Shadow Slave

Sunny did not know what he expected to see in Falcon Scott. He didn't even know why he felt compelled to enter it… and yet, he did enter it, walking along the silent streets with a distant expression on his pale face. He came here precisely because he didn't want to, reluctant see the monument to his failure. He owed to himself, and to those people whom he had failed to protect, to witness their final resting place in all its horrid glory.

Perhaps it was simply because now that no one remembered him, Sunny wanted to at least remember himself. Even the things he would have wanted to forget.

The city was pretty much exactly like he had imagined.

It was a frozen graveyard. The fatal cold of the Winter Beast's blizzard had killed everyone in what seemed like mere moments. The corpses were hidden inside the buildings or buried under snow, so the city seemed utterly empty.

They had not suffered, at least…

Some buildings had collapsed in the past months under the weight of the ice. Others stood like colossal gravestones… or frigid mausoleums, maybe, for those who had perished inside. Strangely enough, no Nightmare Creatures seemed to have entered the city to feast on the corpses. It was as though the Winter Beast had marked this place as its territory.

Sunny passed a few familiar structures… the barracks where the Irregulars had been stationed, the government compound, the dormitory tower where Beth and Professor Obel had lived. His mind was flooded with memories, which only made his mental state deteriorate further.

It was a strange thing, to be alone.

Now that Sunny was alone, erased from existence, he felt no compulsion to control his emotions or maintain the illusion of normalcy. There was no one to witness him fall apart, anyway, and nobody to get the wrong impression of him. There were no tethers connecting him to the world, yes… but, as it turned out, those same tethers had been like supports that held his mind together.

He must have looked quite disturbing from the side.

Only now that Sunny was truly and utterly alone did he realize how much of his habits and behavior had been dictated by the need to blend in with his environment… with human society. Now, he didn't have to bother with maintaining acceptable expressions, keeping improper feelings from his gaze, and saying the right words.

Or saying anything at all, really.

«Maybe I should do all these things, anyway.»

giving in to this utter freedom would make him slip into some sort of derangement eventually, but

wall and spent some time gazing at the snowy

his body light enough to walk on the snow, and left the ghost of Falcon Scott

the last time he would ever see It. But that… was

was for

deathly cold of the unnatural snowstorm. Their

face seemed frozen,

at the horizon. The Winter Beast had retreated into the heart of the landmass, but the signs of its passage remained. Today, Antarctica looked much more like it had once,

below. He did not move, but shadows around him stirred and shot

moment later, It was gruesomely torn apart, a rain

but his

«Strange!»

not here the familiar voice of

grotesque bodies rushing to rip him to shreds. There was a whole swarm of abominations here…

other. There was no weapon in his hand, and no need for

of the abominations with his bare fist. A split second later, he was near another, piercing its chest with his hand and crushing its heart. In a blink of an eye, he was already somewhere else, brutally

most swift and brutal fashion… no, it couldn't even be called a fight.

seconds to obliterate the entire swarm. By the time he was done, the blood covering his onyx armor had

dead… but not all

had left one

beast was writhing on the snow, struggling to burrow into it as shadows held it in place. There

the ugly creature and then took

Who allowed

he crouched beside it and stared into its frenzied eyes with a