edgeofmind

With his superior speed, Roc eventually got the drop on Ingram, attacking from above. His hit landed, but Ingram twisted in the air and kicked Roc in the gut. Roc lost his balance in the air and hit the ground, rolling over a hundred feet across the rough street. Thinking he had seized victory, Ingram turned and flew back to the arena, but Roc, although spitting up blood and covered in bruises, wasn’t ready to quit yet.

Should he do it? Just forfeit the match? To admit before the crowd that their prince was too weak to fight back? After everything that had happened to him, he had no pride left, nothing to lose. Maybe it was better to accept his failure and resign himself to his shame. Lying on the ground, he raised his arm, about to surrender, but stopped, thinking back to a conversation he had with Tarnas. It was during the year of training, the two of them sitting around the campfire on an autumn night. Seraph was staring deep into the flames, into the light and warmth, but all he felt inside was cold darkness.

“All I ever wanted was to change the world, to make it a better place where the weak wouldn’t be stepped on and enslaved, where freedom was a right instead of a privilege. I pushed myself, I struggled, I suffered, all for that goal, and survival is the best I could accomplish? If I have to focus only on survival, to be grateful just for staying alive, then how am I supposed to change anything? How am I any different from those who do nothing to fix this broken, corrupt reality?”