Shadow Slave

...Perched precariously on a broken mountain road, the Rhino stood still as the members of the cohort cautiously climbed higher. Belle, Dorn, and Luster were hiding a hundred steps ahead, just below the crest of the tall hill, while Sunny and Kim were currently on the roof of the armored vehicle.

"I see them."

Samara was tensely studying the screen of her military communicator, which was receiving the video feed from a compact spy drone that she had sent ahead. On it was a small valley. The image was grainy and noisy, sometimes breaking out entirely because of the interference of the Nightmare Gate exerted on it.

Flooding the valley, a swarm of Nightmare Creatures could be seen.

"There are hundreds of them. Most are Awakened, but there are several Fallen abominations, as well. The Gate Guardian… has already emerged. It seems to be a Devil."

Sunny nodded.

"Correct. There are two hundred and seventy-four abominations, of them two hundred and forty-two are Awakened, while thirty-two are Fallen. The Guardian is indeed a Fallen Devil."

One of his shadows had snuck much closer to the swarm of Nightmare Creatures. It wasn't suffering from any interference, as well. Sunny, however…

Maintaining a calm facade, he shivered inwardly. The Gate was whispering into his ears, calling to him on a level much deeper than thought or emotion. He had experienced the Call before, but now that he was a Master, it became so much stronger and harder to resist.

Sunny had experienced this change almost instantly after the First Evacuation Army made landfall in Antarctica. While the other three convoys were sent to East Antarctica — the largest and most populated region of the Southern Quadrant — the one he had traveled with was meant to deliver troops to the Antarctic Center.

The Antarctic Center was a long, narrow, mountainous landmass that served as the administrative and industrial center of the continent. As such, it harbored many priority targets that had to be evacuated at all costs.

The first several days after the arrival of the army was pure chaos. The large city they entered, Falcon Scott, was in a state of utter havoc. Millions of people had just learned that their entire lives would be uprooted, or maybe even lost. While the local government forces had done their best to maintain order and prepare the civilians for evacuation, that did not amount to much in the end.

The situation had been only made worse by all the Gates that were opening near and within the city.

it used to be that one Gate opened

Then, one every day.

Army arrived, the situation was swiftly growing even

Awakened, Master, and

Sunny to adjust to this new, subtly maddening reality. He wouldn't be surprised if the prolonged exposure to

even if the world seemed

chunk of the army corps stayed behind to start converting it into an impregnable fortress. The northernmost city of the Antarctic Center was going to serve as its largest evacuation center, so it had

government forces, however, moved out and started their long march south. Their job was to reach other population centers, establish safe evacuation corridors, and start moving civilians through them

left with the field army and split up

later, Sunny's cohort was going to

they were escorting was already engaged in a low-intensity confrontation against a mass of Nightmare Creatures that had emerged from half-a-dozen Gates at the lower altitudes. To wipe the abominations faster, they needed to flank them, but the most suitable

to fight on such rough terrain was problematic, so the Irregulars

roof of the Rhino,

"We are in luck."

at him with inscrutable expressions. After a few moments of dead silence, the latter said in a

how can facing three hundred Nightmare

He shrugged.

call a low-threat Gate. Do you have

Samara frowned.

"Because… there's no Tyrant?"

with

them, they're just a herd. Things would have been much, much worse if all these creatures could coordinate their attack. Plus, we're smarter. That means that we can stack the odds in our

lingered for

right direction. The Nightmare Creatures have not caught our scent yet,