Shadow Slave

"Before the battle, Morgan had said that she would have been certain of Valor's victory if not for Mordret's Reflections. Now that her final Echo had revealed itself, Sunny finally understood what she meant.

The arrival of the worm titan instantly changed the situation on the battlefield, but even such a creature was not enough to spell certain defeat for the forces of Clan Song.

...A mere Corrupted Titan would not have been able to doom the monstrous beings gathered on the desolate Antarctic plain today, and an Echo of one was tremendously powerful, but not nearly as dreadful as the real thing would have been.

So, even though the situation had changed, the outcome of the battle still hung in fragile balance.

The dead were rising to assist the outnumbered warriors of Valor. The main body of the Echo itself had to be dealt with, as well.

Instead of quelling the furious bloodshed, the arrival of the abominable worm only seemed to drive the chaos to a new, inconceivable level.

One thing it did manage to achieve instantly, though, was force Beastmaster to finally reveal herself.

Sunny felt her presence before he saw her.

It was as though an invisible hammer fell from the sky, pressing every soldier of Clan Valot into the ground. The Awakened, who had been fighting with indomitable resolve up until now, suddenly staggered and swayed. Their movements grew sluggish and strained.

'Aargh...'

Sunny gritted his teeth as he shook off the effects of the mental assault. Even his incredible resistance against mind attacks had been insufficient to fully deflect Beastmaster's diabolical power... the poor warriors of Clan Valor stood no chance against it.

Their only saving grace was that the enchantress was forced to spread herself thin to influence a thousand powerful Awakened at the same time. Their concentration was broken, and their strength was severely diminished, but at least they survived - if the task in front of the daughter of Ki Song had been less enormous, she would have probably managed to either subjugate them or outright shatter their minds.

The most frightening thing about it, though, was that the ordinary warriors were not even her main target.

Sunny saw it from the corner of his eye... but once he did, he couldn't look away.

appeared on the battlefield, standing calmly in front of the ravaged span of it where Whispering Blade had been fighting against the Reflections. Sunny did not know if she had used

mesmerizing. But now, it was simply

that looking at

was as though Sunny's soul

'Damn it...'

that had been fighting Whispering Blade dashed away to confront the titanic

enemy could not be seen. The ground around her suddenly exploded, and she was obscured by a cloud of dust. Something moved within that cloud, and a devastating shockwave spread outward, sending Awakened warriors and enthralled Nightmare Creatures flying. A moment later,

invisible swords - he was suddenly not sure that he was qualified. How was he supposed to intrude upon a battle that he could

'Later.'

he still had an unfinished

of Valor, but Beastmaster's calamitous assault had restored the lethal equilibrium between

was still in

using the Sin of Solace to cut down one of the Masters who had attacked him before - the one capable of creating javelins of

time, the cursed sword laughed

his way through the ring of enemies surrounding Sky

corpses, her armor battered and broken. Her sword was covered in a net of cracks, and her

full of pain and exhaustion,

couldn't have been alright after bearing the brunt of Beastmaster's power for

that was bringing down its stinger on Sky Tide's cracked sword. The two of them fell to the ground, and the Sin of Solace hissed,

no retaliation from the Nightmare Creature, because Saint Tyris had pierced its neck

she pulled her sword out of the thrall's corpse and braced it to block an Aspect Ability attack made by one of

into a rain of radiant sparks. She was tossed back

'You bastards...'

his feet, full of

Clan Song would have been enjoyable, but there were too many of them around, and