Page 57 of Bright Blinding Ruin

“It appears you’ve learned new tricks,” Invictis growls out, his tall frame looming over mine as he puts all of his weight against the double blades he wields. When it comes to sheer strength, he has me beat. Of course he does. The dude is eight feet tall and made of metal. “A shame those tricks won’t save you from me.”

He uses all of his strength to push me back through the magical blades, and as I stumble and catch myself, he slashes them both through the air. I dodge them by ducking, and in the same motion, I swing my own swords against his legs.

They… don’t do much. They pretty much just bounce off him.

He laughs, and hearing his deep laughter infuriates me. I let the swords dissipate and mimic what he did before: I summon a big ball of light over my head and bring it down upon him. Only my ball is made of lightning and vines and fire, three elements combined. It happens so fast he’s not expecting it, and the attack staggers him and lets me put five feet between us.

“Don’t you get it?” I shout. “This isn’t about you destroying me. It’s the opposite. Your time has come to an end. Be a man and face it.”

His tall form starts to glow, blinding in its own right. The world of my college changes, and suddenly we’re on top of Frank’s bar, surrounded by a starry night sky and a busy street below. “I am no man,” he hisses out the words. “I am eternity. I am everything your kind will never be.”

Invictis stands across from me on the rooftop, his six wings outstretched. He is out of place here, but I will not be fooled bythe nostalgic aura of my surroundings. I’ve faced the fact that I will never go back to my old life. Rubbing it in my face won’t make me weak. Not anymore.

“See, I just don’t believe it,” I taunt him. “You say all that, and you sound so… so full of shit. So proud of yourself. Buddy, that’s a human trait if I ever saw one. I think you’re more like us than you want to be, and maybe that pisses you off.”

“No.” The word is uttered with complete distaste and abhorrence as a dozen spears of light form around him, all facing me. Without another word, the spears launch themselves at me simultaneously, and I throw up my forearm like it’s a shield. A wave of fire bursts out of me, pushing the magical spears back and knocking them off-course.

He doesn’t let up when that attack fails. He tries the same thing again and again, unbothered that he’s not actually doing any damage to me. Though he has no face in this form, I can tell I enraged him by what I said.

How dare I say he has human traits? How dare I accuse him of being more like us pitiful mortals than he wants to be? In his mind, this isn’t just about victory. The fight isn’t just to see who’ll be left standing after. Now it’s about teaching me a lesson, proving to me that he is dissimilar to humankind in every way.

My shield of fire is a perfect defense against his thrown spears, and while he’s busy launching a new wave at me, I use my left hand to summon a strong, thick vine beneath his feet. It grows out of the rooftop, like it was always there, splitting so it can curl around both of Invictis’s feet.

Being made of metal, he must not feel it, because those vines reach his calves within a few seconds, and shortly after that, the vines jerk to the right, knocking him off-balance. I curl my left hand into a fist, and the action causes the vines around his legs to multiply and thicken. They grow around him, thornsprotruding from their bodies, but they’re not strong enough to scratch his golden shell.

He breaks through the vines with a grunt, slow to get back to his feet as he extends his wings to their full glory once again. “Haven’t you learned yet, Rey? Your attacks simply aren’t strong enough.” His unnaturally vicious voice laughs.

As he laughs, the world around us changes back to Laconia. We stand on the hillside, the sunrise in full display on the horizon. Invictis stands ten feet before me, and he tilts his golden head like I’m some kind of science experiment he just can’t quite understand.

“You humans are always so… confident. Confident that something you do will stop me. Confident that you are so unique fate will bend to you instead of me. Laconia’s empresses believed they were special, but where are they now?” He lifts his arms in an offering to the sky as the light emanating from him grows.

“You killed them,” I shout at him.

“I did not. Morimento was killed by her own son and that ridiculous final spell that bound me to the throne. Gladus… you’re the one that killed her.” Invictis starts to circle me like a vulture, walking with a gait that tells me he thinks he’s hot shit. It’s the walk of a badass, but I’d never say that aloud to him. His ego is already unbearable. “And as for poor Krotas… well, the blame for that can be placed on your shoulders as well. If it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t have interfered, too lost to her own rage all these years.”

He’s trying to get in my head, his specialty. I glare at him, making sure to face him as he circles me, so he’s never behind me. “And none of that would’ve happened if it wasn’t for you. You caused all of this!”

Invictis stops. “And what about you, Rey? We can go on and on about what I’ve done, but what about you? You could not handle your old life. What makes you think you can cometo Laconia and be the savior these desperate people need?” His voice takes on a mocking tone, each word like a thrown dagger. “You are nothing. You are no one, even with the power of the three empresses. You’re just a pathetic girl in the end, nothing more. Alone, unwanted, and unloved.”

I know he’s saying that to hurt me. I know he’s dredging up my insecurities on purpose, and I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want to let him see how his words hurt.

But they do. When you’ve spent the last ten years in a constant state of fending for yourself and reminding yourself that you’ve got to watch your back because no one else in this world will watch it for you, those insecurities run deep. They’re in my blood.

I hold my head high as I deadpan, “At least I’m still pretty, which is more than I can say for you.” As I speak the final word, I grab the air in front of me and slam my hand down toward the ground. A thick bolt of grayish-blue lightning erupts out of nowhere, as wide as a car and powerful enough to send Invictis flying back. A big, black spot on the ground is all that remains where he stood.

His wings catch him, the bottom two digging into the dirt below. “So amusing. I will miss our time together, Rey.” He pauses, as if in thought. “No, wait. I won’t.”

I’m seconds from suggesting that he leave the one-liners to me—he’s not very good at them—but before I can, he multiplies before my eyes. He doesn’t split off from himself; it’s more like I blink and there’s two, then four, then sixteen. I don’t know how many surround me after ten seconds, but it’s a hell of a lot.

They all look the same. The same golden figure, the same giant span of six wings. I make the mistake of surveying the mini-army of Invictis, and in doing so I take my eyes off the real one. I realize the screw-up too late. When I try to find Invictis again, they all take a collective step toward me.

Fuck. Which one is it? They literally look the exact same, perfect mirror images of each other. I’m surrounded by golden assholes. Not a good place to be.

“Prepare yourself for the end.” The words come from each Invictis, and hearing a multitude of that voice all at once is enough to give me a hardcore case of the goosebumps. “Goodbye, Rey.”

I’m on edge. If they can all talk, that means they can all do other things. I can handle getting attacked by one Invictis, but twenty-plus? Uh, don’t know if my skills are there yet.

A large ball of light gathers in front of each golden figure surrounding me. At first, the magic is nothing bigger than a basketball, but then the blindingly white magic keeps growing, bigger and bigger until they’re as wide as I am tall.

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