Shadow Slave

[You have slain an Ascended human, Amiran.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

Sunny stood for a moment above the Knight’s corpse, waiting for the enchanted armor to dissipate into a whirlwind of crimson sparks. Then, he used shadows to turn his gauntlet into a fearsome claw and struck down a few times.

It was not in his habit to mutilate the bodies of his enemies... but he had to mask the initial blade wound that had killed the fearsome Master.

With that, his task here was finished. Sunny tilted his head and thought with a bit of detachment: ’That went more smoothly than I had expected.’

Wiping out ten cohorts of elite Awakened and two Legacy Masters had turned out to be easier than he would have thought. A force like that... if Sunny had not intervened, their battle would inevitably spill out into the streets above. No matter how sudden Valor’s ambush was, the assassins of Song were not pushovers - especially their leader. They would have retreated and eventually made their way to the surface. But he had prevented that.

Sunny became aware of the infiltration team’s location thanks to the gloomy shadow, which had followed them all the way back to this siege capital from Clan Song’s territory. After locating the assassins, finding the soldiers of Valor was not hard - he just had to send his other shadows to scour the surrounding area.

Then, what he needed to do was make sure that the two forces annihilated each other completely and with no collateral damage.

Sadly, the infiltrators moved earlier than expected, almost giving Knight Amiran and his soldiers a slip. Sunny had to stall them a little, so he silently killed the two messengers the Ascended of Song - he thought her name was Morrow - sent to retrieve the cohort guarding the cage.

Then, using Shadow Step to move unseen, he entered the tunnel and waited there until the scouts arrived. That was probably the hardest part of the entire mission - killing seven powerful Awakened before they could make a sound was not easy, even for him.

He would have summoned Saint, but she could not share the benefits of wearing Weaver’s Mask. So Sunny ended up using Shadow Manifestation to strike simultaneously at all seven. He then pushed the Extraordinary Rock into the mouth of the leader of the cohort and threw the severed head back into the production hall to create a distraction.

A shaken enemy was easier to deal with, so Sunny was not above using a bit of theatrics.

While everybody was staring at the talking head, Sunny killed one more assassin and swiftly dissolved into the shadows. By then, the force of Valor was drawing closer... they were still not fast enough for his taste, though, so he used Imp to hurry the bastards along.

It was then that Morrow decided to blast half of the production hall with a radial sonic attack. Luckily, Sunny was already somewhere where the shockwave could not reach.

When Knight Amiran broke through the roof and launched an assault on the immobilized infiltrators, Sunny was actually inside the cage containing a damn Corrupted Tyrant, slashing the creature with the Sin of Solace to drive it insane. That was another experience he would prefer to never relive.

From the cage, he stepped through the shadow to appear in the corridors above. The force sent by Valor was a bit too strong, especially now that he had dispatched some of the Song’s assassins - he had to equalize the odds a little to make it easier to kill them all.

Sunny waited until most of Amiran’s Awakened jumped into the hole in the floor, and then attacked the last dozen or so that remained in the corridor. With the element of surprise on his side and no more need to remain absolutely quiet, dispatching them was not too hard.

By the time he was finished with the bloody task, the battle between Valor and Song was in full swing. However, they were not killing each other well enough - Morrow could still push the attackers back and pull out her forces. So, Sunny moved stealthily around the battlefield, remaining in the form of an incorporeal shadow and using Shadow Manifestation to pick off Awakened from both sides.

He made sure to obfuscate his interference as much as possible, of course. And, just like he had been doing from the very start, he killed the Awakened of Song with blades, and the Awakened of Valor with claws.

Everything went more or less exactly as planned. Sunny only had to expose himself once, to slow down Amiran and let Morrow open the cage - he used the Bitter Cusp to smear black venom on the blade of the Moonlight Shard, since dealing with the heavily armored Knight was not easy.

He also wanted to give the Tyrant more of a shot. The creature was strong, but without any minions and with its mind shattered by the Sin of Solace, there was a chance that it would not be able to give the kind of fight Sunny needed it to give, in order to make all the corpses with claw marks on their bodies look believable.

The Tyrant escaped and slaughtered those Awakened that remained alive. Sunny cut down those who tried to escape and secretly delivered the abomination a few severe wounds, making sure to give Amiran enough time to ravage the body of the Tyrant with his Aspect.

And when all was said and done, he finished off the mighty Knight with his own hand.

The despicable zealot actually thought that he had won, while in reality, his defeat was meticulously orchestrated from the very start.

...Now, silence settled over the ruined production hall.

Ten cohorts of Awakened... humans... were dead. None managed to escape into the streets of the city. No refugee was swallowed by their empty feud.

The warriors of Song had sword wounds on their bodies, while the warriors of Valor were seemingly killed by sharp claws. The massive abomination was turned to paste by Amiran’s Aspect.

The picture of what had happened here was clear. The two forces obliterated each other, with the Tyrant succumbing to the wounds delivered by the valiant Knight.

Did Sunny feel guilty about bringing these Awakened to their deaths? He had just murdered seventy people, after all. Much more than he had in his entire life, not counting those from the Nightmares.

Did it matter that the seventy people he murdered were themselves murderers?

Not really.

And he did not really care, either.

Unlike the millions of people who had perished in Falcon Scott, they gotwhat they deserved.

If there was one thing Sunny regretted, it was that Amiran actually managed to land the last strike on the Tyrant, somehow. That was a frustrating loss.

Throwing one last glance at the scene of carnage, Sunny shook his head in dejection.

And disappeared into the shadows, as if he had never been here at all.