I had been anticipating the moment when I had to fight the man in front of me since he had attacked the graveyard. Back then, I had been trapped in a crypt and couldn't escape. All I could do was plan my vengeance on him. In my opinion, he deserved to die. Perhaps my years as an assassin has clouded my humanity, or maybe my time here, in the game, has made me more ruthless, but I wanted to see him suffer for what he had done. It wasn't enough for him to lose this fight, I wanted to humiliate him. I wanted him to be afraid.

But the longer I fought this battle, the more I realized that I would not be able to defeat the fire user in the way I had wanted to. He was uniquely strong and difficult to get close to, but I was also not in the best shape to confront him. My leg was badly burned and putting pressure on it wasn't doing me any favors. Worst of all, there were only two of us left in the fight against him. Xander's shield was a game-changer. We finally had a defense against the intensely hot flames he could produce, but it wouldn't be enough if we couldn't hit him, or move him around. All he has to do is push us back enough to fall off the cliff. As soon as he realized that, we'd be on a time limit. So, I reminded myself that a win was a win. Even though I wanted to beat the man till he was begging for mercy, his power negated that as a possibility. I would adopt Xander's plan as my own and save my rage for another time.

Xander's plan was interesting and I wanted to contribute to it but I would need to move the fire user further to the edge of the cliff, facing the water. This was the same cliff that I had fallen from when I fought the man who could switch places with me. I was lucky enough to hit the water and not the rocks below. Xander seemed to think that falling from the cliff wouldn't be enough to kill our opponent, but I was sure it would; especially with how we were going to do it. This was the best chance we had to win; it might be our only chance.

As the fire died out, I ran past the safety of Xander's shield in the effort to move the fire user where we wanted him. I ignored the throb of my leg and within an instant, I was on him, swinging my sword, expecting for him to dodge and sidestep the attack, but my swing simply went through the flames that made his body. He put a hand out to me but I was already moving before fire shot out from his palm, burning the ground around him. He moved his hand up towards me but I ducked behind Xander's shield in time to avoid the blast.

"Not as easy as you thought?" Xander asked.

"Finding him is the trick. His body is somewhere in there. Judging from how Zack hit him, I'd say he's pretty small; maybe around your size." The body of flames we were fighting was gigantic and looked to easily be twice Xander's size; probably more. His ability was strange and it almost seemed like he had two powers, fire and levitation, but I had never seen him fly anywhere. It would have been easy for him to fly up to the cliff, rather than climb up, so it must be related to his fire power somehow. "When the flames stop, pivot a bit to your left. That way we just need to push him back a bit."

When the flames stopped, I made another attempt to attack him. Instead of attacking horizontally, I attacked vertically, intending to cut off an arm or something. My sword passed easily, same as before, and I had to retreat again to avoid getting burned.

"I suppose we could just do this for a while," I said from behind Xander's barrier.

"You're joking, right?" Xander seemed to struggle pushing back the flames and I realized that this wasn't as easy for him as it looked.

"Obviously." I had gotten an idea. It was a dangerous one, especially for me. It might be an all-or-nothing gamble, but I didn't have any better plans other than to randomly swing my sword at him and that felt like a waste of time. Zack said we would just need to keep him in for a long battle, but the fire user had been attacking for a while now and I hadn't seen any progress. The top of the cliff was on fire and I didn't want to give him any more time to figure a way past Xander's shield, or to just burn everything until we had no safe ground remaining. "We're gonna try something. Move one more step to your left and get ready to push me towards him with your shield. You'll know when."

"Uhh...You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

The fire ceased again and I ran up, slicing but not making any progress. Then I backtracked as more fire came but instead of going behind Xander's shield, I jumped and landed on it. For a moment, I thought Xander would lose his balance, but he recovered quickly. I kicked off as he pushed his shield forward and I barreled towards the flaming man. His fire was aimed at me, but I was still wet from the water and I was hoping it would keep me from burning up too quickly. This would be a quick attack and I should be out of the flames before they did too much damage; hopefully.

