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Dramatis Personae
The King
The Assassin
The Commander
The Thief
The Priest
The Warden
Synopsis
The tragedies of five men who have lost everything because of the things they believe in, because of the things they want to believe in…because of things they thought they believed in.
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Scene 1
The leaves rustle in the wind as five men gather around the crackling fire in the dark of night in the woods.
Enter the Warden, the King, the Assassin, the Commander, the Thief and the Priest.
The Warden
“You must all stay here the night. I will be back before daybreak.”
The Thief
“Where are you going?”
The Warden
“I must take care of some things before we cross the border. Please, take this sack, there’s some wine and bread in there, enough for all of you. Eat it for tomorrow will be a long and difficult day.
The Warden disappears into the darkness of the trees around them. The five men remain quiet for a long time, drinking the wine, warming themselves by the fire as the night grows colder and colder. The silence seemed to be interminable, that is until the King breaks the stillness.
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The King
“We have journeyed for god knows how many weeks, yet not one of us has said why we’re here, what we did to get here.”
The Assassin
“Then why don’t you start proud King. I will tell you mine if you tell us yours.”
The King
“Not long ago I was a King. Some might even still call me that but can one truly be a king without a kingdom. I fear not.”
The Priest
“As much as your words ring true, and they do, I myself have always held to the belief that it is not a kingdom that makes a king, nor is it a crown, or the ostentatious monikers that most kings take pleasure in entitling themselves with. No, it is his people, those he surrounds himself with. It his actions, his morals, those are things on which I judge on. None of us here know your story; none of us can judge you, so tell us.”
The General
“You’re bothered by something…aren’t you King?”
The King
“Many things, things that I have done, that have been done…that will be done all because of me.”
The Priest
“One cannot blame everything on himself. If we all blamed ourselves for every tragedy and calamity that occurred in this world, we would have all ended our existences long ago.” 3
The King
“True words Priest, perhaps for one such as you but not for a king, not for someone like me.”
The Commander
“I would agree with the holy man on this one.”
The King
“But how could I not blame myself for all that’s happened. My wife, my children, they would still be here had I not done what I did. As King, it was my duty to protect them, yet not only did I fail them, but I failed my people, the lands that I, no else, was supposed to protect.
The Priest
“Man is lost the day he forgets guilt. We are sinful creatures by nature, nothing can change that and you child, a King you might be, are no different from any man. If truly you regret what you have done, then know that God will forgive you.
The King
I don’t merit God’s forgiveness. I abandoned my son, left him to fend for himself in the harshness of the world against my wife’s pleas but I could not stand him. It wasn’t because he had done anything, no; I couldn’t stand him because of how he looked. He was grotesque, a man in monster’s skin. I could not stand to look at him and eventually, I exiled him from the capitol, because I could not stand to look at the monster that I had created, yet the funny thing is, he was no monster, he looked like one perhaps but I had not done that, your God chose to bring him to this world deformed and grotesque but I…I was the one who created the real monster when I exiled him from my castle. I created the monster that eventually murdered Princess Ana which induced the southern provinces to rebel against the crown.
The Priest
“That was…a terrible thing, what you did to your son but I will not chastise you for that which has long happened. You did wrong, yet how could you have known what he would do, what he would become.”
The Commander
“A man chooses who he wants to be, and your son, he made his choice and whether it was because of you or not is something neither you nor I will ever know.”
The King
“Perhaps, perhaps you are all right yet it doesn’t change anything. I had a part in the making of that monster, and what he did lost me everything, my crown, my kingdom…my family, and that, that is something I will never forgive myself for, never.
The Priest
“In time, I hope you’ll come to forgive yourself.”
The King
“So do I Priest, so do I.”
The gathered men sat quietly around the campfire, passing between one another the wine drinking horn.
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The Thief
“And you Assassin, what’s your story?”
The Assassin
“I killed a man, the wrong man.”
The Priest
“And who was this man?”
The Assassin
“It doesn’t matter. You could say he was a bad man, but his children weren’t. No child deserves to watch his father be murdered before him.”
The King
“There’s more to this, isn’t there.”
The Assassin
“The man’s wife she…she loved him. A few days later I heard that a great mansion had been burned down to the west. It was his mansion; the man’s mansion had burned down.”
The Priest
“The man’s wife…she did it, didn’t she.”
