Shadow Slave novel Chapter 1763

Sunny left the underground cell in a complicated mood. To be honest... he was a little rattled.

'Weaver said... that they would open the Gates.'

Who were the "they" Weaver had spoken about?

The gods? The daemons? Or someone else entirely?

There was one thing that made Sunny restless. it was the fact that no one knew who Weaver was, so the nebulous daemon was never referred to as "he" or "she". Instead, the Spell used the neutral "they" to describe the Demon of Fate.

So... had it been Weaver who unsealed the Void, perhaps?

That did not make a lot of sense, though, since the runes described something that the elusive daemon had said. So, it would have been "I will open the Gates", not "they will"... unless Weaver had had a habit of referring to themselves in the third person.

There was the issue of the runic language itself, as well, which did not necessarily follow the same pronounce conventions as the human language did. The runes written by the prisoner of the ruined cathedral did not hint that Weaver had been speaking about themselves.

But still, still...

'Until it was too late.‘

What did the description of Bone Weave mean, exactly?

If Sunny knew one thing... it was that Weaver had been the most frightening of deities, despite not being the most powerful. He did not trust the devious Demon of Fate one bit. Shaking his head, he walked over to the stone stairs, but then halted and remained motionless for a while.

Walking back, he stopped in front of the cell once more.

Summoning the Covetous Coffer, Sunny violently tore the massive steel door off its hinges and tossed it into the wardrobe‘s terrifying maw. Then, he pulled one of the torches from its slot and carried it away, seemingly unperturbed by the ghostly flame.

A person who had been tossed away by the world had to be practical.

Why leave good things behind?

****

Sunny spent a few more days in the Dark City, exploring the ruins curiously. Before, he had been limited in where he could go and what he could see — there had been Nightmare Creatures everywhere, and his power had been woefully insufficient to walk around freely.

But now, Sunny was powerful enough to cleanse the entire Dark City in a matter of hours. Sadly, all the abominations he had not been able to hunt down were already dead, slain either by the Crimson Terror or Nephis.

Still, he could at least explore all the places he had wanted to visit. There wasn't much important information left to be found here, but there were plenty of things he could learn that would be only interesting to a researcher like him.

The rituals, the mundane details of everyday life, the culture... stuff like that. By the end of it, Sunny collected many pieces of information that would have made the Exploration Report on the Forgotten Shore more comprehensive. Sadly, all of them would have had to be placed in the "Not Related to Combat" addendum, which most Awakened never bothered to read.

"Barbarians..."

Finishing his business in the ruins, he left them behind. Next, Sunny started on the long tour of the remaining six statues of the heroes of the Forgotten Shore.

He visited the Priestess first, since she was just outside the walls of the city. Sunny climbed onto her hand and sat there for a while, remembering the day he had reached the Dark City with Nephis and Cassie.

He had been... barely seventeen back then, knowing nothing of the world. He had just learned that there was more to life than bitter survival.

Sunny watched the black sky for a while, feeling regret that the sun of the Forgotten Shore was gone for the first time. He would never see it rise again from the palm of the Priestess again.

Eventually, he wrapped himself in shadows and jumped down, gliding on dark wings to the distant ground.

Next was the statue of the Hunter, where the cohort had once burned the nest of the Iron Spiders. Sunny visited the giant arch of white marble on top of which they had rested and played games on the way, as well as climbed to the bottom of the canyon from where the Builder's statue had emerged.

Strangely enough, that rest stop on the white arch etched itself in his memories most vividly. Sunny felt remorse for never taking the members of the cohort to a real beach... now, it was too late. He would never have such an opportunity again.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify