Shadow Slave

In another memory, Soul Reaper Jet was looking down at the vast expanse of the Night Garden as life slowly flowed out of her broken soul, drop by drop — like it always did.

Bringing a golden fruit to her mouth, she took a bite and chewed its flesh slowly, a thoughtful expression on her face.

She spared the fruit a long look.

”Eating fruits every day...”

She had never even seen a fruit during her time in the outskirts, let alone tasted one. Life was sure full of surprises. It was full of unexpected outcomes, as well.

Taking another bite, she continued to study the lively expanse of the layered decks far below.

Things were turning strange on the Night Garden.

The ship was currently gliding through the boundless abyss of the dark sky below the Chained Isles. There was nothing but an endless emptiness above it. Beneath it, meanwhile, was a ferocious sea of fire— it was as if the Night Garden was sailing above the surface of a star.

The heat rising from the ocean of divine flame was keeping the titanic ship afloat in the empty abyss. Not in the sense that it was gliding on the rising currents of warm air, though — rather, the hull of the Night Garden was soaking in the heat and turning it into torrents of essence to sustain its innate sorcery.

Which was good news, since the ship was consuming a great amount of essence now that it was sailing on air instead of water. That was something it had become capable of after being mended and restored at the wharf of the Eternal City, among other things.

Making the Night Garden fly had actually turned out to be quite simple. It had never relied on the winds or propulsion engines to sail, after all — instead, it moved due to the divine sorcery left behind by the Demon of Repose. So, if its helmsman was skilled and powerful enough, the living ship could easily sail on air instead of water... or even on nothing at all, if need be.

It was just that the amount of essence required to lift it into the air was too taxing for a Transcendent captain. Beings of such a measly Rank were quite obviously not meant to control the living vessel, and since they could not substitute the essence the Night Garden consumed with their own, an external source was needed to keep it in the air for prolonged periods of time. Something like a raging storm... or a sea of divine flames burning in a vast abyss.

The mission to evacuate the citizens of the Sanctuary of Noctis had been both sudden and ambitious. The Night Garden traveled to the Chained Isles through the Dream Gate, steered by the Saints of Night — Naeve, Aether, Bloodwave, and Nightwalker himself. With the four of them rotating at the helm, the living ship could barely be kept afloat.

The Night Garden arrived at the Sanctuary — the city that now sprawled across half a dozen islands around the Sanctuary of Noctis — where the entire local population hastily boarded it. Saint Tyris and Saint Roan, as well as the Awakened warriors of the White Feather clan, joined them as well. Then, the living ship dove into the Sky Below just before the King of Nothing descended upon the Chained Isles from the Hollow Mountains.

And here they were, drifting above the sea of flames. Nephis had departed to wherever it was she had gone, and the Human Domain was slowly collapsing somewhere far above them.

The Night Garden was severely overpopulated at the moment, and although everyone lived in cramped conditions, there was enough food for everyone. There were also seven Saints aboard: Jet, Nightwalker, Bloodwave, Aether, Naeve, Tyris, and Roan. So even if they ran out of some supplies, they could bring more from the waking world.

The problem lay somewhere else.

Taking another bite of the fruit, Jet narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized the movement of people on the main decks of the Night Garden.

Everything seemed in order. However, something felt off to her eyes. There were invisible undercurrents and signs of internal strife that weren’t that difficult to notice, but there was something else, too.

She knew that most of the mundane population of her Citadel had already succumbed to the plague of Asterion. The loyalty of the Awakened warriors was questionable, well. There were plenty of ways to confirm that someone still belonged to the Longing Domain, but Jet doubted that any of them were truly trustworthy.

In fact, she was willing to bet that even if there was no reasonable way to fool the tests, the Dreamspawn had long found a way to do just that.

Everyone acted like they used to, but at the same time, many people raised her suspicion. So, Jet and the other Saints, as well as the Ascended officers under their command, had been carefully positioning the troops they deemed trustworthy — or at least hoped that they were — near the vital elements of the living ship’s ecosystem.

The loyalists and the turncoats... the believers and the apostates... aboard the Night Garden were constantly getting into small conflicts, and the soldiers under Jet’s command were busy making sure that things did not get out of hand.

The living ship was like a powder keg, and days passed in the atmosphere of distrust and tension.

It felt like a mutiny was brewing.

Jet chewed on the golden fruit calmly.

If the mundane population of the Night Garden rebelled... even if the Awakened soldiers joined them, they would not be able to gain control of the living ship. That was simply because they would not be able to defeat the seven Saints who guarded it. However, Jet did not suspect only the mundane people and the Awakened. She was an equal opportunity offender, so she did not fully trust her Ascended officers, either, and was watching the other six Saints — even Nightwalker — with a wary eye, too.

There were definitely questionable things about them. There were more and more strange discrepancies Jet noticed every day... if it wasn’t all in her head.

They were probably having the same thoughts about her.