As he was running away countless other fleshy apparitions began trying to grab him, there were claws, hands, the aforementioned tentacles, claws belonging to a grab, moving twigs and even just skeletal excesses that seemed to move without being connected to anything.
But not only those fleshy apparitions that seemed to be made for grabbing, crushing, cutting or suffocating were created, instead countless different beings spread out throughout the whole world, Cades could see faces resembling those of birds, of krakens all connected to the aforementioned incredibly long, growing necks that seemed to be run through with bones that were as elastic as gum.
Not only animalistic faces were visible though, there were mainly oceanic faces, countless krill, countless shrimp forms, albeit that they were miniature and tiny, the faces that were on it were countless, they all sprung out of the fleshy, infinitely extending mass, pulsating and causing gigantic waves to run throughout the entire, already stormy, ocean.
And yet there were screaming faces resembling those of humans that were rapidly approaching the fleeing, tiny snack which to the kurakkan probably seemed like a tiny energy drink of pure, condensed mana.
Cades, who was blindly flying away, with his arms being aligned in the wind but still visibly shaking at the horrid being that was extending countless greedy maws towards it, so much so that he didn't even notice that a humanlike face with one, gigantic eye in the middle of its forehead and gigantic canines protruding from its mouth that was opened at an unbelievable anger and ready to bite down and devour Cades if it had only been a few dozen feet closer.
But as it was grossing in a horrendous storm began raging all around the infinitely extending, growing masses with the now extending mountainous excesses growing higher and higher and forcing Cades to looking everywhere, including behind him and growing even more scared of the grotesque monster that was so intent on devouring him.
And if that wasn't already enough the air was starting to get too thin, even for him, as they had already passed the clouds resulting in an added problem being that he had been blinded by the clouds for about a minute in which his face had been whipped by the endless water-drops within the gigantic, seemingly endless, grey cloud.
And, finally, when the mass that the endless monster was able to send up here, though it probably didn't try all to hard as the gigantic body of the monster still, almost entirely, resided under the blanket of the endless blue, though most of the blue had now been cleared away and been replaced by a underlying blackness had caught up to him and one of the smaller but undeniably swifter tendrils had slithered around his ankles and was trying to stop him from ascending even further.
Cades, who was barely able to think because of the thin air and the sheer panic that the grotesque being's tendril that was still covered in the very same black goo as it had always been covered in brought up.
Because of the panic he didn't even try to remove the tendril at first, he simply continued flying, and not only because of the fact that the black goo had basically eliminated the feeling in his entire body and even turned his vision blurry, but also because of the terror that he felt, he barely had any mind to care for anything else than escaping.
That was all he could think of, he had to escape, he fought to survive all this time, he had slain countless beings to avenge his everything, to gain the power and destroy all those that had caused the downfall of his everything, that had taken everything that was good, those that were the cause of all.
He was almost obsessively flying, and finally, shortly before the other fleshy apparitions finally caught up with him, the small tendril that kept him chained up was ripped apart because of the sheer tension that was put onto it and allowing Cades to fly away, finally free, and causing the monster to finally stop sending even more apparitions towards the fleeing, desperate monster.
The storm, however was somehow still persisting, far above the clouds were it originated, although there was no rain or water anymore that was whipping his face and mixing with the tears of fear that were partially caused by the venom and partially by the intense fear that he had felt the entire time that he had ran away from the gigantic, invincible being that was probably put here by another being.
He continued flying away as fast as he could for entire hours, now only ahead of him instead of higher, and slowly he caught glimpses of the gigantic landmass, yet he was too afraid to stop flying, at first he was terrified, at first his chest had continued heaving high up and high down, but then his terror changed to unbridled anger, causing his entire body to heat up dozens of times over, causing his entire body to transform into a boiling inferno.
When he had finally calmed down to some degree, if one could even say that Cades began descending towards the mountain-range that was currently closest to him.
