A Sunless Dream

Sweat and blood poured down Sunny's body as he lay flat on the floor after a long and gruelling spar with Saint, it had almost been three months since his last encounter with Nephis and during this time Sunny had been using it to fully adapt to his newly found transcendent titan power.

Using his transcendent ability, he had managed to preserve two completely separate identities. One of them had been in God Grave, using it as a method to not only continuously saturate his new transcendent titan core using the corpses of Great beasts and monsters as fuel as well as establish his influence in one of the citadels present. However, down to his fundamental core Sunny was just a regular man who had a passion for cooking as well as making money and by splitting off part of his personality which had been primarily focused for combat into his incarnation in God Grave, he allowed his gentler more reasonable side to arise within his newly established Cafe.

This was not to say that he had allowed his original body to slack off and grow weak, far from it. He had continuously been sparring with Saint to keep his body in optimal physical condition, however his continuous usage of shadow dance was proving to have completely certain unexpected consequences.

Continuing where he left off, Sunny ducked under a committed slash from Saint as he continued to pay immense attention to the movements of her shadow. Her grounded and supremely unshakable battle style had been the foundation of his combat prowess, and what allowed him to survive as long as he did throughout all his encounters within the forgotten shore. In all the two worlds, she was the one who he was most familiar with fighting.

Ducking under a horizontal slash, he fell to his knees as he slashed vertically aiming for the head of his noble shadow. Saint however, predicted such a technique and though she noted she did not have enough time to respond to the attack she culled the force of it by meeting it head on with her gauntlet covered fists stopping the slash from building the force needed to be lethal, as well as allowing her to directly hold on to his sword and deliver a driving knee to his stomach.

Sunny jumped backwards, dismissing his sword made of shadows and using both arms to block the knee which sent him a few feet into the air. Twisting to gain momentum, he used the force he built up himself as well as the force of gravity to drive a kick into her head which broke through her guard as well as sent her crashing into the floor. "That's enough for today, Saint, you did well" he said, commending his shadow. Though he knew he was not going to get a response from the stalwart battle master, saying words of encouragement to his ally always made him feel warm.

Suddenly though, Sunny fell to his knees as he dismissed Saint. The vision on his eyes began to blur as his eyes seemed to be unable to absorb colour as they once used to be. For a moment, the entire world seemed to fall and drown into a pool of dark shades of grey. "It looks like...I'm seeing through my shadow" Sunny muttered to himself, he continued to grasp his head as a searing pain appeared as if it had shattered all his being.

Sunny punched the floor continuously, trying to rid his mind of the pain he was going through. If possible, he much would be gutted by the black knight tens of millions of times than to continue experience this torture. However, the pain left as quickly as it came. Slowly but surely, Sunny felt colour fight its way back into his field of vision as he blinked slowly attempting to regain his bearings.

'This must have to do with the grip of fate huh?' Sunny thought to himself, how was he supposed to fight if he put himself at risk of becoming a mindless slave for fate every time, he used his strongest techniques? 'It doesn't matter though, right now my purpose isn't to fight. I better get ready for another day at the cafe again because this is pathetic' he berated himself. Looking into the night sky he took a moment to analyse the stars, their freedom and complete disconnect from all of the worries that mere mortals and even Gods had to go through was something that Sunny envied, whenever his mind wandered onto the topic of freedom immense anger and regret continued to pour into his mind.

Although the part of him was small, that small part of him wished he had killed Nephis after he left the forgotten shore.

Shaking his head, Sunny concentrated on the shadows around him and shadow stepped back into the cafe. Luckily for him, it was still extremely late at night, and they had closed and so he took the moment to fall to his bed and be embraced by the sweet comfort of unconsciousness.

Though his sleep was dreamless, Sunny felt refreshed as the sky in the dream realm was embraced by the warm rays of golden sunshine that was provided from above. 'It's time for a new day' Sunny thought to himself as he put on his classic white buttoned up shirt as well as some black Jeans as he made his way up the stairs of the cafe. He took a brief second to appreciate the changes he had made to the Marvelous Mimic as he mentally prepared himself for another day.

