Aeloria advanced with calm steps, each one escorted by a deadly dance of crystals.
A thin, translucent armor covered his body, made of the purest ice. It wasn't just protection it was proof of a mage's finest magical control.
The cold didn't bother him. The staff in his hand, just over ninety centimeters long, pulsed with a rhythmic, living energy. At its tip, a white-blue orb as clear as a snowstorm under the moon released magical waves that vibrated like frozen tides.
Each time one of the small serpents approached, his armor released an instant icy burst, freezing the reptiles in midair. Before they could touch the ground, the wave of energy from his staff shattered them into glittering shards. It was a magnificent dance. A spectacle. A testament to Aeloria's absolute mastery over ice.
But then, his eyes found chaos.
Above, Glenn was a blur of light in the darkness, an insane lightning bolt darting across the battlefield, chasing the Guardian. The ground shook with each impact of his magic, and the shadows shattered beneath his leaps. That part was under control.
The problem... was down here.
Aeloria spun his staff, freezing another group of serpents, and then he saw it.
At the base of the inner mountain, everything had fallen apart.
Dórian, his shield cracked, his body still throbbing with fury, was... attacking Seraphine.
"DÓRIAN!" Aeloria shouted, his voice breaking through the battlefield like glacial thunder.
But the warrior didn't react. Didn't blink. His eyes were red as embers. His face, twisted by a mix of rage and confusion.
Aeloria ran, leaving behind a trail of crystals cracking the ground. He tried to conjure an ice prison around Dórian, but the distance was too great.
What he saw next... made him stop for a moment.
Dórian was advancing on Seraphine like a crazed monster. But his movements were... erratic. At times, he swung his sword in random directions, trying to strike at "parts" of his sister's body that simply didn't exist—thrusts into empty space, overlapping slashes, blows that made no sense in a real fight.
But then, something would change. In brief flashes, as if he awoke for just a few seconds, his strikes became precise. The smoking blade sliced toward her neck, her flank, her belly.
Seraphine had to dodge. More and more. Her expression shifted between shock and pain.
"DÓRIAN, IT'S ME, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!" she shouted, trying to reach him, but failing.
The warrior roared, like an animal trapped between worlds.
Then, in a brutal spinning move, Dórian used the weight of his body to bring down the flat of his shield in a sweeping blow. Seraphine raised her spear just in time to partially block it.
But the strength was monstrous.
The impact struck her right side. She was thrown like a ragdoll, flying several meters before crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and stones.
Aeloria held his breath.
The sound of the impact still echoed as he saw Seraphine's body roll across the ground. She got up quickly—faster than he expected but something in her stance had changed.
A small serpent, sneaky, had slipped past the side. In the exact moment she dodged Dórian's attack, the creature sank its fangs into her exposed calf. The venom entered fast.
Seraphine drove her spear into the ground, controlling her breathing. Her prana surged through her veins, warming her body from the inside out. The vital energy pushed the venom away from her heart, isolating it in her extremities. Her eyes trembled.
Her retinas burned, itched... but she ignored it. There was no time. Not with Dórian there, and the larger serpents regrouping.
She spun her spear into a defensive stance, eyes fixed on the warrior who was now a threat.
Aeloria didn't hesitate.
He raised his staff with both hands, and the magic spread in waves. First came the cold mist, a freezing breath that embraced the mountain's base. Then, the ground began to glow a pale blue.
Crackles.
Fissures.
Freezing.
Thin layers of ice covered the stone, but it didn't stop there.
Aeloria intensified the magical flow, and what had been a slippery surface became treacherous terrain. Thick plates of ice grew underfoot, blocking the serpents' advance. The smaller ones were caught easily, frozen midair, crushed by ice spears rising from the ground like the teeth of a sleeping beast.
But not everything was victory.
Dórian and Seraphine also felt the weight of the new terrain. Their steps slowed, their movements grew heavier. The natural pace of combat began to fade amid slips and lost balance. Aeloria tried to adjust the field, open movement channels with thawed areas... but the rhythm was out of control.
From the mountain's heart, a bolt of lightning accidentally struck the inner base and tore through the ice like paper. The explosion destroyed one of Aeloria's defensive lines and cracked the thickest layer. But he didn't falter.
Clenching his teeth, he kept channeling.
The temperature in the chamber plummeted. Each breath escaping his mouth came out as thick vapor. The magic now pulsed stronger, forming true frozen walls around the battling duo.
But nothing seemed enough.
Dórian was now completely overtaken. He moved like a beast, his eyes vibrating, his attacks targeting vital points with insane precision. Seraphine defended, countered, screamed, but... her voice was different. Her breathing too.
Two, three minutes passed.
Aeloria attacked with ice pillars, curtains of shards, and freezing lances, trying to interrupt the duel. At times, he managed to separate them. Other times, he only delayed the inevitable.
And then... everything he feared was confirmed.
Seraphine also began to falter.
