Shadow Slave

Jet could have sensed the advance of the ghostly armada even with her eyes closed. That was because the moment the captain of the Dutchman commanded his spectral fleet to sail forth, the winds vanished, plunging the world into a dead calm.

All around the Night Garden, the water was restless because of the harrowing battle happening in the depths, but further away, it turned still and glasslike, reflecting the boundless sky like a vast mirror.

There was no wind, and yet, the wall of mist continued to roll forward from the south, slowly devouring the world. The sails of the ghostly ships were swelling, and the ethereal vessels flew forward across the still surface of the motionless sea.

The tentacles of the Old Tom rose from the water on one side of the Night Garden, while from the other, the wraith armada swiftly shortened the distance, ghostly fires igniting on the dimly glowing decks.

Jet grimaced.

‘They just had to attack at the same time, damn it...”

But then again, maybe they did.

The race to the Eternal City was coming to an end, after all. They were no more than a day or two away from reaching the finish line — countless contenders had perished along the way, and only the strongest ones remained.

Old Tom, the Dutchman, and the Night Garden were among those. Today was their last chance to dispose of the competition, so it was no wonder that the horror of the depths and the nebulous wraith commanding the Dutchman chose to attack.

Honestly, if Jet had a reliable way of tracking either of these foes, she would have been tempted to hunt them down herself — she and the Lord of Shadows had already eradicated more than a few rival contenders that way, leaving the waters of the Stormsea red with blood.

”Fire!”

Aether’s command was relayed to the cannon crews, and the Ascended activated the enchantments of the great siege weapons.

Jet took a step back and braced herself as the obsidian barrel beneath her shuddered and roared, sending an enormous ball of luminous iron flying forward with harrowing speed.

The force unleashed by the sorcery of the Lord of Shadows was so terrible that the enormous cannon, weighing hundreds of tons, rolled a few metres back — it would have rolled further, too, if not for black chains that kept it in place.

Jet easily maintained her balance on top of it, watching the radiant cannonball streak across the sky. The thunderous roar of twenty-four of these cannons firing in quick succession was both deafening and violent, but she endured the palpable sonic shock of it as well.

It was like music to her ears.

A powerful gale of wind sent her raven-black hair dancing, and her icy eyes glowed with chilling blue light through the chaos of the devastating salvo.

A few moments later, the cannonballs struck the ethereal ships. Some missed their marks, plunging into the sea and sending towering plumes of foaming water into the air, but the rest had been aimed true.

A dark smile illuminated Jet’s pale face.

At least a dozen of the ghostly vessels were severely damaged, a few of them even dissolving into halos of ghastly, ephemeral light — as if dispelled by the violent force of the sorcerous bombardment.

Sadly, the wraith armada was an insidious enemy. Both the ships and the bloodthirsty ghosts populating them were spectral in nature, so only those attacks that targeted the intangible could harm them. The annihilating physical force carried by the radiant cannonballs was wasted on the ghastly fleet of restless souls.

However, the soul essence that the cannonballs had been charged with could still wreak havoc among the spectral ships, even if the damage was not as destructive as it could have been.

Several ships were dispelled, and several more slowed down, damaged by the bombardment.

”Reload the cannons!”

Jet evaluated the speed of the wraith armada and the remaining distance between the fastest ship and the Night Garden. The cannons were powerful, but it took time to saturate them with essence, not to mention the laborious process of loading new cannonballs into the enormous barrels.

There was no time for the second salvo... The eerie form of the Dutchman loomed in the mist behind the armada, towering above the advancing ships like a lumbering beast. Drawing closer. ŖαΝ𝖔฿ÈS̈

Jet did not even know if the vessels the bombardment dispelled were truly gone, or simply returned to their source and would be summoned again later. The Night Garden had seen the wraith armada from a distance a few times and clashed with it once, but back then, the Dutchman had not seemed inclined to commit its forces to a full-scale battle.

Perhaps its owner had been wary of the dead captain of the Night Garden and the ghostly monarch she was hosting aboard her ship, seeing a perverse kinship between them. Or, maybe, he simply saw no reason to bother.

But now, the wraith armada was descending upon the living ship in full force.

“Want to board my ship, huh?”

Jet exhaled slowly, then changed the grip on her war scythe.

A moment later, she leaned forward and sent it flying with a throw as powerful as what the great cannon beneath her was capable of.

At the same time, she turned into a torrent of mist and wrapped herself around the ice-cold blade, riding it across the sky toward the advancing armada.

Her aim was true.

The war scythe bit into the spectral deck of the leading vessel, causing the glow of the entire ship to dim. Jet assumed her human form and stepped onto the rotten wood, placing her hand on the trembling shaft of the Mist Blade.

‘How about I board yours, instead?”

All around her, ethereal figures rose from the ephemeral glow — the ghastly shapes of dead sailors still bound to their sunken ship, knowing no peace or solace.

Looking at them with a chilling hunger, Jet grinned.

The Dutchman commanded a fleet of restless souls...

And now, he had delivered them to Soul Reaper.