The work progressed slowly.
There was no day or night in the Sky Below, and Sunny did not particularly care for tracking ti anymore. He only knew how much of it had passed because of the happy shadow, which continued to act as Rain's guardian sowhere far away.
The task of learning how to read the forbidden runes was engrossing.
Sunny was not trying to decipher the ancient script blindly. He was familiar with many variations of the runic language that had been used in the Dream Realm… or rather, in the multitude of realms that would one day beco its various regions. The languages the people of the bygone eras had spoken were different, and so were the writing systems they had used.
However, they all shared a common root… Hope, who had invented the concept of writing and the original runic script. Being familiar with that script and many of its descendants, Sunny could sowhat infer the aning of derivative runic languages, and learn how to read them.
That task was not an easy one, even for a Saint but after spending a few weeks in the Ebony Tower, doing nothing but studying Nether's writings, he was making quick progress.
Sunny studied the runes, took walks along the edge of the scorched island, slept, and lay idly on his cot, staring at the celling. His life was tranquil, easy, and entertaining.
Truly free of all burdens.
…Sotis, he felt the desire to claw at the walls of the Obsidian Tower.
In those monts, he visited the lightless shrine and stared at the statue of the Goddess of Black Skies.
The face of the statue was obscured by a veil, but the sculpture was so exquisitely carved that the veil seed to be made from fine silk, not cold stone. He could see a vague silhouette of a divinely beautiful face, outlined by its delicate folds and creases.
Sunny couldn't help but feel that it shared a close resemblance to the faces of the broken porcelain dolls that piled into a mountain on the lowest level of the tower… as well as Saint's inhumanly beautiful visage.
Had Nether been obsessed with Storm God, or simply too lazy to sculpt a multitude of faces when there already was a perfectly fine one for him to copy? He had been a very practical man, after all… as well as the most impractical of them. Why else would he rise in rebellion against the gods?
As Sunny made advancents in his understanding of the forbidden runes, he was able to make a rough estimate of when exactly the Demon of Destiny had resided in the Ebony Tower.
It had been in the latter half of the Golden Age, during Hope's imprisonnt. Nether seed to have already fallen out with Storm God, but was not contemplating going to war against the heavens yet.
Instead, he had turned his back on the world and dedicated himself to his misguided passion — trying to create living beings, which was an authority exclusive to the gods.
Much like Sunny had turned his back on the world and dedicated himself to studying these forbidden runes.
The Ebony Tower seed to attract disheartened n.
Most of the runes carved into its walls were… esoteric, to say the least. Sunny slowly learned how to understand their aning, but that did not an that he understood what they ant. It would be the sa if soone had given him a highly advanced scientific paper on quantum physics to read — knowing human language would not help him comprehend the contents.
The fact that Nether's writing had never been ant to be read by anyone except the Demon of Destiny himself did not help, either. He had left these notes for himself, so they weren't very detailed.
There were many passages like:
«Dissected. Structure, pathways, flow, Basic chanics hide the deep complexity of process and function. Material?»
«Correlation or causation? Potential hints at obsolescence. Source unknown, observation flawed.»
Sunny could not really understand the aning of these passages, but he did discern several underlying thes.
Nether's goal was to create a living being, and as such, his research had been developing in two directions — the creation of a body, and the creation of a soul. The forr was purely ti-consuming, but the latter seed to vex the daemon to no end.
How did the gods will souls into existence? Why were the creatures created by the gods able to propagate, giving birth to new souls? What was the secret? There was no answer.
The Demon of Fate had created weaving, while the Demon of Desire had created runic sorcery. The Demon of Destiny, however, had not authored an original school of sorcery of his own, taking elents from wherever he felt useful and bending them to serve his purpose.
However, he had possessed the deepest understanding of soul power out of everyone Sunny had known, except for the gods themselves. Nether had been able to manipulate souls and soul essence to a frightening degree, accomplishing things that should not have been possible.
