The Broken Halo

The first seven wagons entered the narrow road without any incident.

Their wheels moved slowly across the fractured stone while soldiers watched the ridges on both sides with cold and focused expressions.

The path was only wide enough for the convoy to maintain its current formation, leaving little space for anyone to manoeuvre.

Black glass covered parts of the ridges and reflected the fading light of the crimson moon.

Smoke escaped from the cracks between the two stones, making the air hot and unpleasant to breathe.

The front section passed through, then the first wagons of the main body followed.

Core Nineteen remained on the platform above Wagon Eighteen as it approached the narrow road.

Sonya still had one palm resting against the wood, while Akaza stared toward the top of the nearest ridge.

Simon watched everything.

The road.

The soldiers.

The ridges.

The empty sky above them.

And the demons moving close to the eighteenth wagon.

Nothing seemed unusual.

But a few seconds later, a thin column of black smoke rose from somewhere near the front of the convoy.

Simon narrowed his eyes and his vertical sky-blue pupils constricted as he activated Sky Eye.

He saw the black smoke like it was right in front of him.

It was small at first, but after some seconds passed, it became thicker and climbed above the ridge.

Simon narrowed his eyes.

’The signal.’

He shifted his weight slightly and the flow of his demonic energy became slightly faster.

Approximately three seconds later, the light of the crimson moon disappeared.

It happened so suddenly that several demons looked upward in confusion.

A Fiend walking beside one of the assault cores frowned.

”Is it night already?”

”That was too fast,” another recruit muttered.

While these recruits and several other demons spoke about the sudden absence of the crimson light, a few kept on looking at the sky with narrowed eyes.

And with every passing second, their eyes slowly widened in sheer disbelief and terror.

There had been no sound.

No whistle.

No creaking bowstrings.

Nothing that warned the convoy of what was above them.

Simon was among those who was staring at the sky with narrowed eyes.

And when he saw what was coming for them from above, his pupils contracted into pinholes.

Thousands of black arrows covered the crimson moon.

They descended from both ridges in a wide arc and they were packed so closely together that their bodies formed a dark ceiling above the narrow road.

The arrows possessed thin shafts, narrow heads, and dark feathers that did not move despite the speed of their descent.

They were completely silent.

A Black Horn officer near the front raised his head, and his expression drastically changed.

”ARROWS!!!”

Another officer released his aura and roared.

”EVERYONE TAKE COVER!!!!”

The quiet convoy erupted into movement.

Defence recruits rushed toward the wagons.

Soldiers with shields raised them, and formation masters slammed their staffs against the ground.

Bam!

Red barriers began appearing above different sections of the convoy.

But the arrows were already falling.

Simon rose and stepped onto the edge of the platform.

Pale-green wind elemental energy rushed out of his body and twisted around him. His white hair and black coat rose as the air surrounding Wagon Eighteen began to spin.

He raised one hand and pushed.

The wind exploded upward.

WHOOOOSH!

A powerful gust struck the descending arrows, and hundreds of arrows were flung away from Wagon Eighteen.

Some spun toward the ridges, while others crashed into the road or struck the ground between nearby wagons.

However, there were too many.

The first wave of arrows passed through the disturbed wind, and several arrows continued toward the central wagons.

Akaza moved.

The tattoos across his arms darkened as a gravitational force gathered around his clenched fist. The air in front of him bent slightly, almost as though an invisible weight had pressed against it.

He pulled his arm backward, then he punched the sky.

BOOM!

A violent gravitational force erupted from his fist.

The arrows above the rear half of the platform stopped for the briefest moment before they were blasted apart from one another. Some snapped in the middle. Others changed direction and flew toward the empty road beside the convoy.

Akaza lowered his fist and looked up.

More arrows were already behind them.

Sonya could not see the darkness covering the sky.

But she heard the warnings.

She felt the soldiers running, the armoured beasts panicking, and the first arrows striking the ground through the vibrations travelling beneath her palm.

She jumped from the platform.

The moment her feet touched the road, she slammed both palms down.

BANG!

The cracked earth rose around her.

Several thick slabs curved inward and formed a rough stone shell around Sonya. Arrows struck its surface a second later, producing a rapid series of sharp impacts.

Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!

She felt every strike through the barrier.

”How many are there?” Sonya shouted from inside.

”Too many!” Pela replied.

Her pale sensory strands had wrapped around her head as she created spinning currents of wind above Core Twenty-Two.

Joro crossed both plated forearms in front of his face. Metal spread from his skin and formed a broad shield over himself and Ossun.

Dessa raised a curving wall of water.

The first arrows entered it and immediately slowed, floating within the water as though trapped inside clear glass.

Across the convoy, the rain of arrows reached the road.

Arrows struck wagon covers, beasts, shields, armour, barriers, and the fractured ground.

Some pierced soldiers before their defences formed.

A beast handler screamed as three arrows entered his back and threw him beneath the feet of screaming and panicking beasts.

One recruit raised a wooden shield.

More than twenty arrows struck it at once, tearing through the wood and entering his chest, shoulder, and throat.

Although these arrows caused dozens of deaths, the ratio of the number of arrows and the deaths was very poor.

The Greater Demons blocked majority of the arrows, and even Simon saw one of the Greater Demons blocking the arrows that was targeting the central wagons.

Aside from the Greater Demons, many formations stood strong, and some demons were able to come together to set up powerful defenses against the arrows.

They did little damage.

Their narrow heads struck metal armour and bounced away. Many buried themselves only a few inches into the road.

Simon noticed all of these.

His wind continued spinning above Wagon Eighteen, pushing away another section of the rain. The arrows were dangerous, but they were not nearly powerful enough to justify the scale of the attack.

Black Banner would not reveal its position on both ridges merely to fire ordinary arrows at a protected military convoy.

’Something is wrong.’

His gaze followed one of the arrows thrown aside by Akaza’s punch.

It struck the ground close to Wagon Seventeen.

The shaft trembled.

Then a faint red light appeared beneath its dark surface.

Simon’s eyes sharpened and he immediately activated SkyEye.

He saw that several tiny formation lines had been carved around the arrow’s shaft. The dark colour had hidden them before, but now they were glowing.

He looked toward another arrow buried in Sonya’s earth barrier.

The same red lines were appearing on it.

Then another.

And another.

Simon’s eyes moved across the battlefield as he looked at one arrow after the other.

The arrows lodged inside the wagons were glowing.

The ones trapped within Dessa’s water were glowing.

The broken arrows scattered by Akaza’s punch were glowing.

Even the arrows Simon had sent flying toward other parts of the road were beginning to release the same red light.

Simon’s instincts flared, and his expression drastically changed.

”GET AWAY FROM THE ARROWS!!!!”

His voice travelled across the central section through the wind.

Several demons turned toward him.

A soldier looked down at an arrow lying beside his boot. The red formations around its shaft brightened until the entire weapon began to shake.

”What-”

The first arrow exploded before he could even finish his words.

BOOOOM!

A ball of fire and metal fragments swallowed the soldier.

Then the second detonated.

The third followed.

In the next instant, every arrow in the sky, on the ground, inside the wagons, and buried within the convoy’s defences exploded at the same time.

The narrow road between the two ridges disappeared inside fire.