Zaphrriyah crossed her blades and split them apart in a flash as she dashed at the musician, leaping into the air and slicing down upon her, but before her blades could bite flesh, a burst of fire rushed into her, burning her skin to a withering crisp and with such force it blasted her all the way to the center of the arena where she hit the floor, tumbling some more distance until coming to a stop at last, blazing aflame all over. The heat was so hot she hadn't even felt anything the moment the flames had engulfed her. Now as she recovered, she felt its heat burning not just her skin or even the flesh beneath it, but the bones of her core, her blood, her very soul. No matter how much she regenerated, the fire would not go out, as though it had a will of its own and was determined to burn forever until she was nothing but ash. Zaphrriyah would not allow it.

  She stopped struggling, enduring through the heat to get on her knees and curl to a foetal position. She muttered a curse breathlessly through burnt lips and lurched back, exploding in a flood of blood that swallowed all the fire from her body, blasting it far away from her as the flames continued to burn the blood like oil. She got up from her knees and faced the musician as she sauntered towards her from across the arena, her arms resting over the neck of her axe, wisps of fire sizzling from the corners of her mouth.

  Zaphrriyah twirled her blades in circles as she approached the firebreather, picking up haste as her blades spun, from a walk to a run to a sprint where her blades stopped spinning, gripped tight in her hands as she rushed the musician head on. The fire-breathing musician leapt forth as well, her axe raised high, its bladed edge gleaming in the red lights of the empty arena.

  Steel clashed. Chords sung. Flames roared. Blood poured. Red eyes stared intently through the surging waves of blood at the heterochromia of crystalline opal and blood-thirsty darkness. Zaphrriyah broke through their standstill, crossing her blades and splitting them asunder against musician's axe. She took the brief opening to dash aside, staying low to the ground as she swept for the firebreather's ankles. The red-haired musician evaded with a dancer's fluidity and swung her axe in a rising, crescent cut which Zaphrriyah was only able to block at the last moment. Another electric chord sung from the flames as Zaphrriyah was launched into the air. A diagonal swing shortly followed. It was unavoidable. All she knew was that it would be instantaneous, coming for her left side following the momentum of the initial strike. A back-handed swing. And judging from the length of the axe and the musician’s length of reach, it would likely strike her somewhere around the lower abdomen. So in the moments she had leading up till the blow, she softened the flesh in that region, melting down muscles and insulating organs, saturating it all with a thick, viscous mixture of blood.

  The axe cleaved into her exactly where she'd anticipated, singing as it soared, its sharpness dulled and swallowed by the saturated flesh that saved her from being split in half, quickly congealing and sticking to the axe where it burned violently. Zaphrriyah broke herself free, swinging into a kick that landed square in the firebreather's face. She rebounded, flipping across the air and landing on her feet a few paces away.

  The musician wiped blood from her nose and channeled her axe, burning off the stubborn blood clot in a burst of flames and another voltaic chord. "Not half bad," she grinned, her axe gripped by the studded hilt, extended down at her side as she circled Zaphrriyah. "The name's Marceline."

  "Zaphrriyah."

  "Zaphrriyah," Marceline repeated ruminatively. "Oh, saying it makes my skin ripple. You make my skin ripple. You came into this city through Lance Avenue and just started killing. Slaughtering and butchering all the way into Club Sanguinis and the Voloré. That's actually fucking insane."

  She shrugged. “Death is the fate of all my enemies."

  "Am I your enemy?"

  "Only if you die."

  "Hahah! Try me."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Zaphrriyah crossed her blades, splitting them down to her sides and broke into another dash, swiftly evading incoming blasts of fire, dodging one last wave as she got behind the firebreather, blades slashing up for the musician's back. Marceline spun through the flames and caught the witch's blades with her axe, igniting a blast of fire that was neutralized by a splash of blood. Zaphrriyah pirouetted off from the force of contact, blades spinning as she did, rebounding with the floor and launching into another attack, blades swinging in a violent flurry as she meteorically pirouetted, twisted and danced around the firebreather in a dark, crimson cyclone full of blades and blood. Marceline matched her strikes with her own, wielding her axe as light as a rapier, switching between hands from strike to strike and at times with both, pursuing the witch as she tried to flank her, fighting back and gaining distance, each swing of her axe sending forth slashes of flames that ruptured into blood as steel bit steel.

