Shadow Slave

At first, Sunny and Nephis were tense and fully focused, observing the feasting serpent with grim apprehension and a bit of dread.

But then, slowly...

It got a little boring.

Even though very few people had ever gotten a chance to see a Great Beast devour a Great Monster - or maybe none at all - as it turned out, even such a macabre and awesome spectacle could grow old really fast.

The Black Turtle was just too enormous. Even though the azure serpent was gigantic itself, it still couldn't devour a significant portion of its carcass in a short amount of time, no matter how hard it tried. It would probably take the creature days, or even weeks, to put a dent in the floating corpse of the titanic monster.

Eventually, Sunny and Nephis found themselves sitting side by side on the green moss, looking silently at the Great River.

The two of them made for a striking contrast. Sunny was wearing a tunic of black silk embroidered with silver thread, his hair black as a raven's wing. Nephis was wearing a tunic, too, hers perfectly white and decorated with red accents. Her long silver hair was moving slightly in the wind.

One's eyes were like two pools of unfathomable darkness, the other's were grey, calm, and hid within them a boundless, immolating heat.

Both would have seemed too flawless and beautiful to a mundane human, with perfectly smooth alabaster skin and faces that seemed to have been chiseled from precious stone by a divine sculptor.

Surrounded by the vast expanse of a mystical river and sitting calmly atop the shell of a great monster, wearing no armor and holding no weapons in their hands, they looked like two transient deities that had descended from the heavenly realm to rest on the soft moss and enjoy the breathtaking beauty of this strange world.

...Of course, Sunny had none of these thoughts. Instead, he had an entirely different view of the current situation.

'This is... huh...'

Over the years, he had grown accustomed to being in the company of armor-clad Awakened, heavily armed soldiers, and military vehicles. Looking at the slender silhouette of Nephis's body outlined by the light fabric of her tunic, and the weightless silk of his own Graceless Dusk, he couldn't help but feel a sense of strange incongruity.

They were currently in the most dire predicament of their habitually dire lives. And yet...

We look like we're enjoying a

Sunny just found the idea amusing after randomly learning about that ancient tradition from Rain, and was reminded of that conversation right now. He knew that being surrounded

However.

corpse of the Black Turtle was technically floating, so it was like a ship. At the same time, it was large enough to

company was very nice,

snout of the azure serpent rising above the water from time to time, he would

'Huh?'

mood, Nephis looked

have that funny

Sunny coughed.

I was just thinking that this entire situation is weirdly... peaceful? We are on top of a dead Great Monster and there is a Great Beast slowly devouring that monster as it waits for a chance to munch on our souls, and yet... there's nothing to

He scratched his head.

tell you, the start of my Second Nightmare was nowhere near as relaxing. Plus, this Black Turtle, it's kind

couple of times, then stared at the black expanse of the Black Turtle's

pause, she

better. I... I actually was never on a

tilted his head

never sailed across

He chuckled.

start splitting around you. Or that something from the outside doesn't come inside to pay you a visit. By the way... both of those things happened to me...

few moments, then looked

even when

start of

at her

thought surfaced in his

she going to say... something

felt