Swords locked together, the melody of steel against steel ringing in his ears as adrenaline flooded his veins, a gamble with death, Vladnil the Redhand was only truly alive on the battlefield.
The man in front of him, one of a thousand nameless soldiers, parried two blows before the third took him in the arm, and the fourth through the heart. He bled and fell and died, and that was his tale, a story ended before it had truly begun. Shame.
He whirled around, cut down two more. Around him, battle raged, an endless scream, shadows drawn in blood, the whirling cry of the death-god. This, this, was life in its purest form, fate teetering on the edge of a precipice, the final gamble.
Vladnil had many names. The Redhand. The Bloodstained Slayer. The King of the Battlefield. Perhaps some more unsavory names as well. Deceiver. Traitor. Cutthroat. He could not deny that he had earned those as much as he had earned the others.
Ah. He had been recognized by the enemy, the army of Krieghold, the army of fools. The fighting shifted, parting around him, his soldiers pushing the enemy back in the few seconds they were paralyzed by fear. His was a name to be remembered, half a god as the annals of history would write it.
There was one who did not move from Vladnil's path. King Jaren of Krieghold, who hefted his blade and stared Vladnil down. Unblinking. Unafraid.
Most kings did not fight on the battlefield. This one was different. A man carved of stone in quite a literal sense, shifting and rippling like water when he moved, not a scratch to be found on the perfect marble. A relic of a greater era, a time of greatness and prosperity and undiluted magic, a relic unmarred by the sands of time.
The King of Krieghold was undefeated in one-on-one combat. So was Vladnil the Redhand. Both were living legends in their own right, names recognized in every corner of the world. Fate would have it that they met on this day. A cruel master indeed, fate, the watchful eyes of the death-god.
The king's eyes, carved of topaz, set in a skull of marble, met Vladnil's. They saw through him, and Beyond, into fate and time itself. He must have liked the outcomes he saw, as he extended his blade, angling it towards Vladnil. A challenge.
There was seeing, and then there was seeing. Vladnil saw his blood watering the grass if he accepted the challenge, his corpse one of a thousand that would be burned on a funeral pyre that night, the realm itself weeping, mountains shedding snow for tears, ice and hail and a maelstrom with no end, but he did not see.
Anyone could predict an outcome, but there was never an absolute certainty, no magnificent woven tapestry of choice and fate. This king of living stone was different. Whatever magics he had been fashioned from, they were great and terrible, and they gave him a sight no mortal should ever have.
Blood pounded in Vladnil's ears, heart strumming a dangerous melody, pure adrenaline coursing through his veins and giving strength to his hands. There was fear too, a many-legged creature of the dark that scuttled up his back, so faint, so very faint, but it was there.
That was what legends went for these days. Shame. A legend should feel no fear and dread no enemy, he told himself. It did not take away the fear.
Legends did not run. That was what carried Vladnil forward, one foot in front of the other, to tap his blade to the stone king's. He accepted, a duel he could not win, a outcome he could see even if he could not see.
All that was left to decide was who he would die as.