It's a Nightmare Creature... a Nightmare Creature that can control a corpse and speak the human language flawlessly. It even knew Seishan's name. It can even perfectly imitate human behavior. If not for Weaver's lineage, I would not have known at all. It... it is... it is unlike anything I have seen or heard about before.'
...And the creature was strong enough to walk the Nightmare Desert at night.
The three of them were trapped in a small underground chamber with a creature like that.
Sunny felt terror.
He activated the Blessing of Dusk and sent Jet a mental message, trying to sound calm:
[That thing is not human.]
Jet sighed, then shook her head.
"There might be, but we haven't met anyone else. The four of us will have to stick together."
At the same time, she answered Sunny:
[I know. Its soul... is much more vast than a Master's soul should be. Or a Saint's soul, even. It is... harrowing.]
Then, Sunny sent a message to Seishan.
[That is not Ascended Xu. Think of an answer, and I will hear it.]
The beautiful woman did not show any sign of surprise as her answer resounded in his mind:
[What are you talking about? I know this man. He and I grew up together... wait. Did the son of Anvil take his body?]
'Gods. I never thought I would say something like that... but I wish it really was Mordret...'
Sunny summoned the runes, seeking the prize he had received for slaying Dire Fang.
[No. Something else took his body. His dead body. Something old, vast... and powerful. I saw the corpse on the way to the ruin.]
The creature, meanwhile, seemed a little disappointed. Its smile grew bleak.
"Of course. We will stick together... and search for more people. Once the morning comes. Yes?"
Sunny stared at a particular string of runes, and then offered the Endless Spring to the corpse of Ascended Su. Forcing out a smile, he said:
"That sounds like a plan. Here... some water. You must be dying of thirst."
The creature accepted the glass bottle with an awkward nod.
"Yes. Yes... I am thirsty..."
Sunny smiled as he watched it bring the bottle to the corpse's lips. Then, without changing expression, he silently thrust the Sin of Solace into the creature's chest.
At the same time, a blade made of darkness appeared from behind, piercing the dead man's back. Saint escaped from the shadows, her eyes burning with crimson flames.
A whirlwind of white sparks rose around Sunny, almost filling the entire chamber.
Jet and Seishan were already moving, too.
The creature looked at the Endless Spring, which was disappearing from the corpse's hand, and titled its head a little.
"Yes... I am thirsty..."
Its smile widened into a grin, and Ascended Xu's face was distorted by that grin, turning into a wicked parody of what a human face was supposed to look like.
The corpse's hands shot up with impossible speed, grabbing the blades of Sunny's and Saint's swords. The pristine white jade of the Sin of Solace seemed to warp under immense pressure.
Sunny suddenly felt cold.
'Not good...'
The Sin of Solace was a Transcendent Memory, and one that had an enchantment enhancing the material of the blade, at that. And yet, as soon as the creature grabbed the white jade, Sunny felt that it was moments away from breaking.
He had been planning to deliver the follow-up strike while augmenting the cursed sword with all five of his shadows, but it felt like if he did, there would be no sword for him to augment.
Cursing, Sunny hurriedly dismissed the jade blade and staggered back.
At the same time, Master Xu moved, and Saint was suddenly flying back. She hit the wall of the chamber with a deafening boom, shattering the black stones and creating a deep crater. White sand flowed from the cracks, falling on her broken armor.
A split second later, Jet brought her glaive down on the harrowing creature. Its ghostly blade passed through the abomination's dead flesh unimpeded, cutting straight into its soul... then, a net of black cracks spread through the enchanted steel, and it exploded into countless fragments. Startled, Soul Reaper lost her balance.
Seishan's delicate hands were like demonic claws, easily slicing through the creature's neck.
But the creature was still smiling.
The wound on its chest that the Sin of Solace had left behind had already closed. The deep cut delivered by Saint's sword was gone, too. As Sunny, Jet, and Seishan watched in horror, the mangled neck of Master Xu rippled and healed, with not a speck left on his skin.
"W-what..."
Seishan's voice suddenly sounded small.
At the same time, she sent Sunny a tense mental message:[What do we do?]
He was the one who had informed her about the nature of the newcomer, so Seishan must have hoped that Sunny knew something about how to deal with the creature.
However, he did not. He only knew that fighting it was suicidal.
Sunny did not hesitate at all. Dismissing Saint, he dashed back and shouted:"Run!"
In the next moment, the whirlwind of sparks filling the chamber finally coalesced into a lumbering, monstrous figure. A bestial hand exploded forward, swatting Master Xu aside and slamming him against the wall.
No matter how strong the creature was, its mass remained the same as that of the possessed corpse. So, even if its power was great and terrible, it was not impossible to overcome.
At least for a few moments.
