Standing over the corpse of the slain guardian, the two Sleepers caught their breath, taking a brief moment to rest. Cassie dismissed her limping Echo, sending it to heal in her Soul Sea. Sunny passed the Midnight Shard to Cassie to replace her broken sword.
With the benefit of hindsight from his previous journey, Sunny knew that the Carapace Demon fought on a level more befitting a Fallen creature than Awakened. Its ability to contend with the horrors from the Dark Sea was truly astonishing.
'The tree must have kept it from rising in rank so it would remain controllable...'
When planning for the engagement, Sunny had prioritized crafting a strategy that wouldn't risk injury to himself, Cassie, or the Echo. Taking time to nurse wounds would have given the overgrown flora a chance to enthrall a new guardian, and losing the Echo again would have been a waste.
The initial trap worked, and they had retreated towards the canopy's encroaching shadow, though that was never the difficult part. The real challenge had been landing a decisive killing blow without overcommitting and being punished. They never had the luxury of a prolonged battle, because they just simply couldn't hope to compete with the Awakened Demon's stamina. Thus, the fight had to be ended quickly once it drew near.
As it stood now, Sunny was a genius combatant with an unusually strong sword, but he was still only mildly above average in physicality for a combat-oriented Sleeper. His Aspect needed time to mature and develop, granting him some of the versatility he had once wielded. With more cores, Shadow Control would grow exponentially more applicable in combat. Eventually, he wouldn't need elaborate week-long schemes to bring down his foes.
Luckily, when the fight began to diverge from plan, they were able to improvise well. Surprising the creature with the full scope of their shadow-related affinities worked, though the Demon committing so heavily to attacking Cassie instead of defending against the flanking Echo, had been unexpected. The Echo was supposed to draw attention, while they worked together to land the killing blow. Sunny was the only one capable of softening the carapace, so he was meant to do so and then block retaliatory strikes. Cassie was supposed to land the lethal blow.
'It didn't see the Echo as a threat... so it kept track of her the entire time.'
Another miscalculation had been the Demon's ability to continue its assault after its heart was destroyed. During Sunny's Second Nightmare, he had lost one of his two hearts while occupying the Shadowspawn body, and the effects had been immediate and crippling. That the Demon had maintained consciousness for so long was deeply unsettling.
The misstep had cost them only injuries to the Echo, so all things considered, the fight had gone well.
But not perfectly.
They wouldn't have room for mistakes in the future.
***
At the base of the Soul Devouring Tree, Cassie and Serpent worked slowly and tirelessly at stripping away the bark in a ring around the base of the trunk. Sunny had told the girl that he would be climbing to the top of the tree to collect a relic.
Cassie could tell by the boy's tone of voice that he didn't wish for her to prod farther due to his flaw, so she waved him off and focused on her task. The tree's mind attack prodded at her mind like an annoying buzz, so she knew they had no time for idle chatter.
The Puppeteer's Shroud and Quiet Resolve would protect Sunny for a time, and Cassie's Lineage granted her a peculiar calmness of mind that resisted the tree's enthralling influence. It wouldn't last forever though.
***
High atop the canopy of the Soul Devouring Tree, Sunny gazed upon the massive egg of the Vile Thieving Bird's Spawn.
He carried some passing reservations about claiming Weaver's Forbidden Lineage. The Daemon had clearly set many plans into motion involving his life, and that left him unsettled. Weaver's Spell seemed benevolent, so the suspicions seemed partially unfounded. After all, the Spell gave humanity the power to stall the consumption of the waking world by the Dream Realm. But still... the Daemon of Fate's motives remained somewhat of an enigma.
What did Weaver do at the end of the Doom War?
Why did he create a lineage? And why had it been able to consume Shadow's?
For every question that went unanswered, worry sprouted that he might fall prey to the Daemon's designs through his lineage.
Sunny had thought about this deeply before entering the Dream Realm. From the moment he received Shadow's Drop of Ichor, he'd weighed the potential consequences. Ultimately, it was the versatility that Weaver's lineage promised that drove him to choose it. The other divine lineages seemed inconsequential compared to the power of accessing an exclusive form of sorcery with near infinite potential.
The choice was obvious. The negatives that came with it were something he would have to deal with. What gave him the confidence to do so was [Unchained].
Fate seemed to be one of the few powers the Gods truly feared, and the fact that his innate attribute made him selectively immune to its effects was nothing short of remarkable. Since innate attributes weren't granted by the Spell, Sunny was reasonably confident it would protect him from unwanted developments.
...Hopefully.
He shook the thoughts from his head.
Approaching the enormous egg, Sunny peered into the swirling darkness along its surface and felt a tug at his Shadow Essence. The attempt was ineffective, shadows—and anything spawned from them—were of the loyal sort to their masters after all, so he ran his blade through the eggshell.
[You have slain a Great Devil, Vile Thieving Bird's Spawn.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
[You have received a Memory: Drop of Ichor.]
Sunny flashed open the runes of the Memory.
Memory: [Drop of Ichor].
