Shadow Slave

"Move, monster!"

An Ascended of Clan Valor had fear in his eyes as he pushed Mordret in the back with the butt of his spear. Mordret had already been walking as fast as he could, so the forceful push made him stumble and fall.

The blistering white sand burned his mangled face.

He sighed, then struggled to stand up.

One of his eyes was gone, and he had only one hand left. His Reflections had all been destroyed. His body was in a sorry state...

Even though Mordret had managed to escape the rampage of the Great being, his luck in the Nightmare Desert was awful. Soon after entering it, he stumbled on the pursuing Gate Guardian, and after barely surviving that unfortunate encounter, a band of surviving Masters of Clan Valor ambushed and overpowered him.

He had failed to finish off his sister, too.

'A pity.'

Now, his arms were bound behind his back with enchanted shackles. Even if he wanted to abandon his original body, he was temporarily trapped within it... the heavy chains were probably not the tool Morgan had planned to imprison him with, but they too were forged by his father.

Getting out of the shackles was going to be troublesome. If anything, though, having only one hand left could help with that.

"Stand up!"

Mordret sighed in exasperation.

"I'm trying... really now, is this how you treat a prince of Valor?"

Instead of the answer, the Master angrily hit him in the ribs.

Mordret plopped back into the scorching sand.

Another voice resounded from somewhere above:

"Stop it! You're only slowing us down... the Skinwalker has to be drawing close. If we want to survive, we need to reach the Citadel as soon as possible."

that was the only reason that the stragglers of Clan Valor had kept him alive - they wanted Mordret

was vast, but with the Echo mounts, the band of survivors had been able to traverse a great deal of distance in the past day. Their luck was also not too bad - the area where the Call had pulled them was not that far

help, they managed to make

stretch, however, had

the Ascended had encountered the Skinwalker, too. In fact, the ones

reaching the Black Skull, too. Where

for a

We're already

forward, navigating between white dunes and

finally saw the giant black skull appear in the distance. The

silently took

He shook his head.

asked him where the Citadel was, and he led them

should have asked another

question was really

the corpses of the Awakened inside the Black Skull

was that he had

started emerging from inside the giant black skull. One, two,

corpse was also there, walking at the

but they had actually

'Time to run.'

to fall and roll down the slope of a tall white

***

others. Together, they made their way through the desert, heading for the spot where he had left the other

many powerful Nightmare Creatures around, and even though most of them were mesmerized by the call

they had to fight were of the Great Rank. Each

it was a

the white desert, and under terrible mental strain

knew whether the corpse of Master Xu was on their trail or not... but just the possibility of meeting the creature

they fought were all powerful

Nephis seemed to be affected the least.

flawlessly white expanse of white dunes, she shook her