Shadow Slave

[Your nightmare is over.]

[Prepare for appraisal…]

Once again, Sunny found himself in the space between dream and reality. The boundless black void was illuminated by a myriad of stars, with countless strings of silver light connecting them together to form an infinite, beautiful pattern.

Now that he had a nascent understanding of sorcery, Sunny saw the pattern differently. His old suspicions grew stronger, slowly turning into a certainty.

This was the inner sanctum of the Spell. And if the Spell had been created by Weaver… then what he was looking at was its weave.

The myriad of stars were the nexuses. The strings of light, however, were not the same as the threads of essence he could create himself.

…Instead, the Spell was weaved from the Strings of Fate itself.

As that realization took root in his heart, Sunny shuddered. The scale of the cosmic weave of silver light and numerous stars that surrounded him had already been too vast to comprehend. Now that he glimpsed its true nature, it suddenly seemed even more inconceivable.

Yes, Weaver was called the Demon of Fate… but harvesting its very fabric to create a titanic enchantment was too incredible, even for the firstborn of the Unknown.

For a daemon…

Sunny shivered once again.

“We are their Flaw… what did she mean?”

Hope’s answer had shaken him to the very core. The implications were too… unthinkable. He did not truly understand what she had meant, but felt as though he was at the precipice of a vast and terrible truth.

Sunny was still far away from grasping that truth, however.

Were the daemons personifications of the Flaws that the gods had shed? Is that how the gods had become flawless? Or had the gods been flawless before the daemons appeared, instead?

None of it made any sense. How did the Unknown, from whom the daemons had come, fit into this? Was there a hint at who or what the Unknown had been… or was?

As always, there were too many questions, and almost no answers!

If there was one thing that became clear, however, it was that the relationship between the gods and the daemons was even more complicated than he had thought.

“How infuriating…”

Sunny had learned a remarkable secret, but had no way to understand it. He stared into the distance for some time, then sighed.

“Well, whatever. I am too small and weak to concern myself with the secrets of the divine, anyway.”

…Although he was not as small and weak as he had been before.

He was a Master!

Or rather, was about to become one.

As if answering his thoughts, the Spell finally spoke:

[Awakened! Your trial is over.]

It voice continued to resonate in the black void:

[A lonesome shadow came to a land of shattered dreams. It was captured and thrown into a cage, but escaped by weaving sorceries from its own soul. The shadow beheaded itself to take the slave collar off its neck, and lost its heart to win its freedom.

Leaving the coliseum behind, the shadow traveled far and got ensnared. It lived a hundred lives and died a hundred deaths within a dreadful nightmare, forgetting what it was and where it came from. The shadow did not break, and so, the nightmare broke instead.

Free once again, the shadow befriended a mad sorcerer, a feral child, a crippled archer, and a blind prophet. Together, they collected the deaths of the immortal lords and waged a war against the holy city.

The lords were killed, the city was destroyed.

The shadow broke the chains of Hope, and set Desire free.]

[You have slain an Awakened…]

The Spell went on to list everyone and everything he had killed inside the Nightmare. Sunny felt that something strange was happening to time inside the black void, because it did not take too long for the Spell to finish with that part of the appraisal.

And there was a lot for it to list… Sunny had been busy in these past five months, after all. He had lost count at some point, but the number of his victims had to be somewhere between one and two thousand. He had slain a thousand enemies at the Red Colosseum alone…

A few of them stood out from the litany of names.

The Red Priest, Nightmare, the three War Maidens, a few high-ranking officers of the flying fleet, Solvane herself… that was the tally of his deeds. The Spell was not shy about showering him with praise, too.

Of course, his most dangerous battle had been the battle of wits against Mordret.

After a while, the Spell was ready to pass a verdict.

[…You have set free a demoness chained by a god.]

[Your achievements are remarkable!]

[Final appraisal: excellent.]

With that, it grew silent.

Sunny remained motionless for a few moments, then frowned.

“Wait… what?”

Excellent? Just excellent?

“What the hell, Spell?!”

It did not even bother to add a remark after the appraisal. He had killed hundreds upon hundreds of Awakened humans and Nightmare Creatures, including plenty of Fallen abominations and Masters! He had even killed a Saint!

He had learned true sorcery, won a battle against a whole army, caused the deaths of several immortals, and set free a daemon against a god’s will! He had his head cut off and his heart ripped out, and still lived to tell the tale! Was it not enough to earn a better mark?

Not that it mattered, anyway… unlike the First Nightmare, the Second did not come with an additional boon. Sunny already had a True Name and an Aspect Legacy. All he was going to receive was the Ascension, which was the only reward he truly cared about.

But still…

Why was his performance in the First Nightmare appraised as glorious, but his performance in the Second Nightmare as just excellent? Both achievements seemed equally improbable, but this one was without a doubt much more impressive.

Suddenly, an idea entered his mind.

Sunny’s eyes widened.

“Can… can this be true?”

If it was…

His heart suddenly skipped a bit.

What was the difference between what he had done in his two Nightmares?

Yes, his deeds in the Kingdom of Hope were astonishing and bordering on impossible. But almost all of them repeated the events of the original past. They had followed the current of fate…

The Temple of the Chalice had been destroyed, Sun Prince had lost his arm and ended up with his chest torn open, hanging from the Shipwreck Island with his leg tangled in a broken chain. Lord Sevras died wrapping his dragon body around the Ivory Tower.

The only substantial change he had achieved was killing Solvane instead of letting her suffer for an eternity in the grasp of Wormvine.

In the First Nightmare, however… Sunny was not sure how the true temple slave fared, but he suspected that their paths diverged quite a lot.

In other words, he had carved his own path through the Black Mountain, overcoming the current of fate to a much larger degree.

But what did all of this mean?

Sunny forgot to breathe.

…Was that what the Spell truly valued?

What that what its true purpose was?

Had Weaver created it…

To change fate?

62e886631a93af4356fc7a46