The Guardian gods Chapter 840

An oppressive silence descended upon the tri-domain. Magnus and Leiko stood resolutely back-to-back, a volatile alliance forged between fire and moonlight, now ensnared within the Beast King’s Refraction Planes.

Innumerable mirror-shards materialized in the air, each fragment reflecting a distinct perspective of the two princes. The Beast King remained unseen, yet his pervasive presence saturated the environment. A scaled tail flickered within one shard,while a reptilian eye blinked from an impossible vantage point in another.

Leiko's eyes snapped shut. His domain, the Rhythm of the Scorched Earth, commenced a low hum. Disregarding the visual chaos, he concentrated on sensing the subtle nuances of the air's 'taste'.

"Cease observing with your eyes, Magnus," Leiko commanded, his voice a low growl as heat distortions wavered around his shoulders. "The wretch is subtly shifting between light, never remaining still."

"I am aware," Magnus hissed. He remained utterly motionless, his form becoming semi-transparent as he enveloped himself in the Umbral Refraction, like a phantom cloak. "I perceive the light bending unnaturally."

Abruptly, the established 'rhythm' shifted. Leiko detected a minute spike in air pressure originating from above.

"Now!" Leiko bellowed.

He erupted into action. Propelling himself forward with a concentrated burst of flame from his soles, Leiko surged just as a scaled claw sliced through a nearby hovering mirror shard to his left. The Beast King was exploiting a small Refraction Plane, his limb emerging from one fragment while his body remained concealed within another.

Leiko's blade clashed against the claw, igniting a cascade of sparks as the intense heat of his weapon sizzled against the cold scales. However, the Beast King did not engage in direct confrontation. Detecting Leiko’s instinctive counter-attack through the fluctuations in heat, the creature swiftly retracted its arm back into the glass, reappearing ten feet distant and slithering across the domain's ceiling in its serpentine guise.

"Persistent insect!" the Beast King's voice boomed, echoing from every mirror simultaneously.

Magnus meticulously tracked the spatial distortion. He released a phased arrow, the projectile vanishing and reappearing as it traversed the moonlight. This shot was specifically designed to neutralize an illusory foe.

Yet, the Beast King proved swifter. As the arrow approached, he whipped his tail, instantaneously carving a new Refraction Plane in mid-air. The phased arrow impacted the newly formed barrier, shattering into kaleidoscopic shards. The Beast King artfully redirected forty weakened fragments with a flick of his tail, unleashing a silvery rain back towards Magnus.

Magnus held his position firm, the moonlight bending around his silhouette, causing the shards to whistle harmlessly through the space he seemingly occupied but did not.

Meanwhile, Leiko moved like a phantom. He had pinpointed the domain's underlying heartbeat. His movements were a series of explosive dashes, leaping from one suspended mirror to another, relentlessly pursuing the vibration of the creature's erratic movements.

The Beast King perceived Leiko anticipating his escape vectors. He reverted to his humanoid form, his heels digging into a Refraction Plane as he initiated a chaotic, zigzagging sprint. He became an indistinct blur, constantly shattering and reforming his own mirrors to construct an intricate maze of light and shadow.

Leiko's brow furrowed, his eyes still closed as he spoke, "He's attempting to drown out the rhythm with sheer chaos," he murmured, his skin emanating a deep, ominous crimson glow.

He plunged his sword into the ground, unleashing a prodigious shockwave of heat throughout the domain. "Found you!"

Through the soles of his feet, Leiko felt the Beast King falter for a fleeting second as the intense heat warped the surrounding air pressure. Leiko vanished in a cloud of steam, reappearing directly beneath the Beast King, his sword held aloft, blazing with incandescent flames.

High above, Magnus seized the opening. He drew his bowstring to its maximum tension, the moon behind him transforming into a blood-red orb as he prepared a shot designed to lock onto the intense heat Leiko was generating.

The Beast King, suspended mid-air and enveloped by the intertwined forces of fire and moonlight, hissed defiantly. He began to rotate, his scales reflecting the luminescence of both domains, intending to transmute the entire arena into a singular, colossal prism.

As he spun, scales detached and hung suspended in the air, each one functioning as a miniature Refraction Plane. The overlapping domains of the two princes collided with this cloud of mirrors, resulting in a devastating fracture. Magnus's moonlight was dispersed into a blinding, chaotic glare, while Leiko's concentrated heat was trapped within a confined radius around him.

