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.

familiar was the actual composition of his new and

faithful copy, but not an exact one. It couldn't be - although the jet-black Sunny looked and acted like Sunny, he was still a manifested shadow. As such, he operated on a different set of

or any internal organs,

either. At best, there were

did it

Hell if Sunny knew.

...It did work, though.

he glanced at the two shadows that were hiding in the corners of

do you

for a while, then raised a hand, as if wanting to say something. Eventually, though, the arrogant guy simply shook his

display of emotions, scratched the

smiled,

"Yeah..."

more malleable than his human body. It could change its shape at will... of course, he needed to

version of himself - that, however, required some practice to master, since such a fundamental change affected a lot of things. He could become larger, too, although there was a limit to how much, dictated by his

existing ones with ease. The same went for claws, horns,

shadow form was almost as resilient as his actual body, in the

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

the effects of the [Stalwart] trait were being applied

be damaged too. Therefore, the

every attack against it was akin

...Which was not ideal.

lot, and if each wound was transferred directly to

that really

an onyx carapace and make it much less prone to being