Shadow Slave vs. The Inheritance Cycle

Nephis sighed and rose from her bed, halfheartedly hiding her wide yawn with her right hand. Rolling her neck and bouncing on the balls of her feet to loosen up, she began her morning routine.

It consisted of stretching cramped muscles and contorting oneself into tense and uncomfortable positions, positions specifically designed to be difficult regardless of the the natural dexterity enjoyed by those with the bodies of Saints.

She didn't plan to partake in any particular exercise for the day, but warming up in the morning was as drilled into her core as her swordplay, and would have been odd not to have done.

She moved expertly through the complicated motions, finishing up with her limbs forced into an odd pretzel-like figure. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, winced after a failed attempt at cracking her neck that had ended in straining it, grumbling internally as she rubbed it with an annoyed frown.

Nephis padded silently into an adjoining room, the bare soles of her feet silent of the cold stone. The bathing room was lit by soft red light, emanating from a glowing chandelier that hung from the too-short ceiling.

Her new quarters had originally been designed to house the officials of Dwarven clans, and was, naturally, made with their size in mind. Besides the blessedly spacious bedroom, the ceilings here were uncomfortably close to her head.

Thankfully, however, the dwarves, as a race, typically thought "big" in their interior designing, sometimes to an absurd degree, so most of it was accessible to humans. Farthen Dûr itself was evidence of this curious trait, what with the miles upon miles of underground tunnels that burrowed beneath it, passing through the Beor Mountains, where Farthen Dûr was situated. Up to a dozen other cities existed throughout the impossibly scaled mountain range, and some were so far apart from each other that travel between them was rare unless on important business. 

This had created the conundrum of communication. What with the great distances between cities, the dwarves had been pushed to devise a solution.

This resulted in a complex system of flashing mirrors, with dwarves stationed to relay urgent messages to other dwarves further past them in specialized tunnels. Nephis had thought it to be lonely work, despite its clear necessity and importance. She had inquired from her dwarven follower, the one explaining the system to her, about how long they were stationed at their posts, and was shocked to hear that the shifts lasted anywhere from several weeks to several years at a time. When Nephis had expressed her concern and alarm about this, however, she was told it was actually quite a coveted calling. 

One had to be extensively qualified and trustworthy for the important task, which drove many dwarfs to years of servitude just for the slim chance to receive the job. According to Velma, which was the name her dwarven friend and follower used for humans, some dwarfs hated greatly preferred to be alone, far away from others, and preferred to be very secret in their doings. That was why a paying job for their preferred lifestyle was so popular.

Nephis ducked under the chandelier, resting her hand on it as she passed. On the other side of it sat a neat, waist high basin, full to the brim of steamy water.

She was used to the primitive advances this world had in way of technology, having spent most of the past decade of her life in the Dream Realm, where such luxuries were rare. Unless stationed in a popular Citadel, Awakened were typically resigned to making do with a mixture of coveted utility Memories and grit.

She had been delighted to discover, however, that those of status in this world had their own methods of smoothing the more dreary tasks. The basin was an example of this. 

It was enchanted to constantly provide heat to the liquid placed inside, and besides having to make up for evaporation, which typically wasn't an issue, or the customary changing of water upon request when sullied with dirt or other filth, the remarkable basin was almost always available. It and the bath were the most coveted features of Nephis' most recent living situation. 

She leaned forward, cupping her hands, and brought the luxurious liquid on her face.

She sighed in content.

To her, right now, it was worth more than any amount of soul shards ever could amount to.

Nephis rubbed the sleep away from her tired eyes, groaning into her palms at the delightful sensation, then mindlessly pinned her hair above her head with her left hand, splashing some of it onto her neck.

Her eyelids fluttered.

She splashed several more handfuls onto her now steaming neck before giving in and drawing a bath, which was, thankfully, also automated through spellwork, which allowed her to prepare it herself. She perched on the rim of the tub, which was inlaid into the ground, watching the water flow in steadily from a tap, which presumably led to some unseen source of water. If she remembered correctly, it was filtered from some sort of underground river the dwarves had discovered when mining.

