The Broken Halo

”A blind Kragh. Earth and metal. A wounded Martial Demon who manipulates gravity.”

Elara watched Sonya and Akaza move away from the Runemasters, her staff resting loosely in one hand.

”You killed Grey Pike, broke Ironcrest, and apparently believe being sent to fight me is the easier assignment.”

Sonya tilted her head, listening to the woman’s footsteps.

”This Honourable asked for your brother. Complain to little kitty. Not me.”

Beside her, Akaza rolled one shoulder, winced, and shifted his stance. Neither missed the slight tightening of Elara’s fingers.

”Then let me make the arrangements more comfortable.”

Elara touched her staff to the ground, and winter raced past them. Ice swallowed the clearing, climbed the shattered walls, and joined the enormous spears left by her earlier barrage. Beneath Sonya’s feet, frozen layers began sliding against one another, filling the ground with overlapping tremors.

”Your earth will not answer easily beneath this,” Elara continued coolly. ”And those seismic senses you depend upon should be considerably less useful.”

She stopped several metres away. Around her, frost climbed into the air in delicate branches.

”Akaza, right,” Sonya said, ignoring her.

A pillar burst through the ice beneath her feet, lifting the short demoness high enough to launch herself at Elara’s head. Akaza reduced his weight and shot around the opposite flank, his heel dragging a crescent through the frozen surface.

They arrived together. Sonya’s earth-covered fist descended toward Elara’s face while Akaza dropped low, restoring his weight and driving a gravity-heavy kick toward her legs. Elara neither jumped nor retreated. She simply lifted her staff, and the clearing stood up.

A slab of ice peeled from the road between the attackers, carrying frozen rubble and broken weapons with it. Sonya’s fist struck its rising face.

Akaza’s kick shattered its base, but the immense sheet was already curling above him like a wave about to break.

”DOWN!” he roared, folding gravity into his fist.

His punch blasted a hole through the falling ice, and he lunged through it just as Sonya kicked away from the opposite side. The wave crashed between them, burying the space where they should have regrouped beneath tonnes of frozen debris.

Elara stood beyond the wreckage without a chip of ice on her coat. She turned her wrist, and the fragments Sonya had punched loose stopped falling. They rotated toward the demoness all at once.

”Shit.” Sonya dragged thick armour of earth over herself as the fragments struck like bullets striking metal.

Bang

Bang

Bang

Her shoulder plate burst. A shard opened her cheek, another pierced her thigh, and the barrage drove her backward so violently that her heels ploughed two trenches through the ice.

Akaza reached Elara through the spray.

He slapped an incoming spike aside, stepped inside its path, and drove his elbow toward her throat.

A transparent shield formed against his forearm rather than in front of it. Its curved surface carried his strike upward, exposing his injured side.

The end of Elara’s staff tapped the shield.

BANG!

Ice exploded against his ribs with the force of a battering ram, launching him across the clearing.

BAM!

He struck a broken wall, bounced, and landed coughing blood.

”Is that all? I’m immensely disappointed,” Elara said, her voice reaching both of them through the settling debris.

”Or did you expect me to be so weak to the point that defeating me would be easy as breathing?”

Her staff returned to her side while frost quietly spread beneath the rubble.

Sonya spat blood and shifted the earth to support her wounded leg.

”You really hated hearing that, didn’t you?” She grinned.

Across the clearing, Akaza pushed himself upright with a solemn expression.

Elara’s expression remained composed.

”Come closer and I’ll show you that you are not even worth my notice.”

Sonya answered by ripping metal supports from a collapsed barricade.

They bent into hooks and lashed around an anchored rock beneath the ice. She hauled herself sideways while Akaza used a brief burst of gravity to crush the frozen ridge separating them.

He could expand his gravitational field and press down on the entire clearing, but Sonya would be caught inside it.

Earth already resisted every alteration of gravity he did, and maintaining that pressure would drain him before it did enough damage to Elara. For now, he kept the changes close to his limbs.

Sonya also kept her earth moving in narrow sections, refusing the wider upheaval that would catch Akaza along with their opponent.

Her feet struck the ground twice, and he moved before the second impact faded, trusting the signal instead of the deceptive tremors beneath them.

The ground erupted under Sonya, throwing her upward. Akaza caught her descending foot on his raised palm and launched her higher, then swept low toward Elara.

Sonya spun above the woman, rocks and stones forming around her heel while two strips of metal struck from behind. Above, below, and behind... their attacks left no clear escape route.

Elara looked up.

She caught the metal inside two sleeves of ice, which shot upward and closed around Sonya’s raised ankle.

Her staff dipped and Sonya’s eyes widened.

”Damn it.” She cursed.

Her rotation stopped halfway through, and the demoness plunged directly into Akaza’s approaching path.

He quickly released the gravity gathered in his fist and caught her.

A white spear shot toward Akaza’s unguarded back and he could not react to it cause of the timing.

Virella’s root jerked both demons sideways while Rellis’s water crashed into the spear from below, lifting its point just enough to miss Sonya.

The water froze instantly, and Rellis severed his control with a gasp.

”Careful,” Elara said softly with a mocking smile. ”You almost killed each other.”

Akaza shoved Sonya upright as the roots beneath them froze solid.

Her hands were already moving, breaking the metal from her ankle. Their attacks had not ended with mistakes. Elara was able to read their flow of attacks, predict their next steps, and always interfered at the right moment.

”Let’s go again,” Akaza rasped.

Sonya inhaled deeply, then she slammed both hands against the ground and dragged a dense wedge of stone through the ice.

Akaza braced beside her, gathering gravity into his fist as they drove forward behind it.

Elara let them come.

The wedge smashed through one frozen obstruction, then another. For several strides, they gained ground, their shoulders aligned and their movements finally went undisturbed.

Then every fragment they had broken rose behind them. Sonya heard the grinding ice and swore.

Akaza glanced back, but Elara was already lowering her staff.

The fragments joined into a curved wall, sweeping them forward toward another rising sheet.

They were inside a closing jaw!

Sonya thrust both palms outward. Akaza struck beside her, and earth and gravity burst through the front wall together.

They nearly escaped.

Then Elara closed her fingers, and the broken wall slammed back into them.

BOOOOOOM!

”Shit!”

”This bitch!”

The impact swallowed their shouts.

Sonya’s stone armour burst apart, Akaza’s chest struck the ground, and both were dragged through a grinding storm of ice before being flung out toward their waiting supporters.

Virella’s roots caught them, but several snapped beneath the force.

Sonya tried to stand but she fell onto one knee.

Frost covered her arms, blood froze along her cheek, and she could not draw a full breath.

Beside her, Akaza spat red slush and forced himself upright, one hand pressed against ribs that shifted painfully whenever he moved.

They stood together only because Sonya raised a stone behind their legs to support them.

Elara watched them gasp for her while her breathing was steady, and her gaze was as cool as ice. Around the demons, the ice they had shattered began rising again.

”You wanted my brother,” Elara said with utter indifference.

”Try surviving me first.”

Behind Sonya and Akaza, the frozen jaws began to close.