{Aros' point of view}

Rexus had to put aside his own grief to finally make Nena go inside. She had cried out, resisting when I ordered her to go away, and Kindle even had to rush out of the Dragon Hall to come help. When he came running at the screams and saw the spear in my hand he had braked slowly and stared at me. I confirmed his subtle, questioning gesture with a small nod, and his brown eyes turned into pools of sadness. He had looked at our ill-driven friend one more time, and then, soothing Nena, had gone back inside with Rex.

"It's for his own good. Go on, I won't get in your way. I...", Rex had said as his shoulders began to jerk again. "I hope he'll remember me... when he gets up there.", he had murmured as he looked up at the two moons of Ecra, and his tears, which ran like welts across his face, glittered silver in the light of the thousands of stars. 

 I walked toward the tree trunk to which my former friend was tied, pushing all the guilt away from me. "This is not the Rellian I knew," I told myself. The former dragon breeder already heard me coming and turned his head in my direction. His eyes had turned completely black, the dirty black slime was still dripping from his mouth, leaning forward panting with exhaustion, his wrists still bound behind the rough tree trunk which was forcing him to adopt a very strained posture. His shoulder blades seemed to almost be bursting out of his skin, his veins in his neck clearly sharply outlined. He emitted a groan as I drew closer, his blond-brown hair sticking to the side of his head from the clotted blood and sweat that covered his entire wounded, broken body. He looked at me pleadingly, almost desperately, and I immediately understood what he was trying to tell me. Looking at the wooden spear in my hand, I closed my eyes. This was best for the guild. This was the best for Rellian.

All I could hear was the rustling of the trees in the wind and Rellian's shallow gasping for breath. When I opened my eyes again, he was looking at me with those empty eyes. I never thought it would have to end this way for him. That a Vortexia would attack him and then, I'd be the one who'd have to kill him. Never.

But now, it became reality.

Rellian began to whisper,  and leaned forward slightly to hear him: "Aros...do it...I'm not afraid..."

The wounded boy gurgled loudly, blood and black slime dripping onto the ground.

"of dying..."

He finished his sentence., looked straight at me again, and I just had to turn my head away because of his eyes, from which I could not read any emotions. For just a second, his old, healthy, and happy face flashed before my own eyes in a wave of memories, before he lifted his chin, to my surprise forming a small, almost invisible smile around his lips. "Protect them, Aros...protect Thyme...and Nena...and Rex...for me..." I lifted the spear and took a deep breath, as Rellian raised his head and looked up at the stars in the same way that Rexus had just done. This was what disturbed this beautiful night. Two friends, one half dead, the other about to put the first one out of his misery.

"Do it. Kill me."

I pulled back the spear to get some momentum, shutting my eyes tight, and with no hesitation left, I rammed. As the weapon hit Rellian in the chest, I heard this last sentence, which shot a pang of pain through my whole body and made me feel nauseous.

I heard the wooden stake hitting his chest, piercing his flesh and bones, an agonized choking sound leaving his lips as he gasped for breath, blood splattering on my shirt. I closed my eyes again, still clasping the spear, afraid that his screams would wake other members, but he  kept as quiet as possible, as the smell of blood and his rotting wounds filled my nose, and I held back a gag. Everything went dead silent, and I felt the spear slowly push back at me as Rellian's dead body slumped forward after his last spasms.

I saw his vacant stare turned to the sky, his mouth left in a soundless scream during his last breath. 

Rellian was dead.

I fell to my knees and cried out like never before until it hurt. I couldn't take it anymore. That stupid curse of Brutheo, Sherdol who had been resurrected, four guild members lost in only a few days.... I put my hands in my neck supporting myself on the ground with my elbows so my face almost touched the soil.

My memories with my former friend all came flooding back as I lay there. I remembered how the city doors closed. I remembered how I saw him sitting on the sandy ground, covering his eyes with a scarf against the flying sand, watching the giant, futuristic-looking gates slowly lock. I remembered how I had sat up and asked him what his name was, how old he was, whether he had any friends. And that was the beginning of our companionship. 

Along with Rex, he had helped me keep the other children safe as best we could. There were many that hadn't survived the first night, we had been thrown out for a reason after all, so as not to endanger the adults, so as not to cause unnecessary deaths. I remember how he was the first to sign up to be a negotiator with Kleim, and a dragon breeder, when the guilds were finally assembled, and how he enthusiastically pulled Rexus with him to break the news to Kindle. And how, before that, he had taken Kindle under his wing, and made other new members feel at home with us.  I remember how he wrote songs, which he then drunkenly brought out on the bonfire nights. How he danced. How his ponytail moved up and down when he laughed. How he did his little braids in the morning, and put in his small engraved earrings. The way he looked at Nena during the Moon Ball whilst he thought no one was looking. The recollections hit me like a hammer in the head. And it hurt. A lot.

A soothing hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw Cole, the leader of the builders, whose job also included being a mortician. "It's better this way, Aros. Kindle told me to come already, so the others don't have to see this tomorrow."Absentmindedly, I remained kneeling and looked back at the gently swaying grass, and in the process, the feet of my friend whom I had just put to death.

While Cole and a few others untied him, I got up and walked away toward the Dragon Hall.