Shadow Slave

It wasn’t simple to heal a Sacred being. It was especially difficult to heal a being as boundless and vast as Abundance, so Nephis had to focus on pouring her soothing flames into the titanic worm. Kneeling on the back of the gargantuan shade, with both hands pressed against its black hide, she was exposed and defenseless.

Luckily, Abundance was safely protected by Sunny and the Shadow Legion, so Nephis was under no immediate threat even as she mended the wounded godworm.

She could not rain fiery devastation upon the Deathless anymore, though. As a result, the pressure on the Shadow Legion gradually increased, and it kept increasing as seconds and minutes passed by.

The wings of the three-pronged formation were slowly melting in the tide of the undead. Sunny and his Shadows found themselves under a lot of scrutiny, as well. Sunny used his quarterstaff to shatter the skull of a skeletal warrior wearing the remains of a once-resplendent armor. The Deathless did not show any sign of slowing down, though, thrusting his rusty sword forward from an insidious angle. At the same time, a skeleton who was missing both legs crawled forward and grasped Sunny’s shin with sharp, bony fingers.

‘D—damn it!’

For a moment there, Sunny had thought that it was Eurys clawing at his ankle. Thankfully, Eurys was a normal skeleton of a bone-white variety, not the blackened horror of the Nightmare Desert.

Steeling his Will, Sunny turned his torso intangible and allowed the rusty sword to pass through him unobstructed. He felt the killing intent of the Deathless attempt to cut the very fabric of his being, regardless, and be denied — that was because Sunny’s Will was more tyrannical and dauntless than that of the undead warrior, both innately and because of Spirit Weave.

He grabbed the headless skeleton and tossed it aside, then brought his quarterstaff down, obliterating the hand clutching at his shin.

‘I do wonder, though…’

Why was it that Eurys and the other skeleton Nephis had encountered remained sane, while the rest of the Deathless had all lost their minds?

Actually, he knew the answer. Eurys briefly mentioned it when asking Sunny to kill him — the very reason he had traveled to the Shadow Realm was to hopefully die before the madness that consumed the rest of the Deathless took him as well… or to find the closest semblance of a proper death there was, at least.

If Eurys could be believed, that was.

Sunny assumed that both Eurys and Azarax had been soldiers of the Demon Legion and fought in the Nightmare Desert. At some point, they were captured by the Divine Host and crucified on a tree as punishment — he did not know what sins they had committed, but the two must have been truly reviled by the warriors of the gods, considering that no one else seemed to have been subjected to such a cruel form of execution.

However, the executioners just had to use one of Heart God’s sacred trees to string Eurys up. And, ironically enough, all of them fell to Shadow God’s curse not long after that.

It was not their own Will or their special nature that had kept Eurys and Azarax sane. Instead, it was the tree — the sacred tree they had been crucified on.

And once Nephis took Eurys off the tree, it was only a matter of time before he was to become just as mindless as the rest of the Deathless.

‘I wonder if I’ll be able to kill him before that…’

Eurys did not deserve a merciful death — in fact, he deserved far worse than what happened to him, considering what he had done. But a promise was a promise. Sunny had promised to do his best to kill the ancient skeleton, so he felt obligated to do just that.

‘I wonder if I can live long enough to kill him, as well.’

Sunny brought his fist down on the skeleton who had grabbed his leg. There was a deafening thunderclap, and a devastating shockwave rolled outward from the point where his fist crushed the ancient bones and strike the sand. The ground quaked, numerous dunes collapsing like flowing waves.

The under warrior was torn apart.

The fingers of his one remaining hand were still moving weakly, but he was in no condition to threaten the Shadow Legion anymore.

Sunny was already retreating into the shadows, rushing to face a different adversary. Saint, Slayer, and Serpent were pulling their weight… but even they were slowly starting to drown in the vicious waves of the Deathless. He called upon a few of the stronger shades to move forward and support them, which bought Nephis and Abundance more time.

Eventually, the Sacred worm was mended enough to last for a while without her healing flames, so Nephis soared into the skies again.

Abundance crawled forward, devouring the Deathless. After a while, it was severely wounded once again, and she landed on its back to heal it.

The cycle continued several times, making Sunny worry about her.

Neph’s Aspect was powerful, but using it too much took a toll on her. Now, she was pouring her powers both into clearing vast swathes of the weaker Deathless and into healing Abundance, which meant that she was abusing her Aspect without a second of respite.

It was exhausting to watch.

Sunny himself was not quite exhausted yet, but he was feeling fatigued as well.

Most importantly, the wings of the Shadow Legion were battered and broken, with innumerable shades having already been sent back into the soothing darkness of his soul. They couldn’t reliably keep the Deathless from reaching the core of the formation anymore, so the strongest shades whom Sunny had kept there, in reserve, had to engage the undead horrors as well.

Still, they had made it far into the desert. As a Sacred being, Abundance moved with tremendous speed, so it devoured not only the Deathless, but also distance.

‘The wings are going to entirely collapse soon, though.’

Sunny evaluated the situation, wondering if he would have to employ a different strategy or sacrifice something else.

At that moment, however, he noticed something that made him halt for a moment.

Out there, in the east…

A thin line of pale lilac had appeared above the horizon.

The endless night was finally coming to a conclusion. The dawn was coming.

The Deathless seemed to have felt it as well, as they launched an especially ferocious assault on the Shadow Legion. Sunny’s shades stood their ground even as they were destroyed, refusing to let the adversary reach Abundance.

And eventually, the Deathless retreated.

The endless horde of blackened undead came to a halt, all of them standing motionlessly and regarding the invaders with an eerie, heavy malice in their empty sockets.

Then, the Deathless slowly sank into the sand, disappearing without a trace.

Sunny let out a long sigh and fell to his knees, breathing heavily.

‘That… was only the first night’

Sunlight spilled over the horizon, painting the Nightmare Desert into a beautiful mixture of pink and brilliant gold.

A warm wind caressed his face, promising a long day of unbearable heat.

Nephis landed softly near him, her silver hair shining in the light of dawn.

Sunny glanced up at her.

“I am not imagining it, right? It’s closer?” He was talking about the Tomb of Ariel, naturally.

However, to his surprise, Nephis was not looking at the distant silhouette of the black pyramid. Instead, her concerned gaze was aimed at something else.

Following it, Sunny saw something unexpected.

Out there in the distance, countered by the rising sun, the branches of a tall tree were swaying above the shimmering sand.