Shadow Slave

The wall trembled violently, almost throwing Sunny off his feet. He caught himself from falling and spun, the Sin of Solace flying into a defensive stance.

"What the hell was that?!"

Master Jet used her glaive to keep herself upright and looked around. For the first time since the start of the battle, her expression became grim. She did not answer for a couple of seconds. Then, her icy eyes widened slightly. Soul Reaper turned to Sunny, trying to say something, but he had already sensed it himself.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

"The Call..."

The Call of the Nightmare had suddenly grown much louder, assaulting his mind with an onslaught of screaming whispers.

In the next moment... the world came undone, and the piercing sound of tearing alloy filled Sunny's ears. The battlement beneath him was falling apart, and a strong aftershock of whatever it was that had destroyed it rolled through the air, throwing him away.

'No!'

Sunny did not see it yet, but he already understood what had happened.

A Nightmare Gate had just opened right below where he and Jet had fought, annihilating a large section of the wall.

An ugly rift in reality tore through the armored alloy, turning it into nothing. The vertical schism of pure nothingness played strange tricks with both light and darkness, making it appear simultaneously perfectly flat and inconceivably deep. A litany of inaudible screams thundered out of it in deafening silence, washing over the world like a demented call.

The wall was breached from top to bottom - some of it devoured by the Gate, the rest simply collapsing when the supporting structure suddenly disappeared.

Sunny plummeted down in a rain of debris.

Before he could truly comprehend what was happening, his body brushed against the boundary of the Gate. Instantly, an explosion of blinding pain enveloped his body and soul, and a strange repelling force pushed him away.

A Nightmare Gate was a one-way path - creatures of the Dream Realm could enter through it into the waking world, but nothing from the waking world could pass through it into the land of nightmares. Only Awakened could answer its Call by sending their souls on a perilous journey. All they had to do was fall asleep in the vicinity of the rift.

Masters and Saints could answer it, too, by pulling on their own anchors - but not by physically stepping through the Gate. Maybe Sovereigns were different, but Sunny had no time to ponder about it.

Or could ponder about it, really. For a few moments after experiencing the shock of brushing against the lightless rift, his mind became utterly blank.

And when he came to his senses, he found himself falling from a seventy-meter height, the ground approaching him with frightening speed.

Still disoriented, Sunny scrambled to summon the Dark Wing, but then froze for a split second.

There was not enough time for the translucent Memory to manifest itself into existence and for its enchantment to activate. He had maybe three seconds left...

Would a fall from that height murder him?

Sunny did not know, and he did not want to find out. Even if he survived somehow, a flood of Nightmare Creatures would soon flow out of the Gate to finish the job.

'D-damn!'

Something heavy and sharp suddenly slammed into Sunny's head. A torn piece of the wall's frame... following an instinct, Sunny reached forward and called upon the shadows of the falling pieces of debris. They moved, sliding toward his body.

Sunny made himself as light as he could, and then manifested the shadows. In the next moment, a vast mantle of darkness surrounded him like a streaming black cape, catching the wind and slowing down his fall.

It was almost enough.

He hit the ground hard enough to bounce off of it and black out for a moment. The mantle of shadows was torn apart and dissipated. Sunny rolled away, his body a mass of pain, vaguely recognizing the landscape of the staging area around him. He came to a halt after violently slamming into the feet of a loader robot, then weakly crawled under it, hoping to hide from the raining debris.

It was good thinking - not a second later, a piece of alloy that must have weighed several tons crashed into the ground in the spot where Sunny had been just a moment ago.

...That was all Sunny could do, though. After taking shelter between the legs of the loader, all strength seemed to abandon him. All that was left was pain.

'A-argh...'

He was alive, at least. Bone Weave and the Marble Shell, as well as his Ascended physique, had protected Sunny's body from being severely damaged. He was a bit shocked, that was all...

Arguably, touching the Gate had caused much more harm.

Sunny did not know what kind of damage he had received, but it felt serious. He knew he could still fight... maybe... but not right now.

Right now, he could hardly move.

'Not good...'

From his temporary shelter, Sunny had a clear view of the broken wall and the vast rift of nothingness pulsing darkly in the breach. A few soldiers and logistics specialists were running away from it, consumed by panic.

A few more lay dead, killed by the debris.

A tide of Nightmare Creatures was about to emerge from the Gate, flood the staging area, and devour everyone here before escaping into the city.

And Sunny was utterly defenseless.

A cold voice suddenly resounded in his ear:

"See. I told you that you're useless."

Sunny gritted his teeth.

'Shut up.'

His own laughter was the answer.

"I also told you that Master Jet was going to die, didn't I?"

He growled.

"I said shut the hell up!"

Pushing through pain and weakness, Sunny forced himself to start crawling. He wanted to crawl away, but somehow found himself crawling toward the Gate. The desire to flee had been subtly defeated by the desire to finish his duty and defend the city, without him even noticing.

'I must have really lost it... what am I planning to do in that state?'

Maybe there was some strategy left... no, there surely was. He was just too rattled and concussed to ponder it.

There was the Dying Wish... huh... there was also Nightmare...

As a massive shape slowly revealed itself in the pulsating darkness of the Gate, a familiar tone whispered into his ear.

Sunny felt a flash of rage sear his mind.

"Shut your mouth!"

But then, he froze.

That voice... was not his.

Ignoring the rude outburst, the Spell spoke:

[...Your Shadow has evolved.]