Breaching the surface, Sunny relaxed his body and drifted in the cold water for a long while, doing nothing but breathing deeply. His mind was empty, and a languid, comfortable stillness overcame his entire being.
The utter darkness that surrounded him, the cold water that soothed his bruised body, the weightlessness... all of it was so peaceful. As if he were drifting in an endless, tranquil void.
Sunny allowed himself to remain in that pleasantly numb state for some time, knowing from the movement of shadows — or rather, from the lack of it — that there were no threats around him.
Now that the danger was gone, both his body and mind needed to rest. It was no surprise, really... he had been under tremendous pressure for a long while now, and that pressure culminated when he returned to the Hell of Ariel.
Those past weeks were unlike anything he had ever experienced. Sunny had visited some truly terrifying places over the course of his eventful life — places that no human was ever meant to endure. The Death Game, the bottom of the Stormsea, the Eternal City...
But nothing had tested him quite like the Nightmare Desert. Not on that scale, at least.
It had taken three powerful Supremes to make it to the heart of Hell, and even then, they had only survived by the skin of their teeth. There had not been a single night that failed to leave them with deep scars, and not a single battle in which their lives had not been at stake.
"How the hell did Daeron make it inside?"
Sunny's voice sounded quiet in the vast silence.
He knew that the Serpent King had been the only Supreme of the Storm Realm. He also knew that Daeron had been both powerful and ingenious... still, he couldn't quite imagine how the ancient Supreme could have made it inside the Tomb of Ariel alive. He would have been far away from his natural element, after all, since there was no water anywhere in the boundless desert. Then again, the desert had been the bottom of an ocean once. So, perhaps Daeron was quite comfortable here.
After drifting in the comfortable darkness for a while, Sunny came to the conclusion that there was little point in contemplating the Serpent King's power in relation to himself or Nephis — because the very nature of power had changed since the days of the Twilight Sea.
The three of them simply existed in different realities.
It was not even about who was stronger, but more about the source and foundation of their strength.
Sunny did not know the order in which the Nightmare, and therefore the Nightmare Spell, had consumed the Divine Realms. What he did know, however, was that the War Realm was unique — it was unique because its laws rejected the existence of all things that went against the mundane.
It was a sanctuary for humans, and a place where humans could freely express their intellect and ingenuity, safe from the tyranny of transcendent Wills. A world of immutable reason... a beautiful world where no one, not even the gods, could dictate how mortals lived, and people were free to choose for themselves what path to take. Even if those paths often led them to bloodshed and strife, they had achieved so much, invented so much, built and created so much — more than any other realm had. But their isolation also made them different from those who had inhabited the Twilight Sea once.
Unlike people of Earth, who had to discover the vast and dreadful world that lay beyond the boundaries of their cradle from the position of utter ignorance, Daeron the Serpent King had been born into it. He had been born into the legacy of knowledge they were still trying to learn or had no idea about.
Awakened, soul essence, Corruption, the Void, Shaping, sorcery — Daeron had possessed an innate understanding of all these matters, and many more, while Sunny and Nephis were merely novices to them. He had inherited the knowledge, disciplines, and skills developed by countless generations of Awakened over the course of thousands of years, from the dawn of time till the end of the world...
And past it.
No matter how much Sunny and Nephis learned, fathomed, and invented themselves, the accumulation of their knowledge could not compare to such a fundamental, civilizational legacy — even if the Spell was there to help breach the gap. Not yet, at least, and not for a long while. That was their disadvantage when compared to the great giants of the ancient past... but it was an advantage, as well. Because they lacked a foundation in all things having to do with the sublime, they were left no choice but to do with what they had. Theirs was a much harsher world, a world where the stakes were much more stark, much more absolute... it was always all or nothing, do or die. Nothing stood behind the people of their world, so they could only rely on themselves.
As a result, they had been forged into much sharper blades.
So, it was not that Daeron had been far stronger than they were, or that they were far stronger than he had been. It was just that the ingredients of their strength were different, and so, its nature was different as well.
Daeron had probably been capable of doing many things that Sunny and Nephis couldn't do, and they, in turn, were capable of many things he would have never been able to accomplish.
That said...
"I still killed him, though. So who's the meanest bastard of them all, in the end?"
Sunny chuckled.
Granted, he had killed the Nightmare version of Daeron while the poor man was already Corrupted, completely insane, and almost dead... but then again, Sunny himself had only been a Master at the time, so that had to count for something.
Having finished contemplating the astonishing fate of Daeron, the Serpent King, Sunny sighed and finally emerged from the state of pleasant relaxation, deciding that it was time to start thinking about the present again.
First, he assessed his condition.
His condition... wasn't great. It was terrible, really.
Six of his seven incarnations had suffered such catastrophic damage that he could not manifest them at the moment. His soul was in shambles, barely held together by Soul Weave. The Shadow Legion was completely eradicated, and at least a week would have to pass before it was mended to full strength.
Saint, Slayer, and even Serpent were wounded so grievously that he could not call upon them, either.
Thankfully, all seven links of the Curse were augmenting the dark flames of his soul, so the rate at which his shades and Shadow recovered was greatly enhanced. Saint especially would be back on her feet soon due to her own powers, so...
All things considered, he had escaped Hell in good shape. Despite how hurt and battered Sunny and everyone he commanded were, nothing was irrevocably lost. Everything could be repaired and brought back, eventually.
Which brought him to the next point on the agenda.
Assessing the world around him.
'Right.'
Something was seriously wrong with the world.
Chapter 2920
Sunny had not known what to expect from the Tomb of Ariel — the real Tomb of Ariel, not the phantom of it conjured by the Nightmare Spell — but he at least knew what not to expect, which allowed him to make some predictions.
First and foremost, the difference between the real Great River and the Great River he encountered in the Third Nightmare was the role Daeron the Serpent King had played in the fate of the River People.
Daeron had made it across the white sands of the Hell of Ariel and entered Ariel's Tomb in the company of his strongest champions — those like his daughter, Wind Flower. By doing so, they left an imprint of themselves on the Great River, which meant that a version of them would exist in all Nightmares that took place there.
His people, meanwhile — the entire population of the Twilight Sea that still remained — made their way to the giant block of black stone that lay among the dunes, containing a Seed of Nightmare, and challenged it. It was the same Seed Sunny and the members of his cohort had challenged after the Battle of the Black Skull.
The survivors of the Twilight Sea could do so because, unlike their Supreme, they did not have to reach the Tomb of Ariel itself. So, they did not need to traverse the Nightmare Desert at night, when the Deathless rose from beneath the sand to engage in the eternal battle.
That must have been a terrifying pilgrimage, still, and one that could not have been completed without countless people accomplishing countless astounding feats. But they did succeed, in the end, and a legion of challengers entered the Nightmare of the Great River, where the phantoms of King Daeron and his Saints were already waiting for them.
That was how Twilight was founded, becoming the core of resistance against the Defilement... in the Nightmare, that was. There was no Twilight in the real Tomb of Ariel, though. They couldn't be. Daeron and his Saints were still here... had been here, at least... but there was no vast army of Outsiders to battle the Defilement.
There was no Nephis, either, and as far as Sunny knew, she was the only one capable of destroying the First Seeker — Aletheia of the Nine — without succumbing to Corruption.
There were only the River People. The cities that were ruled by the sybils, who were destined to succumb to the whispers of the Estuary themselves, and Weave — the city where the cultists of the Nightmare Spell lived.
So, even if there were no Plagues in the real Tomb of Ariel — no Dread Lord, no Torment, no Soul Stealer, no Undying Slaughter, no Devouring Beast, and no Mad Prince either — Sunny did not count the chances of the River Civilization high.
