Shadow Slave

A matte, jet-black version of Sunny was standing in the middle of the room. He did not move for a while, frozen like a statue, then raised his hands slightly and looked at them with a strange expression.

His fingers moved.

'Well, that's...'

The jet-black Sunny scratched the back of his head, then halted for a moment and tentatively touched his hair. The mere fact that he had hair was a surprise.

'...that's certainly something.'

He felt extremely strange.

Sunny was fundamentally a human. When using Shadow Step, he could assume the form of an incorporeal shadow, then turn himself back to his original form. That was not what he had done today, however.

Today, he had become a shadow, and then manifested himself into a corporeal form without turning back into a human. So, what he was right now was... was...

'I... uh... I'll be damned if I know what I am right now.'

A human inhabiting a human-shaped vessel made of shadows? A shadow brazenly wandering the human world in the form of a person? Or something else entirely?

Descriptions aside, his current state was a curious one.

Because of how faithful the recreation was to the original, Sunny felt more or less like himself. His range of motion, strength, and agility remained the same. His shadow form was Ascended, just like his human body, so it was just as powerful and resilient.

There were differences too, of course.

The most obvious one was the change in his perception. His shadow sense seemed to have become sharper, while his vision was now less pronounced. He couldn't see colors, either - just like in the Second Nightmare, when inhabiting the shadowspawn. This was familiar territory for him.

actual composition of his new and

and acted like Sunny, he was still a manifested shadow. As such, he operated on a different set

recreation did follow some underlying principles of how a corporeal creature was supposed to be, but the similarity was shallow. He did not have a beating heart, or any internal organs, for that matter. And although there was a rough structure

no veins, either. At best, there were essence

did it all

Hell if Sunny knew.

...It did work, though.

shadows that were hiding in the corners

you

shadow seemed completely befuddled. It stared at him for a while, then raised a hand, as if wanting to say something. Eventually,

shadow, in an uncharacteristic display of emotions, scratched the back of its

jet-black Sunny smiled, revealing

"Yeah..."

and examining his current state further, he discovered a few things. The first was that this corporeal shadow form was much more malleable than his human body. It could change its shape at will... of course, he needed to possess an excellent

a lot of things. He could become larger, too, although there was a limit to how much, dictated by his

easier. Sunny already knew how to possess four arms, so he could add two more to his existing ones with ease. The same went for claws, horns, a tail... in the future, as his knowledge of various forms and shapes grew, he would be able to make

second discovery was that while the corporeal shadow form was almost as

in this state, which left Sunny vulnerable. Interestingly enough, the

of the [Stalwart] trait were being applied to

the extent that when Sunny was damaged in the form of a shadow, or one of his shadows was damaged, his soul would be damaged too. Therefore, the corporeal shadow form received the benefits of both the extremely high degree of physical protection and the high degree of protection from

fact that every attack against it was

...Which was not ideal.

tendency to be wounded a lot, and if each wound

really won't

form with an onyx carapace and make