Shadow Slave

The horror he felt was not something that could be overcome by courage, bravery, or even by having a depth of experience facing harrowing things. Not even by being one of those things yourself.

Because its source was not something that had a rational reason or could be overcome, to begin with. Instead, it was simply a natural reaction of a lesser being who found itself in the presence of the Forgotten God… of Nightmare God, the God of Corruption. The dreaming herald of the Void.

Even if what they were approaching was not the Forgotten God himself but merely the Seed of Nightmare where he was imprisoned, lulled to slumber by the Spell, their spirits simply could not resist being horrified.

It was a fear that came not from their minds, bodies, or even souls. Instead, it was a fear that was born from the very essence of their beings, like an instinctual response that could not be controlled consciously. And it was growing more and more devastating the closer to the Seventh Seed they came.

Sunny’s hands trembled, making him miss a shot.

‘Curses!’

He froze, momentarily overwhelmed by bestial panic.

Then, with a groan, he forced himself to draw the bow again.

‘The Call, the Seventh Seed, the Nightmare Butterflies… come get me, damn it! I’ll kill you all…’

In the depths of his half-broken, dazed state, Sunny fell back on something that had never failed him before.

Spite.

He was full of spiteful anger. The harder the world hit him, the angrier he was, the more he wanted to strike back. To make the world hurt just as much as it hurt him — no, more. A hundred times more!

So, that was what Sunny did.

His groan turned into a growl. Grinding his teeth, he channeled his animalistic fear into wrath and aggression. Driven into a frenzy by the Call, he made the Nightmare Butterflies a target of his frenzy instead of the Seeds.

‘Die, you bastards…’

Far away, one of his incarnations took Slayer into his dark embrace and joined her in the merciless, malevolent slaughter. Another avatar flew side by side with the abyssal black dragon, defending her from the Nightmare Butterflies that aimed to tear her apart.

On the deck of the Chain Breaker, an avatar was deftly steering the ship. His eyes were still covered by the blindfold, but he managed just fine by relying on shadow sense.

Four other incarnations were fighting to protect the ship. Two of them joined Saint as bowmen, while two more led the shades of the Nightmare Butterflies in the battle against their abominable kin.

The higher the flying ship climbed, the more of the Great Nightmare Creatures broke through the barrier of the three defenders — Nephis, Slayer, and the Puppeteer.

And the more those three defenders suffered, as well.

‘How much longer?’

Sunny could not see how far they had risen, and was too afraid to extend his shadow sense upward to find the four titanic scars left on the surface of the Tomb of Ariel by the claws of some unknown, unholy creature.

But he knew that if they didn’t reach those marks soon, they were going to die.

The more Nightmare Butterflies he and those who served him killed, the more shades of those eerie creatures he could summon — and those shades, in turn, could kill more of their terrifying kind and conscript them in the Shadow Legion.

That was how it was supposed to work in theory, at least, creating a vicious cycle. And it had worked, indeed… for a short while.

But as the Chain Breaker dove into the depths of the terrifying swarm, things began to change.

At first, there were simply more Nightmare Butterflies reaching Sunny and his shades. Sunny and Saint shot them out of the sky, while his two winged incarnations sliced those who survived apart, cutting through the hurricane winds raised by countless enormous wings beating chaotically. His shades tore apart the few that had gotten past him.

None reached the Chain Breaker.

However, as the density of the ghastly swarm increased and the three vanguards of the flying ship sustained more damage, the situation turned. The arrows Sunny and Saint sent into the swarm were like a drop in the ocean. His winged incarnations were drowning in a torrent of the Great abominations, while his shades began to suffer casualties as well — because their kin fought back.

He lost a few shades at first, then more. And then, slowly, he began to lose the Shadow Butterflies faster than new shades were being added to the Shadow Legion.

By then, his winged incarnations were not eradicating the Nightmare Butterflies who had gotten through the three defenders — they were trying to survive in the flood of them instead.

The first layer of defense around the Chain Breaker became ineffectual, the second was insufficient, and the third was barely holding on.

It was only a matter of time before the first of the Nightmare Butterflies crashed into the Chain Breaker, leaving deep grooves on its wooden hull.

“Damn it!”

Sunny discarded his bow and jumped overboard, landing on the wing of the eerie creature.

