Lila was thirty-eight years old when she had died.
She was slowly walking towards the great pedestal on which she was to be executed, the red executioner with that horrible grinning mask already in position, both the fire and the whip ready, both of which she had been sentenced to.
The whip, reinforced with splinters of glass, salt and other materials she despised so very much, having known about their effects on human wounds and how much more it would hurt because of it as both an alchemist and a healer, rested in a holster on his hip, ready, almost as if it already thirsted to poison her blood and sentence her to a state of extreme fear.
On the pedestal the people of the village, now all hundred of them collected in the town square where people normally traded for food and other necessities, were also hungry for their self-decided justice, yearning to get rid of the alchemist who had supposedly poisoned their world.
Many would have said that they were innocent, unknowing, that one should not blame them.
But most weren't on their way to their death right now.
No matter how much she knew that fact, the fact that their kings and queens, their leaders and masters, their idols and enemies, had all lied to them, she would not forgive them, not the oldest man who didn't even know what was going on, neither the youngest child carried in their parent's arms, a child she knew very well.
The child's name was Lilly, after herself, as she had helped her mother give birth as a midwife, covered in fluids and blood, healing for hours on end, a horrible birth, a birth where the mother would have died without being able to do anything had it been anyone but her, someone who was renowned for both healing, alchemy, even medicine, though, medicine was basically just the unity of both alchemical magic and healing magic, a science itself.
Now the mother stood there, anger in her face, contorted with both despair, disgust, and so much more, a face that had once given her bread in the coldest winters, a year ago, in the same month she had helped her give birth.
It was a weird feeling that she forgave not even them, but in the end, she was certain that all of them were poisoned by themselves, by their bigotry, by their ignorance despite the horrible cries for help she had sent out as she had been sentenced to this horrible execution by the same king who's father's life she had saved those many years ago.
Truly, she didn't even want to utter his name, but she knew him, and she hated him.
Why had he killed her?
That was a question that had kept her awake for months, for the entire time where she had been incarcersated, where lies had been spread about her, where her friends, her dearest companions, had been intoxicated by themselves, where her pets, a cat and a dog, had been slaughtered, their heads displayed a few feet from her, proof that nobody who associates with someone like her, whatever that was supposed to mean, was allowed to continue existing.
And in that same manner they now forced her to kneel, the book still in her hands, her only remaining item that was truly hers, a book she had published, full with secrets of medicine, healing, alchemy, so many things, onto the ground, where it was soon destined to be burnt with her.
The last copy of am almanack meant for normal people to be used in normal situations, an item that had cost the churches and so-called royal 'artisans', healers who were paid a lot more than normal people and cost them their whole life-savings in some cases, so much work and money that the kingdom had supposedly been forced into ruin, almost.
But she hadn't cared, she had just wanted to help, to do what she had thought was right, to do what she wanted to do, to help others, to do what people told her would be the right decision.
Lila smiled slightly as she felt the first attack from the whip, cleaving into her flash, the sound of the air breaking with the executioner flicking his wrist back, the poison on the horrible tool already entering her body, enhancing the pain.
It was kind of ironic that, within her book, she had also added a method of easily curing that very same poison, won from a rare plant in the jungle and used only the worst criminals of the crown, she had added a cure for it, never believing to have to use it.
Still, her mind was clear, her clothes were undoubtably open to the air, exposing wounded flesh, pale ligaments, some things perhaps having fallen off by now, her very bones might even be cracking, but she had already long known how to reduce pain using magic.
That was a basic of healing magic, just merely slowing down the pain receptors, dulling them, causing the patient to be unable to feel pain for the most part, though, of course, it wasn't absolute, and even the pain she felt right now was utterly excruciating.
What had she truly done to deserve this?
She had tried to help, nothing more, that was something she had repeated countless times within the silence of her head, until the silence turned into many voices ringing for control, all within the decades of imprisonment, or perhaps, no, it had only been ten years.
Lila had been imprisoned back when she had been twenty years old, she had cured the old king back when she had been sixteen, she had published the almanac which had been told to be one of the best ever collections of such knowledge with nineteen, sending it out to every kingdom in the world and settling down in this very village, only to be captured about a decade later, and only released once, to help a moderately wealthy woman give birth, a woman who later snuck into prison and gave her bread, as previously mentioned.
Yet, all of that, her whole life, didn't matter anymore.