As they had previously realized, it was difficult to follow the passage of time in Umbra’s ominous realm. Therefore, the ladies worried their internal clocks would soon fall into chaos. It certainly wouldn’t matter for at least a week or two, but it was inevitable, no matter how strong mentally and physically they were.

Outside the empty windows of their granted suite, the sky was as black and brooding as during their first hour in this world. A few of them had been hoping for some kind of change that would make it easier to process fleeting day and night cycles, but it was now clear that something like that didn’t even exist in the dimension of eternal darkness.

The purplish dots resembling stars did cast the faintest glow onto the ground, so there was that at least. On the other hand, that gleam never subsided. No matter if they slept six hours or twelve, that tiniest shine wouldn’t change. Therefore, they needed to figure out a solution for their prolonged stay in their friend’s homeworld.

Their interdimensional host was the first one to suggest a seemingly viable option. Having someone as powerful as Silvia, it wouldn’t be too hard for the gorgeous mistress of flames to create a miniature sun just for them. Supported by Asterios, she might even be able to uphold the technique while sleeping.

While a seemingly viable option, it would affect those around them, which wasn’t the best outcome, both making it more dangerous for Ast’s group and more troublesome for everyone else.

Thankfully, Tia came up with a less noticeable option.

She offered to become their clock. Residing inside Ast’s source, partially inside his soul, she was capable of extremely precise measurement of passing time. If they agreed upon the starting point, she could inform them accurately when minutes and hours passed, matching the system they were used to from their respective realms. She would watch over their mental health by keeping them on a schedule, and as long as they abided by it, their journey would be much lighter on their minds.

Of course, that didn’t solve the lighting issues, but Umbra came up with an offer that matched the Dryad’s suggestion well. Since he didn’t require something like sleep, always watching over them, he could envelop them in an even deeper darkness for the moments of their rest. The difference might not be huge, but it would be noticeable, allowing Asterios and the girls to still perceive the change.

There was no need to look deeper as everyone agreed to try the combination out, starting at that very moment. They were at least partially tired mentally after not one but two challenges of the mind right out of the bat. Asterios could see his mates trying their best not to show signs of any weakness, and while it made him proud of how much the girls cared for him and his goals, he didn’t want to see his beloved push themselves to their limits without any urgency.

So, after wrapping up their conversation on the topic, they set their first night with Tia and huddled up on the shadowy bed. Miria ended up the closest to Asterios, snuggled tightly to his chest, and showered his sweet mate in comforting affection, knowing that she would be one of the people affected by their recent trials the most. Tina and Silvia formed a spoon in front of them so that they could both face their man with warm smiles. That left his back to Selene and Althea, who mirrored the other pair.

Without further ado, Umbra turned the lights off, and they let themselves drift off.

In their assumed morning, the Lord of Darkness removed the nightly curtain and Tia roused the group awake. After many hugs, snuggles, and good morning kisses stolen from Asterios, they all sat up and confirmed that the plan seemed to work, everyone feeling fairly refreshed. Moving onto breakfast, they discussed their next step while briefly examining the artifact gained the previous day.

Nothing came up during that attempt, thus Umbra’s plan remained in focus. It made the girls really excited, and their friend quite awkward, which they seemed to miss in their eagerness to see what the territory of the Duke of Umbra looked like. Asterios stared at his loyal familiar with a pitiful smile, knowing firsthand how much a force of nature the ladies were when they set their minds on something.

Finished with their morning routines, the group sought Darek to bid farewell to the community. The little guy was sad that they were leaving so fast but didn’t try to hold them back, mentioning something about divine responsibilities and all that, making Selene roll her eyes. He expressed his hope for the artifact his people had provided to aid them on their journey and wished for another opportunity to meet. Assured that it would definitely happen, he focused on taming the crowd of Darklings who wanted to express their gratitude for the help.

Finally escaping the range of the village, still seeing quite a lot of its community waving at them past its borders, they turned to Asterios.

“Time to fly again?” Tina smirked softly, a hopeful glint in her charming eyes.

