11 [11]Teamwork(1)

Cassie took a moment to realize that nobody was speaking.

"What's wrong?"

Sunny silently chastised himself. Time waited for no man. It might not have seemed like it, but Sunny was indeed on a timer. The world was going to end in a decade or two. Perhaps even a few years.

Sunny should have been taking charge right now. Nobody was going to listen to him if he didn't man up and prove his worth as a leader.

"There's nothing wrong Cassia. I explained it to Nephis while you were sleeping, but there's a lot of scavengers in that direction. I'll have to bust us through them."

Cassie's face fell.

"Oh."

Nephis glanced at Sunny. It seemed to irritate her that he was asserting himself as a kind of leader, but she was focused on something else at the moment.

"Tell us more about the castle."

Excitment crept into Cassie's voice and expression again. She nodded in Nephis' direction, and began to speak about what she had seen in her vision.

"I dreamt of a vast, ruined city built of weathered stone. It was surrounded by tall, impregnable walls. Various monsters were wandering its narrow streets. In the center of the city, there was a hill, and on that hill stood a magnificent castle."

Cassie smiled as she went on.

"But there were no monsters in the castle! Instead, it was full of people. I think . . . no, I'm sure that they were Awakened. Some were guarding the walls, some were going about their lives without a care in the world. There was food, safety, and laughter!"

Sunny faked interest in her words. Cassie was blind, but there was a need to hide his hesitaion from Nephis.

The awkward mess next to him might have been horrible at properly expressing herself, but reading the expressions of others was a whole different matter.

 Sunny felt a headache coming at the idea of constantly hiding the knowledge of the future, while actively trying to use that knowledge to his benefit. He had a whole new level of respect for Cassie. 

He might have seen her actively fool him firsthand, while hiding what she knew and planning to manipulate him from a distance, but seeing and doing were two different concepts. 

If he was this worried already, he struggled to imagine the weight that Cassie had burdened herself with constantly, ever since her powers began to fully blossom.

Sunny cleared his throat, pretending to listen closely.

"Did you see anything else?"

Cassie frowned, trying to remember. Her face cleared. 

"Yeah. I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle. I think at least the two of us make it."

Sunny didn't miss that Cassie's phrasing had changed from before he regressed. Cassie had obviously become even more obsessed with Nephis compared to before. The two of them had become ridiculously close. 

It was far beyond what he had initially planned for the two of them. He remembered how Nephis had wanted to admonish him for his childish prank on they day they met, and chalked it up to the thing he hated perhaps the most in this world. Fate.

Sunny turned and faced Nephis. He spoke up.

"Ah, hold out your hand."

Nephis gave him a confused look. It would have been hard to discern for anyone else, but Sunny had long since understood how Nephis thought. He could practcally read the girl's mind at this point. Sunny didn't wait for her to speak up and continued :

"It seems you're going to need that armor memory a bit more than I thought. Who would go anywhere else when we have an adorable compass pointing us exactly where we need to go?"

Nephis blinked. Cassie stiffened. Both girls seemed to look at Sunny like a rare nightmare creature they had never seen before. Sunny realized that he had called Cassie an adorable compass, as if only realizing the problem after having spoken it aloud. In fact, that was exactly what had happened.

To distract the girls, Sunny had started setting up the fire to make breakfast, and right before Nephis had started cooking, Sunny reached out his hand. Nephis quickly realized what Sunny was doing didn't hesitate to take it. Who would refuse an armor memory when it was offered to them? Certainly not a teenage girl who was desperate to  cloth herself in the face of a teenage boy that she had to spend an undetermined amount of time near.

Sunny did the gentlemanly thing, and walked around the coral blades hiding their camp on the coral mound. Neph was no longer in view, even if Sunny turned to face her. Nephis quickly made sure that Sunny and his shadow were properly gone, before dropping her crude seaweed clothes and summoning the Puppeteer's Shroud.

After a few moments of light bundling together from out of nowhere, Nephis told Sunny that it was safe for him to come back to the camp. Sunny came back, and immediately enjoyed what he saw.

The grey fabric of the suit's main clothing had conformed to Nephis' shape tightly. The darker shade of the leather plates contrasted perfectly with Nephis' short silver hair. The leather vambraces and shin guards hugged her limbs well, and the boots were not unstylish at all. If Sunless looked like a standoffish rouge in this armor, then Nephis looked like the princess of an elite assassin clan. The outfit looked roughly the same, but the difference in the people wearing it was just too vast.

. . . Sunny wanted to cry. Why was he so ugly? Did the dead gods wake up just to smash his face as an infant? Sunny certainly felt that way. Justice for the creeps and the crazies, please? Please?

Luckily, Nephis paid no attention to the bumbling fool gawking at her. If she had noticed his jaw drop in such a ridiculous manner, he would've been put on pervert watch again, especially after that careless remark about Cassie earlier. She didn't realize that Cassie was more akin to Sunny's sister to him. 

Sunny was very focused on his breakfast while they ate.

***

Sunny was leading the group through the thick mud of the coral labyrinth quickly. The group pf three had not gotten all that far towards the headless knight statue before they ran into scavengers. Sunny quickly explained his findings, and they walked around the beasts. The first group they had come across was a staggering group of six.  They didn't take long to have to circle around a group of three, and then a group of four. Finally, Sunny's eyes gleamed. Nephis seemed to notice the change, as well.

"What's happening?"

Sunny scoffed.

"We won't make it to the statue if we keep avoiding fights. I found an isolated scavenger. We can kill it and get closer to the statue."

Nephis nodded her head. She liked this line of reasoning.

"I'll play bait, since you gave me your armor. You need Shadow Fragments anyway, right?"

Cassie was confused. 

"What are Shadow fragments?"

Sunny rolled his eyes. Cassie had not slept through him forging the Shadow Bond with Nephis, but he had not yet gone into detail about how his Shadow Core was different from a regular soul core.

"I have to fill my Shadow core with Shadow Fragments instead of regular soul essence. I can only get them through killing creatures, for now."

"For now?"

"My aspect makes me very unique, so I'm sure that I will find other ways to gain them, eventually."

Finally, They were close enough to the creature to start a rush on it. It was just a short turn and a dash away from them now. Sunny had Nephis pull Cassie into a small side path where she would be relatively safe. 

The two sleepers dashed around the corner. Nephis was faster, and ran directly toward the creature. Sunny was slower, but he ran silently and stuck to the shadow of the labyrinth wall. The scavenger didn't notice him, so it focused on Nephis. She ran right past the creature. It tried to swing its claw at her, but it missed and she skidded to a stop on its back side. 

The creature turned to face Nephis, but Sunny was waiting for exactly that. He was perfectly aligned a few steps behind her. The instant the scavenger turned its head to face Nephis was the same instant it died. It did not ever get to find out why.

[You have slain an awakened beast, Carapace Scavenger.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

[You have received an Echo.]