Shadow Slave

As days passed, filled by cold darkness and grueling battles, Sunny had not only been slaying terrifying abominations and enduring the pain of his titanic form being torn to shreds. He was also slowly learning more about the Underworld — and especially about its history.

The Spell was stingy with granting him Memories, let alone Echoes, so he had not received any information from their descriptions. He had, however, gained quite a bit from the description of the shades he was gaining. Mostly, Sunny learned from exploring the crumbling waystations they were conquering.

One could learn a lot from careful observation. Even if thousands of years had passed, destroying most traces, there were still signs left of what had transpired here. For example, it was clear that the waystations had been meant to house far larger garrisons, but were left with only skeleton crews to guard them — the size of sleeping quarters and the armories did not fit the number of the corrupted Stone Saints they had to fight, even accounting for thousands of years of attrition.

There were also intact writings left in some of the waystations, shining a light on the distant past.

Sunny knew that the Underworld used to be the realm of Nether, the Demon of Choice, and that Nether had played a central role in the daemonic rebellion. However, what he did not know was just how important the Underworld had been for the uprising.

The Hollow Mountains, and therefore the Underworld, had been unique among all the realms. That was because they were connected to countless mortal realms, bridging the gap between them. Of course, very few were capable of crossing that bridge alive... unless the Prince of the Underworld welcomed them.

The Underworld had been the central stronghold of the Demon Legion. It was not only nearly impregnable, but also allowed the six rebellious Demons to swiftly deploy their troops to various mortal realms and move between them, attacking and retreating unpredictably, as well as recruit more warriors to the banner of rebellion. That was why the Demon Legion had been able to contend against the Divine Host in the early years of the war despite being a much smaller and weaker force.

But, as Sunny already knew, the Doom War had not been kind to the daemons. Despite their initial success, its tides eventually turned against them. As existence itself was coming undone in the annihilating flames of the bitter war between the gods and the daemon, the Demon Legion suffered defeat after defeat and was pushed back on all fronts.

That was why Nether and his siblings had made a choice to resort to one last, desperate measure — to open the Void Gate and unleash the Forgotten God upon the world.

In the last days of the war, the Underworld had become the last stronghold of the Demon Legion. The victorious Divine Host laid siege to it... but the daemons were preparing to launch a different, far more daring assault.

Descending to the darkest depths of the Underworld, Nether led their warriors into the Abyss and invaded the Shadow Realm, challenging Death and its endless legions — the shadows of everyone who had perished in the cataclysm of the Doom War.

Sunny had seen the last minutes of that mythical battle himself. That was where Orphne of the Nine had killed Weaver for the second time, and where the Nightmare Spell was born.

So, that was the reason why the entrance to the Underworld was littered with ancient corpses, and why the waystations and settlements of the Stone Saints seemed so empty. Most of the Stone Saints had followed Nether to lay siege to the Realm of Death.

The seven Great Ones who were slain in the crumbling settlements, and the fallen Stone Saints Sunny and Nephis encountered as they traversed the tributary river, had been the rearguard of the Demon Legion — those tasked with holding back the Divine Host for as long as possible while the last battle of the Doom War unfolded far below.

In the end, the Void Gate had been open, and even though the Forgotten God was lulled to sleep by the Nightmare Spell, Corruption still swallowed all of existence. Eventually, the remaining Stone Saints fell to it, as well.

Thousands of years later, the realm of elemental darkness was ruled by monsters and abominations. The throne of the Underworld was empty, and the Stone Saints, who had held the beings of the dark Abyss back before, were too few to prevent them from conquering its vast expanse. Even those who remained had become Nightmare Creatures, their nature twisted by Corruption.

That was the realm Sunny and Nephis had to traverse in search of the last fragment of Weaver’s Lineage.

Traveling along the tributary river had already been perilous enough. When they reached one of the three great rivers of the Underworld, however, things swiftly went from bad to worse.

There was another settlement of the Stone Saints at the point where the tributary flowed into the main body of the river. That one was no more than a ruin, though, the Children of Nether who had guarded it once gone. Instead, a Cursed abomination made its nest amidst the rubble — unwilling to disturb it, they sneaked past the ruins in utter darkness.

That was the first Cursed Nightmare Creature Sunny and Nephis had encountered in the Underworld — but these were merely its outskirts. Things were bound to get worse as they moved further north, approaching the capital of the fallen Stone Saint civilization.

They could challenge this Cursed One to a battle, and they stood a good chance of defeating it. However, there was no telling what kind of horrors the echoes of the ferocious battle would attract, and what beings would emerge from the darkness once the fallen deity who had claimed the ruins was gone.

Sunny felt like he was on the bottom of the food chain once again.

Soon, it became painfully apparent that they could not continue traveling in the same manner anymore.