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

to stall the horde to cover

of her words was clear.

Help me.

to the nature of their bond, she

Sunny hesitated.

dashed back. Those who remained doubled their efforts to resist the flood of abominations,

turn of those who had stayed behind to retreat. Like that, alternating between running and fighting, the Fire Keepers, the

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 preserve their lives through the

The ring of flame that raged around her changed, growing narrower. A few moments later, the fire seemed to be

Sunny sighed.

I wish,

do today was make a suitable kind of impression. And the impression he was going for was that of someone who would never retreat from a trivial nuisance like

forth all the shadows that were stored inside, and

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

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

fan. It swallowed many ranks of Nightmare Creatures

the path of the abominations - half of the dam was the wall of shadows, the other was the wave of

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