Shadow Slave

For a moment or two, Sunny's mind was empty. He crawled back, looking up at the familiar figure towering above him.

Verne… it was Verne. There was no mistake.

…Or something wearing Verne's corpse, at least.

His shadow was much more vast and dreadful than a human's shadow was supposed to be.

The hollow gaze of the dead Master pursued Sunny, his face still and unmoving like a mask. Behind him, the dark waves stirred, and more figures rose from the water. Men, women… dozens of them, hundreds even. They marched forward like an army of the dead, silent and emotionless, their eyes drowning in darkness.

All their shadows were wrong.

The people of LO49 that Sunny had left to die. He recognized all of them, staring at the undulating surface of the ocean in horror.

'The… the Terror…'

Strangely, it was the contemptuous laugh of the cursed sword that shattered his paralysis.

"Look, Lost from Light… your sins have come to haunt you!"

Sunny shuddered, coming to his senses.

'What sins, you bastard? I did everything I could to save them!'

The insidious voice laughed again, then whispered, its hissing words falling like drops of poison:

"Weakness is also a sin, you pitiful worm… it is the greatest sin of them all…"

rose to his feet and froze for a

without being torn to shreds by the defensive

garrison. Bloodwave and the Awakened of the House of Night were also there, protecting the anchored ships and overseeing the loading

to put a dent

the slowly advancing figures of the drowned residents of LO49, the black water seethed and boiled, releasing even more thralls. Nightmare Creatures… thousands of them… were rising from the waves, all moving

steeled himself and raised the

with even more already on the ships. Thankfully, the elevator platforms leading to Falcon Scott were empty, the evacuation stopped briefly on account of

above, illuminating the quiet horde. A instant later,

But it didn't.

spotlights moved on, as if not noticing anything. Instead of an obliterating onslaught

of the

chill run down

'The hex…'

a chance to

a human. Sunny shifted, trying to deflect the incoming attack, but his reaction was too slow. A devastating blow sent him flying backwards, the breath knocked out of him entirely. He crashed to the ground and rolled, feeling cold

'Curse it…'

the thralls had been before falling prey to the

a neglectful fool, aren't

his teeth. Indeed, he was… he had already known that the hexed residents were capable of showing

Awakened, close to a thousand mundane soldiers, several hundreds of civilians… and thousands upon thousands of Nightmare Creatures, all controlled

blind to their

was not

for the first time in a long while, Sunny forced himself to rise

'No, not everyone…'

be ignoring the Terror's thralls, some were still firing their rifles. That meant that the creature's hex was not