It took him no more than a second to slide down to its body and behead the eerie creature…

But by then, another abomination was already plummeting onto the deck.

That one was severed into nine equal parts by the seven black swords controlled by Serpent, but there were already more on the way.

From that point forward, the battle against the swarm of Nightmare Butterflies turned from simply terrifying to desperate.

And the Call… the Call was growing louder. Sunny groaned, covering his ears.

That cost him dearly.

Far away, an incarnation of him that was fighting side by side with Slayer was a moment too slow to dodge a scythe-like limb of a Nightmare Butterfly. It struck him in the chest, where the jadelike metal of the Mantle had already been damaged by Azarax.

The armor held — just barely — but the impact was terrifying enough to damage his internal organs…. a little. They were altered and improved by Flesh Weave, after all.

But he was also tossed into the air and lost control of his flight as a result, failing to protect himself from another abomination. And when that one struck him, the Mantle failed to stop the blow.

The ghastly proboscis of the Nightmare Butterfly — a long, hollow, needle-like trunk that served them as mouths — pierced Sunny’s chest and exited from his back, impaling him like a pinned insect.

The damage was nearly fatal, or at least would have been to someone without a Lineage. Even the tenacious nature of the Weave, however, could not contend against the ghastly damage Sunny had received. His indestructible ribs were cracked and bent out of position, his lungs were completely destroyed, his heart was torn apart, and his spine was severely damaged.

With blood streaming from his mouth, Sunny gritted his teeth and severed the proboscis, falling away from the reeling Nightmare Butterfly.

The pain was… manageable.

The damage he sustained, however, was not.

He had no choice but to push his mangled body toward Slayer and turn into a shadow, wrapping his mutilated incarnation around her — that was all that avatar of him could do now, unless he wanted to lose it.

The other defenders of the Chain Breaker were not doing much better.

Slayer was just as full of murderous malice as always, but her draconic body was now almost entirely shrouded in ghostly smoke that trailed from countless wounds on it. She had lost one of her eyes, and many fangs in her merciless maw had shattered. One of her mighty legs was viciously broken, black bones protruding from the shredded flesh, her fearsome claws hanging limp. Now, that broken limb was nothing but a useless burden that slowed her down. Twisting her body, Slayer bit into the uselessly dangling limb and tore it off in one vicious movement, burning it to ash before continuing the battle.

Far away, the Puppeteer was riddled with terrifying wounds, several Nightmare Butterflies crawling on his body, ripping those wounds wide open and delivering new ones. One of its wings was damaged, while the other was on the verge of being torn off. The storm of black silk that used to protect it was tattered and torn, as well, the abominations gnawing on the ethereal strings like locusts.

And Nephis…

Nephis had eradicated more of the Nightmare Butterflies than the rest of the defenders of the Chain Breaker combined, serving as the snowpiercer of their small aerial fleet.

But it was not because she was overwhelmingly more powerful than the Great abominations. She was of the same Rank, after all, which meant that just like she could easily wound and destroy them, so could they wound and destroy her. Nephis could heal most of the wounds the Butterflies dealt her, but if she was killed in one blow, no amount of white flame was going to save her… so, even if killing her instantly was a difficult task, she was only one mistake away from being destroyed. And when there were countless Great abominations around her, each capable of ending her with one lucky strike, making a mistake was far too easy.

Worse, she was also being driven mad by the Call, just like Sunny. Her spirit was in the throes of primal fear, just like his… and on top of that, she had to endure the harrowing pain of her soul being burned to cinders and restored from the ash anew, torn apart and mended by flame over and over again without a single moment of respite.

All that crushing torment was more than enough to burn away anyone’s mind and break them… or change them into something new and unrecognizable, something awesome and unstoppable. Nephis had not been stopped yet — but she was not unstoppable, either.

Even as she burned a path to the top of the pyramid, her melodious voice thundering the Names of Flame and Destruction from the burning sky, her essence was swiftly dwindling.

She had been able to replenish it swiftly at first by destroying her soul cores, but soon enough, even that stopped being enough to make up for the essence she was spending to destroy the Nightmare Butterflies. Nephis was approaching the state of complete essence exhaustion…

And if she did, even her Dormant Ability would fall into a slumber, prohibiting her from mending the horrible wounds dealt to her by the endless abominations and by her own fiery Aspect.

That moment was approaching swiftly.