Shadow Slave

Asterion could not be killed.

However, an immortal adversary was not that novel, as far as Changing Star and the Lord of Shadows were concerned. Both of them could hardly be destroyed, as well, and the same went for the fourth Supreme, the King of Nothing.

All that meant was that the Dreamspawn would have to be defeated and sealed, just like he had been sealed once by Anvil and Ki Song... no, rather, he would have to be sealed far better than the first Sovereigns had managed, so that his sinister influence never infected humanity again.

Therefore, the invisible war of influence that Asterion had declared on Changing Star and her Domain was going to end in an open confrontation eventually. So, before then, they had one primary task — to make sure that the Longing Domain was not weakened too much, while the Hunger Domain remained as weak as possible.

At the same time, they had to prevent Asterion from harming humanity to the best of their ability. It was already apparent that he was intending to hold mankind hostage in his conflict against them...

Or, at least, it seemed that way.

In truth, Asterion’s motives remained a mystery, just like most things about him did.

In any case, Sunny and Nephis needed to slow down the spread of Asterion’s influence and disarm as many of his thralls as they could. The Hunger Domains silent and disturbingly unnoticeable growth seemed unstoppable, and the Dreamspawn was becoming more powerful with each day — but even if it seemed that they weren’t making any progress, in truth, their position was improving as well.

That was because they were gradually learning more and more about the adversary. By now, they knew enough to take action. While humanity was their weakness, it was also their greatest resource. innumerable talented individuals were mobilized to develop means of recognizing members of the Hunger Domain without truly knowing what they were working on, or why — that way, they were not at risk of becoming infected themselves.

While sorcerers and Spellsmiths were working on a tool to identify Asterion’s sleeper agents, Sunny and Nephis directed their attention to the fringe organizations that had already been discovered as carriers of the Dreamspawn’s will.

Sunny had described the conflict they found themselves in as ideological warfare. While not as familiar to them as ferocious and lethal combat, that type of strife was not new to those born of the War Realm, either. In fact, humanity had a rich and bloody history of waging wars of ideas, most boasting death tolls in no way inferior to conventional military campaigns.

So, if they wished to, they could open the bottomless toolbox of history and borrow a harrowing array of strategies to crush an idea championed by the adversary... as well as those who carried it.

However, Sunny’s careless description was not entirely fitting. Yes, Asterion was as much an idea as he was a man, and his powers spread through human thought. However, the idea of Asterion was not a mundane one — it was an expression of his Supreme Will. Therefore, it was an idea so perilous and virulent that merely being exposed to it meant becoming infected by it.

Which meant that most tried and tested strategies of ideological warfare were meaningless in front of the Dreamspawn. That said...

Asterion’s power was not absolute, either. After all, not all of those who had become infected by the idea of him were turned into his thralls, which proved that the Dreamspawn was limited in how many people he could subjugate — that limit, most likely, was the difference between his personal power and the mental resistance of his prey.

Sunny and Nephis deduced that last point after observing the first few thralls the Shadow Clan captured. The person’s resistance against mind attacks mattered, but what seemed to matter even more was their mental state — depending on how firmly one believed in Changing Star and the Human Domain, the difficulty of penetrating the defenses of their mind could either increase or diminish.

In other words, they needed to make sure that as few people as possible were exposed to the idea of Asterion. At the same time, they needed to strengthen people’s belief in the Human Domain, so that fewer of those who did end up learning the name of Asterion became his thralls.

And lastly, they needed to isolate the thralls to prevent them from spreading the Dreamspawn’s name further.

That was where they discovered another trap laid out for them by Asterion.

“That wicked bastard!”

Sunny let out a frustrated scoff as he stared at the list of targets in front of him.

They needed to eradicate the sleeper agent cells that were helping the plague of Asterion spread — like the Church of the Moon, which was rapidly gaining popularity in the former territory of the Sword Domain.

However, by coming down on this cult and other ones like it, they would be creating an impression of tyrannical authority that did not tolerate dissenting opinions or afford the people the freedom of thought. Therefore, they would be weakening the belief of the people in the virtue and power of the Human Domain, making numerous humans more susceptible to the infection. ”Ahhhh...”

Looking up, he let out a heavy sigh.

The forces of the Immortal Flame clan could not be seen persecuting seemingly harmless cultists, so it was decided that the Shadow Clan would handle the dismantling of Asterion’s sleeper cells. His agents were already positioned to handle that kind of work, anyway, since they were supposed to be the shadow of the unblemished Fire Keepers.

naturally, he was not planning on slaughtering the unfortunate souls that fell under the Dreamspawn’s influence. Some of them were thralls, while some were merely misguided fools. The former had to be delivered to the quarantine facility in NQSC, while the latter had to be isolated until Asterion was dealt with.

Distinguishing the thralls from simple cultists was quite difficult at the moment, though. So, all the prisoners would have to be held somewhere, for now — Sunny had already built a comfortable, but quite inescapable village for them outside the walls of the Dark City.

With so many people vanishing without a trace, the citizens of the Human Domain would understandably become disturbed. Their confidence in Nephis would diminish, somewhat, but it was still better than an open campaign of repression.

Letting out a sigh, Sunny rubbed his eyes. ‘Look at me, planning to kidnap thousands of people:

He was not very happy about this turn of events.

Still, it had to be done...

The problem was that the Shadow Clan only had a few hundred members, and Sunny himself was spread a little bit too thin.

He needed help if he was going to accomplish this task — and numerous other tasks to come — cleanly.

‘I guess it’s time to get myself a capable lieutenant.’