The Broken Halo

[A/N: This bonus Chapter is once again thanks to TheCollector515!!! I cannot thank you enough man. You’re awesome.]

The earth shell protecting Sonya stood nearly twenty metres across and rose higher than the ruined walls surrounding the clearing. Its uneven surface kept changing. Boulders struck it, sank halfway inside, and locked together as smaller stones packed the spaces between them.

Elara could no longer see where Sonya had been lying. She could only feel the demonic power gathering behind all that rock.

Her grip tightened around her staff.

She had held the Kragh by the throat. One movement would have ended her life. Instead, she had chosen to leave her dying while she dealt with the others.

Now Sonya was advancing to a higher realm.

’I should have killed her.’

Anger burned beneath the cold spreading through Elara’s body. She was furious with the demoness, with the impossible wall before her, and most of all, with herself. Every heavy pulse from inside the shell reminded her of the mistake she made.

The phoenix’s tail feathers drew closer to its body. Elara felt its unease through their connection, and her own instincts urged her to act before whatever was happening inside finished.

She raised her staff.

A narrow stream of freezing Aether struck the shell. The stones on it whitened, cracked, and exploded, opening a deep hollow in its side. Elara concentrated the stream into that opening, stripping away the next layer before the fragments fell.

Then a boulder slammed into the hollow from above.

Another followed from the left. The opening closed around her attack, and Elara twisted her wrist, forcing the frozen stream through the new obstruction.

BOOOOM!

Rock burst outward, but behind it was more rock.

Elara’s jaw tightened. She still had not glimpsed Sonya.

Rather than break another layer, she pressed the cold into the stone and let it spread. Blue veins crawled across the surface, sinking through the seams toward the interior.

The infected section peeled away.

It fell at her feet in a sheet of frozen rubble. Fresh earth rose behind it, and the cold she had driven inward disappeared beneath another arriving mass of stone.

”I don’t believe you can keep doing that,” Elara said through clenched teeth.

The shell answered with another heavy pulse.

She lifted her free hand toward the phoenix. Its upper wings swept forward, and long crystalline feathers tore free, gathering into a rotating fan above the shell.

Elara brought her hand down.

The first impact shook the clearing. The next stripped an entire section from the shell’s roof.

For an instant, a dark gap appeared and Elara thrust her staff toward it.

Before she could release her attack, a slab torn from the hillside struck the gap and sealed it. Hundreds of smaller stones followed, rolling across one another until the roof was thicker than before.

The phoenix spread all four wings.

White fire poured from the lower pair. Wherever the pale light touched, frost spread deep into the earth and shattered it. Elara kept the attack concentrated on one point, trying to destroy the replacement stone before it settled.

The shell shed its frozen layers.

Boulders burst beneath the phoenix’s power, but those arriving behind them were already moving into position. Debris spun around the structure, and another pulse drew it inward.

Elara lowered her staff slightly.

Her breathing had changed.

Across the clearing, Ammor watched with only his head free of the ice imprisoning him. Akaza remained frozen against his back, his ruined arm hanging uselessly at his side.

”That is Sonya?” Virella whispered.

Ammor did not answer immediately. Something within his own earth affinity had drawn back from the presence filling the ridge. This was not the difference he had felt between his Low S-grade affinity and hers during the tests.

He could barely recognise the strength she was currently exuding.

”What exactly are you?” he murmured.

Akaza’s eyes shifted toward him.

Ammor swallowed. ”Why does my affinity feel as though it is bowing to hers?”

The ice around his chest prevented a full breath. He had wanted her power once, resented the effortless difference between them. Now he could not even bring himself to compare them.

Another explosion swallowed the shell.

When the fragments cleared, it was still there.

Elara ended the attack.

She had destroyed enough stone to bury the clearing twice over. None of it had brought her close enough to touch Sonya who was inside. Every broken layer cost Aether, while the surrounding hills continued supplying replacements.

Whatever limits the defence possessed, she was not reaching them quickly enough.

Continuing like this would leave her depleted when Sonya emerged.

Elara forced her fingers to loosen and she came to a decision.

She would recover, watch the shell, and prepare for the change in the Kragh’s power instead of exhausting herself against a defence she could not currently break.

But first, there were three other mistakes to correct.

Her gaze moved toward the frozen survivors.

Virella went still.

”No more waiting,” Elara said coldly.

She would not leave another talented demon alive at the edge of death. One unexpected advancement was enough.

Three curved ice blades formed beside her staff, each aimed at an exposed head. Elara swept them forward without another word.

Suddenly, stones erupted between her and the prisoners.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The blades struck a wall that had not existed an instant earlier. Two buried themselves in it. The third sheared through its upper edge, only to meet a second slab already sliding behind the first.

Elara stared at it with wide eyes.

The prisoners had not moved. Ammor remained sealed inside her ice, barely possessing enough energy to keep himself conscious.

She looked sharply toward Sonya’s shell.

”You can still protect them?”

The answer arrived before she finished speaking.

Rocks swept past her and gathered around the three survivors. The ground rose beneath them, lifting the frozen patch of road with it. The structure grew around the ice instead of crushing through it.

Elara raised her staff again.

A white crescent blade descended toward the unfinished roof of the forming shell.

Two boulders collided beneath it. Both shattered, but the impact bought enough time for thick slabs to fold overhead.

Akaza caught one final glimpse of Elara through the narrowing opening, then his eyes moved to Sonya’s shell.

”Sonya...” He said weakly.

The gap closed.

A second shell stood in the clearing, smaller than the first but thickening just as quickly. Inside, the three demons remained frozen and injured. The stone had not healed them or released them from Elara’s ice.

It had denied her the killing blow.

Elara’s teeth ground together.

She reached for the freezing Aether surrounding their bodies. The response came faintly through the packed earth and was smothered beneath the demonic pressure filling its layers. Even maintaining a clear connection had become difficult.

Her eyes returned to the larger shell.

The Kragh had nearly died beneath her hand. Now, while advancing, she was protecting herself and the demons Elara had left alive.

All because Elara had wanted to hear them suffer.

For several breaths, she stood motionless.

Then she stepped back, raised a low seat of ice, and sat with her staff across her knees.

Her anger had not lessened. She simply refused to spend more strength feeding it.

The white feathers along her temples and armour trembled as she steadied her breathing. Holding this transformed state consumed Aether continuously. So did maintaining the phoenix’s manifestation, even when it was not attacking.

Frostveil Watchtower had helped her more than the demons understood.

The tower’s formations had already filled the ridge with cold and ice-aspected Aether. She had not needed to create winter across untouched ground. Without that advantage, she could not have maintained both her current form and the manifestation of such a powerful spirit for this long.

Elara drew the blizzard closer and began recovering the Aether she had spent. The phoenix hovered above her, its four wings partially folded, and its golden eyes fixed upon the shells.

She kept her own eyes open.

This time, she would be ready when Sonya appeared.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, fire collided with dark emerald wind.

Simon was still fighting Darius, and the human had proved more difficult and more dangerous than he had initially expected.

He was currently facing an opponent who could take his life.