[Amazing Echoes]
The roar of the Rhino's engine was a metallic echo lost among the frozen mountains.
In less than thirty minutes, the vehicle, driven by a Miranda with her brow furrowed in concentration, joined the military column.
Inside the Rhino, the atmosphere was tense but controlled. Shade was reviewing the information Jet had provided him. At least two Category Two Nightmare Gates. That implied, at minimum, two Corrupted Ones. His red eyes reflected, for an instant, a flash of cold confidence. No threat, he thought. Corrupted devils, as powerful as they might be, were no longer an obstacle for him.
They advanced for about ten more minutes, the landscape becoming more rugged, until the column stopped with a squeal of brakes.
The military vehicles lined up at the edge of the mountain road, which descended a steep slope towards the devastated highway below.
Shade, Asher, Lucien, and the others peered out of the Rhino's hatches. The spectacle unfolding below was like something out of Dante.
The highway, once a main artery, was now a seething hive of nightmare. At least four hundred creatures swarmed among the wreckage of abandoned, rusted vehicles.
Most were Awakened Ones, twisted and grotesque humanoid figures, and Fallen Ones, beasts that seemed like amalgamations of animal nightmares. Their appearances varied: some had grayish skin and empty eye sockets, others had bodies covered in black chitin and limbs that were far too long.
Some crawled, some slithered, some walked with a disturbing rigidity.
But what captured everyone's attention were the two Nightmare Gates.
Like cracks in reality, they were canvases of vibrant darkness from which a corrupt energy flowed. Beside each one stood its Guardian.
The first was a nightmare centaur. Its body, a mix of man and steed, was wreathed in flames of an infernal blue that did not warm, but rather chilled the soul. From its torso emerged four muscular arms, ending in long claws that held a single, disproportionately large black sword. Shade narrowed his eyes and concentrated. Through his perception, he could see four knots of darkness pulsing within it. A Corrupted Devil.
The second Guardian was an aberration. An amorphous mass of flesh that writhed and pulsed, as if struggling to define itself, to find a stable form. From its surface, eyeless eyes, mouths uttering muffled laments, and rudimentary limbs sprouted and were reabsorbed. It struggled to emerge from the fissure, expanding and contracting in a grotesque cycle.
"Asher." Shade's voice was a whisper.
"A Fallen Terror... and a Corrupted Devil," Asher reported, his eyes gleaming with arcane knowledge as he analyzed the two abominations. "The rest are Awakened and Fallen. A considerable force."
The column came to a complete halt. The soldiers in the armored transports watched with a mixture of dread and determination. Shade got out of the Rhino with feline agility. They were a few hundred meters away, with the wind in their favor. The creatures, in their frenzy, had not yet detected them.
A military man with a weathered face and a steely gaze approached him. He wore the uniform of the Human Alliance special forces.
"Captain Uriel," he began, in a tone that tried to be formal despite the tension. "I'm Sergeant Major of this unit, Richard."
Shade offered a respectful salute.
"Greetings, Sergeant."
Sergeant Richard wasted no time on pleasantries. He gestured with a nod of his head towards the infested valley.
"The situation has worsened faster than expected. An hour ago, there was only one Nightmare Gate. The second one just opened a few minutes ago. This... complicates our assault plan."
The officers who had gathered nearby exchanged grim looks. A frontal assault against four hundred creatures, two guardians, and two active gates would be a slaughter. Shade observed the chaos of abominations, his red eyes filled with a calm that contrasted with the horror of the landscape.
"I'll take care of clearing the area," he said.
His declaration fell like a stone in a still pond. The officers and Awakened Ones surrounding him looked at him with curiosity, some with barely concealed skepticism.
"Excuse me, Captain?" asked Sergeant Richard, raising an eyebrow. "How exactly do you plan to do that? With all due respect, you're one man."
Shade sketched a cryptic smile. "I have a nice pet. Well, actually, I have several. I'll just need a little space."
The officers, bewildered, stepped back a few paces, clearing an open space on the mountain road. Miranda, Lucien, and the others watched with a mixture of pride and anticipation. They knew what was coming.
Shade raised a hand. The darkness at his feet intensified, becoming denser, deeper, like a bottomless pit. Then, it happened.
An enormous claw, covered in scales black as night and veined with gold like the sun, emerged from the shadow. Its talons, capable of shredding steel, gripped the ground. It was followed by a colossal head, with incandescent yellow eyes and jaws from which a thin wisp of smoke escaped. Then the torso, the wings that, when unfurling, made a sound like tearing silk, and finally a long, powerful tail that coiled around him.