Aiko, his newly hired assistant came through the front door also donning the same clothes as he was stared at him with a tired glare. "Never make me work that long again" she huffed at him before preparing the cafe for customers, he knew she didn't mean it so a response was not necessary however, he couldn't help but tease his employee "Oh? You don't want the extra pay? That's fine too I'll just have to cut your working hou-" he was unable to finish his response as he dodged a cup being thrown at him from Aiko. Quickly catching it, he turned to face his employee who was red in the face with rage "Don't. Even. Think about it." She said, though she was insurmountably weaker than he was for some reason he still felt scared of her.

Meanwhile, in the ivory tower Nephis felt as though she was on the cusp of a breakthrough. She stared at the members of her cohort who were also immensely focused on the same problem she was. The problem was quite simple, they were trying to figure out how in the world Nephis had made the man named Sunless her slave.

"He mentioned that someone who I knew gave up his freedom, however he didn't seem as if he was talking about me" Nephis thought to herself, from her observations of his runes she knew that all that was needed to enslave him was simply to utter his true name. However, she had no means of doing so and judging by the strength of the man she doubted she would have been able to force him to do so anyway.

There were only a few ways to be able to determine the true name of another awakened. Either Cassie had received a revelation, he had told her, or she had forced him. The latter two options seemed extremely unlikely, his commitment to freedom made those two impossible so that only left the first.

"If what he was saying is true, then at some point in our shared past one of us had willingly given up his true name to Nephis and she had decided not to kill him" reasoned Kai, it seemed as though he was operating on the same mental frequency as Nephis was more and more as time progressed. "However," he continued "if Nephis didn't try to kill him after becoming his master that has to mean that he remained an ally to us for an extended period of time" he finished. The implications of such an idea weighed heavy over the members of the cohort, none of them wished to say it so Jet stepped in and cut through the tension as though it was a large piece of solid steel.

"One of us, had given up his true name to Nephis. Robbing him of his freedom, and yet he continued to remain allies with us for substantial amounts of time." Jet said, Kai moved to interject her however she continued speaking "And then, from what I've gathered recently the entire world seems to have forgotten he even existed in the first place." She finished, her suspicions of who it was were already clear as she turned her head to Cassie who remained in the corner of the room without saying a word.

Typically, in situations like these, where mental strength was prioritised orders of magnitude higher than physical strength Cassie was the first one to step in. However, her silence was letting Jet know all that she needed.

"It was me wasn't it" Cassie said, instantly everyone's heads darted towards her direction in the corner of the room. Jets icy cold blue eyes bored holes through her head, and if looks could kill then there would have already been a dead body in the room. The same could be said for Effie, though her gaze was much softer than Jets, she already knew what it felt like to have your freedom robbed from you by forces you could not control.

Hell, she lived most of her life a cripple, and she had no say in that either.

Nephis and Kai had an indifferent mask as they continued to stare at her in silence, imploring her to continue. Though Nephis had mastered the art of having a strong poker face through years of experience. Kai was not privy to such privileges and taking a quick glance into the look in his eyes would let even the most emotionally unintelligent that he did not want to hear the next words that came out of her mouth.

"Even though I don't have my memories completely intact, I remember abandoning a friend for the sake of Nephis. I wanted to leave them to die in the dream realm and gave Nephis the tools to do so, however-" she wasn't allowed to continue as she was struck across the face by Jet. She wore a look of disgust as her lips were curled into a thin line, her eyes which formerly represented a tranquil sea of experience and resolve had been filled with a gaze of unbridled rage. "You disgust me. You planned for him to die, only for him to survive and remain your ally regardless. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you were also responsible for us forgetting him!" she roared at Cassie, going for another strike.

However, her swing was interrupted by Nephis as she shot her a piercing gaze that demanded her to show restraint. "If what you're saying is true, no matter how deplorable your actions are I likely share the blame myself" she said, her eyes transitioned from a look of restrained anger to a look of utter shame "if your plan was to abandon him and leave him in the dream realm you likely couldn't have done so yourself. Meaning I commanded him to leave. I robbed him of his freedom just as much as you have!"

Nephis raising her voice wasn't something that was unusual to the members of the cohort however, her voice did not display her unwavering confidence as it usually did but rather the only emotion that was portrayed by her tone was shame.

She looked at the floor unable to meet the gazes of Jet and any of the other members of the cohort who had surrounded her. Cutting through the silence was Kai "You're wrong, there's a difference between forcing a friend to do something to save their life and forcing them knowing they might die." Kai's voice was portraying an emotion which none of the members of the cohort had heard. It was rage.

"What Cassie did," he said, spitting out her name like it was poison "cannot even be compared."