The Broken Halo

”Slowly? Why?”

Ammor’s voice carried disbelief and irritation.

Simon glanced at him.

”Because there is no need to rush,” he replied indifferently.

Ammor looked at the frost spreading across Sonya’s wall, then at the exhausted demons sheltering behind it.

”No need to rush?”

”If we take Frostveil as quickly as we took Ironcrest, Marek will send us to another tower,” Simon said. ”Once that tower falls, he will find somewhere else that needs us.”

His gaze passed over both cores.

”I have no desire to become anybody’s dog. An oath does not change that.”

Sonya immediately nodded.

”This Honourable agrees. We did our work. Apparently, that means we now have to do everyone else’s.”

She directed the last words toward Ammor, whose jaw tightened.

Akaza shifted his injured shoulder and exhaled through his nose.

”We did not even have time to rest.”

”Or recover our demonic energy,” Virella added quietly. Her fingers were still trembling as she maintained the roots reinforcing the wall.

Rellis glanced uphill.

”The reward for taking a tower seems to be another tower. I am beginning to dislike being useful.”

Simon said nothing more for a moment.

Beyond their cover, rifles continued firing. A section of frozen roots shattered, and Virella replaced it before the next volley arrived.

Marek thought he could use Simon however he wished during the first raid.

Simon would show him otherwise.

He would not abandon Ammor’s Runemasters. He would not damage their cases, refuse the assignment, or allow the humans to kill them simply to inconvenience the commander.

They would reach their assigned position.

But Marek had ordered success, not another display of everything Simon could do.

Assault Core Seventeen could advance at a pace comparable to an ordinary unit.

Perhaps a little slower.

There were wounded demons to protect, formations to dismantle, and depleted reserves to recover. None of those things required Simon to charge through every defence and place his body before another weapon like Sunshear.

The oath bound him to the first raid’s objectives.

It did not make his patience or strength inexhaustible.

Ammor heard the agreement among the five demons, and anger rose through the exhaustion weighing down his body.

They could afford to speak like this, but his core could not.

Every moment spent beneath Frostveil would remind the commanders watching them that Assault Core Nine had failed to reach its position without help.

Now the demons sent to save them wanted to proceed slowly.

Even with reinforcements, his unit would look incapable.

’I have an S-grade earth affinity.’

Velmora had valued him. Black Horn had selected him without requiring further tests and provided resources, training, and attention that most recruits could only envy.

He had intended to justify that investment.

Instead, his defences were broken, his reserves were nearly empty, and a demoness he had insulted had just saved his life.

His gaze moved toward his surviving teammates.

For an instant, he wanted to blame them.

If he had Blackmoon, Akaza, or Sonya beside him from the beginning, perhaps he would already be standing inside Frostveil.

Then he noticed Rathen pressing one hand against his bleeding ribs while keeping his axe raised.

Another one of his teammates crouched beside the limping Runemaster, shielding him from stone fragments.

Ammor clenched his teeth.

His teammates had fought.

They were still fighting.

And those three monsters had been together before recruitment. Black Horn had not simply gathered its strongest recruits and handed them to Blackmoon.

Each of the three was frightening on their own.

Together...

Ammor lowered his head.

There was nothing he could say.

Simon could guess what troubled him, but Ammor’s pride was not his concern.

Some of the other demons in Ammor’s unit also looked displeased. Rathen’s grip tightened around his axe, while the one beside the Runemaster stared at Simon with restrained resentment.

None of them objected because they knew that without the five newcomers, they would most likely become corpses in no time.

Simon briefly looked toward the suspected spy who was protecting the limping Runemaster.

The demon was watching him now, although no more openly than the others.

Simon let his gaze continue.

”Keep the four cases together,” he ordered. ”The wounded remain in the centre. Nobody leaves cover to chase a human.”

One Runemaster nodded hurriedly.

”Ammor, stop trying to control the entire ridge. Recover what you can. Sonya will handle the ground directly around us.”

Ammor’s expression darkened, but he nodded.

”Rathen, protect the left side. Virella, extend your roots through the broken trenches. We move from one piece of cover to the next.”

Rellis raised his head.

”And me?”

”Keep their firing positions obscured. Sonya, leave the road behind us intact. Akaza-”

Simon’s expression suddenly changed as the hairs at the back of his neck straightened and his neck emitted a chill.

This chill... was not the lingering chill from Frostveil.

Something far heavier descended through the air above them.

”DOWN!”

Dark emerald wind erupted around both cores.

A curved wall rushed upward, closed over their heads, and swept beneath their feet, enclosing the demons and their cases inside a rotating sphere of wind.

The first ice spear struck before anyone could ask what had happened.

BOOOOOOM!

The wind bowed inward.

An enormous blue-white point hung above Simon’s head for an instant before the rotating currents dragged it sideways.

It struck the road outside the sphere and buried itself almost completely in the mountain.

Then the rest arrived.

Dozens of ice spears plunged from the sky.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Sonya’s earthen wall split beneath a strike that missed the sphere. Frozen roots, stone, and shattered ice disappeared into a white cloud.

The ridge convulsed beneath them.

Ammor lost his footing. Rathen fell on one knee , and the limping Runemaster would have fallen across his case if Rellis had not caught him.

”What the hell?!” Rathen shouted, his voice cracking with alarm.

Simon raised both hands.

The wind accelerated.

He did not attempt to stop every spear head-on. Currents caught their sides, turned their points, and forced them to scrape across the sphere before plunging into the ground beyond it.

Even so, each collision drove a heavy tremor through the defence.

Frost formed along the outer currents.

Simon fed more demonic energy into them before the freezing Aether could slow their rotation.

Crack!

His boots sank into the fractured ground.

”That is not the cannon from earlier,” Akaza said with a solemn voice and expression.

Sonya’s head tilted upward. Her smile had vanished.

Ammor stared at the enormous spear sliding across the wind above him, and he knew that his final wall would not have survived even one.

”Who is attacking us?” he demanded hoarsely.

No one answered.

The final spear struck.

Simon turned his palms, and the projectile veered away from the wounded demons, crashing through a deserted section of the trench.

The barrage stopped.

For several breaths, the only things visible beyond the wind were white mist and fragments of ice.

Simon kept the sphere around them for a few seconds, then he swept one hand outward.

Wind tore through the mist and drove it apart, revealing the shattered ridge, the embedded spears, and the sky above Frostveil’s road.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the sky.

Two figures stood in the air above them.

A man and a woman.