Shadow Slave

Sunny's bed trembled slightly, and he felt the wind blowing across the room. Still mostly asleep, he sighed and tried to pull the blanket higher. However, that damned thing was nowhere to be found.

'Where the hell is it…'

Reluctant to let go of sleep, he blindly searched for the blanket. Instead of finding it, though, Sunny suddenly felt his whole bed careen to the side. Startled, he opened his eyes… and saw nothing but darkness surrounding him.

'What the?! Oh… right.'

He wasn't in his small room in the Sanctuary. He was plummeting into a lightless abyss atop the corpse of a Fallen Devil, instead.

Sunny stared into the darkness for a bit.

Then, he yawned.

'Well. At least I slept well.'

Indeed, he was feeling rather refreshed. Most of his aches had either disappeared or grown milder, and even his wounded mind felt soothed. He felt rested, energized, and much better overall.

The only problem was, he was still falling into the endless void of the Sky Below.

Sunny scratched the back of his head, though about this predicament, then summoned the Endless Spring and drank some water. Then, he concentrated and tried to assess the situation.

situation was absolutely the

nothing, nothing had changed while he slept, and there was nothing he could do

and stared at the treasure chest beneath him. After

next-level pettiness. Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take a

below, false stars shimmered with

shadow essence had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit

assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he had left the Sanctuary six days

take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at least a week… much longer than that, most

the basement of his house. The

Would anyone miss him?

not. Kai and Effie were used to his long ventures into the Dream Realm, and even if none of them had been as long as this one was going to be, they would just assume that he was too lazy to answer their messages and go about their business.

The lookouts in the Sanctuary were not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to

she would just think that he was

in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things

Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of the dead

my

***

he was performing a strange aerial dance. Holding onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto the side

incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about

had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant

the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as he fell through it — it