“We have some distance to cover,” Umbra replied first. “It will be faster for me to transfer everyone. And safer since we have to pass through at least two other territories. That is if no one has anything against it.”

“How long is it going to take?” Silvia asked.

He consulted with Tia and hummed quietly. “About ten hours. But, we can take breaks.”

“I believe this will serve as a good test and training,” Althea chimed in. “Since we are in a place where darkness is a dominant theme, we should get used to it as much as we can.”

Everyone agreed and gathered together. Selene suggested a bet, and before Asterios had even a chance to say anything, the girls were burning with intense competitive spirit. He could only chuckle in amusement as they ignored him and discussed between themselves what kind of reward they would be getting. Which, obviously, involved his person.

Happy with what they decided on, the ladies signaled their readiness and Umbra swallowed them into his shadows, save for Abyss, who would have no issues keeping up with him. It took about six hours for the first person to quit their self-imposed social isolation. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Miria but Tina who gave up ahead of everyone else. She looked fairly disturbed so Asterios wasted no time in praising his amazing girlfriend for being so incredibly brave and strong-willed.

One by one, the others joined them and began taking their minds off the deep black emptiness surrounding them by talking to each other. It became much more bearable with the presence of another person by their side, though not completely effortless. Only Asterios seemed to be doing fairly well, but that was to be expected with one of his lineages being related to this element.

By the eighth hour, they had to stop for a short break. Miria won the bet by default when all the other women surrendered. She would have most likely continued until their very destination, but the panthergirl was literally shaking and shivering as she fought off all her fears, discomfort, mental pressure, and worst of it, the crippling loneliness of not being able to connect with her beloved master.

Therefore, Asterios broke her out of her trance, announcing her as a winner, and spending some time pampering his unbelievably determined mate. He knew Miria still viewed herself as the weakest in their group no matter what, and this was one of her methods to catch up with them, by pushing herself way past her boundaries and comfort zone. Out of sheer respect and love, Asterios didn’t try to dissuade her from such attempts, as much as he wished he would, unable to watch the girl he cared for deeply hurt herself so much.

Taking a bit more than thirty minutes to recover, they continued with their journey, this time working on the oppressing feeling together while Umbra intentionally made it more intense for them. As much as they needed to work on their resistance individually, they knew they were a tightly-knit team and their true strength lay in their powerful spiritual and emotional connection.

This time, even Asterios struggled a little as they combated the Lord of Darkness’ influence.

Thankfully, the second part of the trip was much shorter and they soon were relieved of the challenge. Taking deep breaths and examining each other in case anyone needed any support, they looked around the area they had found themselves in. Abyss descended next to them in a blink, curiously staring at something.

That something turned out to be a weird crystal… lake.

They stood on solid ground, albeit a little springy. Black earth spanned underneath their feet while they were surrounded by what resembled trunks of dead trees but made of the same dark stone. The only space free of them was the sizable, almost perfect oval resting on the ground at the exact same level as the tender surface. It was hard to distinguish, but the purplish dots from the sky reflected on it clearly.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Is this it?” Miria frowned lightly. “I expected something… less empty.”

“I have a feeling there’s more to this place than meets the eye,” Silvia said and took a peek at Abyss, who remained quiet and detached.

“You are right.” Umbra chuckled. “This is just an entrance. What you see before you is the blood of the previous lord of this region. The creature’s main trait was the ability to invert almost everything. It even tried to invert its death, but instead of resurrecting itself, it turned its blood into an everlasting fluid. Some argue that it’s still alive, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to recover from this splotch of reflective liquid.”

“How is it an entrance, then?” Asterios furrowed his brows at the eerie mirror.

“Let’s just say that I was pissed at having to look at it forever from that point on and tried whatever I could to remove it from my new land. As you can see, I failed in the end. However, I discovered something interesting during my attempts. After me, please.” His familiar seeped into the gleaming surface, sending faint ripples through it.

Exchanging a few glances, Ast’s group moved closer to the perfectly flat edge. Althea risked dipping her shoe in it to check if it truly wasn’t solid and evoked a similar reaction from the pool. Shrugging, she offered the ladies the closest to her a hand each and they all formed a chain. Counting down in their connected minds, they jumped right in.