The Assassin
“She couldn’t bear the pain of losing her husband. No one knew how it happened but she must’ve burned down the house in the midst of the night. The charred corpses of the children as well as hers were found in the burned ruins. I had done this, if I hadn’t assassinated that man, those children, that woman, they would still be alive.”
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The men gathered around the fire all grew quiet, a powerful silence that seemed to freeze the world around them.
The Assassin
“None of you could say that their blood wasn’t in my hands, and its true, and now I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
The Commander
“Was this the first time something like this happened?”
The Assassin
“I’ve killed much worse men in my life, I thought maybe this man wasn’t any different, the contract paid well, and even after the fire, I still tried…oh you don’t know how much I tried not to blame myself for it, to get over it. Then…then I found out that I had killed him so that his business rivals could take over his trade in that region, nothing more. I had killed an entire family; just so one greedy bastard could make a little bit more coin for his dainty needs.”
The Thief
“It is the profession. You must’ve known something like this would happen, I mean, you did kill for a living.”
The Assassin
“Am I to be judged by a Thief now?”
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The Priest
“No one’s judging anyone. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of; it is why God has brought us all here tonight. We are here to confess the terrible things we have done, to confess before one another one last time. Who else in this world can understand us, the things we did, why we did them? No one, no one can.”
The Thief
“Then let me tell you my story…a Thief’s tale.”
The King
“Then speak, why are you here among us? What could a Thief do to make him one such as the likes of us?”
The Thief
“Many things o’ King…one terrible thing.”
The Priest
“Who did you steal from child?”
The Thief
“Not who…what did I steal?”
The Priest
“Then what did you steal?”
The Thief
“A child…Princess Ana’s child.
A great silence cut through the group of men.
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The King
“What did you just say?”
The Thief
“I kidnapped Princess Ana’s child.”
The Commander
“And who hired you to abduct the child?”
The King
“My son…it must’ve been my son, it must’ve been.”
The Thief
“It…it was your son.”
The Priest
“Are you sure child?”
The Thief
“He used others to do his bidding for him but, I did meet him once, after I had taken the child. I-I handed him the child.”
The King
“And my son used the child to get to Princess Ana. To get her to come out so he could do the things he did to her…so he could murder her.”
The Thief
“I-I’m sorry.”
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The King
“Don’t be. I made my son what he became; you were just a tool he used to get what he wanted, nothing more.”
The Commander
“I…I met your son once, a long time ago, during the purges when I was a general. I remember when he came to me once, begged me to take him in my forces, but I was unrelenting, I had my men and hounds chase him off. In my eyes, he was nothing more than a grotesque wretch. I didn’t think much of him, but I must’ve been wrong, after all he’s done, a monster he might be, but a tactician nonetheless.”
The Priest
“You’ve met the King’s son I see, but what is your story Commander, your tale?”
The Commander
“It is one of regret, of death. I am a malicious man Priest, nothing but the fiery pits of hell await me once I’m dead, but I never really cared for all that. Some saw me as the devil himself, come forth from the gates of hell to bring fire and blood on those he deemed unworthy and to an extent, they weren’t wrong.”
The Assassin
“So you are the famed ‘Butcher of the North’, aren’t you?”
The Commander
“I am. In the North, they called me the ‘Devil of the Night’. I much prefer that. Only they saw the things me and my men did.”
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The Priest
“Most of us know of your…purges against the northmen but none of us know why you did it, what belief you held on to as you had your men burn their towns and butcher their people…if you regret doing all of that.”
The Commander
“Regret, maybe. It is why I am here I garner, but do you know why I did it, why I had my men commit those atrocities. I did it because in my eyes, those savages were nothing more than animals, vermin that ought to be eradicated.”
The King
“The northmen are heathen brutes, everyone knows that, but why take such extreme measures. Why try and wipe out an entire people?”
The Commander
“Your realm never experienced the brutality of their raids. Mine did. I lost my entire family to those savages. I hated them. Their entire being. In my eyes, their culture was nothing more than a blight that ought to be exterminated before it infected us all. That was why I did it. Some of you might say it was a personal vendetta, perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t but if their end meant that no other man would ever see his entire family be massacred before his very eyes because of those barbarians, and then it was well worth it if you ask me.”
The Priest
“But do you…do you regret it?”
The Commander
“Do you want me to be truly honest?”
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The Priest
“Yes.”
