But Saigo wasn't listening to her anymore. He charged forward. At a full sprint.
CRACK!
The manacles, glowing red-hot around his wrists, melted under the onslaught of his flame and will, droplets of liquid metal hissing onto the carpet.
His plan was four words long: Close the distance… then improvise. He was a bullet hurtling towards the epicenter of a firestorm, ready to crash into the very essence of the Phoenix.
Katarina turned at the last moment. Saigo was already swinging his fist a blow capable of shattering rock when her fiery breath met him. A wall of flame, capable of vaporizing a fortress wall, erupted from her mouth. He didn't retreat.
A surge through hell it only slowed him for a fraction of a second, his charred clothing smoldering. He broke through the stream and slammed his fist into the space where her head had been an instant before.
Katarina vanished not a step, but a lightning-fast shift. His fist, continuing by inertia, finished off the back of the imperial throne.
BOO-OM! The ebony and gold inlay exploded into splinters like dry kindling.
"Can't let her create distance!" Saigo instinctively kicked the largest debris. Stones and splinters, superheated by his flame, shot towards Katarina.
But she was already hovering a meter above the floor, a score of spherical suns birthed by a flick of her finger floating behind her. The wooden projectiles turned to ash before reaching her.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The fireballs shot forth like a serpentine chain, tearing the air with a searing hiss. Saigo darted left, right, barely dodging. The balls whizzed past centimeters away, scorching his skin, their trajectory predictable... "Closer... Even closer..."
WHOOSH! A sense of danger exploded in the back of his skull, shaking his cranium. Without thinking, he launched into a forward somersault! Air whistled past his temples. Below, the floor beneath him was already glowing crimson, ready to erupt.
BOOM!
A pillar of flame erupted upwards right from under his heels, nearly searing his back. Landing in a roll, he barely evaded the next ball. "Damn... Tough!" Katarina just smirked. Her arsenal was bottomless, and this "game" was starting to bore her.
Saigo surged not towards her, but to the right corner of the hall, beginning to circle Katarina in a wide arc.
"Feeling like running?" her voice rang with contempt. Without easing the barrage of balls and igniting the floor under his feet, she raised a hand. A new sun small, blindingly white was born in her palm. It grew, devouring the light around it, becoming more unbearable with each second. "Hmm... Enough. Though... Maybe I do want to kill him?" she wondered aloud.
Saigo, having completed the arc, charged headlong! The distance closed dangerously fast.
WHOOSH! The white sun, fist-sized, shot from her hand, speeding towards him at the speed of thought. He didn't swerve. Didn't dodge. He ran straight on, pouring all his will into a shield of his own flame.
BA-BA-BOOM!
The explosion shook the castle's foundations. The shockwave blew out the remaining stained glass, raising a hurricane of hot ash and dust. The hall plunged into semi-darkness, pierced only by cracks in the walls.
"Idiot..." Katarina whispered through the smoke.
WHOOSH!
A barely noticeable shadow slid under the veil of ash, hugging the floor. A fist wrapped in the smoldering steel of the remaining manacles aimed for her jaw. Katarina jerked her head back a hair's breadth from the impact!
BAM!
Saigo's other hand slammed into her solar plexus. A crunch sounded—not bone, but something inside gave way. Air hissed from her lungs. The Empress's body was thrown back like a ragdoll. She smashed through a wall of massive blocks, leaving a smoking hole behind her.
Saigo didn't wait. Two chunks of stone, torn from the damaged floor, buzzed through the hole after her.
"You...!"
The voice from the darkness of the breach was not human. It was the sound of reality breaking. A dull, gut-wrenching roar, filled with infinite rage and pain.
"HOW DARE YOU?!"
From the smoke in the wall, like a demon from the abyss, Katarina erupted. Her eyes blazed with blinding white fire, tears of light streaming down her cheeks. Behind her two giant wings of pure energy. Not feathers woven lightning, a churning sun, crackling and hissing with inhuman heat. Every movement of a wing left a smoking trail in the air.
