The Broken Halo

Simon cut off Devour and threw himself sideways.

The violet spark shot along the current he had been drawing toward his chest.

He swept the Chaos Blade across its path.

Light scraped the black edge, slipped past it, and burned a line beneath his collarbone. His lower wings struck the air, dragging him clear before the spark bloomed.

BOOOOOOM!

A violet column tore through the place he had occupied.

Simon landed on one knee, coughing. His next breath came roughly enough to hurt, and the one after it was little better.

That thing had almost entered him with the energy keeping him alive.

’Bastard.’

He stood, pulling the blade close.

Above, the shield remained intact.

He had struck it with everything he could gather. Attacked its edges. Changed direction behind fire and shadow. Tried to find an opening through which the Chaos Blade could reach the eyes.

Nothing had worked.

Meanwhile, the attacks had become more precise.

The One had driven him into prepared traps, targeted his wings, and now used his own absorption against him.

And the gaze was growing stronger.

Simon felt it in the weight settling across his shoulders. The violet light had deepened. The next pulse of light carried more power than the last.

Lilith had told him that birthing additional seeds would allow The One to send more power into the realm.

But bringing that power across required time.

Time Simon had been spending trying not to die.

His jaw tightened.

He resumed absorbing through several narrow currents of demonic energy, watching each for anything that did not belong. Gluttony pulled while Devour stripped the lingering power from his newest wound.

He could not afford to stop healing.

He could not afford to continue like this either.

The four seeds answered his Will, but he knew how crudely he was using them. Each possessed abilities he had barely begun to understand.

So far, he had mostly forced them to supply more power, strengthen his attacks, and keep his body moving.

They could do more.

During the fight, he had felt responses he had not known to ask for. Brief changes in the way their power moved, possibilities he could almost grasp before another attack demanded his attention.

He was learning, and to a knowledgeable Daemon, he was learning fast.

But in this situation, it was too slow.

The same was true of his new body.

The wings, their vents, the cube distributing energy through his pathways... he was discovering them while using them.

And there was the third eye.

His awareness touched the closed seam in his forehead.

During the battle, whenever the cube redirected a particularly large surge, something behind that seam had answered. The response belonged to his Uruqath bloodline.

He had followed it.

Only far enough to understand one possibility, and to feel how much demonic energy it would demand.

It was an ability he had not dared attempt while struggling to keep his body intact.

Now his muscles were trembling for reasons regeneration could not erase.

Four seeds were feeding power through a Prime Forged Heart. His control kept the circulation orderly, but it could not make his body endure that strain forever.

The eyes above brightened again.

Something began pushing out of one black pupil.

Simon went still.

It was white.

At first, he saw only a rounded surface, smooth and pale against the darkness. Then it emerged farther, revealing a forehead, two hollow cheeks, and a narrow chin.

A head.

Enormous.

There were no eyes on its face. No nose.

Only a mouth.

And its lips were stretched into a gentle smile.

Simon’s instincts flared so violently that his fingers tightened around the hilt.

The head hung beneath the eye without a neck or body. Violet light threaded its pale surface like veins beneath thin skin.

Then its mouth opened.

There was another face inside.

Smaller. Identical.

It opened its mouth too.

Behind that was another.

And another.

Simon could see the faces receding into the thing’s throat, each smiling before opening wider.

A sound came from them, but it was too faint to call it a scream.

The loose stones beneath the head crumbled.

They did not fall apart. Their surfaces flaked away in layers, disappearing before the flakes could reach the ground.

The sound grew a little louder.

Blood trembled inside Simon’s ears.

’What the fuck is that?’

It was preparing to scream.

Whatever the earlier weapons had been, this was worse.

Lilith’s expression changed completely.

”BLACKMOON! Get away from it!”

Simon glanced toward her.

”Don’t try to block that! RUN!”

There was no trace of her astonished smile now.

He looked back at the thing forming beneath the pupil.

The faces were still opening, one behind another. Violet light gathered deep within their mouths.

He could leave.

Fold space and teleport. Use every wing that still answered. Put distance between himself and the attack.

A retreat was not a surrender. He knew that. Surviving today did not mean abandoning what he intended to become tomorrow.

However, the seed of pride thrummed, and his mouth curved.

He wanted the position of the being watching him.

Yet here he was, considering flight before even trying the one ability he had left.

Wrath answered Pride.

Fight and win.

The thought returned with the next heartbeat.

Fight and win.

All four seeds pressed more power into his circulation.

Fight and win.

Simon recognised their influence. The desire was his, but they were making it louder.

He could still turn away.

Instead, he planted his feet.

His expression settled into something fiercer than the grin he had worn through the battle. His breathing was ragged, his body wounded, but his eyes no longer moved toward an escape.

”I’m not finished.”

He did not know whether he was answering Lilith, the eyes, or himself.

The cube flashed.

He directed the gathered power upward.

Pain split across his forehead.

The vertical seam opened.

The eye beneath it was narrow and upright. Where an ordinary eye would have been white, this one was black. And inside the black pupil was a silver cross that was bright enough to stand out against the darkness.

It looked up.

Black light spilled over Simon’s face.

It flowed down his throat, across his chest, and along all six wings. His body vanished within it.

Then the light expanded.

BOOM!

The ground cracked beneath a vast black foot.

Another formed beside it.

Legs rose through the dust. A torso followed, broad shoulders unfolding far above the ruined ridges.

The figure kept growing.

Simon felt the demand tear through his reserves.

Gluttony dragged harder at the surrounding demonic energy. Devour fed the incoming power inward while the cube distributed it through the structure taking shape around him.

His heart hammered.

’Hold.’

Pride kept the four seeds aligned.

The enormous figure straightened.

It had his face.

His jaw, his mouth, the same crimson eyes with broken black rings around their pupils. The likeness was unmistakable, though its skin looked like dark metal beneath the flowing black radiance.

Ivory stripes crossed its shoulders and ribs, following the markings on Simon’s own body.

Four pale horns crowned its head. Two swept backward and the other pair rose above its temples, sharper and longer upon the colossal form.

White hair streamed behind it in thick, luminous strands.

Six wings opened.

Their ivory spars spread across the sky, stretching broad black membranes between them. Crimson light burned inside their vents. Every movement sent lightning crawling from one wingtip to another.

Black flames gathered along its forearms.

Its third eye opened last.

A silver cross shone within the upright black eye, reflecting the one in Simon’s forehead.

The figure was no longer an indistinct mass of light.

It was a towering manifestation of Simon himself.

The broken mountains lay below its knees. Its horns rose toward the enormous violet eyes, and the shadow of its wings covered what remained of the battlefield.

Within its chest, Simon hung at the centre of the black radiance.

His actual body had not grown.

He could feel the giant’s limbs as extensions of his own. When his fingers tightened, the immense hand outside closed with them.

The Chaos Blade remained in his right hand.

Black light extended from it through the manifestation’s arm, forming an enormous sword in the giant’s grasp. Crimson lightning gathered along its edge.

Lilith stared upward.

Simon barely saw her.

The cost was worse than he had expected. Holding this form consumed power even while he stood still.

He could not waste it.

If this could break the shield, he might yet tear the gaze from the realm.

He could only hope it would work.

Above him, the white head’s mouths continued opening. The scream gathered behind them, deeper than the faint sound already stripping the earth bare.

The violet pupils moved from the giant’s sword to the silver eye in its forehead.

Simon looked back.

The manifestation’s mouth followed his own as his bloodied grin widened.

”Now look at me properly... I am the one that would rise above you.”