The outer reaches of the Sanctuary of Noctis did not welcome life. They merely tolerated it until they could figure out a way to extinguish it.
Sunny moved along the treacherous curve of the chain with ease. The Puppeteer's Shroud clung to him, and the Dark Wing memory shimmered faintly behind his back, ready to catch the violent updrafts. His shadows slithered along the rusted iron like living tattoos, scouting ahead, and ready to swallow him into the immaterial world at a moment's notice.
Cielle walked beside him. Or, more accurately, she glided.
She didn't use a memory or shadows. Her massive, pristine white wings simply caught the ferocious winds effortlessly. She hopped from link to link with terrifying balance, pacing a very narrow branch. She looked completely at home in the death zone, her sharp green eyes scanning the jagged horizon for prey, entirely unbothered by the sheer drop inches from her feet.
'Well she can fly so its not really a drop for her'
They had been hunting for three hours. The excursion had been efficient, really efficient. They had already taken down three Awakened demons and a particularly nasty fallen monster that had tried to ambush them from a rusted crevice.
Sunny checked his runes. His fragment counter sat comfortably at 473. He smirked.
"You are very good at this," Cielle said suddenly. She landed lightly beside him, her wings folding with a crisp snap that cut through the wind.
Sunny glanced at her, dismissing his Midnight Shard. "Hunting? It comes with the territory. If you aren't good at it, you end up as fertilizer."
"No," she said, tilting her head. "Finding the weak spots. You watch how they breathe. You adjust to their attacks. Your body is very versatile"
Sunny shrugged, though a small, prideful warmth bloomed in his chest. "What can i do, its my aspect legacy"
Cielle nodded thoughtfully "I usually just break their necks," she stated. "It is faster. And I do not have to aim as much."
Sunny snorted, shaking his head. " Brutal. I approve, though my physical strength isn't quite at the 'casually snap an fallen monster's spine' level yet."
They continued forward, reaching a fractured section of the chain where a massive link had snapped centuries ago. The jagged ends curled inward like the broken jaws of a leviathan.
Sunny paused, his instincts flaring. He raised a hand.
His shadows immediately detached from his feet, slithering rapidly into the gloom of the broken link to scout.
"Something ahead," Sunny murmured, his voice dropping low. "Something big."
Cielle stepped up beside him, her wings flaring slightly in anticipation. The pristine white feathers shimmered in the gloom. "I smell rot," she said, her nose twitching. "blood. And acid."
They crept forward, slipping over the rusted lip of the broken link. The air grew precipitously thick, heavy with the suffocating stench that tasted like battery acid on the tongue.
When Sunny's shadows returned the visual feed to his mind, his eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
It was the corpse of a Dead Chain Worm.
It was a monstrosity of staggering proportions, even in death. A serpentine nightmare easily 10 hundred meters long, its heavily armored hide was cracked and split open, pale, acidic innards spilling across the rusted iron of the chain. Needle-like teeth, each the size of a daggers, lined a gaping, circular maw.
The air around the carcass physically hummed. It was thick with essence. Sunny let out a low, slow whistle. "That's a Corrupted one. And it's recent."
Cielle tilted her head, studying the grotesque mountain of flesh with mild curiosity. "It is dead."
"No kidding," Sunny muttered, his eyes scanning the surrounding darkness for whatever had killed it. "Who, or what, could take something like that down solo? And leave the corpse?"
Cielle shrugged. Without a single ounce of hesitation, she walked right up to the colossal corpse.
Sunny tensed, stepping forward. "Cielle, wait! You can't just—"
She completely ignored him. She peered into the worm's gaping, acid-burned throat. Then, she casually rolled up her sleeve, darted her arm inside, and began rummaging around in the beast's insides.
Sunny stood there, paralyzed by a mixture of profound awe, disgust, and horror. The acid hissed against her skin, but her arm was unaffected, only sizzling a little before the wound would heal up.
A few seconds later, she pulled her arm out with a wet squelch.
She held something up between her gore-covered fingers.
A coin.
It was small, perfectly round, and made of some unknown, lustrous metal that shined golden. It caught the faint ambient light, gleaming with a deep, inner luminescence.
"Shiny coin," Cielle announced, inspecting it. She flipped it into the air once, caught it, and carelessly tossed it into her satchel. "I have many of these."
Sunny's brain ground to a complete halt. He stared at her. "I'm sorry, you have many of these?"
"Yes," she said smoothly, wiping monster guts on her trousers. "I found a pile of them a few months ago. They are perfectly weighted. They are very good for skipping across the water. Or throwing at annoying birds."