And that was exactly what the Echo of Saint Dire Fang Sunny had summoned was supposed to buy them. The body of the towering beast occupied almost half of the underground chamber, scraping the ceiling with its head. One arm was extended forward, pushing the abomination into the cracked stones, while the other was already flying to deliver a devastating strike.
...Sunny doubted that the Echo would be able to accomplish much, though.
'What the hell... I actually managed to receive the Echo of a mighty Saint. A Saint, damn it! But it's barely enough to slow the enemy down for a moment...'
The Nightmare Desert was veiled in darkness, and darkness meant death. However, being trapped in the small underground chamber with the harrowing creature also meant death.
They could either remain and try to fight, or escape and try to survive the ancient battlefield. Both choices were equally fatal, but at least the latter would kill them a few seconds, or maybe even minutes, later.
"Hurry!"
Jet was the first one to jump up, grab the edges of the narrow fissure, and climb into the narrow crawlway. Her figure disappeared from sight, and Seishan instantly followed.
Without wasting any time, Sunny stepped through the shadows and appeared above ground, just in time to grab Jet's hand and help her climb out of the fissure.
The roar of the eternal battle, which had been muted by the breadth of stone, assaulted them like a storm.
Looking out of the ruin, Sunny paled.
Under the ghostly starlight, legions of the ancient dead were fighting each other. There was no skin or flesh left on their perfectly black bones... some of the dead resembled humans, some were like giants, and some were too monstrous and alien to describe with words.
However, all of them were terrifyingly powerful.
It was strange to see that the world had not been destroyed by the dreadful fury of their battle. How was a fragile human supposed to survive that cataclysmic clash?
'We... we are supposed to go through... that?'
Seishan had just climbed out of the fissure and stopped, staring at the scene of the harrowing battle. Her silken grey skin suddenly seemed darker.
Jet looked at the desert beyond the ruin, then at the hole they had just climbed out of. Just at that moment, the whole structure shuddered, as if something was pushing against the black stones from below.
And a second later...
The Spell whispered into Sunny's ears:[Your Echo has been destroyed.]
He staggered and gritted his teeth.
'Just... just like that?'
Sunny knew that the Echo of Dire Fang would not be able to defeat the harrowing creature, but still... he had not expected it to be destroyed in mere seconds.
He had just gotten that Echo. And now, it was gone.
Just what kind of horror was wearing the body of Master Xu?
...No matter what it was, the three of them were not capable of fighting it.
Even if Dire Fang himself had been here - or all the other Saints of the great clans - Sunny was not sure that the abomination could have been stopped.
Summoning Nightmare, he shouted to Jet and Seishan:"Get on!"
Soul Reaper stared at him for a split second.
"But... but I still don't know how to ride a horse!"
Sunny was already running away.
"Figure it out, if you want to live!"
A moment later, both Jet and Seishan climbed onto Nightmare. The black steed instantly rushed away from the narrow fissure in the stone floor.
Sunny was just a step or two ahead, turning into a swift shadow.
Together, the four of them flew out of the ruin...
And plunged into the dreadful havoc of the eternal battle.
Nightmare flew through the battlefield where the servants of dead deities fought against each other, unable to resolve their ancient grudge even after thousands of years had passed. All around the galloping steed, giants made of black bones clashed with murderous fury.
Each strike of a rusted blade, each blow of a vicious claw, each snap of crushing jaws produced powerful shockwaves that stirred the white sand and made it seem as if the world was on the verge of collapsing. Angry sparks flew into the air, and a cacophonous clangor filled the dark sky.
'Crazy, crazy... this is crazy!'
Sunny was in the form of a shadow, gliding across the sand in front of Nightmare. He was serving as a guide, and the black stallion followed, carrying Jet and Seishan.
Sunny's mind was in overdrive, absorbing every minute detail of what was happening around them. He had to find a way to avoid the ancient wraiths and slip between them, somehow, while not being destroyed by their destructive wrath.
It was not easy... no, it was almost impossible. His only saving grace was that the dead did not seem to pay them any attention.
Still, just the aftershocks of their dreadful attacks were enough to obliterate a puny Ascended like Sunny.
'Damn it all!'
As they moved away from the ruin, Sunny saw...
A black skeleton easily parting the night sky with its obsidian sword. The abominable bone behemoth that had been attacking the dead swordsman shuddered and collapsed, making the whole desert shake. Its mountain-like skeleton, almost a kilometer long, was cleanly cut in half along the spine.
A phalanx of ancient warriors marching forward to meet the charge of monstrous skeletal cavalry. The moment the two tides of black bones met, millions of stars were suddenly extinguished in the sky.
Two giants colliding above the dunes. One wielded a sword, while the other had iron shackles fastened around its wrists and ankles. The heavy chains rang as a gargantuan shackled hand shot forward, grabbing the colossal sword and flinging it away.
