The impact leaves a Lucien-shaped divot in the dirt, and for a second he just dangles there, staring up at a brightening sky, the taste of copper and freshly-turned soil mingling on his tongue.
Then Serenith's hand, closed around the front of his shirt, tosses him aside like a sack of laundry that personally offended her.
He hits the ground, rolls once, and is already scrambling back upright before the dust settles, dropping straight to his knees in the churned earth, both hands raised in the universal, desperate posture of a man begging for his life.
