Page 342 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

It was utterly dark, so I might have been forgiven for
thinking my opponent had taken a sledgehammer to my
kidneys, but I knew better—his fists were no less, if not
more than tools made for splitting rock. The pain dropped
me to the floor, and before I had the chance to roll to my
back, a great booted foot stomped me into the wet stone. I
had become only an insect to be crushed out of existence,
nothing more. Repeatedly came the thunder of my father’s
devastating footfalls, each monstrous impact compromising
both the scaffolding of my body and the integrity of the floor.
His booming laughter grew with every crunch and crackle
my body gave up.
Yet anger was not sole ally to my father. Summoning my
own fires, I vanished in a plume of vagrant darkness, my
father’s gigantic foot passing through empty space. In an
instant, I rose up before my forbear, my massive fist swinging
upward. The attack was weighted with as much anger as the
need to impress. Even in a battle to end his life, I would
make him proud. His head snapped backward, offering me
only an instant to act. I seized the exposed throat of the man
who had raised me—imparted his exquisite violence, made
me a man—and I tore it out.
But death would not take my father without a fight, as I
should have known. I was seized in a monster’s death-grip
and smashed through the solid rock of another wall. He
released me only long enough to rain down fists like meaty
comets, pounding me unrecognizable. I gave him his last
rage, and so let my arms drop to my sides. I was thankful for
all the blood, as it concealed my tears for him, a gesture he
would certainly have disapproved of. His attack slowed until
he finally collapsed into me.
His final words as a living man came out in a hiss of air
and blood. “Boy . . . I fought this rotting world and lost. But
because of me, you whelp . . . you will not.” In darkness and
blood and death, I held my father for the first time. But it
would not be the last.
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