Chapter 950 - 949: Sacrifice (Golden Gachapon Bonus - )

[A/N: This bonus Chapter is thanks to Kollum!!!]

———

The head rolled across the broken paving.

White hair caught beneath a splintered plank, pulled free, then spread across the dust when it finally stopped near the boy’s feet.

He did not move away.

His fingers remained around the sword his father had given him.

But his eyes narrowed slightly.

The face was wrong.

It belonged to a woman.

Pale feathers clung to her temples. Her parted lips were bloodied, and the faint gold in her half-open eyes was already dulling. White hair covered one cheek.

There was no red hair.

’Wasn’t it the man?’

He had watched the demon swing.

He was certain.

The boy looked toward the crater again.

The six-winged demon stood over the fallen body, his sword lowered. His grin had disappeared, replaced by a deep frown.

He seemed confused too.

’What is happening?’

———

Simon stared at the corpse, and to his confusion, it was not the corpse of the God of War or Darius to be more precise but...

Elara.

The broken ice-feather armour was unmistakable. So were the fading traces of her cold.

However, the man he had been attacking had possessed neither.

’An illusion?’

He drew the lingering black flames back into the Chaos Blade and examined her again.

Nothing changed.

The God of War had used decoys and exchanged places with his manifestations, but disguising a dead woman as himself was something else. It did not fit anything Simon had seen him do.

And Elara was supposed to be fighting Sonya and Akaza.

How had she reached his blade?

Suddenly, he felt the familiar aether of the God of War in the distance.

Simon’s head turned.

Sky Eye

The intervening distance sharpened.

The God of War stood in the air beyond Miresti village, battered, bloodied, and very much in possession of his head.

He was staring toward the village.

His remaining hand rose to his own neck.

For once, the confusion upon his face looked genuine.

Then a tear slipped down his cheek.

Simon’s eyes narrowed when he saw the tear.

Another tear followed the first.

The god touched the wetness with two fingers.

He had not meant to cry.

Inside the world belonging to his Chosen, something surged toward the body he controlled.

Darius.

His soul had recoiled from what it had witnessed. Now it was reaching outward with a violence the god had not anticipated.

The grief struck before he could suppress it.

His hand jerked.

His mouth opened.

"Elara?"

The voice was younger.

But broken.

Darius’s eyes fixed upon the white hair lying beside the ruined house.

For a heartbeat, he seemed unable to understand why her face was there and her body was somewhere else.

Then his expression crumpled.

"ELARA!"

The scream tore across the valley.

He lunged toward Miresti.

The God of War caught the movement before it became flight. His command sounded within his Chosen.

[Stop.]

Divine authority closed around the limbs of his vessel.

Darius hung in the air, trembling against the restraint.

His remaining fingers clawed toward the village.

"No... no, get away from her!"

His eyes found Simon.

The grief did not disappear. It twisted through the rage that followed, leaving his face almost unrecognisable.

"I’LL KILL YOU!"

Killing intent spilled from him, wild and undisguised. Aether burst unevenly around his body.

The god forced it still.

[Calm yourself. You cannot defeat him.]

"LET ME GO!"

Darius struggled so violently that the wounds across his chest reopened. He seemed not to feel them.

His arm pulled forward while the god held his shoulder back. Blood ran between the plates of his armour.

She had come for him.

She was lying there because of him.

And he could not even reach her.

"Elara!"

His voice cracked on her name.

[You idiot! You will get yourself killed!]

"I DON’T CARE!"

The answer was immediate.

There was no calculation left in him. No thought of his rank, his injuries, or the sword that had nearly taken his own head.

He wanted the demon dead.

He wanted his sister to answer.

And because one of those things was no longer possible, he threw everything he had at the other.

The god’s restraint tightened.

Darius’s back arched. His mouth remained open, but the next scream came out as a choking sound.

Simon watched the struggle with narrowed eyes.

The change in the face, the uncontrolled Aether, the body trying to move against itself...

Darius had surfaced.

But the god was still there.

