Shadow Slave

Sunny often wondered what powers Orphne of the Nine had wielded. After all, her shadow was already one of the deadliest things he had ever faced without them—it was no coincidence that Sunny called her Slayer. Just how fearsome the original had been?

Orphne was one of the two known beings in all of history who had managed to kill a daemon, after all. The other one was Weaver... and she had killed Weaver. In fact, she had killed Weaver twice, so what did that make her?

To his surprise, though, her Aspect was not at all what he had expected.

Sunny had thought that she would possess an immensely powerful combat Aspect, or at least one focused on death and killing, but that was not the case at all. If anything, Slayer’s powers were the antithesis of that—her Aspect was focused on utility, with hardly any combat applications. More than that, at its core, it was an Aspect meant to promote understanding and harmony.

At least that was the impression Sunny had gotten after Cassie transcribed the runes for him.

Of course, the powers Slayer had reclaimed after remembering the name of the woman who had cast her were not entirely the same as Orphne’s Aspect had been. After all, Orphne had been a human—Slayer, however, was a shadow creature. Had been a Shadow Creature before Sunny killed her and made her his Shadow, rather...

It was a bit complicated.

‘What it is is ridiculous, not complicated,’ he smiled faintly.

Orphne of the Nine had been a mortal woman, and like all mortals, she had a shadow. Shadows traveled to the Shadow Realm after the death of mortals who cast them, but Orphne had descended into the Shadow Realm alive... and died there side by side with the Demon of Fate.

Her shadow remained in the Shadow Realm, but it did not surrender to the laws governing the afterlife and refused to be annihilated. Instead, it roamed the dark expanse of the Realm of the Dead for thousands of years, hunting down other shadows to sustain itself.

Eventually, the feral shadow of Orphne of the Nine became a Shadow Creature. A kind of being who were born from the shadows of the dead, but were distinctly different from them—like Nightmare.

That Shadow Creature was eventually killed by Sunny and turned into one of his Shadows. And his Shadows were all Shadow Creatures themselves, by definition... sort of. They were apparently incomplete, whatever that meant, and were neither mere shadows of the dead nor independent Shadow Creatures.

Sunny winced as if in pain.

‘Shadow God was truly a great and awesome god...’

But his naming sense... was terrible.

Perhaps that was one of the reasons Sunny had ended up receiving his blessing and becoming a Shadow Slave, as well.

‘Wait. If Slayer is the Shadow of a Shadow Creature of a shadow of a mortal woman... Then what the hell was Sunny himself?’

He made a face, trying to define his own existence.

It seemed that he was a mortal man who had become a Shadow Creature with the help of the Nightmare Spell and a blessing from Shadow God, then killed himself and became a shadow, then made himself into a Shadow Creature once again while attaining Supremacy. Coincidentally, he had once descended into the Shadow Realm alive, too.

Now, though, no trace of his mortal self remained—he was truly and utterly a creature of shadows, born from the shadow of a dead man.

‘Huh.’

In any case, as a Shadow Creature, Slayer did not wield a true Aspect—and neither did she possess a true Flaw. Rather, she wielded powers that were derived from the Aspect of her original source, Orphne of the Nine... ŗ𝖆ꞐꝊ𝐛ƐS̩

The Godslayer.

The Demon Slayer?

Orphne did not have a title because no one had been alive to tell the tale of her incredible and terrible deeds. She had performed them at the world’s end, after all—in fact, it was her hand that had set the end of days in motion.

Few beings could boast of causing the deaths of all the gods and all the daemons with one strike of their blade, but Orphne could.

Which only made the fact that his Aspect had nothing to do with death and combat so much more poignant.

Slayer’s first Ability was quite an odd one. It allowed her to understand and communicate with all manner of beasts and living creatures, as well as comprehend human languages—humans were beasts as well, after all. An Ability like that certainly had its uses, and while Sunny had benefited greatly from having learned a few dead languages himself, he... how could he put it?

He would not have wanted to receive an Ability like that as a Sleeper. The world was too violent and cruel a place for a power that only encompassed communication. It was an Ability suited for peace... but life was war.

Slayer’s second Ability greatly enhanced all her senses. That one was far more useful, and could explain how she was so eerily accurate when shooting a bow over vast distances, great and laying ambushes, and almost impossible to catch unaware.

Her third Ability was the only one that could be considered a direct combat one. It allowed her to imbue her attacks with soul essence, making them more potent.

That one... reminded Sunny of Samara and her powerful rifle, so he felt wistful while reading the runes.

‘The method is similar, but the result should be different. I will have to watch Slayer fight to understand more.’

Samara’s Ability had been straightforward—it allowed her to charge objects with her essence and then convert that essence into kinetic or heat energy. Slayer’s Ability, however, was more... mystical. So, he could not immediately understand its nuances.

It was curious, though, that Slayer had not used that power before. She seemed to have retained some measure of her first two Abilities as a feral shadow, but not of the other ones. Now that she had regained more of her former self, though, that was going to change.

And then there was Slayer’s fourth Ability... That one intrigued Sunny the most.