His still shaking body crashed into the peak of the mountain, causing a smaller avalanche about a thousand feet down and resulting in him laying there, more so leaning forward with an arched back then anything else.
His entire body had been covered in the black goo but by now most of it was send away by the storm that was still raging over the ocean, far away but still close enough for him to feel a gentle breeze that resulted from the raging temperament of the incredulous, raging storm.
He slowly began standing up, barely feeling his body and looking forward, down the endless mountain and finally receiving an ever so small glimpse of the eternal flame of hope.
There was an ivory city down in a gigantic clearing within the endless mountain range touching the sky.
Beautiful temples were all over the temple and endlessly tall towers with a beautiful, rounded peak residing at their tops grazed the city with their beauty.
The entirety of the beautiful city was framed by tall, white walls on which small antlike beings, clearly without wings, were walking and looking all around, not yet having caught a glimpse of the powerful, winged creature that had just landed on the nearby mountains.
But, before he could go down, greet them and hopefully establish a good relationship on this new continent and maybe find a way back home, if there... was still a... home to return to a horrid but beautiful voice resounded from behind him, causing Cades to quickly twirl his body around in a rapid movement, still on guard because of the monster he had just encountered in the ocean, not too far from here.
There stood something that resembled a human skeleton burning in a bright, golden flame exuding a horrendous presence that pressured him so much that he could barely stand it, the skeletal monster on the other end was not afraid at all, it looked at him with its empty eye-sockets, as if laughing at him, and the voice which had been speaking in a ramble up until now started talking in esperanto, the ehetrian language that was now probably more of a dead language similarly to Latin.
"Accursed fiend, you dare enter the domain of the god of freedom, you dare defy the divine law.
You shall vanish, go to nowhere."
As it spoke these few simple words his entire body was practically incinerated, the entirety of his vision was interchanged for a spasm of countless colours and he was violently thrown into the dimensional vacuum that he was previously already in.
He panicked once more.
What had happened ? Why had it happened ? Who was that ? What was that ?
All these and countless other questions raced within his mind as he bore the endless pressure of the mana that was seeping into his sore body, causing him to heal and grow more and more powerful and causing him to finally break through once more, not the least because he was simply panicking, not trying to defend himself from the infinite mana that was seeping into him.
He reached the unknown domain that bore no name as far as he knew and grew far more powerful, or at least one could assume so.
Finally, he was violently thrown out of the nothingness that resided between dimensions and crashed into a soft ground, barely being able to move because of the great amount of the endless, foreign mana that had seeped into him, and the bright purple strands that had clung to his body.
After some time he began standing up once more and looked around, trying to discern what the hell had just happened.
Before him was an endless expanse of flying islands that were arranged in an insane patchworks of the gods, some were big, some were small , some were of a frozen hell, some from the netherworld, some simply from lush forests, such as the one he was currently standing on while looking around himself and heavily breathing with a lost, despairing look on his face.
Some were interconnected by small and big onyx chains that seemingly kept the titanic and smaller islands from drifting apart, though the chains all seemed to originate from one single direction.
And from far below there shone an bright, light resembling the light of the sun, in all likelihood it probably was the sun that had been illuminating this place for the past few centuries.
Cades attempted to flap his wings but instantly lost the little bit of calm that remained on him, he could not feel his wings, and not like when the goo was covering and poisoning him, not like when the thomiside poison had paralysed them, no, instead they were gone, he could not see them even when he frantically turned his head around resembling a dog hunting his own tail.
He had no idea where he was, he had no way to easily travel between the floating island, and worst of all he could see countless monstrous, onyx being floating between the black, starless void of the floating islands, though he hadn't noticed them before because of the panicked state he had been in.
Cades had no wings anymore, and he had hunger, he wasn't.... ehetrian anymore...
He was scared, angry, confused but he still tried to keep his calm assessing the situation.
He was nowhere.
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End of volume 1 ~ Prologue