While deafening war cries and the clash of blades rang out before the defensive line Angron and the others had built with their own flesh and blood, another clash between supreme combatants, one that would decide their fate, unfolded at the center of the Temple—silent, yet even deadlier.
Lorgar and Supreme Seer Xinaniels faced each other, ten paces apart.
Neither wasted words. Their auras had already risen to their peak.
Lorgar clenched both fists, vast golden psychic energy coiling around them like liquid flame, bathing him in the radiance of a god descended into the world.
He moved!
One step cracked the wraithbone floor beneath him. His body became a bolt of golden lightning that tore through space and lunged straight at Xinaniels!
It was a simple straight punch, yet it held enough raw force to shatter mountains. The pressure of his fist compressed the air with a thunderous crack!
Countless fragments of future light and shadow cascaded through Xinaniels's eyes.
Lorgar's attack trajectory, its angle, even several possible follow-up moves were perfectly clear to her "sight." Her slender figure seemed weightless as she turned, leaned back, and glided aside by the narrowest margins, always evading with exquisite grace just before his fist reached her.
Her palms swept back and forth, forming shields of psychic energy that deflected the heavy blows she could not fully evade with precisely timed, muffled thuds.
She seemed to dance on a blade's edge. Danger surrounded her, yet she always escaped disaster at the last possible instant.
But she could only defend, not attack.
Lorgar's assault raged like a relentless storm, leaving no opening whatsoever for her to chant or cast a psychic spell.
"A futile struggle, young god. I have already seen the course of your destiny." Shina's ethereal voice sounded in Lorgar's mind,