And indeed just a bit later they were able to jump off of the endless chain and arrived in the forest, the mountains far away on the opposite side, now hidden by the endless green roof that hindered their sight.
Both of them had a clear goal in mind, explore, find the water to clean themselves and drink a bit, if they could, and secondly, perhaps much more important to their health, at least psychologically, find food if there was any.
And indeed they moved through the lush forest without ever hearing a single sound, but it wasn't that they didn't see anything move, no, the leaves moved, they rustled, or at least they seemed to, the ground was littered with bugs but whenever they tried to look closer at them they weren't ther, and whenever they took a step they evaded as if they already knew everything.
It was not as if there was no live, no movement, no, they simple couldn't hear any sound, as if the sound was held back by force, as if the rustling leaves only send their melodies away from their ears, as if the bugs only existed in old times and only appeared to make them feel safer, to show them safety, because they didn't exist, they knew none of this was truly there and yet, sometimes, they knew it was there, as if the amount was multiplied to make them feel safer, which it probably was.
They didn't talk out of that very same reason, they were so observant of their surroundings, they were unnerved, they knew that something was grotesquely wrong, they know that they may die at any moment, they know that they had to watch out, but after some time they began feeling safer, much safer.
And soon after they also arrived at the long-awaited water, at the place where they would be able to cleanse themselves, so they might stop attracting beings that only smelled, beings that only had a nose, and they had seen many of those slithering by in the endless light, or perhaps they just looked as if they had no eyes but in truth they watched them, it was hard to tell when their bodies were obscured by the endless light.
The water they arrived at was a small river, about two meters deep at its deepest and in the shallow sides only about half a meter, the water was crystal-clear and there were no algae, it was just about a few hundred feet away from the end of the islands, from the place where the endless water somehow vanished into the endless light.
Surrounding the small river, only about 36 feet across there was a long stone shore consisting of beautiful gravel of various colours, mostly white, but even some that reminded Cades of gems, ones that had been worked on, but in this case they had only been smoothed out.
In the gravel there were still some trees that grew, as if they had been forced to grow there against their will, they all stretched towards the water, but their trunks were all stuck in tiny patches of brown dirt.
Yet, neither of the two truly thought about it, their bodies were covered in months of filth, at least that of Cades, the archers body rather not, so they began cleansing themselves, facing opposite sides and watching the forests at any given moment, for two reasons.
First, privacy, second, safety from whatever it was that was watching them.
They stripped themselves of their clothes, the archer having to take of multiple layers that had somehow hidden themselves in a compact, elegant suit that all seemed to have adverse magical effects and Cades just having to take off the cloak and then peel off that which had once been his old clothes.
He knew that he wouldn't be able to wear them again, he knew that it would be useless to try, but, he didn't know, he was scared of losing them, they, at leas small pieces that he had used in their productions had belonged to ehetria, but he had no choice, he left them.
They left their weapons right next to them on the shores, so close that they could get there within a second if they had to, at least Cades did, the archer seemingly didn't have weapons on them, though Cades knew with absolute certainty that they, in truth, did have weapons on them.
As he cleaned himself he noticed something, normally when a ehetrian grows stronger magic-wise, or even just in a normal way, or even just starving, all of these thing would make muscles more defined, magic because the magics move throughout arteries that are connected within the whole body, including the muscles, normal muscle-growth is self-explanatory and in terms of dehydration and starvation the muscles would become more defined because the body would burn its reserves.
But Cades muscles were barely any more pronounced then when he started this whole journey, his body might've become a little less pale, gaining a more "alive" look than before, but his muscles still looked almost the same, his chest was pronounced because he had flown using that muscle his whole live, his back probably looked the same because of that very reason, his arms were quite defined because of his constant weapon-usage and his legs had grown a bit after he had walked for who-knows-how-long in this accursed plane, but, despite all of this, his muscles had grown much less than one could have expected, probably also much less than the archers, but Cades decided not to harm his privacy by looking back, for some reason not even thinking of the danger of facing someone that had once been his enemy with his back.
After a while, with the archer first taking his due time to get out of the dozens of layers that had been making up one piece of clothing he was still done long before Cades, due to the simple fact that the archer had seemingly done this regularly, with his own magic while Cades had completely forgotten about that lately.
Therefore he began talking once more, this time about something that interested him.