I drew my sword, my heart fluttering in my chest. He laughed, pointing the tip of his blade at me. I tried to do the same but found my point wavering in my shaking hand.
“Life and death,” he said.
Death and death, I thought to myself.
He lunged, and I retreated. The metal gangplank echoed through the quiet warehouse. Neither of us could move much, or quickly, along that swaying walkway. Because of the railing, we could only go back and forth. That is, I could only go back, and he only went forward. Keep coming, I thought. He came. Now and again, our swords met with a clank, but I never braved a riposte.
“Fool,” he said. “When I’m done with you—”
“I’ll be dead,” I cut in.
“When I’m done with you,” he said again, charging. I just about turned my back on him and ran, but remembering something of my form, I faced him, parrying with wild swipes his deadly thrusts. “They’ll be nothing to stop me!”
That was when the bomb went off.
The flames were instantaneous and omnipresent, like we had fallen into hell. The weird, green fire was climbing up the walls of the old warehouse and darkening the ceiling with thick, black smoke. Fear gripped his face, and he turned his back to me.
“Stand, Coward!” I shouted, slashing him in the shoulder.
He growled.
“Life and death,” I reminded him. “Life and death.”
“We’ll both die!” he cried.
“I know!” I said.
I thrust. He didn’t even parry. The steal went deep into his black heart, and his monstrous body crumpled into a lifeless heap upon the floor.
Leaping over the body, I ran, feeling dizzy as the gangplank swayed back and forth. Better to die falling, to risk falling, than stand here and be burned.
Taking the stairs, two, three, four at a time, leaping so far my shins burst with pain, I flew down to the main floor. The chemical fumes were overwhelming. My head swam. There was no escape from the fire and smoke, no doors, no exit. The flames surrounded me in an ever tightening circle, their weird, green glow like some phantasmal horror.
I realized my sword was still in my hand, and I stared at its blood red tip.
“Let me be counted among the heroes,” I whispered, and guessing about where I remembered the doors to be, threw myself into the fire.
Tale Told 