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.

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

very few things that Sunny could not throw off the road, and even if there were, he would simply cut through them with the

listening to its invasive

the old mountain roads, the rough state of the

just the natural side of things. Of course, there were other threats around

region was teeming with

now, Sunny had managed to lead the convoy past the large swarms of abominations, but it was only a question of time before they had to fight. With how

too much attention. Sunny was using her as an outrider, so she traveled apart from

would last them, though. Sunny felt as though the envelope of safety around the convoy was getting smaller and

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

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

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. The world could easily kill them without even needing the help of the abominations,

most dire one - the unforeseen threats. That one could

all the right decisions, nothing stopped a new Gate from opening right in the middle of the convoy, so...

And on top of it all, we're too

also desperately behind schedule. At

I can do