Through the wound he'd carved in the Fire King, Marcus could feel tremendous crushing forces trying to squeeze him into nothingness. The dimensional entity was attempting to use its own body as a weapon, compressing the space around Marcus until his atoms would be forced together beyond their breaking point.
"Want to kill me?" Marcus called out, his voice carrying clearly despite being deep inside the Fire King's arm. "You'll need to try harder than that!"
Despite being vastly smaller than his opponent, Marcus's power was more than equal to the challenge. He raised the Flame Blade above his head and channeled his full might into the weapon. Purple-gold flames danced along the sword's edge as he unleashed a devastating flame slash that carved through the Fire King's internal structure.
"AAAHHHHH!"
The Fire King's scream shook the entire dimension, a sound of agony and disbelief that echoed across infinite planes of burning reality. Marcus's attack hadn't just caused physical damage—it had actually erased the wound itself, preventing the Fire King's natural regeneration from taking effect.
The implications hit the Fire King like a physical blow. He was the incarnation of flame itself, the absolute ruler of an entire dimension devoted to fire. Within his own realm, his power should have been unquestionable, his regeneration instantaneous, his control over all flame absolute.
Yet somehow, this intruder was not only resisting his authority but actively burning him with flames he couldn't control or extinguish. It was like being burned by fire itself—a contradiction that threatened the very foundation of his existence.
"Haha!" Marcus laughed with genuine delight as he watched the Fire King's confusion. "I didn't expect this power could be used this way!"
He'd stumbled upon something remarkable—a new application of Ember Prime's abilities that went beyond simple thermal manipulation. The purple-gold flames weren't just hot; they were conceptually superior to normal fire, capable of overriding other flame-based powers through sheer qualitative advantage.
Marcus channeled more of his energy into the Flame Blade, transforming the weapon from a mere sword into something approaching a divine artifact. The blade became a stream of living purple-gold fire that cut through the Fire King like it was made of paper rather than cosmic flame.
Wherever the enhanced weapon passed, the Fire King's fires were simply extinguished—not overpowered or consumed, but negated entirely. Vast sections of the entity's arm crumbled to ash as Marcus carved his way through internal structures that had existed since the dimension's creation.
The annihilation of his limb sent waves of unprecedented pain through the Fire King's consciousness. In millennia of existence, he had never experienced anything like this—the systematic erasure of part of his essential being, accompanied by flames that seemed to exist in deliberate opposition to his nature.
"Die!" the Fire King roared, his voice carrying enough force to shatter normal matter.
From the burning wound in his arm, endless streams of fire erupted with power that rivaled the heart of stars. These weren't ordinary flames—they were manifestations of pure dimensional authority, powered by the Fire King's absolute control over his realm.
Marcus's grin widened as he saw the attack approaching. "Now that's more like it! This is the kind of power a dimensional entity should command!"
He dissolved his enhanced Flame Blade back into its component energy, then reshaped that power into something even more magnificent—a phoenix of pure purple-gold fire that spread its wings and screamed a challenge at the approaching flames.
The two attacks collided with a force that warped reality itself. Where they met, space began to twist and buckle under stresses it was never meant to endure. The laws of physics strained to contain energies that belonged to the fundamental forces of creation.
The battlefield became a maelstrom of conflicting flames as purple-gold fire clashed against dimensional authority. Both combatants poured more power into their attacks, neither willing to yield an inch of ground in this contest of absolute will.
The Fire King stared at the twisted space around them, feeling the piercing agony in his mutilated arm, and came to a terrible conclusion. Blazing flames erupted from his eyes as rage and desperation warred in his consciousness.
With his remaining hand, the Fire King manifested a colossal flaming sword and raised it high above his head. Without hesitation, he brought the weapon down in a devastating arc—not at Marcus, but at his own wounded arm.
SLASH!
BOOM!
