Holding the seams of the white robe in the same hand that was still covered in his once intricately designed, beautiful crystal gauntlet that now looked ghostly pale, chipped and was worth almost as little as a crude ujo as the mana had left it after its circuit was restlessly annihilated he bend his knee and got closer to the unconscious face of the archer that had attacked him without any reasons.
The face was almost uncanny, from up close it was fairly obvious to Cades, or at least he hoped that it was obvious to him, but the archer was indeed male, just as his intuition had been telling him at first, that, however was not what was so uncanny and eerie about it.
Interestingly enough the archers face was perfect, it hat the smoothest skin that Cades had ever seen, smoother than he would've ever expected skin to be, so perfect that he touched it to make sure that it wasn't just a intricate mask put on so that his enemies wouldn't know who he was.
Perfeclty designed, every nook of the face, long, golden hair that seemed to sometimes shift colours and reached down to their waist, perfect constitution, relatively pale skin but still very much of a natural colour and if that wasn't already insulting enough to Cades who must've looked as if he hadn't slept in half a dozen years, not even the thin lips of the man were cracked.
Overall the body was insultingly perfect, too perfect even.
Maybe it was illusion magic, maybe it was something else, but Cades had the feeling as if he was being entranced while looking at the unconscious males face.
As such he got closer to the face, moved his hand down, pulled the hood of the robe up and covered the face of whatever this archer might claim to be when he woke up.
After that he moved away from the entrancing body of the archer and sat down just a few feet away, facing the archer with an unwavering look that must've seemed as if he was intent on killing him and eating his corpse.
And with the fact that Cades hadn't eaten anything since entering this hellscape, with the facthe hadn't even encountered any monsters except for those restlessly swimming in the endless void, those he didn't want to even interact with, he was starving.
So much so that Cades did have that very thought in the back of his mind, only a small, small part of his mind, the darkest corner, right next to the corner telling him to give up, to just die in the endless light below.
But Cades didn't care, he was assessing the situation.
Cades artifacts were damaged because of the battle, and even before that many of them had been destroyed, and now, finally, he was going to look at everything that he had lost.
The first thing he thought about was his bag, the bag he had probably lost during his fight with that abomination, the kurakkan that had resided between the continents, it had been lost above that monster, probably having been devoured and giving the monster even more powers.
Maybe... Cades had no idea what a kurakkan was truly capable of, it was more of a being that was heard of in myths, legends and tales sung by a old, toothless bard in the middle of a tavern full of heroes with a dark figure sitting in the corner and brooding above a cup of tea.
After that he began thinking about the most important thing that he had lost next to that, his weapons.
Interestingly enough he had lost both of them around the same time, the clash with the nameless archer, his crystal gauntlet finally chipping apart completely, barely even holding on, and the staff of which he had been so theatrical in its creation having been thrown down, into the endless light and the same with his cloak he had robbed from the body of the demon of the skies.
A truly scary fate now that he thought about it.
With darkness one could at least assume that there might be something down there, but with light one could be certain of that, but the brighter the light the worse it would normally be.
A dim light might be glowing coals, might be a city with countless lanterns burning far below and forming a wave of dim, warm light to come up to them who flew high above, unaware of them.
No light might mean a bottomless abyss, might mean a floor just a few miles below, could mean anything really.
But this much light... Cades didn't really know what it was, he stood to his first thought of it being a sun, he assumed that that theory was probably the most likely scenario out of all he could think of, and there weren't many.
Now that he began thinking about it, his armor and clothes had also been heavily impacted, because of the silvery tendrils drilling into his flesh and vanishing, he shuddered, they were as full of holes as a Swiss cheese in a factory full of cheese-eating maggots with adhd.
His clothes had been affected by the same thing.
Cades didn't even remember the original colour of the light clothes he had been wearing underneath the cloak he had now lost, but now it was of a dark red colour, scrunching as he moved and feeling disgusting.
If he hadn't been constantly fighting for his survival there would've probably been maggots squirming in there by now, maybe there were some parasites after all, but that didn't matter to him.
It was hanging down in rags, exposing some private areas, though, luckily enough not those of the deeper regions, those were relatively safe, however his arms and much of his torsoe was now without protection and still covered in a crust of the dirt that had accumalated on his skin all this time.
At that