Memory Rank: unknown
Memory Type: unknown
Memory Description: [The loathsome Thieving Bird was hated both by the gods and -unknown-. However, it only cared about shiny things. Enamored by Weaver's beautiful eyes, it stole one of them on a dark, starless night. Impatient, the vile creature looked at its bounty while still in flight. However, when it saw the reflection of the Forgotten God forever frozen in the depths of Weaver's pupil, it went mad and screamed, dropping the eye on the mortal realm below. All that was left in its greedy beak was one drop of pure, golden ichor.]
It appeared that [Inoculation] let him see through the Spell's censorship, but only partially this time.
Sunny willed the Drop of Ichor to manifest, and the Spell spoke with obvious enthusiasm.
[You have acquired a drop of ichor. Do you wish to consume it?]
"Yes."
[As you wish.]
The radiant drop of ichor split into two streams of beautiful, golden liquid. The streams flowed through the air, approaching Sunny's face. He felt a gentle touch caress his cheeks. Then, the liquid reached his eyes and flowed through them, entering his soul through the pupils.
Soon after, Sunny screamed.
***
Some time later, at the base of the tree, the Sleeper duo reunited. Before their venture into the Dream Realm, Sunny had taught Cassie that certain creatures in the Dream Realm had the ability to mimic others, and they may encounter some in the area they entered. As a precaution, she had developed the habit of checking his attributes whenever he approached.
Attributes: [Unchained], [Fatecharmed], [Spark of Divinity], [Shadowtouched], [Inoculated], [Blood Weave]
Cassie noticed something immediately—one of his attributes had upgraded, and another had been added.
'Odd...'
It wasn't clear how climbing the tree could have caused that, but she decided not to pry. Sunny had warned her about the consequences of oversharing future knowledge, and she respected that. She understood that not all of his memories of the future would be shared with her, just as not all of her visions would be shared with him.
What he had shared up to now was more than enough. Their next steps were clear: they would head west to a settlement of Sleepers, gather seven keys to a citadel, and build a force to storm it, aiming to escape through the Gateway.
It aligned with the most recent prophetic dream she'd had.
In it, she saw a darkness bound by seven seals break free and consume the land. An army marched from a castle towards a crimson lance that pierced the sky, leaving behind a corpse resplendent with gold. A woman with a bronze spear drowned in a tide of monsters; an archer tried to pierce the falling sky with his arrows, and a swift cloaked figure ran towards death. Atop the citadel, a figure wrapped in shadows collapsed under a flood of light.
When the devouring light filled her sight, she felt as though something so precious that it couldn't be described with words was taken from her.
A heavy pressure settled on her heart, and a lump formed in her throat. According to her vision, they wouldn't win.
'Sharing will only make it more likely to come true...'
***
After Cassie finished debarking the tree, she applied oil over the exposed sapwood ring. Sunny quickly fashioned a boat together while Serpent carried their smallest urn up the trunk, leaving a flammable trail that led into the canopy.
The Soul Devouring Tree was not of mundane nature, so conventional knowledge of biology would not serve them in killing it. Where a normal plant thrived under sunlight and from nutrients within the soil, the Soul Devouring Tree used stolen essence. Depriving it of oxygen, light, or rendering the soil barren wouldn't affect it in the slightest.
But setting the Awakened Terror thoroughly ablaze, weakening it structurally, and besieging it with monsters would certainly do the trick.
In the late hours of the night, they set the oil ring on fire. The flames spread quickly, consuming the exposed sapwood with terrifying speed. Beneath the tree's bark—its natural defenses—was nothing but dry, almost petrified, wood. The essence that nourished it had replaced the usual moisture found in normal trees, so bypassing the bark would allow much more damage to be dealt with fire.
The blaze also climbed high into the canopy, lighting the tree's crown in a dazzling display. The two sleepers immediately boarded their boat and used Cassie's wind staff to sail west, not wishing to witness the guests drawn to the bright spectacle.
***
Some time later, the Soul Devouring Tree finally perished.
[You have slain an Awakened Terror, Soul Devouring Tree.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
[You have received a Memory, Seed of Remorse.]
Sunny flashed the runes of the Memory to life, grateful to see its weave through his reclaimed lineage.
Memory: [Seed of Remorse.]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: VI.
Memory Type: Tool.
Memory Description: [A benevolent tree lived among its kind in a scared grove, but was taken from home to distant shores. Corruption consumed it, and it lost sight of its nurturing nature.]
Enchantment: [Sown.]
Enchantment Description: [Cannot be summoned outside of the wielder's Soul Sea.]
Enchantment: [Reparation.]
Enchantment Description: [Feed essence into the seed until a sapling emerges.]
Sunny looked upon the runes curiously. He experimentally channeled essence through Serpent to the Memory in his Soul Sea, surprised to see the idea worked, but found that the Memory needed overwhelmingly more essence to saturate than he could provide.
He checked his fragments.
Shadow Fragments: [439/1000]
'What a strange Memory.'
He returned his gaze to the Dream Realm, and quietly sailed west. Both Sunny and Cassie were difficult to detect under the cover of darkness, so they were unlikely to be attacked by the creatures of the Dark Sea.
The Bright Castle awaited.