Finally, it was ready. She leaned forward eagerly, sealing closed the first tap, then twisted another that was gold and inlaid with five bright rubies the size of her pinkies fingernail. After only a few moments, the water started to boil furiously. She adjusted it to her liking, then reached to her right and retrieved a robe and towel from a hidden cabinet, one that sat seamlessly with the rough stone walls of the bathing room.

The only sign of its existence was a little red knob, the size of her thumb, of ruby. Pressing it made the drawer pop out into being. The average human, and indeed the average dwarf, who she was told had much better sight, might have been fooled by its exceedingly fine craft, but with the finely tuned sight of a Saint, she was able to spot the imperfections easily.

She had found the whole thing fascinating when first introduced, and made a note in the back of her mind to keep watch for any similar imperfect walls as long as she stayed in Farthen Dûr. 

She placed the robe and towel on the floor next to the tub, then quickly undressed and slipped into her bath.

Nephis' sigh of tranquility turned into bubbly nothingness as she sank into the steaming water, leaning her head so far back on the rim of the tub that only the upper part of her head remained free of the liquid. She had spun and pinned her hair into a tall bun, not wanting to deal with washing it that day, and rested for a time. She felt like she wanted to fall asleep, but, sooner than she would have liked them, the dark thoughts she had grown used to bordering with slipped into her stream of thought.

Sunny.

Her eyes flew open, and she sat back up in the water, face and arms emerging from as she instinctively hugged her knees, chin resting on her arms. Her face was once again an emotionless mask, but shadowy darkness swirled behind her silver irises.

Nephis had been forced to face this brand new world alone, and though she'd never show it to her followers or newfound companions, she had been finding it more and more difficult to balance her recently found duties and responsibilities with the weighty shock of her… realization.

Nephis hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, about him, since she saw the Beor Mountains.

The flashback to her youth, when she had stared at similar mountains in a similar desert, spurred on to continue her existence only by the words the Nightmare Spell gave her, returned once more to her mind.

They had been the only evidence that he, too, was still alive, still fighting to grow stronger.

Sunny.

Mongrel.

The Devil of Antarctica.

Master Sunless.

The Lord of Shadows.

He was what she had been missing, that odd feeling in the back of her mind that something was mysteriously... gone. Had left her mind. Slipped it as though something unimportant, not to be remarked upon. She'd never pursued it. Other things were constantly on her mind, other tasks she had, at the time, considered more important. Cassie had asked her about it once before, had spoken of the same feeling, but Nephis herself had dismissed her best friend's worries.

But now she knew exactly what that feeling had meant.

She had tried to force it out of mind, for a time. Told herself she was crazy, that the shock of arriving in a new world had finally caught up with her, but they were weak and flimsy dismissals of what she knew, deep in her core, had finally been returned. Forbidden memories. Eventually, she had been forced to try coming to terms with it.

Doing so nearly broke her.

She had collapsed into something akin to a catatonic state, unaware of passing time, as she relived each and every agonizing memory.

The way he laughed nervously, the way he lied but didn't at the same times, the way he had cared for her so sweetly. She had taken him for granted, then. She had never truly known the treasure he had been for her.

Nephis had stayed that way for a while, forced to resurface from her endless cycle of torturous memory only when Eragon and Murtaugh, weighed down by two helpless companions, had been forced to turn and fight a small army of what they called Kull, snarling, horned monsters that towered as high as ten feet tall.

Slaughtering them had felt good.

Nephis didn't remember much of the fight. Only what Eragon, Murtaugh and Saphira told her, later on.

She had fallen upon the beasts with unbridled fury, silver eyes flashing brightly as fiery radiance flowed from her blade, white wings of flame erupting from behind her armored shoulders as she annihilated each and every one of the beasts, until they were no more than ashy dust in the desert wind. Then she had stood, blade extended at her side, waiting for more challengers. According to Eragon, she had nearly killed him when he had nervously tapped her shoulder. 

After that, she finally came back to her senses for a time. She had forced a lid onto her storm of thoughts, then helped heal her companions wounds. Saphira's right wing had been nearly cleaved in two. After that, Nephis had finally been alerted to the elf's life force, and had healed her as well. Eragon had indeed done well in healing her wounds, as he had claimed but there were still many that required her divine flames to truly become whole once more. 

