Shadow Slave

At the same time, far away, cold winds were assaulting the world, and a murderous blizzard was raging across a desolate wasteland.

Far in the distance, the outskirts of a tall mountain chain were barely visible, rising above the horizon like a thin black line. They were shrouded in clouds of ash that rose from the depths of ancient volcanoes, their boundless heat keeping the blizzard at bay.

There were the lands west of Ravenheart, where lethal cold reigned.

On the very edge of the frigid wasteland, a chain of outposts had been built from ice, guarding the lands of the humans from the beings that dwelled in the snow. They had been home to transient garrisons of Awakened warriors and sheltered the scouts who would dive into the blizzards from time to time… but now, the ice strongholds stood empty and forlorn, dead silence shrouding their battlements.

Everyone had answered the call of war and followed their golden-eyed Sovereign east, abandoning the defensive line of outposts that used to protect the Citadel Cities from harm. Now, only snow and wind moved inside the abandoned fortresses…

And the creatures that they had been supposed to stop moved between them, traveling toward where human souls emanated a maddening scent.

A swarm of such creatures had just passed through a desolate army camp, bringing the blizzard with them. The snow flowed with the swift wind, and the abominations moved under its veil.

None of them made it in sight of a human settlement, though.

Instead, they died unseen and unnoticed, the blizzard hiding their corpses while the winds drowned out their death cries.

Soon enough, a scattering of ghastly corpses was being slowly buried by the snow. Eerily enough, the corpses bore no wounds, no visible signs of having been harmed by claw or by a weapon.

It was as if their lives had simply ceased, extinguished by the hand of a merciless deity.

But no one seemed to be around…

Unless one looked really closely.

The blizzard raged, and in the swirling drifts of snow, a ghostly figure could sometimes be seen, walking east with measured steps. Its contour was drawn not by the snow, but by its absence — apart from that negative presence, nothing betrayed its existence. Not breath, not warmth, not heartbeat, and not the sounds of her steps.

The ghostly figure belonged to a woman with blue eyes who carried a black scythe in her hands.

Stopping for a short moment, Jet assumed her human form and inhaled deeply, enjoying the vicious bite of the murderous cold.

Her hair was in disarray, and her armor was tattered. Snow and ice clung to her like a frigid cloak, and her porcelain skin was as white as the snow that surrounded her. There was no color to her bloodless face — except for her eyes, which burned like two piercing, ferocious blue flames in the pale inferno.

Jet looked like a corpse… or perhaps like death itself. However, she was undoubtedly alive — as far as that word could be applied to her, at least.

Having entered the frozen wastelands from the Forgotten Shore, she dove into the blizzard in order to hunt down snow wraiths and survive. The world was enveloped in snow, and since the sky was hidden from sight, she quickly lost track of time. Day and night lost all meaning, and after a while, time lost all meaning as well. All Jet could use to differentiate the past from the present was the number of fierce battles she had fought and the number of vicious Nightmare Creatures she killed.

But even then, she eventually lost count. The world narrowed to the extent she could see in the blizzard, and the scope of her life narrowed to only two things — hunting down Nightmare Creatures and being hunted by Nightmare Creatures in turn. There were moments that broke the murderous monotony, of course. Sometimes, the blizzard would die down all of a sudden, and Jet would see the flawlessly white world stretch endlessly in all directions. Sometimes, the ground beneath her would crack, and she would realize that she was walking across a frozen ocean. Harrowing things dwelled beneath the titanic layer of ice, and she would flee from the deep cracks, terrified to sense the giant beings watching her from below.

There were only two constants in that stark and harrowing white void. One was the suffocating, deadly cold. The other… was the Hollow Mountains.

The Hollow Mountains were to her left, shrouded in white mist. At times, the mist and the blizzard were almost indistinguishable from each other, but in reality, there was little in common between the two. The snow was murderous… but the mist far more dangerous. So, Jet avoided drawing too close to the Hollow Mountains as she traveled west.

