The Rise of The Powers vol. 1

Chapter 20: Second Best

Chapter 20: Second Best

At first nothing happened, I stood there on the mountain top, gripping Lilith, not wanting to except my defeat. My failure.

"Come on!" I screamed. "Placae opque!"

Then, at that moment. The world started to spin around me. The Mountains rushed around me in circles, going so fast that I could only decipher them as brown and white blobs.

The only thing that didn't move was me, it was as if I was the center of the universe. Everything orbiting around the center of gravity. The best. The biggest. The strongest. The most powerful.

Me.

As usual, we were thrown into darkness, but this time it was different. A bright light shone brightly in the distance. It made me feel dizzy, nauseous. White spots danced in front of my eyes, but I couldn't pass out. That could kill me or worse, kill Lilith too.

I groped toward the light in the distance. I wanted it. I wanted to stand in front of it, absorb its power. I wanted to be there next to it. I wanted to be it. I wanted to stop it from shining, so only I could shine.

Distance didn't exist in the blackness. When it seemed that the light was miles away, I was almost near it, but when it seemed that the light was only a few feet away, it was actually miles away from it.

Despite the troubles, I made it. The light made me smile, but it made me frown. I loved the light, but I hated it. I wanted to be it, but I also wanted to wipe it from existence.

I touched it. It shocked me. It was burning, searing, but it was also as cold at the tip of the tallest mountain. It hurtled me into nothingness.

I gasped. A short, intake of breath. I had been hurled onto The Forest floor. Lilith lay sprawled on the ground a few yards away. I had made it here, to Lilith and Soren's creation.

Even though the journey here had felt like hours, millennia, I knew it wasn't. It was what happened to Lilith every time I just felt a few milliseconds of darkness.

Maybe I was more powerful than I-and everyone else had thought. Maybe if I had been trained properly, like Lilith, I could be the most powerful human in Alembria. I could be the Demion Graves of the time.

After all, it ran in the blood line right?

I wasn't sure if I liked that idea or not.

Throughout the day, and into the next one. I nursed Lilith back to health. I was completely alone with my thoughts and my conscience.

My guilt.

My wrongdoings.

I did not like it.

It doesn't matter what I thought about, but the effects that came from it. I thought about the person I killed and the things I killed, and it shocked me. Duke Whitings is an innocent, soulless person, who has done no wrong, and is as innocent as could be.

Duke Partial, on the other hand, is a killer, a fighter. He is brave and valiant. He would thrust himself into danger to save those who he loved. He is cursed, but he was cursed to be good. And he would live up to that.

No matter what.

Duke Whitings is fake. He's not real and he never was. He was made up; a figment of imagination. He didn't exist with a soul, or without one.

Duke Partial is who I really am, deep down inside and I like that.

I don't want to be helpless, powerless. A burden. A weakling. I'm powerful. Possibly more powerful than Lilith. Definitely more powerful that my father, Ahilian. And maybe, one day, more powerful than Essence.