Shadow Slave

"What the hell is she doing?!"

Sunny dodged a fearsome attack, feeling the wind raised by the abomination's spear throw his hair into disarray. As a chill crept up his spine, he sidestepped a black tentacle that insidiously shot at him from beneath the water, and prepared to dive into the shadows to come to Cassie's aid.

However, he did not get a chance to.

Right at that moment, the water which he had been using for footing suddenly tore free of his control. With no time to react, Sunny plunged into its cold embrace. This section of the dark hall was not flooded too terribly, but still, a moment later he was submerged up to his chest.

'Curse it...'

Sunny did not have to look around to know what had happened. One of the Corrupted Devils leading the Drowned was targeting him, using some profane power to wrestle the dark waters from his control. He did not possess a Domain yet, after all, so whatever connection to the element the Crown of Twilight provided him with was weak and rudimentary.

The situation was not good. Currently, Sunny was only augmented by a couple of his five shadows and some of Neph's flame. Because of the synergy between the two, he was much stronger than he would have been otherwise - enough so to push his body through water with sufficient speed.

But not enough speed to keep the same frantic cadence of combat.

'That Devil has to die, fast...'

Distracted by his own predicament, he had to delay joining Cassie in the battle against the sybil.

...

Up on the dais overseeing the flooded hall, meanwhile, the Defiled creature and the blind seer continued to stand opposite of each other without movement. Only the sybil's appalling tentacles were swaying subtly, her monstrous figure reflected in the polished metal of Cassie's light cuirass.

was as though something utterly dark and dreadful was seething, unseen, beneath

straight at the Defiled monstrosity. Her beautiful face was

remaining motionless like an ice sculpture, her

because she was using her Awakened Ability to its utter limit, well past it even. If Sunny was capable of reading thoughts, he would have known that the blind girl was in a state of absolute, pristine battle clarity. Time moved slowly for her, and a thousand thoughts were being born in

or rather, a multitude

By activating her Awakened Ability, Cassie could enter a state similar to existing in two separate moments of time - one current, the other

incredibly strange, disorienting, and mentally straining. It had taken her a long time

in the flooded temple, however, the heavy

Cassie was torn between different versions of possible futures instead of one definite one. Instead of two moments in time, she existed in the present and in several fragmented variants of the

...

grown used to

was arduous, but not

and make use of it, as

'A step forward.'

took a swift step forward, and then dashed at the Defiled sybil with stunning speed. The Quiet Dancer flashed, diving under one of the deadly tentacles and aiming to hit

it flashed

same time, the slender rapier was tossed aside,

into the abomination's flesh, but failed to do

And then...

target. The dark tentacles wrapped around her entire body. Her bones shattered, ripping the flesh apart. She opened her mouth to

Death was not kind.