Crusader King Chapter 98: Endless Chain(1)

It was truly ironic.

After everything that had happened with Manug, after finding out so much, after understanding it all, after being in so much pain and not really doing anything against those mories that were now constantly plaguing him, after losing Manug, his companion, after all of this..

He was in the sa position as he had been before eting Manug, all he had gained was power, he had gained the knowledge of actives, he had finally truly achieved the next rank, and so much more, but in the end, he just ended up completely alone once more, left, and forgotten by all, without even a ho to return to.

Walking along the seemingly endless chain once more, this ti one that was titanically huge, so big that he, himself, could be stacked atop over fifty tis and it would barely reach the height of a single link of the endless chain that seed to consist of thousands of such links, all connected to a singular far-away island as Cades already knew.

But he simply stared ahead, his one eye almost burning from the liquid that pressed itself out through it, a liquid that many people would refer to as tears, the lacrimal fluid, as he watched the endlessly extending ocean of darkness colliding with the endless expanse of the light that ca from below like a desert that collided with a ocean and was swept away during an unnatural tide.

He was lost in thoughts, lost in the rhythm that resulted whenever he would take a step, and the next, and the one after that, and another, and all the rest, over and over again, he simply couldn't rip himself out of that very trance, lost in it all, not thinking but simply existing, watching it all happen over and over and over again in his mind, recovering the feeling of the pain while the screams almost stopped.

All the screams were gone, all except one...

The one and only scream that was left, it was loud and full of agony mixed with despair as bad as the one he had felt when he was dying from that invincible monster back on that horrible island with the endless forest atop of it, on the island that he still felt like he was standing on.

That scream, which had a gurgling undertone, was more so a constant mockery over everything that he ever believed, it was painful, but he knew whose voice it was, and that very voice was now screaming as loud as it could, stretching that one scream into an eternity, endlessly giving off a singular sound, the very note, the very scream that he could not stop thinking of.

It was a scream he had never heard while he was still with Manug, but it was undoubtably Manug's own scream, the gurgling was a big help in figuring that out, though it was still pretty clear to him from the beginning, already having heard his voice for a long ti.

And now Manug's scream was resounding within his head, and it would never, ever stop, he was certain of that, he was certain that his scream would never leave him be, he was certain that this scream would even follow him when he dies..

He had been walking for a long ti, his feet had begun to move even while he slept, so he had been walking for a to him unknown amount of ti, but he estimated it to be at least half a month for which he had been walking, and the scream just wouldn't stop.

Finally he just collapsed, his hand touching the ground and his back arching over, his face still above the ground with the never-ending tears having dried up for many days now, so much so that he wasn't able to cry anymore, so much so that he was barely able to think or blink without feeling how incredibly dry his eyes were right now..

Sothing big had changed, well, sothing that was really big to himself had changed, sothing that had only happened 16 tis up to now, Cades didn't know exactly, but he knew that he was at least a year older by now, after all this ti sothing had to have changed after all, and his birthday had only been two months away when it all began.

He was seventeen years old now, he was only one year away from when he would've beco an adult, a person who made their own decisions, a person that had the right to really go away from ho for good... and yet here he was, away from ho for good, separated by who knows how many planets and dinsions, if this place was even a dinsion.

He had been in this place for at least two months now, and he was certain that the rest of the world must have moved on... no, that's not right, it must've been more like one-and-a-half months, though right now, he thought that two months was much more likely the case seeing his constantly growing hunger that should've stopped over a month ago, the pain that simply wouldn't go away, no matter what he did, it simply grew worse, sothing that would normally not happen when one was starving for such a long ti.

Cades didn't know if he would ever get out, he didn't know if he would even survive, he didn't know if he was just so simple fool who was stuck here and would be devoured just like all those others who fell to the sickness, just a stronger sickness in his case.

It was clear, without a doubt, that there would be much more powerful beings out there, even just that monstrosity that appeared at the end of the battle along that wooden hell was enough to prove that for him, even that proved that there were such beings out there.

And the worst part was that he knew that that thing, whatever it had truly been, was severely weakened, after all, none of those puppets had been able to really use magic, at all, so all of them had been weakened, mainly in a physical way, and that thing, with how far above him it had been, Cades was certain that it had to have been a rank above him, so, perhaps it had originally been two ranks above himself.

Cades crawled forward on the ground, ripping himself apart in his mind, his soul, his everything, he had lost so much, why had he lost so much.

Why ?

Why ?

Why ?

WHY !?