Shadow Slave

It was at the crack of dawn that Sunny finally reached the abandoned church. The city was still enveloped in deep darkness, though, due to the heavy storm clouds obscuring the sky. The torrential rain continued to pour down. The flooding in various parts of the city was only growing worse—the roads were a mess, and the silence of the dying night was kept at bay by the blaring of car horns.

Looking at the many PTVs stuck in the slowly rising water, Sunny could not help but expect them to start blowing up in a devastating chain reaction.

However, none of them did. Despite the strange nature of their engines and fuel, the ancient vehicles were not at all as prone to exploding as he had expected.

Parking his newly acquired PTV in front of the church, Sunny climbed out and walked in. Effie arrived first, it seemed—both of them had long escaped the surveillance team sent to spy on them, but Sunny ran a few errands before returning to their temporary lair.

”Hey, partner,” Effie met him with a wave. Her usually bright and boisterous smile seemed faint and subdued today, and there was a hint of wistful melancholy in her eyes...

Sunny frowned slightly and stopped near her.

”Are you alright?”

Effie chuckled. ”Me? Oh... well, yes. Sure I am. When have I ever not been alright?”

He studied her for a few moments, knowing that she was not telling the truth. But he also knew that she did not want to talk about what was bothering her... At least not with him, who was still mostly a stranger.

So, Sunny simply respected her wishes, even if it hurt. He smiled derisively.

”You’re just bummed out because you’ll never get the chance to gobble up an entire box of those donut thingies, right?”

Effie’s smile widened, turning at least a little bit sincere. ”Damn. You know me so well! I haven’t even thought about that...”

He scoffed, then walked past her.

The Other Mordret was napping on one of the benches. Morgan was keeping an eye on him from behind the altar... Saint was sitting apart from everyone, staring into the distance.

Sunny contemplated for a few moments, then walked over to Morgan first. She briefly informed him about what they had learned from the Other Mordret while he explained to her who was behind the attempts on their lives... the knowledge of what Mordret’s Flaw actually was rendered Sunny speechless for a while, but eventually, he gave Morgan a slow nod.

Strangely enough, it made sense for Mordret to be a... a broken mirror of himself, each shard reflecting the visage of the original person from a different angle. Sunny looked at Morgan, then asked:

”So, this version of your brother... is he really as nice as he seems? Is he actually a sane person?”

She looked in the direction where the Other Mordret slept and remained silent for a long while. Her usually cold expression seemed... troubled, somehow.

Eventually, Morgan shook her head slightly and sighed. ”He is indeed just what he seems—nice, decent, compassionate. But a sane person? No, he is not sane... in fact, I am not even sure that he can be called a person. If anything, I’d say that he is even more damaged than the one we know.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow. ”More crazy than that psychopath? How so?”

Morgan smiled faintly. “The Mordret from the real world cannot feel regret, which twisted him into the monster we know today. But this one cannot feel other things: anger, resentment, hatred, contempt... and much more. Oddly enough, or perhaps quite predictably, that makes him much less of a complete person than the other one is. He is a... a cripple.”

She paused for a moment. ”He has no negative feelings toward the one who imprisoned him in this illusion whatsoever, despite all the suffering he endured here. He might feel sad about the death of his driver, who had served his family for decades, but he is incapable of resenting the person who killed him. And if we tell him that the one who wants to kill him is his own uncle... he would not be able to feel hurt by that betrayal, not really. It is as if his soul was neutered.”

Morgan shook her head with a wistful expression. ”So... yes, he is nice. He is smart, affectionate, and pleasant. But he is not mentally sound. Not at all. I guess... he is what remains of a person when their very being gets shattered into pieces.”

She looked at Sunny and smiled darkly. ”And if you ask me—crazy as it may sound—I would have preferred to be the murderous one instead of a harmless one.”

Sunny stared back at her silently.

’What a surprise. So would I.’

A person would probably become a monster if they were not capable of feeling regret, but what would they become if they were incapable of feeling anger? That wasn’t something he ever wanted to experience, or could allow himself to lose.

Sunny had gotten this far due to various reasons, but for a long stretch of it all, he had only survived out of spite. If his ability to feel the darker shades of human emotions was taken away from him, he would not have lived for long.

He would not have been able to truly experience the brighter, stunning feelings humans felt, either.

’It is a bit... sad.’

No matter how sad it was, though, there was a different aspect of Mordret’s Flaw to consider...

He looked quietly at the sleeping CEO of the Valor Group.

According to Morgan, when one fragment of Mordret killed another, the destroyed fragment was absorbed. That was what the Mordret they knew had done to five of his mirror versions. ȓäꞐ𝐨𝔟Ɛṥ

And the Other Mordret, despite all of it, was indeed harmless.

That presented a potential way to remove the danger Mordret posed without robbing humanity of one of its most fearsome scions.

The Prince of Nothing could not kill his other self, because that last piece of him he had not absorbed yet contained his death... But what would happen if the Other Mordret killed the Prince of Nothing? Then, they would become an actual person. A complete individual capable of feeling everything that a human being was supposed to feel, and therefore not at all as unhinged as the Prince of Nothing was.

And that would give Sunny and Nephis a chance to recruit an ally who was both immensely powerful and potentially reliable, which was an incredible boon, especially considering the looming threat of Asterion.

’It is worth considering, is it not?’

Sunny remained silent for a few moments, then sighed.

Whether it was or wasn’t worth it did not matter, because it was hardly possible—precisely because of what the Other Mordret was. He was indeed overly nice, kind, and compassionate, which meant that he would never kill his other self, no matter what the Prince of Nothing had done in the past.

One could not kill the other without destroying himself, while the other could not kill anyone, really, let alone his last mirror sibling. Therefore, Mordret was destined to remain fragmented forever.

’A Flaw is a Flaw... how gruesomely apt.’

Sunny sighed, then looked at Morgan and said in a neutral tone:

”In any case, go wake him up. We should start preparing to depart... so, get ready. Everything will be decided today.”

When Morgan walked past him, Sunny inhaled deeply and looked at Saint.

’Now, for the hardest part...’

He had to convince Dr. Saint to lend them a hand in the fight against the Castellan, somehow.