Crusader King-Chapter 115: Beneath the Statue(1)

After Cades overcame the first wave of shock that had overwhelmed him, causing him to stand still for a bit too long, he began to look around in greater detail, and saw some things that were indeed different from normal aside from the great number of islands that he could in all likelihood access with relative ease right now, as long as there weren't any monsters hiding atop them, which there definitely were.

It took him all but a second as he finally realized that the chains that were keeping these endless islands together, islands as far as he could see ahead of him, all of them were silver, not black, not red, they were all silver, they were all of the very same colour as that of the silver which Cades had already seen.

However, as if all of that, all of these islands that now looked quite inviting for Cades, wasn't already enough, he now began to realize something much, much worse as he slowly began to turn around, looking at the exact place from where he had entered just about half a minute ago and seeing nothing other than a statue that he had never seen before.

The statue was small, only about as big as he himself was, but it was even more detailed than his real body, quite honestly it was vexing, it was terrifying to look at, simply divine in many a way, and he felt the same as he looked at the incredible handiwork, not even noting what the statue was made up off, instead just looking at it, coming closer and closer as if in a stance and finding out that even the seemingly old and wrinkly skin, even that part, even on there there was a well-known pattern, the very same pattern that was visible on any other skin, including his own.

Only after analysing every little detail, looking at everything that his own eyes would've perhaps not have been able to pick up on his own body, and probably still missing most of these incredible details, wasting about an entire hour simply being entranced by this absolute masterpiece, he slowly began to think about it, still not realizing or even intending on taking a few steps back to look at the whole statue, something that would've been the best decision right now, no question about it.

He had indeed been entranced by the masterpiece for quite some time, simply staring, simply appreciating every single one of the parts of the body, the cloth whose texture could be felt, including a slight silkiness even though it was made out of stone, the hair that seemed to move whenever he wasn't looking at it despite him knowing for a fact that it wasn't moving, the eyes that seemed to be wet despite them not being, the everything that seemed to defy the natural state of all things, the state that something solid should be solid, at least that it shouldn't be liquid while being a statue and not having been heated up.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest shocks on the entire thing came to him when he realized that each of the countless hairs on the body was visible and made with extreme care, so much so that even the hairs on the neck and the few pieces of skin that were shown, perhaps because of this very reason, were visibly despite having obviously been cut away, as if they had been made complete and only then been cut away by a kind of razor, something wasteful as Cades thought at first, but still pretty poetic as he realized just a tiny bit later on.

After giving it just a bit more thought he began to take a few steps back, keeping his eyes on the beautifully made statue that was so detailed that one could almost believe that every single cell, and everything else, even including the inner organs were made one to one, as exact copies to that of an actual being, and all of that for what Cades could now see seemed to just be an old man with his eyes halfway closed.

Cades now stood a few steps away, staring at the whole of the statue that he had previously not even really paid attention to, and soon after he began to realize two things and his smile that had snuck onto his lips without him noticing slowly vanished once more, instead giving way for his face to turn into an expression of pure terror, and intense fright, which only grew further as he finally, for just a bit, not even having really looked at the entire build of the statue, realized that his way out was completely gone, lost to that statue that was now standing in front of him.

He was stuck, but still, Cades was reasonably fine with that for some reasons, one of those being that the temple on which the gigantic statue of the child that had stood atop a temple had been had been a dead end with only one chain connected to it, something that he had already been inwardly terrified of, and the second reason was that that which he now saw were countless islands, all extending around him, ones full of forests, ones filled with animals perhaps, ones with clean water maybe, it could all be there, and all of it was connected by a material he really needed to learn more about.

And so, after just a few moments of the anxiety completely crushing him, like a huge mountain that was suddenly dropped onto a tiny, tiny ant, he was once more, almost completely, free of all the fear, simply looking ahead and smiling ever so slight, looking right past the statue that he still hadn't wholly looked at, something that he did however intent to do right after he first made sure that there were no monsters in the vicinity, something he had previously neglected, and perhaps also something that was completely useless now, after everything had already passed, but still something he had to do to gain himself some closure.