And yet, he had not been able to create a living being out of nothing, no matter how Ingenious his thods were and how great his determination was. That was one thing that the Demon of Destiny could not build.
For a ti.
Sunny knew that the daemon had eventually succeeded, creating Saint and her people. His perception was influenced by knowing the end result, but back then, Nether must have been daring to the point of insanity, to pursue sothing that had never been done before, and was not supposed to be possible.
What had motivated him to persist in his seemingly hopeless endeavor?
Sunny did not know, and doubted that he would learn the answer in the Ebony Tower. The runes carved into its walls were Nether's research notes, not a personal diary — there was no ntion of the daemon's feelings or emotions, as if he had not been capable of having them at all.
That said… not everything written on the black walls was dry and void of feeling.
After weeks of studying the runes, Sunny concentrated on three fragnts, all unlike the rest of the passages he had translated.
The first one seed like a poem or a short story that Nether had written down for so unknown reason.
It read:
[Why does the fla wane?]
[I asked the black skies.]
[«What is life?»]
[The skies answered in a subtle voice.]
[«A mother is watching her children die slowly of starvation. There is only enough food for one of them, but she is hungry, too. That is life.»]
[«The war is over, and those who discarded their weapons to surrender are made slaves. They are brought to an arena and told to kill each other. A young warrior looks at a sword, his hand trembling. That is life.»]
[«A man loves his wife, but feels lonely in her company. One day, walking the market, he sees a beautiful stranger smiling at him sweetly. He hesitates to return the smile. That is life, as well.»]
[I pondered.]
[«So… life is a choice?»]
[The skies laughed.]
[«Life is desire. It's a desire to be alive.»]
[The skies were illuminated by a myriad of stars, burning in the beautiful darkness.]
[Like the fla of desire had burned in the hideous void, giving birth to the seven gods.]
[Why does the fla wane?]
Sunny thought about the strange story for a long ti, Was it a fable Nether had written down on a whim? Or the transcript of an actual conversation between him and Storm God?
In any case, it had to have aning. The Demon of Destiny was not soone who would have carved runes into stone without a reason.
He had been trying to create life, so the story could have been a contemplation on the nature of life. However… to Sunny, It seed like there were many layers to this passage.
The Goddess of Black Skies had described three situations. One was about hunger, one was about the desire to survive, and the last one was about lust. So, had she been trying to say that life was hunger, fear, and lust?
He did not think so. It seed that the exact situation did not matter too much… what mattered was that the character of each anecdote was faced with a choice. Nether had been the Demon of Choice, so… was that the true aning of the story?
Sohow, Sunny felt that it was not that important, either.
The truly important part was the first and the last lines of the story.
Why did the fla wane?
The waning fla was, presumably, desire — the primordial desire that had been born in the Void, and gave birth to the gods in turn.
Sunny rembered the murals describing the origin of the daemons clearly, both those that he had seen in the drowned library of Fallen Grace, and those he had seen in the Estuary.
On one, a golden fla was burning in the darkness. On the next, seven figures — the gods- were surrounding the greatly diminished fla, Sitting on the edge of the Ebony Island and looking at the sea of divine flas above, he blinked.
«No, wait… but really…»
Why did the fla diminish?
The divine flas that had created the Sky Below waned slowly over thousands of years, until only this much was left. One day, they would be extinguished altogether.
But why had the primordial desire waned after giving birth to the gods?
Did it have sothing to do with the secret of life?
Nether had built the Ebony Tower because he wanted to use divine fla to create living beings, but he eventually abandoned that path and returned to the Underworld. Had he been trying to substitute the fla of desire with the fla of divinity?
All of it seed too… interconnected, sohow, and encapsulated in the strange story to be a re coincidence.
However, even if it was, Sunny could not, for the life of him, understand what it actually ant.
He summoned Saint, shared his theory with her, and asked for her opinion.
…Saint, of course, remained silent, simply staring at him with indifference.
«Thought so.»
Sunny clicked his tongue, dismissed the Shadow, and returned to the tower with a sullen expression on his pale face.
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