The Broken Halo

The crimson light above Velmora drew inward.

Simon’s words were a provocation, but what he had done to the lightning was something worse.

After a strike, the remaining power should have dispersed into the realm. In time, it would have returned to the same vast circulation from which the tribulation drew.

However, the portions he had consumed would never return that way.

They were inside his bones. His muscles. The body the lightning had been sent to destroy.

He was stealing from it.

The presence within the clouds followed the missing power and recognised the hunger responsible.

The Devourers.

A forbidden power. One that should never have returned to the world.

Lightning gathered fiercely above Simon. Then it stopped.

Through the traces its strikes had left within him, the tribulation searched his blood. The Uruqath and the Nine-Tailed Byakko joined in a form neither should have possessed.

But these were not the bloodline it sought.

It searched again.

The accursed power was there, but its source was not.

The next branching bolt divided, rejoined, then pulled back into the clouds. For several seconds, the thunder ceased while the crimson light remained unnaturally still.

Below, Simon frowned.

’What now?’

He looked at the hand he had raised toward it.

’Do I have to attack the clouds? Or did I break the damned thing?’

The tribulation considered what its search had found.

An unanswered origin did not make the forbidden power acceptable. Whether it came through the cursed blood or something the examination could not uncover, the result remained the same.

A newly born Daemon was using the Devourers’ power.

He had to die.

Simon had just begun considering how to reach the clouds when the light moved.

The fifth strike did not branch.

It twisted.

Three immense streams of crimson lightning wound around a white centre, tightening into a single rotating column. Jagged ridges travelled down its length. Its lower end narrowed to a point that turned directly above Simon’s head.

The sky had made a drill.

His grin disappeared for an instant.

Then it descended.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Simon’s left knee struck the ground.

The impact drove it through stone.

His right foot slid backward, carving a trench before he forced it still. Above him, the column kept turning, grinding its lightning into his body instead of spending everything in one collision.

The crater burst outward.

A ring of fused stone rose beyond where Velmora’s walls had stood. The shockwave caught it in midair and hurled it across the surrounding land. Roads split far beyond the ruins, and a distant hillside shed its entire face.

BAAAAANNNGGGGG!!!!

No screams followed the destruction.

Velmora had no citizens left to kill.

Blood poured from Simon’s mouth.

The skin across his shoulders burned away. One wing folded at a broken spar, while crimson branches drove through his side and emerged between his ribs.

He made no sound of pain.

Instead, he raised his face inside the revolving light.

His lips pulled back from bloody fangs.

”That’s better.”

A laugh escaped him.

”Now give it here.”

Devour spread through the lightning entering his body.

The first surge almost overwhelmed his circulation. The cube at his solar plexus brightened, dividing the usable power between its nine currents while Unholy Regeneration began repairing his shattered knee.

This time, he did not feed everything into strengthening his flesh.

The fourth bolt had already taken his body to its limit.

The fifth belonged to his lightning.

Simon reached inward without abandoning his awareness of the descending column.

The Nine-Tailed Byakko stood upon the mountain, its wings spread above the silver terraces. Blue-white sparks travelled between its tails.

He drew one of those currents toward the crimson power passing through Devour.

Not everything.

One thin strand.

He stripped away the force directing it to destroy him, but preserved the nature he had come to take.

Then he fed it into the tiger’s lightning.

The blue-white current snapped.

The Byakko jerked backward.

Simon’s fingers convulsed in the physical world. A line opened across his palm, spilling blood that burned before reaching the ground.

’Again.’

He reduced the amount and kept the connection steady.

This time, the two currents held together long enough to pass beneath the tiger’s fur.

A red vein appeared along its shoulder.

GRAAAAAAARRRRHHHH!

The Byakko’s roar shook the mountain. Its forelegs bent, and all nine tails lashed at once.

”Don’t give up.”

Simon felt its pain through his own shoulder.

”You wanted more strength. Take it.”

The beast dug its claws into the stone.

Crimson light spread beneath its white coat. It followed the path of the lightning already inside it, reaching the wing roots and descending through its forelegs.

