Shadow Slave

Amiran lunged forward, calling upon his Aspect and bringing down an avalanche of destructive force upon the formation of the Song infiltrators. Two waves of crushing power rolled forward from his weapons... only to shatter against the invisible bulwark of a sonic boom.

The concrete floor was shattered as the whole factory trembled.

A moment later, a swift silhouette shot toward him from the cloud of dust - Morrow, her calm eyes full of cold murderous intent. Her shabby civilian clothes were torn, revealing glimpses of a slender enchanted armor hidden beneath.

In her hand, there was a narrow blade that seemed too fragile to be used in actual combat.

Amiran raised his sword, batting the blade away. At the same time, his hammer flew forward, the spike protruding from its top aimed precisely at the enemy's unprotected throat.

However, as soon as his sword met the steel of Morrow's weapon, there was a melodious ring. That ring suddenly magnified, crashing into him like a stone wall. Grimacing from pain piercing his ears, the Knight of Valor was thrown back.

He rolled over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of his warriors. They were advancing, ready to clash with the Awakened of Clan Song... even though Amiran only saw them for a tiny sliver of a second, he noticed two things.

First, the blood spilling from the breach in the roof of the main production hall. Second, the fact that only four of the six cohorts seemed to have made it down.

Wrath ignited in his heart.

'Treacherous worms...'

One of Morrow's cohorts was missing, and now, two of his own had failed to descend. It was not hard to understand what had most likely happened - the damned witch must have sent some of her people to ambush the warriors of Valor on the upper levels of the factory. To sacrifice their lives so that the rest could escape.

A cunning maneuver... albeit a fruitless one. It was of no use. Even with the missing cohort buying the infiltrators time with their blood, the force of Song was still hopelessly outmatched.

Morrow was desperate. And wouldn't she be?

The executioner she faced was none other than Amiran. The sword of Valor was inescapable.

These thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant. Landing on his feet, Amiran calmly looked up and saw the slender blade falling on his head. His helmet was probably strong enough to withstand the sharp edge, but it was forged out of the best of Valor's steel - should the strike land, there would be a ringing, and that ringing would be turned into another sonic explosion by the enemy.

Instead of the helmet, the blade struck a shield of invisible force that appeared in the air above Amiran. He also wrapped both his weapons with thin layers of force - he was a fast learner, after all. After that first strike, Morrow would find it hard to turn the sound of clashing blades against him.

As the two Masters collided with each other in a lethal battle, so did their soldiers. The Awakened of Valor descended on the formation of the infiltrators like a steel tide, threatening to overwhelm it in an instant.

Unfortunately for them, the Awakened of Song were not so easily overwhelmed.

***

'Damn it...'

Morrow saw one of her soldiers fall to the ground in a fountain of blood. His armor was shattered, and the wretched warrior of Valor who had killed him was already moving to attack another.

But then, the servant of the King of Swords fell, too, his back tore open.

She felt wicked joy. It was strange, though... Morrow missed which of her people had avenged their brother. It must have been a ranged attack, since no one was close enough to deliver a melee strike. There, at the edge of the formation, there was only emptiness and darkness.

A good shot, then.

Morrow hummed, and her humming was picked up by the rest of the Song's messengers. Bright smiles bloomed on their faces. The humming was not an expression of some Awakened power or a harbinger of a devastating sonic attack... it was simply their song.

A song of slaughter.

'This brute has a tough shell...'

She was entangled in a fierce fight with Knight Amiran, preventing him from devastating the formation. Of course, the dog was also preventing her from massacring the attacking Awakened... for now.

Amiran was powerful, skilled, and intelligent. But he was also arrogant and rigid. Morrow had already landed half a dozen blows on his armor... the problem was that the armor was too tough. It had to be a Transcendent Memory created by the best forgemasters of Clan Valor, since even her blade - bestowed by the Queen herself - was powerless against its enchanted steel.

Even more frustratingly, the Knight was using his Aspect to wrap himself in a thin layer of protective force, stifling all sounds that could have resulted from their clash.

Still, it was just a matter of time before he made a mistake.

Morrow was confident...

Just a dozen seconds later, however, her confidence waned.

Not because she felt pressured by Amiran - and she did, of course. A Knight of Valor was not an enemy to be taken lightly. No, it was because Morrow was suddenly unsure of how much time she had left.

Because their soldiers were dying too quickly.

All of them were the absolute elites of the Awakened world, so their battle was unsurprisingly intense and bloody. The whole factory was quaking and convulsing from the magnitude of the unleashed violence, as if on the verge of collapsing.

Before it did, they would have to escape to the streets.

And yet... the battle was somehow too bloody, and too lethal. There were too many corpses on the ground already, especially at the edges of the formation, where the fighting was supposed to be less intense.

Morrow remembered that the assassin Amiran had sent ahead of the main force was still here, somewhere, in the production hall - that could have been an explanation, if not for the fact that there were more of Valor warriors dying than that of Song.

Something... something strange was going on.

Morrow deflected a glancing blow from Amiran's sword and evaded the beak of the war hammer, pushing forward to deliver a strike of her own.

'I am missing something. Something... is not right...'

Even though she was suppressing the valiant Knight, and even though her soldiers were seemingly prevailing against the servants of Valor...

A cold, unsettling feeling slowly found its way into Morrow's heart.