Gunlaug rose in all his imposing majesty. The power he radiated was a wave of heat and primal fear that struck everyone present. The most hardened soldiers took a step back, their hands trembling on their weapons. A young Awakened One muttered a shaky, "W-what... what is that?"
Even the veteran Sergeant Richard visibly paled. He had seen terrible things in his life, but nothing compared to the absolute presence of the dragon before him.
"Hey," said Shade, his calm voice breaking the spell. He looked at Gunlaug, who inclined his enormous head in a gesture of understanding. "Kill the fleshy thing and its followers."
The order was simple, direct.
The dragon spread its wings with a movement that released a gust of wind, kicking up dust and making those closest stagger. With a powerful beat, he launched himself from the heights, a nightmare projectile aimed at the sea of abominations. The Awakened and Fallen on the highway looked up, their primal instincts screaming an alarm that came too late.
Gunlaug opened his maw and a furious sea of incandescent flames, a torrent of black fire, descended upon the horde. The dragon's roar mingled with the screams of the creatures as they were consumed. Dozens of Awakened Ones became living torches, their bodies writhing before disintegrating into ashes. The voice of the spell whispered in Shade's mind, confirming what he already knew: awakened beasts, and the occasional minor demon. Nothing his dragon couldn't handle.
As Gunlaug sowed chaos, Shade summoned his other creature. This time, it wasn't a colossal beast that emerged from the shadows, but a single figure. Silent, wrapped in a dark cloak that swayed as if it had a life of its own. His armor, black as the abyss, covered every inch of his body. From the darkness that enveloped him, a sword materialized, long and lethal, forged from the same substance as the shadows.
The Taciturn Knight.
"Kill the Corrupted Devil and clear the area while your brother deals with the Terror," Shade ordered.
The knight did not respond. He simply began to walk. He took three steps and sank into a shadow cast by a rock, disappearing. An instant later, he emerged from the darkness beside a large black stone, just a few meters from the fire centaur who, distracted by the dragon's attack, did not see him coming.
The knight launched himself at the abomination with deadly speed and precision. His sword, a black blur, severed two of the centaur's arms before it could react. The Corrupted Devil roared, its flaming sword descending in a mortal arc, but the knight was no longer there, sliding through the shadows to reappear at its back and sink his blade into one of the darkness knots of his target.
Below, the massacre was total. Gunlaug, with his breath of fire, had reduced more than a hundred creatures to ashes. The Fallen Terror, the mass of flesh, tried to envelop the dragon, but Gunlaug was too fast, too powerful. His claws tore through the amorphous flesh, his flames carbonized it. The Fallen Terror lost miserably, its form collapsing upon itself.
The Awakened Ones on the road watched with mouths agape, paralyzed by awe. A dragon was massacring an army of nightmares. A shadowy knight, a figure seemingly ripped from an urban legend, was destroying a Guardian that, under normal circumstances, would require the intervention of a saint to defeat.
The battle lasted only a few minutes. When silence returned to the valley, only the smoldering remains of the creatures and the two Nightmare Gates remained, which began to flicker and slowly close upon losing their guardians.
The voice of the spell whispered the deaths of the two abominations.
[You have killed a Fallen Terror: Curse of Flesh]
[You have killed a Corrupted Devil: Centaur of Vengeance]
Shade exhaled slowly. Three memories. He would use them to feed the knight, Gunlaug, and Soul. As the creatures dissipated, returning to their sea of souls, Shade walked back towards the vehicle column, passing among the dumbfounded soldiers.
"It's done," he said with a studied tone of boredom, as if he had just crushed a plague of annoying insects.
Sergeant Richard blinked, shaking his head to snap out of his shock. "Quick! Secure the perimeter! Make sure nothing else comes out of those gates! Mobilize the collection teams!" His orders, shouted with authority, broke the spell that had held the soldiers paralyzed, and they mobilized with mechanical efficiency, although their glances kept drifting, again and again, towards the calm figure of Shade.
Shade returned to the Rhino, where his subordinates waited with eyes like saucers. Miranda was the first to break the silence.
"What the hell, Captain? Where did you get echoes that are so... so cool?", she asked, her voice choked with emotion.
Shade shrugged, leaning against the side of the vehicle. "Oh, it's not a nice story."
"That was incredible!", Lucien chimed in, his eyes shining with a childlike light. "Can I ride the dragon?"
Everyone looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.