It was most likely already gone, having been consumed by the forces of the Defilement. The whole Great River would be a seething mass of Nightmare Creatures by now.
And since there was no Mad Prince here, there would be no piece of flotsam for him to clutch onto, either. No field of demented runes carved into it, and no warning to be careful of what he wished for.
It was too late for Sunny to heed that warning, anyway.
'Right. And then...'
And then there was the most important difference, one that Sunny was wary of the most.
The Vile Thieving Bird. The phantom of it had made a nest in the Estuary of the illusory Great River, but now, that phantom was in the real world, having escaped the Nightmare. There was no telling what the loathsome creature had done, how it had changed the Great River, and what it was doing at the moment.
The only thing Sunny was sure of was that the Thieving Bird was still in the Tomb of Ariel. There was a very simple reason why he believed that: if a Cursed Terror that even the gods had despised escaped into the Dream Realm, humanity would have felt the consequences of its freedom very soon. What would the odious Thieving Bird have stolen first?
Would it have taken all the pretty eyes in existence as its prize? Or just absconded after rending the entire Mirror Lake from the fabric of the world?
Would it have stolen the radiant Strings of Fate from which the Nightmare Spell was woven, perhaps?
That sounded quite fantastical, but Sunny was not going to put anything past that damn bird. It had already stolen his fate, after all, so who was to say that it couldn't rend apart the Nightmare Spell, just for the fun of it?
If anything, since the Thieving Bird seemed to be obsessed with all things Weaver, and the Nightmare Spell had been born from Weaver's soul, it was under the greatest threat should that loathsome thing escape into the world.
'Huh. I didn't think about that.'
Sunny sighed, then finally acknowledged two facts that he had been aware of from the very moment he plunged into the Great River, but was reluctant to think about until now.
The first one was pretty obvious... the comfortable darkness he was enjoying was not supposed to exist inside the Tomb of Ariel. In the Nightmare, the Great River had been illuminated by the light of seven suns, each forged by Ariel from the soul cores — or at least soul shards — left behind by the Stone Titan, the Unholy horror he had killed.
Those suns were nowhere in sight right now. Of course, they could have moved under the Great River, plunging this stretch of it into a deep and lightless night. But then, the water itself would have been emanating a beautiful radiance, illuminated from beneath.
There was no radiance. The waters of the Great River were lightless, and the world was shrouded in absolute darkness.
'Perhaps the damn bird really did steal the suns.'
They were the shiniest thing in the Tomb of Ariel, after all.
It was bitterly cold — so cold, in fact, that Sunny could not explain why the still and dark waters around him had not turned to ice yet.
And that was the second thing he had to acknowledge... the second way in which the world was wrong.
The endlessly flowing waters of the Great River were not flowing anymore.
The water stood still, utterly unmoving, stretching in every direction like an endless flat plain. If there was a current, it was so weak that Sunny could not feel it at all.
He could explain the absence of the suns, somehow, but this...
This, he couldn't even fathom, let alone explain.
The Great River was not meant to stand still. That was entirely against its nature — against Ariel's design. No force was supposed to be able of making its waters stop flowing, and nobody was supposed to be capable of breaking the fundamental laws that governed this singular, strange realm.
Drifting in the cold water, surrounded by utter darkness, Sunny let out a heavy sigh.
"I can't believe it."
He had spent so much time — how long had it been, now? Six, seven years? He had spent all those years imagining the day he would return to the Tomb of Ariel. He had imagined all kinds of possible scenarios, but he still failed to predict what would really happen.
Reality was utterly different from even his wildest theories.
Which meant that he had no idea what to expect here, inside the Tomb of Ariel. Whatever he encountered would be a complete and utter — and most likely terrifying — surprise.𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖
The only choice he had was to delve into the unknown and hope for the best.
Somewhat rested, Sunny took a deep breath and finally forced himself to move.
"First things first. Let's find Nephis..."
Judging by the Third Nightmare, she had to be close.