Chapter 946 - 945: A Moment Too Long

’Why is this still happening?’

Elara stared toward her brother.

The God of War was inside him. One of the strongest gods had descended into Darius’s body, yet the battle had not ended.

Against a one-horned Archfiend.

How could that be difficult?

Her stomach tightened again.

She tried to swallow, but her throat felt dry despite the freezing air passing her lips.

Was Darius unable to bear the god’s power? Was that why he was injured? Had something happened in the Demon Realm?

And why did every answer she imagined make her more afraid?

A distant flash reflected in her golden eyes.

Elara drew upon the phoenix’s sight.

The valley sharpened between drifting curtains of snow. She found the demon again, and her thoughts stumbled.

Black skin.

Four pale horns.

Long white hair streaming around a body taller and broader than the one she remembered.

But she recognised his face.

’That’s him.’

His presence reached her beneath the far greater disturbance of divine power.

A Greater Demon.

Elara’s fingers tightened around her staff.

He had been an Archfiend.

When had he advanced? How had he changed so much while the God of War was supposed to be killing him?

Then she distinguished another demonic presence nearby.

The figure was unfamiliar. So was his power.

However, the depth of his demonic energy belonged to a rank higher than the newly advanced demon.

A Supreme Demon Lord.

’Was it him?’

Had that stranger protected the Archfiend? Helped him evolve? Was he the reason her brother had returned wounded?

It would explain something.

But not enough.

A Supreme Demon Lord should not have made a god-!

A fist covered in stone suddenly struck her face.

BANG!

Elara’s head snapped sideways.

The ice-feather plates along her cheek broke before the defence behind them finished forming. Sonya’s stone-covered fist drove through, throwing her down through the blizzard.

BOOM!

She hit the ground shoulder-first and skidded across the ice.

Above her, Sonya shook blood from the knuckles of her gauntlet.

"When this Honourable thinks about something else, she still remembers to dodge. Learn a thing or two from this Honourable."

Elara tried to rise, but the ground burst beneath her.

PUCHI!

PUCHI!

PUCHI!

Three spikes pierced Elara as she was pinned against the ice. One drove through her chest, another split her throat, then the last her stomach.

However, no blood followed.

The impaled body turned transparent and became an ice statue.

Then the ice statue shattered.

Sonya’s head turned before the pieces finished falling.

Snow gathered overhead. Elara emerged from it, breathing hard, with four wings opening around her and the translucent phoenix reforming at her back.

A patch of its breast remained ragged where its power had been spent upon the substitute.

"You’ll regret that," Elara said through bloody teeth.

"This Honourable has heard that before."

Elara swept her staff downward.

The phoenix’s upper wings beat with hers, sending two enormous fans of ice feathers toward Sonya.

But the ground rolled beneath the falling storm.

Stone rose in a curved slope rather than a flat wall. The feathers struck at an angle, breaking or sliding away while Sonya accelerated along its inner face.

She emerged beside Elara.

Her stone gauntlet reached for the human’s throat.

The phoenix turned its head.

Its beak closed between them, forcing Sonya to withdraw before the edges could crush her arm.

Elara thrust her staff through the opening.

Sonya knocked it aside.

Then a tremor rolled through the clearing.

Far away, iron-grey light spread behind a dark ridge.

Elara looked.

Only for a moment.

Sonya caught the staff beneath her forearm and kicked Elara’s knee.

Ice shattered around the joint.

Elara cried out and folded one wing between them. Its crystalline feathers burst beneath Sonya’s next punch, but they stopped it short of her ribs.

She pulled free and flew backward.

’Focus.’

Her brother had a god protecting him.

She had an enemy trying to tear her apart.

Elara forced her gaze onto Sonya and released a ring of freezing fire. It spread from her lower wings, rolling outward through the air.

Sonya dropped beneath it.

However, Elara followed her descent, driving the staff toward the place she would land.

For the first time since the distant battle had distracted her, the attack arrived where she intended.

Sonya crossed her forearms.

Stone thickened over them.

The staff struck, and frost raced up both gauntlets.

Sonya grunted.

A pillar erupted beneath Elara’s flank.

The phoenix’s talons caught it, but Sonya had already pushed away, shedding the frozen stone from her arms.

Elara drew a breath.

She could still do this.

