Shadow Slave

Sunny remained motionless for a while, then shifted slightly, causing the chain of his cage to rattle. Attracted by the sound, Elyas woke up from his restless sleep and stared into the darkness, a tired expression on his young face.

"...Demon? What happened?"

In the next moment, he heard the sound of a heavy body slamming against the iron bars, and then another crash. His partner's cage swung widely, and at the highest point of its swing, a long arm suddenly shot from between the bars, claws scraping against metal as Sunny took hold of the youth's own gibbet.

Elyas flinched.

"Wha... what are you doing?"

Sunny growled, trying to express his intention as best as he could. The young Awakened didn't know how to read the runic language he knew how to write, so this was the only way of communication between them. Luckily, an honest effort to answer truthfully was enough for the Flaw. It didn't punish Sunny for not being able to deliver the truth, as long as he really tried to.

Their cages hung diagonally, connected by his hand. Sunny groaned, straining his muscles to pull them even closer together. Then, staring at the young man's pale face, Sunny took hold of the bars with two more hands, and stretched the fourth one to grab the Awakened by the throat.

Elyas's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't even try to struggle. The youth simply looked at him, no fear written on his gaunt and emaciated, but still childishly soft face. Instead, there was only confusion... and trust.

Sunny sighed.

'What a fool. If I wanted to, I could have snapped his neck right here and now…'

Of course, he had no such intentions. Instead, Sunny brought the youth closer and stared intently at the steel collar wrapped around his neck, studying it. He couldn't really see his own, so this was the next best thing.

Elyas remained motionless for a while, then said:

"I don't know what you are trying to do, Demon, but you better stop it before the priest comes to check on the noise."

Sunny scowled, then let go, causing their cages to swing away from each other. Elyas was right… there were mere seconds left before the Ascended showed up, judging by how long it had taken the solemn giant to appear before. He was always somewhere near, ready to intervene in case the slaves misbehaved. Sunny had timed their jailer's reaction time many, so he knew that much.

It didn't matter, anyway. He had already seen all that he needed to see. The pattern of runes carved inside the collar, and the stream of soul essence running through it… this was what he needed to disrupt.

Sunny was going to have to work fast.

***

Several days later, looking more like a corpse than a living being, he was laying at the bottom of the cage, looking at his hands. Between them, a complicated cradle of black strings was weaved together, forming a strange and hypnotic pattern. Sunny had advanced a lot in his ability to thread shadow strings and loop them between his fingers… sadly, it was not without cost.

The strings were ephemeral and unseen to anyone except him, which also meant that they could not interact with the material world. However, they could interact with his flesh, which was why two of his fingers were missing, each sliced away so cleanly that it seemed as though they had never existed.

Even his phalanxes, reinforced by the evolved Bone Weave, had not offered the essence strings any resistance. All that remained were two bloody stumps.

The rest of his fingers were cut and mangled, but still in place. Considering that there were eighteen of them left, he still had more than a human would. Not that it diminished the pain he was constantly experiencing.

It would have certainly been helpful to have a tool to work the black strings, instead of doing it with his bare hands… something like a needle, perhaps. Coincidentally, he had one of those in his possession, a needle used by Weaver themself, no less. But it was locked away in his Soul Sea, safely kept and utterly inaccessible inside the Covetous Coffer.

So, he just had to endure and be very, very careful, lest the number of his fingers diminished even further.

…There was another problem, though.

Sunny had inherited an intuitive understanding of the guiding principles of spellweave, but it was not like he really knew what to do. All he had was his memory of the spellweave patterns he had seen before, and a vague feeling of the purpose behind them.

This was not enough to master sorcery… but it was at least a start.

Each Memory he had studied before had unique enchantments, so he couldn't draw parallels between them and extrapolate how their weaves produced the desired effects. There were magical qualities that all Memories shared, however.

The ability to be summoned and dismissed, the ability to repair themselves unless completely destroyed, and the connection to the owner's soul.

Knowing these three ubiquitous traits, Sunny could, in theory, determine which parts of the weaves were the exact same across all Memories, and thus were responsible for these effects. Then, he could try to recreate them.

Each spellweave was incredibly complex, so recalling even a single pattern perfectly was a challenge, despite him having a very good memory. Sunny, however, had to recall not only many, but also do so with a sufficient degree of precision to be able to compare and find similarities between them.

And then, he had to somehow rebuild the repeating parts of those weaves with nothing but his bare hands and shallow reserves of shadow essence. The task seemed nearly impossible…

But, fueled by obsession, resolve, and desperation, he had succeeded.

…And also failed.

After thousands of attempts, Sunny was finally able to perfectly recreate one of the three patterns he had managed to isolate. But as soon as the pattern was complete, it instantly fell apart. No matter how many times he repeated the process, the result was the same.

For some reason, the weave didn't hold. It wasn't able to sustain itself.

Something was missing.

Today, Sunny was going to perform another experiment… perhaps the last one. He was tired, drained, and terribly hurt. Whatever hope he had managed to find before, in this bloodsoaked hell, was on the verge of running out. He was… he was almost ready to give up.

But not just yet.

There was one other thing that all Memories contained… not a part of the pattern of ethereal strings, but something different. A bright ember that served as the anchor and nexus for the strings, a point around which the whole pattern was structured. Memories of the first Tier had one, and those of the higher Tiers had several.

After considering that fact, Sunny had brought something back from the arena today… a single soul shard that he he had not given to Elyas, instead keeping it for himself. The shard had belonged to a fearsome Awakened demon he killed earlier today, in one of the killing boxes of the Red Colosseum.

Now, looking at the cat's cradle of ethereal black strings drawn between his fingers, he hesitated for a long time, and then carefully placed the gleaming crystal in its center.

Then, holding his breath, Sunny slowly started connecting each of the strings to the shard, moving his fingers with extreme speed and nimbleness. Slowly, a black pattern started shaping around the bright ember, strangely not permeating a different object, but instead looping back on itself.

And after something that felt like an eternity, with drops of blood rolling down his hands… Sunny finally let go of the strings and stared at the soul shard laying on his palm.

A beautiful pattern of tenebrous strings hovered in the air around it, stable, without a single flaw or weakness to cause it to fall apart.

He sighed, and then weaved the last string into the pattern, connecting its other end to the shadow core in his chest.

Finally, Sunny closed his eyes and gave the mental command.

In front of him, the soul shard disintegrated into a rain of white sparks, and then appeared once again, creating itself out of nothingness.

Sunny let out a long, heavy breath.

...This was the first sorcery he had woven.