Shadow Slave: The Sound of Glass

As Waynie walked away, the corpses on the ground slowly started to rise again. Ki Song's authority over death meant that all who died in her domain would reemerge to serve her once more. If Waynie had been a hostile entity, they likely would have attacked. But none of the alarms played their foreboding melodies and Waynie hurried to get out of the way.

Ravenheart, where Waynie's family lived was about a march of an hour away. He had not been there in several weeks, ever since he had been supposed to enter the nightmare. Back then, the war had not been in full swing and Boss had wanted to use the time to transcend to sainthood in order to make a difference.

Waynie himself had little hope to come back from such a dangerous undertaking alive, but his loyalty compelled him to not abandon her.

Yet, this was exactly what he had done in the end:

It was supposed to be a simple supply run. A couple of soul shards, memories, food and other goods harvested from nightmare creatures. All things they couldn't really use in the nightmare but were badly needed for the war. Waynie had been all too happy to volunteer to bring it to the frontlines. The whole exercise was only supposed to take half a day and Bosses cohort had even suggested waiting for him. While Waynie's flaw made him an inferior fighter, his glass tears would've been invaluable tools to carry the master's safely through the nightmare. A group of five awakened was supposed to take the supply crates off of him but a dreadful nightmare creature, a fallen beast had assaulted the group. They had managed to prevail and kill it but were no longer fit to travel on their own.

Waynie knew at this point that Bosses cohort would enter the nightmare without him, but there was still time left for him to arrive later. It was only about a bit over a week's delay. Four days to reach the support units, marching towards the death zone known as Godgrave that no human was supposed to ever enter. And five days of travel back to the nightmare seed. Unfortunately, when the group arrived at the given location, the supply team had already pushed ahead. And they were forced to follow suit. At this point Waynie logically would have been able to turn around and leave the rest to the five awakened under his supervision. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. One might argue it was responsibility that had compelled him to do this, but in his heart, he knew the truth. He was scared to enter the nightmare. Even more scared than he was of the war.

When they eventually made it to the supply team, their leader, another master, ordered Waynie to stay to support the supply lines. Nightmare creature attacks were now frequent and because Waynie could foresee them, he reluctantly agreed with the command. He argued, it would just be for a little bit. Then, something happened that changed everything.

Several of his glass shards suddenly started to vibrate. But among all of them, there was one that he could not help but to always pay special attention to, the "Cry of a callous death". The deep sound of the tear, a 'E1' musical note was especially designed to warn Waynie without alerting the enemy. This tear meant that something undefeatable fiend was approaching. He wanted to scream to warn the others, but instead, he couldn't breathe. His fear all too great, Waynie stumbled backwards and ran. If he could only escape, the sacrifice of the others was not in vain.

Waynie turned around one last time and saw the five awakened that he had brought here get captured by a fog of darkness. That was what Waynie believed.

A magnificent shadow creature appeared out of the fog. He could not say if it was tall or short, but his instincts told him that it had to be massive.

From the resonance of his tears he could tell that the creature was not corrupted.

This was a mythical being some believed to be human. But that was impossible. Waynie had heard of this creature. The ruler of a citadel that could speak the language of the waking world and had saved soldiers of Ki Song from peril. This was the Lord of Shadows, a neutral observer of the war. An aberration. It's will was so overwhelming that Waynie could not help but go to his knees.

The vibrating tears started to play a melody as if responding to the presence of the higher being. Waynie stretched his arms, watching as all the light around him was swallowed.

Then for a second, the creature turned into a human and then disappeared. When Waynie looked down onto his chest, he noticed that his arms were no longer stretched but tied onto his back. Likewise, his legs were tied. And all his tears were gone.

Waynie pushed little pieces of glass out of his fingers and cut the black ropes on his hands and feet and waited for the ominous presence to disappear.

As soon as he couldn't feel the dreadful presence anymore, he started running. Running back to the nightmare seed that he had abandoned. He did not know what happened to everyone else. Neither did he care. He was on another mission.

Waynie ran for about half a day before he finally dropped into the soil. He realized that he could not continue, alone near Godgrave, exposed and with his tears taken from him. Had the creature managed to preserve them? It didn't matter, Waynie had to remake them all. He sighed. This would take several days. But he could not keep walking around the dream realm blind.

The next few days, Waynie spent remaking his tears. It was a terribly slow process. Most of the glass he produced turned out like crystals. Much unlike glass, molten by artisans. Waynie had some method to get the crystalline edges of the glass to reshape into beautiful drops. Which was to heat them, just like a glass blower would do.

Thus, Waynie had to make a fire. But it wasn't hot enough. He tried to heat it inside a glass casket, but it melted the entire structure and Waynie never got to work on the tears.

Finally he used the bricks of the freshly made road near him and managed to reshape the valuable objects, one at a time. Every single piece took him several hours to complete.

The glass alone was not all the material he needed. A lot of the shards were filled with color. He had three of them that could cause in combination various effects. There were other components involved as well.

After insipid days of hardship Waynie finally rose to his feet. His back slightly bent backwards and glass shards protruding from his arms. From the shards there was always a small resonance. It never stopped. Before, Rainy had an own tear to counter this effect the 'Noise of Silence'. But now he had decided that this tear was not effective enough in his collection. It had to make space for more important options.

Many days later, shaken up by earthquakes and with his glass tears intact he finally arrived at the nightmare seed. It was no longer there, and a mound of mud had collapsed on top of it.