The Broken Halo

The ice spear protruded from Sonya’s body.

Akaza stared at it and Sonya with wide eyes. Beside him, Virella stopped reaching toward Rellis, while Ammor’s lips parted without releasing a sound. For a moment, all three seemed unable to understand what they were seeing.

Sonya was a monster too.

Not like Blackmoon. None of them had ever understood how far his strength reached. But Sonya had always stood above them in talent, in power, and in the ease with which she did things they could only struggle to attempt.

Now her feet hung motionless above the ice.

Blood ran from her mouth. She tried to swallow, choked, and spat more of it over the hand gripping her throat. Her fingers slipped against Elara’s wrist before weakly closing again.

Virella remembered the cheerful voice telling Ammor that his walls were pathetic. Ammor remembered a little demoness standing inches from his face, daring him to repeat an insult.

Akaza remembered her telling him to keep up.

None of those memories fitted the figure hanging before them.

”SONYA!”

His shout broke halfway through.

He pressed his left palm against the ground and dragged one knee beneath himself. Pain shot through his pierced forearm. He ignored it, gritted his teeth, and forced his body upward.

His right arm hung close to his ribs. He could barely feel two of its fingers, but he still tried to raise it.

”Let her go.”

The words emerged hoarsely.

Elara glanced toward him. She released the spear with her right hand, leaving it lodged through Sonya’s stomach.

”How futile.”

Akaza saw her fingers move.

He pushed against the ice before the attack formed, trying to reach Sonya before Elara could finish. However, his injured leg buckled beneath the effort.

A curved blade of ice appeared beside Elara’s hand, then she waved.

Akaza’s instincts screamed. The blade was coming straight toward the left side of his chest and he knew that he could not block it with his current state.

He turned to the side instead.

His boots scraped across the road as he twisted his right shoulder into its path. For one desperate instant, he thought he had moved far enough.

However...

CRACK!

The attack struck his upper arm and drove him sideways.

His shoulder armour burst. The curved edge tore downward through the arm he had tried to raise, leaving it hanging at an angle that made Virella flinch.

Akaza crashed against the remains of Ammor’s wall.

He fell to his knees, then onto his side. A mouthful of blood splashed across the ice before he managed to draw another breath.

He groaned and tried to move, but he realized that his right hand did not move.

He stared at it and tried again, but the result remained the same.

Nothing.

Elara’s eyes narrowed slightly.

”That should have passed through your heart,” she said, sounding faintly inconvenienced and annoyed. ”Three times now. You really are fortunate.”

Akaza dug his left fingers into the ground.

Fortunate?

Was he really fortunate or just a weak demon desperately trying to survive?

He could still hear Sonya choking, and his useless arm lay beside him while the woman holding her spoke about his luck.

He tried to pull himself forward, but his body moved only a few inches.

”Akaza, stop,” Virella whispered.

However, he did not look at her.

Elara’s attention had already returned to Sonya.

A low groan escaped Sonya. Blood clung to her lower lip, and her earth-covered hands had begun shedding small fragments. Each piece struck the ice with a sound too light to carry beyond them.

Where was the laughter?

The insults?

Elara studied the trembling mouth that had mocked her brother and dismissed the humans standing against them.

”Did they make sounds like that?”

Sonya’s blind eyes shifted toward her voice.

”The humans you killed,” Elara continued coldly. ”Were they still amusing when they begged? Or did you stop listening once you grew bored?”

Sonya tried to answer, but blood came out instead.

Elara’s expression did not soften despite the pain and state of her body.

”Then this is a fitting end.”

She closed her right hand around the spear again.

Akaza lifted his head.

”No.”

Elara turned the shaft downward, lowering Sonya with the movement. The demoness’s feet dragged across the ice before her back struck it.

The point protruding beyond her body scraped against the frozen road.

Elara pushed.

CRUNCH!

Ice split beneath Sonya. The spear entered the stone below and fixed her to the ground.

Her body arched.

A wet, broken gasp forced its way from her mouth, carrying blood across her chin. Her heels struck the ice, then dragged uselessly against it.

Virella recoiled.

”Sonya...”

Ammor’s face twisted. He pressed his palm against the road without thinking, searching for enough demonic energy to move something.

Anything.

However, the ground remained still.

Akaza made a sound through clenched teeth and tried to rise again. His left arm shook so violently that he collapsed before his chest left the ice.

Elara released Sonya’s throat.

The demoness gulped at the air, but the first breath ended in another cough. Her hands moved toward the spear. She could feel it trembling beneath her fingers, cold enough to hurt through the stone still covering them.

She pulled, but pain tightened every muscle in her stomach.

And the spear did not shift.

Elara stood and turned toward the three survivors.

She left Sonya where she was without saying anything else. She had said all that she wanted to say, and she was satisfied with the death she had given Sonya.

Her staff drifted beside her as she began walking toward Akaza, Virella, and Ammor. Above the clearing, the phoenix’s golden eyes remained open, watching through the snowfall.

Virella drew back beside Rellis’s body. Ammor tried to stand and had to catch himself against a broken slab.

Akaza kept dragging himself forward.

Sonya heard all of it.

The scrape of his fingers. Virella’s uneven breathing. Ammor’s armour knocking against stone.

And Elara’s footsteps.

Her blind eyes turned in their direction.

Now that her back touched the road, the vibrations reached her through more than her feet. Each step pressed faintly through the ice and into her shoulder blades.

One.

Then another.

She knew where Elara was going.

Sonya tried to call out, but her throat would not shape the words that wanted to leave her throat. Her lips moved around a breath that never became a word.

A small piece of stone shifted beside her fingers.

She reached for it with her demonic energy.

The piece trembled, rose slightly, then dropped.

Cold spread outward from the spear. It travelled beneath her skin and settled deep inside her, making every attempt to circulate power more difficult than the last.

She had always been able to make the ground move.

Even when it resisted. Even when she was hurt.

Her fingers curled against the road.

’Move.’

But nothing happened.

Elara’s footsteps continued.

Sonya listened harder, trying to hold on to their rhythm. They were still there, but the spaces between them seemed longer now. The blizzard sounded farther away.

Her body no longer shook as much.

That should have been better, but she knew that it wasn’t.

Her eyelids began to lower. She forced them open without knowing why, then lost the effort a moment later.

There was something she wanted.

Not another insult. Not another chance to prove that she was stronger.

The thought came quietly, without the title she always used or the confidence she had worn through every battle.

’Mother. Father.’