Shadow Slave

Approaching the window, Sunny opened the heavy shutters and looked at the desolate landscape of Weave from the height of one of the Nightmare Spell Temple's bell towers.

The sky was veiled in impenetrable darkness. The waters flowing through the canals of the floating city glowed with iridescent radiance, bathing the empty streets in ethereal glow. Usually, the light of the Great River at night was dreamlike and beautiful, but contrasted against the forlorn desolation of Weave, it made for an eerie sight.

It was like a city of ghosts.

He sighed, thinking about the cruel fate that had befallen the followers of Weaver... and the creature that had driven them to extinction.

The Mad Prince.

A dark expression appeared on Sunny's face.

He was reluctant to think about his meeting with the Defiled Titan - or at least some vestige of the abhorrent creature that had found its way into his dreams. It almost felt as though thinking about the abomination would summon it here.

Nevertheless, Sunny had to consider what he had seen, and heard, in the harrowing dream. Because it was too ominous.

'I dreamt of being Weaver.'

The spider with a broken leg was, without a doubt, a representation of the Demon of Fate. It was not surprising that Sunny had dreamt of the nebulous daemon after witnessing the mural in the grand hall of the temple, and neither was it unexpected that he had assumed the daemon's role in his nightmare.

Weaver's blood was running through Sunny's veins, after all, and he too had an innate affinity to fate. The latter was the reason for the former, in the end - it was because of being Fated that he had stumbled on the egg of the loathsome Thieving Bird and received the forbidden lineage of the sinister daemon.

Sinister... Sunny had actually never thought about Weaver in such terms before. Mostly because he had benefited greatly from their tenuous connection, but also because there was no reason to. In all honesty, he had admired the mysterious daemon, with no particular reason except for the fact that the Demon of Fate was an intelligent, cunning, and fearsome deity.

But the more Sunny learned about the end of the Dream Realm and the Nightmare Spell, the more ominous of a figure Weaver seemed. And how could they not... who could be more dangerous than a creature that wielded knowledge of fate itself?

Sunny and Nephis had argued about the nature of the Spell, whether it was a fundamentally benevolent force or not.

He was inclined to believe that it had been created for a noble purpose... which was not to say that it was not a vile and terrible curse for the humans of the waking world... but he was also starting to suspect that neither of them really understood the true intention and scope of what Weaver had done at all.

The Nightmare Spell seemed like a tool to make living beings stronger in the face of encroaching Corruption. But there were too many discrepancies between what was apparent and what was hidden beneath the surface. The Nightmares, the slow but inevitable escalation, the sheer convenience of it all...

goal? How had the rudimentary version of the Spell Ananke wielded grown to become the pervasive and

think of it, how had the Doom War ended? What had actually happened to the daemons, the gods... and Weaver? Where did the Corruption that had devoured

answers. More than that, these were not even the questions he had to

of Corruption that had spread from the Estuary, and there were six

strangely familiar

He shivered.

he

was like a flesh puppet worn by a boundless sea of

was like a

thing in the world, after all. As well as the

with the fact that the Mad Prince

the start, because the abominable creature was too different from him. But when the Sin of Solace appeared... he had to admit to himself that the Defiled

and the Mad Prince were

landscape of

the role of that

roles did they assume? Who could have been present that

as evident

become an Ascended Tyrant... but not impossible. The Spell could have decided that it was the best and only option, slightly changing the rules. The Third Nightmare was different from the previous two, to begin with, with challengers entering it with their

...That was one possibility.

that the abominable madmen could have been the Sin of Solace from the future, conjured into the present by some strange quirk of the Great River. Ananke had said it herself that the flow of time in the Tomb

who had either been devoured by

no way. No

felt

to turn into that bastard. The letters of

Mad Prince, either. The description of the rest

Soul Stealer, who could wear the skin of those he killed. The Undying Slaughter, who was overcome by insatiable bloodlust. The Devouring Beast, who consumed the bodies of her slain foes...

twisted versions

Nephis, who

too ridiculous of

of time... distortion could have happened inside the Tomb of Ariel. He could even admit that it was quite possible for them to fail in conquering the Nightmare