Shadow Slave

'Curse it...'

Sunny stared at the dark abyss of the canyon, his mind empty. A second passed in stunned silence, then another. Finally, he turned around and looked back, as though capable of gazing through the armored hull of the Rhino.

Which he was, in a way.

There, behind the heavy AFC, the other vehicles of the convoy had hit the brakes, barely avoiding slamming into each other. They were crowded on the mountain road, snow dancing in the narrow beams of the headlights.

And behind the convoy, the flood of darkness was rushing forward, stretching its tentacles in their direction.

They had maybe a minute before the mass of dark beetles reached the rear vehicle.

...This time, Sunny was not going to be able to protect it.

He might: manage to destroy hundreds, or even thousands of the ghastly insects, but: it would be like a drop in the ocean. None of his attacks would be able to deal the titanic wave of darkness any serious harm... especially because, as Sunny suspected, the beetles were not technically alive.

Not only did he not hear the Spell announcing the kills while slaying the few that had crawled into his armor, but the mere fact that the damned creatures traveled with him through the shadows meant that they were somehow akin to inanimate objects - Sunny was only able to carry those with him through Shadow Step, after all.

What good would it do to kill a bunch of bugs that were not even alive, to begin with?

"Captain! What... what do we do?! "

Sunny glanced at Luster, then said in a hoarse voice:

"What else? Run... we have to run..."

Then, he silently disappeared into the shadows. A moment later, Sunny was standing at the edge of the broken road, looking into the bottomless abyss below. The biting cold of the polar night caressed his skin, and the strong winds instantly tried to push him down.

beetles was devouring the cracked surface of the road, getting closer and closer, and the

down. There was no secondary road to skirt its edge or

Sunny gritted his teeth.

did the first thing that came to his mind, without even stopping to consider if it was possible to pull

impossible... he would just have to change

through his veins with tremendous speed, and then flowed outward. His

shadows covering its slopes moved, too. The deep murk drowning the deep canyon boiled, rushing upward. Two black pillars suddenly broke through the snow covering the sides of the shattered road

reached the edge of the broken bridge and bent, freezing for a moment above the bottomless canyon like a wave that

to spread forward and solidify, as if forming a dark path above the

no bridge for them to cross, Sunny would just

'Argh...'

it had come under strain. However, instead of slowing down, Sunny doubled his

two more pillars rose, and another surge of shadows stretched into the air, growing meter after meter to meet the first one. Long tentacles of darkness shot from the tops of the pillars, turning into unbreakable chains. From them, dozens of smaller chains

structural integrity of the hurried construct, and the speed with which he would be able to connect the two

not much

very few people in the world who knew more about forming connections out of chains. After all, he had spent so much time in the ruined Kingdom of Hope, traveling from one island to another across

together... inseparable... and stronger for

some philosophical lesson to learn from it all, but Sunny was too preoccupied to care. With a

"Drive!"

him with wide eyes, then glanced at the eerie black road that hung above the abyss, connected to nothing and only supported by dozens of

wheels soon abandoned the cracked asphalt of the broken road and

of shadows shook slightly... but

full weight of the Rhino, and then that of the next vehicles that

the hatch of the last vehicle and allowed its momentum to pull him with it, then climbed onto its roof and crashed down on the cold

seconds, Sunny glanced back, at the approaching wave