The limb that Marcus had been using as his battleground fell away completely, severed at the shoulder in a explosion of dimensional fire. At the stump where his arm had been, countless fierce flames danced and writhed as the Fire King's natural regeneration struggled to compensate for the loss.
The Fire King was nothing if not decisive. When he realized that Marcus's presence in his arm was causing irreversible damage, he had chosen amputation over corruption. Better to lose a limb than allow the infection to spread to his core.
Of course, as a dimensional entity, the Fire King could regenerate the lost arm given enough time and energy. But the process would require significant recovery, and this was hardly the moment for convalescence.
Without pause, the Fire King swung his flaming sword at the severed limb, determined to destroy any trace of Marcus's contaminating influence.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Each strike created explosions that could have leveled mountains, tearing the dismembered arm apart piece by piece until Marcus was forced back into the open.
"I have to admit," Marcus said as he emerged from the destruction, "you really are worthy of being called a dimensional entity."
He hovered in the air before the wounded Fire King, seemingly unbothered by the display of self-mutilation he'd just witnessed. In his hand, a purple-gold fireball began to form as he drew energy from his Ember Prime frame.
The fireball grew larger and more intense as Marcus fed it power, its radiance becoming almost too bright to look at directly. The energy it contained was dense beyond measure, compressed into a sphere that hummed with barely contained destruction.
"The warm-up is over," Marcus announced, his voice carrying an edge of anticipation. "Let's start the real battle."
With those words, the massive fireball suddenly contracted, shrinking down until it was no larger than his palm. But rather than becoming weaker, the compression made it infinitely more dangerous—like a star compressed into a marble.
Marcus casually tossed the palm-sized sphere at the Fire King, watching as it traced a deceptively gentle arc through the air.
The Fire King, having learned the hard way not to underestimate any of Marcus's attacks, responded with everything he had. His flaming sword expanded to planetary proportions as he wrapped it in a whirlwind of dimensional fire and brought it down to meet the incoming projectile.
The moment the two forces made contact, the Fire King's whirlwind simply... ceased to exist. The massive sword that had taken millennia to perfect dissolved like morning mist.
Then the compressed fireball expanded.
In an instant, it grew from palm-sized to the size of a small moon, its purple-gold radiance consuming everything in its path. The expansion was so rapid and so complete that it resembled a miniature big bang, creating new space as it grew.
The Fire King barely had time to register what was happening before the explosion reached him. His remaining arm, the one he'd used to wield his sword, was completely vaporized from the shoulder down. Only his quick reflexes and dimensional nature saved him from total annihilation.
"Where did this monster come from?" the Fire King wondered, staring at the space where his arm used to be.
During their previous encounter on the dimensional battlefield, Marcus had seemed powerful but manageable—certainly dangerous, but not beyond the scope of normal dimensional conflicts.
Now, fighting in the Fire King's own realm where his power should have been absolute, Marcus was proving to be utterly overwhelming. Every attack the Fire King launched was turned against him, every strategy countered before he could implement it.
As a dimensional entity, the Fire King had clashed with the Ancient One countless times over the centuries. She was undoubtedly powerful, one of the most formidable sorcerers in existence, but even she required extensive preparation and favorable circumstances to pose a real threat to beings like him.
Marcus was operating on an entirely different level. He had casually killed a dimensional avatar in open combat, then invaded the Fire King's home dimension and proceeded to dominate him in a realm where the Fire King should have been omnipotent.
"Die!" the Fire King screamed, pouring his desperation into one final assault.
Thousands of flame spears materialized around him, each one containing enough power to destroy a planet. He launched them all simultaneously, creating a barrage that filled the sky with deadly fire.
Marcus watched the approaching attack with calm interest. After mastering the purple-gold flames, conventional fire-based attacks had lost most of their threat. These spears might be shaped by dimensional authority, but they were still fundamentally inferior to his own flames.
The spears struck the vortex of fire that surrounded Marcus's body and were immediately crushed, their energy absorbed and converted into fuel for his own power. With each absorbed attack, Ember Prime grew stronger, its incomplete components filling out as Marcus claimed more of the Fire King's authority.
