The ride back was simultaneously less intense, as they no longer needed to hurry, and also felt much shorter, because now they could finally talk comfortably, fool around, banter, and have fun on their way, with Nightmare being half-amused and half-irritated the whole time at their antics.
When they reached the outer settlement, it was still early morning and there were a few hours left before noon — their expedition turned out to be apparently short — but life there was already in full swing as the unfortunate Sleepers were moving around minding their business.
The arrival of the group however caused a fair bit of murmurs and interested stares.
The whole way through the settlement, Effie held her chin high, hands wrapped tightly around Sunny — to his irritation, as they were moving comparatively slowly — eyes bright and a large grin all over her face.
It didn’t take long before someone he didn’t recognize shot a question from within the crowd.
“Hey Effie, what’s with all that noise? I could have sworn, with the way you’re parading now, that you’re fucking royalty returning from a war campaign!”
People around the Sleeper laughed after that, as they stopped Nightmare and dismounted him one after another.
Effie’s booming laughter, however, overshadowed them completely, her grin even wider, threatening to split her happy face.
“We might as well be! We killed the fucking Lord, after all!”
Silence took over the crowd as a weave of murmurs swept through it, most of them shooting dubious looks towards them.
“That’s just bullshit, if the golden bastard died, every speck of dust would have already known that. Besides, no way his lieutenant would let y…”
“Not that lord, you morons — we’re even coming from the direction opposite the Castle, that should be a dead giveaway already,” she chuckled as she shook off the imaginary dust from her shoulders.
“We slew that gross mountain of bones. The Lord of the Dead’s gone. Dead. Kicked the bucket. Call it whatever you want, but we did it,” and to prove her point she even summoned a Starlight Shard as the cloak wrapped itself proudly over her shoulders.
“I even got a cool new Memory for it,” she looked around them in silence and then raised her hand with a chuckle.
“What are you looking at? Praise us, fools!”
And praise they did.
After those words left her lips, the crowd exploded into loud cheers and laughter.
Kai and Sunny felt a bit awkward in the spotlight, though for different reasons obviously — Sunny not being a huge fan of attention altogether and Kai feeling like he was stealing Effie’s moment for some reason.
But no matter how much he disliked being in the spotlight, he believed that his newfound popularity was a good thing, considering… well, considering newfound developments in this life.
And if his guess was right, he would have to change his plans drastically very soon.
And that’s why he was forced to endure it for a while, as Effie described the fight to the attentive crowd and how it even came to be — omitting only his most guarded secrets — accompanied by the Sleepers’ cheerful laughter and jokes.
And so, a few hours flew by like that and it was time for them to split temporarily, agreeing to meet in the evening at his place again to celebrate the successful hunt.
‘Damn, if we continue like that, we’ll really turn into true alcoholics soon enough.’, he mused as shivers ran down his spine at the mere idea.
He had seen what alcohol does to a person’s life in the outskirts too many times to count after all… ‘Nah, we’re gonna be careful today, so that’s alright…’
And that was how Sunny ended up in front of the Ruined Cathedral once again with a [Forgotten Repentance] in his hand, gripping the handle tightly, his expression shifting as he looked at the golden key in his left palm.
He had managed to get it after all, as his Crazy shadow managed to snatch it from the Lord’s possession right after he exploded it for the first time.
But he was still hesitating.
He gripped the key tightly one last time, tied it to the rope and hid it under his armor.
There was no point in thinking about stupid things.
‘Better get this over with…’
He took a step forward inside the Cathedral as two of his Shadows materialized to both of his sides, and he put the sword over his shoulder with a chuckle.
“Come out, you moody zealot.” he shouted, concentrating on the smallest shifts of air as he said those words.
“We promise, we won’t jump you!”
A mere fraction of a second later, he was the one being jumped.
The fiend materialized in front of him, swinging his sword with raging crimson fire burning behind his visor, where his eyes were supposed to be.
Sunny dove to the ground and jumped back slightly, his own blade making a metallic ringing sound as it collided with the fiend’s greatsword.
He twisted his weapon in his hands, making the flat side of it slide towards the tip of the Devil’s sword.
Just as it was about to slide away, he wrapped two of his shadows around his body, making it almost three and a half times stronger, and straightened his legs while also pushing the blade to the side.
The Devil caught himself as he jumped back and parried a series of strikes from Saint.
Nightmare, meanwhile, activated his [Mantle of Fear] ability as he jumped from the shadows behind the fiend and kicked him with his hooves in the back.
And then…
a blinding light exploded from all around them, making the darkness in the Cathedral either go away completely or weaken significantly, robbing the Knight of his elemental advantage and most powerful abilities with it.
The creature growled hatefully as he connected his gaze with Sunny, to which he simply grinned.
