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.

was the actual composition of

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

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 to

At best,

it all

Hell if Sunny knew.

...It did work, though.

the two shadows that were hiding

do you

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

uncharacteristic display of emotions, scratched the back of its head,

Sunny smiled, revealing

"Yeah..."

was that this corporeal shadow form was much more malleable than his human body. It could change its shape at will... of course,

Sunny could become a smaller version of himself - that, however, required some practice to master, since such a fundamental change affected a lot of things. He could

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

that while the corporeal shadow form was almost as

simple - the Weaves. Neither Blood Weave nor Bone Weave persisted in this state, which

effects of the [Stalwart] trait were being applied to

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 akin to a soul

...Which was not ideal.

had a tendency to be wounded a lot, and if each wound was transferred directly

that really won't

surround the physical shadow form with an onyx carapace and make it much less prone to being