The Broken Halo

Twice, Simon had felt like a fool.

The first time was when he finally understood that the seeds of sin were the answer to his predicament.

The second was now.

He had needed Lilith to point him toward something inside his own heart. Now he had needed the sound of his own laughter to recognise how badly he had lost control.

His bloodied grin lingered.

He was disappointed in both mistakes. More than that, he was disgusted by how long it had taken him to recognise them.

Ever since those eyes appeared, he had not been himself.

He had struggled to think. Shouted without restraint. Demanded answers even while knowing what each answer might cost him.

And he had been afraid.

He still was.

The pressure continued crushing his ruined body, and the certainty of death returned with every painful contraction of his heart.

But now he understood something else.

Fearless

The skill had always been active ever since he obtained it. He never needed to remember to call upon it, never needed to set aside energy or attention to maintain that familiar calm.

It had simply been there.

Even when the God of War had beaten him black and blue, Simon had remained calm and fearless. Pain had hurt. Injuries had weakened him. However, neither had brought the terror currently disrupting his thoughts.

He had grown accustomed to that.

Far too accustomed.

At some point, he had stopped noticing how much the skill supported him. Its protection had become so familiar that he expected his mind to remain clear regardless of what stood before him.

Then it failed to protect him.

And he had discovered that expecting to be calm was not the same as being able to maintain it.

His mouth twisted.

There was something unreasonable about this judgment.

He was a Greater Demon beneath the gaze of the strongest being in existence. His two lives could not turn that difference into something manageable. Remaining completely fearless before such a presence would itself have been an unimaginable feat.

His reaction was hardly inexplicable.

He knew that much.

But the knowledge did nothing to lessen his disgust.

How often had he declared that he would reach the peak?

Not merely become powerful enough to protect himself. He wanted to become the strongest. To reach a point where there was no one left above him.

Yet the being occupying that position had not even appeared.

Only a gaze had crossed an unfathomable distance.

And he could not even stand before it or look at him.

Four limbs gone. Six wings crushed against the ground. His face soaked in blood, his thoughts stumbling over the possibility of dying.

It was pathetic.

Utterly pathetic.

”Hehe...”

Another laugh scraped its way out of him.

The sound hurt his throat. He coughed and tasted fresh blood, but the crooked smile remained.

It was easy to imagine himself at the peak.

Easy to proclaim what he would become when the being he intended to surpass was somewhere beyond his understanding.

Much harder to keep thinking when that being looked down.

Simon shook his head.

The movement was barely more than a scrape to one side and back. It pulled at the torn muscles in his neck, and the pressure forced his cheek harder against the stone.

Enough.

His limbs were not going to return because he despised their absence. His fear would not disappear merely because he found it shameful.

He needed to act while he could still think.

His attention turned inward.

Greed and Gluttony remained within his Prime Forged Heart.

Two seeds.

If they were insufficient, he would have to birth another.

His damaged sea of consciousness became more active. Black water churned as he forced his scattered thoughts to gather, working through the pain instead of waiting for it to ease.

A third seed...

No.

One more would not be enough against the power he had allowed into the realm.

He would birth a fourth as well.

Whether even that would save him, he could not know. Another seed might draw a worse response from the eyes above but there was already nothing safe about what he intended.

But he already knew what doing nothing would achieve.

He also knew which two seeds he would attempt to birth.

The first was Pride.

Simon directed his attention toward himself, searching beyond the name for what he intended to bring into existence.

His contempt for his own condition was still fresh. So was the refusal beneath it.

He held on to both.

The broken ground, Lilith’s trembling figure, and the enormous eyes grew distant in his awareness. His wounds continued bleeding, but his thoughts began following one another with a concentration that resembled a trance.

Pride.

To many, pride was satisfaction in an achievement.

A craftsman looked upon a finished work and remembered the years needed to acquire that skill. A student finally understood a topic that had once seemed impossible.

They were pleased with themselves.

That pleasure did not require someone else to suffer.

To others, pride was dignity.

A slave might be forced to kneel without accepting that the chain around his neck determined his worth. Refusing humiliation could be the last way he preserved something his master could not own.

Others used the same word for arrogance.

For vanity.

For the belief that one’s talents, bloodline, or accomplishments made everyone else lesser.

The word described different things, and confusing them made it easy to praise a vice or condemn something that deserved no condemnation.

Recognising one’s worth was not the same as denying the worth of others.

Being confident in a skill was not the same as believing that skill made every judgment correct.

And wanting to become great did not necessarily mean believing one was already entitled to greatness.

A man could aspire to the highest peak while acknowledging every step he still had to climb.

None of that, by itself, explained the sin of Pride.

The distinction became clearer when self-respect turned into a claim of exemption.

A swordsman could know he was more skilled than his opponent. That might simply be true.

But if he believed his skill made every weaker person’s objection beneath consideration, something had changed.

His ability had become an excuse to place himself beyond correction.

He could be right about his swordsmanship and wrong about what it entitled him to.

True achievements did not prevent sinful pride. Sometimes they gave it a better hiding place.

The craftsman could deserve satisfaction in his work and still despise the apprentice whose question exposed a flaw.

Both things could exist in him at once.

The work did not become worthless because he was arrogant. His arrogance did not become harmless because the work was good.

Pride, as a sin, did not merely cherish excellence.

It could demand that truth yield whenever truth threatened one’s importance.

It could make an apology feel intolerable, not because the accusation was false, but because admitting fault meant surrendering an image of oneself.

It could turn help into an insult.

It could take a genuine strength and use it to justify contempt for anyone who lacked it.

Nor did it always announce itself loudly.

A person could bow politely while considering everyone around him unworthy. Another could speak of his own insignificance only because he expected others to hurry forward and deny it.

Even humility could become something a person congratulated himself for possessing more perfectly than everyone else.

Yet outward defiance was no more reliable a measure than outward modesty.

A refusal to bow could come from arrogance.

It could also come from the simple conviction that greater strength did not grant the right to degrade another person.

The gesture alone revealed little.

What mattered was the belief behind it, and what that belief permitted a person to dismiss, demand, or do.

Simon’s heart contracted.

Pain disturbed his concentration, but the thought remained.

He was not trying to birth a seed from every feeling that happened to share a name.

He was seeking the sin.

And some of those descriptions were uncomfortably familiar.

He had never lacked confidence in himself. He had mocked beings far stronger than him and intended to rise above every power he encountered.

Even now, crushed beneath the strongest being’s gaze, he was disgusted that he had reacted in a way almost anyone could have understood.

He had allowed himself no such understanding.

His attention returned to his heart.

Greed.

Gluttony.

Only those two completed seeds answered him.

If some of these descriptions were enough to explain the sin, Pride should have been among the first seeds he birthed.

Not Gluttony.

Not Greed.

So why had he not birthed the seed of Pride first?