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.

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 that the APC could not handle safely

if there were, he would simply cut through them with the Sin of Solace. The jade blade of the beautiful jian was sharp enough to

he enjoyed listening to its invasive

precarious nature of the old mountain roads, the rough state of the

things. Of course, there were other threats around them,

whole region was

swarms of abominations, but it was only a question of time before they had to fight. With how much noise they were making and how much light they were producing, it

solitary Nightmare Creatures without drawing too much attention. Sunny was using her as an outrider, so

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

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

was both simple and

were two types of things at his disposal. One of them was assets - Saint and Nightmare, himself, the Irregulars, and the mundane soldiers. The other was dependents - the refugees, as well as Professor Obel

and either avoid or slay. The 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.

one - the unforeseen threats. That one could not be

all the right decisions, nothing stopped a new Gate from opening right in the

top of it all, we're too

also desperately behind schedule. At that rate, the refugees would have to spend a

nothing I can