High Atop the Ziggurat

The bodies of his enemies lay strewn about the thousand steps to the peak of the Imperial ziggurat, where his greatest foe stood, waiting. The sun beat down fierce and unrelenting upon him, but decades in the wasted plains had rendered him immune to the intense heat and blinding glare, and he took no notice. Nor did he pay any attention to the distant sounds of the rioting populace, as they laid waste to the imperial city far below. All his attention was fixed on the foe before him.

"This could have been such a great partnership," his hated enemy spat bitterly.

"No, vizier, it never could have," was his reply.

There was a moment as they regarded each other. He, with lean muscles born of hardship and strife and a lifetime of battle, his skin tanned dark and his blue eyes narrowed by the fierce sun, head shaven but for the long braided topknot he wore, dressed in a slave's loincloth and armed with a simple but highly effective axe. He wore dozens of scars, some so fresh they still bled, hot and sticky and drying to dull brown. His hated enemy, tall and skeletally thin despite a lifetime of plenty and waste, eyes dark and filled with hate and perhaps a tinge of fear, dressed in fine robes of red silk, skullcap on his bald head, fingers and ears ringed with heavy gold and polished gems, heavy chains of gold about his neck marking his office as imperial vizier, leaning against his staff for support.

They had been friends once, long ago, a lifetime ago. But a betrayal and a death had forced their paths to diverge, and take entirely different directions. Now, here, their paths once again connected, and both knew, there was only one path leading away from this meeting, though neither could say which of them would be walking that path.

His foe's path had been one of schemes and manipulation, of ambition through the imperial court, climbing the ranks of power through backroom deals and temporary alliances. His foe's path had helped expanded the borders of the empire to encompass the known world, and caused the suffering of untold tens of thousands of people across the empire.

His own path had been one of pain and battle, of hardship. His life had been filled with loss and suffering. His path had led to the revolution that raged in the streets far below, as the suffering people of the empire sought to throw off the shackles of oppression. Smoke obscured the former beauty of the imperial palace, of the city that lay spread out beneath them. Screams of rage and screams of pain rose from the streets, made faint by distance.

The only sounds that concerned them were their harsh rasping breaths and the moan of the desert winds. A fly buzzed past, attracted to the fresh scent of blood drying under the relentless sun.

"Ready?" he asked his foe.

"Always," was the only reply.