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

while he slept,

sighed and stared at the treasure chest beneath him.

only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take a nap on top of its dead body.

below, false stars shimmered

had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he

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

of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at

pod in the basement of his house. The pod would

Would anyone miss him?

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. They were famous heroes now, after all, with packed schedules and plenty of problems

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 to help

that he was avoiding her, as he

the 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,

bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of

I have my coins, at

***

the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously

the fact that both of them were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for a while,

speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some point his body was bound to be simply torn apart…

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