The wind howling through the boundless blue skies of the Chained Isles was deafening, but Sunny had long since grown accustomed to it.
He was currently clinging to the massive iron links of a heavenly chain, slowly and methodically traversing the vast, terrifying emptiness between two floating islands. Thousands of meters below him was a dark, bottomless abyss that promised absolute, soul-shattering death. Above him was a crushing expanse of forbidden sky.
It was a beautiful, serene Tuesday in the Dream Realm.
I am so tired, Sunny thought, staring blankly ahead. I am so unimaginably, profoundly exhausted.
It wasn't physical exhaustion, though lugging himself across gargantuan chains was hardly a vacation. It was the deep, spiritual fatigue of a man whose carefully constructed boundaries had been dismantled by an angelic wrecking ball with zero concept of personal space.
It had been a few weeks since their disastrous, chaotic lunch with the cohort in the Waking World. The initial shock had worn off, replaced by a strange, new status quo that Sunny was still struggling to process.
Specifically, the sleeping arrangements.
It had started as a compromise. Cielle regulated his body temperature(Sure, lets go with that). He provided peace. It was logical. It was efficient.
It was also completely, utterly addicting.
Sunny had spent his entire life sleeping with one eye open. Now, he found himself instinctively reaching out in the dark for the heavy, soft drape of her wings, the unyielding warmth of her body, and the quiet, steady rhythm of her heartbeat. He slept deeper, better, and longer than he ever had in his entire life.
'Which is a massive vulnerability!' Sunny argued with himself, hauling himself up over another iron link. 'I am getting soft. I am losing my edge. I am a highly lethal predator, not a heated blanket!'
His shadow, currently sliding effortlessly along the iron chain next to him, turned its head and gave him a look of judgment.
'Shut up!' Sunny told it mentally.
While Sunny was having an internal crisis over his rapidly diminishing personal space, the rest of the Sanctuary of Noctis was having a field day.
Because of Cielle's nature, the indestructible orange cat she carried like a stole, and Sunny's gloomy, deeply menacing reputation, the rumor mill in the Citadel had gone entirely out of control.
The residents of the Sanctuary didn't see the quiet moments. They didn't see Cielle laughing quietly with sunny, or Sunny buying her soft clothing.
They saw a beautiful angel following the Demon of Shadows around like a loyal, lethal shadow. They saw Sunny counting massive piles of soul shards while Cielle silently broke the necks of Nightmare Creatures and dragged them back to camp.
Naturally, human imagination filled in the blanks.
"I heard he's keeping her hostage," a young Awakened had whispered to his friend near the central pool just yesterday. "He must have a mind-control Aspect. Have you seen how she looks at him? It's completely blank! The poor girl is trapped!"
"It's worse than that," an older, grizzled hunter had chimed in, leaning closer. "I've heard things. Late at night. Last week, I was walking past their quarters, and I swear to the gods... I heard a soft, high-pitched noise coming from inside."
"A scream?" the young Awakened gasped, horrified.
"Like a suppressed whimper," the hunter nodded grimly. "A tiny, desperate noise. That bastard Sunless must be torturing her in there. The man is a monster."
Sunny, who had been hiding in the shadows five feet away, had nearly suffered an aneurysm on the spot.
The "tiny, desperate noise" hadn't been Cielle crying. It had been Sunny making a soft, entirely involuntary sound when Cielle had started scratching the back of his head while he was half-asleep.
But he couldn't exactly defend himself, could he?
"Excuse me, gentlemen, I am not torturing her. She is actually the one who aggressively pets me like a cat. Please update your rumors accordingly."
No. He would rather dive headfirst into the Sky Below.
"You are stalking again," Cielle's voice drifted from behind him, cutting through his internal monologue.
Sunny glanced over his shoulder. Cielle was walking across the massive iron links as easily as if it were a paved sidewalk. The Neighborhood Menace was trotting happily beside her, completely unbothered by the fact that one misstep would send it tumbling into an eternal void.
"I'm questioning my life choices," Sunny corrected her, turning back around to face the approaching island.
"You are experiencing an elevated heart rate," she noted bluntly, her green eyes scanning his back. "Is the Crushing affecting you? Should I carry you?"
"Do not carry me," Sunny said immediately, his pride violently rejecting the mental image of being princess-carried across the islands "I am fine. We're almost to the Iron Hand Island anyway."
The island slowly came into view, its surface covered in tall, swaying grass. In the center, exactly as Sunny remembered from his previous expedition, a massive, rusted iron hand jutted out of the ground like a monument to a fallen titan.
A few weeks ago, this was where Sunny had found the dead winged demon, the Chain Worm. And, more importantly, it was where he had discovered the strange, golden coins hidden in its acidic stomach.
Sunny hopped off the final link of the chain, landing softly in the grass. He immediately summoned the midnight shard, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the perimeter.
