Luci combo into Lux At

Light gathered in my hands as I tapped my power for everything I and my other could spare, draining myself dangerously low to make a shot I hoped would count.

And then I hit him with Lux Aeterna.

Fourteen of them, to be precise.
The world began to shimmer, shifting patterns of space rippling outwards from the palm of my hand. That light gathered in my hand and it was all but solid, reminding me distantly of the Brahmastra, of the spear I’d formed out of thin air.

But no, this was something else, if every bit as intense. Instead of roaring from my hands in a colossal torrent of pattern, something strange happened—the light seemed to curl in upon itself. Fourteen tendrils began to slowly stretch from my palm, twisting around some central point as they did, before connecting at a point less than a meter from my skin. The moment they did, something seemed to pulse within me, beating alongside my twin hearts, and the light shinned, brightening almost painfully for a moment before a narrow, hair-thin line of power began to emerge from my hand, intersecting cleanly with the point of connection directly in front of it.

My first thought of it was that it was strange—the light, bizarrely, moved slowly. It seemed to cross the space between Malkuth and I at a glacial pace, burning through the world like it was a candle melting; if not for my senses, I wouldn’t have been certain it was moving at all. It took me a moment to realize that wasn’t what was actually happening, cross-referencing it against my view of the world. Malkuth seemed frozen, along with the chaotic storm of heat and light I’d made of this world. Where I could distinguish matter as a meaningful thing, it seemed halted and still, as though time had stopped around me again.

Except, that wasn’t it. I’d notice if I was the subject of time manipulation; this was something else, if still familiar. In fact, I was reminded of the last time I’d met Malkuth and of what had happened shortly before, when I’d used a whit Dust crystal.

The world wasn’t moving any slower. I was just perceiving it as if it were standing still—as if I myself were light.

And then things began to change. It seemed to happen slowly, but I was aware that, if not for my current view on reality, I probably wouldn’t have been able to see any of it at all. The burning chaos I’d made within my Sanctuary with Lucifer’s power—it all began to flow towards me. With a twitch of bizarre motion, I felt my thirty-six wings unfold behind me, moving and not moving as Sahasrara shined through my skin. The hell I’d been building seemed to gather in them, flowing into them in a flood of light until I wasn’t certain where they stopped and the rest of the world began—and soon it didn’t matter.

The world began to condense around us, the heat that had filled my Sanctuary shrinking steadily inwards as it was drawn into Lucifer and then into me, leaving nothing behind but a lightless void. The star I’d created followed it, shrinking in pulsing waves as it was drawn into me and flowed beneath my skin. Soon, only Malkuth and I remained, and I was only able to perceive the former thanks to my more esoteric senses.

Then my view of the world began to narrow, even as I shed my skin. Sahasrara sprang forth fully from where it had been hidden beneath my Metamorphosis, and I could feel myself being drawn into the Light again. My wings began to shrink into my body, fading from the tip inwards, and the rest of me was quick to follow. I felt as though I was being crushed and twisted, drawn and pulled around a central point, and I was able to see it as my body swirled around and through itself until my head, limbs, and chest were all indistinct. I watched from the outside perspective Sahasrara granted me as the last of my body was sucked down into my arm until even that began to flow into the gather light. After a moment—for I wasn’t sure if or how time applied in a state such as this—the only things left of ‘me’ were the fourteen spiraling columns that circled the central pillar, and those too soon flowed into the central point, which gathered and encompassed everything I’d created, everything I was. My power, my other, my created inferno, we were all drawn into a point that was no larger than Malkuth’s portal had been.

And then…that point flickered out, as if consuming even itself, and there was nothing lift but Malkuth and the darkness.

But then there was light. There was no shape too it, nothing that could truly define it—it just exploded outwards from an infinitesimally small point to an unspeakably huge one. I couldn’t feel it, watching it from the outside as I was, but I could see its immensity, the power that filled every corner of my Sanctuary and seemed to strain the very confined of space. Whether because of how I’d fueled it or the numbers I’d used, it was a massive attack—something even more intense that what I’d created with Lucifer. It reached the boundaries I’d laid down and washed back upon and over itself, growing and shrinking, creating and destroying, and simply filling the world with its majesty. Simply seeing it was amazing, awe-inspiring, and more than a little terrifying. If I’d been caught in the wake of such an attack, I wasn’t certain I’d be able to survive it, even with all my defenses and advantages.

Malkuth, though…he wasn’t the center of that attack, but he was still caught within it. I watched as the Light expanded to encompass him, washing over him like a tsunami, and where the Astras had done nothing, I saw him burn. Gilgamesh’s body seemed to ignite at the very touch of it, going up in blue and white flames that seemed to consume and unravel him where even Lucifer had failed, eating at his flesh in pursuit of what laid within and burning with unspeakable brightness. I saw Malkuth resist instantly, raising power against the attack and sending sparks of his own strength flashing over the Grimm’s dark flesh to defend it from the light and replace whatever was lost. At a glance, it seemed like he was doing a pretty good job of it, but it seemed this wasn’t something he could simply ignore.

That was good news for me; it meant I was right. He couldn’t use his full power within another’s body, or he’d had significantly more options available to him. If I had to guess, I’d say he was using whatever connection he had to the Grimm to alter them, exerting his power over Gilgamesh and the matter that composed him. He was transforming it and altering how it interacted with natural laws, but he had his limits, or else he’d be shaping the entire world around us; at best, I was only fighting a dim shadow of Malkuth. Still a terrifying foe, perhaps, but not an unbeatable one, even as I was right now.

I could hurt him.

Now it was just a matter of doing so a lot. Lux Aeterna wasn’t up to that task, I could tell that much right away; whatever damage it was doing to Gilgamesh was superficial at best, at least for someone that had gotten his entire body annihilated and gotten back up. The Light washing over him reduced him to an almost stick-like figure, but it wouldn’t kill him.