As I bolted towards my opponent, the cone of fire hit me in mid-air and I felt more heat than I ever had in my life. There was no oxygen to breathe within the flames and the heat made my eyes burn. My skin bubbled all around me and then...I felt contact. With all of my might, I pushed hard and the flames that surrounded me vanished. Steam came off my body and my skin was red hot, but I was alive and the burns weren't as bad as I had expected them to be. Best of all, the fire user was near the Western edge of the cliff, right over the water, where we needed him.

My power was ready to go and I used it to copy Xander's ability. The flaming man cocked his head as I plunged my sword into the rocky ground and used the copied power to extend my blade's length. Fire shot out at me, but Xander moved to block it. I moved again, repeating my attack on the cliff. Xander plunged his sword into the ground next to me. Our opponent finally realized what we were doing, but it was too late. Our blades dug into the cliff one last time, the ability to extend the swords activated and the cliff shifted.

"Have a nice trip, hothead!" Xander shouted, looking proud of himself as we wrenched on our weapons, we pushed, forcing the small crack to widen and expand. The section of cliff on which Fire King stood began to slide and fall away.

Xander had lost his balance during the push and stepped over the fall line. He panicked, freezing in place and screaming about not wanting to fall. Quickly, I grabbed Xander's hand and pulled him away from the falling rock. We backed away and watched as the fire user frantically tried to run away from the divide where the cliff was split. He had no chance, the rock was already too far for him to jump and it was falling faster than he could react. The man fell and after a moment, we heard a wet splat below, mixed in with the tumbling rocks hitting the ocean. He hadn't been lucky enough to avoid the rocks. A familiar feeling came over me and I knew that Xander and I were the last two players in the game.

After a moment of silence, Xander said, "We did it!"

"Yeah," I looked around. The cliff was much smaller but seemed stable now that it wasn't crumbling beneath our feet. The flames around us died out like magic. All that remained was the heat waves and smoke gently coming off from the charred ground. Rayne was sitting on a nearby rock, near the edge of the cliff, looking at me. She wasn't smiling. Instead, she seemed sad.

"Dude, I should've said, 'long live the king!'" He said it strangely, like he was trying to impersonate someone with a deep, gravelly voice.

"You know he's not a real king, right?"

Xander slumped, "You'll get it when we watch the Lion King."

A breeze blew by while I looked back at Rayne again and I realized that she was waiting for something. "You know what comes next," She said, reminding me that the game doesn't care that we killed off a difficult player. It wants a victor.

"Xander," I said.

"What's up?"

I took a deep breath, "It's time." My sword was out and I looked at him, expecting him to make his weapons reappear, but they didn't come.

"But...you're injured."

"All the more reason you should want to do this now."

"I...Alright." Xander's sword and shield were in his hand in the next moment.

"Whatever happens, I'm proud of how far you've come."

Xander eyed me before saying, "Thanks. I owe a lot of that to you."

"You don't owe me anything. Let's have a good fight."

Xander nodded and we took our preferred fighting stances. He bent his knees and had his shield to me, his sword lower to the ground. It looked like a defensive stance, but I had seen him use this to attack as well as block. It suited his fighting style well. I held my sword with both hands and relaxed my grip so I could easily change the direction of my attack, or I could dodge and counter quickly. Neither of us moved. We were both waiting for the other to start the fight.

"You can't put it off forever," Rayne reminded me. "You have to do it."

I struck first. Dashing to Xander's left, I swung my blade upwards at an angle. He caught the attack with his shield, then thrust his blade at me, which I dodged easily, attacking again. We went back and forth like this for a while. He blocked and I dodged. No attacks connecting but then, I changed the rhythm of my attack and caught his shield at an odd angle with my sword. He was open for a strike on his left side. I could easily slide the blade through his defenses and win. I could go home! But I backed away, breaking our bout.

"What do you think you're doing?" Rayne stood and began shouting. "You wouldn't stand for it if he did something like that to you! Don't dishonor him like that! And don't hesitate to come back to me either! It's been so long. Don't you want to see me again? Not like this, where you can't touch me, but really, actually, physically see me?"

She was right. This wasn't the way I would want someone to fight me. I gripped my sword tightly and shook my head. Xander looked at me strangely. He knew I had backed away and he saw that I stopped when I had an opening. I didn't answer the questions I was sure he had. Instead, I simply shouted, "Again!"