Chapitre 11: Return to Chained Isles
An Awakened woman entered the Nocts Sanctuary. A few days ago she appeared before the local Saint with the purpose of registering her new activity.
What job? It was pretty simple. She was supposed to open a little shop in the Sanctuary of Noctis, do some advertising, and offer things like drinks, snacks, tea, spices, etc. Then ask about who's from the NQSC, and if there are some things they want to bring there from the Dream Realm.
She summoned a Memory that appeared in the form of a chest made of alloy, and was handed to her by her boss. She read the runes:
[Poor Coffer]
'I guess the craftsman wasn't especially prideful about his creation.'
But who cares. It's not like everybody is gonna see that 'poverty'. From the outside it would seem to be like a great artifact. If this is poor, what is she? Even more poor? The description was even stranger.
["What do you mean, you don't want to use it?" said Shadow showing his friend a magic chest that he made for her. For some reason she wasn't satisfied. "It's not fancy, but you could show it in the Bastion." He was wondering why she doesn't like the little present. "So what it's a random military storage box that I found in Antarctica? I can tell you. No one has such a chest."]
'Was that meant for me to read?'
She didn't notice that while she was reading a shadow left the alloy chest, and moved towards the edge of the island. It moved swiftly, and silently.
No one saw it. Soon it appeared on the edge of Sanctuary Island, hid himself, and waited for a few hours lying still. Then it turned into a human, that almost instantly dived into shadows again. Then the shadow, in which he was 'diving' turned into the shape of a crow.
He still didn't know how he was supposed to travel between the Dream Realm, and Waking World. Because of the Nightmare he conquered, his anchor could be located in the desert, which was a scaringly bad possibility. Sunny didn't want to risk returning there at all.
So what were his options? He could use the Gateways in Antarctica to appear in Bastion, and then try to spend weeks or even months traveling through the Dream Realm. He didn't like that option. It would be very time consuming. He could ask Tyris to get him to the Chain Isles. But then would see he's a Saint, which would put him in an awkward position. When he was about to give up, and start experimenting on his own, Aiko started talking about making that commercial network.
Sunny didn't have the attitude to go big so he left all managing to Aiko. However, when he came to terms with the idea he's going to make a bigger business, it occurred to him that the Aiko's network could be actually very useful for him due to specifics of his spellweave.
All chests he crafted shared one special characteristic he borrowed from Effie's locket. Every single one was able to carry living beings. Normally such a thing would be useless. Without a source of breathable air living beings were doomed to suffocate inside.
Unless they didn't need air to live. Shadow helpers met the criteria just right.
The problematic part was the timing. He couldn't transform his shadow helper into an avatar till the chest was summoned, and opened. The chest was filled with commodities, and the attempt to displace them could end up only as a mess. While the shadow was in the chest, he couldn't use its vision, as it was 'out of range'. In this regard he could only trust his shadow helper that it would leave the chest on its own as soon as possible.
Yet... Sunny could trust his shadow helpers this much so he was left with only one thing: That still doesn't address the question about timing. When should he use his transformation?
The answer was pretty simple. In a few hours from the moment the employee fell asleep in the waking world. By that time Sunny could guarantee that his avatar wouldn't wake up in the chest.
And here he was, back at the Chained Isles. Sunny used simultaneously his avatar transformation, Shadow Step, and Shadow Manifestation to turn his avatar into a crow.
Despite what one could expect from a bunch of islands flying in vast skies, there weren't actually that many Nightmare Creatures that could fly. Most of them experienced death by Crushing.
Even Saints could be killed by it so Sunny had to choose his route carefully. From time to time he clashed with some Nightmare Creatures, or paid a visit to the Nightmare Creatures dwelling beneath the islands. There he could find the most potent shadows, which were very good suited to fill the Shadow Lantern, and form Shadow Shell.
Also from time to time there were even some Corrupted Creatures. Many required a unique approach. Luckily for Sunny they often lose in terms of raw power, which let him kill them simply with a shadow construct.
Currently Sunny uses a sword he crafted from a bone of the Winter Beast. It didn't have any transcendent enchantment yet. Despite his tries he was still far from devising even one. The best he could do was to make an ascended version of [Unbroken] for durability, and add something for sharpness.
It didn't mean he doesn't have any ideas how such a transcendent enchantment should work. Completing many orders lately provided him with many insights, things he ignored earlier. Some of the Memories were made of bones, and they were of exceptionally great importance, because their enchantments applied specifically to the bone materials. Learning from them could be a good source of inspiration.
Obviously having an idea, and making it reality are two different things. Sunny still lacked practically everything. His greatest limitation currently is the lack of essence. While his essence capacity is now much greater it couldn't let him weave many transcendent enchantments, unless he abandoned his avatars. It had to be noted that many of his feats from the time he was Ascended were possible only due to Memories like the Shroud of Graceless Dusk, and the Crown of Twilight. He didn't have them anymore.
