Shadow Slave

Different skies, different faces of the Great River, night and day…

Sunny, Nephis, and the Thieving Bird plummeted through space and time, leaving a trail of fractured reality behind them.

It was a wondrous experience that no one except for them had ever known before… and yet, they paid it little attention, wholly preoccupied with trying to kill each other. Sunny tore into the flesh of the Vile Thieving Bird, trying to get to its heart and rend it apart. The Vile Thieving Bird shrieked and cried, slicing him and Nephis viciously with its talons and piercing them with its beak. Nephis burned like a star, annihilating the very air around them, trying to reduce the Cursed Terror to ash.

In this fatal battle where an enemy far more lethal than any they had faced before was willing their demise into existence, she had to push her Aspect to its very limits, inventing new ways of channeling her power on the fly.

The white flame enveloped the Thieving Bird, and was enveloped by a vast and unfathomable shadow in turn. It burned the Cursed Terror — but it healed the shadow instead of incinerating it.

That was how Sunny was managing to survive under the terrifying onslaught of the cursed deity, for now, and why he had not been annihilated by the merciless purity of his companion’s radiant soul yet.

As their incarnations fought ferociously across the endless maze of fragmented time, their Wills were locked in a vicious battle, as well.

The Thieving Bird was weakened by the three curses, but its horrid Will was still as vast as the sky, as deep as the ocean, tyrannical and terrifying. However, Sunny and Nephis were not powerless in this deific clash, either — especially not when they were working toward a common goal in seamless harmony.

The sum of their titanic Wills might not have reached the immensity of a god’s authority, but when it came to killing intent and ruthless determination to kill, they had no equals.

They were children of the War Realm, after all. They had been forged and tempered by the Nightmare Spell, having lived a life that consisted of little except bloodshed and strife. Their past had shaped them into killers, into destroyers of things — that was the only way of living they had ever known, and what they were best at.

Facing a Cursed Terror had been a shock at first, but now that they were submerged in battle, walking the fine line between existence and destruction, they were swiftly learning how to fight their terrifying enemy. The Thieving Bird was ancient, it was unfathomably powerful, its vitality seemed infinite…

And yet, it was also mad and bestial, having been driven to insanity by the Corruption. Or perhaps it had never been sane, to begin with — after all, why else would it steal Weaver’s eye despite knowing that crossing the Demon of Fate was probably the worst idea anyone had ever conceived of?

So, even if the Thieving Bird was so tough that even attacks of Supreme Titans rolled off it like drops of rain, and even if it showed no sign of being severely wounded despite being assaulted by their combined powers… it was still being diminished, little by little.

The more wounds they dealt it, the more its seemingly boundless vitality flowed out of them. And the more they battered its Will, the less insurmountable it became.

Even if their own Wills felt less and less inexhaustible as they suffered the dreadful agony of its attacks, driven into a frenzy by the pain.

They were barreling through a starlit sky, the Great River shining radiantly in the darkness far below.

A moment later, they tore through a fissure in the fractured reality and escaped into the blinding radiance of day, moving mere meters above the water.

Then, they plunged into the cold currents, making the surface of the Great River undulate, colossal waves rising from their passing.

Then…

They were suddenly surrounded by utter darkness, still water stretching as far as an eye could see. There was a familiar shape right in front of them, rising from the soil of a vast island like a black stele.

It was Aletheia’s Tower.

Before Sunny could realize what was happening, the three of them smashed through it, destroying most of its middle floors and sending its top flying down from the hill.

A devastating rain of stone debris descended upon the dark island, toppling myriad trees. The top of the tower rolled down and crashed into the forest, destroying a vast swathe of it.

A moment later, they were already somewhere else, in a different time.

The sky was blazing with a million hues of crimson. The air was permeated by the deafening roar of falling water, and a great waterfall stretched in both directions beneath them, a boundless black abyss extending from the plumes of fine vapor into infinity.

There were ruins of an abandoned city being drawn toward the Edge. Sunny recognized it, as well… it was Fallen Grace. It was Fallen Grace after the last River People had abandoned it to seek refuge in the Ark that Daeron of the Twilight Sea and King Cronos had built.

As the mass of living flames ravaging the Thieving Bird rose, assuming a vaguely humanoid shape, and raised a colossal ray of pure light like a sword to bring it down on the loathsome Terror’s neck, the first of the island-ships fell over the Edge, disappearing in the torrents of plummeting water, and into the endless darkness beyond.

A moment later, they were somewhere else. The dark carapace of an enormous turtle moved through the water beneath them. As Nephis brought the Blessing down with all her titanic might, the Theiving Bird let out a shrill caw and twisted its neck, somehow avoiding the strike — it should not have been possible, according to how space was supposed to work, but Nephis still missed. The Blessing plummeted down like a ray of sunlight and cleanly cleaved through the black carapace beneath them, severing the Great Monster in two.

Before its blood mixed with the water, they were already beyond the horizon.

Reality fractured once more, and they broke through the widening fissure, escaping into the light.