Shadow Slave

Drifting across the perfectly still surface of the water, the battered ketch slowly gained distance from the swirling wall of the dark mist. The raging winds died down, then disappeared altogether. A strange silence settled upon the world, as if they were caught in a gap between two moments.

Only the subtle ripples that spread through the radiant mirror of the frozen river's surface by the bow of the ketch showed that this hidden sanctuary was not entirely, and eternally, unchanging.

Sunny fell back and leaned tiredly on the side of the wooden boat. Breathing heavily, he looked at Nephis, then at Ananke. The silence was too sweet to break it with the sound of human voices. He was too exhausted to speak, as well... for a while, all three of them remained motionless, trying to recover from the torturous fury of the howling storm.

"We'll have to dive back into that hell, eventually."

The thought alone made Sunny shudder. Refusing to entertain it, he closed his eyes and slumped down, intending to rest for a few minutes.

Instead, he fell into the embrace of sleep almost immediately.

Perhaps because of Nightmare, or perhaps because even the Defiled Titans could not reach into the depths of the time storm, nothing visited him in his dreams.

...Sunny woke up with a start when a shadow fell on him. For a split second, he was afraid that they were back in the ruthless grinder of the time cataclysm, but it was only Nephis - she had walked to the bow of the ketch to look ahead, her face pale and her eyes sunken.

He stared at her for a few moments, then sighed and pulled himself upright.

"How long was I asleep?"

She lingered for a while.

"There's no way to tell."

Sunny frowned, confused by the odd answer. However, then he felt it himself... in the place where the deep discomfort of sensing the broken nature of time had been, there was now a strange emptiness. But it was not the familiar comfort of sensing the natural flow of time, either.

it was the

It was a truly bizarre sensation, one that could not be properly described with words. His heart was beating, and his chest rose and fell as he breathed - however,

been a moment, a minute, or a thousand years. It could have been

Sunny grimaced.

'Damnation.'

What was happening now?

alive, strangely enough... at least it seemed that way. His body ached all over, still reeling from the terrible strain of surviving the storm. Such pain was something that only

ask the priestess a few questions,

His expression darkened.

of age, at most. Her ebony hair was short and unruly, and her lovely face had become round and immature, with clear blue eyes and cheeks that had yet to lose all of their

sitting on the helmsman's bench, her feet dangling above the deck. Noticing his gaze, she picked up the folds of her comically oversized mantle and jumped

"Greetings, my Lord."

had

nothing short of adorable... however, he did not feel uplifted by the cute sight.

Ananke even be able to return

Nephis, who stood with her back to

'We'll think of something.'

the child priestess

is going on,

sweetly, her azure eyes sparkling, two dimples appearing on her plump

my Lord. Time is frozen still here. It is not dangerous... I think. It's

her words by a subtle movement in the water. The

Great River was perfectly clear and flat, turning into a giant mirror. The azure sky reflected in it seamlessly, suffused with bright sunlight.

of it was like a