  Breaths were growing heavier, ragged and uneven. Sweat gleamed off her skin. Heart beating harder. Blood burning hotter. She could feel the strain in each fiber of every muscle as they pulled and released like ballistae at her will. She was losing too much blood and there was only so much left in her shawl to assimilate. Then at last there came the cathartic sound and feeling in her hand as her khukuri cut flesh at last, slicing into Marceline's thigh.

  The cut wasn't deep, but it wasn't shallow either. Marceline must have felt it, and yet she did not falter the slightest. Through the storm of seething blood and raging flames, Zaphrriyah caught a glimpse of those red eyes. They were burning with zeal bright and fervently. If anything, the pain only excited her. The heat became scalding. Even when the flames never caught her, simply being near them burned. The air up to several feet away from the flames warped and wavered in its heat, blazing with such intensity it seeped into the chords ringing from the axe like deep, boosted bass.

  Zaphrriyah endured, but she could feel her strength bleeding out her skin by the second. The fatigue began to drag on her, and she knew if she stayed any longer she would be gravely punished for it. After the next series of strikes, she locked her blades against Marceline's axe, anticipating the swing of her axe, using the momentum to propel herself away. With a dozen paces between them, Zaphrriyah lowered her center of gravity, readjusted her grip and dove. The sudden acceleration ripped apart the air around her, and with every explosive step she took, pushing hard off the ground, she left a deep, fresh, scarlet print behind as blood erupted from out the soles of her feet, launching her diagonally ahead. Her velocity along with her shawl concealed her completely in these swift, powerful leaps, leaving only her footprints to be seen and the booming sound of her advance to be heard.

  Marceline appeared frozen at this velocity, her axe raised and loaded to strike, smiling madly, the light in those red eyes radiating. Zaphrriyah dashed past her, blade slicing through her side and striking again from behind, carving two deep cuts into her oblique. Marceline's axe came smiting down like an executioner, but she was too late, striking nothing but thin air. The corners of her lips curled wider and she pirouetted around, anticipating the second strike but she was already too late. By the time she'd turned around, another pair of cuts had already dug their way into her flesh. She shrugged off the wounds, cauterizing them in a surge of flames and stood still, axe held in both hands in front of her chest, eyes closed softly.

  Steady. Focused. Now.

  She swung her axe down in an arc of fire, but her strike was empty again. Zaphrriyah had learned from her mistake. She dashed past Marceline without striking, rebounding off a bone tusk and dove back again. She lunged at the last instant, stabbing her blades forth into Marceline's back, straight through to her heart.

  Only her blades never touched her skin. In the focus of her velocity, it was as if there was an impenetrable barrier between them, an infinite distance that only grew greater the closer her blades got, and as her velocity began to wither, the distance between them grew larger and the barrier took its form. A blazing, white inferno exploded in her face, but before the force of the blast could blow her apart, she was grabbed out of it by the throat, the rest of her body raggedly billowing through the exploding flames before she was slammed to the ground with such force all the blood was knocked out of her lungs after all the air had been incinerated by the heat. Her blood boiled, repeatedly vaporized and regenerated as the flames devoured her. It took all the strength and focus she had just to stay alive, but the flames were relentless, and she was rapidly running out of blood.

  Then as suddenly as it erupted, the flames vanished, sweeping away from Zaphrriyah back into Marceline's body, where they burned and flared bright red like her hair that now flowed untethered. She smirked, satisfied, and released Zaphrriyah. The flames extinguished from her skin as she got up and slung her axe back over her shoulders.

  Zaphrriyah groaned, wincing and panting as the last bit of fire smoldered away. There was a phantom pain in her side where Marceline's axe had cut into her earlier, even though it had already healed. She scowled, rebounding back onto her feet, only that wasn't happening. The nerves in her back and the muscles in her arms screamed as she struggled getting up to her side and raising one knee, and even then, she was too weak to stand. She had lost too much blood. She glared at the musician smirking down upon her victoriously, seething with a rage she had not felt since the first time she lost to Aphrodisia.

  "We're ... not ... finished yet," Zaphrriyah rasped.

  The runes over her skin darkened, bleeding, and then started to glow. The scarlet ground across the entire arena shivered, rippling like the surface of a lake in the rain. Teeth clenched, eyes shut tight in focus, breaths hastening.

  Red. A vast, endless desert all around her as she stood in the emptied reservoir of the only oasis. Thirsty and freezing beneath the heavy, crimson sky. The red sand still only sand, slipping through her fingers, dry, coarse and cold. It did not belong to her. It would not listen. It was just sand.

  Zaphrriyah collapsed.