Sigrid - Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1.1: Sigrid Ankertna

Why? Why? Why?

Sigrid Ankertna looked down at the round barrel not far from her. Soon, when the guillotine’s blade falls, her head will fall into that barrel.

Sigrid raised her head to look at the people who’d gathered and judged her with resentful looks. She was bewildered. All of her life, she’d lived by the rules. She’d lived right. No matter what others did, she was as loyal as a dog to the empire. But why did she end up like this? Why should she kneel here like this? WHY? WHY? WHY?

She bit her lips.

“Execute!!”

Just as the word was said, Sigrid felt her vision swirling. She saw the bottom of the approaching barrel, and then, complete darkness..

***

“Ugh!”

Sigrid woke up from the bed, struggling to breathe.

“Hah.. hah.. Haahh…”

Drenched in cold sweat, Sigrid touched her neck.

It had just been detached. Properly.

“What is this…? The afterlife?”

Sigrid pushed off a rough blanket and got up from an old bed. It was a sixteen square meter room that was similar to what she used to have. Her hand groped around in the dark to turn the lamp on, then pushed the window open. The old wooden window rattled and opened heavily.

As the cold air flowed in, Sigrid took in a deep breath.

‘Is the afterlife like this?’ 

She was in a similar place to where she lived before. Even the surrounding scenery was also no different.

Without closing the window, Sigrid took out an empty teacup and a teapot. She lit a small stove to heat up water and took out some cheap tea leaves to make herself some  hot tea. Then, she took a sip.

She frowned. The tea was really bad. She looked at her hot tea then realized, even the stuff was the same. The tea tasted similarly awful. Furthemore, her habits were still the same. She subconsciously made tea when her mind was in chaos. She didn’t feel like she was in the afterlife.

‘My neck was cut off and I opened my eyes in my room and now I’m drinking tea that tastes like this.’

Sigrid kept drinking her tea while in daze. Her past life was like a funny joke. She had so many gold and silver treasures, but she lived too modestly as she’d believed that a knight living a frugal life was the right way.g. If she’d known her life would end like that, she would have lived in luxury.

Sigrid slowly drank her tea and looked out at the darkness beyond the window.

Everything was unfair. There was nothing that said that a person would live in the afterlife the same as they lived before. Even so, if it is like that, after the king dies, he would still live in the palace? And if the people in the slums died, they would be still in the slums…

Thinking of the slums, Sigrid let out a low groan.

There were slums in the capital, but they’d all been wiped out. It was her military squad and herself who’d done that.

The emperor gave an order to ‘clean up’ the slums. It was the virtue of knights to follow the emperor’s orders and the orders of the master were absolute. She’d blocked the entrances and set the fire while killing all those who ran away. She’d also killed all the knights and soldiers who protested against what they did. Disobedience only earned death. But wasn’t that natural? Knights were tools for the King.

Or so she’d thought, until the Emperor gave his tool this punishment.

Sigrid touched her neck again. Even now, she felt that her neck would roll around.

After her tea was finished, Sigrid got up from her seat. She wanted to know how far the similarities of the afterlife went compared to her past life. No, since she was in the afterlife, she wanted to visit the God of the Underworld and ask him, ‘Have I really committed such a great sin?’

She opened the closet to change her clothes. The wardrobe was also worn out. There was a piece of wood stuck in one of the legs to make it balanced. One of the doors was broken and if it wasn’t opened gently, it would fall out, but Sigrid had the trick to open it so it was opened well.

There were three sets of clothes in the closet. A uniform, two shirts and two pants. ‘Come to think of it Morris told me to buy some clothes.’

Sigrid let out a little chuckle at the thought of her friend. Morris was one of her friends who’d tried to get her out of prison until the end. She didn’t expect it since many of her friends had left her after the slum incident. And yet, some of them had still come to visit her when she was in prison. They believed in her innocence.

Sigrid changed into everyday clothes and put on her boots before opening the door. Soon she was faced with the old and dark corridor that a typical multi-family residential area in one of the capital cities had. The wooden floor of the hall was worn out and creaked which made the people living there unable to stand the noise when people walked on it. However, Sigrid walked skillfully across the passage without making any noise at all.

‘This is also similar.’

Everything was really the same. Nothing had changed from the past world.

‘You mean the afterlife was like this?’ Sigrid stood in front of the building, feeling the urge to beat the theologists in the back of their heads.

‘It’s curfew.’

Could she go out since it’s afterlife? Or perhaps since it’s curfew? After a moment of hesitation, Sigrid began to move. How did she know if it was curfew? If the guards from the underworld came, it would be a great welcome.

Moving along, Sigrid began to walk towards the center of the capital city. She thought maybe the king of the underworld lived there.

After a moment of walking, suddenly there was a whistle.

“There! Stop!”

Sigrid stopped, then she turned around. She saw two guards with spears in their hand walking towards her.

“It’s curfew. What are you doing?”

“Show me your identity card.”

Sigrid was puzzled by the words of the two guards. If it was the identity card, did they mean the identity card in the current world? Did they talk about the things of the underworld? If it belonged to the underworld, she had not yet received anything.

“Identity card?” When she tilted her head, the two guards’ expressions got more grim.

”Suspicious behavior!”

“Let’s go to the guard station.”

Sigrid nodded her head and obeyed passively at the order of the guards. If she was being sent to the center of power, she didn’t mind.

However, when Sigrid arrived at the guard station, she was baffled.