"Clear," Cielle stated, not even bothering to draw a weapon. She knelt down, running her fingers through the grass. "There were nightmare creatures here a few hours before, but no active hostiles. What are we looking for?"
"A clue," Sunny muttered, walking toward the rusted metal hand.
He had brought the three golden coins back to the Sanctuary of Noctis. Out of curiosity, he had placed them on the white marble altar in the center of the Citadel, the one that served as the Gateway back to the Waking World, and the one that held the immovable obsidian knife.
When the moonlight had touched the coins on the altar, the Spell had whispered:
Your shadow grows stronger.
The coins had given him free shadow fragments.
Ever since that moment, Sunny had been obsessed. If one dead Chain Worm had three coins in its stomach, there had to be a hoard. Maybe a treasure chest. A mountain of them, hidden somewhere on the Chained Isles.
He reached the spot where the Chain Worm's bones had been. As expected, they were completely gone, ground into dust by the harsh environment and the ravenous scavengers of the Dream Realm.
"The creature I killed here swallowed these," Sunny explained, pulling one of the golden coins from his pack and tossing it to Cielle.
She caught it effortlessly, inspecting the heavy gold disc. She looked at the depiction of the ancient flying ship, then flipped it to see the smiling, beautiful face with the crescent moon on its forehead.
"This is poor currency," Cielle noted, testing the coin's density with her thumb. "The gold is pure, but it holds no inherent matrix. Why do you care about it?"
"Because if you put them on the altar in the Sanctuary under the moonlight, they turn into fragments" Sunny said, a greedy gleam entering his eyes. "And where there are three, there are more. I want to find where that demon came from."
Cielle tilted her head, her mind instantly shifting into tactical analysis. "You wish to trace the flight path of a deceased target based on zero evidence, weeks after its death, in an environment where the terrain literally shifts daily?"
Sunny sighed. "When you put it like that, it sounds stupid."
"It is impossible," Cielle agreed. She handed the coin back to him. "However, the target was a Chain Worm. You told me Master Roan said they feed on failing iron."
"Yeah," Sunny nodded. "He said the only failing chain is far from here, connecting Shipwreck Island to the Twisted Rock."
"Then we go to Shipwreck Island," Cielle concluded simply, as if suggesting they walk to the corner store.
Sunny stared at her. "Cielle, Shipwreck Island is on the edge of the Tear. It's a Death Zone. Master Roan told me it's infested with Corrupted horrors and things that would use us as toothpicks. It's too dangerous."
"You possess the Underworld Mantle. I possess my wings and other extreme lethal force. The cat possesses immortality," Cielle listed, pointing at the orange furball currently trying to chew on a rusted piece of metal. "Our combined combat rating is sufficient."
Sunny rubbed his temples, feeling the familiar onset of a migraine. "We are not going to a Death Zone just on a hunch. We need to be prepared."
Before Cielle could argue, the sound of distant, echoing thunder rolled across the sky.
Sunny froze. It wasn't thunder. It was the horrific, metallic grinding of gargantuan chains drawing taut.
The island was beginning to ascend. The Crushing was starting.
"We need to go," Sunny said sharply, his greed instantly replaced by survival instinct. "If we get caught in the ascent, we'll be flattened into pancakes."
Cielle looked up at the sky. She felt the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure, her senses picking up the deadly, invisible weight descending from the forbidden heavens.
Without a word, she grabbed the Neighborhood Menace by the scruff of his neck, hoisted him under her arm, and walked to the edge of the island.
Sunny followed, looking down at the dark abyss below. The journey back to the Sanctuary was going to be long, and he was already so tired.
"You are distressed," Cielle noted, her wings flaring slightly in the rising wind.
"I'm fine," Sunny lied.
Cielle observed him for a second. Then, she stepped closer and wrapped her free arm around his waist.
Sunny tensed, glancing around nervously. "What are you doing?"
"Conserving your essence," Cielle stated bluntly. "You are fatigued. You will not use your shadows. I will carry you."
"Cielle, I am not a damsel in distress…!"
Before Sunny could finish his sentence, Cielle stepped off the edge of the island.
Sunny let out a very undignified yelp as they plummeted into the boundless blue sky. The wind roared in his ears, tearing the breath from his lungs.
And then, with a sound like a cracking whip, Cielle's wings snapped fully open.
Their descent instantly halted, the powerful downstroke of her wings catching the air and sending them soaring smoothly toward the distant chains.
Sunny clung to her waist, his heart beating just a little faster, his face buried in the soft material of her tunic. She felt like a walking furnace against the freezing wind of the Sky Above.
"See?" Cielle's voice cut through the roaring wind, completely calm and undeniably smug. "Highly efficient."
Sunny closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of dirt and clean rain that always seemed to cling to her.
He hated how much he liked this.
'I am a killer' Sunny repeated to himself like a mantra as they flew through the sky. 'I am a beast, almost a demon'.
The Neighborhood Menace, tucked under Cielle's arm, let out a loud, obnoxious purr of agreement.