Once again, Sunny was plummeting with terrible speed through the sky. Only this time, the vehicle he had chosen to transport him was even stranger, as well as spinning like crazy, with the wind roaring deafeningly all around. Luckily, he couldn't get sick as a shadow… otherwise, his already empty stomach would have become emptier.
'Curses! Don't break, you damn bone!'
The vertebra of the dead dragon was cracking and slowly breaking apart… but, miraculously, still holding together.
At this height, the Crushing was deadly enough to pulverize the flesh of a Saint — a bona fide demi-god — into a bloody paste. Maybe even a big, red cloud. But the adamantine dragonbone was only now beginning to slowly crumble apart.
Once the process started, though, it became unstoppable.
Sunny panicked as he watched wides crack appear on the white surface all around him. Then, a piece of the bone flew away, letting in a chaotic flood of light. Cursing, he shifted away from the breach, but seconds later, another appeared, and then another. The size of the shadow he could hide in was growing smaller and smaller.
'Crap!'
Soon, there were more holes and cracks in the bone than he could count.
And then... it crumbled completely.
At the last second, Sunny slid onto the biggest remaining slab of the ancient vertebra, and then went into a crazy dance, shifting from one side of it to another as the fragment spun and exposed different parts of it to the sunlight.
Small pieces broke off from it, and then, the fragment itself cracked, too.
'Argh!'
Finally, the piece of the adamantine vertebrae disintegrated into a rain of splinters that were too small to fit Sunny into their shadows. With nowhere else to hide, he was thrown out into the physical world, his body instantly becoming the victim of the bone-breaking force of the Crushing.
…Luckily, his bones were now much more robust than before.
And the Crushing was already not as irrevocably obliterating as it had been higher up.
As a loud scream escaped from Sunny's mouth, he continued to fall, feeling his body go through a cruel meatgrinder. But with the help of two shadows and a generous outpour of shadow essence, it wasn't enough to kill him, or even seriously wound him. It was simply painful, damaging, and unpleasant.
The tail bone of the dead dragon had carried him down for long enough to go through the worst layers of the Crushing.
Now, all he had to do was stick the landing.
With a suppressed groan, Sunny struggled to control his fall and finally managed to stabilize his body, preventing it from spinning madly.
The Chained Isles were now much, much closer than they had been before.
In fact, he could even recognize a few nearest ones.
'Don't you dare miss, you pale bastard!'
He really, really didn't want to repeat the whole damned process again.
Summoning the Dark Wing, Sunny waited for a second for the dragonfly cloak to activate its enchantment, and then slowly started to turn his fall into a glide.
A single thought rang in his mind:
'I made it… I actually made it… crap, I really did!'
***
Some time later, a figure of a young man fell from the skies and nimbly landed on the index finger of the giant iron hand that lay in the center of a peaceful, quiet island. The young man looked a bit strange… he was naked above the waist, with several half-healed burns covering his pale skin, and a menacing, intricate tattoo of a coiling black serpent covering his arms, as well as a large part of his torso.
His black hair was wild and disheveled, and his dark eyes seemed a little crazy.
Sunny swayed a little, caught his balance…
...And turned to a group of Awakened who were sitting around a dancing campfire, staring at him with their mouths wide open.
A bright smile appeared on his face.
"Ah! Good day to you, fellow humans. Say…"
As mad intensity appeared in his eyes, Sunny licked his lips and asked hoarsely:
"...Is that food I see roasting over your fire?"