Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

Outside of the now-empty Temple of the Chalice, the dawn was slowly painting the world in a beautiful shade of lilac. Sunny was sitting on the ground, staring at a scarlet odachi and a spear with a blade etched with runes that lay on the ground in front of him. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Veliona was flopped on the ground nearby, her wooden mask nowhere to be seen.

March was also close. She was standing in front of a pile of weapons, some of them whole, some broken and melted by the fire. Despite her exhaustion and injuries, the little girl, whose body was almost entirely covered by bruises and lacerations, was picking up one weapon after another, then thrusting them into the rocky ground with somber determination.

The graveyard of swords surrounding the temple was slowly growing, thanks to her efforts.

"Hey! Aren’t you going to help?"

Sunny observed March for a while, then sighed. He did not see a lot of sense in leaving so many enchanted weapons behind, even if most of them were only equivalent to Awakened Memories. Despite that, he did not stop her, and even moved to help her.

He did produce a new thought, though.

In the future he knew, there was no such graveyard around the ruined Temple of the Chalice. Which meant that no one had done this last mercy for the War Maidens slaughtered in the great hall. Was that the reason they had turned into vengeful wraiths, perhaps?

...Maybe. Or maybe the swords had just been stolen or destroyed at some point later in time. He had not seen the rest of the graveyard in the future as well, after all.

So then... what, exactly, was the connection between the Nightmares and the Dream Realm?

Before, Sunny had been sure that Nightmares were simply recreations of the past. Now, however, he was not so certain. After all, the Temple of the Chalice was destroyed in the same exact manner as it had been in the future. Which meant that... he had always been the one to destroy it?

The Seed of Nightmare was a portal to the actual past?

No, this didn’t make any sense. If that was true, then too many things would have been changed in the real Dream Realm every time an Awakened conquered their Nightmare. The connection was too easy to spot... all he had to do was to go and carve his name into one of the menhirs of the Sanctuary, then check if it had actually appeared outside the Seed.

People weren’t fools... they would have known, by now. Nightmares were almost certainly simply recreations of the past of the Dream Realm, and not the actual thing. After hundreds of thousands of years, nobody had came to that conclusion.

However, the coincidence of how the Temple of the Chalice had ended up was too glaring to be natural. Logically, the appearance of Awakened from the Waking World should have changed the course of events that had happened in the past completely. And yet, it had not... at least not yet.

He could think of two explanations for that, one far less frightening than the other.

The first explanation was that this was a simple case of his knowledge of the future informing his actions in the past. Sunny had thought of destroying the chalice because he had already seen it destroyed in the future, and so, the cycle had been complete without any ominous reasons. Just due to a logical connection.

The second explanation... was far more concerning, at least to Sunny. He knew more about Fate than most people. He knew how hard it was to change it, let alone escape its stranglehold completely. So what... what if Fate had a pull on all things, had influence over all of existence, and pushed everything, everywhere in a certain direction?

To a certain conclusion, no less.

If so, the details of what happened could potentially change, but the end would inevitably, and inescapably, be the same. That... that was a thought that terrified Sunny beyond belief.

He had proclaimed Fate to be his sworn enemy, after all. And now, that enemy seemed for fearsome than ever.

***

The next morning, the inhabitants of the Sanctuary saw a very peculiar thing. A towering four-armed Devil climbed from beneath the island. On one shoulder was a scrawny girl of eleven or twelve, and the other held a teenager with an artificial eye in her right socket. The two of them wildly kicked their legs as the Devil carried them around.

"Gee-up! Faster!"

"If you don’t go faster, my finger might slip..."

"...Isn’t that a bit much?"

"That’s just what he’s into."

"...What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Basically—"

"Shut up!"

Sunny used his hands to grab their legs in order to get them to stop flailing around. His fingers were abnormally long, so one hand were easily able to wrap around two legs.

"Ouch! My bruises!"

March made a pitiful face and whimpered.

"Oh, no... please don’t hurt me, Uncle Devil! I’ll be good, I promise! I’ll try to recover from the beatings faster... you don’t need to get angry..."

As the people stared at the girl’s terribly bruised body with dark expressions, then looked at Sunny angrily, he hissed:

"What? The rest of you want some, too? Get in line."

Having been threatened by a fearsome Devil, most people looked away as if they haven’t saw anything.

’Rimbos...’

Sunny snorted.

March wore a blank expression on her face.

"You... really have no shame."

He turned his head slightly to glare up at her.

"Why should I be ashamed of something I never did? And when did you develop a sense of humor? A crappy one, at that."

March huffed.

"For your information, I’m way funnier than you."

While they traveled back to the Sanctuary, Sunny had to explain the general situation to March. He also had to tell her that Seele wasn’t around, and that her and Veliona had been seperate. To do so, he had to explain Seele’s Flaw...

As such, she wasn’t too surprised by Veliona’s actions and personality, as she already understood the two were different people.

Sunny’s eyes looked towards Noctis’s estate with murderous flames in his eyes.

’That bastard swindled me again.’