The prisoner asked only for mercy, gazing up at the King with hollow eyes. His body ached from repeated beatings, his wrists and ankles were chafed raw from the shackles that bound him, and now, forced to his knees before the King of Gondor, he asked for compassion in a voice as hollow with grief as his eyes.

King Elessar Telcontar of Gondor, Lord of the Iron Kingdom and all its domains, once known simply as Aragorn, held no mercy in his heart that day. He was the very image of the Kings of old, his hair gleaming despite the heavy cloud cover above them, curling about his hard-won crown and framing noble features worn by long-past struggles. Though he had recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, he was still as hale and hearty as a man in his early forties, thanks to his Númenórean blood.

How had it come to this?

His steel-grey eyes slid past the prisoner to the executioner. The executioner's face was shrouded by the traditional black hood, yet his body language was tense, anticipation set his fingers drumming against the haft of his long-bladed axe, boredom and impatience made his feet shuffle. A crowd looked on, shifting restlessly, beguiled by the voice of the King into complacency and riled to eagerness to see the end of a group of traitors.

"Aragorn." The prisoner forced the name from between chapped lips in a hoarse and broken voice. There was little more he could say, his voice long since rusted away from a lack of use. The King did not respond, dispassionate and aloof as a statue, nodding to the executioner to proceed. That was a name he no longer answered to.

"Mellon nin. Estel."

The crowd roared their bloodlust, stomping their feet, drowning out the prisoner's desperate rasp. Only the King had heard the plea, had seen the last flicker of hope fade from once-brilliant blue eyes. The prisoner slumped in his chains, his breath rattling in his chest. There would be no mercy today.

The years he'd spent in the dungeons beneath Minas Tirith had robbed him of his health and vitality: wasting away both muscle and fat as he'd struggled to survive on meagre rations, deprived of sunlight his skin had dulled to an almost ashen paleness. The shackles, which once had been too tight on his wrists and ankles, where the slightest struggle would have bitten into his flesh until it bled, now hung loosely, jangling angrily against protruding bones. A painful cough shook him - the dungeons had been cold and damp and illness had long since overtaken his now-fragile body. He was long past his wild rages, where he had battered himself to pieces against his restraints to escape.

But what had truly beaten him down was watching as, one by one, his friends were escorted from the dungeons, never to return. He had been the mute horrified witness to their pleas for mercy, heard them beg and threaten and bluster and cry, and had been a failing solace to those who remained below. Sometimes, the blood had run down the drains to drip down the dungeon walls. The cells were directly below the executioner's courtyard, where once a tree had blossomed, shining white - the tree had not survived the rise of the Iron Kingdom, and he wondered how long it had taken the King to strike it down.

He was the last prisoner, though he was not sure why. Was it some twisted kindness, to let him outlive the others? Or was it just another form of torture, to make him live through the deaths of his friends? But with his death, the King would rule unopposed.

He lifted his head again, steeling himself for the blow to come and met the King's eyes squarely. He searched those pitiless grey eyes, looking for some sign of the man he had once known - a friend, noble despite his lack of a crown, a leader despite an army to follow him, brave in the face of unrelenting odds. But he could not see that man in the gaze of the man now before him. The man with Aragorn's face smiled, a twisted smile, half-pitying, half-cruel and his hand crept up to grasp the golden ring that hung proudly on a chain about his neck.

At that moment, by uncanny coincidence, the clouds above Minas Tirith parted for a moment, allowing the summer sunlight to fall on the the doomed prisoner and the merciless King. The wind picked up briefly and the prisoner inhaled deeply, catching the faintest scent of trees and green growing things - something he'd been deprived of for years. And then, he lifted his gaze away from the King to gaze up at the sky. The stars twinkled in the break in the clouds, invisible to mortal eyes, but not to his. Their steady gleam was a comfort unlooked for.

And there he knelt, his gaze fixed on the sky above, clinging for as long as he could to this fragile comfort,. The crowd shifted uneasily, their minds stirred to memories that had long been suppressed by the will of the Iron King. Memories of a brighter world, a world before the Iron Kingdom had swept across the lands, snuffing out those who resisted or protested.

And the prisoner spoke, loud enough so that the crowd might hear, knowing that these were to be his final words:

"Onen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim."

The Iron King scowled, his fingers tightening around the ring, and with his free hand slashed at the air. His furious gaze snapped to the executioner, who hurried forwards, urged on by the voice of the ring. The guards swiftly leapt into action, fearful of the King's anger and the uncertain, shifting mood of the crowd, manhandling the prisoner into position, surprised when he failed to resist, but this did not stop them from sneaking a few unnecessary blows in.

As the executioner approached the stump where a white tree had once stood, a wind gusted hard and an eagle screeched in the sky. The world fell to silence, a collective breath held. The King's will flexed and settled over the crowd again, subduing the restless murmurs and spiking anxieties back to calm obedience. The axe rose high, arcing in the sunlight. The prisoner closed his eyes, breathing a quiet prayer.

The axe swung down with an echoing thump and the crowd screamed in approval.