Shadow Slave

The Deathless were growing stronger the deeper into Ariel’s Hell they went, yes — but Sunny and Nephis were learning how to fight them better, as well.

There were the mundane lessons of how to dismantle the undead warriors faster and more effectively. There were the broader lessons of developing better strategies and implementing better tactics, as well. Most importantly, Sunny and Nephis were learning about the nature of the Deathless, and therefore about their weaknesses.

One of those weaknesses, for example, was the tenuous grasp the undead warriors had on their Aspects and powers. Most Deathless had either lost them entirely or could only use them on a shallow level, as if using muscle memory to do something that they did not understand or remember anymore.

As a result, fighting the undead horrors was an exhausting, but mostly straightforward affair. It was combat in the purest of forms, a clash that relied solely on physical prowess and martial skill — even if the physical power involved in that clash was obliterating and terrifying enough to destroy lesser realms and reshape the very landscape of Hell.

It was a physical clash shaped by the underlying battle of warring Wills, of course.

Even then, Sunny and Nephis had found ways to overcome the tyrannical vastness of the enemy’s Will.

The secret to doing so lay in the fact that it was not just two Wills that clashed with each other — their Will against the Will of the Deathless. Instead, it was actually three Wills struggling to subjugate one another. That was because the Deathless were not a monolithic force.

Even if they were united in their determination to obliterate the invaders, the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Demonic Legion were still opposed to the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Divine Host, and vice versa. Even consumed by the curse of Shadow God, the two great armies still struggled against each other.

Their resentment ran so deep that even after forgetting themselves, the Deathless still carried an overwhelming hostility toward the enemy. The thousands of years that had passed since the Doom War did not diminish their animosity toward each other one bit — if anything, it only made that animosity far greater.

The Deathless seemed to forget their strife when faced with a new enemy, but that was only an illusion. In truth, both sides still harbored a deep resentment for the other army, even while they were trying to eradicate the invaders. That division was not noticeable in their movements and seamless tactics, but betrayed itself in the turbulent expanse of their Will.

In other words, there were powerful undercurrents in the vast ocean of crushing Will the Deathless wielded, and those undercurrents clashed and collided with each other, creating a state of chaos and discord.

If one knew how to make use of that discord, how to slip through the cracks in the insurmountable mountain of the enemy’s Will, they could overpower it with far less effort than would have been needed to summit the mountain through brute force.

So, that was how Sunny and Nephis managed to make it halfway to the Tomb of Ariel despite facing a seemingly endless horde of ancient, undying, immensely powerful foes.

Tonight, however, it all felt different.

The power of the Deathless they faced had taken a qualitative leap. The billowing ocean of murderous Will they possessed felt deeper than ever before. Their presence, too, felt different from before — it was colder, crueler, and far more focused.

‘Let’s think positively…’

The seven incarnations of Sunny were the vanguard of the battle formation, serving to break the momentum of the advancing Deathless and soften them up for the marching army behind him. He moved like water, being elusive at times and exploding with crushing power at others.

His mind had entered the state of battle clarity and turned into a diamond under the pressure of controlling seven Supreme bodies in a ferocious, deadly battle. Every second, he unleashed a hurricane of attacks and withstood a storm of blows, breaking and weakening the Deathless while attempting to remain whole.

His Shells were damaged and torn, but at a slower rate than his ability to repair them. So, he could continue to fight.

Some distance ahead, Azarax was rampaging among the undead warriors. He had grown to tower over the dunes, clashing with the most powerful of the enemies as the desert quaked and groaned around them.

Unlike Sunny, there was nothing elusive or flowing about how the ancient tyrant fought. His battle style was all about dominance and oppression, explosive force and relentless aggression — which was not to say that it was brutish or lacked sophistication.

On the contrary, Azarax channelled his merciless, cruel fury in a chillingly calculated manner. As Sunny watched, he lunged forward to clash with a towering black skeleton clad in the rusty remains of bronze armor. The ancient tyrant created a false opening by lowering his enormous axe, then ducked under the enemy’s rusty greatsword.

At the same time, he hooked his opponent’s leg with the beard of the axe and pulled it back, sending the black skeleton falling to the ground in a cloud of white sand. In the blink of an eye, Azarax was upon his fallen enemy, bringing his foot down on the undead warrior’s chest.

He pressed the Deathless champion into the sand and brought his axe down on his skull. As a shockwave rolled from the point of impact, and the skull of his adversary cracked… however, it did not shatter. Azarax had left it in one piece on purpose. Because a second later, when the ancient tyrant removed his foot from the enemy’s ribcage and dashed forward to meet the next opponent, the Deathless warrior slowly rose from the ground and joined the formation of the undead warriors who followed the Deathless Sovereign’s commands.

Sunny was trying to keep up.

‘How do we think positively? Well, let’s think about it as training. Training to finally kill Eurys, that vile bastard…’

Unlike Azarax, who could subjugate the Deathless by defeating them, Sunny could only dismantle them completely — or at least severely damage them and leave the rest to his soldiers. So, every clash took him much longer.

‘But hey… there’s seven of me. So who’s to say which one of us is accomplishing more?’

While Sunny and Azarax fought in the front, their armies followed behind, soaking the brunt of the undead horde’s assault.

The Deathless following Azarax were in the first row of the formation, assembled loosely, while the soldiers of the Shadow Legion were positioned behind them. The skeletal warriors were the first line of defense, and the shades were the sharp blades that lashed out from behind them to bring the enemies down…

Well, most of them, at least. The Wolf was not someone who respected or had a need for a defensive formation, so it ravaged the enemies wherever there was an opening, crushing their black bones between his mighty teeth.

From a distance, the battle formation of the invading army looked odd — almost comical, even. It was as if an army of living beings divided itself in two, with the blackened skeletons of the soldiers moving forward while their inky souls fell back.

The enemy was much stronger tonight than it had been before…

But the speed with which the invading army advanced was not at all slower.