Shadow Slave

Sunny and Nephis remained in Verge for a short while, resting and recuperating. However, they did not stay long.

There was a lot they could do… a lot they needed to do. They had to come to terms with each other once more, and in more practical terms, they had to experiment extensively to explore what the Shadow Bond was capable of now that they were Supreme.

But both of them felt anxious, not knowing what had happened to Ananke.

The threads of essence string tied around their wrists suggested that she was alive, but apart from that? Neither of them knew. They did not know what state the Estuary was in or how long she would stay alive, either.

So, they abandoned the ruins of Verge and continued traversing the labyrinth of broken time.

This time, side by side.

There were a million things Sunny wanted to say, but strangely enough, he wanted to remain silent just as much. The silence between him and Nephis did not feel tense, though.

Instead, it was comfortable and full of meaning — a meaning that only they knew. That both of them knew.

The way back to the heart of the Estuary — to the present — did not take them long. Or perhaps it had taken an eternity. With time itself broken and existing in a shattered state, there was no way to tell. The Estuary Lake was just as they had left it… but also entirely different.

It was still vast and illuminated by the radiance of the stolen suns. In the distance, the corpse of the Guardian still towered above the water like a grim monument to the past that was gone forever. The lonesome mountain where Oblivion was buried still stood, one of its two peaks broken, while the other pierced the sky. However, the water itself was not the same. It was as if the mystical force that had made it special was gone. Now, it felt like water — ordinary water, not time itself condensed into a liquid form.

Ananke had sought shelter on a fragment of manifested shadows Sunny had used to cover the lake, sitting with her legs crossed. Her eyes were closed, and two strings of essence silk extended from her fingers into the water.

It was as if she were fishing…

And today, her catch was two very tired, very wet Supremes.

Sunny and Nephis surfaced from under the water, climbed onto the small island of shadows, and sprawled on the ground, breathing heavily. Their journey had not been too exhausting physically, but the mental strain of experiencing the timeless void between seconds over and over again was mentally straining.

They were both spent.

Opening her eyes, Ananke glanced at them and smiled.

“Welcome back, my lord and lady.”

Sunny and Nephis slept while Ananke guarded them.

When they woke up, however, the time they had allotted themselves for rest was over. The Vile Thieving Bird was defeated — even if it was not quite dead — and Sunny had reclaimed his fate. He was also a master of a powerful new Shadow now, which was an unexpected boon.

However…

While this battle was over, another one already awaited them. Asterion remained undefeated, after all, and he was somewhere out there, subjugating the world.

If he had not subjugated it already.

There was Mordret, as well, who had gone on a rampage. The world outside the walls of the Tomb of Ariel was in a precarious state, and they had not found the solution to all its problems.

To its most pressing problems, that was. Sunny and Nephis sat down to discuss their future plans.

“Cassie must have sent us to the Tomb of Ariel for a reason. Even if the current Cassie does not remember, her past self knew something… or at least suspected something. The intuition of an oracle is a powerful thing — sometimes no less powerful than their knowledge. So, what were we supposed to accomplish here? And have we accomplished it yet?”

Sunny remained silent.

All kinds of troubling thoughts surfaced in his mind. From Cassie wanting them to spend an eternity here, striving for natural Apotheosis, to her simply sending two people she cherished the most to a place where they would survive the end of the world, even if no one else did.

He glanced in the direction of Oblivion’s burial chamber. Were they supposed to find something in the nest of the Vile Thieving Bird? It did not seem that way.

Ananke had already entered the burial chamber in their absence, and according to her, it was empty. Apparently, the Thieving Bird did not forget to clean out its nest, taking all its shiny treasures with it before escaping the Tomb of Ariel.

So, then…

What was their role?

Sunny sighed heavily.

“You know what is worrying me.”

He was worried, indeed.

It was because of the state of the Estuary. Now that its waters had lost their mystical quality, the Great River was truly and utterly dead. It had already been dying for a long time, and now, its very heart had been destroyed too.

Which meant that the Tomb of Ariel was changing. It had already irrevocably changed, and the process was only continuing.

So, the question was…

Now that the Great River of Time was no more, did the relation between the time inside the Tomb of Ariel and the time outside it stay the same?

