Crusader King-Chapter 137: Two-faced lie(1)

It was dark, and damp.

Cades awoke with his head resting against something hard and was immediately thrown into alert after he realized that he had been unconscious, something that was quite obvious to him after a few seconds when he realized that he had no idea where he even was, until, about a quarter minute later, he began to calm down and realize that he did know where he was.

He had spent a lot of time here, weeks as far as he could remember, though it could've also just have been a few days, Cades wasn't entirely certain, and to be entirely honest his sense of time and memory related to it had been diving downwards ever since he realized that he was now seventeen years old, and it got even worse after he had been on that endless chain that led to the temple with the statue of the child atop.

His surroundings were made out of wood, wood that had been slightly carved into, his head had been resting atop a especially big root, one that had been rid of the bark that had been growing atop it before he got here all that time ago, time that now seemed like an eternity, if not even multiple eternities.

Cades still remembered how he used that root as a pillow, remembering himself as using something else because he just didn't want to acknowledge everything that had changed, and he remembered that there were other artifacts he had added all around this place, if he remembered correctly there should be an artifact producing light atop him, imbedded in the wood over his head that he had carved at with his dagger that he used to still have back when he got here, and there should be heating-devices to his sides, a luxury that he had truly missed lately.

When he finally reached up, stretching his right hand he smiled for a short while, simply looking at the wooden wall that he had stared at during his first time realizing that his parents were truly gone, and his sister might as well be, and then, finally, his mouth parted and a few words began to come out, his voice talking in an unusually deep tone that was differing from all the times he had talked before, all the times he had been struggling after staying silent for a long time, after all the times he had been talking in an annoyingly high pitch and his throat had started to hurt, this time his voice was deep and calm.

"Trumal.. arak..."

It was the place he had been at, the first time he had left ehetria, the place he had suffered alone, the place he had viewed himself as the apex-predator, the place he had also begun realizing that he was much weaker than he believed himself to be, the place he had been broken and rebuild, his body gaining it's engravings in the process.

His smile dropped as he realized something though something that was indeed something positive as far as he could tell, but still something that he had never experienced before, well, he had experienced it, but he had never felt it after losing it, as such it was kind of a weird experience when he finally saw that his right arm was back where it should be, nothing to see of the artifact the had worked at for so long, as if it had vanished, or perhaps as if the artifact itself had become his arm, or perhaps this was just an illusion, after all there was no way he got out of that accursed realm so easily, and how would he have even gotten out..

Nevertheless he still couldn't entirely believe it, quickly grabbing his right hand with his left hand that had been occupying the spot of his favourite for quite some time and realizing after the fact that he did indeed feel his right arm again, something that, however dangerous the situation may be, brought a small smile to his lips that seemed to warm up his battered body, though, now that Cades began to think about it, he also didn't really feel as if his body was battered.

Nothing was sore, nothing hurt, there were no scars on his hands from all the artificing he had done lately, something that should've remained even if he was somehow able to heal his entire arm back, and also something that freaked him out quite a bit after which he decided to try something else, frantically realizing something that could also be back, something he had lost and never truly seen.

His long black sleeves that he was almost certain he had seen once before but was simply not bale to recall as to where that idea came from, fluttered in the emptiness of the tree cavern as it raced towards his face, punching himself by accident and poking his right eye, the eye that he had lost, the side of the face that was now smooth that had been broken and charred as if it had been wood before, after the fight against that monstrous wooden bastard, the monster that had showed him the difference between ranks, the monster that had showed him just how pathetic he was..

After all this, remembering what was going on after he felt a rush of ecstasy that had caused his heart to skip a few beats and made him cough in surprise, he turned around, remembering how he used to crawl out of this place he had lived in for a long time, like a squirrel that was hiding itself from a predator, or a spider that had found itself a hiding spot, or a rat that had build a home. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

He turned around, towards where the opening was supposed to be, seeing a wooden plank, expertly made, that he didn't even remember anything of, a plank that he didn't even think about as he just began to push against it, eager to smell that which he would now refer to as the breath of freedom, eager to catch a glimpse of the warm sun that shone above Trumal from what he could remember.