Shadow Slave

Effie stared at him with no amusement whatsoever on her childish face, which only made her attempts to appear serious look more comical. Then, she scowled and said evenly:

"Wanna die?"

Sunny shook his head with a grin, then went into more detail about the things he had learned, including various pieces of information he had gleaned in the nightmares, his experience with the Warmongers, and his observations about Solvane and Noctis.

When he was done, there was silence for a while. The others were digesting all the information he had shared with them, full of thought. Well… everyone except Effie.

The somber silence was soon broken by the sound of loud chewing. The little girl swallowed a piece of meat pie, then blinked a couple of times, noticing that everyone was staring at her. Finally, she wiped the oil off her lips and said:

"What? I am a growing child, you know! I need to eat well to grow big!"

Then, she wiped her oily fingers on the tablecloth and shrugged.

"Well, anyway… I guess I'll go next."

The little girl glanced at Sunny, made a face, and turned away.

"There's not much to tell, anyway. My three months in the Temple of the Chalice were not at all as exciting as Sunny's wild misadventures. Although…"

grew

weren't very

moments,

As I already said, their teachings had grown cruel and perverse over the centuries. Now that I know about how Hope is manipulating everyone's desires, I finally understand why.

The little girl trembled.

and the punishment… at the time, they already knew that nothing they did to me

grew silent for a bit,

How to be a perfect, merciless, lethal vessel

little girl's

end, everyone turned out to

of meat pie, chewed

in a coffin and buried me alive, for a few days. To teach me how to conquer the fear of darkness. These wretches… who said that I was afraid of darkness, to begin with? So… so stupid. But mostly, it was just combat training. They trained us ruthlessly. There's a lot you can achieve with a few Awakened healers and no regard for whether your disciples survive or not. If we broke a bone,

Effie shook her head.

I was getting it even worse than the rest. The girl whose body I took had the misfortune of Awakening at a very young age, you see. So, the Maidens saw her as their promised chosen one… a prodigious warrior fated to slay Solvane and wash away the humiliation she had visited upon the sect,

girl looked away, then

did to us was done without any hint of hatred, malevolence, or bad intentions. On the contrary, the older Maidens treated us like their little sisters — when they were not torturing and killing us, of course. My teacher… Hilde… I think she thought of me as her own daughter. She cared. A lot of good it did, in the

for a moment, and

think they went harder on the other girls because of me. My presence… reignited their fervor, I think. After everyone else died and the Maidens had nothing else to hold over my head, I started planning my escape. I had no idea if I would survive it, but luckily, before I had the chance to find out, Sunny and Kai came and obliterated the whole sect.