Chapter 12 - Dawn

Jason raised his pistol and calmy shot a Shadow in the head. He saw Andrei do the same, calmy eliminating the Shadows slowly but surely, taking a step back whenever the tide came to close to his feet. It was then that Jason realised a serious problem. 'Crap, with Mia's dragon fighting that gorilla and me and Andrei both using guns, we have nobody to fight the Shadows at close range! Unless Lucy's able to hold them back, we'll have to keep on retreating until we reach Elena!'

Gritting his teeth, Jason continued shooting at the ocean of Shadows as he took steps back. Across from Jason, Lucy watched as a Shadow approached her.

Lucy raised her right arm, it trembled as she looked at the Shadow. She paused, waiting as the Shadow approached, listening to something only she could hear. When she regained her focus her arm no longer shook, and her smile resurfaced. Whoosh! Cold mist flew towards the Shadow wrapping around it and freezing it into an ice statue!

Lucy smiled from ear to ear and pumped her fist in glee, her smile somehow even wider.

"Lucy!" shouted Jason, without stopping his attacks 9n3 the Shadows, "can you use a weaker but more spread out version of that to slow them all down?"

"Err, probably?" said Lucy, shrugging her shoulders, "I mean I've never tried, but I don't see why not."

Lucy then raised her hand towards the centre of the sea of Shadows, unlike last time her hand was firm and unflinching, she closed her eyes as a chilly wind swept her hair, the ends of which were now dyed a light blue, flicking it across her face; the ground surrounding her was soon covered in a layer of blue frost. A chilly mist rose from the ground; her figure turned blurry as Jason could barely see her through the blue, icy fog. Then, as if hit by a gust of wind, the mist flew towards the Shadows, engulfing them in a sea of frost.

When the mist dissipated, the Shadows pale skin was covered in a layer of blue ice. There movements clunky, as if they where being pulled down by invisible chains. Some even directly tripped up, sprawling out on the ground and presenting themselves as easy targets for Andrei and Jason's, revolver and pistol.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A flurry of bullets rained down upon the frozen Shadows, eviscerating the front row.

"How much longer?" shouted Jason.

Elena heard Jason's shout and said something to Rick, who was now fully focused on his task, then, receiving a reply, shouted, "one minute!"

Jason turned back to the Shadows, fully concentrated on keeping them at bay. Except this time he had a slight smirk on his face, confident he could hold them off.

Jason, Andrei and Lucy continued shooting and freezing the Shadows, until; crackle... BOOM! A bolt of lightning struck the door, once again obliterating the arms on it, this time, however, when the arms tried to flood back in, a wall of golden energy surrounded the door, burning the hands which dared to touch it!

Bang! The door was hit again, by another of the punches that hadn't let up since earlier, and was sent flying off of the doorframe nearly hitting Rick, who was crouched just three metres way!

On the other side of the door, stood Quinn, with his glowing orange glove thrown out in a fist. He stared at where the door had been for a second, before realising he had succeeded, "it's open!" he shouted to the people inside, before running outside, Kyle following closely behind. Chris then jogged out of the door, flaming sword in hand, slashing any of the hands that came close to him.

The trio then met up with Elena and Rick, before running to the rest of the group, Elena carrying Mara. Elena scanned the group, making sure everyone was there and said, "we need to leave. We definitely attracted a lot of attention so we need to be gone before someone or something a lot stronger than us shows up with ill intentions. We'll go that way," Elena pointed at the alley Luke had gone down, then continued, "and meet up with Luke there."

Everyone turned to the alley and nodded in agreement, they could see the sky behind it which had an orange tint that seemed to point to a new dawn, a new salvation if they could just escape this Shadow.

Just as the group started moving a loud laugh came from the hotel, "kekekekekek!" The group all turned around and saw a head wrapped in arms on the front of the hotel. The Shadow had no body or legs just countless arms surrounding its pale, soggy head like large tree trunks with countless branches splitting off! It looked down at them as the arms circled around the group surrounding them!

Elena's face twitched as she said, "we'll have to break through, everyone follow me an-!"

"KEKEKEKEKEEE!" before Elena could finish, she was cut by a horrifically loud shriek of laughter. The laugh seemed to pierce their eardrums and directly attack their brains, causing Mark, Lucy and Mia to fall unconscious whilst the rest collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain! The only one who stayed on his feet was Chris, who leant on his flaming sword, grimacing.

The Shadow on the hotel had a similar reaction to Chris, as it shrank backwards onto the hotel wall.

After a few seconds Elena barely regained the strength to even look at what had caused so much harm, and what she saw horrifying. The Shadow flew in the sky with massive wings that stretched more than twelve metres from tip to tip and the Shadow had long, clawed fingers that looked like they could cut through any defense they could muster up! Apart from those two mutations the Shadow looked completely human, its skin was still pale yet it wasn't so pale that it looked inhuman, and the translucent liquid was nowhere to be seen. The Shadow flapped it's wings in front of the magnificent, orange sky, marking the dawn of a glorious, terrifying new world.

"Kekekeke," the monstrous champion laughed at them as it declared itself the ruler of the dawn.