The king of the skies, now a grounded engine of pure rage, rose to its feet. The intelligent, sapphire pride in its eyes was gone, wholly replaced by the red-hot, instinctual fury of a wounded predator. Its piercing cry was no longer a focused, sonic weapon, but a raw, deafening roar of pain and indignation that shook the petrified trees to their foundations. It had been humbled, and its pride demanded a bloody retribution.
Forgetting the sky it once commanded, the Griffin charged. It was a thirty-foot-tall battering ram of silver fur and storm-cloud muscle, its massive talons, each the size of a man's forearm, tearing great furrows in the glassy black stone of the plateau. The sheer, kinetic force of its stampede made it clear to Ren that a direct hit would not just be an injury; it would be an annihilation. The time for tactical maneuvering was over. The brutal, close-quarters brawl had begun.
Fzzt.
Ren used Raijin's Flash, his body dissolving into a burst of azure static a microsecond before the Griffin would have plowed through him. He reappeared a hundred feet away as the beast, unable to stop its furious momentum, crashed headfirst into a towering, petrified redwood. The ancient stone tree, which had stood for centuries, exploded into a billion glassy shards, the sound like a thunderclap.
The Griffin shook its massive head, its fury undiminished. It spun around, its storm-cloud wings, unable to provide stable flight, now crackling with a wild, untamed energy. It unleashed this power not as a precise attack, but as a chaotic, unpredictable aura of arcing lightning, turning the area around it into a deadly, electrical minefield.
This was the new phase of the battle: a deadly dance of matador and bull. Ren was forced to stay constantly mobile, using Raijin's Flash to blink across the plateau, evading the Griffin's savage charges and the random, lashing tendrils of its chaotic lightning aura. He would teleport behind the beast, launching a Thunder's Needle at its flank, only for the spear of lightning to sizzle harmlessly against its thick hide. The Griffin was wounded, but its raw physical power and immense Aetheric reserves made it a near-impregnable fortress.
The intelligent beast began to learn. It was adapting to his teleportation. Instead of charging blindly at his last known position, it would stop short, its sapphire eyes scanning, and lash out with its massive, sharp beak or a swipe of its talons at the area where he was most likely to reappear. Ren was forced to chain his Flashes, to think two steps ahead, a constant, dizzying sequence of teleportation that was draining his Aetheric core at an alarming rate.
He appeared on a high ledge, breathing heavily, as the Griffin shattered another stone tree below. The battle had become a war of attrition. The Griffin was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, its movements growing slightly more sluggish. Ren, while physically unharmed, was nearly spent. He could feel his Aether reserves dwindling to a dangerous low. He had perhaps three, maybe four more Flashes left in him before he would be a grounded, helpless target. He had to end this now.
He formulated a desperate, final gambit.
He deliberately made his next Flash seem slower, clumsier. He reappeared closer to the Griffin than before, faking a momentary stumble as if his energy was failing him.
The Griffin, sensing victory, let out a triumphant shriek. Its pride, its rage, its predatory instinct all culminated in a single, final lunge. It threw its entire weight forward, its massive, razor-sharp beak aimed directly at Ren's heart, a definitive killing blow.
This was the opening.
As the beast's head lunged forward, Ren did not dodge. He poured every last drop of his focus, every remaining shred of his Aether, into a single, complex, point-blank creation. He summoned the Aegis of the Storm.
But he did not create a defensive dome around himself. He wove the azure lattice of pure lightning around the Griffin's head and neck. It was not a shield. It was a cage. A muzzle of pure, crackling thunder.
The beast's lunge was brought to a screeching halt as its head was trapped in the humming, constricting field. It was blinded, disoriented, its own chaotic lightning sparking harmlessly against the containing lattice of Ren's superior, more ordered power. It was trapped, helpless, for a single, crucial second.
With the Griffin's primary weapon neutralized, Ren used his final, exhausted reserve of will for one ultimate attack. He formed a single, dense, brutally efficient Thunder's Needle, and with his last use of Raijin's Flash, he appeared directly above the struggling beast's back.
He plunged the spear of lightning down, aiming for the exposed vertebrae at the base of the Griffin's massive skull.
There was a sound of cracking stone and a final, wet, electrical CRACK.
Ren collapsed to his knees, his Aether completely spent, as the light in the Griffin's sapphire eyes faded. The colossal beast shuddered once, a final, convulsive tremor, and then fell silent, its great head still caught in the fading, shimmering cage of the Aegis.
He had won. But he was now alone, exhausted, and vulnerable in the heart of a dead forest, the silence of his victory more terrifying than the fury of the battle.