Simon’s gaze returned briefly to Elara’s body.

Then his six wings spread.

Whatever had happened, the man he intended to kill was within reach.

He launched himself upward.

BOOOOOOM!

Dust flattened beneath him.

Crimson lightning ran along his wings as the vents drove him toward the suspended figure.

The God of War saw him coming.

[Enough of this!]

His Will pressed through the connection to his Chosen.

Darius resisted.

Even now.

But a moment of surprise was not the same as the strength to hold a god back.

The reaching hand lowered.

The shoulders turned.

Darius’s expression hardened against his wishes, although tears continued running down his face.

The god had control again.

Aether erupted beneath his feet, driving the damaged body away at its greatest speed.

Simon accelerated after him, the Chaos Blade angled beside his body.

He could see the lost time costing his enemy. The distance narrowed with each wingbeat.

Then the god looked ahead.

Something answered him from far beyond Simon’s perception.

He did not hesitate.

Iron-grey light closed around his body.

Simon felt the spatial disturbance and immediately reached toward it.

Too late.

The opening contracted before he could follow.

The God of War vanished.

Simon stopped so abruptly that thunder rolled beneath his wings.

He stared at the empty air, then his expression darkened.

"No."

He examined the fading distortion, following the direction in which space had been joined.

This was nothing like the short teleports from their pursuit.

The destination lay much farther away.

Too far for the power the god had just expended to bridge unaided.

However, Simon had encountered such escapes in his previous life.

A prepared destination could answer from the other end.

For a god, there was one obvious place.

"A temple."

He had suspected the god was trying to reach one. Their latest flight had finally brought him close enough to use its support.

Simon could sense the route’s direction.

But he could not fix its distant endpoint, and the passage was already disappearing.

The last trace faded beneath his awareness.

"Fuck."

His fingers tightened around the hilt.

Now the god had an opportunity to return everything he had learned to his true body.

All that effort, and a woman Simon had not even been fighting had bought the last moments his enemy needed.

He released a frustrated breath.

Then he turned back toward Miresti.

———

The village was quieter when he returned.

Not silent.

There were still people calling beneath the rubble.

But some of the voices had stopped.

Simon landed beside Elara’s corpse and folded his wings closer.

For a while, he looked down without speaking.

He no longer believed the god had changed into her.

They had exchanged places.

Elara and Darius were twins. Their Blessings were alike in ways their opposing elements could conceal... an ice phoenix and a fire phoenix.

Perhaps the connection between those Blessings allowed such an exchange.

Perhaps they possessed an artifact.

He did not know enough to decide.

But the god’s confusion, Darius’s grief, and the woman beneath his blade left little doubt about who had chosen it.

Elara had taken her brother’s place.

She had put herself where the sword was about to pass.

Simon slowly shook his head.

He had intended to kill her brother. Nothing about her sacrifice changed that.

And yet the satisfaction he should have felt at removing another enemy would not come.

She had accomplished what she wanted.

That irritated him.

But another part of him could not dismiss it as foolishness.

She had seen what approached Darius and accepted it for herself. There had been no time to bargain over whether he deserved saving, whether he would repay her, whether anyone would remember.

Only enough time to choose.

Simon remembered faces from his first life.

His wife.

The people who had stood beside him through decades of war.

He had trusted them with far more than his life, and they had found reasons to take it.

This woman had needed only one reason to give hers away for her brother.

Simon’s jaw tightened.

He was still the one who had killed her.

Admiring the choice did not clean his blade.

"I’ve heard men swear loyalty for years," he said quietly, "then bargain for one more breath when it was time to prove it."

His gaze lingered upon the broken armour.

"You didn’t even wait to be asked."

The words left him with a feeling he could not quite name.

Then two familiar presences reached him.

Sonya.

Akaza.

He turned.

Sonya was approaching above the ruined ground, rising slabs catching beneath her feet and launching her forward. Farther behind, he felt Akaza moving along the damaged road.

They had survived.

Simon watched the small figure drawing closer.

And a small smile appeared on his face.