Cades was panicking, what had happened, the raging storm in his mind and soul had bever wholly subsided, so much so that he was just standing there looking into the emptiness between the floating islands, dressed in various different types of worlds, as if it was a patchwork created by an almighty, capricious god.
Who or what was the being that caused all of this ?
Why did they do this instead of just killing him ?
However, after he had just stood there in a dazed state with violet eyes that had practically no life behind them he began to think about what he could possibly do next, and then he began realizing that there were chains, man-made objects that were all seemingly pointing into one singular direction, like a spiders net.
The chains were all huge, some were dozens of times as big as him, with each of the interconnecting, dark onyx links and some were just about as big as him, so big that he would barely be able to walk atop them if he had the need to do so, which he would probably have very soon seeing as he no longer had the wings that had been with him since the beginning, since his birth.
As Cades finally began moving once more, the raging storm in his soul still not having calmed down, he felt the lush grass under his dark brown, pelted boots.
The only reason he had not felt the sharp grass before was probably because of the kurakkans venom.
He felt how the grass blades penetrated through his boots, artifacts that he had enchanted himself and sliced open his soft sole, causing him to fall over and have his hands penetrated by the very same blade-like grass that had previously penetrated his soles.
Cades screamed aloud at the surprising pain, probably a toxic meant to do something he hadn't found out yet.
As he finally realized this, after just a second, he violently pushed himself up and ran, pushing the bladed grass deep into his soles, feeling as if he was walking on swords.
But he didn't stop, he had his goal in front of him, directly in his field of vision, there was one of the gigantic onyx chains made out of an unknown metal, a chain that looked as if it had been hammered by not the hammer of a giant or not the power of some god who formed it out of nowhere, but of a hammer that would be able to fit into Cades hands, albeit that parts of the seemingly ancient chains looked half-molten or unfinished but still functionable.
He a few mere dozen feet away but to him and his wounded feet it felt as if the saving chain was still hundreds of thousands of miles away, yet he was able to reach it within just a few seconds, his whole body being slowed down by a concoction between the venom of the grass and the venom of the kurakkan.
As he finally jumped of the edge of the floating islands, entrusting his body to the endless abyss filled with the light of a bright star burning far beneath his body he felt fearful once more.
The air was his home, his territory, the place where he would always win, but what now ?
Would the air show mercy ?
No, it wouldn't.
All he could do was pray to land correctly.
And he did, landing on the onyx chain-links and leaving behind a bloodied handprint and a small puddle of the blood that was gushing out of what had once been his boots, now containing a mangled piece of bone with small tissued of flesh somehow still connected to it.
He turned on the ground in a somersault where he took the majority of the strain on his left shoulder that he was still barely able to feel after he had broken through the encapsulating enclosure of the black tendrils that had belonged to the kurakkan and were now probably in the stomach of the kurakkan, if it even had one, after having floated around the ocean for at most a few minutes.
Cades stood up, his eyes frantically darting around everywhere, high, low, right, left, shaking and focused trying to find the next threat that he would have to run away from, but to his relief, aside from the horrendous, far-away creatures that were swimming between the void of the islands.
As he finally stood, fully stretching his back and breathing heavily, not in a showcase of his own exhaustion but instead in an attempt to calm himself down in any way he could, in this case hyperventilation, probably one of the worst ways, but his body had been suspended to a horrendous treatment and this was just one of the ways that it reacted to it, his current body anyways, whatever species he now belonged to.
Finally, after a few minutes, when he started being relatively calm, as much as one could be in this situation, he started to look at himself, trying to discern what had happened with his once ehetrian body by looking at the onyx metal of the interlinking chain that seemed to work as a mirror.
What he saw shocked him to his core, indeed, not much had changed, he still had almost the same body as he had previously but he had no more wings and his eyes were glowing in a slightly dimmer, violet colour then they normally did, though he was incredibly shocked back when he first found out about the fact that his eyes were glowing violet, back when the crow, Hekima, told him about that, he was relatively used to it now, though it was still a shocking sight whenever he was met with the vision of his new eyes, as rare as that was for him.
But that was not what he was shocked about, he could barely see anything of his body, barely the outline actually, he was covered in too much blood, dirt and the black goo, though that had now diminished almost entirely.
After he was done with the rough examination and with the feeling of disgust that had been plaguing him since forever but had now been strengthened multiple times over by the sight and realization of just how encrusted he was in the old and new blood.
However, now he had to look forward, he slowly started walking, towards the end of the chain, hoping that he was walking in the right direction to find whoever made them, hoping that they weren't enemies, hoping that they hadn't died yet, hoping that there was something at all.