Pressure. It crashed down on Saigo like a mountain. Physical, magical, or the will of a deity. His bones creaked, muscles went numb. His own flame choked, crushed by this monstrous force. He crashed to one knee, bracing his palm on the scorching stone floor. Every breath was like a gulp of molten lead.
"Damn..." he exhaled through gritted teeth, feeling the armor of his spirit crack under the onslaught of the true Phoenix.
The space between them evaporated. Katarina materialized before Saigo as embodied fury, her eyes burning with pure hatred, reflecting the glow of distant torches.
Her fingers, swift and relentless, dug into his tangled hair, pinning him to the floor, and yanked him up. "Pathetic, but talented mortal scum," she hissed through clenched teeth, raising a fist clenched into a stone-like lump for a crushing blow.
But Saigo only smirked. A crooked grin touched his bloodied lips. Instead of dodging, he surged forward, like a snake striking from ambush.
His legs, sinewy and strong, instantly wrapped around her neck, constricting her throat. He pulled his whole body against hers, locking on in a death grip. All that remained in Katarina's fist was a clump of his white hair, torn out by the roots. His hands, like steel traps, clamped down on her wrist.
With inhuman strength, he yanked both of them downward. Their bodies crashed onto the stone floor with a deafening roar.
CRUNCH!
The sound of breaking bone echoed through the hall, an icy needle piercing the silence. Katarina didn't have time to comprehend a sharp, burning pain was already washing over her back, but the pressure mounted, relentless, suffocating.
CRUNCH!
The broken rib bent further under his steel grip. The muscles on her back and shoulders, strained to the limit, tore under the inhuman effort, like cables heated to red-hot. Every breath was torture.
Her consciousness swam, but the instinct for self-preservation kicked in before thought. Her free hand jerked upwards, and a blinding, furious sphere of crimson flame ignited above her, blazing with heat.
Simultaneously, from beneath her, right under Saigo, a devastating pillar of fire erupted upwards, tearing through the stones. She only had time to think: "He pretended... pretended he couldn't resist the pressure... clever little dog..."
BOOM!
Two hellish streams of fire the sphere and the pillar met somewhere centimeters above their tangled bodies. A shockwave of monstrous force rolled through the hall, shaking the ancient walls to their very foundations.
Dust and stone fragments billowed up in a cloud. The pressure on Katarina's back eased—Saigo faltered. Using a fraction of a second of freedom, she wrenched herself sideways, scrambling back on wounded elbows and knees, frantically scanning the area through the veil of smoke and ash.
"Hm… He still managed…" flashed through her head with a kind of wild glee. And she, as if in mockery, waved towards the smoke... with what remained of her left arm.
Not just severed torn out with a huge flap of flesh and the shoulder bone, the stump ending just below the elbow. Blood gushed in hot streams, mixing with the ash on the stones.
From the billowing smoke and flame, Saigo stepped forward.
Nothing remained of his clothing but tatters. His body was a ghastly canvas of suffering: deep, ragged wounds, extensive burns, livid bruises it was as if he had been put through a meat grinder and then thrown into a blazing furnace.
He staggered, every step an agony, but he remained on his feet. His gaze, through a mask of blood and soot, was full of that very battle madness, the frenzy of a cornered but unbroken beast. The corners of his lips twitched into a smile more like a snarl.
"Empress..." his voice was hoarse but firm as rock. "You... are very strong..." He paused, catching his breath, droplets of blood falling from his chin onto the scorched stones. "But that doesn't mean... you are immortal..." And as proof of this statement, he raised her severed arm, which he still clutched in his fist. He waved it before him like a banner on a battlefield, like a trophy inspiring a final stand.
Blood from the stump dripped onto his feet.
"Insolent..." Katarina unexpectedly laughed, a short, rasping laugh. On the stump of her shoulder, tongues of flame began to play. They licked the wound, burning the flesh, sterilizing it, and wove into the ghostly outline of a new hand - blazing, semi-transparent, woven from pure fiery rage.
She clenched this torch-like fist, testing its strength. "I love insolent men... strong... and filthy..." her voice sounded both weary and with genuine, almost insane interest.
The fire in her eyes blazed even brighter.