Vorgûl, the Flame-Tyrant VS Red-Eyed Suit Figure

The sky above the shattered causeway had gone the color of a wound, and Vorgûl, the Flame-Tyrant, stood at the top of the broken stair with the whole world beneath him. Fire bled through the cracks in his blackened iron hide; smoke coiled from his tusked jaws and drifted down the steps like a slow tide. His cleaver rested across one shoulder, its edge still glowing from a forge that had never once gone cold. Somewhere below, a figure in a dark suit waited on the third landing, hands loose at his sides, a red tie hanging perfectly still.

"You climbed a long way to die on stone," Vorgûl said. His voice carried down the terraces and echoed off the walls. "Turn back. I will let the stairs keep you."

The Red-Eyed Suit Figure tilted his masked head. Around him, red energy began to swirl in thin, patient arcs, and the air made a sound like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath — whish. "A tower of night and flame," the figure said, his tone flat and unhurried, "and still you talk. I expected the chieftain of the far East to be quieter. Less afraid."

The word landed. Embers spat from Vorgûl's jaws. He came down the first flight in three strides, each footfall cracking the old mortar, and the cleaver came off his shoulder in a long, burning arc. The figure was not there. There was only the whish, a blur of black cloth, and suddenly the Red-Eyed Suit Figure stood on the balustrade above him, looking down as if from a pulpit.

"Slow," the figure said.

Vorgûl answered with fire. He drove his fist into the step, and a vein of flame tore upward through the masonry, splitting the stair between them. The balustrade collapsed. The figure dropped, caught the ledge of the second landing, and swung himself under it, hanging by one arm while the fire roared past overhead. For a moment the two of them were stacked in the vertical dark — Vorgûl on the ruined stair, his enemy below the floor of it — and Vorgûl understood, with the cold clarity of an old warlord, that this creature would not meet him strength to strength. He would slip. He would circle. He would wait for the weight of the cleaver to drag its owner off balance.

So Vorgûl stopped swinging.

He turned his back deliberately, walked to the highest surviving step, and planted the cleaver point-down into the stone. The blade sank half a span and the whole terrace began to glow like a coal. He was not chasing. He was building a floor that would not let anyone stand on it.

"That is a fine trick," came the voice from below, and now there was something new in it — not fear, but interest. "You burn the ground you stand on."

"I burn the ground you stand on," Vorgûl corrected.

The Red-Eyed Suit Figure came up through the hole in the landing like a thrown knife, red energy trailing behind him, and for the first time he moved straight at his enemy. His fist caught Vorgûl across the jaw. The impact rang like a bell struck in a foundry, and the Flame-Tyrant's head turned, and smoke poured from his tusked mouth — but his feet did not move. He had rooted himself in the molten seam of his own making. The figure struck again, twice, three times, each blow fast enough to whistle, and Vorgûl took them all and let the fire in his hide climb higher with every hit, until the air between them shimmered and the stone under the figure's shoes began to soften and shine.

The masked head turned, just slightly, to look down. It was the first mistake.

"Ah," Vorgûl said. "You are standing on my floor now."

He wrenched the cleaver free and brought it around in a flat, terrible sweep — not at the figure's body but at the ground beneath it. The burning stone gave way in a single sheeting collapse. The Red-Eyed Suit Figure dropped through his own footing, caught the edge of the ruined terrace with one hand, and hung there over a fall of four broken floors, red energy guttering around him like a snuffed candle. The whish had stopped. The calm had not.

"You cannot hang there forever," Vorgûl said, walking to the edge. "And you cannot climb past me. There is no third answer. That is what a tower is for."

The figure laughed — a small, cold sound. "Then I will take the stairs you left me."

And he launched himself upward, not at Vorgûl, but at the wall, running along it in defiance of any floor at all, red light screaming behind his heels. It was fast. It was almost enough. He reached the top of the arc, twisted in the air, and drove both feet into Vorgûl's chest to knock the great chieftain from his perch.

Vorgûl let him come. He opened his arms.

When the figure struck, the Flame-Tyrant closed around him — one vast hand seizing the dark suit at the collar, the other clamping the masked head against his own burning hide. The red energy flared against the fire and lost. The suit began to smolder at the seams. The figure thrashed, once, twice, with the terrible speed of something that had never been held before, and Vorgûl simply tightened his grip and leaned out over the four-floor drop, holding his enemy out into the empty air with nothing beneath him but the long fall and the glow of the broken stair.

"The stairs," Vorgûl said into the mask, close enough that the smoke of his jaws washed over the crimson eyes, "were mine the whole time."

He opened his hand.

The Red-Eyed Suit Figure fell without a sound, tumbling down the terraces he had climbed with such confidence, striking the molten seams Vorgûl had carved into the stone, each impact flaring red and then dimmer, until the dark suit came to rest far below on the lowest landing, still and small, the red glow leaking out of it like a dying ember. The whish was gone. The tower was quiet.

Vorgûl, the Flame-Tyrant, stood alone at the top of the broken stair, smoke curling from his tusked jaws, and looked down at the long way his enemy had come — and the longer way he had fallen. He pulled his cleaver from the stone and set it back across his shoulder, and the fire in his hide banked low and red, satisfied.

"Climb again," he said to no one. "I will be here."