Shadow Slave

Sunny almost shuddered when he sensed the flotsam, but it was not the familiar piece of wood — a piece of the Chain Breaker’s broken hull — covered by a mad weave of runes. Instead, it was a small fragment of a thick bone plate, fractured and covered in soot.

Sunny slowed down to observe the flotsam closely, then swam past it and moved further downstream.

As they advanced forward slowly, there was more and more debris in the water around them.

And then, they saw it…

The corpses.

There were dead Nightmare Creatures drifting in the water, cold and unmoving. Some seemed to have been crushed, the rest bore no visible wounds. One thing that united them all was that they were dead, and had been dead for a long, long time.

It was just that their flesh did not rot… because the waters of the Great River stood still, and therefore time had no power over them.

Sunny manifested his second incarnation on the back of the first one, standing close to Nephis.

“What happened here?”

His quiet voice echoed above the dark water, spreading far and wide.

Nephis remained silent for a while, then raised her hand to illuminate the dark waters around them. The feeble flame that had been burning on her palm had grown strong and blindingly radiant by then, shining like a little star.

In the stark white light of the dancing flame, they could see the ghastly carcass in every gruesome detail.

Eventually, she said:

“It was killed by a shockwave.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow, while Nephis looked around with a somber expression.

“The Nightmare Creatures did not die in these waters. All of it — the debris, the corpses — rained down from the sky after being flung outward by a monstrous explosion… or at least a monstrous impact that created a devastating shockwave. Followed by an actual wave — a tsunami, really.”

Sunny studied their surroundings once more, forced to admit that her theory sounded correct. Few people knew more about explosions, impacts, and shockwaves than the Star of Ruin, after all.

But what had caused that shockwave?

And where had the impact happened? What had been caught in its epicenter?

Sunny’s heart felt heavy because he had an idea about what the answer to his last question was.

‘Please, let me be wrong…’

But he wasn’t wrong.

Soon enough, they saw something towering above the surface of the water. It was one of the island-ships that comprised Weave — or rather, a fragment of it, shattered and half-drowned.

The buildings that had littered its surface once were now piles of rubble, the orderly streets were fractured and covered in dried blood, the trees that grew in tenderly nurtured gardens had been burned, with nothing but charred stumps left in their place.

There were more dead Nightmare Creatures floating in the water now, as well.

Nephis pointed to one of them.

“Look.”

Sunny had already noticed it.

Most of the corpses were the same as the ones they had seen before, but some bore more familiar wounds — wounds that had been left by harpoons, arrows, and sharp blades.

“There was a battle here.”

Nephis nodded quietly, her face turning distant and still.

“Yes. The city was besieged… and then, it was destroyed.”

Sunny’s heart fell.

They continued forward, encountering more and more of the same — the shattered remains of Weave, the corpses of the Nightmare Creatures, and an echoing emptiness left in the wake of people that weren’t here anymore.

It must have… it must have been a bitter battle, for the people of Weave. Because it was a battle from which they could never retreat — the River People could not move freely across the Great River, after all. Going too far either downstream or upstream meant death, so they would have had to defend their city to the last drop of blood, even if they had no hope of winning.

Sunny closed his eyes for a moment.

He still remembered the day Ananke brought them to Weave… the pride and care the priestess of the Nightmare Spell felt when looking at her empty, dead city. The stories about it she had told him, hoping that he would bring them away with him and tell those who lived outside the Tomb of Ariel about her people.

About Weave.

The city was gone now, and only its ruins remained. Eventually, even they would be swallowed by the Great River, erasing the last traces of the mortals who lived and died here.

He sighed.

Eventually, they reached the heart of the city — what had been its heart, at least. Strangely enough, there was no debris here. No corpses were floating on the water. Instead, a vast circle of dark water stretched toward the horizon, perfectly empty and still.

“This was the epicenter.”

Neph’s voice sounded dull.

Sunny could see it, as well. The inconceivable shockwave that tore apart the city, killed countless Nightmare Creatures, and sent their giant carcasses flying across dozens of kilometers had started here, in the heart of Weave.

Sunny swam to the middle of the circle of empty water and stopped there for a while, looking around in silence. Nephis was silent as well, staring at the drowned ruins that surrounded them with an inscrutable expression.

Eventually, she sighed.

“There was a woman who helped me in the Nightmare, you know. A priestess of the Nightmare Spell. I wanted to save her, but failed. She vanished without a trace, having sacrificed herself to pave the way for me.”

Turning her head, she looked at Sunny and smiled bitterly.

“I’ve watched countless people die, but her death dealt me a truly painful blow. Maybe it was because she reminded me of my grandmother. Or perhaps because she looked like a child, back there at the end.”

Turning away, Nephis let out a quiet sigh.

“That was why I hoped to meet her again, in the real Tomb of Ariel. But I guess… it wasn’t meant to be.”

Sunny did not answer, because he was incapable of answering sincerely. Whatever he said would be forgotten, just like he had been… leaving Nephis to carry the burden of all these scars and losses alone.

Thinking that she had been carrying them alone all along.

His gaze turned downstream — where, somewhere far away, the Estuary lay hidden in the mist.

“…What do you think destroyed the city?”

Nephis remained silent for a long while, then said in an even tone:

“There is no way to tell. However… I did notice something strange.”

Sunny looked at her.

“What, exactly?”

Studying the ruins of Weave with a slight frown, Nephis pointed to the pulverized corpses of myriad abominations drifting in the still water.

“All these dead Nightmare Creatures…”

She paused for a moment and then asked:

“But where are the humans?”

Sunny frowned.

Nephis continued in her usual calm tone:

“Where are the corpses of the humans who fought these abominations? From the moment we neared Weave until now, I haven’t seen a single dead human drifting in the water. So where did all the bodies go?”

Sunny shivered.

He did not like the sound of that, one bit. Hearing about missing corpses, he couldn’t help but think about a procession of terrifying horrors. The Terror of LO49 — who had been Dusk, the Sybil of Fallen Grace once — the Soul Stealer, the Skinwalker… He remained silent for a short while, and then said quietly:

“Maybe they are gone, just like that priestess you spoke about was gone. Perhaps the ruins of Weave drifted too far downstream, and they all vanished.”

Nephis frowned.

“But there is no downstream now. The Great River is not flowing anymore.”

Sunny sighed.

“Then, I don’t know.”

She looked at the forlorn, broken ruins of Weave once more and then turned away.

“There is nothing here for us to find. Let us leave… let’s try to find Fallen Grace. Maybe we will find an answer there.”

Sunny nodded.

At the same time, he lowered his giant head down to the water and moved his enormous body, cutting across the still water.

They left the ruins of Weave the same way they found them, empty and forlorn.

The suns were gone, and the Great River stood still. The only things they had encountered here were dead and broken, and nothing challenged the boundless silence but the sound of their own voices. Swimming away from Weave, Sunny could not help but feel that he had found himself in a place that no mortal should ever have seen.

That he had entered a dead world… the frozen fragment of a ruined world that remained, still and unchanging, after the end of time. Like a dark image on a length of film left to collect dust in the reel, never to see the light of the projector and come to life once again.

And once that thought entered his mind, he couldn’t help but think about something else, as well…

Would the whole world look like that, one day, if they failed to stop the Nightmare? Sunny gritted his fangs.

‘We’d better not fail, then.’

He had been telling himself that quite often lately.