The silence in the tri domain was suffocating. Magnus and Leiko stood back to back, a precarious alliance of fire and moonlight, surrounded by the Beast King’s Refraction Planes.
Thousands of mirror-shards hovered in the air, each one reflecting a different angle of the two princes. The Beast King was nowhere to be seen, yet his presence was everywhere. In one shard, a scaled tail flickered, in another, a reptilian eye blinked from a perspective that shouldn’t exist.
Leiko closed his eyes. His domain, the Rhythm of the Scorched Earth, began to hum. He tuned out the visual nightmare, focusing instead on the "taste" of the air.
"Stop looking with your eyes, Magnus," Leiko growled, his voice low as heat ripples distorted the air around his shoulders. "The bastard is stepping between the light and is not standing still."
"I know," Magnus hissed. He stood perfectly still, his body becoming partially transparent as he drew the Umbral Refraction around him like a cloak. "I can see the light bending where it shouldn’t."
Suddenly, the "rhythm" changed. Leiko felt a microscopic spike in air pressure from above.
"Now!" Leiko barked.
He exploded. Using a condensed burst of fla from his soles, Leiko shot forward just as a scaled claw erged from a floating mirror shard to his left. The Beast King was reaching through a small Refraction Plane, his arm appearing in one shard while his body remained hidden in another.
Leiko’s sword caught the claw in a shower of sparks, the heat of his blade hissing against cold scales. But the Beast King didn’t commit to the struggle. Sensing Leiko’s reflexive counter-swing through the change in heat, the creature retracted his arm into the glass and reappeared ten feet away, sliding across the domain’s ceiling in his serpentine form.
"Persistent fly!" the Beast King’s voice echoed, seemingly coming from every mirror at once.
Magnus tracked the distortion. He loosed a phased arrow, the projectile flickering in and out of existence as it traversed the moonlight. It was a shot designed to kill a illusionary target.
But the Beast King was faster. As the arrow approached, he swept his tail, carving a new Refraction Plane mid-air. The phased arrow struck the ice wall and instantly prismoid-split. One arrow beca forty weakened shards that the Beast King skillfully redirected with a flick of his tail, sending the silver rain back at Magnus.
Magnus stood his ground, the moonlight bending around his silhouette so the shards whistled through the space where he seed to be, but wasn’t.
Leiko, anwhile, was a blur of motion. He had found the heartbeat of the domain. He moved in a series of explosive bursts, leaping from one floating mirror to the next as he chased the vibration of the creature’s movent.
The Beast King realized Leiko was anticipating his exit points. He shifted back to his humanoid form, his heels digging into a Refraction Plane as he launched himself into a chaotic, zig-zagging sprint. He beca a blur, constantly shattering and reforming his own mirrors to create a maze of light and shadow.
Leiko’s brow furrowed with his eyes still closed spoke "He’s trying to drown out the rhythm with noise," he muttered, his skin glowing a deep, dangerous crimson.
He slamd his sword into the ground, sending a massive shockwave of heat through the domain space "Found you!"
Through the soles of his feet, Leiko felt the Beast King stumble for a fraction of a second as the heat buckled the air pressure around him. Leiko disappeared in a burst of steam, reappearing directly beneath the Beast King with his sword held in his hands bathed in red hot flas.
High above, Magnus saw the opening. He pulled his bow to the limit, the moon behind him turning a blood-red as he prepared a shot that would lock onto the heat Leiko was generating.
The Beast King, mid-air and surrounded by fire and moonlight, hissed in defiance. He began to spin, his scales reflecting the light of both domains, preparing to turn the entire space into a singular, massive prism.
As he spun, he shed scales that hung in the air, each one a miniature Refraction Plane. The overlapping domains of the two princes hit this cloud of mirrors and fractured; Magnus’s moonlight was scattered into a blinding, chaotic glare, and Leiko’s heat was trapped in a confined area around him.
"Clever beast," Magnus muttered, his eyes narrowing as the light from his domain was turned against him. He could no longer see the target, even with his phased sight, as the light was bending in too many directions at once.
