The Broken Halo

Crimson lightning spread across the clouds in branches thick enough to hide the darkness between them.

The flashes did not fade. New bolts followed the old bolts, feeding their red light until every ruin beneath them cast several overlapping shadows.

Then thunder struck.

RUMBLE!

Loose stones jumped. A surviving wall split down its centre, spilling dust over the bodies at its base.

Simon looked upward.

He could feel something within the lightning beyond its heat and force. Its presence pressed against his new bloodline, searching for the shape his transformation had finally settled into.

His eyes narrowed.

”That could incinerate a Demon King.”

A thicker bolt writhed beneath the clouds.

”Even a Prime Demon King.”

Lilith stood beside him with one hand above the array. She did not dispute his judgement.

Simon turned toward her.

”This is a tribulation. Why did you never tell me that I’ll have to face a tribulation?”

”I could not.”

”Because I was too weak to hear it?”

”If I had explained before you reached this point, the laws of the realms would have struck us both down.”

His expression remained calm, but his eyes narrowed further.

”For a warning.”

”For knowing what you were not yet permitted to know.”

Simon looked back at the sky.

”A weak man can spend his entire life obeying a law he isn’t allowed to understand. Then, when it kills him, those above him call him foolish for breaking it.”

His lips curved without amusement.

”They call weakness a misfortune. Yet their laws treat it like a crime.”

Lilith said nothing.

”Is that what worried you?” he asked. ”The tribulation? Is this why you said evolving my bloodline would be more dangerous than facing Sunless or the God of War?”

”That depends on you.”

Simon stared at her.

”How does that answer my question?”

”There are details I still cannot give you.”

”I’m becoming very tired of having to guess which part of your answer is supposed to keep me alive.”

Lilith’s gaze remained on the clouds.

He waited a moment, then followed it.

The lightning was gathering rather than falling. Several immense branches reached toward the city, but their ends remained suspended above the outermost inscriptions.

”Why hasn’t it descended?”

”Because I have not ended the ritual.”

Simon glanced down.

Blood continued moving beneath the corpses. The broken skull remained held together by thin strands of dark-golden light.

”The moment it ends, the tribulation will descend with the intent to kill you,” Lilith continued.

”And what am I required to do? Survive it? Destroy it?”

”You can endure its attacks with your bare body until it stops. Or you can attack it.”

Her eyes returned to him.

”But if you attack, it will grow stronger. Whatever you send against it, be prepared for its answer.”

”So that also depends on me.”

”Yes.”

”I see.”

Simon let the words settle. He did not raise his hands toward the sky.

Instead, he looked at the thing restrained beyond his circle.

Tarvak barely resembled a creature that had once walked upright.

His torso had lengthened and folded around itself. Twisted horns protruded from what remained of his arms. Wing membranes stretched between knots of bone, their edges crowded with fingers that kept closing upon nothing.

Faces moved beneath his skin.

Some had eyes inside their mouths. Others pressed outward until the flesh became thin enough to reveal their teeth.

The only recognisable part of his original face was one eye, trapped beneath a swollen brow.

It followed Simon.

”What happens to him?”

”Kill him, and the ritual ends. He is its last living connection outside you.”

Simon watched something crawl beneath Tarvak’s ribs.

”I will release the restraints,” Lilith said. ”Do not judge him by what entered them or his previous heart rank. The force he can release now approaches a Half-Step Demon King. Some of those fluctuations reach the level of a Minor Demon King.”

Her gaze passed over Simon’s wings and settled on the exposed face of the cube on his solar plexus.

”Not that I expect him to trouble you much.”

Simon lowered his eyes toward the blood beneath him.

His reflection was clear enough to follow.

Four horns framed his humanlike face. Two tall ivory horns rose above his forehead, with their black tips hooking forward. The other two curved down beside his ears and turned outward near his jaw.

Between them, his third eye remained closed.

His other eyes were still sky-blue.

White hair reached the middle of his back. Ash-grey skin carried ivory stripes around his ribs, while his forearms and lower legs were almost black.

Six wings spread behind him in three pairs. Ivory leading edges framed the black membranes with silver undersides. Rows of narrow openings moved across them with his breathing.

Below his breastbone, a dark glass diamond sat flush against his skin.

Only one face of the cube showed. Behind it, nine white currents turned around a black centre.

Everything about his bloodlines answered when he tested it.

Nothing fought him for control.

Simon released a soft breath and stood.

”Release him.”

”Very well.”

Lilith opened her hand.

The blood bands loosened.

For an instant, Tarvak remained suspended in the shape they had forced him to hold.

Then every mouth opened.

SKRRAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!!!

The sound carried thousands of voices inside it. Screams broke into sobs, then curses, then the same name shouted so often that it became almost a single word.

”BLACKMOON!”

The ruins shook. Far beyond the array, something alive cried out and fell silent.

Tarvak moved.

The malformed wings snapped together. His body crossed the distance before the dust beneath him could settle, bringing a mass of horns, claws, and exposed bone directly toward Simon’s face.

”DIE!”

”YOU KILLED US!”

”BLACKMOON!”

The longest claw stopped two inches from Simon’s eye.

Everything behind it struck the same invisible boundary.

BANG!

Tarvak’s flesh folded forward around the halted limbs. Teeth snapped inches from Simon’s throat.

Simon had not stepped back.

The cube beneath his sternum brightened. A faint distortion spread across the space between them, showing the creature’s claws in several slightly separated positions.

Tarvak pushed.

However, the last inches to Simon’s throat remained uncrossed.

A lower wing shifted behind Simon. Its vents adjusted, feeding another controlled current of demonic energy into the cube.

The distortion steadied.

Simon examined the mass hammering against it.

A horn snapped under the creature’s own force. The mouth beneath it kept screaming.

”You have finished your part and fulfilled the destiny I imposed on you.”

He raised his right hand.

A black flame slipped between the overlapping layers of the Chaos Wraps.

Simon pinched its tip between his thumb and forefinger and drew it outward.

The fire lengthened into a narrow ribbon.

Its pull upon his soul was familiar. He fed it carefully, then opened his middle and ring fingers.

The ribbon divided.

Four long strips of black fire slid away from his hand. They passed above and below Tarvak, curving around the space holding him until their ends met behind his body.

For a moment, the creature hung between four burning black loops.

Simon turned his palm downward.

”Burn.”

The loops widened.

They became broad sheets of black flame and folded inward, one over the next, wrapping Tarvak in fire.

His scream changed.

The curses scattered into voices begging separately.

A claw punched through the burning covering and crumbled before it could reach Simon. The malformed wings thrashed, striking the same folded space that had stopped the first attack.

Nothing broke through.

Black fire entered the mouths beneath the skin. Their eyes burst into sparks. Bone darkened, cracked, and fell through the bottom of the burning shroud.

The figure inside it shrank.

Simon lowered his hand slowly.

The sheets followed, closing around the remaining shape without allowing a single writhing piece to escape.

A final face pressed outward.

Its mouth moved, but no sound escaped it.

The black fire folded shut.

Then grey ash spilled onto the ground.

The connection beneath Simon’s feet closed. Across the ruins, the blood inscriptions went dark.

RUMBLE!!!!

The sound shook the earth beneath the array.

Simon looked up.

The branches that had waited above the ritual joined into one vast crimson bolt.

And fell.