Shadow Slave

The shadow surfaced from the memory. But he also drowned in it.

The slave, the slave driver, the warrior of a lightless land... each of their lives was so vast, so vibrant, so intricate in its infinite complexity. Just one was enough to lose himself, and there were thousands — hundreds of thousands — of past lives crowding his tired mind.

And past deaths, as well.

The cursed legionnaire had not perished on the day the sun rose above his fallen land. An eon of Corruption followed, spent in the embrace of frenzied agony. Just as he had predicted, the civilization built on the bones of a dreadful hecatomb was eventually destroyed, and all memories of his people were erased from the world. Only Corruption remained.

But the shadow remembered.

He remembered living myriad abominable lives under the starless abyss. During the day, a radiant sun flooded the world with brilliant light. At night, a dark sea drowned it with death and destruction. Revolting creatures dwelled in that desolate hell, and the shadow had been those creatures once.

He remembered living as the cursed soldiers of the fallen legion, devouring the corpses of the creatures the sea had killed. He remembered being monstrous centipedes that hid in the coral, waiting to ambush their prey and dissolve it in virulent acid. He remembered being ghastly spiders that wove webs made of razor-sharp steel. He remembered being flesh-eating flowers that bloomed in screaming bodies and wore them as shells. harrowing vines that sprawled for hundreds of meters under the mud, ensnaring those who were unfortunate enough to step on them and dragging them into the giant maw buried deep beneath. Colonies of loathsome termites that made their nests inside the corpses of dead leviathans and slowly devoured them from within.

He remembered being a towering tree that consumed souls by luring living things with the promise of sweet fruit, then stealing their minds to force them to guard, worship, and feed it.

Each of those ghastly lives was no less vast, vibrant, and intricate than the lives of three men he had remembered. They were like a mosaic. Put together, the disjointed fragments painted an all-encompassing picture of that terrifying, starless land.

The mental picture was so detailed that the shadow felt it could encompass that hellish realm, just like his senses encompassed the land around his cave. That he could fuse with it and dissolve in its endless horror, just like he did with the mortal realm that Tatal and her people had made their home. But why would he do that?

What good would fusing with a realm devoured by Corruption do? It would only allow Corruption to swallow him, as well. The shadow did not want to remember agony.

He only wanted peace.

But those memories had a pull that was hard to resist. Once he disturbed them with his careless thoughts, they took hold of his mind and refused to let go. And so, he drowned in them... he drowned, unable to break free...

“Shadow! Shadow!"

‘What the...'

The shadow was pulled from the ghastly sea of memories by an unreasonably loud, high-pitched voice. Dazed, he directed his gaze to the mouth of the cave and saw a familiar, tiny figure carefully making its way inside.

For a moment, he felt turned back.

‘Haven't I sent her back?'

He definitely had. And yet, here she was, demonstrably breaking the law of causality. Causality was one of the foundational laws of the universe. Not even the gods could impose on it easily... so how come the girl who was supposed to be somewhere else suddenly appeared in his cave?

There was no reasonable answer.

‘Did that old fool of a man decide to sacrifice her again?'

The only explanation the shadow could imagine was that somebody had brought the girl back. However, that didn't make much sense, either... after all, his warning was quite stark. The tribesmen would have to be complete fools to disregard it immediately.

But then again... the shadow’s sense of time was murky. He wasn't fully aware of how much of it had flown by since the moment he sent the girl back to her village. It felt like just a moment ago, but days seemed to have already passed.

"Uh-oh!"

Not at all aware of the inner turmoil that her appearance had caused the shadow, Tatal slid down the sloping entrance of the cave and clumsily fell to her knees.

“Ouchie..."

She did not, however, drop the oil lamp burning in her hand.

For the first time since the birth of the world, the shadow's shelter was illuminated by the radiance of fire. He was aghast, struggling to believe that somebody would be so bold as to bring a source of light into the vast darkness of his being.

‘What... is happening?’

Tatal, meanwhile, picked herself up from the stone, dusted off her crude garments, and glanced up with a grin.

"Shadow?"

The shadow hesitated.

Eventually, his voice resounded from the darkness.

"Yes?"

The girl's smile widened, and she waved at the darkness.

"I've come!"

That did not dispel his confusion one bit. He remained silent for a long while, digesting her statement and getting accustomed to a candle shining within the depths of his vast and formless being.

The light of the candle was feeble, of course. If the shadow wanted to, it could extinguish it with a thought — less than that, even. But then, Tatal would stumble in the dark... making all sorts of noises...

His peace and quiet were already gone, but there were degrees to this state of unrest. Wishing to avoid having to endure even more noise, the shadow let out a mental sigh and spared the little flame.

He lingered for a moment, then spoke.

"I see."

Then, after considering the situation a little more, the shadow asked:

“But why have you come?"

Tatal blinked a couple of times, staring into the darkness with an expression of sincere surprise.

Then, her grin returned.

“Because I thought that you'd be lonely!"

Her tone suggested that the answer should have been entirely obvious.

The shadow stared at her, utterly perplexed.

‘Aha.'

No one had brought the girl to the cave, and the law of causality had not been broken either. Instead, she was here of her own volition, having decided that the fearsome being that dwelled in the cave would be lonely there without her.

‘I shouldn't have expected a reasonable explanation. That was my mistake.'

There was some merit to Tatal's logic — he was alone in the cave, after all. It was just that her logic had nothing to do with reason...

It was little girl logic.

Since she would feel lonely living in a dark cave by herself, she assumed that Shadow would too.

Why was she concerned whether he was lonely or not, though?

The cold voice resounded from the darkness, sounding a little confused.

"Why would you care?"

Tatal tilted her head a little.

Then, she smiled.

“Because we're friends!"

The shadow was flabbergasted.

‘Since when?!’

He was sure that he would have noticed making a friend.

However, the girl sounded quite confident. There was no shadow of a doubt in her voice.

So, the shadow resolved to set her straight...

Somehow, though, he failed.

That was the first time the shadow had failed at anything since the dawn of time.

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