Even the sword he made could be accused of being a bit subpar. Not that it mattered much. By the time he would be ready to weave the enchantments his new bone sword will be perfect. The current one was enough to cut through the Corrupted creatures, though it wasn't anything near the horrifying might of the Sin of Solace.
While traveling through the region for three weeks he killed around twenty Corrupted abominations. He could also feel he's accumulating Shadow Fragments again, which was a good sign, but it was also only a drop in the ocean.
'No point in worrying about this. It will be years before I'll get anywhere.''
Seven thousand of Shadow Fragments is an impossible number to obtain within a year, and Sunny didn't set his hopes high. Killing creatures of the same rank as his won't get him far. If there was any goal in this it's rather to get a hundred, a few hundred fragments.
"Your Shadow grows stronger."
It was the Extraordinary Rock talking in his voice.
There were times he was a bit too bored of flying with the Shadow Shell. Then he summoned a Soul Serpent that could assume the shape of a Cursed Herald. He could fly on its back like Master Roan on his griffon.
"I wonder what it was like for you, when you watched over my sister. Months spent on nothing, but staring at her. It isn't very nice of me. If she was actually pulled into that Nightmare you would at least have your portion of fun."
His Shadow didn't even rattle, though Sunny could tell it was listening. Its recognition was rigid, and flat. While intelligent it wasn't really expressive. Maybe there wasn't even a place there for something like boredom. After all, boredom is a human invention. Someone as uncivilized as his shadow couldn't really comprehend it.
There was a long time he spent wandering through the archipelago before he was about to reach his destination. The place he wanted to find was in the range of sight. The Tower of Longing the citadel he conquered with friends many more than year ago, and was claimed by Nephis as her future place of operations.
If before it was a village blended into the landscape now it was... just a little bigger village. There's nothing really to expect there. The citadel looked a bit abandoned even. It lacked people who could take care of its humble establishments. The skeleton of Sevirax was still wrapped around the tower.
He dismissed Soul Serpent, and used Shadow Lantern to summon a little bit of shadows. It was necessary since shadows normally are not cast without a surface, and the void lacked anything like that. The shadows were shaped into a pair of black wings protruding from his back, turning him into a perverse version of... he could think only of Nephis, perhaps Kai would qualify.
That way he could at least appear as a human. That's what he did think, but Fire Keepers had seemingly other plans for this. He was greeted with some arrows. They couldn't do anything to him, but were a little annoying.
"Please, you don't need to shoot me. Someone else could consider it rude."
Sunny exclaimed before e landed, and in a matter of seconds he was surrounded by a squad of Awakened, with swords, bows, and spears. All were determined, and ready to come at him at any moment. Sunny looked at them with a little smile, still having the wings on his back.
"That's commendable courage that you have, but it would be good for you if you learned to be more coward. You know. It's important to value your life. Otherwise you may lose it someday."
The awakened around didn't lower their guard.
"Who are you?"
One of them asked.
"The same question over, and over again... It's getting boring already. I'm no one. But... I'm also the owner of the Brilliant Emporium, Memory boutique. I want to offer you Memories."
Everybody was stunned, but no one even flinched. They were still ready to fight. Someone ran into direction of the Tower. Sunny looked at that show of raw rigour then summoned one bottle in one hand, then another in the other.
"Look. I have, for example, these bottles. You may wonder, what do they do, you may ask This little beauty will make water endlessly for you."
He turned one upside down, and kept till it formed a puddle on the ground. More items appeared in his hands. A little orb made of some kind of crystal, and a knife.
It stirred some nervousness, but Sunny explained playfully.
"This nice boy will help you breath underwater. That one is rather a tool. Good for carving wood, but I sometimes use it to cut meat. However it's not use if it's to fight. I have saddles for Echoes. This one is especially comfortable, but mind that you might need a custom-made. I don't know how to go around that. Yet"
Soon Sunny summoned his own Chest, and started showing all kinds of commodities, handling them to Awakened to show...
Meanwhile Nephis was practicing her swordsmanship in the tower before someone shouted.
"Lady Nephis, Cassie, we have an intruder."
Nephis immediately dropped her training, and ran to see, what's going on. She summoned her mirror sword. The circuits of the slaughter machine heated up. The everpresent murder math intensified. She was ready to face any Saint that would be thrown at her followers.
'If the intruder is already here, then my followers... How did he even escape the sight of Cassie?'
She was expecting the worst. Even if she'll make it, some of them could be already dead.
'Please, endure...'
Her silent rage was growing. She passed the exit like a bullet, performing a seamless economy of movements to not lose any fraction of a second. She reached the outside with a stunning speed, nearly breaking sound barriers.
The proud Saint Nephis out of nowhere stopped, and was staring at what's happening with lost face. If not for that she wasn't able to do that anymore she would fall to the ground.
She saw the Fire Keepers having a damn picnic.
Load failed, please RETRY
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone