Shadow Slave

As a hundred souls plummeted to their deaths in a rain of wooden debris, the four-armed devil who had doomed them to death laughed madly.

Of course, he was falling with the rest… but, unlike most of the warriors on the broken ship, the devil had long grown accustomed to plummeting from great heights. After all, he had once spent a whole month falling into the endless darkness of the Sky Below.

Dissolving into the shadows, Sunny appeared on the deck of the nearest ship. His sword flashed, ending the life of a Sun Legion soldier that stood in his way and sending blood spraying into the night air. There was only a moment before the enemies would shrug off the shock of his sudden arrival… and so, he did not waste any time.

Lunging forward, Sunny struck another warrior in the back with the Cruel Sight, slashed the Midnight Shard across the throat of an enemy archer, and wrapped his tail around the neck of a third soldier. Sending the last one overboard with a powerful throw, he bared his teeth and briefly glanced into the night sky.

Out there in the lightless void, Effie and Kai had managed to slaughter the entire crew of one of the ships and sent the vessel crashing into the rest of the formation. The little girl jumped off the rails at the last moment, and the swift archer caught her, carrying both of them away, toward the next target.

The ship where Saint and Nightmare landed was silent and dark, with not a soul moving on it. Everyone was already dead, and the vessel was careening to the side, ready to plummet down. The black courser galloped across the bloody deck and soared into the sky, breaching a gap of a hundred meters with a single jump and landing among fearful Awakened on a different ship. Saint's scarlet odachi flashed…

The Soul Serpent crashed on the deck of another flying vessel, the previous one he had visited breaking apart as it fell into the darkness. Before the warriors could react to the appearance of the ghastly abomination, its shape suddenly shifted, turning into a mass of liquid darkness. Then, the darkness flowed into a figure of a menacing knight, his black armor forged from a lusterless, anthracite steel and decorated with intricate engravings. The great sword of the knight rose and fell like a guillotine, severing flesh and bone.

Sunny grinned.

'Not bad…'

Effie and Kai had taken out two ships, while he and his Shadows took out four. The gargoyles had destroyed even more… at this rate, obliterating the entire fleet was not going to be as impossible as it had seemed.

But, of course, that was just an illusion.

Sunny used Shadow Step to travel between ships, he wasted a big chunk of his… not to mention

Shadow was consuming its own essence at a terrible speed — not only did it have to expend it to maintain the form of other creatures, but using their Abilities had a cost, too. The Soul Serpent was not going to be able to keep it up for

element of surprise on their side. As soon as the fleet realized

as he could, as fast as he

his luck, chances were that he would have

to slay him and sow discord in the coordination of the vessel's crew. However, this time, he failed to behead the snake with one swift strike — the officer of

angry hiss escaped from his

'Damnation!'

an Ascended, and one of remarkable might, as

at the dozens of warriors surrounding him, Sunny

And fought.

the Gate in the waking world, surrounded from all sides by Nightmare Creatures… using everything he had, every trick and deception he could muster, and every little bit of skill and

slick with blood,

a few drops of his own mixed into it, as well, shining with the invisible light of

The Mantle of the Underworld rang as a rain of blows landed on it, a few blades finding their way through the

off all the attacks and pursued, closing distance in a split second no matter how far away from himSunny jumped. This could not

to kill this bastard…

to cross blades with the Ascended and struggling to withstand the blow, Sunny activated the [Gates of Shadow] enchantment, drowning his immediate surrounding in darkness. The soldiers stumbled, failing to adjust in time. The Ascended, however, had already learned

would have been very bad for Sunny... if