Yeah, he used the slightly modified strategy that he had invented for their fight with the Lord — sending his Crazy shadow to plant a few Luminous Memories around the Cathedral as they drew the Knight’s attention to themselves.
The fiend’s stupor didn’t last long, however, as he hit Nightmare in the neck with his giant leg and shot towards him and Saint.
The ring of steel, growls of rage, and Sunny’s mad laughter could be heard for the next few minutes as they danced around each other.
Even though it was the Devil’s turn to be at a complete disadvantage, he wouldn’t call it an easy fight.
The bastard was smart, ruthless, and very skilled.
And while Sunny took notes on him in this life and knew his behavior and techniques very well from all the years he had possessed his Shade in his Domain, the fiend took notes on him too, it seemed.
The mad Knight knew when to evade his strikes and when to retreat, could predict the perfect moment for attacks and unleash his elemental darkness as Sunny was jumping through Shadows.
So it wasn’t easy to finish off the bastard.
But he wouldn’t call it very hard either.
He was holding back a lot in this fight, after all.
It was akin to a test for Sunny of how much stronger, how much more skilled and ruthless he had become in all the years after their clash in his previous life.
And also of how much he had managed to achieve in so little time this time around.
That his careful planning, crazy and sharp mind, and hard work had finally borne fruit.
And so Sunny stepped into the shadows, seemingly planning to jump from the back of the Knight.
The monster cackled behind his visor and expanded his darkness once again, so Sunny was forced to jump out earlier than planned.
Or so it seemed…
Instead of only the murderous gremlin being pushed out of the Shadows, one more figure materialized to his side.
It was the giant jet-black Serpent that shot towards him, trying to wrap himself around the Devil’s body.
The giant blade of the Knight whistled through the air as it flew in an attempt to slay the gremlin’s minion.
He was too late, though, as the spiteful goblin and his Marble Saint were already upon him once again.
Sunny took a short breath as he directed almost all of his remaining essence into the [Forgotten Repentance], filling it to the brim as the blade turned into a solid inferno.
One of his shadows was wrapped around his body and the other two — over the sword itself.
The edge of the weapon connected with one of the Devil’s arms.
Sunny growled under the strain but still pushed with all of his Awakened might, and then finally he did it.
The metallic arm of the Knight’s armor fell to the ground, cleanly severed from its body.
The Devil roared in fury and moved, trying to set himself free and then dodge the incoming strike, but Saint was faster — she faced much less resistance than Sunny had, as her sword almost effortlessly severed his second limb that was holding his weapon.
But she wasn’t done yet.
She took a fast step backwards and a bit to her left, standing right in front of him and — as Serpent let go of his hold on the Knight’s body — pierced him through the gut.
As the Devil’s sword fell to the ground, she caught it by the edge, meanwhile sharing with the fiend a short look of revulsion, and then crushed it, to his horror.
A few seconds of complete stillness followed then, and just like the last time, the wraith within the armor in its rage tried to rush forward, completely ignoring its missing limbs and a sword stuck in its gut.
However Saint didn’t let him as the very next second — just like the last time — she punched through the Devil’s chest and tore his source of darkness from it.
The Forsaken Knight’s figure trembled like a doll with its strings cut and then dropped to the ground.
Dead.
As usual, Spell whispered into his ear just a moment later.
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
And then — unlike the last time — it whispered once again
[…You have received a Memory.]
He blinked, surprised by the revelation.
That was completely unexpected.
The first two months on the Shore he had barely gotten any Memories at all, killing harrowing creatures — sometimes even more than the Knight himself — on a day-to-day basis.
And those few Memories that he had received were mostly just unusable junk.
These days though, Spell had become a bit too generous, he mused.
And that development made him worried, somehow.
‘That can’t be a good omen, that’s for sure…’
Sunny massaged his nosebridge in irritation and then shook his head, clearing his mind.
There was no time to worry about useless things that he had neither influence over nor the slightest idea about, after all.
Sunny looked at Saint, who had dismissed her helmet at some point, and was staring at the Forsaken Knight’s core of darkness intently.
Feeling his gaze, she slowly turned her head and faced him, holding his gaze for a few seconds, apparently asking for permission.
Sunny chuckled as he made a dismissive motion with his hand.
“No need to ask, you deserve it. Go and get ’em, Saint. And… see you soon, I guess.”
Right then he could have sworn that she smiled at him again as she nodded briefly and swallowed the core like the last time, falling back into shadows the next instant.
Sunny exhaled wearily.
He’d be lying if he said that he wouldn’t miss her.
After all, they had just reunited barely a few days ago.
But it was different — she was still with him.
Just sleeping.
