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.»

this utter freedom would make him slip into some sort

remains of the city wall and spent some time gazing at the snowy

enough to walk on the snow, and left the ghost

would ever

was for the

First Evacuation Army had died, killed by the deathly cold of the unnatural snowstorm. Their frozen figures were still there, those closest laying on

face seemed frozen,

looking 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, frigid and encased in ice. It was

moved under the snow, and a hideous creature lunged at him from below. He

a rain of hot blood falling on Sunny like

but his eyes

«Strange!»

was still strange, to kill a Nightmare Creature and not here the familiar voice of the Spell announce its Rank, Class, and

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

fast that it almost seemed as if he simply disappeared in one place and appeared in the other. There was no weapon in his hand, and no need for one, either. The gauntlets of the

battle style of the Barrow Wraiths, Sunny crushed the skull of one of the abominations with his bare fist. A split second later, he was near another, piercing

most swift and brutal fashion… no, it couldn't even be called a fight. He wasn't a fighter right now — he was

swarm. By the time he was done, the blood

Nightmare Creatures were dead… but not

had left one

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

creature and

are you going? Who allowed you

it and stared into its