The Commander
“I don’t know. I truly don’t know.”
The old Priest stood up and trudged over to where the Commander sat, and placed his hand on the Commander’s shoulder.
The Priest
“Sometimes we never know. Sometimes we go on through the great journey that is life without ever knowing anything. That is the tragedy of man’s existence.”
The King
“And what about you Priest, what can a holy man such as you could do to be here among men such as me.”
The Priest
“A long time ago, a mutated man came to the steps of my church. He begged me, begged me to take him in. ‘But how could I let a fiend, a beastly looking man such as him enter the house of God’. My feeble mind was shrouded back then, constrained within the bounds of what I was led to believe, and I refused this young man when he needed God most to be accepted into God’s house. This boy…this boy was your son King. You’re not alone here into making him the monster he became. I shunned him away when he needed someone. Who else would accept someone that looked like him? Nobody and nobody did and then he went to murder a Princess, and start a civil war that killed thousands. How…how could I live with that? I could have changed it all, all of it, yet when I turned him away, I turned away everything I wanted to believe in. When I turned away your son, I turned away God, and for that, I can never forgive myself.”
The King
“You told me before Priest that I could have never known what he would grow to become and do, and you, you barely knew the boy. In your eyes, he was probably nothing more than some malformed vagabond so you did what anyone else in your place would have done, you shunned him away.
The Priest
“And that is where you and I both did wrong. We shunned him away when he needed us most, and so both you and I had a part in making him what he became, even though we could have never known that he would eventually do what he did.”
The Thief
“Then it appears that we all have something in common, we all did something for or did something to the King’s son. We all had a part to play in what he became, in what he eventually did and started. At least everyone here, except the Assassin.”
The Assassin
“Not really. The man, the one who contracted me, well the one that worked for the real contractor, he was a monstrous man. He must’ve been your son. He must’ve been the real contractor. The death of the man that I assassinated paved the way for his rivals to take over the town.”
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The King
“And what was the name of that town?”
The Assassin
“Getterbock.”
The King
“Then it must’ve been my son who contracted you. The fall of Getterbock enabled the southern provinces to quickly march their forces against my rule across the river through the town’s bridge. My son had you assassinate the Earl of Getterbock himself so that he could enable the southern provinces to wage their rebellion against me. It all makes sense now, all of it.”
The Thief
“Then what now? What are we going to do, what is going to happen to us?”
The Commander
“Yes Priest, please, you must tell us. What will happen to us now? We all had a part in the making of that fiend, in what he did, what is going to happen now?
The Assassin
“How could we ever forgive ourselves now? What more do men such as I mean anymore, are we monsters just as the King’s son? Did we exist just so we can bring destruction and death and despair in this world of ours?”
The Priest remained quiet for sometime, and then as he raised his head, his rheumy grey eyes stared at each of the men, a sea of sadness engulfing them.
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The Priest
“Of all questions of existence that weigh upon mankind, the humanity of living with guilt is the greatest of them all. And when you come to that horrible, unavoidable realization we have only three choices, we pray for forgiveness, we kill ourselves, or we simply accept who we are, and thus we become the monster.”
The King
“Then I call a toast, to men like us, to men who have done things that they regret, who have done things they can never hide from again, who have become the monsters of our own existence, let us drink this one last time.
The five men all sipped from the drinking horn passing it among one another one last time, enjoying the night for as long as it lasted for sometimes all men should do is enjoy what they have, as long is it lasts because nothing is this world lasts forever. It is sadly, the fate of man, the fate of human existence.
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Scene 2
The melody of robins’ tethers in the air as the sun rises over the trees. Five men lay on the ground, the life of them extinguished just the like the flames of the campfire they surround.
Enter the Warden
The Warden
“In this life, men such as you could never again live in peace, so I brought you peace, an eternal peace, away from the world which you damned, away from the world which you tainted, away from those that you wronged…away from me.”
*David B. Vehbiu në shkollën e mesme, 17 vjeçar fitoi Çmimin e Trete per skenare në distriktin e Browardit në Floriden e Jugut , qe ka 2 milionë banore. Ky skenar është shkruar në vitin 2017 dhe çmimin e ka fituar në 2018. Sot Davidi studion në vitin e dyte ne universitetin e Floridas ne Gensvile qe eshte universiteti pulblik i gjashti më i mire në USA .
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