Shadow Slave

The graceful silhouette of the Ivory Island drifted among the clouds above Bastion. Contoured against the golden sun, it glanced breathtaking and peaceful from the ground... however, the atmosphere within the walls of the Tower of Hope was far from tranquil.

In fact, it was tense and somber despite the suffocating power of the five people gathered in a spacious council room on one of the great pagoda’s seven floors.

Sunny, Nephis, Cassie, Effie, and Kai were seated around a table, wearing grim expressions. Cassie was talking, and the more she said, the heavier the mood in the room became.

Sunny heard each word clearly and grasped their meaning flawlessly.

At the same time...

He found himself getting distracted as his newly altered mind spread far and wide, absorbing thousands of different perspectives with the same degree of focused clarity.

It was an odd state of being, and one he was still failing to get used to.

The reason for his current state was, of course, the fragment of Weaver’s lineage he had collected in the Palace of Imagination... Mind Weave.

‘No wonder I was out cold for so long?’

The four previous fragments had put him out of commission for a short while and caused him indescribable agony. Absorbing and assimilating them had been a torment — but the Mind Weave was different. Perhaps it was because it had altered his mind on a fundamental level, or perhaps it was because the suffering had been too great to endure even for someone as used to pain as Sunny, but he simply passed out as soon as Weaver’s terrible reflection fused with his own. So, he did not remember experiencing any pain at all.

That was a wonderful boon, without a doubt... however, Sunny had remained unconscious for two weeks as a result.

The chaos his absence had caused was significant. The conquest campaign in the Burned Forest had almost collapsed, the restoration of the Dark City had fallen behind schedule, and the numerous projects he had been busy with had stalled. Nothing he couldn’t salvage had transpired, luckily, but there was plenty of catching up he had to do.

If there was one silver lining that had come out of this mess, though...

It was that Nephis seemed to have thawed after their recent spat. In fact, she was more attentive to him now than she had been before, albeit in a subtle way... which secretly pleased Sunny a great deal.

The body of a Sovereign was enormously enduring, meaning that a few weeks of coma were not going to harm it in any way — so, Nephis had not really nursed him back to health. But staying by his unconscious body for many days, not knowing when his condition would improve, must have rattled her quite a lot, or at least forced her to put things into perspective.

No, not even an unconscious body... with Sunny out cold, his incarnations were released and reverted back to being independent shadows. That must have been even more difficult for Nephis to endure. As a result, the distance between them disappeared, almost making it seem like there was no disagreement between them. Almost...

Sunny sighed faintly.

In any case, he did come back to his senses eventually. And when he did, the world was quite different from how it had been before — or at least Sunny perceived it differently from how he had before.

The difference was so startling, in fact, that he had spent a few more days entirely disoriented.

It was difficult to describe the tectonic shift that had happened to him with words. Mind Weave... did not exactly make him smarter, wiser, or more intelligent. However, it did increase the volume of his mind immensely, making it seem almost limitless.

Sunny was not unfamiliar with this trait, since he had achieved something of the sort himself over the years. First learning to perceive and process the world from both his own point of view and that of his shadow, then slowly expanding the scope of his mind to encompass all of his incarnations while at the same time learning to cope with the increasing reach of his shadow sense.

Later still, his mind expanded even more, adapting to receive sensory input from all the shades of the Shadow Legion and every member of the Shadow Clan. Sunny had always perceived what transpired around them passively... most of the conduits of his perception simply blended into the background, but he could bring dozens of them to the forefront at will — even hundreds, if he really tried.

He had thought that to be quite an accomplishment at the time. Now that he had Mind Weave, though, he felt that his previous achievements were merely child’s play.

As soon as Sunny regained consciousness, he had been assaulted by a crushing avalanche of sensations. The strangest thing, however... was that he had not felt crushed. Instead, he was suddenly able to clearly perceive and concentrate on each of these sensations, as if he was a mythical monster with ten thousand heads and ten thousand arms.

Or would that be twenty thousand arms?

In any case, Sunny had been quite startled. And ever since, he often found himself getting distracted — but also not distracted at all. It was not that he could not concentrate on something while concentrating on a thousand other things at the same time, it was just that he... he sometimes failed to put meaning into any one point of view while simultaneously perceiving countless the rest with the same intensity.

His mind was drifting.

‘Was this how gods felt, I wonder?’

Only on a much, much vaster scale.

There were benefits to having a mind spacious enough to encompass limitless inputs, of course.

Sunny’s control over the Shadow Legion had increased tremendously, for example. His ability to envision and execute impossibly complex and intricate patterns while weaving had taken an enormous leap, as well — so much so that it felt like he had been crippled before, and was only now experiencing weaving as it was meant to be. He could pay much more attention to each member of the Shadow Clan, too... Ꞧ𝔞ꞐỒΒƐ𝐬

But, still, Sunny was somewhat uneasy.

He was having a bit of trouble maintaining his former way of thinking in this new, startling reality... and he was not sure that he was meant to. Sunny felt more distant from the mortal man he had once been now, and that feeling slowly grew. But wasn’t that exactly what Eurys had told him had to transpire as one approached Apotheosis? Talking to Nephis and especially Cassie had helped him, somewhat. Both of them were experiencing their own version of that strange process, albeit not quite on the same scale — Nephis because of her Domain and the Sun God’s lineage, Cassie because of her Aspect and Attributes.

But it was still a big adjustment to make. Oh, and he had been quite busy ever since regaining consciousness, putting Mind Weave to the test...

”Sunny?”

He remained motionless for a few seconds, then raised his head and looked at Cassie. “Yes, I am listening.”

She lingered a little, then nodded.

“As I was saying, the investigation into the Church of the Moon has produced quite concerning results. Let me share the report...”