Well, kind of…
He threw a short glance at his left hand holding the golden key that he had subconsciously pulled out just a few seconds ago.
He cracked his neck and moved his feet towards his next destination.
There was still one thing left to do here after all…
***
As he was descending the winding stairs behind the hidden passage, the familiar premonition started to rise in his chest.
He gripped the key in his hand tighter, as uncertainty wrapped around his heart.
The lack of meddling from the Demon of Fate in this life was one thing that had concerned him deeply this whole time.
He was the ‘beloved’ epigone the Weaver had wasted a lot of time cultivating in the other timeline, and he would definitely want his plans to bear fruit this time around, for sure.
And yet…
Was there a lack of meddling, really?
Weaver was a genius manipulator, after all, and Sunny might have danced to his tune all this time and was none the wiser.
But still… he believed otherwise.
And he had a very good reason for that, though he still hadn’t figured it out completely yet…
He swallowed and took a deep breath as he stepped off the last stair and onto the chamber’s floor.
Whatever he was about to find out wouldn’t leave him happy at all — that was the only thing he was completely sure of.
And finally — as he turned his gaze towards the massive black door — the first difference in scenery became clear to him.
It was the torches.
Or to be more precise — the lack of that ghostly unsettling light they had produced in his previous life.
Sunny stopped in his tracks, suddenly staring intently at his three shadows and then back at the door.
His companions looked at him warily, shifting their nonexistent gazes towards it in apparent concern too.
‘Is it a trap?
Are the torches going to ignite the moment I come into their vicinity?’ But what was the point then?
This place was built as a prison after all, and the whole point of it was to contain the unfortunate souls within its walls and not otherwise.
Unless one of the schemes of the Deamon of Fate changed that setting.
But why?
In revenge for him destroying all of his intricately created plans in another timeline?
Was Weaver really that petty?
He was pretty sure that it wasn’t the case, but the worm of paranoia inside his chest still made him leave his shadows behind as he approached the door.
Other than the lack of light from the torches, everything about it was exactly the same.
And yet the premonition grew stronger and stronger each second, his heart hammering against his ribcage.
But still he composed himself and managed to put the key in the lock and turn it.
The mechanism clicked, and then the door opened silently and slowly.
He swallowed as finally he saw the interior of the room.
His heart stopped its mad chase for a second.
Everything went completely still.
What he saw relieved him and, at the same time, confirmed his worst fears too.
There was no broken runic circle on the floor; no corpse chained to it; and certainly no Weaver’s Mask within.
And no hidden message was left behind for him too — he was absolutely sure.
The room was completely and utterly empty.
He let out a shaky breath as he leaned his shoulder over the wall.
That was it.
It confirmed everything.
All of the inconsistencies, his theories and paranoia too.
His thoughts wandered for a bit before he composed himself.
That made things ultimately harder but also infinitely simpler too.
For the sole reason that he would no longer need to chase that Forbidden Lineage.
Even with his terrible luck, Sunny would have put the [Mantle of the Underworld] and even the [Shapeless Thief] too on one simple bet at that moment: if someone were to go and check the Ebony Tower in the Sky Below of the Chained Isles and the Estuary of Ariel’s Tomb, they would find neither the severed hand nor the wondrous tree.
Or any other pieces of Weaver’s Lineage, wherever in the Dream Realm they had been hidden in his previous life.
They simply wouldn’t be there now — because of one simple truth.
There was no such thing as Weaver’s Forbidden Lineage at all.
He had started to suspect that it might be the case because of a random piece of information he acquired while he researched the events of this world in the Academy.
And that little thing was something that put his mind on hold for a while at the time…
Somehow Broken Sword — the father of Nephis and most renowned Awakened of those times — had not only survived the Fourth Nightmare in this timeline, but had also lived more than half a year past the presumed date of his demise that had happened last time.
None of the four Sovereigns had announced their status for some reason too. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Well, he already knew why the three Ghouls didn’t, but Broken Sword was a surprise.
Somehow the big three had managed to persuade the madman to keep silent for some reason, and then had stabbed him in the back.
For a very good reason this time, though…
And what a madman he was, indeed.
Even Sunny himself had to admit that the bastard went completely nuts after he reached Supremacy.
For some reason, after he had returned from the Nightmare, all notion of subtlety and care for other things and lives lost any meaning to him.
And only one purpose remained.
So he had started running around the world, waging war on monsters, acquiring territories, making new campaigns in which more human lives had been lost than saved.
And then, a few weeks before his death, he had announced the North America Reclamation Campaign.
And with it his subsequent challenge of the Fifth Nightmare.
The last part was left unsaid, of course, but still understood by all.
But that wasn’t the worst thing.
The idea he had offered was a complete mess: no real plan behind it — just a simple charge and hope for the best strategy.
