Red ignored the flames that licked his feet as he fought off the vibrating raging Dragon God. Even with his stunted body, the damned thing had sharp teeth, and it, too, was using fire to cook his body. Like with Merin, Red could barely sense blood within Aphra's body. It should be coursing through their veins, but that song was absent.

With Acuzio, Red could all but taste the Dragon's blood. It pounded and sang just as fiercely as his mouth did. Red healed the bite marks on him as he used his blood to shield the next assault from the beast.

There was a brief lull between them as they stared at each other throughout the whole ordeal. Acuzio broke the silence by charging.

An explosion grabbed Red's attention, but when he turned his head, all he saw was fire. An endless wall of flames swamped Merin and Aphra's bodies.

Red could still sense Merin's life and her near-silent breath, but she was nowhere to be seen. Acuzio grunted a heartbeat before attempting to aim his chompers at Red's throat. Red blocked the Dragon by kicking it mid-jump. There was a brief pause where his foot met the Dragon, and everything stood still. Acuzio's hard scales sent waves of pain, but Red gritted his teeth and added more force. It might have worked, but Red would never know.

Acuzio growled out several garbled words that sounded like nothing Red had ever heard. The Dragon wasn't looking at Red, but Aphra.

Red turned his head to look again, and his eyebrows rose. The firewall was gone, and Merin and Aphra stood in its place. Red wasn't surprised that Merin had managed to escape Aphra's clutches. Red was surprised by how Merin managed to do so.

Merin stabbed Aphra in the chest with her father's sword. The silvery hilt of the immortal killing blade was sticking out, proving that. Aphra stared at it with a bloody smile. She coughed and spat fire on the ground.

"Hey, numbnuts, I can't die," Aphra said. Her flesh began melting and piling on the ground in small clumps of flames. "I'll just be born again."

"You're most vulnerable during that process," Merin said with a cold stare that made Red proud.

Aphra pulled the sword out of her chest and swayed on her feet. The mounds of flames around her burned in alternating hues of blue and red. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." She said.

"Isn't that how you came into power? By doing exactly that and defying the old Gods?" Merin said. Then, in a move Red never saw coming, Merin used her telekinesis on the blade to slice off Aphra's head. "I didn't want it to come to this, but you gave me no choice."

Another loud explosion sounded, and Red turned to see the light in Acuzio's eyes go out. The Dragon God's scales turned midnight black, and he fell to the ground in a loud crash.

Merin skipped over the fire to reach him, but instead of joy, she looked scared. "We have to go," she said, grabbing Red's hands and trying to move him. "This will only hold them for a while."

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"What did you do?" Red said, looking at Acuzio's strange husk. He understood why Aphra fell apart into fiery clumps, but why was the Dragon God like this?

"I killed Aphra's construct to buy us time. She'll be reborn whenever she chooses to come back," Merin said, hiking up her dress as she all but ran away from the palace ruins. "Acuzio likely killed his own construct to return to his true form. He said he was punished into becoming that lizard, but given how old and powerful he is, that wasn't truly holding him back."

Red recalled how the Dragon God grew and acted like a baby whenever he pleased. If the Gods were bored creatures with too much power, having adventures like this likely gave them fleeting pleasure from life's monotony. He understood it and had nowhere near their mileage on life. Red was a fledging in comparison, even with the handfuls of years he spent with the Gods. But there was a hollowness that had been carved out of him. He couldn't pinpoint the moment, but it grew each time he took a flawed inhale.

Was his plans worth it in the end? This burning question ruined the control and sense of self his plans created. When Red killed his father, the last piece of himself was erased, too. He felt like an empty husk whose purpose wasn't clear...this flew in the face of everything Red believed.

When Kaan died, Red should have felt peace at last. His burning desire and appetite should have diminished into a full stomach.

But Red was just a hollow God, created by the curse of his blood and made into a puppet by the other half.

Only by battling with Aphra and Acuzio was new life breathed into him.

Luckily, Merin's words renewed the energizing spark that the anticlimactic ending brought. How could he turn down the chance to battle a Dragon God? Acuzio's true form would be monstrously huge.

Red's legs stopped moving, and he walked back toward the flaming corpses they had left behind.

"Red!" Merin shouted his name, but he ignored it. "We can't win against them!"

"It's not about winning, though," Aphra said. Her voice was different; she was younger but still very feminine. "The thrill of battle doesn't need stakes aside from who threw the last punch." A small child stood in Aphra's corpse. Bright blue flames covered the child, and when they finally went out, a dark red-haired woman stood in its place. "I knew you would get it. It's a shame Merin was born more moon than fire. She was doomed to be just like Cael. Aran, are you ready for round two?"

Red didn't bother questioning how Aphra knew his true name. At the end of the day, it didn't matter. He grinned as he felt the blood in his veins rejoice. He needed this kind of release, and he desired this exact kind of blood sport. How else could he grow strong? Only other Gods could challenge him from now on.

"You're not going to be as lucky this time." A deep voice that sounded like gravel being churned spoke from above.

Red lifted his eyes to look up. As far as the eye could see, was a pitch-black sky. But this sky was moving and breathing. He knew Acuzio's true form would be enormous, but even in Red's estimation, this was too much.

The Dragon God shimmered and shrank until, like a meteor, he landed on the ground. The giant of a man he'd gotten a glimpse at before stood next to Aphra.

"I'm so pumped for this!" Aphra said. "We can fight forever!"

"No," Merin said as she stood next to Red. "I don't want to waste forever on you."

"No, you'd rather act like a coked-out princess and roam the skies," Aphra said with a chortle. "As if your taste was ever the standard one should live by." Her laughter was cut short by a sneaky little blood figure holding the immortal killing sword.

Aphra dodged the sword and set the construct on fire. "Is that why you let us cut you up? So that you can create a bunch of mini-mes?" Aphra tsked as she held her hands up and used her flaming remains to create her own. "Bring it on bitch!"