The Broken Halo

For an instant, the iron-grey barrier held.

Seven black edges pressed against it from different directions. Crimson bands brightened beneath them, and the God of War’s remaining hand tightened. The air around the sphere bent inward.

Then one of the bands split.

It did not explode. A clean gap appeared across it, and the power flowing through that section stopped reaching the other side.

The god’s eyes narrowed.

Simon’s technique was not seven sword waves thrown toward the same target. He had chosen seven places to cut and prepared the movements needed to cut them. Now all seven strikes were taking effect together.

Throat. Heart. Wrist. Waist. The defence itself. The space behind the shoulder. The ground beneath the feet.

Stopping one did not stop the others.

The God of War forced more Aether into the barrier. Three sections became almost opaque, protecting his throat, heart, and remaining hand. The black edges bearing down on those points shuddered.

Then they broke.

Their power burst outward, dragging thin crimson streaks across the sphere. Simon felt each failure through the Chaos Blade, and blood spilled between his clenched teeth.

The god was still far stronger than him. But four cuts remained.

The strike aimed at the waist met a sloping reinforcement and was forced aside. It missed the body inside, cutting past the god instead.

An abandoned artifact cannon to the side of the rift developed a thin diagonal seam. Its barrel slid away from its mounting before the soldiers nearby understood what had happened.

Farther away, the same line crossed a rocky slope.

A broad section of the hillside’s upper face shifted. It slid across a perfectly smooth surface, carrying trenches, broken fortifications, and loose earth with it.

BANG!

Before it fell, the fifth cut finished opening the god’s barrier.

This was the line Simon had placed across its gathered power. Rather than meeting the thickest defence head-on, it followed the connection between two reinforcing bands. The first band had already parted.

Now the second did too.

A section of the iron-grey sphere separated from the rest. The god tried to feed power into it, but the route supplying it had been cut.

The sixth strike reached that opening.

Black steel was nowhere near the God of War’s body. Yet a cut opened across the back of his shoulder and continued around his ribs.

Splash!

Blood burst through the torn armour, and the god’s expression changed. The wound had not reached his heart. His defence had absorbed much of the strike’s power, and his turning body had spared him something worse.

But he had been cut, and a fine black fire clung to the wound.

The final Death Line rose past the leg he pulled back. It missed his knee, split the stone beneath him, and continued into the space directly behind his body.

Toward the rift.

All of it happened within the same instant.

Then the broken barrier came apart.

SHIIIIINNNNGGGG!

GOOOOONNNGG!

A deep metallic screech and note rolled across the basin. The sound came from the seven strikes resolving against the god’s power, followed by the roar of everything they had broken.

Iron-grey fragments burst outward. Crimson bands snapped between them, releasing shockwaves that flattened the nearest trenches.

Kneeling humans were hurled off their feet. Demons staggered beneath a wall of dust, and loose weapons spun through the air. The obsidian giant Demon Lord planted his warhammer and braced against the impact.

Nearby, the silver-horned demoness swept her chains across falling rubble before it could crush the warriors beneath her.

Then the hillside fell.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

Rock struck rock. A rolling cloud climbed above the shattered slope, swallowing the fortifications carried down with it.

Across the basin floor, a dark line opened through the road beneath the god. It ran beyond the ruined trench and split a stretch of broken ground hundreds of metres long. For a heartbeat, both sides of the split road remained level.

Then one side sank.

BANG!

Demons leapt as the gap widened beneath them. An overturned gun carriage tipped into the opening and vanished beneath falling stone.

Above all of it, the rift changed.

The passage hung in the open basin. Nothing stood above it but smoke and sky, and the last cut climbed straight through its upper edge.

The red opening lengthened.

Its upper tip tore upward through empty air, leaving a towering crimson wound against the sky. The lower end plunged into the newly divided ground, bathing the surrounding rubble in red light.

The passage shuddered, but did not close. Its sustaining formations flared, holding the existing connection while the cut stretched its mouth vertically.

Through the enlarged opening, figures on the Demon Realm’s side hurried away from the disturbed rift.

The winged Demon Lord stared at it.

”An Archfiend... did that?”

Stefan did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the one-armed figure standing amid the broken remains of his own defence.

Blood ran down the God of War’s side.

Simon had not overpowered a god. He had forced one to answer seven different cuts at once, and made the few cuts that the god was not able to defend against matter.

In the shattered trench, Simon nearly fell.

His right wrist would no longer support the sword properly. Blood ran from his eyes and nose, and both shoulders burned as though the muscles had been pulled apart.

The Chaos Wraps tightened, holding his hands against the hilt. UnholyRegeneration struggled to repair the damage beneath them while Simon forced air into his aching chest.

’Enough. It has to be enough.’

He looked past the god.

The seventh cut had not ended with the ground and the rift. Between Simon and the passage, a narrow seam remained in the disturbed space. He had chosen its direction before releasing the technique.

Earlier, he had been unable to teleport near the rift because the space around it shifted too violently. Now his sword had cut through those folds along one narrow route.

It had not made the entire area safe. On either side, broken space twisted more violently than before. But along the cut itself, there was a brief, clear connection to the ground immediately before the rift.

His spatial affinity had shown him the obstruction, and the Sword Daemon’s sword art had opened it.

’There.’

The seam was already narrowing. Simon forced the last usable portion of his concentration toward it.

The God of War lifted his head. His eyes found Simon through the dust.

”You-”

Simon vanished before he could complete his wounds.

There was no long flight for the god to intercept this time. He reappeared directly before the rift, one boot striking stone less than an arm’s length from the red opening.

His knee buckled. He caught himself with wind and drove forward.

Behind him, the God of War reached out.

The invisible pressure that had lifted Simon before gathered again. This time, it trembled before the grip could close.

The wound across the god’s side split wider. Blood ran between the broken plates of Darius’s armour.

He looked down sharply.

The cut had done more than open flesh. It had severed some of his aether veins and channels through which power circulated beneath it. Normally, the god would have rebuilt them immediately. Now the black fire along the wound burned through the first connections he tried to restore.

Forcing more Aether through them only tore them apart.

A minor delay for a being like him, but it was long enough for Simon.

The demon’s shoulder crossed the threshold.

The god’s expression hardened. He stepped toward the rift, preparing to cross the distance by teleporting.

Another rush of Aether pressed through the damaged pathways, and black flame flickered beneath his armour. He tried to force the body forward anyway.

However, blood spilled down his side.

”Demon!”

Simon did not turn.

His torso disappeared into the red light. His sword followed, still fixed between hands held together by the Chaos Wraps.

Then his trailing foot left Earth.

The God of War’s fingers closed on empty air.

Beyond the passage, Simon’s presence receded into the Demon Realm.

The god remained standing. The cut was not fatal, and it had not come close to destroying the being occupying Darius’s body.

But his barrier was gone. His chosen’s blood covered his side. And the Archfiend he had pulled back with one hand had escaped beneath his gaze.

The God of War drew a breath to speak, but a sudden burst of pain emerged from beneath the damaged ribs.

Cough!

He bent slightly, and a mouthful of blood spilled onto the broken ground.