Shadow Slave

[Sunny. I think I walked into a trap.]

Sunny froze when Cassie’s voice suddenly resounded in his mind. It sounded calm, but concerned - a dire proof that whatever danger Cassie had found herself in was grave enough to make her fear for her safety.

It had to be. Otherwise, she would not have contacted him at all.

His mind spun, entertaining innumerable possibilities.

The most probable reason was that the thralls locked up in the quarantine facility in NQSC had escaped their cells. possibly Asterion was finally making a move... it was unlikely that a group of enthralled Awakened could pose a threat to a Saint, but possibly the Supreme pulling on the strings behind the scenes had empowered them, somehow.

”No, wait...”

Was Cassie even in the abandoned factory at the moment? She had been spending most of her time there, but today, she was supposed to meet with Wake of Ruin. Sunny thought that it was today, at least. His mind settled as he prepared to take action.

[Where are you?]

The answer came a split second later. [NQS...]

But she never finished the sentence. Her voice disappeared abruptly, a dead silence filling his mind in its place.

Sunny remained still for a moment.

”Cassie?”

There was no response.

At this point, his composure finally revealed a crack.

”Damn it all!”

Sunny assessed the situation.

Cassie was somewhere in NQSC, facing danger - possibly mortal danger. Unless it was already too late, and she was... she was...

Unwilling to finish the thought, he shifted slightly.

In any case, there was no point in considering that possibility, since there was nothing he could do if it was already too late. If it wasn’t, however, he had to act fast and base his decisions on the assumption that Cassie was still alive.

He had to travel to NQSC and find her as quickly as possible.

Sunny’s thoughts moved at a speed far greater than that of a mundane human, so no more than a single heartbeat had passed since Cassie sent him the message.

His incarnations were scattered across the Dream Realm. Ravenheart, Bastion, Godgrave, and the Forgotten Shore... each one was performing an important task, but nothing was as important as ensuring Cassie’s safety.

The question was, which one would he send?

Just as he began considering the question, his eyes widened slightly.

That was because several things happened at the same time all across the Dream Relm. In the Forgotten Shore, he sensed the shadows moving erratically beyond the walls of the Dark Castle, in the prison camp. There, a storm of ethereal sparks suddenly exploded to obscure the somber buildings, beginning to coalesce into hundreds of monstrous Echoes.

In Ravenheart, the ground trembled as a deafening groan of shattering rock resounded from the depths of the volcano.

A jagged crack suddenly appeared on its slope, sending enormous boulders rolling downward and threatening to drown the outer reaches of the city in lava.

In Bastion, bells suddenly rang in the towers of the ancient castle, announcing that a powerful Nightmare Creature had entered the estuary of the Mirror River and was now moving upstream, threatening to attack Rivergate.

And those were merely the places Sunny was watching over from the shadows. Even if he did not have any proof at the moment, he was convinced that similar situations were happening in other areas of the Dream Realm - and Earth too, possibly. He frowned.

”What terrifying timing...”

Too terrifying to be a coincidence, no less. Sadly, that did not mean that they could ignore these acts of sabotage.

Eradicating the Echoes summoned by the thralls among the captives was simple enough. Revel could handle them herself, but if he wanted to avoid any casualties, he would have to lend her his help and guidance.

The unknown threat to Rivergate was serious enough for the watchmen to raise the alarm, but Effie would most likely be able to handle it alone. Still, considering that Asterion seemed to be behind the attack, there was a real possibility that it was a trap, so Sunny would have to go take a look personally to ensure a good outcome. ”A trap...”

The situation in Raveneart was similar. Kai had long been prepared to deal with anything the volcano could throw at him, and he had plenty of helpers on top of that. Morgan alone could probably stop the lava from reaching the city. However, Sunny was still going to watch over them, in case there was more to the sudden earthquake than it seemed.

All of these emergencies were quite easy to handle.

Which meant that...

”It’s a trap.”

What other reason would Asterion have to deliver such trifling attacks to the Human Domain? Either he was trying to distract them from something, or it was a carefully set trap.

”Cassie... needs my help...”

A good trap was incomplete without a perfect lure, though.

Sunny and Nephis were not going to let their cities suffer. But nothing would lure them out better than a threat to their closest friend and confidant’s life... out there in the waking world, no less, where their powers would be suppressed.

Sunny was suddenly sure of it...

The Dreamspawn had prepared a trap for them, and Cassie was the lure.

’It seems he has a very low opinion of our intelligence’

Naturally, Sunny had to rescue Cassie. But he was not going to walk into a trap unprepared. At the very least, he had to inform Nephis of the danger and take her with him. Effie and Kai would be tied up dealing with the emergencies, Jet as well, most likely, but there were still a few powerful Transcendent allies he could call upon to act in the waking world without being suppressed by its laws.

So, Sunny would have to collect them before venturing across the realm boundary.

A simple plan swiftly formed in his mind, and he nodded resolutely.

His incarnations were already preparing to depart in order to enact the plan when Sunny stopped himself and frowned. Something was bothering him. Something...

It felt like he was overlooking some small detail.

A small detail, but important nonetheless. But what was it?

His frown deepened.

’Cassie... needs my help.’

A cold shiver ran down his spine as he realized something.

It was the frightening fact that ever since Cassie had contacted him with a plea for help, his thoughts had been a little strange. His thoughts had been a little suspect. They were not irrational, really, but his priorities seemed oddly skewed. He had surrendered the urgency of the situation in favor of caution too easily, at the very least.

’What... the hell was I thinking about, wanting to waste time gathering helpers when Cassie might be hurt or dying right now?’

Sunny’s eyes widened, and he inspected himself carefully.

It was only then that he realized that his thoughts and emotions were being manipulated by someone.

The realization hit him like a bucket of cold water. Sunny possessed very formidable mental defenses, and it was only because of that powerful resistance that he had been able to notice the unnatural course of his thoughts. If he hadn’t, he would have continued to act on the circumspect plan, oblivious to the insidious mental assault.

...Which of his other thoughts and emotions were not his own, then?

A piercing, unpleasant feeling grasped his heart.

There was no time to examine his every thought and feeling, though. He had already wasted too much of it.

Muttering a quiet curse, Sunny rose from his throne and pulled on his tether. The realm boundary offered too much resistance to his vast existence, though, so he gritted his teeth and roughly forced his way into the waking world.

Appearing on the deserted streets of the outskirts in a violent whirlwind, he inhaled deeply, and then extended his shadow sense to cover all of NQSC. Immediately, billions of shadows flooded his mind, hundreds of millions of them belonging to living beings.

A vast expanse of tangled streets, numerous buildings extending both high into the sky and deep into the ground, a myriad of moving humans, the gaping holes in the fabric of the world where the active Nightmare Gates stood, surrounded by alloy fences and contamination domes...

He had to find a single individual among them.

Even with Sunny’s capabilities, it took him a little time to locate Cassie.

And when he did, his blood ran cold.

Letting out a growl, Sunny stepped into the shadows and emerged from them on a quiet, peaceful street... or at least it had been peaceful, once.

Now, one of the homes here seemed to be on the verge of collapsing, and blood was smeared on the smooth surface of the concrete pavement.

Cassie was here, maimed and bleeding... but still alive.

And behind her...

Just as Sunny focused his attention there, a gargantuan Dream Gate suddenly tore the fabric of reality apart in the middle of NQSC.