Shadow Slave

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Not paying the Sin of Solace any attention, Sunny bent down and studied the rune.

It was carved into the wood, but not with any kind of instrument. The grooves were deep, but crude and uneven, with rough and shaky edges. It was as if someone used their nails to scratch the rune into the wooden surface in a fit of madness.

The rune was a familiar one, too.

”Wish.”

It had other meanings, too - desire, yearning, longing, aspiration... even hope, sometimes, depending on the context. Sunny knew that rune all too well. How could he not, after spending so much time on the Chained Isles?

But its most fundamental meaning was just that, a wish.

He stared at the rune for some time, thinking.

Who had carved it into the ancient wood? And why?

Had it been carved before the piece of wood he was using as a raft ended up as flotsam, or after?

What did it mean?

Sunny hesitated for a bit, then tentatively scratched at the wood with his nail. It was really tough - much tougher than mundane wood would have been. This raft of his turned out to be really sturdy. He wouldn’t be able to leave a scratch on it without losing a nail or two...

”What are you doing?”

Sunny glanced at the Sin of Solace, who was looking at him with a bewildered expression.

’Playing dumb, huh?’

He pointed to the rune.

”Were you trying to hide it from me?”

The apparition tilted its head in confusion.

”Hide what?”

An angry expression appeared on Sunny’s face, and he gritted his teeth.

”Stop messing with me, you pale bastard! You have been standing here this whole time, as if trying to prevent me from noticing the rune!”

However, deep inside, he felt a hint of doubt. Was... was he now seeing things? Was the rune not really there?

The Sin of Solace suddenly laughed.

”Gods... your expression, it’s priceless. What about the rune? So there is a rune. Why would I care? In fact, why do you care? You seem completely beside yourself.”

Sunny frowned, remained silent for a while, then let out a sigh.

Indeed, why would he care about some rune? Yeah, it might have possessed some meaning, like hinting at something about Hope. But a single rune was not enough to learn anything.

Maybe he was just so bored that he made a big deal out of nothing.

Maybe he was just trying really hard not to think about other things.

Like the fate of East Antarctica. Or Rain.

Or himself.

With a sigh, Sunny sprawled on the ancient wood and stared into the mist.

East Antarctica... was most likely finished. This was an appalling tragedy and a personal wound for Sunny. For the first time in his life, he had tried to act upon his nascent principles... and failed. In the end, his intervention didn’t amount to anything.

Sure, he had prevented the great clans from causing the deaths of many civilians and government soldiers. But with the great abominations now rampaging across the Southern Quadrant, how many of those people he had saved would survive?

’Ah, this feeling... how bitter...’

The taste of failure was painful enough to make him want to never have such desires again. To never have the nerve to try and force his will upon the world again. To never... try.

’So childish.’

He was like a novice who had swung his training sword once, failed to perform the cut perfectly, and instantly gave up on wanting to learn swordsmanship. How many thousands of swings had it taken him to gain a basic level of control over his blade on the Forgotten Shore?

One failure, no matter how painful, was not a reason to stop trying.

Nevertheless, even if he somehow overcame his disillusionment and numbness... the cruel truth remained the same.

The Chain of Nightmares was only the start of a global catastrophe. Sunny did not know how many years the destruction of the waking world would take - a couple, a dozen, or a hundred - but he believed Morgan when she told him that it was inevitable.

The scope of this truth was so vast that he could not even really comprehend it.

It was the end of the world.

Or was it?

’I’m stuck here in the Third Nightmare, and may very well die. But Rain is out there in the waking world, which might be consumed by a global cataclysm at any moment.’

Sunny could not help but feel restless, disheartened, and afraid for his sister.

’At least Serpent is with her. It will protect her...’

Regardless of that, the revelation of the dire future forced him to look beyond his own experiences and motivations.

Sunny had been struggling against many things ever since becoming an Awakened. His personal indignation at becoming bonded with Nephis, his desire to be stronger than her and escape the chains of fate, his animosity toward the great clans and his ambition to see as many people as possible survive the Chain of Nightmares... all these matters were important and valid.

But, blinded by them, he never seriously considered the most fundamental and important conflict... mostly because it had always seemed too large and distant to have anything to do with a small and insignificant person like him.

The Nightmare Spell, which was slowly consuming humanity.

Now that he knew that the waking world had reached the point of no return, Sunny couldn’t ignore the looming terror of it anymore.

’This is... this is just infuriating. I can’t believe that I ended up being the bigger fool, out of the two of us!’

Back when Nephis had told him that her goal was to destroy the Spell, Sunny called her a lunatic. And he still believed that she was - her desire was nothing but pure madness!

However, as it turned out, the world they lived in was a world of madness. So it was Sunny, who just wanted to operate a Memory store and live a peaceful life, who was misguided.

In retrospect...

Maybe Neph’s desire to conquer all the Nightmares and destroy the Spell was a bit insane, but Sunny’s desire to just be free of it all and live carefree was pure lunacy.

The only sane ones were probably the people who fell somewhere in between these two extremes.

Like Effie.