Then another flash brightened the snow.

Her eyes shifted before she could stop them.

Sonya felt the change in her stance.

One shoulder turned. Her staff lowered slightly. The phoenix remained facing Sonya, but the body inside it had ceased following the same intention.

’She’s distracted again.’

Sonya’s eyes flashed, then she pressed her palm toward the ground.

A strip of buried road peeled upward behind Elara, bending into a broad stone hook.

It caught one wing before she noticed.

Sonya closed her fingers.

The hook tightened and dragged Elara backward into an approaching fist.

The phoenix’s translucent neck bent across her chest.

Sonya’s punch struck it instead.

BOOOOOOM!

White light spilled from the spirit’s torn outline.

Elara coughed blood as the recoil passed through their bond.

She tore herself free, leaving crystalline feathers caught in the stone.

Below, Virella watched her faltering flight.

"She keeps looking away."

Ammor followed the direction of those glances and realized that it was toward the rift.

Akaza said nothing. His attention moved between Sonya and the distant flashes, his right hand opening and closing beside him.

Above them, the phoenix gave a sharp cry.

The sound rang inside Elara’s skull as well as through the clearing.

She felt its rebuke through their fusion. Its outline pressed closer around her, urging her attention back toward the enemy it kept having to intercept.

"I know," she whispered.

Sonya swept a slab toward her legs.

Elara broke it with her staff.

However, the fragments turned behind her and drove forward again.

Her upper wings caught most of them. One opened her thigh.

The phoenix cried again, harsher this time.

"I know I have to focus!"

The words escaped aloud.

Elara’s breathing shook.

"But that’s my brother over there."

Aether rushed into the wound along her thigh. Ice sealed it, stopping the bleeding without easing the pain.

"I love him. I can’t just stop worrying because I need to."

The phoenix’s outline rippled.

Its lower wings spread around her, catching a volley of stone needles before they reached her back.

She felt the cost in every glowing pathway beneath her skin.

It was protecting her.

But she was making it pay for every distracted glance.

Elara clenched her jaw and raised her staff again.

’He’s safe.’

She tried to make herself believe it.

’The God of War is with him.’

Yet she had already seen his missing arm.

She had already felt his presence falter once.

The thought of feeling that absence again made her chest tighten until the next breath would not come properly.

Sonya advanced through the snow.

Elara met her with a sweeping blade of ice.

Stone broke against it. A kick struck Elara’s staff, and a second rising pillar forced her to climb.

The phoenix beat its wings and carried them above the attack.

For a heartbeat, the blizzard opened beneath her.

Then Elara looked toward Darius, and her eyes widened.

Whatever thought she had been holding vanished.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came at first.

Then-

"DARIUS!"

All four wings snapped backward.

The phoenix’s immense outline stretched around her, its neck lowering as its wings drew close to her own.

Elara shot across the sky.

She did not spare Sonya another glance.

"Where do you think you’re going?"

Sonya thrust her hand upward.

Stone columns burst along Elara’s route, their tops curving inward to bar her passage.

But Elara was no longer trying to win the fight.

She spent power without holding anything back.

Freezing fire streamed behind her. The first column split beneath the phoenix’s beak, and she rolled through the opening before the others closed.

Sonya caught a wingtip with a hooked length of stone.

Elara tore through it.

Blood and white feathers scattered together.

She did not slow down.

"Fuck!"

Sonya drove a slab beneath her feet and launched herself after the retreating blaze.

Another stone platform rose ahead. She kicked from it, then another, forcing herself faster as the terrain answered.

But Elara kept gaining distance.

Sonya could command the mountain beneath them. She could turn its slopes into weapons and feel its deepest cracks.

But that did not give her the straight-line speed of a woman fused with an ice phoenix.

Her jaw tightened.

She pursued anyway.

Below, the stone shelter opened as Sonya moved away.

Virella stepped through the gap.

"What happened?"

"Why are they-"

Ammor stopped as Akaza ran past him.

The Martial Demon gave no explanation.

He cleared the broken wall, landed heavily, and drove himself forward at the greatest speed his recovering body could manage.

His stiff arm stayed close to his side.

He did not look back.

Virella stared after him.

"Fuck."

Ammor glanced toward the distant light.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake."

They looked at each other.

Then both ran after them.