Onyx, Son of Audior

Content warning: suicide, slavery, violence.

    There’s no way I could possibly explain how I got here. I cannot recount every battle, every day spent puzzling and planning, nor can I detail for you every sacrifice and heart-wrenching decision I’ve had to make. That would be an epic saga, and I’m no poet. But I’ll give you all I can before they drag me out before the millions who eagerly and impatiently await my bloodshed. 

    My name is Onyx Strider, and today, I am pitted against a man to die. 

    I cannot use a thing in my cell to cut my chains. And even if I could, I would not. I’ve given everything to the movement for freedom. I have spent one hundred years of my long life running the Independence Brigade—a society whose very existence is illegal—in an attempt to free human slaves. 

    Human society fell to the hands of the magical races generations ago, for we are enhanced in ways humans are not. We have magic on our side, the power of historic titans that courses through our blood. That power makes us faster, stronger, more fearless, and longer living—we elves, as well as the goliathins and the goblins and the dwarves alike. But I have remained convinced that humans exist on par with us in terms of intrinsic worth. That magic is an ability, not a marker of value. Their lack of power is moot. A talking point that we use for our self-aggrandizement. Our kinds have exerted our dominion over the world no better than the humans did. They enslaved each other in droves across their entire history. We would do the same, except we use them instead. Both parties simply repeat the same jargon. 

    ‘Look at them. See how they diverge from what we do and are—the right way of being.’ Ah, my son. What fools we all are. The boogieman is so sought after because we don’t know what we’d be without them. The boogieman, even if it’s an entire species, gives us something to have as our inferiors, to shun and scorn. The humans sought it amongst their own ranks. We have defenseless beings, capable of love and hope, that we use as our own personal punching bags. Understand, Oxyn son of Audior; no man, and no one race, is perfect. They all fall short. They will all seek to usurp and exert force over those they think they can overcome. The blood of tyranny and torture is on all of our hands. 

    Words from my father, the great Audior, leader of the freedom fighters before me. I carried on his legacy after he passed on to the heavens. Yet as my ranks in the brigade dwindled and dwindled until my legions of thousands turned to hundreds, I began to lose hope. And on the day that my last loyal soldiers and I were led to a slaughter, when the traitors in our ranks brought us to an ambush resulting in the death of all my good men and women, both liberated humans and honorable warriors of magic races, I realized I would need to prepare for the ultimate sacrifice. For that day, my position of most value to the movement changed. I am worth more to it as a dead man than as a live one. A martyr who, hopefully, will inspire a young freedom fighter to continue my work. To do it better. To learn from my mistakes and not allow the poison to purge the movement from within. 

    My cell door clangs open, and I look up, not caring that my withered face is mostly obscured by a long, unkempt, shaggy beard and raggedy locks of gray and white hair that hang over my face. I wear the robes of a commoner, but they are sooty, dirty, and vile. I’m to be dressed down in front of the nation. The man who nearly took down the corrupt government of Argolluscas, who slew countless generals, who burned terror into the hearts of officials and created hope in those of slaves—that man is to be declared a myth. Shown now as he is, or rather, as I am—old, tired, and prepared to die. 

    The most powerful thing, the greatest and ultimate sacrifice for a cause that one cannot further pursue, is death, young one. 

    More words from my beloved father, that I rely on in faith today, as I set out to face the crowd, rather than plunging the dagger into my own heart prematurely, as I’ve been so tempted to do over the course of my painful weeks in this rotting cavern. 

    Each of the goliathin guards that enter is ten feet tall. They tower over me, heads upon heads taller, arms and chest and shoulders bulging with swollen muscle, straining against their impenetrable iron armor. 

    “Get up, filth.” The deep rumbling voice of the pack’s lead thug scares me—I am not ashamed to admit it. “Can’t you even die properly?” 

    I am kicked with a hard metal boot, and I feel a rib bruise hard, if not crack. The wind is knocked out of me, and I wheeze for air. 

    “Filth.” The lead guard repeats. With great effort, I force myself to stand. I’m taken roughly by either arm and dragged along, feet trailing, until we reach the trapdoor. I don’t beg or plead for my life. I stay silent as the steel plate is opened and I’m thrown through it with incredible force. The second it’s open, and I’m flying through the air, the sound of a roaring crowd hits my ears. When they see me, the noise increases tenfold. I fall back down onto the ground, and somehow the sound of the hard collision—old flesh and bones on unforgiving metal—rings throughout the densely packed crowd.

    A single drumbeat, and the noise quiets to a low buzz, a barely audible thrum. Anticipation. 

    The most powerful thing, the greatest and ultimate sacrifice for a cause that one cannot further pursue, is death, young one. 

    “Watch ‘Lord Onyx,’ the traitor to the magic race, the lover of slave commoners, the protector of humans, fight to the death against my general, my strongest commander, Lord Himeir!”

