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...

the hell. We look like we're enjoying a luxury

on tropical islands had not been a thing since before the Dark Times. 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

However.

the same time, it was large enough to be an island. The food was delicious. The view was to

was

for the blooded snout of the azure serpent rising above the water from

'Huh?'

Nephis looked at him and raised

have that funny look

Sunny coughed.

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

He scratched his head.

Black Turtle, it's kind of

stared at the black expanse of the Black

short pause, she

know better. I... I actually was never

tilted his head

Antarctica by Whispering Blade. She never sailed across the ocean on an alloy battleship, only

He chuckled.

not that special. Mostly, you just stay inside and pray that the ship doesn't 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... so no matter how strange

few moments,

was even when

start of my Second

looked at her

thought surfaced in his

to

felt