All his talk, and what did it mean to her?  Not much, really.  He hadn't agreed to come quietly, not really, anyway, so what did anything else matter?  If anything, his babbling was a little bit amusing.  He was still trying to treat her like another of these surface creatures.  Did he truly believe she was nothing more than a crazed human?  He had to be an absolute idiot.  Her bearer this time around was an absolute idiot.

He was trying to leave.  The fire didn't scare him anymore.  Of course, he knew the flames wouldn't hurt him much.  She understood.  But that still wasn't acceptable.  She was done playing around.  When he began stepping outside her ring of flames, she cast her hand out, like she had before, with a disturbingly gentle smile on her face.

A tremor shook the small convenience store.  The ground beneath his feet rocked.  A deep bass-like sound came up from the floor.  With the sound came the first crack in the tiles.  From under them both, the floor began to split, cracking like ice on a lake.  The debris covering the floor began to fall away and the roof above their heads began to splinter.  The fluorescent lights snapped and sparked, the pipes burst, and the plaster began to fall.  Everything in the store fell towards the sinkhole that had formed before everyone's eyes.  And the empress just watched, calm and controlled, with the assurance that it was all over for him.  No more talking pointlessly.  Just fall, and she'd join him momentarily.