Shadow Slave

'Well... that's new...'

Sunny had lived through many unthinkable disasters, managing to survive in the most dire and seemingly inescapable situations. The improbable tales of his close brushes with death could probably fill a book.

However, he had definitely never had a titan fall on his head.

'What the hell is this?!'

The great scaled beast was plummeting to the ground, its body riddled with terrible wounds. One of its three long necks was severed, the other hung lifelessly, held by only a few threads of flesh. Of its wings, only one remained. A cloud of vile miasma trailed behind it like a harrowing cloak.

The creature was maybe two dozen seconds away from crashing into the ground.

Sunny froze for a moment, stunned by the frightening visage of the titan that had been cast down from the skies. He wasn't the only one - Nephis was looking up, too, and so were the soldiers. Even the Nightmare Creatures halted, raising their bestial heads to witness the fall of one of their lords.

'Not good.'

Neph was the first to react. Her voice rolled across the battlefield, pulling the Awakened out of their shocked inaction.

"Pull back! Fighting Retreat! Move if you want to live!"

same time, she sent

am going to stall the horde to cover

her words was clear. What Neph meant to say

Help me.

to the nature of their bond, she couldn't. Because that would

Sunny hesitated.

doubled their efforts to resist the flood

and assembled into a loose line. Then, it was the turn of those who had stayed behind to retreat. Like that,

and had the potential to result in many casualties. Every time you turned your back on the enemy in a battle, you were risking your life, after all. But with the help of the experienced Fire Keepers and the three Masters who had joined the formation, the soldiers managed to

changed, growing narrower. A few moments later, the fire seemed to be absorbed into her radiant

Sunny sighed.

I

was

the gate of the Shadow Lantern, he called forth all the

ground, blocking off a wide swath of the battlefield.

the same time, far to his left, Nephis unleashed her flames. The wrought fire that she had wrapped tightly around her armor and compressed into a furious mass of incinerating white radiance was suddenly devoid of the pressure of her control.

of white flame rolled from her staggering figure in a wide fan. It swallowed many ranks of Nightmare Creatures - some were torn to tiny pieces and turned to ash, crumbling into nothingness, some

to build a temporary dam that blocked the path of the abominations - half of the dam was the wall of shadows, the other was the

had spent the lion's share of their remaining essence to produce this wide-scale effect. The wall was