"More," Marcus said softly, his voice carrying a note of hunger. "I need more."
The Fire King finally understood what was happening and felt true terror for the first time in eons. "He... He's stealing my authority!"
The realization hit him like a physical blow. Marcus wasn't just defeating his attacks—he was systematically absorbing the dimensional authority that powered them, claiming pieces of the Fire King's dominion over flame itself.
"This guy can actually seize power directly!"
The concept was terrifying beyond measure. Dimensional entities could steal power from each other, but only after achieving complete victory. It required utterly defeating an opponent, usually through destruction or subjugation, before their authority could be claimed.
Marcus was doing it in real-time, during active combat, treating the Fire King's own attacks as a buffet to be consumed at leisure.
"Finally figured it out?" Marcus asked, looking up at the increasingly panicked Fire King.
He stopped hiding his true nature, allowing flames to spread across his body as white Void energy began to merge with the purple-gold fire. His form started to expand, growing larger and larger until he matched the Fire King's massive scale.
"Since you've discovered what I'm doing," Marcus said, his voice now carrying the weight of cosmic authority, "I don't need to be subtle anymore."
He raised the Flame Blade, now enhanced with both dimensional fire and Void energy. White lines danced through the purple-gold flames as he brought the weapon down in a devastating arc.
TSSSK!
The Fire King tried to block with his own flaming sword, but the weapon offered no resistance whatsoever. Marcus's blade cut through it like it was made of smoke, continuing its arc toward the Fire King's torso without slowing.
Desperate, the Fire King used his dimensional authority to instantly regenerate his weapon, swinging the restored sword to intercept Marcus's attack.
Marcus's eyes lit up as he saw the Fire King use his authority again. "That's exactly what I was waiting for."
Void energy erupted from his blade, overwhelming the purple-gold flames and transforming them into something far more dangerous. The Flame Blade became an instrument of pure negation, capable of unmaking the very concept of fire itself.
When the two weapons collided, they locked together in perfect equilibrium. But white lines immediately began spreading across the Fire King's sword—visible signs of Void corruption eating away at the weapon's essential nature.
The flaming sword, powered by the authority of an entire dimension, was being systematically eroded and assimilated by forces that existed outside normal reality. The authority contained within it was being imprisoned by Void energy, cut off from its source and claimed by Marcus.
As the white lines spread, they began appearing on the Fire King's body as well. The corruption was following the connection between entity and weapon, seeking to claim the Fire King himself.
"What is this?!" the Fire King screamed in horror as he felt his power being drained away. "Get out of my body!"
He tried desperately to purge the Void energy, calling upon all his dimensional authority to burn away the foreign corruption. But Void energy operated by rules that transcended normal existence—it couldn't be destroyed by conventional means because it existed in the spaces between reality.
The more the Fire King struggled, the faster the white lines spread. His authority over flame was being systematically imprisoned and absorbed, transferred piece by piece to Marcus's growing power.
Meanwhile, Marcus grew visibly stronger with each passing moment. The golden decorations on his Ember Prime frame began to shine with inner light as stolen authority integrated with his existing abilities. He was becoming something approaching a living sun, radiating heat that made even the Fire King recoil.
As the ruler of the Fire Dimension found himself being consumed by temperatures that exceeded his own tolerance, Marcus slowly flew closer to deliver the final blow.
"Your power is quite impressive," Marcus said conversationally, as if discussing the weather rather than cosmic theft. "I like it very much."
He drove the white-flame sword deep into the Fire King's chest, releasing the full power of his accumulated Void energy. The majestic force spread rapidly through the entity's body, causing his flames to gradually dim and fade.
The last fragments of the Fire King's authority broke free from their dying host and flowed into Marcus, finally completing the missing components of his Ember Prime frame.
"Finally," Marcus breathed, feeling the armor reach its true, complete form. "Now this is the real deal."