"A cunning beast," Magnus conceded, his eyes narrowing as the light of his own domain was turned against him. The light's multifarious refractions rendered his target imperceptible, even with his specialized phased sight.

Below, Leiko snarled. The atmosphere thickened into a suffocating miasma of searing steam and shimmering glass. He could no longer discern the subtle air pressure changes; the Beast King's scales vibrated at such an extreme frequency that the fundamental 'rhythm' felt like a deafening static.

Suddenly, a sliver of ice, a ricochet from one of Magnus’s own arrows, whizzed past Leiko’s ear, drawing the first blood.

"Magnus! Control your shots!" Leiko bellowed. Yet, even as the words left his lips, he felt a subtle shift, a fleeting disruption in the prevailing rhythm.

The scaled monstrosity erupted from the mist of shattered glass, its serpentine tail lashing out with the might of a collapsing peak. It didn’t target an individual but struck the very ground beneath Leiko, its tail impact violently carving a vast Refraction Plane across the ravaged earth.

Leiko’s instinctive surge of speed faltered, his feet sliding uncontrollably on the utterly frictionless surface of the mirror-ice.

The Beast King seized the moment of disadvantage. It sprang towards Leiko, its claws extending into razor-sharp blades of pure ice. Simultaneously, it flicked a shard of mirror skyward, capturing the moonlight from Magnus’s domain and focusing a blinding beam of lunar energy directly into the archer’s eyes.

"Argh!" Magnus cried out, recoiling as his manifested form flickered, his concentration shattered.

The Beast King became a whirlwind of motion, assaulting Leiko with strikes emerging from three distinct 'Refraction' angles at once. Forced into a defensive posture, Leiko tightened his grip on his sword, his domain shrinking around him as pure instinct guided his movements, deflecting the unseen pressures of the attacks. With his free hand, he unleashed short, explosive bursts of flame, parrying the invisible force.

"You presume yourselves the hunters?" the Beast King’s voice slithered, somehow manifesting behind Magnus’s left ear even as its body was audibly striking Leiko.

Magnus, his vision still impaired, abandoned his bow. Letting it hang by its string, he drew a short sword forged from solidified moonlight. Through his distorted vision, he searched for the tell-tale shadows on the surface of his water-mirror.

"There," Magnus whispered, his voice barely audible.

He plunged the blade downward into the water at his feet.

The domain of Umbral Refraction shimmered. By striking the reflection, the resulting damage manifested on the physical plane. An agonizing scream reverberated through the myriad of mirrors. The Beast King, which had been preparing for a fatal strike at Magnus’s throat from its phased state, was violently thrown back, a gaping wound appearing on its chest, leaking a sickeningly dark red blood.

"Leiko! The center! Now!" Magnus commanded, his sight rapidly clearing.

Leiko required no further prompting. He could feel the Beast King’s heartbeat falter from the inflicted wound. He condensed all the heat within his domain, the cracked earth beneath him instantly liquefying into molten slag.

"Take this, you overgrown reptile!"

Leiko launched himself upwards, transforming into a spinning drill of pure fire. His target was the spot where the blood was staining the ground. The Beast King desperately attempted to carve a Refraction Plane to refract the inferno, but its movements were agonizingly slow, hampered by the wild lunar energy coursing through its body.

Leiko descended like a meteor, his sword shattering the incomplete refraction. The blade carved a massive gash from the Beast King's shoulder to its abdomen, the wound searing shut instantly, preventing any blood from escaping.

The unleashed fire clashed against the Beast King’s icy essence. The resulting sound was a deafening shriek of steam that bleached the entire domain white.

The billowing steam obscured all vision and seared the lungs of anyone who inhaled it. The Beast King, its chest heaving, its scales smeared with dark blood, realized its mirrors were becoming obscured by condensation. The Refraction Planes were losing their clarity, their ability to manipulate light diminishing. With a guttural roar of utter desperation, it tapped into the very core of its domain.

"If I am to fall," it hissed, its voice echoing ominously throughout the compressed space, "you will join me!"

Its claws moved in a blur as it slammed them into the center of the domain, and the world itself seemed to fracture. The suspended mirror shards violently accelerated, transforming into a deadly hailstorm of razor-sharp glass.

Magnus bore the initial onslaught. One shard, fractured into a dozen invisible edges, ripped through his 'phased' cloak. It bypassed his light-bending defenses, burying itself deep within his shoulder. He gasped, his bow tumbling from his suddenly numb fingers. Another shard sliced across his thigh, followed swiftly by a deep cut to his cheek.