[The legend of the accursed king]
Long ago, long before the end of the kings that once ruled on ehetria there was a king, a king that defied the gods, a legendary ruler that always won, he won with an army and often without it, the strongest ehetrian in mythology, at least as far as Cades knew, but he wasn't especially knowledgeable in this, the legend of the accursed king was quite literally used as a children story when they wouldn't behave.
Wameshindwa ruled over three of the five continents that separated ehetria, according to the legend he was above the lord-rank, at least, the rank he was at exactly was neither named or even mentioned in the story at all, but that didn't matter much.
King Wameshindwa had been on a crusade against the gods, he had slain and executed most of the religious fanatics that had poisoned the ehetrian society back when he was on that very same crusade, within just a few weeks.
One might find that cruel but many ehetrians agreed with the decision, albeit only after a few centuries, the people of the time were just too terrified that they would be next or that he would lose control over himself.
Ehetria was poisoned with many followers of evil gods back then, they tortured innocents, they killed countless and did many other things that were barely ever mentioned as this was just a children story, though there was probably a list somewhere in a library, if ehetria hadn't been completely burned already.
The king took care of that problem, he killed them and people celebrated, after that however legend says he didn't do his duties anymore, legend says he continued battling against all, so much so that there was no religion on ehetria during the time that Cades lived there, and in all likelihood for all of eternity after what had happened not too long ago.
At the height of his countless heroes from various different worlds tried to defeat him, at first a single hero appeared, then a dozen appeared, then a hundred tried to rip him apart at once, then an army of heroes appeared and tried to finally defeat him, but they all failed.
Until a burning skeleton appeared out of nowhere and entered the Castel and after that the king was never seen again.
The people called that being the "mungu", a synonym for divine in the ancient ehetrian language.
The story was a warning to everyone, a warning to never go to far, a reminder to never defy the gods.
And to some it was the opposite.
[Reality]
After a few more hours of walking and simply reconsidering about everything that had happened up until now he continued listening to the rhythm of his continuous steps, practically falling into a kind of trance.
Finally he arrived at the end of the onyx chain.
There was a building that seemed to resemble a small temple made of ancient, dark stone, though the stone had probably just become ancient over time as was usual with such materials.
It was really simple, just a small building in the form of a polygon, dressed in beautiful decorations that were mostly made of stone themselves, different from the often weird materials that the gods used, on the other hand the temple seemed to have an enchanting quality towards it, simply calling out to Cades and basically forcing him to take step after step towards the temple which seemed to become darker with each and every one of his steps.
The hut was only about two dozen square feet across and a dozen feet high with a triangle stone roof and a few headless statues on the side that seemed to resemble not humans but monsters, not a single species but various, he saw something that resembled a kurakkan, the mungu and some others that Cades had also only heard about in legends or just never at all, there was a headless horse with sixteen legs, a gigantic worm with a dozen wings and even more arms and so many more, there were dozens all looking as if they had been made by petrifying them, had it not been for the fact that the sizes were completely wrong, as was obvious with the kurakkan.
Finally Cades entered the lone temple floating in a sea on nothing, not even thinking about what could go wrong, simply enchanted by the almost magnetic pull it had on his whole body.
The inside of the temple was covered in silver coins that Cades had never seen before, they had one simple but interesting eye on one side, the one that was almost always facing the ceiling, with a transparent gem in the middle and a symbol resembling a few lines together, similarly to numbers which they probably were.
In the middle of the small ocean of silver coins there was a altar, about as big as he himself, three foot high, six and a half foot long and three foot wide, though Cades himself wasn't three feet wide of course.
It was fashioned of a dark onyx stone and had some barely noticeable ripples on top of them but it was fairly clear that it was used to bring sacrifices, whatever that might have been, to whatever had been worshipped here.
As Cades walked even further, slowly shaking of his weird trance, he began looking around in more detail, the entire temple was fairly simple overall, with there barely being anything other than the coins, the altar and coloured paintings on the wall that seemed to be slowly fading after staying there, on the wall for many hundreds of years in all likelihood until he noticed what was above the wall paintings.
Above the paintings there was an artistic black, intricately created black line that separated them from what seemed to be a army of golden beings resembling that which he was right now, each with eyes made out of transparent gems that were glowing in various different colours, Cades could see almost all colours he could imagine, each probably representing someone, and all the eyes seemingly looking towards a giant, golden eye out of which a white light shone, one of the only colours that weren't attended for in the army.
The eye had the same design as the tiny ones on the silver coins, simple but imposing, just that this one had two irises instead of one, two irises that seemed to be interconnected.
After Cades continued looking at the beautiful golden figures that had directly caught his eye he noticed that each of the colours had one figure that was more detailed and often of a different species than the others, albeit not much more detailed, like most here, except for the wall painting it was quite simple in artistic design.
Finally, after shacking of the entrancement with the beautiful figures he started looking at the comparatively crude paintings on the wall.