Lucina floated beside Herxes, with her golden eyes narrowing as she looked down at the ssenger god still hunched over, breathing heavily with dark blood dripping from his split lip.
"How embarrassing," she said coldly. "A god, groveling on his feet before a dragon vessel who hasn’t even reached his full power."
Herxes grunted, and averted his face slightly in sha and fury.
He stretched his hand out to the side,and his staff, which had been tossed away earlier, shot back toward him through the air.
He stood up slowly and adjusted his posture.
Lucina said nothing for a mont, with her gaze still fixed on Aiden, who stood several ters away with that infuriating smile still plastered on his face.
She had abandoned her direct assault on the Space Locks, temporarily, at least.
Her Law was still active, still burning away at those barriers relentlessly. But if she focused solely on breaking through them while Aiden picked them off one by one, they would lose.
Fighting together was their only real chance now.
"You’ve underestimated us enough," she said.
In that instant, her form began to change.
Her body dissolved into pure light and her hair lifted into the air as if it was weightless, just floating around her.
The flas that had been burning around her earlier intensified tenfold, rging with the light until she beca sothing almost impossible to look at directly.
Aiden’s smile widened slightly as he watched the transformation unfold before him. His vision had naturally adjusted to the radiance without difficulty.
"Let’s put an end to this, shall we?" he said calmly.
Black scales erupted across his forearms in smooth, overlapping plates. His fangs lengthened, more scales spread down his legs, and sharp claws pushed from both his fingertips and toes.
His draconian pupils narrowed even further, shrinking into thin slits within the red glow of his eyes.
It wasn’t a full transformation. He didn’t need to go that far to deal with these two.
Without warning or preamble, Aiden stretched his hand forward toward both gods.
"Crush Point."
Space itself folded inward violently around Lucina and Herxes with invisible pressure collapsing toward a single point where they stood.
This was a space Authority skill designed to shatter space itself and crush anything caught within it.
Lucina’s senses scread danger. Her instincts flared so sharply, and without hesitation she vanished in a flash of golden light that scattered like sparks before reforming elsewhere.
Herxes’ Foresight had already shown him what was coming; ten seconds was more than enough ti to react, and he moved instantly with his speed carrying him away from the collapsing point.
The space where they had been standing imploded violently with a sound like shattering glass mixed with thunder rolling through stone caverns.
Ruptures spread outward from the point of impact, splitting open reality for a brief, violent mont before snapping shut again.
Lucina reappeared above Aiden from behind, hovering high in the air as pure radiant energy swirled around her form.
She brought both hands together in front and an enormous magic circle materialized between her palms.
A colossal beam of concentrated light exploded from the circle with so much intensity, downward toward Aiden with enough force to vaporize stone and tal alike on contact.
At almost exactly the sa mont, Herxes who had repositioned himself off to Aiden’s left side, raised his staff.
A yellow magic circle ford directly in front of the tip of his weapon, glowing brightly as arcs of yellow lightning crackled across its surface before converging at the center.
"Tenji Astrauza!"
A massive bolt of yellow lightning erupted from the circle and shot forward toward Aiden like a spear thrown by an angry god, which wasn’t far from accurate given who wielded it.
Two attacks converged on Aiden simultaneously.
Aiden’s form flickered and vanished mid-air just as both attacks converged on the space where he’d been standing.
The colossal beam of radiant light collided with lightning spear in a blinding explosion that tore through the cliffside, vaporizing rock and sending shockwaves rippling outward.
When the light faded, a massive crater had been carved into the earth, but Aiden was already gone.
He reappeared off to the side using Void Step, with his scaled arms crossed over his chest.
"You’ll have to do better than that".
Lucina’s eyes blazed with fury as she descended slightly.
Herxes began repositioning himself for another strike.
And then the back-and-forth exchange resud imdiately.
Herxes shot forward with blinding speed, whilst swinging his staff in wide arcs. Aiden weaved through each strike with minimal effort, ducking and sidestepping.
Lucina attacked from above, sending down concentrated beams of light that rained toward him.
Aiden darted between them as well, precisely evading it all.
Then he saw an opening.
Herxes overextended slightly on a downward swing. Aiden closed the distance instantly and drove his clawed fist into Herxes’ ribs with brutal force.
The impact sent the ssenger god flying backward through the air, until he crashed into a rock formation, that sent debris scattering everywhere.
Herxes groaned as he pushed himself upright, more blood dripping from his mouth.
Aiden turned toward Lucina next and swung at her, but his clawed hand passed straight through her radiant form without resistance.
Lucina smiled mockingly. "You cannot touch in this form."
Aiden clicked his tongue in annoyance and pulled back.
The Space Lock barriers also looked like they were beginning to fracture more under the effect of Lucina’s Law.
In fact, she had nearly broken through the last one.
Without hesitation, Aiden lifted a hand and layered another Space Lock over it.
Lucina noticed this and surged forward in fury, trying to interrupt it, but all it did was push them back into another rapid exchange, with Herxes eventually diving back into the clash.
And every ti the barriers began to fail, Aiden rebuilt them.
Then finally, Aiden broke apart from the exchange and landed several ters away.
He straightened up, brushing white hair from his face as he turned toward Lucina.
"Why did you ever think it was a wise decision to co after my wife?"
As he spoke, the most recent Space Lock began compressing rapidly inward.
It shrank from encompassing the entire planet down to just this cliffside battlefield, down to just the small patch of land where the three of them stood, until it fit snugly around only them.
The pressure increased exponentially as space folded tighter around their position.
Both gods felt it imdiately, and their expressions beca alard.
Aiden continued:
"For daring to co after her, I’ll make you both feel a pain far worse than death."
Herxes’ Foresight imdiately picked it up, Aiden’s follow up and his eyes widened at the terror.
"We have to leave here now!" Herxes shouted.
Lucina’s eyes imdiately shifted all her focus toward breaking through the Space Lock, with her conceptual flas flaring at maximum intensity.
But it was too late.
Aiden laid his palm forward, and a black mass ford in his hand, it was small at first, no larger than a marble, but impossibly dense.
Herxes spun around in panic preparing to run and put so gap between him and that thing. But the instant he turned and took even a single step, his body hit an invisible wall.
The compressed Space Lock had already sealed them in, and there was nowhere to run.
"Black Hole," Aiden whispered.
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