"What?", Lucien defended himself. "I've always wanted to ride a dragon. It was my childhood dream."
Shade couldn't help but smile slightly. "I'd let you, but you'd die instantly. Gunlaug is a very proud and powerful creature. He doesn't accept riders."
"Oh...", Lucien's illusion vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"Even so," Abel interjected, his tone more reflective, "what about that shadowy knight? He was incredibly strong. He defeated the Guardian in a matter of minutes, without much effort. How much are you hiding, Captain?"
Shade looked at him, a spark of amusement in his red eyes. "You'd be surprised to know." Then, his gaze drifted to the gray horizon. "Although, who knows. Maybe a nice butterfly."
Everyone blinked, confused.
"A butterfly?", asked Tiffany, frowning.
Shade nodded, with sudden nostalgia. "I like butterflies. I always wanted to see one, before they went extinct."
The response, so unexpected and human, broke the tension. The chatter among the irregular company continued, mixing the awe of what they had just witnessed with the everyday nature of their personalities.
Meanwhile, the offensive division advanced the few hundred meters separating them from the massacre site. They began the meticulous task of collecting everything useful: soul fragments, skin, bones, claws, any valuable parts from the monsters, especially from the Fallen Terror and the Corrupted One, whose remains were excellent materials for creating high-level equipment.
Of course, Shade kept the lion's share: four Transcendent Soul Fragments and six Ascended Fragments. He handed them to Miranda, Tiffany, and Abel, bringing them one step closer to saturating their cores and reaching the next level.
Shade sat on top of the Rhino, watching the soldiers and Awakened Ones come and go. There wasn't a single injured person, not a single casualty. The operation had been a resounding success. To prevent any surprise attack, he had summoned the dark knight to scout the terrain. A few kilometers to the east, the knight detected the opening of a new gate, but contained it silently, eliminating all the abominations without the army noticing, a protective shadow on the periphery.
Hours later, with everything collected, Shade allowed three of his subordinates to enter the dream realm to strengthen themselves. When they returned, the other three followed suit. As night fell, Shade was finally preparing to sleep, but fate, capricious as it was, had other plans. His personal communicator vibrated. The ID showed a name: Jet.
He took the call. Soul Reaper's image appeared projected, her expression, even through the screen, denoting a barely contained annoyance.
"Maestra Jet. What a pleasant surprise to hear from you so soon. I thought you'd call tomorrow or in a week. What can I do for you?", asked Shade in a falsely cheerful tone, while finishing a container of instant synthetic ramen.
"There's been a change of plans," Jet said, without preamble. Shade raised an eyebrow, putting his chopsticks aside.
"I need you to head south. To the Erebus campus. The situation is escalating faster than anticipated, and we need all available support."
Shade nodded, processing the information. "The Erebus campus... that's one of the important zones for the evacuation operation, right?"
"It is now," Jet confirmed. "Due to the mobilization of so many people, a considerable number of nightmare creatures are migrating to that location. I don't need to explain the chaos that would result if Erebus Field falls."
Shade imagined the scenario: millions of refugees, supplies, the logistics of the entire evacuation depending on a point that, if it collapsed, would cause a devastating domino effect for the entire evacuation operation.
"Yeah, everything would go to hell. Will I be alone, or will I have help?"
"You'll have help. Dale and Randal are heading to the Erebus campus right now."
Shade felt slight relief. Dale and Randal were heavy hitters. "And after that? What am I supposed to do?"
"For now, your focus is to be the defensive line at Erebus Field. For a few weeks, at least, until we manage to evacuate a few million people to the eastern quadrant."
"Alright. I'll get moving as soon as my subordinates return from the dream realm."
Jet nodded, her image serious. "I'll send you the relevant information as soon as possible." And with that, the communication ended.
Shade let out a deep sigh and set the empty ramen container aside. He looked at the Rhino's ceiling, his expression grim.
"This is bullshit," he murmured, his voice tinged with contained frustration. "There were supposed to be at least two months left for this. I haven't even been in Antarctica for a full month."
He rubbed his eyes, feeling the weight of responsibility and fatigue. "So, the Erebus campus... At least it'll be an easy place to defend. I guess Soul will have a lot of work with so many souls converging there."
His mind, however, was already plotting strategies, calculating risks. There was still time before the real nightmares appeared: the Titan Goliath, the Winter Beast, the Terror of L049, and the Devouring Swarm. And then, Falcon Scott. But now, his priority was Erebus. Another battle, another line to hold in the endless war against the night.