Plot Armor Is Overrated

Chapter 2: A Pawn Just Committed Regicide

She rolled. Barely.

The ground where she had been exploded with radiant energy. Stone vaporized in a beam of brilliance that carved a clean, glowing scar across the arena. She flung herself behind a ruined column, body trembling.

Another blast.

The entire column disappeared.

She flew again, this time midair, caught in the shockwave. She landed on her back, her legs twitching uselessly as the ground tried to stop her with unforgiving teeth. Pain bloomed in her side. Burning pain.

She looked down, her jacket was on fire.

Not flames.

Light.

Lux didn't use fire. His energy, his magic, sank into the body, igniting nerves like dry brush, cooking from the inside.

She screamed, clawing the jacket off and tossing it aside, flesh underneath red and blistered.

And then he was there.

Not running.

Gone.

No sound. Just sudden proximity.

One blink, and Lux was just, there, above her, radiant and terrible.

His boot slammed down on her stomach with enough force to crater the ground beneath her. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs so violently she couldn't even scream. Pain spiderwebbed through her chest, and she wheezed, struggling to breathe around it.

He raised his hand.

It flared with light.

She twisted, dragging herself by her elbows just as the beam fired straight down, vaporizing the ground she'd been lying on. A solid chunk of it shattered upward and impaled her thigh, a jagged spike of burning-hot stone punching clean through.

She screamed now, loud and raw and broken.

Lux landed softly a few paces away, the light around him humming like a living thing. His eyes were glowing, no longer gold, but white, blank, expressionless, like the stars watching the death of worlds.

"This is new," he said softly. "This feeling."

He vanished.

Then she was airborne.

The punch came out of nowhere, one moment she was crawling, the next her jaw snapped sideways and she was flying, tumbling like a ragdoll across broken terrain. She hit something, rock, maybe. It shattered under her. So did her shoulder.

She coughed blood, barely able to think.

Lux didn't stop.

A burst of speed, he was behind her before her body hit the ground again. He caught her by the neck mid-fall, hand glowing so brightly her vision whited out. She clawed at his wrist, kicking wildly, trying to wriggle free, but he only tightened his grip.

"I thought I was bored because nothing could challenge me," he said, voice oddly distant. "But maybe I was bored... because I never let myself feel this."

The light in his palm burned hotter.

It began to eat through her skin.

The pain was blinding, like acid soaked in fire. Her veins felt like they were boiling, her screams caught in her throat as his divine energy started to burn into her, branding her flesh and soul with agony. Her armor melted in that spot, fusing to her collarbone, warping under the holy blaze.