The evidence suggested that it did not. When Sunny reached out to the subjects of his Domain, perceiving the world through the shadows around them, it all seemed just as it had been — frozen in time and unmoving. However, when he looked closer, he could tell that it was actually not the case.

Time seemed to be passing slowly. It just moved at such a crawl that noticing the changes at first glance was all but impossible.

But they were there… and although Sunny could not confirm it, he felt like time was gradually accelerating. The difference between the Tomb of Ariel and the outside world seemed to be diminishing little by little, which meant that they did not have as much time as they thought they had.

They did not have eternity.

“I think we both know, deep down, what Cassie wanted us to achieve.”

Nephis looked at Sunny thoughtfully, then added:

“I think that you regaining your fate was exactly the reason she sent us here. We just don’t know how that can help us defeat the Dreamspawn, yet.”

Sunny nodded slowly.

“That does make sense… in a senseless kind of way.”

In other words, they did not have a logical reason to believe it. But they both felt that it was the case.

Sunny would have dismissed that feeling, usually…

But he was [Fated] again.

And even though he had actually managed to forget it, his intuition had been almost as fearsome as Cassie’s, back when he had been connected to the great tapestry of fate.

Well, no surprise. After witnessing what [Fated] really looked like, Sunny knew that a myriad of Strings of Fate were tied to him. His intuition was simply a subtle way in which he was able to perceive the vibrations of those Strings.

“So, what then? Do we just…”

He did not finish the sentence.

Because his intuition was telling him that something was coming.

Nephis must have felt something, as well, because she suddenly looked around with a slight frown.

Some distance away, Ananke raised her head and studied the sky.

Then, she glanced down at the waters of the Estuary Lake.

“My lord…”

As Sunny and Nephis rose to their feet, the water rippled.

And then, it became perfectly still.

So still, in fact, that the entire Estuary Lake suddenly looked like a colossal mirror, with their reflections staring back at them from its surface.

Sunny remained motionless for a moment, then suddenly yelled:

“Get back!”

Grabbing Nephis across the stomach, he dashed back, toward where Ananke was standing with a tense expression.

In the next moment, something gargantuan broke the surface of the water.

It was the bow of a titanic ship.

A seemingly endless expanse of its hull rolled past them as the ship continued to rise vertically from the lake, towering above it like a colossal mountain.

“The… the Night Garden?”

The Night Garden was a good dozen kilometers in length from bow to stern, so when it stood vertically like that, it was higher than the highest mountain on Earth. It was so immense, in fact, that Sunny was not able to see its tip soon, no matter how much he craned his neck.

What was the Night Garden doing here?! Finally escaping the Estuary Lake entirely, the titanic ship remained still for a few long seconds, rising into the sky like the trunk of a gargantuan tree.

Then, it tilted slowly and began to fall.

Its bottom was swiftly descending, bringing it to a horizontal position, parallel to the surface of the lake.

…Watching a mountain fall on you was not for the faint of heart.

Sunny, Nephis, and Ananke stood there, frozen, as the titanic ship righted itself. Eventually, it came to a rest in front of them, hovering a few dozen meters above the surface of the lake.

Sunny shook off his astonishment and prepared himself for the worst.

The Night Garden had the power to travel great distances, but Jet was not strong enough to bring it all the way to the heart of the Nightmare Desert, inside the Tomb of Ariel. Which meant that someone else ruled Rime’s ship now…

And since Jet was not one to relinquish her Citadel voluntarily, that could not mean anything good.

“Quite a remarkable sight, isn’t it?”

Hearing a familiar voice, Sunny flinched and looked around.

Only, of course, he should have been looking down. Because at some point, a fourth reflection appeared on the surface of the water near theirs.

Sunny scowled.

“Mordret? What the hell are you doing here? No, wait…”

Was it Mordret? The man looked the same, but somehow, he felt different.

Looking back at him from the surface of the lake, Mordret shrugged.

“Sadly, waiting is not an option. You see… Song of the Fallen asked me to deliver a message to you.”

He pointed to the titanic ship behind him and smiled darkly.

“She says that it’s time to return.”