3The Avatar
John Fiore
It was a bleak evening for us, for the warriors who stood at the edge of the Black Cliffs. The war drums in the distance beat relentlessly, more than two score strong, while all we had was a broken, rusting bugle. There was a mere half a dozen of us left, and only half of us had working weapons anymore – cannon fire and the myriad enemy forces had decimated the rest of our once great legion. I poked at the small fire with a twig, and when it caught blaze I tossed it in.
The enemy, who were easily two hundred in number, had been advancing on our position for days, pushing us back against the straight drop to the shores of the ocean below. We were all that was left – the elite, the stoic veterans, the grim survivors. But really, we were just as scared as any recruit. At least I still had my sword. Torius had lost everything but a single javelin head, which he was fitting to a straight branch. It was when night truly began to fall that an intruder stumbled into our camp. One of my companions immediately trained his rifle upon the man's head, but put it down just as fast, as we recognized him almost immediately.
The newcomer stood more than six feet tall in his armor, which consisted almost completely of volcanic glass. A gargantuan drum, more than four feet across, was strapped to his back with leather. "An Avatar!" my eyes widened and I rushed to his side as he staggered, leaning heavily upon the only thing he carried: A long, silver flagpole. The tatters of what was once our glorious banner clung feebly to the metal, and the falcon at the top of the shaft had lost its wings, but the Avatar was still amazing to behold. Even when breathing heavily, hunched against his standard, he carried an aura of majesty that could made the skin prickle.
A long, black arrow protruded from his shin. The armor around it had shattered; it always did when struck by any amount of force, but since it was weighted down, it actually increased the Avatar's speed the more he was hit. I helped him down against a nearby boulder, laying his damaged leg carefully against the soft grass. There were no allied forces for fifty miles in any direction, and the only means of getting to our position would have been to break through the enemy lines, most of which were equally far away. The Avatar had come fifty miles with an arrow in his leg.
"Where is your weapon? Where is the Burning Greatsword?" one of my companions asked from the other side of the fire while I drew out the arrow. The Avatar did not so much as grunt.
"When I was forced to break through the enemy lines," he responded, confirming my beliefs, "I battered apart so much armor that eventually, it was like fighting with a great metal rod. And I've already got one of those," he said, shaking his flag a bit. His voice was like a far-off thunderstorm, and it reverberated in my chest.
"This arrow is poisoned," I said grimly, examining it. It was a very powerful venom.
"I know," the Avatar nodded. "I'll be dead in an hour."
"What?" I said, throwing down the projectile. "You can't be killed by a mere arrow! You're an Avatar!" It wasn't possible. This man would have had to defeated more than fifty enemies single-handed to break through the lines.
"Hah," the man laughed derisively, shaking slightly. The others had lapsed into a respectful hush and drawn back around the fire, leaving me alone with the warrior. He put a hand on my shoulder and drew me close. Then, lifting up his visor, he whispered in my ear: "The only thing that makes a difference between…" he trailed off, coughed up some blood, and paused to catch his breath. "I can't… Take this damn armor off me. The breastplate, the breastplate."
I did as he asked. Upon setting the protection aside, I could see where more than ten arrows had punched through his inner mail – where he had drawn them back out by himself. It occurred to me that if his breastplate was undamaged, it meant he must have entered the battle without the majority of his armor. "Why would you run into a fight with no breastplate?" I asked, my mind boggling at the amount of damage his body had sustained. I had heard of Avatars surviving amazing feats, but this…
"Think, man!" he said, shaking his head weakly. "If an Avatar enters a battle uncovered, who is the enemy going to focus their fire on? Him, or the protected?"
I nodded in understanding, but then: "Wait. There were others with you?"
The Avatar grimaced. "Two."
Three Avatars. It was a ridiculous amount of military power to waste on a handful of stranded fighters. "Why?" I asked.
"Because you," he said, picking up the flag with some effort and crossing it over his chest to me, "are the next Avatars. You were to be reached at any cost."
I looked at his face for the first time, then. The Avatar was an old, tired man. Scars of blade wounds crisscrossed his face, and I began to suspect that it was not the arrows that were killing him, but age. "Us?" I whispered, looking back at my companions. "We can't be… This can't be right. We are just warriors."
"The only difference between a warrior and an Avatar," he repeated, smiling slightly, "is that an Avatar knows he's already dead. You men here know that, do you not?"
We did. It didn't make us Avatars, in my mind. "If you're just a normal warrior," I said, touching the glass armor nervously, "why aren't you dead from all those wounds already?"
"Sometimes," the mighty Avatar removed his helmet with one hand, then leaned his bare head against the boulder, "the body forgets to die when the mind doesn't want it to. Let's just say my body is finally catching up." He laughed, then. It was the laugh of a man who had little to live for, now that he had given everything in the name of what he believed in. I grit my teeth, and nodded, and the old man nodded back. I picked up the glass helmet and battered standard. His short white beard blew a little in the breeze, and he closed his eyes. And there, on that bleak evening, one Avatar died, but six were born.