The Noble Queen-A Shadow Slave Fanfic

Noble had hoped that the rubble of the trainwreck would be enough to stall the Skinwalkers in their pursuit.

In some respects, it had. The flow of monsters was blocked from rushing toward them like an endless tide.

Yet the twisted metal was already creaking and moving under the pressure of the Skinwalker's vessels.

"Come on!" Noble called to the other Masters.

The men rose to their feet and raced forward.

"Will nothing stop them?" Lonzo looked ready to give up.

Noble could not allow that to happen. She snapped her fingers. "They may be determined but we are even more so."

"Still, it would have been better if the tunnel collapsed behind us." Recalling his bow, Fir rested his thumb against his cheek before one of his arrows whizzed away and lodged in the first vessel to break through the chaos.

The group resumed their mad dash down the damaged corridor.

"You want it to collapse?" A small Memory that looked like a sponge formed in Coy's hand. He squeezed it and it began to glow. "I do love a good explosion, and this has one charge left."

The curly-headed Master tossed it behind them, ready to complete the destruction that the train began.

They needed to get far enough away that they weren't caught up in the avalanche. Every meter mattered.

Noble felt something fly towards her head and she ducked. Sailing past her and landing on the tracks before them was Coy's Memory!

But how?

"Those corpses threw it back!" Chip growled.

Having suffered the effects of the devastating detonator once before, the Skinwalker was aware of the Memory's capabilities. Rather than crush it and risk setting it off early, one of the Awakened Vessels had used his strength to hurl the weapon back at its wielder.

The tracks began to glow as the Memory heated to a fiery red. Noble used her Ability to throw it back, but it was already melding to the tracks. She couldn't lift the whole railway!

"Dismiss it!" Noble screamed.

Nodding, Coy pulled the item slowly back into his soul sea. 

"Coy!" The floating duelist tried not to panic. 

"It takes a second!" the Master responded. 

They didn't have a second! 

With a large leap, Helios nearly landed on the bomb to block it as it was about to blow. Instead, the Memory dissolved into a rain of sparks.

Noble released the breath she had been holding. Her noble echo would have placed his body on the line to save them, but his precious cargo would have suffered as well.

'That was too close.'

'We should have stuffed that bomb down one of those creature's throats!' Chip's enraged thought crept into Noble's mind.

Fir continued to let his arrows fly, but they would not hold back the enemy for long. More vessels were making it through the contorted wreckage.

Noble scanned the walls, looking for any weakness. There seemed to be cavities at intervals beyond the concrete wall to her left, but Noble had no idea if any of them led to the surface or if they were strange dead spaces leading to the forgotten underground city.

'How are there no exits in this entire corridor?! Isn't that a safety hazard?'

While she was still trying to search for the best escape route, the burly man beside her nodded.

'That's exactly what I'm going to do!'

'What is?' Noble stopped scanning the world around her to look at the strange Master. The wave of nausea made her immediately regret her choice.

Chip's guttural growl grew. "Give it here, Coy!"

"What?" Coy frowned. Did the man want his daggers?

"Your sponge bomb. Pass it here!" Chip's eyes glowed with anger.

A rain of sparks preceded Coy passing his cohort member the object in question.

"What are you going to do?"

Chip turned on his heels and began sprinting in the opposite direction.

"I'm finishing what that cursed train started and getting all of you out of here in one piece, that's what!"

Noble's eyes opened wide. "You can't!"

She started to grab onto the man and pull him back with her Ability, but he had anticipated that move enough to counter it.

Using some enchantment on his armor, he slipped through Noble's invisible grasp.

'Let me float it in.' Noble urged him. 'If I hold it near the ceiling then–'

'Those critters would still get a hold of it and toss it back. We only have one shot and you need to save your essence for your trip up.' Chip rolled his eyes. 

The woman would completely drain herself if she wasn't careful!

'At least call Endo so he can let you out before the blast!' Noble sent the message to the rogue Master.

'Of course! I'm crazy but not that crazy.' Chip shook his head as he laughed.

If Chip planned to wait until the last possible moment as Noble guessed, there would be no way for the Master to make it away from the explosion and stay in the Waking World.

While it might not kill him, the collapsing tunnel and remaining Skinwalkers would be more than able to finish the job.

As Noble and the others put distance between themselves and the persistent monsters, Chip dove into the fray. The first of the Skinwalkers lunged at him, but an arrow pierced her and pinned her to the ground before she could take hold of Chip's bicep.

'Fir says he is running low on essence. He won't be shooting many more arrows.' Noble told him apologetically.

That wasn't a surprise to Chip. The arrows had more power than they had any right to against such powerful creatures. It must have taken an enormous toll on the Awakened scout.

'Tell him to save his strength. He's going to need it!'

Chip thrust his Kama Yari into the thigh of the next corpse that crossed his path, momentarily debilitating it.

Either the mundane vessels were weaker or having so many of them in one place was making the Skinwalker sloppy.

'Weirdos…' Didn't they care about their job? If they were going to try and take him out of the equation, they could at least put a little more effort into it!

Not everyone could be as diligent as he was, it seemed.

'Don't look them in the eye!' Noble reminded him.

It was sweet of her to care.

'Already on it.'

Chip's face contorted as a monstrous visage took the place of his handsome face. He was almost to the wreckage and he didn't want something like being taken over by corpses to stop him from his mission.

The secondary perception of an Awakened Tyrant that he had once killed took over for his disappearing eyes. While it wasn't like Noble's extra sight in its detail, it was more than enough to maneuver the dark tunnel.

Another vessel lost its arm to the Kama Yari, causing Chip to chuckle.

"I know I'm disarming, but you don't have to make it so obvious."

The vessel hissed but chased after the disregarded limb instead of pursuing him.

In this manner, Chip slashed through the monsters like a terrifying demon.

Anyone watching would have thought he was the Nightmare Creature attacking humans, not the other way around.

Chip slashed his weapon through a monster's skull. Hooking his Kama Yari to his back, the Master took the small radio from his side and flipped it on.

"Endo, come in. Extraction pulse needed on my mark."

Chip lowered the machine to clip it at his side before he wielded the Kama Yari once more against the decapitated vessel.

A hiss caught his attention in the next moment as a once mundane woman burst through the mangled metal.

Her bloodied arms reached for the explosive Memory in Chip's left hand.

He twisted away.

"Ha, nice try." The Master was not about to let the monster take Coy's toy a second time.

The woman's hand was severed from her body, but not before grabbing Endo's radio device from Chip's waist.

The possessed fingers closed around the simple piece of technology. The hand and its cargo went crashing to the ground with a sickening crunch.

Chip didn't have to check to know that his radio was in hundreds of little pieces. He sighed.

'Noble. We have a problem…'