Below, Leiko snarled. The air was becoming a soup of white hot steam and shimring glass. He couldn’t taste the air pressure anymore, the Beast King was vibrating his scales at such a high frequency that the "rhythm" felt like a screaming wall of static.
Suddenly, a shard of ice refracted from one of Magnus’s own stray arrows whistled past Leiko’s ear, drawing blood.
"Magnus! Watch your fire!" Leiko roared, but even as he spoke, he sensed a shift. The static in the rhythm broke for a heartbeat.
The scaled figure lunged out of the glass cloud, his serpentine tail whipping out with the force of a falling mountain. He didn’t aim for anyone, he aid for the ground beneath Leiko. As his tail slamd into the scorched earth, he carved a massive Refraction Plane horizontally across the floor.
Leiko’s reflexive burst of speed failed him as he slipped on the frictionless surface of the mirror-ice.
The Beast King didn’t waste the opening. He lunged at Leiko, his claws elongated into translucent ice-blades. At the sa ti, he flicked a fragnt of a mirror toward the sky, catching the moonlight from Magnus’s domain and reflecting a concentrated beam of blinding lunar energy directly into the archer’s eyes.
"Argh!" Magnus recoiled, his phased form flickering as his concentration broke.
The Beast King was now a blur as he slashed at Leiko, his strikes coming from three different "Refraction" angles simultaneously. Leiko, forced onto the defensive, held his sword as his domain trait shrunk around him as his body moved from pure instinct deflecting, at the sa ti used his free hand to blast short, concussive bursts of fla to parry the invisible pressure of the strikes.
"You think... you are the hunters?" the Beast King’s voice hissed, appearing behind Magnus’s left ear even as his body was seen clawing at Leiko.
Magnus, still partially blinded, didn’t use his bow. He dropped it, letting it hang by its string, and drew a short-blade made of solid moonlight. Through his blurred view, he looked for the shadows on his pool of water.
"There," Magnus whispered.
He stabbed downward into the water at his feet.
The domain of Umbral Refraction rippled. By attacking the reflection in the water, the damage translated to the physical plane. A scream of agony echoed through the mirrors. The Beast King, who had been positioning himself for a lethal strike on Magnus’s throat from the phased space, was suddenly knocked backward, a deep gash appearing on his chest that leaked deep red blood.
"Leiko! The center! Now!" Magnus shouted, his vision clearing.
Leiko didn’t need to be told twice. He felt the Beast King’s heartbeat falter from the wound. He gathered every ounce of heat in his domain, the cracked earth beneath him turning into molten slag.
"Eat this, you oversized lizard!"
Leiko launched himself upward. He beca a humanoid drill of fire, aiming for the spot where blood was hitting the floor. The Beast King frantically tried to carve a Refraction Plane to prism the heat, but his movents were slowed by the lunar energy running rampant inside its body.
Leiko descended with his sword shattering the unfinished refraction as his sword drew a huge wound that cauterized from the beast king shoulder to its stomach, no blood fell as it was burned away from the heat.
The fire t the icy essence of the beast king. The sound was like a scream of steam that white-washed the entire domain.
The steam from the collision obscured everyone’s sight and it scalded the lungs. The Beast King, his chest heaving and red blood staining his scales, realized his mirrors were fogging. The Refraction Planes were becoming opaque, losing their ability to prism the light. With a guttural roar of desperation, he tapped into the core of his domain.
"If I fall," he hissed, his voice rattling through the domain space "I will take your lives with !"
His hand’s blurred as he slamd his claws into the center of the domain, and the world shattered. Literally. The floating mirror-shards accelerated, becoming a hailstorm of sharpened glass.
Magnus was the first to take the brunt. A shard, refracted into a dozen invisible edges, tore through his "phased" cloak. It bypassed his light-bending defense and buried itself deep into his shoulder. He gasped, his bow slipping from his numb fingers. Another shard sliced across his thigh, then his cheek.
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