The Broken Halo

For several seconds, nothing moved inside the underground tunnel.

The Furnaceback Centipede lay where it had collapsed, its enormous body pressed against the walls it had carved through the earth. The dark-red light between its plates had disappeared, and smoke drifted weakly from the vents along its sides.

Then a black line appeared beneath one of the plates covering its head.

The line grew longer, and a few seconds later...

Shiiing!

Flesh and armour separated from the inside.

Dark blood spilled through the opening, followed by the tip of a black sword. The blade moved again, widening the cut until it was large enough for a demon to pass through.

A pale-grey hand appeared first.

Then Simon pulled himself out of the corpse and landed in the narrow space beside its head. Blood and burning liquid covered his clothes, while parts of his skin were still blackened from the heat. Fortunately for him, Unholy Regeneration was already repairing the worst of the damage.

He sent the Chaos Blade back into his spatial ring, then turned toward the opening. He was about to stretch his hand toward it but he stopped.

He opened his right hand, and the Sword Daemon’s mask appeared in it.

He wore it, and after the mask settled into his skin, he stretched his hand toward the opening he made.

A current of wind reached inside, and it pulled the rebel from the corpse. The rebel groaned and collapsed onto one knee.

The demon was conscious, but barely.

One side of his face had been badly burned. The skin around his left shoulder had dissolved in several places, exposing part of the bone beneath it. Several ribs were broken, one leg was twisted, and dark burns covered most of his body.

He still breathed, could talk, and that was all Simon required.

The rebel lifted his head and looked around in confusion.

The tunnel was far smaller than the Furnaceback Centipede’s body suggested it should be. Large sections had already collapsed after its death, and the remaining stone rested against the plates along its back and sides.

The corpse was holding part of the tunnel up.

Simon straightened.

The tips of his white hair almost brushed the ceiling. Only a few inches separated his head from the cracked stone above him.

Small pieces of earth fell around his shoulders.

Crack!

Another line spread across the ceiling.

Simon looked at it, then at the giant corpse filling most of the passage.

”This place will collapse in no time.”

The rebel’s remaining colour disappeared and he could not help but look at Simon. However, when he saw the matte-black mask on Simon’s face, he froze.

For a moment, the rebel forgot the falling stones.

Something about the mask made his body tense.

It was not merely its appearance. The dark eyeholes seemed deeper than they should have been, and the crimson markings made it look as though old blood had dried across the metal.

’Why am I so afraid?’

’No.’

’The question is why is he wearing a mask when I’ve already seen his face?’

Simon placed one hand against the Furnaceback Centipede as the rebel’s mind was spiraling with a myriad of thoughts.

The corpse vanished, and the moment it did, the change was immediate.

The massive body had been supporting the tunnel. The moment it disappeared into Simon’s spatial ring, stones shifted from every direction.

BOOM!

A section of the ceiling dropped into the space where the centipede’s head had been.

The rebel tried to stand, but his broken leg failed to carry him.

Simon caught the back of his armour before he fell.

His spatial perception spread upward through layers of stone till he found empty space above them.

The tunnel groaned.

Simon pulled the rebel close and vanished a heartbeat before the ceiling collapsed.

The underground passage disappeared beneath thousands of tonnes of stone.

A moment later, the air above the cracked lands twisted, and Simon and the rebel appeared on the surface surrounded by black rocks. Dead grass grew between the stones, and thin smoke rose from distant cracks in the earth.

The rebel fell immediately, and Simon remained standing.

He did not move from the spot until he had inspected everything around them.

Shadow Sense spread through the ground and rocks.

The wind moved outward in several thin currents, carrying scents and sounds back to him. Sky Eye looked across the distant land, through the smoke, and over the low ridges surrounding them.

There were no demons nearby.

No beasts.

No observation artifact in the sky.

The Glass-Eyed Demonic Eagle was nowhere within sight.

Through the weakening Shadow Eye beneath Wagon Eighteen, Simon could still see parts of the battlefield several kilometres away. The connection remained faint, but nobody appeared to be following the Furnaceback Centipede’s path underground.

For now, they were safe and alone.

Simon looked down at the rebel.

The demon had dragged himself backward until his shoulders struck one of the black rocks. His breathing was rough, and pain twisted the stolen face he was wearing.

It was not his real face.

A thin false-skin artifact covered him from the hairline to the base of his throat. It had copied the dead Velmora guard’s features, scent, and even the shallow scar beside his mouth.

The heat inside the centipede had damaged it.

One edge had peeled slightly beneath his ear, revealing a different colour of skin underneath.

Simon looked at the artifact with a little bit of curiousity.

The rebel stared at the matte-black mask covering Simon’s face.

He knew the demon before him was Blackmoon. He also knew Blackmoon was supposed to be a Minor Archfiend.

But a Minor Archfiend had survived being swallowed by a Half-Step Abyssal Beast.

He had also protected him from the creature’s jaws, survived the heat inside its throat, and attacked its mind hard enough to make it flee from the Biggest Kev.

Then he had cut his way into its skull and killed it from within.

Afterward, he stored the building-sized corpse as though it were ordinary prey and teleported both of them through layers of underground stone.

Every part of it was impossible for a Minor Archfiend to accomplish, and the more the rebel remembered, the more frightened he became.

Perhaps Blackmoon was a disguise.

Perhaps the Minor Archfiend aura was a fake.

Perhaps the thing standing before him was not even the same demon who had joined the convoy.

The black mask made those thoughts worse.

The crimson marks seemed to shift whenever Simon tilted his head, and the darkness behind the eyeholes revealed nothing but a soul chilling indifference.

”Who are you?” the rebel asked hoarsely.

Simon did not answer.

He crouched in front of him and examined the false-skin artifact first. His gaze moved from the peeled edge beneath the demon’s ear to the damaged armour, then finally to the dull-grey spatial ring on his finger.

The ring gave off a very faint spatial disturbance.

It happened once.

Then it happened again after a few seconds.

And Simon could not help but narrow his eyes behind the Sword Daemon’s mask.

”Interesting.”