...Right in the direction of Sunny.
'Curse...'
The giant sword fell down just a few meters ahead of Sunny. However, it did not hit the sand - instead, the ancient weapon plunged into the shadows, disappearing into their bottomless embrace. The steel blade flashed past his intangible form like a wall of steel, barely missing Sunny himself.
'...We won't survive here for long.'
No one really knew what the Nightmare Desert had been before, but it was known that one of the last - or at least one of the fiercest - battles in the war between the daemons and the gods had taken place here.
Maybe the desert had already existed back then, or maybe this land had been turned into a desert by the battle.
No one knew why the fallen soldiers rose from the dead every night to continue the ferocious clash, either. Why did the continue to fight? What power had been unleashed here? Who was the architect of this nightmare?
All Sunny knew was that this was no place for the living. It was barely a place suited for the dead, even.
The weakest of the black skeletons were equal to powerful Corrupted creatures. The strongest... he did not even want to know. From what Nephis had said, the true horror was hidden in the heart of the desert, where the champions of the two armies had fought and died.
Sunny struggled to imagine what could be more horrific than the catastrophic clash happening around them, but he understood very well that they were not going to survive in the open.
They were like ants here. No one had stepped on them yet, but with how intense and harrowing the fighting between the dead was, it was only a matter of time - minutes, or maybe even seconds - before someone or something erased them from existence.
Just an echo of a distant strike was enough to annihilate them.
He had been planning to reach some other ruin. The location of the nearest structures was burned into his memory, but once they entered the battlefield, Sunny realized that it was of no use - the white dunes had shifted, and he had no marks to orient himself in the desert.
From the moment the three of them escaped the ruin, they were utterly lost.
The ground shook and split as a skeleton in rusted armor slammed its war hammer into the shield of a six-armed demon, and Nightmare almost stumbled. Baring its fangs, the black steed soared into a high jump, landed on the spine of a lumbering monster, galloped across it and landed on the other side, faster than wind.
Jet and Seishan held on for dear life.
Sunny was thrown out of the shadows and rolled on the sand, then jumped to the side, barely avoiding a titanic foot that descended from somewhere above like a black cliff.
The shockwave of its landing sent him stumbling back, and he tasted blood.
Dazed, he dove back into the shadows and flew toward Nightmare.
'We need to hide... we need to hide...'
Suddenly, Sunny saw a flash of light somewhere far away.
He couldn't really perceive colors while in the form of a shadow, but from the purity of the light, he knew that it had to be white.
Some distance away, obscured by countless fighting skeletons, a white halo was rising above the desert.
'There.'
Without spending too much time doubting himself, Sunny pivoted and flew toward the distant light. Nightmare followed, foam falling from his mouth.
All around them, the armies of the dead continued to annihilate each other, their battle slowly turning into a frenzied, apocalyptic scene of the end of the world.
Sunny knew that he was going to die. He was supposed to be dead already, even - the power of the clashing creatures was too great for mere mortals to survive.
And yet, it seemed that luck was on his side today.
Somehow, they were continuing to cling to their lives.
Eventually, they reached the source of the white light.
Hidden behind rolling white dunes, a stone edifice protruded from the sand. It was surrounded by a ring of white flame - and, strangely enough, none of the black skeletons dared to cross it.
Sunny did not risk plunging into the fire, either. Instead, he stepped through the shadows and appeared within the ring of flames. Nightmare simply jumped over them, landing nearby.
The ruin was in front of them, seemingly empty. There was no movement inside.
Feeling his heart start to beat faster, Sunny glanced at the white flame, and then at the broken black stones. His breath grew heavy.
'...Neph?'
The harrowing battle was still raging all around them, and Sunny struggled to suppress the feeling of primordial terror that threatened to overwhelm his reason. Thinking back to their mad dash across the dark battlefield, he felt his hands tremble.
How the hell did they survive?
He winced, and pushed the fear to the side. There was no time to be afraid.
Glancing at Jet and Seishan, Sunny nodded silently, and took a step toward the ruin.
No matter what awaited them inside, they couldn't remain in the open.
The ancient structure was in a sorry state. It had withstood thousands of years of heat and wind, but was nearly destroyed by whatever it was that had transpired here minutes ago.
The spherical dome was raptured, and stone shards lay on the white sand, some covered in dancing flames. It was as though a powerful explosion had wrecked it from within, spreading fire and debris all around. A few chunks of broken stone were large and heavy enough to crush an armored vehicle.
Sunny extended his shadow sense as far as he could, but the black walls of the ruined structure were somehow blocking it.
Followed by Jet and Seishan, he carefully approached the hole in the dome's wrecked wall, lingered for a moment, and jumped inside.
The first thing that met them was the stench of burned flesh.
