The Guardian gods Chapter 972

"It seems our dear last-born has managed to fool everyone," Einar murmured, his tone dripping with quiet disdain. "Most of all, himself."

Magnus flinched, instincts urging him to spin around toward Einar, but the suffocating pressure of Petra standing directly before him rooted him in place. He swallowed hard, keeping his gaze locked on his brother while throwing his voice over his shoulder.

"What do you mean by that?" Magnus demanded, a tremor of defensive anxiety edging his tone.

Einar let the silence linger, taking measured steps until he stood just at the periphery of Magnus’s vision, his presence heavy and menacing.

"You seek power just like the rest of us, Magnus," Einar said, his voice a low, raspy drawl. "The true tragedy is that you lack the courage to admit it. Look at you even now, when it is blindingly obvious how far out of your depth you truly are, you still cling desperately to that seat. And you wrap your greed in sweet, pathetic words of unity."

Magnus took a slow, steadying breath, puffing out his chest to shield the panic churning inside him. "I cannot simply hand this throne over," he insisted, casting his voice with as much royal authority as he could muster. "Holding this seat is the only guarantee of safety for myself and Lunara. Most importantly... this realm was entrusted to me by Father. It was done in accordance with royal tradition."

The flagstones beneath their feet groaned, fine fractures webbing out from beneath Petra’s boots as a surge of suppressed aura rattled the chamber walls. The air grew instantly suffocating.

"Do not speak to me of tradition!" Petra roared, his voice vibrating with years of simmering hatred. "Do not dare utter that word to me when tradition was stripped from my hands to elevate a coddled child! Do not talk to me of birthright when the princess’s hand should have been mine from the start!"

Petra closed the distance between them in a single step, towering over Magnus. He took a slow, harsh breath, forcing the violent aura back beneath his skin, though his eyes remained ablaze with lethal intent.

"The princess, the crown, this realm, they are mine," Petra whispered, his voice dropping into a deadly, unshakeable promise. "And I am here today to claim every single piece of what I was owed."

He reached for the hilt of his weapon, his gaze cold and absolute. "Now, little brother... it is entirely up to you whether this handover is settled without bloodshed, or if this day ends with yet another life in our bloodline erased."

A frown suddenly creased Magnus’s brow, mirroring the sudden shadow that crossed his thoughts. "Where is Lunara?" he demanded, his voice tight with an urgency that had been absent before. "Is she safe?"

A low, mocking chuckle erupted from Einar. The sound, cold and without humor, seemed to mock Magnus’s very existence.

"Took you long enough to notice, did it?" Einar sneered, his gaze hardening. "We are not the only ones disappointed with Father’s choice, and certainly not the only ones tired of seeing you occupy a throne you don’t deserve. Petra’s vision is shared by many, Magnus, many who believe he would lead them to see another day, not force them to die at the hands of the Bj?rn!"

As he spoke, a pair of short, wickedly curved swords appeared in Einar’s hands, glinting in the dim light. Before the air could even still, he suddenly closed the distance, a flash of motion aimed straight at Magnus. Even as he lunged, Einar shouted back over his shoulder to Petra, his voice cutting through the rising tension.

"Petra, we came today to end him! This is no time to hesitate! The longer we take here, the more land is claimed, and the closer the Bj?rn’s get to our walls!"

Magnus, forced by the sheer speed of the assault, dived frantically to safety. A massive wall of ice erupted from the floor where he had stood only seconds before, Petra’s greatsword crashing down heavily, shattering the ice and embedding itself in the flagstones. But Einar, unhindered, moved like an icy mist, seeping through the cracks and openings of the shattered ice wall as he relentlessly pursued Magnus, who scrambled back, searching desperately for an escape that was quickly being sealed off.

Magnus hit the ground hard, rolling over jagged frost shards to put distance between himself and the two attackers. He brought his longsword up defensively, but his grip was awkward, his footing unbalanced. Steel was a duelist’s weapon and against two master combatants in this tight chamber, standing his ground was suicide.

"I can’t beat them here. I need to get out, raise the guard, and find Lunara".

There was no way the entire palace had turned coat. If he could just shatter the isolation of this hall and draw the attention of the royal guard, Petra and Einar’s quiet coup would explode into chaos.

With a harsh intake of breath, Magnus channeled his frost mana into his hands. A blinding flash of icy mist erupted from his palms, consuming the longsword entirely. The metal shattered like brittle glass, and as Magnus pulled his hands apart, a magnificent longbow formed from dense ice in its place.

"A bow in close quarters?" Einar mocked, his voice echoing from everywhere at once as he dissolved into a swirl of icy vapor. "You really are an idiot!"

Einar materialized directly above him, twin short swords poised to plunge through Magnus’s collarbones.

Magnus didn’t bother aiming at Einar. Instead, he slammed the lower tip of his glacial bow into the stone floor, pouring every ounce of his power into the shockwave.

"Glacial Detonation!"

Instead of a localized defense, Magnus overloaded the ice structure. The bow’s tip exploded into a deafening, thunderous CRACK that rattled the hall’s heavy foundation, sending a blinding wave of frost-shrapnel and roaring air in all directions.

The acoustic shockwave hit like a siege engine. Einar’s misty form was violently scattered by the blast, forcing him back into solid flesh as he tumbled across the flagstones, ears bleeding from the sheer sonic pressure.

Taking advantage of the blinding mist, Magnus turned toward the hall’s massive stained-glass windows overlooking the palace courtyard.

"He’s trying to alert the courtyard!" Einar shouted, coughing blood as he scrambled up. "Stop him!"

Petra moved like a tank, his heavy boots crushing floorboards as he surged forward, his dark-frosted greatsword raised for a cleaving strike to cut off Magnus’s escape path. "You won’t leave this room alive, Magnus!"

Magnus pulled his bowstring back to his ear, a heavy, drill-shaped lance of blue ice manifesting instantly on the nock. He didn’t shoot at Petra. He aimed straight at the structural archway supporting the vaulted ceiling directly above Petra’s head.

He released.

The oversized ice arrow slammed into the central keystone, expanding rapidly upon impact as the frost magic burst inward. The archway cracked with a sound like tearing metal, dislodging thousands of pounds of reinforced stone and heavy ice stalactites.

Petra was forced to halt his charge, swinging his massive greatsword upward to smash through the cascading avalanche of masonry and ice, creating a wall of dust and debris between them.

With the narrow opening secured, Magnus didn’t hesitate. He charged the reinforced stained-glass window, gathering a dense coating of frost armor around his shoulders, and hurled himself body-first through the glass.

The window shattered with a roaring cascade of colored glass and ice, the sound booming across the outer ward like a cannon shot.

Magnus plummeted into the open air of the courtyard below, twisting in mid-fall to conjure a sloped ramp of smooth ice to cushion his landing. He hit the ramp sliding, skidding hard onto the cobblestones before scrambling to his feet, breathless and bruised.

Above him, smoke and frost poured from the broken high-window, and shouts were already beginning to ring out from the distant watchtowers.

Gasping for air, his hand tightly clutching his reformed frost-bow, Magnus sprinted into the palace corridors toward the inner quarters.

Lunara, his mind raced frantically above the growing sound of alarm bells beginning to toll in the distance. Hold on. I’m coming.

The alarm bells tolled across the inner courtyard, their brassy metallic ringing slicing through the crisp air. Magnus sprinted through the vaulted marble colonnade, his boots spraying frost across the flagstones to boost his momentum with every stride.

Behind him, a deafening shatter echoed as the heavy oak doors at the end of the gallery blew off their iron hinges.

Caution was gone. Petra and Einar no longer cared about quiet execution, they were moving for a public slaughter, willing to paint Magnus as a frantic traitor mad with grief if it meant his corpse hit the floor.

Einar was the fastest. Abandoning physical form entirely, he liquefied into a streaming torrent of icy mist, riding the high draft along the vaulted ceiling. He moved like a spectral serpent, outrunning Magnus in seconds.

Above me!

Magnus snapped his head up just as Einar condensed out of the mist directly over a chandelier, plunging downward with twin curved daggers dripping with black frost.