lux aternea mercs goli

briefly before being sucked into the light I’d gathered in my right hand. The night darkened further, seeming to almost empty the sky above us as light fled from it. The rising surge of my Aura illuminated my surroundings only briefly before it was torn away from my skin and slithered into my fingers. For a moment, I seemed to hold the only light in the world, at once burning steadily and illuminating nothing but itself. “So thanks. But I don’t need anything else from you, so you can just go ahead and die now.”

Then the moment passed and night turned to day.

Light poured from my hands in a blinding torrent, burning away the shadows and Grimm alike. It took the Goliath in the side and pierced through it as if it weren’t even there. Where the creature’s dark flesh was touched by my Lux Aeterna, it simply melted away, replaced by shining wounds that seemed to devour its body further, pushing outwards to enlarge the already massive wound my attack had made. The Grimm shifted as the attack struck but didn’t even have time to scream as it was swept away—so its fellows screamed for it, trunks rising in a trumpeting chorus and they edged away from the light. Even though they weren't the targets of the attack, wounds began to mark their skin as if they were burning, mere proximity shredding their skin.

I didn’t flinch away even as the light rose into the sky like a second sun. I’d angled it upwards, just in case, and it split the heavens like a bridge as it pierced the darkness around it. In its wake, the sky was briefly marked with everything from bright daytime blues to the beautiful colors of dusk and dawn, and where the light didn’t blind, it illuminated as if it were noon instead of night.

And when it faded, everything in its path was gone. All that was left of the Goliath I’d hit were the mighty pillars of its legs, the rest of its body gone as if it had simply stopped existing. The edges of what remained were smooth where they didn’t erupt with white and silver fire, but from its belly to its trunk…

I’d made the Goliath disappear.

To either side of the beast, its companions were alive, if worse for wear. They smoked where the light had burned them, the color lightening as it rose from their skin—black to gray to a pure and scattering white that rose into the sky like snow falling in reverse—and in places they seemed just a touch thinner, as if partially melted away. Even so, they didn’t back down and their eyes focused on me intently, crimson orbs intelligent and waiting. I could see them both gathering power as I stood, weakened from the sheer breadth of power I’d just released. I felt myself sweating again, panting even as I met their eyes, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from chuckling.