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.

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

slopes that stretched far, far down. There was no secondary road to skirt its edge or descend to its bottom, only the broken bridge and the vast schism separating the fleet from the opposite

Sunny gritted his teeth.

not much time to think, so he did the first thing that came

he would just have

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

the deep canyon boiled, rushing upward. Two black pillars suddenly broke through the snow covering the sides of the shattered road and rose into the

same time, the tide of shadows rushing from below reached the edge of the broken bridge and bent, freezing for a moment above the bottomless canyon like

instead of breaking, the shadows continued to spread forward and solidify,

Sunny would just have to build

'Argh...'

was expending so much essence that his soul felt as if it had come under strain. However, instead of slowing down,

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 fell, fusing into

worried about the structural integrity of the hurried construct, and the speed with which

not much

there were 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

together... inseparable... and stronger for

was probably some philosophical lesson to learn from it all, but Sunny was too preoccupied to care. With a groan, he stepped aside and waved to Luster, who

"Drive!"

wide eyes, then glanced at the eerie black road that hung above the abyss, connected

APC rolling forward. Its massive wheels soon abandoned the cracked asphalt of the

path of shadows shook

the Rhino, and then that of the next vehicles that drove onto it. And

built by Sunny. He grabbed the metal handle on the hatch of

glanced back, at the approaching wave of