Shadow Slave

As Sunny slowly approached the main cargo hold, he felt doubt crawl into his mind.

What was he actually doing?

A battle between two Saints was no place for an Awakened, no matter how powerful he had grown after absorbing thousands of shadow fragments and forming the fourth core. The gap in power between Sunny and Solvane was just too vast… he had faced her twice in the past, and each time, the War Maiden crushed him without even putting any effort into her attacks.

The bitter taste of those defeats still lingered in his mouth.

…Especially of the second one, when he watched helplessly as she slaughtered Elyas in front of his eyes.

When he remembered that vile day, his pupils narrowed. An overwhelming feeling of hatred and anger drowned his mind, so scorching and consuming that Sunny was momentarily stunned by the intensity of it.

Every wound, every second of torturous pain, every night of quiet desperation he had experienced in the Red Colosseum rose from the depths of his memory, making him feel as if he was reliving all that torment. The memory of the burning Sacred Grove was there, too, as well as that of an old man crying as he cradled the dead body of his mother in his trembling arms.

And that of Elyas's bright eyes suddenly turning empty and hollow. The grief, shame, and fury of not having been able to keep his promise and save the young man…

Sunny tried to resist the hatred, but failed. It was just too vast, deep… and deserved.

Solvane had deserved his hatred.

She put him in a cage…

She tried to make him a slave.

Gritting his teeth and suppressing a bestial growl, Sunny continued to move forward.

'I'll make her pay... it is not impossible.'

it to be. He did not need to defeat Solvane… he just needed to give Noctis an opportunity to defeat her. Anyone

had not been

an immortal Transcendent… but his

turned into an incorporeal shadow, sliding noiselessly into the main cargo hold of the broken

were entangled in a

***

to have forgone the use of weapons. Neither had they assumed

using their Aspect Abilities, unless Sunny simply failed to comprehend the scope and magnitude of what the

chose the most direct, intimate, and brutal form of combat — they were fighting with their bare

a mountain, sending destructive shockwaves

to

the ship. He was covered in blood from head to toe, his face broken and missing an eye. One of his cheeks was ripped open, revealing white teeth and making it seem as though Noctis was grinning. The sight of it was both ghastly

like a

yet, he

which the two Saints fought was almost too great for Sunny to discern anything, but he

Sometimes, he even succeeded.

…But mostly, he failed.

were broken with a sickening crunch, and more of what made Noctis himself

other hand,

flawlessly clean. The only indication that she had been locked in a furious fight with another Transcended was that her hands were covered in scarlet

His thoughts darkened.

'Damnation…'

interfere. There had to be a chance, a single instance where a momentary delay in Solvane's onslaught would allow Noctis to turn the tables on the

matter how long he waited and how closely he watched,

scream and fell to his

forward and grabbed him by the hair, jerking the sorcerer's head up so that his

deliver the final blow and said in a voice that seemed to be more mournful