Shadow Slave

Not long after, Sunny and Ananke were in a spacious chamber, seated at a table. A beam of brilliant sunlight fell through a tall window, illuminating its weathered surface. There were several items laid out on the table, glistening in the light: a silver bell, an ordinary-looking rock, a beautiful glass bottle, a needle emanating a faint golden glow, a folded mantle woven out of sublime black silk, and a small lantern carved out of stone.

They were, of course, Sunny’s Memories.

“Are you ready?”

Ananke nodded, inhaled deeply, and then summoned a Memory of her own.

A black wooden mask obscured her enchanting face, replacing it with a ferocious visage of a snarling demon. It was Weaver’s Mask — a lesser replica of it that priests and priestesses of the Nightmare Spell had worn once, thousands of years ago.

Ananke had inherited it from her mother, and now, Sunny had used his own skill as a sorcerer to modify its elegant weave.

It had taken him a long while, and as a result, they were going to have their first lesson today.

Sunny gestured to the Silver Bell.

“Can you see it?”

Ananke peered at the small bell, deep darkness nestling in the eyes of her mask… but then, it seemed as if a faint glimmer of gold ignited in their depths.

“I do.”

Sunny smiled in satisfaction.

The enchantment he had woven into Ananke’s mask served a simple purpose and was inspired by the [Where is my eye?] enchantment of the real Weaver’s Mask. It did not allow her to gaze upon the great tapestry of fate, but it did allow her to see the intricate spellweave of Memories.

The purpose of the enchantment was simple, but the enchantment itself was anything but. There was a reason why it had taken Sunny close to a year to successfully implement it, after all.

Granting people abilities similar to his own was not easy. In the past year, Sunny had spent countless hours trying to create an enchantment that would allow others to see spellweaves, but all his attempts ended in failure. Over, and over, and over again… months spent in researching and experimenting, with no result at all.

In the end, he had to change his approach entirely in order to succeed — and in the process, elevate his own mastery of Weaving further by accident.

The minor breakthrough Sunny has made expanded on the principles he had already known, but never considered deeply. Funnily enough, it had nothing to do with creating a spellweave — instead, it concerned the materials from which the Memory was made.

He knew, of course, that only materials of sublime quality could sustain the burden of powerful enchantments — one needed something like blessed steel to forge a Transcendent blade, for example. Mundane alloy would simply crumble under the strain of potent sorcery.

He also knew that materials had innate qualities that responded well to certain kinds of enchantments and were inefficient with the rest. One could make a lethally sharp wooden sword with a bit of effort, for example, but forging it out of metal would be far more effective.

By exploring this relationship further, Sunny discovered that there were enchantments that required highly specific kinds of mediums to take hold, refusing to function with any other. And in the case of the enchantment that could grant someone the ability to see spellweave… there simply did not seem to exist a medium like that.

That was what Sunny had thought, at least, before taking a look at Ananke’s mask. After studying it for a while, he was surprised to discover that it was highly suitable to serve as a medium for the enchantment he had in mind — so suitable, in fact, that it almost seemed as if the mask had been created for that exact purpose.

He even found sections of its spellweave that were designed to serve as a foundation for an additional enchantment — the potential shape of which was very close to his own design.

It made sense, really. Sunny knew that there had been weavers among the priests of the Nightmare Spell, even if only a few. They had to have a means of perceiving spellweaves, so he theorized that those with talent for Weaver’s sorcery were granted special kinds of masks that allowed them to do just that. It was just that Ananke’s mask was not one of those.

It hadn’t been, rather, until Sunny completed the enchantment.

And so, Ananke gained the ability to perceive spellweaves.

That was only one requirement for becoming a weaver — the second was the ability to touch and manipulate essence strings. Sunny suspected that those who practiced Weaver’s sorcery in the ancient past possessed tools that allowed them to do that, but Ananke didn’t need any.

Her Aspect already allowed her to both create and manipulate essence silk, which could be turned into essence strings with just a little bit of practice.

Therefore… Sunny was excited to know that there would be a second weaver in the world soon, if everything went well.

He pointed to the Silver Bell.

“This is the first Memory I received. And the first one I modified, as well. Its weave is relatively simple.”

He pointed to the Shadow Lantern next.

“Compare it to a Divine Memory. This one’s weave is almost infinitely complex. Even I can’t fathom it, let alone replicate it. So, one would think that starting to study sorcery with the Silver Bell as the example would be a smart decision.”

Sunny chuckled.

“But they would be wrong. Only a fool would start with the Silver Bell… like I did… unless they had no other choice. Because even if it is a weak and simple Memory, it is still a Memory created by the Nightmare Spell. And the Nightmare Spell is the greatest weaver in existence — there is infinite skill hidden in the deceptive simplicity of its designs.”

He shook his head and smiled, then pointed to the folded mantle.

“No, if one really wanted to understand Weaving, they would start with this. Because, unlike the Silver Bell, this Memory was created by a mortal.”