    And now, General Himeir struts through the double doors. He is beloved by the people—at least, by the middle and upper classes. The lower echelons, of course, detest him and all his men, but they are kept quiet with threats and examples made of their fellow citizens. My foe in countless battles, now here to kill me at last.

    “This should be FUN!” Himeir roars, bellowing, beating his chest to show off his golden chest plate, accompanied by shoulder pads, arm protection, and greaves. He tosses a blade into my hands. It’s no match for his own, his superior iron beast that glints and bears down on me. It is not a fair fight; I’ve no armor. I hold a slower, duller blade. I will not survive.

    The most powerful thing, the greatest and ultimate sacrifice for a cause that cannot be further pursued by you, is death, young one. 

    True, very true, and yet I will fight until I can’t, because when I die, it will be said I fought in the name of freedom. If I appear to be cowering to this man at last, all I’ve done will be viewed as for naught. 

    And so it begins. I wait for his strike, circling him silently. He smiles, and doesn’t leave his attack a surprise. He cries an insane, sick, gleeful battle cry, and the people, the ones that love him and praise their Lord Himeir, lose their minds in their screams and hollers, and suddenly, oh god, too suddenly, my rigged execution has begun. The great swordsman descends like night, slashing his blade at my abdomen with ferocious speed. I swat the weapon aside. The clang of metal on metal, so familiar, lights a fire within me.

    I counterattack, whipping my sword at the backside of his legs, and he jumps above the blade, an athletic, impressive leap. I see his next attack too late, and the striking blow from the blunt of the sword on my off-hand arm sends me reeling. The cheering and clapping are now beyond deafening, and I don’t care. I lunge for the man, and he falls for the bait. Himeir moves to push the blade aside and return thrust, and yet my blade is already spinning over his and at his wrist. There is a gush of blood. Perhaps I’ve made contact with an artery, for it is not as severe a wound as it appears. Surely enough, he endures it and kicks me back with a mighty buck. I lose balance and fall. As I regain footing, he slips in a stab at my leg. My thigh blossoms red, and I cry out, agony sweeping through me. 

    My return strike is vicious and full of all my malice for the man. I bludgeon his exposed abdomen with a bruising headbutt and stab the area as he flies back. And so the fight goes. Back and forth, and back and forth, and on and on until we are both tired, in pain, gasping, but still moving, never ceasing. The crowd is loving it; they eat it up, they are all focused, all watching, all waiting to see who will prevail. 

    But down on the ground floor, we know. Of course, we know. Even as I pin his blade and send a flying punch to his face, causing his nose to bleed down into his maw, twisted into a mad grin, we know. “I won’t be the man to lose.” He hisses. “You’ve no armor. You’ve no glory, none at all. Because I will strip it away with the kill.”

    “You will never kill the ghost I am to become.” My response bites with a cold fury, not a hot, flaming thing. We duel, exchanging scrapes, punches, kicks, gouges, stabs, and injuries, until, at last, I begin to slow. I am much worse for wear; I’ve hit his defended, plated body countless times, yet he’s hit me too, and I have felt the scratches and punctures, felt the pain as my skin is torn at by his blade. Multiple minor strikes, combined with a trio of more major lacerations and punctures, make me grow dizzy from loss of blood, blood that stains my bare feet and the stone ground. 

    And at last, he knocks me to the ground with a kick across the face that immediately swells my eye. I’m sure it is red, and if I were to live long enough, it would surely blacken and bruise into something nasty. But I will not last. My sword clatters beside me, out of my treacherous hand, my grip helpless against the brutal impact of stone. He surrounds me and swipes his sword at my robes, yanking the blood-soaked mess until my stabbed and cut body is laid bare. But I am not ashamed, lying there naked in front of the millions in the impossibly behemoth crowd. 

    “They are the marks of my pain!” I bellow. “My servitude.” I gasp for air for life as the man stands over me, still, held in place not by honor, but by the audience’s need for my words, for the spectacle. “I AM DYING!” The words are ripped from me. “Thousands are dying! One of you must continue…” My voice catches in my throat, and I choke in pain as Himeir steps quickly now and ruthlessly on my deepest wound, on a heavily bleeding shoulder that he nearly hacked to the bone, and I swear, I want it to stop, I want it to end, I want to rest, I want death. But I have to say one thing. With my last ounce of strength, I roar a crazed and powerful cry and shake him off, and stand. The audience grows silent and awed, for I have done the impossible. I don’t know how I’m conscious, much less managing to hold my weight. Before the general can gather his wits, pick up his sword, and charge me, end me, I shout at the top of my voice. “One of you, and then more, much more, must continue what I’ve done! The cowards, the liars, they must all lose! You must prevail! I PASS MY THORNED CROWN ON TO YOU!” 

    I gather in my mouth all the saliva I can muster and spit it on the man I so detest. “HAIL FREEDOM!” I pick up my fallen sword and sink the blade hilt deep through my heart.

    And so Onyx, son of Audior, freer of slaves, toppled, breathing his last on the stone ground, and darkness fell upon him, as for any man.