As Cades stepped out of the temple in which he had spent an unknown amount of time, the sun still at the same position as it had been since he entered here, a ocean of light illuminating the entirety of the endless, expanding void and the net of chains that seemed to connect all the lonely, floating islands.
In the distance he saw something, another of the floating islands, a small one, just like the one he was standing on, many miles away, and he finally started his journey towards the next island, and hopefully one step closer to his goal, or at least to escaping this accursed place.
As he was thinking this he tried calming down his heart that was beating in excitement at the idea of going to the next island, in many ways this place was like a game of chance, the next island could be an oasis that would heal him, a cohort of people, hell itself, another temple or just a island filled with a normal, luscious forest for all Cades knew.
Actually, now that Cades was thinking of this, the chance that this was the only temple in this realm was close to zero, this place seemed to be endless, how could there not be more, and maybe those could have a way for him to escape, learn the rest of the story and, hopefully, find out what was up with those silver coins that had gone into his body.
Cades shivered at the thought of the countless silver tendrils drilling into his body and jumped down from the small ledge that was separating him from the titanic chain, that was hilariously big compared to the small island, as if the island was just used as another link in the endless chain, just a slightly bigger and deformed link.
As Cades fell onto the chain that was just a few feet beneath him, a small ripple was sent through the endless chain, though it barely moved because of the sheer weight of the seemingly endless chain.
This was a bit weird though, why did they have weight if they were quite literally floating in nothingness, and why did the ripple not stop extending...
Cades was afraid that the laws of magic and just simple physics were completely different in this place, or maybe the chains themselves were enchanted with the spells to cause it to happen, then it would at least be calming to him, at least he would have some closure then.
But that didn't really matter right now, he started walking, walking, walking and walking, for hours on end, or at least that's what Cades assumed, he had no way to measure the time except for his own sense of time, and his sense of time wasn't exactly the best.
Ehetrians learnt to tell time by the sun at a young age, it was all part of orientation during flight after all, so much so that ehetrians never really cared for learning to measure time with just their mind, and then there was the fact that Cades was only able to think and wasn't really able to do anything else.
He was bored out of his mind and so he began oggling the creatures surrounding him.
They were truly interesting, he had never heard of most of them and many of them should not even be able to fly, but they were capable of doing that anyways.
Maybe they had adapted to living here through the centuries, or even millennia.
Some had dozens of eyes, some hundreds of arms, some had legs as hair instead of the normal hair, as if they were a giant lion with a powerful mane.
And then Cades eyes widened as he saw something.. no... someone walking towards him, raising a seemingly powerful, silver bow and aiming towards his head, uncaring for the fact that Cades wasn't a monster, or anything of the likes.
The attacker was of the same species as Cades was right now, whatever that species may be and wore a gigantic silver bow that resembled his sword but was seemingly much less intricate, as if it hadn't been made out of the liquid silver but simply out of silver itself.
A relatively bad choice for a weapon as silver was mendable, soft and easily deformed, as such it was only used as ceremonial weapons, but on the other hand silver was also often used for wands and other magical artifacts because of that very same specifications, it was also highly conductive in relation to magical energy, gold could also be used but was much worse in the second regard.
This was information that any artificer would have to know for obvious reasons, but this also meant that the opponent used magic instead of simple arrows, and from what he was seeing probably ice magic, a magic that condenses and cools down the water-particles flying around in the air, and this place was not without them, most could not live without water after all, whether in the air or in their mouths.
Cades watched, carefully analysing the situation with an unreasonably calm mind for this situation, and saw as the hooded figure quickly condensed an arrow made of a kind of glowing ice that was exuding a golden light and let go of the bows handle, shooting it towards Cades at an unbelievable speed, as expected from how powerful and hard to pull that bow, a bow made out of metal, seemed to be.
The arrow soared through the air, leaving a trail of golden light behind, as Cades evaded the arrow with a simple movement of his upper body, not really taking the enemy serious.
He could sense that the enemy was only at the middle of the lord rank, not nearly powerful enough to kill him, he was probably just scared.
As such he quickly moved, leaving his staff behind on the floor because of the danger that the chains might shake too much, picked up his new sword and rushed towards the enemy that was still about a mile away but somehow able to shoot him.
And then a rain of arrows began to fall onto the onyx chain.