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!"

time, she sent Sunny a mental

stall the horde to cover the retreat. You...

words was clear. What Neph meant

Help me.

their bond, she

Sunny hesitated.

every second Awakened turned around and dashed back. Those who remained doubled their efforts to resist the flood of abominations, who had

ran for a few seconds, they turned around and assembled into a loose line. Then, it was the turn of those who had stayed behind to retreat. Like that, alternating between running and fighting, the Fire Keepers, the

the enemy in a battle, you were risking your life, after all. But with the help of the

seemed to be absorbed into her radiant figure. Clad in black armor and wreathed in blinding white flames,

Sunny sighed.

I

he wished to do today was make a suitable kind of impression. And the impression he was going for was that of someone who would

Lantern, he called forth all the shadows that were stored inside, and sent them

of shadows suddenly rose from the ground, blocking off a wide swath of the battlefield. The tide

unleashed her flames. The wrought fire that she had wrapped tightly around her armor and compressed into a furious mass of incinerating white

wide fan. It swallowed many ranks of

build a temporary dam that blocked the path of the abominations - half of the

last long, and both of them had spent the lion's share of their remaining essence to produce this wide-scale effect. The wall was already cracking, and