Shadow Slave

A few more days passed in blissful idleness. Sunny continued concentrating on Shadow Dance, not ready yet to learn more from Ananke - the information she had shared with them was already vexing enough, and he was struggling to parse through all of its many implications. He also resumed his habit of studying the weave of the Estuary Key, even though it still remained a complete mystery to him.

After hesitating for a while, Sunny turned to the old woman for help, but there was no result. Although she was a priestess of the Nightmare Spell and a follower of the Demon of Fate, she was not a weaver herself. Sunny knew more about Weaver's sorcery than Ananke did.

...Which was not to say that she did not know anything about sorcery at all.

After spending several days in the ketch, Sunny and Nephis noticed two strange things about the swift vessel and its owner.

The first one concerned the ketch itself. Its sails were always full of wind, pushing the boat across the shining surface of the Great River with enviable speed. Which was not too strange in and of itself, if not for the fact that this speed was too constant and stable. It also did not seem as though the direction and strength of the wind ever changed - or rather, they never changed around the ketch.

They did, however, change some distance away from it, creating an eerie situation where the waters where the wooden sailboat passed were different from the rest of the world.

Not only that, but Ananke also never manipulated the sales in any way to help them catch the wind.

And nothing ever attacked them.

Both Sunny and Nephis knew, of course, that the ketch was not a mundane boat. It was obviously enchanted in some way, they just did not know how. There were no runes carved into its surface and no sophisticated runic patterns like on the Chain Breaker. There was no spellweave hidden within the old wood either.

Eventually, they were defeated by curiosity and asked Ananke directly.

That was how Sunny learned that, while the old woman was not a weaver, she was still a sorceress. However, the sorcery she used did not belong to the Demon of Fate, nor was it the runic sorcery created by Hope.

Instead, it was the ancient sorcery upon which Hope's runic magic was based - the sorcery of Names.

the old woman

was just taught a few simple Names and Phrases by

that they met a practitioner of an entirely new

how to invoke them, but his was a more sophisticated kind

few more, considering that she was acquainted with the forgemasters of Clan Valor. She had told him that the members of the Valor family often received Aspects tied to crafting, which

that Sunny and Cassie had almost died in during their imprisonment in the Night Temple was

her

dying breed even before the war. And with the gifts of the Nightmare

a few moments,

Name of concealment

Ananke sighed.

Names... were never meant to be spoken by mortals. So, one has to possess innate talent in order to

at her intently

the ketch to have

woman nodded with a

tenuous and slippery, so sorcery can't stick to it that well. Oh, at least that was how it was explained to me when I was a child. A nameless thing won't be influenced as much,

Ananke, meanwhile, looked at them with a strangely wistful emotion in her

willing, of course... since even I was able to master these few Names, at least one

each other. Her expression was thoughtful, while his was

'Ah, damn it...'

with curiosity and insatiable avarice. Learn a few

a tiny bit of the Word sorcery, but his resources were already spread thin. Apart from Shadow Dance, he also had to study weaving. His combat skills and Aspect powers all required attention, too. Becoming distracted by a shiny new toy was