Shadow Slave

Sunny took a moment to fathom the astonishing truth that Eurys had revealed to him so matter-of-factly.

It was a hell of a thing to process.

...No, really.

'I am inside Shadow God's corpse.'

The Shadow Realm… the entirety of it… was the sacred body of a god.

Which meant that all the other Divine Realms, like Godgrave and Stormsea, were as well.

…And the waking world, too.

Gods were vast, after all. Vast enough to encompass entire worlds within them, it seemed.

But gods were also dead.

'How morbid.'

What the hell did all of it mean?

'Well… it's not like I did not suspect something like that, already.'

Actually, Sunny and Nephis had discussed a similar theory in the past. It was during the conversation about the titanic skeleton in Godgrave, and whether it had truly belonged to a god.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Nephis was of the opinion that it was too puny to be a god… which was a funny thing to say about a corpse the size of a continent.

But now, it did not seem funny anymore.

Actually, Sunny was not even in disagreement with Nephis. If anything, he was tempted to agree. After all, he had been inside the Tomb of Ariel, which was built from the remains of an Unholy Titan. The Great River was like its Soul Sea… and if the soul of an Unholy Titan could encompass an entire realm, then what about an actual god?

Still, suspecting and knowing were two different things. Especially here, in the desolate darkness of the Shadow Realm.

Sunny struggled with the desire to gulp, his mouth terribly dry.

He lingered for a few long moments, then asked hoarsely:

"If this is Shadow God's corpse, then what killed him?"

That was the greatest secret of all. That was what Sunny truly wanted to know… what had killed the gods? What had killed the daemons? How had the Doom War ended, and how had the will of the Forgotten God escaped the Void, slowly turning all of existence into his nightmare?

Hearing his question, Eurys chuckled.

"What killed Death? My, oh my! I wish I knew. Sadly, by the time the gods perished, I was already nailed to that damned tree. The view from there was not great."

Sunny stared at him somberly.

Somehow, he doubted that the skeleton was being entirely honest.

The white skull betrayed no emotion, however.

Eventually, Eurys offered him a bone:

"I doubt it were the daemons, though. By the end of it all, they were losing the war pretty badly. Otherwise, I would not have been captured by the warriors of the Divine Host, would I?"

He laughed.

Sunny surmised two things from that statement.

First, that at least one of the Nine — Eurys — had participated in the Doom War under the banner of the Demon Army.

Second… that the daemons seemed to have lost the war, or at least had been close to losing it near the end.

That was the first true piece of information about the Doom War he had received.

Sunny smiled darkly.

"...Are you sure that you weren't the one who killed Shadow God? I've heard that you boasted once about slitting a god's throat."

Eurys exploded with laughter after hearing that.

"Oh… so you have met that abominable girl, it seems! Good, good. I'm glad that she has survived, nephilim or not."

He paused for a moment, and then chuckled.

"Yes, I did indeed tell her that I had slit a god's throat once. However, I never said that it had killed the god! What kind of god would die from such a trifle?"

Sunny winced from the amount of nonsense he had been subjected to in the last few minutes.

'What? What does he mean?'

"...I thought you said that the Shadow Realm was Shadow God's corpse? His body was quite huge, then. Pray tell, how would one slit the throat of an entire realm?"

The skeleton, who had remained motionless all that time, finally moved.

Eurys… shook his skull, the bones scraping unpleasantly against each other.

"No, but what kind of divine shadow are you? Don't you know anything, boy?"

Sunny scowled.

"How am I supposed to know anything if the god who was supposed to cast me is dead?!"

Eyrus stared at him silently for a while, then returned to his previous pose and grew still once again.

"A better question would be how can you even exist, but… fair is fair. To answer your questions — gods were indeed vast and unfathomable, but they took mortal vessels from time to time. Avatars, as some called them. Those were easier to reach."

Sunny blinked a couple of times.

Mortal avatars… that he could wrap his head around. After all, he had avatars of his own, even if they were not exactly the same.

What surprised him more was that Eurys seemed to have no idea about how Sunny had come to be a Shadow Slave.

Well… it made sense, in hindsight. The talkative skeleton seemed like someone who knew so much as to almost seem omniscient, but reasonably, that knowledge only encompassed the past. If he had really spent thousands of years nailed to a tree in the Nightmare Desert, he would not know anything about what had happened after the final days of the Doom War.

To him, the Nightmare Spell was merely a fringe cult that a small group of believers was spreading secretly in the Mortal Realms. He would not know what Sunny and Nephis really were, or how they had come to be that way.

Sunny tilted his head a little, suddenly coming up with another question.

It was hard to collect his thoughts because there were too many things he wanted to ask, but that one was, perhaps, the most vital.

"...You are the first being from the ancient times I've met who is not entirely insane and consumed by Corruption. How come?"

Eurys stared at him with the black gaping holes of his empty eye sockets.

"Haven't you met that abominable girl, as well?"

Sunny scoffed.

"That's different! She's from the waking world, just like I am."

The skeleton let out a chuckle.

"The waking world? What's that?"

Sunny suppressed a sigh.

'He's clueless.'

After lingering for a few moments, Sunny tried to explain:

"The waking world… is the last of the Divine Realms. There are people still living there, free of Corruption. The rest of them, as well as all the Mortal Realms, have already been swallowed up by the Dream Realm, and are only populated by Nightmare Creatures — that's what we call the Corrupted Ones. However, our world is being consumed by the Dream Realm too, piece by piece."

Eurys sighed.

"Oh… then you and your people must be fighting against the Corruption with all your might, united against a common foe. What brilliant camaraderie! No wonder a divine shadow and an abominable nephilim can exchange words so freely."

Sunny coughed in embarrassment.

"Actually… currently, my people are at war. With each other. Have I mentioned that the last Divine Realm is the Realm of War God?"

Eurys remained silent for a long while, and then suddenly exploded with laughter.

This time, he laughed longer than usual, and his laughter seemed different from before.

It was tinged with mysterious darkness.

After a while, the white skull turned a little to stare at Sunny.

"War God? My, oh my! Such irony."

He paused for a moment, and then added:

"You asked who the Nine were? Well… to tell you the truth, child of War…"

His tone turned a little cold.

"Regardless of who we were, we hated War God and her children the most."