She missed a simple thrust. Her eyes were now tinged with red. Her face, a distorted reflection of her usual composure, turned wild. A growl escaped her lips. Her prana turned erratic, surging in bursts, without control.
They lunged at each other.
It was a colossal fight now. Savage, without tactics just pure strength and instinct. Blade against spear. Screams against snarls. They crashed like beasts, their bodies colliding and ricocheting across the ice and battlefield debris.
And every five or six seconds, new serpents appeared and sank their fangs into both. The venom seeped through scratches, cuts, poorly healed wounds. It was a self-destructive cycle.
Then everything changed. From above, like a falling star, something was plummeting toward them.
**
The air was too thick to breathe properly. Filled with dust, residual magic, and blood.
My blood.
The Guardian moved as if made of liquid shadow. Its body felt wrong.
Distorted. Fluid.
At times, it stretched like a colossus, slithering along the inner walls of the mountain like a hundred-meter titan.
Other times, there wasn't even a sliver of light between me and its silhouette—small as a living dagger, dancing between the coven's portals.
Casting lightning was torture.
I'd concentrate it, time it, calculate trajectory and dimensional displacement...
But I kept missing—by mere centimeters.
"Damn it! How can I miss something that huge?" I asked myself.
I jumped aside as another violet beam tore through the air where I had been milliseconds before. It was like facing a reversed mirror: always one step behind, always the reflection and never the real image.
Another laser.
Another rift opening at the flanks.
Another seared cut down the side of my leg.
Six hits so far. Three deep. Two grazed me. One direct hit to the shoulder.
I was bleeding too much.
The rifts in the walls opened like mouths, spitting out serpents of darkness or sucking in parts of the environment a stone, a lightning bolt, my scream.
This lair was his. I was just an intruder on borrowed time.
Barely dodged again.
A diagonal beam.
I ducked, rolled, and fired two lightning bolts in quick succession.
Nothing.
Nothing but a distortion vanishing like smoke through my fingers.
My breathing was ragged. My chest rising and falling too fast. My left arm almost useless. Every step was pain.
And then… something clicked.
A mental spark. A flash of clarity amidst the pandemonium.
I stopped.
Not physically—my body kept moving, surrounded by lightning, illuminating every corner I passed like a raging storm. Spinning, dodging, seeking cover among shattered pillars and cracked ice blocks.
But my mind grew still.
I began to truly observe.
Not where the Guardian was...
But where he couldn't be.
The portals.
They weren't random.
They weren't infinite.
Each laser, each attack, every blow I took... came from fixed points. The Guardian wasn't omnipresent. He only pretended to be.
"Now to the right."
The violet laser came from the left. Clean dodge.
"Above, now..."
I floated upward, dodging a fatal strike by inches. The beam sliced through the ceiling and pulverized stalactites that collapsed behind me.
"Lightning to the left... now! Three portals are about to open... one, two, three — HIT THE THIRD ONE!"
I fired.
The bolt hit something.
For the first time, the Guardian screamed. A muffled sound, like thunder trapped underwater.
'So that's it. Slippery, elusive... but not tough!'
I smiled, even with blood dripping from my teeth.
My eyes sparked—not from emotion, but from pure electrical discharge. I channeled prana into my retinas, and a bluish mist began to radiate from my pupils. Gravity around me began to shimmer, as if space itself could feel something was coming.
"You showed me how your house works... now deal with me breaking the windows."
My feet landed on a side wall, lightning hissing around my body, which contracted for another high-speed leap after the Guardian.
"BOOOOOOOOOOM"
I moved like a beam of light, bouncing from rock to rock, racing from one side of the mountain's interior to the other, defying time, chasing the Guardian who was now retreating.
Yes. Retreating.
He knew.
"Next move... he'll try to distract me with a lateral beam, and open two fake portals in the ceiling, but the real one will come from that path. I've seen this pattern."
I channeled every ounce of electricity I could into my eyes. I moved where the Guardian wanted me to go. But at the last moment, I turned toward the correct tunnel.
From my eyes, two colossal lightning bolts surged across the mountain, cutting through everything in their path—and before the portal even opened, I knew I'd hit it.
A roar—sharp and warped—echoed through the mountain.
Direct hit. Twice.
The creature emerged fully, finally vulnerable—half of its body exposed in translucent flesh and dark bones.
My nexuses—my gloves—flared with the full power of my cores. I held nothing back—no prana, no mana.
Gravity twisted. Time slowed.
The air crackled.
My glove multiplied gravity by a hundredfold.
And my eyes unleashed two more searing lightning bolts.
Spiraling arcs of thunder swirled around me—a concentrated storm.
The portals began to close by instinct, but it was already too late.
"The elevator's going DOWN!" I shouted.
The final bolts launched.
They struck the Guardian dead center in the skull. An explosion of darkness and electricity tore through the mountain's interior.
The sound vanished. The light vanished.
And then...
Everything collapsed.
Like a black star, a serpent nearly twenty meters long crashed at the mountain's base.
I fell soon after completely drained, energy collapsing from within.