Shadow Slave

Sunny rolled over his shoulder, and just as he did, countless arrows hit the deck in the spot where he had been just a split second ago. Sent from powerful bows made for Awakened archers, each carried enough force to pierce plate armor with ease. Of course, the Mantle of the Underworld was not just any armor…

And yet, Sunny was extremely apprehensive of the threat posed by archers. Being battered by a rain of arrows was going to take a toll on his body, and all it took was for one to slide into the slit of his visor… not to mention that there were all kinds of Aspects the enemy could possess, and all kinds of runes the bows and the arrows could be enchanted with.

The heavy javelins sent flying by the bolt throwers came next...

Streaking through the air with terrifying speed, they hit the ship like missiles. Each possessed enough momentum to tear a hole in the deck, sending an explosion of splinters into the air. Sunny was not sure if he would be able to survive being hit by something like that, so he took no risks, diving into the shadows and turning into one of them.

The wisest move right now would have been to step onto the deck of a different ship… however, only the two attacking vessels were close enough to not require a truly vast expenditure of essence to perform a jump, and their crews were undoubtedly already prepared to resist an assault.

Plus, Sunny was reluctant to leave without killing the remaining soldiers and destroying the ship completely. He had a very good reason for that.

While the gargoyles and the four boarding parties were harassing the formation and slowly whittling down the number of enemy vessels… the fleet's main target still remained the same.

All of them were attacking the graceful ship with a beautiful tree growing around its mast, surrounding it like a murder of hungry crows.

Cassie was the fifth and final part of the cohort's assault force, and the one in the most danger. While Sunny and the rest fought with the soldiers of the defending fleet… she was battling the fleet itself.

Guided by her hand, the sorcerer's ship maneuvered between the enemy vessels, barely dodging constant shots of their harpoons and siege weapons while responding with its own attacks from time to time. The bolts sent by its ballistae were much more devastating due to runes carved into them by Noctis, taking whole chunks out of the enemy ships or obliterating them completely. It was larger, faster, and much more durable…

But it was also alone against countless foes.

As Sunny rushed through the shadows toward the stern, he caught a glimpse of the graceful ship as it dove down, the figures of Sailor Dolls bracing themselves against rails and releasing the strings of their powerful bows. There were deep scratches on its hull and holes in its sails, dozens of arrows sticking out of the deck like needles… but it was still in one piece.

Due to Cassie's intuition and uncanny Aspect Ability, she had been able to predict and avoid the enemy attacks, at least to some degree… for now. But the pressure on the lonely ship was mounting with each second, and no matter how many enemy vessels she destroyed, this deadly aerial dance could not continue much longer.

Knowing that, the young woman threw the ship into a dive, falling from the dark sky like a star. She was leading the fleet down, toward the surface, where she would be able to maneuver between the flying islands and use their solid mass as a shield.

That was extremely dangerous, since any ship moving that low ran a risk of crashing into an island or, even worse, into one of the heavenly chains. But Cassie had no choice… she had to limit the amount of vessels that had a direct line of sight of her ship if she wanted to turn the threat posed by the enemy's overwhelming numerical advantage from insurmountable to simply lethal.

She was barely hanging on to life…

And so, Sunny could not allow himself to leave this ship before it was disposed of completely. Sure, it was already damaged, and the few soldiers that still lived were not going to be able to both control it and mount the onagers and ballistae… but it would take just one heroic fool with a death wish to ram the damaged vessel into Cassie, taking out the main force of their small army.

Emerging from the shadows at the stern, Sunny used the second or two it took the enemy archers to notice him and take aim again to push one of the steering oars all the way up, wedge the Prowling Thorn into the wood, and then secure the handle of the oar in place with the invisible string attached to the heavy kunai.

The ship shuddered, and then its bow turned down, sending it into a downward dive. Sunny made it just in time — not a moment after he finished the task, a heavy arrow hit him in the back, sending a jolt of pain and a concussive shock running through his body.

He was roughly thrown forward and hit the deck, which was slowly turning into a vertical wall. Sunny allowed himself to slide down, dodging a few more arrows that way, and saw the remaining soldiers falling into the night sky with terrified screams.

A feral grin appeared on his face.

'Done!'

It was time for him to abandon the ship, as well…

By pure conscience, at that very moment, the falling vessel happened to be at the same altitude as the descending ship that Cassie controlled. Pushing himself off the deck to dive into the shadows, Sunny noticed the massive siege engine on the bow of the sorcerer's ship take aim at an enemy boat. It seemed as if another enemy was going to be destroyed in a second...

Then, however, Cassie suddenly gave up on the sure-shot and threw the ship into a desperate spin, changing course so abruptly that one of the Sailor Dolls was thrown overboard.

Sunny frowned.

'What…'

Before he could finish the thought...

The vessel he was still standing on suddenly exploded into debris as something massive tore through it at a stunning speed and then streaked through the lightless sky, missing Cassie's ship by a hair's breadth. Instead, the thing hit one of the sorcerer's gargoyles and obliterated it completely, turning the terrifying creature into a cloud of stone dust in a blink of an eye.

It was only a second later, when Sunny found himself falling down with nothing there to support his weight anymore, that he registered what the thing was.

…It was a narrow pillar of polished steel, at least fifty meters in length, that ended in a sharp point. That pillar, it looked like… like…

Like a javelin worthy of a giant.

Stunned, Sunny turned his head and looked in the direction of the Ivory City as he fell.

His eyes widened.

He did not like what he saw.

...He did not like it at all.

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