Shadow Slave AU: Fluid Fate

[35]Predators

Nephis, Caster, and Cassie were currently staring at Sunny like he just told them to swallow a mountain. If even Nephis was skeptical, Sunny knew that it was an impossible venture to get them to agree to help him kill a Fallen creature. So, Sunny just shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"We could probably go pick a fight with someone important under Gunlaug, but why bother to go march into the castle when we could do so much better?"

Caster was looking at Sunny like scum on the floor. Nephis looked expectant.

Cassie was just a bundle of confusion.

Sunny had to remind himself for a minute how cruel she could be.

Moving on, Sunny got the three of them to follow Sunny to the building at the edge of the settlement, and then he began to lay out his plan.

The three of them were not convinced, but the more Sunny talked, the more they realized that his plan was actually feasible for them to accomplish. Eventually, Sunny convinced Nephis, so Caster and Cassie followed suit.

They perfected the plan before they slept.

***
When morning came, Sunny carefully led his little Sleeper strike force through the city. Caster and Nephis took up the rear, with Cassie following behind Sunny.

Sunny was not happy with the arrangement, but paid it no mind. He had a job to do.

Sunny knew where all of the surrounding creatures were, so he had a good idea of where to go in order to avoid them.

Gloomy was ahead, triple checking their path and acting as a way to summon Soul Serpent in an emergency.

Sunny took almost the entire morning to get to the starting point of his plan, carefully avoiding nightmare creatures of many types, whether they were openly wandering through the streets or hiding in or around buildings.

Sunny saw every type of creature as if they weren't covered by buildings or walls at all and was able to avoid them accordingly.

Not only did he get away with no encounters, Sunny was able to move through the city at a speed greater than perhaps any other Sleeper in the city, thanks to outright knowing where every living creature not attuned to elemental darkness was, and even then just knowing to avoid any blind spots.

Caster looked increasingly thoughtful as they made their way through the city. The girls were still kind of new to this, but he had been in this damned place for almost a month, so he had a better idea of just how terrifying Sunny had proven to be.

Sunny had suddenly jumped to his top ten threats in the city, and to make matters worse, he and the blind girl were stuck to his target like glue.

Caster even had a creeping, ominous feeling every time he saw Sunny, and his gut was telling him that the strange dreams he was having had something to do with the short young man.

. . . He put it aside, chalking it up to paranoia. If Caster was half as paranoid as Sunny, he would be plotting Sunny's death by now.

Instead, Caster tried to quietly talk to Nephis and was promptly scolded by Sunny in a whisper to keep his emotions in check and stay quiet.

For some reason, unlike when other pathfinders scolded him, this irritated Caster. Still, after a while of creeping through the city, they came to a corner street that was unfamiliar to all of them, except Sunny.

It was the nest of the Fallen rank Iron
Spiders. The very same creatures that later took down the territory of the stone soldiers, and the children of the Iron Matriarch, which was supposedly an Awakened Tyrant.