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

nothing had changed while he slept, and

at the treasure chest beneath him. After

I even went so far as to take a nap on

down, down below, false stars

he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he was really

calculations of his, of course, were very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he

idea how long it was going to 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,

real world, his body was safely hidden in the luxurious sleeping pod in the basement of his house. The pod would keep it alive for

Would anyone miss him?

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. They were famous heroes now, after all,

from him, too. 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 think about him would be when Cassie arrived from the Night Temple, and he wasn't there

she would just think that he was avoiding her, as he had

lid of the dead treasure chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things had changed, but even more

his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on

I have my coins,

***

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

were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for

Yesterday, he had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some point his body was bound

wrong. Since he could breathe in the Sky Below and felt the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as he