The transfer was instantaneous, though it involved a few quite disorienting spins. They were spat out on the other side, quickly realizing they were in the air, already approaching the faraway ground. Selene reacted first and created thin barriers underneath everyone’s feet, using the spiritual discs to slow them down and then fully stop them in the air. The footholds merged together and formed a single platform.

Now that their focus wasn’t on surviving the fall, Ast’s group fully took in the sight before them.

It was immediately clear that they had dropped into an enclosed space, even if it was impressively deep and much wider than the stain would have suggested. The main difference from the other place was the color palette. While the straight cliffs surrounding them and the uneven, natural-looking ground were white, they were still far off from the marble structure of the underground facility. The shades here were much less pristine and much more worn out by the passage of time and whatever weather conditions existed in the realm. It was more of a light gray than white, actually.

The gate they had traveled through remained slightly above their heads, the mirror surface positioned in the ceiling, now also light instead of dark. In all that bright space, there was one distinct landmark bearing black colors. It resembled a tall and thin mountain, or maybe a sharp spire, with a flat top, leaning slightly to the side. It released thick fumes into its surroundings, which descended to the ground at a languid pace and covered it in a small layer of dark fog.

“Where are we?” Tina voiced out the question that everyone pondered on.

“It turns out that this creature loved consuming entire plots of land that it had stumbled on. That’s why the ground seems like a mishmash of different natural styles. After its death, this place didn’t disappear but became a static pocket dimension under my control, attached to the blood. I used it as my lair for the most part. It still seems connected with the realm and the lands outside of this oval box,” Umbra explained. “Save for the spire, everything you can see here is here thanks to the courtesy of the previous lord.”

“Did you make the spire?” Silvia inquired, noticing the slight resemblance between their darknesses.

“Well…” The Lord of Shadows turned his glowing eyes aside awkwardly.

“I don’t feel anything like wind here but damn, that black grass around it is going wild.” Miria giggled, switching everyone’s attention to the mentioned detail.

Ast’s brows rose as his eyes landed on the dark shapes wriggling in every direction in perfect sync. “That’s no grass…”

Those without sharper vision focused on his senses through their bond and they all saw what he had seen. The moving things were actually living, or at least existing entities shaped like someone threw a blanket on a person and cut holes in the sides for their arms. Those black figures kept bowing and shaking their bodies almost in a trance, every single one facing the mountainous tower.

“Are they… chanting?” Althea noted.

Surely, after focusing more on their hearing, the group could recognize the intonation and even some words. The entities sang praises to the Lord of Shadows and expressed their gratitude for his existence. They seemed to relish in the dark fumes surrounding them, their form shivering with each new wave descending upon them.

Asterios and the ladies turned to Umbra, who kept glancing away. But, he couldn’t escape their gazes forever and released a tired sigh.

“These are Shades.” He mimicked the notion of rubbing his eyes. “Don’t ask how and why, but these guys just one day migrated here. They chose me as their… god, and no matter what I did, they wouldn’t leave or change their minds. After a few decades, I gave up and decided to ignore the problem. They are extremely territorial and take care of any intruders who stumble inside the pocket dimension, so I just let them be.”

“Ah. I remember you mentioning something like that during our aquatic travels with Svertaniel.” Asterios cocked his head back in realization.

“From the doorstep of one cult to the doorstep of another.” Miria snickered sweetly. “Does every one of us get one?”

They all laughed at the possibility.

The sounds of their joy sent ripples through the Shades and the chanting stopped. All the figures froze, and so did Ast’s team. Expecting the entire population under Umbra to turn hostile in a flash, they readied themselves to defend, not necessarily wanting to hurt his followers.

Then, the Shades shot up into the air as one mass, the bottom ends of their figures rippling like flags on the wind. They weren’t fast, but the hundreds of dark shapes soon surrounded them in every direction and axis, staring at them with a single, vaguely triangular bright white spot near the top of their forms, which had to be their assumed eye.

“The Lord has returned!” one of the Shades threw its arms into the air.

The rest of the crowd mirrored the motion and they chanted the phrase repeatedly.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough.” Umbra waved his hand at them, silencing the gathering instantly. “As you can see, we have guests today. They are very important to me so show them proper respect. And don’t antagonize them. They can end you whenever they wish to.”

The Shades nodded with their entire bodies, which looked fairly comical.

“So, who is the leader?” Asterios asked.

“We are all one,” a different being answered with the exact same voice. “We exist to serve the Duke of Umbra and share the same respected rank of a devotee.”

“When one falls in battle, another takes their place,” a third speaker joined in, also a perfect copy. “The Tower of Shadows gives us strength and replenishes our sect for as long as the Duke’s darkness spreads its tendrils into this and many other worlds.”

“What exactly is the tower?” Silvia glanced at the worshiped entity.

“You can think of it as my nest, my birthplace, which somehow ended up inside the giant, most likely on one of its wandering journeys,” he responded. “I have no idea how they managed to link themselves to my lifeforce, though. It should be impossible.”

“There is nothing impossible for the most devout believers,” Abyss shared a bit of her wisdom. “The enemy you have slain might have played a role in it too as I assume these creatures weren’t so interested in you before.”

“On the day of the great prophecy, we left our home in search of our dark master,” the Shades said in unison. “It is our duty to serve.”

“You must have done something to the blood,” Asterios offered his thoughts. “Because I bet that this thing wasn’t the only one you bested.”

“Definitely not. It wasn’t even the strongest at that time.” Umbra shook his head. “But, none of that matters now. I can’t get rid of them. I can only hope that the demon from your realm doesn’t start another cult as I can barely tolerate this one. I still regret coming back.”

It looked like no matter how harsh he was on his followers, they didn’t care.

Talk about total fanaticism.

“You have returned just in time, Great Duke,” one Shade stated.

“What?” The Lord of Shadows glared at it.

A powerful ripple shook the entire pocket space enough for Ast’s group to stumble a little, pieces of the ceiling coming down.

“The unworthy has been waiting for your return to take your place,” another Shade said. “It is time for the wretched offender to learn its place.”

Everyone looked up towards the liquid mirror. One by one, massive dark blue tentacles slid into the restricted area. They were thick and full of ugly suction cups from the bottom side, which were used to glue the writhing limbs to the ceiling. Soon, the rest of the monster emerged from the gate, revealing itself as something akin to an octopus whose bulbous head was replaced by a gigantic maw straight out of a horror story.

“I knew it was a mistake…” Umbra sighed.

The monstrosity roared and let go, hurtling towards the ground. With another powerful quake, it smashed into the hard surface, its full size finally comparable to something. It was almost as big as the spire, capable of wrapping itself around the tall and thin mountain without a problem.

Asterios and his mates readied themselves to intercept the new enemy, but their shadowy friend raised a hand to stop them.

“I’ll handle this,” the Duke announced. “It’s the host’s obligation to clean up their house before the visit. And it’s been a while since another fool challenged my authority.”

Without waiting for a response, Umbra dropped down too. As he fell, the black fog seeping out of the spire changed directions. Along with the smoke on the ground, it flowed up and into his figure, which took the shape of a quickly growing sphere. Before he crashed just like his opponent, he reached almost equal size to the scary octopus.

The tiny planet of black haze exploded upwards like a water drop and formed an old but very familiar shape. Rivaling the height of the octopus, Umbra rose into a tall pillar of darkness with two purplish slits for his eyes. An oppressive spiritual pressure filled the entire area, the light seemingly sucked straight out of the air as the space around them dimmed.

Once again, the Duke of Umbra stood in front of them in his full glory, holding back nothing. Even though Asterios and his mates had grown since that fateful day of their first meeting, they still shivered slightly from the memory, reliving that powerful moment. Those who hadn’t been there back then could base their impressions only on the current display, which was still quite impactful.

It looked like they were finally going to see what it meant for their usually kind and considerate friend to go all out.