Gambling, gambling, gambling. The stakes had been impossibly high and he had finally lost. Now it was time to pay the price, the highest price. Paying a price for a man he did not know. To the law enforcing body, it was a case of obvious right and wrong.
They didn't know that they weren't hanging the man who deserved it.
After Windsor had woken up after passing out from exerting so much energy from that incident a month or so ago, he had been himself coughing and sputtering, feeling as if he had just gotten beaten half to death. A flood of guards had come in. There was a great deal of shouting and commotion, the general consensus of a conspiracy. The guard captain remained asleep but quite alive, and the healer had said one thing;
"I housed her. It is my fault."
From that moment on, his mentor and best friend was an enemy to the government. He had been taken away, quickly and roughly. Windsor had been ignored after the general commotion that he was alive. The whole thing had taken a long while to be digested by the legal system and there was a fair amount of uncertainty about it. One day, Windsor had been informed that it had emerged as a hanging. From then on, he felt like the most low dirt there was. It was all his fault. He was able to visit his friend once, only for a few minutes and with a guard standing nearby, listening.
"Oh Azaldi," he had said miserably, "Why would you do this? It's not your fault. You have a wife! You could have lived happily." Azaldi said to him, "You can't have your cake and eat it too, nor can you have your perfect life and truly live."
'Why does everything he say have to sound so cryptic? This is horrible. It's all my fault.'
Azaldi only ever said things when he really meant them, and only when they needed to be said most. Rarely was a word spoken in simple conversation. Windsor felt miserable, sorry for himself and everyone else involved. He thought of Tiraris as well. What had become of her? Was she alright? He had no way of knowing. Not a way. He hoped she was doing well, much better than him, as he stood by helplessly, watching the hangman take his friend up to the place in which he would die. Azaldi remained strangely calm, while Windsor stood and tried to make himself not look as depressed as he truly was for fear of being accused of sympathizing with an enemy of the government. 'Why me, why him?', Windsor thought sadly.