Shadow Slave

Jet realized that all her plans had become meaningless the moment she felt Asterion’s presence through the Night Garden. Dealing with six powerful Saints was already difficult enough. Dealing with six Saints and a damn Supreme on top of that was... well above her paygrade. Now that Asterion boarded the Night Garden, executing her escape would be all but impossible, and on top of that, his Aspect granted him frightening powers.

The second he appeared in the runic hall, he would be able to read her mind and learn how exactly she was planning to get away. Even worse, he would be able to manipulate her very thoughts, twisting them and turning her own mind against her.

Jet prided herself on being paranoid, but now, she couldn’t even trust herself.

She had to improvise an entirely new plan of escape in the brief moment between the vague silhouettes of Bloodwave and Asterion appearing in the runic hall and them fully crossing the realm boundary, manifesting in the Dream Realm — not only that, but she had to make that plan impervious to the powers of the malevolent Sovereign, somehow.

So, she did just that.

By the time Asterion laid eyes on her, the new plan had already been put in place. Jet also made an effort to focus all her thoughts on the old one, forbidding herself from thinking about anything else.

It seemed to be working, for now.

She had not been certain that it would. Her new plan was quite simple, but also innately devious in its simplicity. It relied on a single proposition — that while Asterion could manipulate and deceive her own mind, even he could not manipulate the vast, slumbering mind of the Night Garden.

The Night Garden was not just any ship, after all. It was a living ship, and while it did not quite possess a consciousness in the way people understood the concept, it was not truly mindless either.

So, in that brief moment before Asterion appeared in the runic hall, Jet gave the Night Garden a simple command.

Protect its captain.

That was why the Dreamspawn and the Saints he had subjugated suddenly started to sink into the floor. The Mainmast Pagoda and the floor of the runic hall were carved from the same wood as the hull of the living ship — the Night Garden had never absorbed and digested its passengers, but not because it could not.

Rather, it was because it had been damaged in the past, and there was no reason to consume the beings it was meant to shelter and nurture anyway.

Jet doubted that Asterion and the Saints would be seriously harmed by that simple defensive measure, but they had at least been slowed down at a decisive moment. Next, the Night Garden sent her away from the runic hall, where the danger was, to its main deck. Jet suspected that it had opened a miniature portal between the two — just like it could open a vast rift in space to travel from one place to another.

‘So... something like that was possible, too.’

The sudden break of the connection between Jet and the living ship was a bit jarring, but she swiftly regained her senses. She was standing on one of the outer decks of the Night Garden now, surrounded from all sides by hostile thralls of the Dreamspawn. Asterion was already aware of her current location, no doubt. He would escape the runic hall in a matter of moments, so...

She needed to run.

There was nowhere to run in the Sky Below, really. The Night Garden was surrounded by a vast emptiness from all sides — except for one, where a sea of divine flames burned in the darkness.

However, Jet was a Saint, and Saints could always escape across the realm boundary to a different world.

It was just that pulling on one’s tether required time and concentration.

Jet had little time and could not afford to focus entirely on her tether. Still, she had to manage it, somehow.

Just when a small figure exploded from the arched portals of the runic hall far above, at the top of the Mainmast Pagoda, she lunged into a run. She had to buy herself more time, and there was only one way to do it. From where she stood, only a few hundred meters separated her from the edge of the Night Garden, beyond which lay the empty dark void — a distance that a Saint could breach in the blink of an eye. When people moved to bar her way, Jet simply turned into a mist and flowed past them, rushing toward the railing.

However, bizarrely, it took her several seconds just to move a few dozen steps.

Jet cursed.

‘Nightwalker, that old lecher!’

The legendary Saint was twisting space to increase the distance between her and the dark void. He couldn’t stop her entirely, but he could slow her down.

Somewhere above her, two flying figures dove out of the towering pagoda following the first — they were Tyris and Roan, without a doubt.

Behind her, meanwhile, Asterion landed on the deck of the Night Garden like a meteor.

’Damn it.’

Jet poured a roaring torrent of essence into her muscles. Her dead body was special, as it could absorb far more essence than the flesh of the living could — so, she could move faster than almost any Saint, streaking across the deck like lightning.

But not as swift as Asterion was moving as he lunged after her. The Dreamspawn did not even seem to run; he simply blinked out of existence at one spot and appeared in the next — in the blink of an eye, he was already upon her.

It was then that the Night Garden suddenly tilted, throwing Asterion off balance while simultaneously pushing Jet toward her goal. She leaped onto a colossal cannon that stood in front of the railing, then jumped into the empty space below.

An arrow pierced her shoulder at the last moment, wounding her and making her bleed.

Jet was spun around as she fell, witnessing the radiant sight of the countless lanterns that illuminated the Night Garden for the last time.

‘Goodbye, my wondrous ship. Thank you. I hope we’ll meet again...’

Then, she plummeted down, into the depths of the Sky Below — and the fierce radiance of the ocean of flame that burned beneath her.

‘This... is going to hurt.’

Watching two enormous figures — a magnificent bird of prey and a winged lion — diving to catch her, Jet focused on her tether.

She fell, and fell, and fell... as she did, the blinding radiance of divine flames grew more intense around her.

The heat was suffocating at first.

Then, when Jet crossed the invisible barrier of the living ship’s aegis, it became lethal. Her armor ignited, and a terrible pain flooded her mind.

The talons of the enormous thunderbird were moments away from snatching her. But in the end, failed to reach her.

Burning, Jet fell into the sea of flames.

‘l wonder...”

A moment later, she rolled across cold concrete in a cloud of smoke and crashed into a cracked wall, shattering it entirely. As pieces of concrete and dust fell on her from above, Jet coughed and let out a pained groan.

‘...am I the first Saint to escape from a Supreme?”

No, come to think of it, Cassie had escaped too. Asterion seemed to have terrible luck with catching Saints.

Jet, on the other hand, had been quite lucky. She had returned to the waking world.