Lux Aeterna

Focusing on light was rather easy, given the circumstances, but though my power immediately moved to guide my metaphorical hands, the complexity of the process quickly became apparent. Imagine white light passing through a prism and breaking into a myriad of colors—and then imagine the process happening in reverse. I gathered four elements and held them firmly but separately in my mind, before bringing them together as one. No, more than that, it was like I was returning them to some prior form, putting back together the broken pieces of a puzzle. For just a moment, I thought I understood why the skill that allowed this had been called Unity.

And then I felt the thing I had created take on a life of its own. For a moment, I felt light shine from my eyes and mouth, glowing beneath my skin as it pushed against the inside of me and strove to get loose. I tried to give it form through Bai Hu’s hands, but as I did, I felt him sink into me and return to the whole. The light around me, from both Bianca’s attack and the Sun’s light, dimmed as one, as if some massive beast had taken a deep breath and sucked in the luminance in the process. I felt power course through my veins like fire, yet it didn’t hurt or burn. It just flowed and grew, from the crown of my head to the bottom of my feet, or maybe the other way around.

My heart beat once to the pulse of that flow—and another heart beat in return, but it wasn’t my own.

I realized then, in a way that even I couldn’t truly grasp, that I was putting this power to a use that was almost unworthy of it in its simplicity, just as I realized that I needed to get this power out of me before it broke loose.

Exhaling a breath that I didn’t remember taking—would swear I hadn’t taken—I let that power rise up to my hands, pushing back against Bianca’s attack like it wasn’t even there and releasing my creation.

A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of supreme elemental power, ‘Lux Aeterna.’

The world around me darkened even further as I felt my power flow and it took me a moment to realize the reason why. It should go without saying that holding an arm up against Bianca’s light did little to stop the majority of it from slipping past the limb and scorching both my skin and the ground around me—but as I unleashed my new attack, all of that changed. The destructive light swirled around me, seeming to bend away from the ground and spiral up my legs, chest, and arms. Even beyond that, light seemed to flow into me, dulling and changing colors as it went until the pressure of the attack seemed to almost vanish. I stretched out my hand, feeling something scorching and burning as it coursed through my body, and…

And then there was light. A tremendous amount of pure, focused light, brighter than anything I’d ever seen before—and while I wasn’t sure how anything managed to look bright against the background of Bianca’s assault, it did. For a moment, I thought that the attack was somehow pushing Bianca’s beam away from me, but it only took me a second to realize how ridiculous the mere idea of that was and see the truth; it wasn’t pushing anything away, but rather still drawing light in. As Bianca’s light met mine, it dimpled and narrowed and swirled around it, drawn into the thin cylinder that flooded from my hands, starting with the part closest to me but growing quickly to encompass the rest.

In moments, the entirety of Bianca’s attack seemed to writhe in the air as if trying to fight against the pull, but it couldn’t escape as it was twisted again and again into the almost smooth shape of my attack. Even as it did, the sky seemed to darken further, day turning to night in the midst of the attack as my power called to the light around us and swallowed it whole. As the source, it felt more like I was holding onto it than anything else, but…I could feel it. I could feel Bianca’s attack flow into mine and the light of the Sun follow suit, driving the attack to greater heights as pieces became part of a whole—but underneath all of that, I felt the power that came from me. The additions made the attack’s power swell, but even that seemed relatively minor in comparison to what I was barely holding in check.

Because beneath everything else, beneath all that power, it was me. It was my light that was drawing in everything else, swallowing everything less than itself, and that light came from me in a way that I could only loosely grasp. It was more than just physical illumination, the same as Bianca’s was, but as different from her attacks as I was from her—because this was me and that was her. The light of our souls in an exceptionally literal sense, given form and power and purpose. It tore through everything, making my illusions unravel and the light of my Aureola spring forth, and then that too flowed into the attack that gave shape to everything I was, because it was everything I was. Just as white was the result of merging all the colors of Dust, light was the result of merging the Elements—and of combining everything I was.

This was why the skill was called Unity, I thought again as the world seemed to freeze for a moment.

And then the moment passed. My light—my Lux Aeterna—split the same darkness it had plunged the world into. For the briefest instant, we were the only things visible in the night I’d made of everything near us; a blindingly bright line that connected my sister and I, flowing from my hand into the luminous portal she’d made of her body—

But then everything was back to normal as the attack ended and more light streamed down from the sky. At once, I was back to standing in the middle of a melted crater and Bianca was high in the sky, features completely hidden within the light of her altered form, no longer attacking. Slowly, she lifted a hand and rested it just below her ribcage, holding it there for a long moment.

“Ow,” She said at last, the tone of her voice a touch surprised. “I actually felt that.”