The two of them hurried, travelling across small and big streams of water that occasionally cut the endless forest apart, such as the one in which they had cleaned themselves had been, though that one had been exceedingly close to the edge, they were jumping over smaller crevices, ravines full of water even, or even just the streams of water that had been previously mentioned, they were climbing up smaller hills, perhaps smaller cousins of the gigantic mountains on the other side of the island, those that seemed to never really grow closer, leading Cades and Manug to believe that this was somehow more of a oval than a true circle, but in the end they were really just trying their utmost best to get to the great tree, ignoring anything else, even the countless puppets, including many master types that appeared during their way towards the mountainous tree.
And indeed there were quite a lot of puppets appearing, and not only those that resembled trolls or other creatures, there were even a few pathetically weak, or rather average, animals that they came by, not that those posed any threat, even if their mana wasn't hindered by the policemen.
Another thing that Cades began noticing was that the commanders of the puppets, those with the orange liquid that seemed to be flowing through their bodies but still regularly vanishing whenever they were defeated, seeing as he wasn't bathed in any of the liquid, were mostly just like the mage, ehetrians without wings.
Cades perhaps already knew why.
It was simple really, all of these wingless ehetrians had simply come from this place, the place in which he himself looked like a wingless ehetrian, this endless abyss, this nowhere, this hell, and perhaps that was the reason they all looked like that, because they had all arrived here, dozens, maybe more, of them, all to find a safe have, all to survive, and all of them had died or been trapped here for all of eternity.
To the two, especially Manug, that enlightening fact was quite.. disappointing to be frank, it was a bit depressing to think that this many people had been here just to die, to not even be able to greet or help them, to just vanish without any real reason, it was just so disgusting, it was as if they had no sense of survival, perhaps they were being hypocritical, no, they were definitely being such, but they were annoyed, especially Manug who had been stuck in this endles splace for about three years, if he was even able to follow the never-moving sun, the endless boredom correctly, for all he knew it could've just been a few months as well, but he was still so disappointed, and Cades, who felt this with his newfound power, in which he seemed to truly be pretty talented, felt in a similar way.
It's just that he wanted to find out more about this place that hid so, so many secrets from him, this place that he had been forced to enter without any previous knowledge, he wanted to desperately understand it, that was one of his most dearest wishes right now.
And another was that this moment, no this stream of clarity cold go on for longer, but after all, all things must come to a change, if not even an end, and so did this endless chain of thoughts that he was crocheting when the two intruders finally arrived at the endlessly large tree, now just about a hundred feet away and capable to really understand what that orange stuff was.
Countless mushrooms covered the stump of the endlessly wide tree, a tree that was as wide as one could see from their current positions of about a hundred feet away, from what he could see the orange patches were all mushrooms, all residing on a singular side, but there they were covering it to an unnaturally great degree.
They had long stilts, big umbrellas and were glowing in an eerie colour, some orange, no, all were glowing orange, but most of them, most of those that really glowed, pulsated, had a different undertone, whether gold, whether purple, whether red, whether yellow, whether green, but Cades was indeed terrified by that simple fact, something that the had just viewed as a visual difference if it had been a few hours earlier.
Each one of the mushrooms that were all wildly different in shape and size now that Cades tried to look closer at the individual ones all had intent, it was quite difficult to grasp it with them all screaming at the top of their lungs, if one could call it as such, but to him it seemed like they were frozen in the state in which they were completely dominated by the sickness, at least that would explain the fact that almost every part of this endless ocean of intent wished to run, to survive, every part intended to at least do something of the likes.
It was terrifying, this was what they could end up as if they failed.
Neither entirely dead, nor in any way truly alive, an eternity of screaming, an eternity of thinking, but cursed to never move on to the next thought, an eternity of nothing and yet everything, or at least that's what Cades assumed it to be like, a assumption that, whether or not he somehow knew it, was pretty much correct in every way, and Manug felt the same about it.
They were both terrified, but that fear grew even worse as they, or rather just Cades, felt an intent grow, one that was greater than all of them combined, and soon they heard, no, felt something, something grave, something that was simply.. bad.. if that made sense at all...
And as soon as they did they began hearing something, a fluttering noise followed by a kind of whistling that could be easily explained with a kind of wind, but more than that there was something else, something that only existed in their minds, something that truly terrified them.
In their heads there were countless screams, each one full of anguish and suffering, each one desperate and full of woe, and each one endlessly screaming as more and more of the screams joined the infinite choir.
Then, finally, once the screams stopped their limitless growth and the two could barely think, as they were even starting to get used to it, partially due to the fact that at least one of them has heard screams in his mind before, and partially due to their separate equilibriums right now, though Manug's had almost worn off, then, it appeared, a being fell, and then, it was there.
"It" stood in front of the two intruders.