In Velmora, red sparks emerged along Simon’s black forearms.

They were no longer all fragments of the bolt striking him.

Some answered when he moved his fingers.

His grin widened.

’There.’

He fed the bloodline more.

The lightning had once required effort to gather. Now it answered so readily that it rose before he finished reaching for it. His affinity was improving alongside the change in its nature.

He wanted to know how far it could rise.

He wanted the entire strike.

The column continued tearing into him, but he drew faster, using part of what he stole to restore the body receiving it.

His broken wing straightened.

A moment later, lightning ripped through its membrane again.

He did not withdraw it.

Pain could make him bend, but it would not decide what he was permitted to keep.

Within the manifestation, crimson sparks replaced the blue-white light along the Byakko’s feathers. The silver edges of its stripes glowed red. Lightning crawled around the black rings on its tails, joining them to the storm forming beneath its coat.

The tiger lifted its head.

Its sky-blue eyes had begun changing.

Thin crimson streaks spread through the irises, moving inward toward the pupils.

The same colour appeared in Simon’s physical eyes.

His third eye remained closed, but the two beneath it shone through the descending lightning with a red light of their own.

More.

The thought arrived before he could measure what he had already taken.

A pulse of rage followed it.

Why was he still on one knee?

Why was the sky still above him, pouring punishment onto a body he had earned?

For a moment, he wanted to tear the clouds apart even if nothing useful remained afterward.

Simon caught the thought, then his smile vanished and his expression became solemn.

That anger had come too easily.

ROOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!

The Byakko roared again, this time toward its own sky. Crimson lightning burst from its mane and struck the wind circling the mountain.

The current broke.

Simon felt it through his wings.

A stream of air that had moved naturally through their vents faltered, then vanished beneath an expanding rush of lightning.

He narrowed his eyes.

Another discharge struck the space folded around the tiger’s tails. The distant views shifted violently. A pale arch fractured where the lightning crossed it.

His cube jerked beneath his sternum.

One of the nine currents lost its smooth return and struck the inner face instead.

Blood escaped between Simon’s teeth.

’No.’

He examined what the crimson power was doing.

He had removed its command to kill him. He had deliberately kept its relentless destructive quality.

Now that quality was turning against everything it encountered.

Including the Wind and Space affinities woven through his own bloodline.

The lightning was not merely becoming stronger. It was driving the other affinities aside, burning through their circulation to claim more room.

The Byakko’s rage climbed with it.

It struck the mountain with one paw. Red lightning tore through the stone while its nine tails whipped behind it.

Simon pressed his Will against the impulse to destroy without distinction.

”Enough. You do not get to burn everything inside me because I let you in.”

The thunder swallowed his voice.

He kept the connection open, but divided the incoming power more carefully. His cube caught the disrupted current and forced it back along its proper route.

Wind moved again through one wing.

It hurt.

Space steadied around his fingers, only to tremble beneath the next crimson pulse.

Holding all three together was becoming harder with every portion he consumed.

He could feel the easier answer.

Let the lightning dominate. Stop resisting the change. Keep the power at the cost of what it replaced.

His face darkened.

”I refuse.”

The Byakko turned its reddening eyes toward him.

”My Wind affinity stays. My Space affinity stays. Everything I brought this far stays.”

The rotating column thinned overhead, its remaining streams drawing into his body. The fifth strike was ending.

But the struggle within him was not.

Simon forced his knee from the cracked ground.

His wings spread, torn black membranes glowing with crimson veins. The wind around them returned in broken, violent gusts.

Lilith watched him rise.

His hands shook. Blood ran down his chest. His eyes burned with hunger, anger, and something that would not accept a limit merely because refusing it hurt.

He looked into the clouds.

”If the heavens won’t allow it, fuck the heavens. The world, the realms... none of you gets to choose what I surrender.”

The Byakko raised its head with him.

Simon roared at the tribulation.

”SEND MORE!”

Crimson light filled his widening grin.

”IT ISN’T ENOUGH! I WANT IT ALL!!!!!”