The Broken Halo

’Just as I expected... He wants to devour the tribulation lightning.’

Lilith watched a crimson thread reverse its course beneath Simon’s skin.

It had been moving toward his heart. Now it stretched toward the blackness gathering in his palm, thinning until nothing remained.

She had expected this long before the tribulation formed. Long before the invasion, when the ritual was still something Simon lacked the ingredients to attempt.

Give him a chance to survive, and he would take it.

Give him a chance to profit while surviving, and he would begin questioning how much danger he could afford so as to make as much profit as he could.

That was why she had told him his bloodline evolution would be more dangerous than anything he had faced in this life.

The ordinary course of the ritual was dangerous enough, but Simon was never going to be satisfied with its ordinary course.

He could spend an entire conversation avoiding one question. Offer several convincing truths and leave out the only fact that mattered. He watched what others wanted, used it against them, and called the result an opportunity.

Patience was not beyond him.

Restraint was not beyond him either.

He simply abandoned both whenever he believed he had found something worth the price.

Lilith looked over the ruins.

He had wanted to preserve his weaker bloodline. Then obtain a Daemon’s constitution. Then reach farther down its ancestry. Then strengthen the Byakko and make both lineages into something neither had produced before.

Every success had become permission to demand another.

Now the punishment descending upon him was becoming another resource.

’Is it the Devourers’ power that made you this greedy?’

Her gaze returned to his face.

’Or did being the Hero of Earth, only to be betrayed and reborn as a demon, leave you unwilling to trust anything except what you could take for yourself?’

Simon flexed his fingers. More crimson light disappeared beneath them.

There was no answer in the movement.

He wanted the peak. Not a position from which he could bargain with those above him, but one from which nobody could force him to bargain at all.

Lilith raised her eyes.

The branching lightning overhead had begun drawing together.

Her expression became incomparably solemn.

”At this rate, he’ll most likely form a Seed of Sin before the tribulation ends.”

The words barely left her lips and Simon could not hear her.

If that happened, simply keeping his body alive would no longer be the greatest difficulty.

She watched the deeper darkness between the clouds.

’How much time will we have before THE ONE arrives?’

...

Simon felt the lightning come apart inside his hand.

The force that had continued attacking his flesh unravelled beneath Devour. What entered his circulation afterward no longer carried the same hostile drive.

It was power he could use.

He directed it into his body.

His muscles tightened beneath the ivory stripes. A deep ache passed through his bones, followed by the unfamiliar sensation of weight gathering inside them without changing their size.

This was not merely healing.

He curled his fingers and felt the difference.

’Body first.’

The evolution had given him room to grow. He intended to fill it before attempting anything else.

He drew upon the third bolt’s remnants, then reached the traces of the first two still buried in his body.

Crimson threads pulled free of old wounds.

Each one disappeared into Devour.

His wing spars creaked softly. Their membranes became firmer, and the pathways beneath his shoulders widened enough to carry the increasing flow.

The cube at his solar plexus brightened. Nine white currents distributed the power instead of allowing it to accumulate in whichever part received it first.

’If this isn’t enough, I’ll take the next one.’

Simon looked upward.

’And the one after that.’

He did not expect the sky to cooperate.

The fourth bolt made that clear.

The clouds contracted around its forming centre. Branches that had stretched across Velmora bent inward, feeding a column far broader than the previous three.

The tribulation had sensed what happened to its lightning.

The third strike had been consumed. So had what remained of the first and second.

This was its answer.

Simon planted his feet.

The crimson column descended.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The force struck him before he could see anything beyond the red.

His knees bent.

One leg almost folded beneath him.

He forced his heel down, caught his weight, and remained standing while the earth around his legs burst outward.

The shockwave swept through Velmora.

It did not stop at the ruined walls.

Beyond the city, the road lifted in sections. Trees farther away bent flat before their trunks split. A rocky slope fractured along its base and slid into the low ground beneath it.

Dust rose kilometres from the impact.

Inside Velmora, the last survivors died.

A demon trapped beneath a cellar pressed his hands over his ears. The stone above him broke before the thunder reached him.

Elsewhere, crimson lightning raced through the rubble, entering the spaces the shockwave had failed to crush.

A rat-like beast hidden inside a drain stiffened and burned.

A wounded guard’s reaching hand fell.

The cries that had persisted through the city’s destruction ended.

Only Simon and Lilith remained beneath the tribulation.

At the centre, Simon’s newly strengthened body was being torn open.

Skin burned away from his shoulder and down one side of his chest. Blood escaped his mouth. Several wing membranes split between their ivory supports, and a black horn-tip fractured.

The fourth strike was hurting him far more than the earlier three.

Strengthening himself had not kept pace with the tribulation’s retaliation.

His jaw tightened.

’Not enough to put me down.’

He increased Devour.

Blackness spread between the crimson branches crawling over his body. The lightning twisted toward it, resisting as its tightly gathered force began coming apart.

He could not consume all of it before it hurt him.

A wound opened across his ribs.

Unholy Regeneration closed it.

The lightning tore it open again.

Simon drew harder.

The usable energy divided between repairing the damage and strengthening the flesh suffering it. His muscles tightened until the edges of the next wound did not pull as far apart.

A burned finger reformed.

He closed it around a crimson strand and devoured that too.

Gradually, the healing began catching up.

The bolt continued pouring over him, but less of its power reached his heart’s pathways unbroken. More disappeared into the blackness before it could deepen the wounds.

His knees straightened.

The lightning had driven him downward, but it had not made him kneel.

The descending column finally broke into scattered branches.

Simon was still consuming them when his body stopped changing.

He frowned and directed another portion of energy toward his muscles.

They accepted what they needed to repair the remaining damage.

Nothing more.

His bones gave the same response. So did his wings.

Simon tested the circulation once, making certain it was not an obstruction.

Then he understood.

’There it is.’

The new limit.

The fourth strike had contained enough power to fill the physical capacity his evolved bloodlines and current Heart could support.

For the moment, Devour could make his body no stronger.

His Infernal Heart remained unchanged in rank.

Simon released a slow breath.

Fresh skin closed over his ribs. The damaged wing membranes joined, and the fractured horn-tip restored itself.

He lowered his gaze to the lightning still moving across his hand.

Now for the other problem.

A blue-white current answered beneath his skin. The Nine-Tailed Byakko’s lightning moved cleanly through him, but it did not pursue destruction the way the crimson remnant did.

He wanted that nature.

He also wanted to raise the grade of his Lightning affinity.

So far, he had concentrated on taking the tribulation’s energy as nourishment. Now he needed to take what made its lightning different.

Keep the destructive quality.

Make it answer to him.

He had used most of the fourth strike to build his body. What remained gave him something to examine, but not enough to force the change he intended.

He brought the two currents close.

The crimson strand struck at the blue-white one. Simon separated them before either could dissipate.

’I need more than a few remnants.’

The fifth strike would give him a fresh supply.

He would use Devour to take its power, then work on changing his own lightning instead of spending everything on his flesh.

Above him, crimson light gathered again.

Simon raised his head.

His six wings spread, the repaired membranes catching the glow. The cube beneath his sternum shone through the last smoke leaving his body.

He lifted the hand the fourth bolt had burned.

It was whole and stronger than before.

”Four strikes,” he said. ”And now I’m harder to kill than before you started.”

His lips curled, exposing his fangs.

”Send the fifth.”

He looked directly into the gathering crimson lights.

”And do me a favour and make it worth stealing.”