Sunny pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a massive headache forming right behind his eyes. "Cielle. Those are not skipping stones. Those are ancient Waning W—Dream Realm artifacts. Probably currency from the era where people lived here!"
She blinked her large green eyes at him. "They are shiny."
Sunny let out a long, agonizing, world-weary sigh. "Of course they are. Void, give me strength."
He stepped closer to the corpse, carefully keeping his distance from the most acidic pools, and sent his shadows probing deep into the innards. "If nobody harvested it... there might be soul shards still inside. Transcendent ones. It's worth checking."
Cielle nodded, instantly rolling up her other sleeve. "I will dig."
"No—" Sunny started, but it was entirely too late. She was already wrist-deep in Transcendent worm guts again.
They spent the next hour engaged in the most grueling, disgusting harvest of Sunny's life. But the payout was astronomical. The worm yielded two Transcendent soul shards. Sunny was just waiting for the sales, this would be enough to buy a house, two houses even.
He was just wiping the worst of the gore off his hands, mentally calculating how many memories he could afford, when the chain beneath their feet vibrated.
It wasn't a normal tremor. It was a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through the soles of his boots and rattled his teeth. The atmosphere turned into a lead weight. The ambient atmosphere in the air violently snapped.
Sunny's blood ran ice cold.
"Crushing," he whispered.
A low, bone-deep rumble echoed from the endless void below. The massive iron links began to groan, the metal shrieking as millions of tons of pressure began to contract with an apocalyptic force. The sky above them seemed to darken, the clouds violently twisting.
Cielle's wings snapped open, expanding to their absolute maximum wingspan. "I will fly us out."
"No time—" Sunny started, but she was already moving.
She lunged forward, scooping him up with one arm wrapped tightly around his waist. Her massive wings beat downward with explosive force, shattering the rusted iron beneath them as they launched off the chain just as the Crushing hit full force.
The world contracted.
Below them, chain links slammed together with a sound like continents colliding. Distant floating islands seemed to groan. Waterfalls reversed gravity, sucked violently upward into the void. The wind transformed into a solid wall.
Cielle beat her wings furiously, fighting gravity, fighting the wind, fighting the sheer wrath of the Waning World. She climbed above the chaos, her jaw set, muscles straining. Sunny clung to her, his shadows whipping wildly around them.
They were almost clear. They just had to crest the next island.
Then, the atmosphere imploded.
A massive, invisible pressure wave, the true force of the Crushing, slammed into them from above.
Cielle cried out.
It was a sharp, raw, agonizing sound that Sunny had never heard from her before. It cut straight through the roar of the wind and pierced Sunny's heart.
Her wings buckled under the impossible weight. The sound of feathers snapping was sickeningly loud. Essence ripped violently through her frame, short-circuiting her flight.
They plummeted.
They were dead. They were going to fall into the Sky Below and be torn apart by the Crushing.
No!
Sunny twisted mid-air. He didn't think; he just reacted. He summoned serpent and made it take the form of chains, lashing it out like tethers. He grabbed a protruding, jagged spur of iron on the underbelly of the chain just as they hurtled past it.
"Cielle!" he roared, grabbing her arm.
The momentum nearly dislocated his shoulder, but serpent held. They swung in a violent, terrifying arc, crashing hard into a narrow, dark crevice carved deep into the island's underbelly.
Darkness completely swallowed them.
Outside, the Crushing roared in its full, unholy majesty. The walls of the narrow cave immediately began grinding inward, threatening to flatten them into stains on the iron.
Sunny shoved Cielle behind him. He exploded with essence. His shadows wrapping around him as he covered her body, bracing against the crushing stone.
The pressure was immense. It was the weight of the world trying to close a fist around them.
Sunny's arms trembled violently. His shadows screamed in his mind, his essence burning away at a terrifying rate. The rock pressed closer, grinding down until it was mere inches from his face.
Below him, Cielle gripped the back of his shirt. Her hands were shaking. Sunny had some sort of idea of her flaw, and because of it, the ambient pressure wasn't just heavy, it was a million needles pressing into her skin, an overload of pure, distilled agony. Her usual calm was gone, shattered completely wide open.
She buried her face into his spine, her breath ragged and hot against his neck.
"Sunny," she whispered, her voice impossibly small, trembling with fear. "Sunny… it hurts."
Sunny's eyes burned. He bared his teeth like a cornered beast, pouring absolutely everything he had, every drop of essence, every ounce of willpower, into holding on.
"Hold on," Sunny gritted out, blood dripping from his nose as the island rose further. This one was especially high up since two of its three chains were gone "Just… hold on."
They endured.
Trapped in the dark. Panting. Straining.
Alive.