It was mad and delusional, but he hadn’t cared.
And worst of all, it also required an unimaginable force of mundane soldiers and Awakened alike the world had never seen before.
All of those lives — lives of people who believed in him — he had simply prepared to send for slaughter, to pave the way for him with their bodies to his dream.
After all, the only thing that had mattered to him was his delusional quest to free Smile of Heaven from the presumed captivity of the Nightmare.
No matter how many human lives he would have to sacrifice…
‘I used to respect that guy, damn I even idolized him when I was a kid…’ Sunny clenched his jaw and shook his head.
It was sickening, disgusting, and inhumane.
But also… It felt familiar too…
He sighed as he massaged his brows.
Was Broken Sword’s Nightmare this time so fucked up that it cracked him even more, or was he already on his downward spiral the other time too, but had no opportunity to show it?
Sunny shook his head.
That didn’t matter.
The only thing that did was that he was dead.
This time though, Sunny believed that neither the Government nor the House of Night were left behind in this treachery scheme.
He swallowed the bile rising in his throat, as an uncomfortable feeling rooted itself in his chest.
Now he could somewhat understand the Ghouls better… He could even sympathize with them a bit — and what an unnerving thought that was!
If they didn’t murder the lunatic, humanity would have been dead by now, that’s for sure — there simply wouldn’t be enough Awakened left to hold the most powerful horrors, contain all Nightmare Gates on Earth, and keep hold of the Citadels in the Dream World.
But he could sympathize with Broken Sword too.
After all, Sunny himself went through something very similar… And that thought made him resent the man even more.
‘He should have been better than me!’, Sunny thought with disgust.
Both with what his childhood hero had turned into… and himself most of all.
He pinched his nosebridge and clenched his teeth as he slowly slid along the wall and sat down on the cold floor of the chamber.
There was no use in thinking about that.
But his historic dive had its reasons too.
The main and obvious one was understanding the cause of the man in question’s survival and why he wasn’t betrayed the next moment his cohort returned from the Nightmare.
Sunny’s first thought was that his regression — or what the thing appeared to be at that time — caused huge ripples in the timeline and must have changed the events of the more distant past too.
But that theory quickly fell apart as he dived into the history more, and it appeared to be exactly the same — or as far as he was concerned it was — except the circumstances of Nephis’s father’s death.
And that was how he came up with his second idea — which had been confirmed now by Sunny’s recent discoveries.
That being the fact that the Shadow Weave had never come into Broken Sword’s possession.
Because there was no Weave Lineage at all.
Initially, Sunny had believed that the man had simply decided not to consume it for some reason.
But the small worm of doubt still took root in his chest… So in his infinite paranoia — or wisdom, as it turned out to be — he and Jet had made a few contingencies just in case.
And that proved to be the right choice in the end, he chuckled.
And now he sat on the cold floor of the underground chamber, breathing heavily and running his exhausted mind into overdrive.
This discovery made everything much harder for him, he thought again.
To create any useful Memory by himself in a reasonable amount of time, he would have to strengthen his Will considerably first, as his essence strings right now were of subpar quality most of the time.
Well, unless he had to waste a day’s worth of time to create a single one…
And with his current speed of progress, it could still take years before he reached Transcendency.
The time he didn’t believe he had.
He exhaled in exhaustion.
It seemed that he would have to cut his already non-existent sleep time to proceed with his new projects and take even more risks.
‘Damnation’.
Sunny stood up with reluctance and let out an uneven breath — he was dead tired.
But his agenda for today had suddenly expanded, so he had a lot of things to do.
He let his thoughts wander for a moment and then chuckled.
Maybe it was not such a bad idea to get drunk this evening.
‘Yeah, I’ll be careful this time for sure.’
Hello lads and ladies!
Writing again in the middle of the night for you and to you.
Still managed to post it in the promised time.
And better yet, I had almost finished the next POV-chapter and will post it tomorrow.
This one became a bit shorter then usual, as I initially wanted to included the POV in the end, but the end size exceeded 8k words mark and so I decided to split it.
The narrative and tone were different in those two anyway, so that’s for the best I believe.
Thus you can wait for the next chap very soon, as all I have to do is finish a few last sentences and edit it.
Most people asked for what happened to Weaver’s Lineage in the comments and here is the answer.
It doesn’t exist, simple as that.
It’s not speculation of the unreliable narrator.
It’s a fact.
The reason for that though…
we won’t cover that for a while I guess, just to keep you a bit interested.
Anyways, would like to hear your thoughts about it.
I predict that not everyone would like the development with Weave (It was never meant to exist in this fic, by the way), but that’s okay.
But I still hope, you liked it.
See you guys very soon and goodbye!