Jet did not have a lot to do, except for killing and surviving, so she set a goal for herself. She wanted to find where the Hollow Mountains ended.

…And now, gods knew how many weeks or months later, she had arrived at the outer edges of the human territories from the west. She had discovered the termination point of the mountain chain that had seemed endless, crossed to the other side, and made her way back to human civilization.

“I can’t believe I actually made it.”

Jet had somehow managed to achieve her goal.

So, now…

She looked east, where a different mountain chain rested under an ashen sky.

Where Ravenheart was.

Releasing her corporeal form, Jet continued moving east.

“I’ve been gone long enough. Now, it’s time to see what they did to the world in my absence…”

Somewhere else, in a dark cell, Effie opened her eyes. They were slow to focus, but eventually, she could see again… it was just that what she saw was the same stone ceiling as before.

For however long she had been in the dungeons of the Castle.

‘Aahh… I’m awake. What a pity.’

She had been dreaming the sweetest dream. And then, she dreamed a terrifying nightmare.

But even the nightmare was better than her current circumstances.

Effie sighed.

‘At least I am not hungry… am not… hungry…’

Anymore.

She didn’t feel hungry, indeed. However, that wasn’t because she was full — on the contrary, her body was a gaunt wreck. She looked like an emaciated corpse, so thin and frail that anyone would feel nauseated by looking at her.

Effie herself was not that appalled by her current state, though, because it was a familiar one. She had not looked much different for most of her life, bound to a wheelchair and wasting away in a world that was not too kind even to healthy people, let alone cripples like her.

She didn’t feel hungry simply because her body had moved past hunger. Instead, she felt apathetic and terribly tired, so weak that even the weight of the chains binding her limbs made it seem like she couldn’t move. Her mind was enveloped in fog, and her thoughts were slow and disjointed.

‘What was I dreaming about?’

That comfortable state was the body’s response to starvation. After subjecting a person to the maddening, irresistible desire to find sustenance and the excruciating pain of extreme hunger, the body chose to conserve what little energy it had left and entered a state of lethargy.

Effie was familiar with that lethargy, as well… she had seen it happen countless times in the outer settlement of the Bright Castle. Usually, its arrival meant that the starving Sleeper would die soon.

Of course, she wasn’t lucky enough to die. The Dreamspawn was not going to let her die, which meant that someone would come to feed her a few morsels soon.

Then, the madness and pain would begin anew.

She just hoped that Asterion would not send her husband again…

‘No, wait. What was I dreaming about?’

Slowly, the details of her dream surfaced in her foggy mind.

It was then that Effie finally moved, making the chains rattle.

Straining her emaciated body, she slowly sat up. The weight of the chains felt crushing, but she still forced herself to move, pushing herself into a semblance of a vertical position.

The length of her chains was not generous. Effie couldn’t really stand up, and she could barely sit. Both of her legs and both of her arms were shackled, each chain connected to one of the four walls of her cell. Because of that, she couldn’t exert her strength fully… couldn’t find purchase to pull on the chains and tear them out of the ancient stone, destroying what Mirage had once imagined.

Why would a daemon need a dungeon, anyway? What kind of things had that strange girl fantasized about?

Then again… it wasn’t Mirage who had fashioned this underground chamber into a cell, most likely. It had probably been someone from the Clan Valor.

Those guys were great masters of creating ghastly things…

Had been great masters. Almost all of them were gone, now.

Effie drew in a hoarse breath.

‘That dream…’

She had dreamed of being free.

Effie tried to smile, a weak laugh escaping from between her cracked lips.

“Free… free…”

Wouldn’t it be nice, to be free?

Effie had also dreamed of the Ebony Tower being besieged. If the war had really entered the final stage, then the Dreamspawn must have summoned away most of the Awakened in Bastion.

She swayed slightly.

‘Ah, damn it…’

Maybe no one was coming to feed her, after all.