Shadow Slave

There were hours left until they were going to be taken to the arena again. Sunny stared at the walls of the dungeon intently, as though hoping to glean some secrets from the ancient stones.

But what could he see? They were just old stones. There was nothing interesting on their surface, and neither was there anything interesting beneath it.

After a while, Sunny took a deep breath and sat down again, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible in the narrow cage. Then, he shut down his senses, pushing away the presence of countless abominations surrounding him, the stench of the prison, the pain in his exhausted body… everything that distracted him from thinking.

'What do I know about sorcery?'

That was a daunting question.

Even the word itself was deceptive. Humans of his world used it to describe any Aspect capable of dealing direct damage to the opponents, as opposed to augmenting the Awakened's combat ability — especially those that could do so from range. But that wasn't what Sunny was after.

No, what he was interested in was not the type of abilities that existed within the familiar framework of supernatural powers, but the very means used to create that framework, or at least those that existed outside the realm of Aspects.

That, to him, was true sorcery.

'But there are different kinds of such sorcery, as well… what are the ones that I've witnessed?'

he believed to be Weaver's own sorcery. The Spell itself was created from it, as well as all the magical items that the Spell gifted to the Awakened — Memories

was not synonymous with the Spell, and that there were ways of creating magic different

of a much more primitive weave hiding beneath the usual pattern of ethereal strings before he turned her into a Shadow. Later, he encountered the same type of alien weave

to notice, but Sunny didn't know which of the daemons had copied which — whether Weaver perfected the sorcery created by their brother, or whether the youngest child of the Unknown had based the method of his

some kind of a weave. However, that conclusion would have been wrong… Sunny knew this because of the third

the white altar of the Sanctuary of Noctis before leaving for the

knife had no weave hiding beneath its surface… instead, it was full of blinding radiance, as if encompassing a boundless ocean of

miracle could even be called sorcery. In any case, the obsidian knife — and later, the wooden one he had used to kill Solvane — proved that one didn't have

might have been completely

frowned. How was he supposed to search for

that he had encountered.

wearing Weaver's mask had been chained

Spire was surrounded by a circle of runes, too… as well as the stone arch on the last level of the

had encountered sorcerous runes was the Night Temple… there, they had been

creating sorcery. One was the spellweave, as well as a version of it used by the Prince of the Underworld. The other was the divine miracles of

was based on the inscription of runes, and seemed to have been mostly used by humans —