[i]Part III, here it is. I appreciate all the likes and comments. I'm just thrilled that there are people out there that enjoy my story.[/i] My skinless fingers remained wrapped around the black hilt of my sword, that was still strapped to my back. A gentle tug and a pull, exposed a small half-foot of cold steel, but I dared not pull any farther. I stood in the ossuary that made up my Father’s lair. The longer I stand here, the stronger my feelings of animosity towards my Father blooms. The glowing green orbs, that are my eyes, glare at him. He sits on a vast stone chair, the size equivalent to my space craft. It was carved crudely out of the rock in which we bored deep into, in order to create our home. Deep down in the bowels of this planet, which is nothing more than a dried up boulder that floats in the dark pools of space, my Father and I stood; leering at each other. “Come Xax…” In a voice that sounded to be mocking me. “Do come and sit next to me, tell me all of your exploits of your latest raiding. I am so wishing to hear it.”. “I do not wish to sit next to you, I am no longer a child.” I stood still, as still as the stone that formed the walls, but the words I spoke dripped with acid. “No? From where I sit, I see nothing but a scared toddler, searching desperately for an answer to a question he doesn’t even know to ask. You foolishly thought, that from the moment you were hatched, that I did not know what powers lie within you?”. My Father didn’t move either. A mere flinch, but a flinch it was, his words… “All this time...All the lives, all the souls, all the executions. You told me, Father, that the more of the Darkness that I embraced, the more spirits of the dead I consumed, the more powerful and unstoppable I would become. But it hasn’t happened. Has it?”. My Father merely laughed at me. “Do you honestly think that everything I’ve done and shown you, was for your benefit? You are even more naive than I had believed to be possible. There is a force inside of you Xax. A force that I have been trying to hunt and capture my entire life.”. I was trying to make sense of it all. What was he talking about? What ‘force’? The Darkness? As I struggle to comprehend his mystic words, and even though my bone clawed hand held a tight grip on my sword, it was He who had struck first. I saved my own life, the second I had partially removed the blade from it’s sheath when I had entered the crypt in which he dwelled. My Father, despite all of his size, the enormity, the colossus of his stature, was one of the fastest creatures I have ever had the displeasure of knowing. I should have foresaw his tactic, I should have been able to read it in his eyes, but I didn’t. I was lured into a complexing riddle of tangled up words that meant nothing, yet served it’s purpose in distracting me. My Father closed the gap that was between us in less than the bat of an eye. I reacted only quick enough to fully remove my sword, grip the hilt with both hands, and stop his gigantic swing in his attempt to render my head from my twisted body. It took every ounce of strength that I could muster to stave off his swing. It felt as if a mighty lumberjack was chopping down a Redwood tree with a single swing of his axe. His power was immense. I blocked the initially hack of my Father’s blade but was quickly knocked off balance by the sheer force of the blow. It slammed me into the jagged rocks jutting out from the stonewall, just to the left of where I had entered. I felt my hands go numb, the tingling sensation traveled up my arms and through my entire body. “Having trouble, all powerful and mighty Prince Xax? You are nothing but a fool. You thought that you could deny me your power? Your only pathetic existence is because of ME!”. He screamed as he tracked me with his eyes. I tried to take up a defensive stance, but when I brought the sword up in front of me, it was then that I realized, with an overwhelming sense of sorrow, that I had dropped it. He stayed standing by the door, and I backed further into the mammoth of a room, that at any moment, would become my tomb. I stumbled over myself. The legs at which I had come to know, the feet on which I had walked and run on throughout my entire life, now seemed alien to me. Walking was a concept that I couldn't grasp, and no matter how hard I tried, I continued to fall. Falling forever in the Pit of the Abyss. Was this my fate? My punishment for all of the evil that I have done? I kept moving, kept looking for a reason to remain optimistic about my situation, which was looking woefully bleak and becoming bleaker by the second. Then, I spotted it. My sword. My Father had once told me, that it was cursed and that any unfortunate soul that fell prey to it, became trapped inside, for all of eternity, feeding it’s sinister power. I had to retrieve it. “Well, Your Grace, if I may do say so myself, you are looking a trifle weary.” I felt his grin, his joy in what he was doing to me, the triumph of seeing his plan executed to perfection; his plan of killing me. “Perhaps you should lie down and rest awhile. Haven’t I always taken good care of you?”. He came charging, but this time, I was ready for him. His monstrous footsteps sounded like one that Phogoth, The Untamed, would produce. He howled and hissed as He raised his sword high over his head to deliver a death blow with such verocity, such massive strength, he never saw me charge too. I almost lost my balance the moment I lunged forward. The rocky terrain of the floor made it hard to run on, especially with legs that were made out of jelly. Everything came to a halt. It was like I was seeing the world one frame at a time. My Father was soon in front of me, ready to dispose of me once and for all, but I was faster. By the time our bodies reached one another, and he brought his sword down, I had already slid through his legs and went sprawling on the ground for my sword. My slide wasn’t near as what I was hoping for, as the ground was covered with sharp, broken speed bumps of rock, it took a several foot crawl on my claws to reach my coveted prize. As my finger-bones secured the hilt, I rolled from my front and onto my back, but it was two seconds too late. The sword that my father wielded came down, and in an instant, removed my arm, right at the shoulder. The blood that spewed from the void on the left side where my arm should have been, was black and thicker than ink. But I couldn’t feel the pain. The severed limb lay lifeless next to me, I was slowly becoming surrounded in a pool of black water. He struck again, this time he aimed for my neck. The Sword of Souls was still clutched in desperation by my right hand, and as if the steel had a mind of it’s own, parried my Father’s blow, and pushed it harmlessly into the ground by my ear. No words were spoken. It was snarls, roars, nothing that even closely resembled words. I was not going to drop my sword this time. I was not going to have my Father end my life down here in the infinite emptiness of the dark, on a planet which was the only one left known to exist. I rolled on the ground, as fast and as far away from my Father as I could manage, as he tore the wretched sword from the stones. As I emerged to slowly rise to my feet, sword in the only hand I had left, I felt the power surging through my hand. It was a power I had never felt before, I was beginning to feel something, and like a pop-up storybook, it was all beginning to unfold. My Father turned to face me. His eyes radiated nothing but disdain towards me. “You never once...Never once cared for me as a son, but merely only as an outlet of power that you could feed into to further fan those black flames in your heart.”. I stood shaking, as the fury within me began to boil. “My hunger, my thirst, everything, everything I did, I did for you Father, because I thought that would make you proud of me, that you would feel honored to call me your son. But it was all a lie. A God forsaken lie!”. I screamed at him, my voice a loud shrill. My Father didn’t reply to me, he just stood, sword in hand, lowered to his side. The black ooze from my missing appendage receded. I didn’t care anymore, I was sick of it all. Sick of the lies, of the death, of my Father. I looked at him, and he looked at me, and that’s when I charged. In a blur of nothing but violent slashes, the sword in my hand knew the dance better than I ever could have dreamed of. My sword collided into his with a metal clang and a sprinkling of golden sparks. His sword and mine came together. I had aimed high right, and he caught the blow, repelling it. The momentum pushed me back a step but as my body moved, my blade did as well. In a large looping arc down left, that was too fast to be caught, I felt it. The bite of the steel as it dug deep into the flesh of my father’s left leg. A tiny gap that was exposed and not covered by humongous, hard, rigid scales, was right behind his knee. An opening so tiny, no eye would have been able to detect that it was even there, but my swing found it anyway. [i]The Ascension: No Turning Back (Part III continued)[/i]: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/99020280/0/0 [i]The Ascension: ALL Chapters[/i]: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/99858091/0/0