Shadow Slave

1522 Break of Dawn

Driven to madness by wrath, Sunny was forcing his mangled body to move. His mind was muddled by fury and pain, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stand up, for some reason.

An inferno of dark, malignant rage was consuming his aching heart.

'No, no, no!'

The dragon… the hateful worm… was laying dead on the wet stones, stolen from him. Silver blood was pouring from his opened maw and obliterated eye, slowly spreading across the ruined courtyard. If only there had been more time... if only no one had interfered in their fight... Sunny would have been able to slay the Dread Lord himself. He knew he would.

But the dragon was gone.

And now that he was gone, Sunny's suffocating fury needed a new target.

'Kill, kill them… kill them all… I'll kill them…'

He could sense several shapes through the shadows. The loathsome fly that had stolen his prey, the crippled fiend who had come from the water, and a macabre abomination that had been spawned by a tainted shard of the fiend's soul.

And the most odious of them all… a pale young man wearing a nebulous black mantle, who was looking at him mockingly with a derisive smile.

"Look at you, fool. Mad as a hatter. How pathetic… how familiar… how distasteful..."

Sunny growled.

The abomination was staggering toward him, piercing him with the demented gaze of its rotten eyes. Glass claws were growing from its stump, and twisted fangs were growing from its bloodied maw.

He grinned.

'Good, good…'

He couldn't stand up, for the moment, so the creature was graciously delivering itself to him. Sunny was going to enjoy tearing it apart.

But before he could, a slender rapier pierced the abomination's chest, and a radiant hand grasped its head. The creature glowed with incandescent light, being incinerated from within, and then shattered like a broken mirror.

He howled, his hoarse voice full of indescribable rage.

'No, no!'

another from him! Thieves,

had to kill them, rip

a breathtaking young woman looking at him silently from above, her beautiful face devoid of emotion. Her

"I'll… destroy you…"

apart, but his muddled mind failed to contain the intricate patterns of the manifested forms. The

woman studied him for a few moments, then kneeled and put a hand on his

made Sunny

to…

eyes flashed in his

though Sunny wanted nothing more than to see the young woman die, he

spoke, her voice sounding both strange and

"Sunny…"

gathered his strength, preparing to

"Dismiss your crown."

that a more profound rage existed, but when he heard those words, his entire being ignited with a harrowing fury. The thought of

odious dragon, and vaster than even the hatred

However…

authority contained in the voice of the

been oppressive and

a boundless abyss between nearly

very soul respond to the young woman's order, following it obediently, as if he had no will of his own. He felt broken and violated, which only made his

though, he still could not

'She… she ordered me.'

Twilight dissolved into a

with it, Sunny's frenzied wrath disappeared as

Leaving behind only horror.

Confusion, too… and pain.

the pain he had been ignoring caught up with Sunny, making him shudder and let out a

consumed

a soft glow, and its comforting warmth chased the pain away. A wave of cleansing white flame spread through his body, mending his broken flesh

sense of relief it brought was

added

left laying on the ground, disoriented and feeling lost. Everything that had happened since he activated the [King's Resentment] enchantment of the Crown of Twilight was

'...What happened?'

he forced himself to raise his

the Starlight Legion Armor, for some