Shadow Slave

In the cold darkness, a small procession of vehicles was climbing an old and battered mountain road. The road clung precariously to the stone slope, so narrow that the wheels of the transports barely fit on its cracked surface.

Looking through the windows to their right, all the refugees could see was a sheer drop. It was as though they were driving on nothing, a few centimeters away from plummeting to their deaths. From time to time, a stray rock would be pushed off the road by the wheels of the slowly moving vehicles, and then fall down, ricocheting off the cliffs with startling clangor.

The sound traveled far through the deep gorge, reflecting from its stone walls as it grew louder and louder. For the frightened refugees, it seemed as deafening as thunder.

Their fear was only made worse by the darkness. The headlights of the transports cut wide swaths through it, but beyond that, the night was impenetrable and oppressive. The drivers were already struggling with keeping the vehicles on the narrow road, and with most of it obscured by the chilling gloom, their task seemed all but impossible.

Traveling through the mountains at night was an ill-advised and perilous affair. It was a fool's errand.

'...Who's the fool, then?'

Studying sensor feeds in the command suite of the Rhino, Sunny was mentally calculating the rate of their progress. No matter how he thought about it, the convoy's speed was appallingly slow.

Sadly, it couldn't be helped.

The powerful APC was moving at the head of the column, clearing the path for the other vehicles. Its ram was lowered and once again serving to push through the snow. From time to time, the Rhino had to remove other obstacles from the road, as well - stone debris, large boulders, and massive chunks of ice that had split from the glacier at the peak of the mountain.

good job of it, for the most part. Very rarely did they stumble on something that the Rhino could not move through or push away. In these instances, the whole convoy had to come to a halt and wait for Sunny to remove the obstacle

road, and even if there were, he would simply cut through them with the Sin

that he enjoyed listening

cold, the precarious nature of the old mountain roads, the rough state of the area after the recent earthquake... none of it

natural side of things. Of

was teeming with

question of time before they had to fight. With how much noise they were making

However, Saint had been able to kill the few solitary Nightmare Creatures without drawing too much attention. Sunny was using her as an outrider, so she traveled apart

last them, though. Sunny felt as though the envelope of safety around

he and his soldiers could see through the darkness. If they were as blind as the mundane soldiers protecting the convoy, Sunny would have probably gone mad by now. As it was, he remained surprisingly calm and

situation was both simple and

of things at his disposal. One of them was assets - Saint and Nightmare, himself, the Irregulars, and the mundane soldiers.

other was the threats from within - people succumbing to the Spell or going mad, which he could mitigate through various measures. The third was the environment itself. The world could easily kill them without even needing the help

of danger, the most dire one - the unforeseen threats. That one could

the correct way, in order to protect his dependents from the danger. However, even if he made all the right decisions, nothing stopped a new Gate from opening right in the middle of the convoy, so... there

And on top of it all, we're too

from an attack if need be, they were also desperately behind schedule. At that rate, the refugees would have

nothing I can do