The ruin was much smaller than the one they had sheltered in before, and from the looks of it, there was no path to the underground portion of the structure. There was only this one spherical chamber, with its floor partially buried under the sand.
A blackened corpse lay in the middle of the round hall. It seemed human, but it was impossible to tell who that human had been — the corpse was burned too badly, and all its features were destroyed by the flame.
There was someone else in the chamber, too.
Sunny cursed and dashed forward, appearing near the motionless figure a split second later. Nephis was laying on the black stones, her armor almost destroyed, with her eyes closed. Wisps of white fire were escaping from the terrible wounds covering her body, and in the bleak light, her face looked pale and vulnerable.
'No, no, no…'
A moment later, a relieved sigh escaped from his lips.
She was alive, just unconscious. The wounds were already healing, too — just in these few short seconds, their edges had already grown closer.
Jet and Seishan slowly approached. Soul Reaper kneeled, studying the charred corpse.
After a while, Sunny forced himself to turn away from Neph and asked:
"Who is it? Can you tell?"
Jet hesitated, then shook her head.
"No… the body is too damaged. However, it gives me the creeps."
The three of them remained silent for a few moments, wondering what had happened here.
Had Nephis fought with another survivor? Or had there been another creature like Ascended Xu?
Both possibilities were a little unnerving.
Eventually, Sunny shook his head.
"It doesn't matter. We need to destroy this corpse. Otherwise, there's a chance that it will rise and start talking to us again."
There were no objections.
After disposing of the corpse, the three of them gathered around the unconscious Nephis and sat in tense silence, waiting for dawn with terror gripping their hearts.
***
In the morning, the sounds of the battle grew quiet. Sunny, who had not closed his eyes or allowed himself to relax for a single moment, sent one of his shadows to take a look outside.
He was utterly exhausted. Usually, an Ascended could go a long time without needing to rest, and Sunny had the benefit of wearing the Shroud of Dusk, as well… but in the past twenty-four hours, he had participated in a viciously intense battle, fought a Saint, traversed countless kilometers of the Nightmare Desert, and even survived the ruinous clash of the dead armies.
Not to mention facing the harrowing creature that wore the corpse of Master Xu.
Sunny was tired.
Outside, the desert was tranquil and pristine. The white dunes stretched as far as the eye could see, and there was no sign of the terrible forces that had fought across this hellish place just hours before.
The sand had swallowed everything.
It had been terribly cold in the desert during the night, but now that the sun had appeared above the horizon, the unbearable heat was coming back.
He let out a hoarse sigh.
"They're gone."
The skeletal warriors were gone, but what about Master Xu? Had the creature followed them into the battlefield and got destroyed, or had it waited inside the ruin patiently, waiting for the sun to rise?
Was it coming for them now?
Sunny did not know.
Jet and Seishan were sitting back to back, while he was a couple steps away. Neph's head rested on his knees.
Summoning the Endless Spring, Sunny brought the beautiful glass bottle to her lips and poured out a little bit of water.
As it flowed into her mouth, Nephis stirred a little, and then coughed.
Her eyes opened, and she stared at him from below, slightly confused.
A slight smile appeared on Sunny's face.
"You're awake. Take it slow."
Nephis flinched, then sat up and grabbed the Endless Spring. She drank from it greedily, and then looked at Sunny.
White sparks danced in her eyes, as if agitated.
"How… how are you here?"
He shrugged.
"I told you that I would see you on the other side."
Sunny lingered for a few moments and scoffed.
"What? Don't look at me like that. To be honest, we saw the light of your flames from afar, and rushed here, hoping to find shelter. If not for that, we'd be dead for sure."
Nephis glanced at Jet and Seishan. A small frown appeared on her face.
Then, she suddenly shuddered and turned around, staring at the spot where the charred corpse had been before.
Seishan finally spoke:
"We got rid of it. We… have encountered a creature that can possess corpses. So, keeping a dead body with us did not seem safe."
Nephis shivered.
"Yes… I… I have encountered such a creature, too."
Sunny remained silent for a while, wondering how was it that she had managed to kill the damn thing. Did it have something to do with her Ascended Ability, [Longing]? Or the nature of her Aspect in general?
The dead of the Nightmare Desert seemed unwilling to approach the white flames, too.
More importantly…
Was there more than one creature like the one they had fought? Or was it a creature capable of inhabiting multiple vessels at the same time?
His expression was grim.
"...Do you know what that thing was?"
Nephis hesitated for a few moments, then nodded.
"I'm not sure… but I think I do."
She grimaced, looked at her ruined armor, and raised one trembling hand.
"There were three Nightmare Gates, but only two Gate Guardians entered the waking world. The third… I think that it stayed behind in the Dream Realm."
Nephis grew quiet for a bit, and then added:
"To hunt us."