The parts Nephis remembered most vividly were when the elf awoke. It had been Nephis' turn to be faced with a crazed woman's fury, but the elf had calmed down after seeing Saphira, the dragon, who she had approached with wonderment in her beautiful, emerald green eyes. After that, she had carefully introduced herself as Arya, then cautiously thanked Nephis for healing her. She then accompanied them as a verbal character for the remainder of their journey. 

After that incident, Nephis had been forced to create a dangerous and frail balance between sorting through a lifetime of memories, and staying awake and present enough to travel.

Arya had many questions for Nephis at first, but was also clever. It hadn't taken long for her to give Nephis space, and instead redirected them to Eragon, Murtaugh and Saphira, the first of which grew slightly agitated after she kept asking about her instead of him. By the time they as a group had reached the Beor Mountains, Nephis had come to terms with her new life, the one she had been forced to forget. She was able to regain control of her mask, which had always been so rare to slip.

But the memories never left, never stopped cycling endlessly through her mind. She just got better at dealing with them.

Not even now did they cease.

Keeping busy with work helped, distracting herself by talking with her newfound friends helped, but there was nothing to do when she was alone like this, when there was nothing to distract her. There was no Cassie to reach for with her mind, to comfort her with her familiar presence.

It was to the point that Nephis had worked herself until too exhausted to even sleep. Which had only resulted in more time alone, laying awake at night. She had never hated the stamina of Awakened bodies before, but she found reason to do so now.

She couldn't keep her mind off of him, the Sunny she had known, then the Master Sunless and Lord of Shadows that had found her again years later.

Now she understood the way he looked at her, the deep flame of longing she could see burning in his chest. She had, at first, believed it be some superficial emotion. Perhaps he was just an emotional character.

But she'd begun to doubt such thoughts after their relationship began. But Nephis had always brushed it off, something to understand another day. 

How could she have known?

And why did she forget?

She remembered, now. The man that had approached her in the rubble of a collapsed building in Antarctica, after her fourth Nightmare.

Their fourth Nightmare.

It was a memory buried under a thousand others like it, deemed as insignificant.

He had been dirty, covered in dust. But she could recognize him, now. Could label the moment she had broken his spirit. Rewatching it in her mind made it feel like something inside of her broke.

* * *

"Who are you? Identify yourself."

The man hesitated, as though confused.

"It's me... Sunny."

"Your affiliation?"

He responded somewhat stiffly.

"...Evacuation Army, I guess. Army Command, special envoy."

* * * 

Nephis had noticed Cassie, then. Helped her out from the wreckage. By the time she turned, the man was gone. She'd forgotten about the strange encounter soon after.

How?

How could she have forgotten him?!

She could feel bitter, angry tears run hotly down her cheeks, silently slipping into the steaming water. Not for the first time.

She remembered him leaving, his betrayal in the fourth Nightmare, when he had left to pursue control of his fate, enabled by Cassie...

What had happened?! What had he done? What had caused him to be forced to just... LEAVE?! Why hadn't Sunny tried to explain?

Why couldn't he have gone back to her, taken her by the shoulders, and screamed into her face until he forced her to remember him?

But she knew such a thing would never have worked. She remembered how she had felt that day, after their Nightmare. She would have killed him if he had even touched her, or at least tried to. She understood just how powerful he was, now. She'd thought she had a grip on his strength before, but she might as well have been blind.

Nephis had gone over that scene a thousand, a million times, trying to understand why. Thats what everything ended up at. A single worded question. 

Why.

But she didn't know. And now she wasn't sure if she ever would. 

Nephis didn't know what horrors awaited her in this Nightmare. All of her past ones had been brutal, horrific challenges that impacted her mental state severely. And this would supposedly be her greatest trial yet, since they got more difficult with each advancement.

She didn't know what she would be facing here.

She could prepare all she wanted, garner all the strength that she could, but she knew it could all be wiped away with one sweep of a Sovereign's hand.

She hadn't found a single person here in Farthen Dûr that was truly powerful. Politically, yes, religiously, yes. But if she wanted to, truly wanted to, they would all be dead, within days. None would be able to withstand her will.

Nephis held her face in her hands, letting the bitter tears run their course. She had suffered them so many times, she knew what to expect. 

But knowing didn't help as much as it should have.