Change

As Rethys shuffled in his sleep, he felt himself being assaulted again by the entity's interference. Its attempts extended to his periods of sleep now, and it seemed to step up its efforts after the last time he disregarded it. It usually went away after ignoring it for a while, yet now seemed more persistent than ever.

"Why does nothing work?! Move... move!!" The voice said, yet Rethys only heard unintelligible noise.

He tried to filter out that noise, yet its voice was especially loud this time, and simply wouldn't go away easily. It always went on and on about untold suffering this and eternal torment that, as if Rethys didn't see it every single day in this place. It grated on his psyche immensely and though he displayed nothing on the outside, at times, his head felt like it was going to explode from the pressure.

"This was not supposed to happen! Could it be because of his element... No, the curse should have worked!" The voice continued.

Eventually, Rethys defaulted to the one technique that always worked when one had loud voices yelling inside of their head. Yelling back.

"This cannot be! I planned everything perfectly! Move da-"

"Just shut up! I get it! I'll go and take care of it!" And just as he expected, his method brought back peace and quiet.

He then turned and reached to burrow deeper into his sleeping bag, only to realize he was laying on the cold stone floor, not that he could feel it. At first he was confused, but then began looking around. And as he began sobering up from sleep and his senses re-calibrated to his surroundings, he noticed the discrepancies all around him.

Not only was he not in his sleeping bag, but Sevi was also missing from his senses. This greatly disoriented Rethys, since he depended on the trapped mage's powerful and far reaching aura as one of the landmarks he used to navigate the catacombs. He looked around with his physical senses and noticed first that the nullstones on the ceiling that illuminated the room were unusually dim.

He then noticed that the room was empty. Aside from a few wooden chunks and splinters here and there, there was nothing. None of Rethys' own things, neither his supplies or notes, and none of Sevi's, as her giant dark sword and its alabaster chains were all missing.

Then he paused as he remembered what had happened and realized what's wrong.

"I'm still alive..." He murmured in a barely audible voice.

But Sevi herself was nowhere to be found. Which was more than a little suspicious after what she did.

Standing up, he felt the rest of his shirt slipping off his chest as torn rags. This didn't alarm him, as despite the fact that most of his clothes were all but destroyed now, he could always just grab some slightly over-sized lab-wear from the nearby workshops and be done with it.

What did alarm him however was the web of glowing red veins that ran under his skin and throughout his whole body. At first he panicked, thinking that he was attacked by something in his sleep, after all with Sevi missing, there was nothing keeping them out of this place anymore.

Yet after examining everything, he realized that it was neither wound nor spell, for it seemed to his senses a feature of his body. And tracing them back, he found that they led to his chest, from which these veins seemingly sprouted.

It took him a while, but he recognized this sight, it was the same that decorated Sevi's blade. And deciding to be extra careful, sat down to examine just what happened to him.

He then turned his ethereal senses into his body and saw the mass of bright, indecipherable ether that was his soul, as well as the ether flows moving from it to the rest of his body. The entire ensemble looked like a strange, bright silhouette of him sitting down, with his soul as the epicenter of it, hovering in his chest. This was how he saw living things through the lenses of the senses bestowed upon him by his element.

Everything looked normal, everything except for the two completely foreign objects that now nestled themselves into his chest. The first seemed at a glance to be an additional heart that now inhabited his chest, glowing with thick blood-red ether. The second, meanwhile, was a spherical object that shone very brightly to his senses, as it contained a whole soul.

It was Sevi's soulstone, and by the looks of it, it was up to something.

"What did you do to me?" He asked in a hoarse voice, the words barely leaving his throat.

He had a basic idea of what the now-previously-trapped mage did, but he was no mage, and feared the worst.

The voice remained completely silent, but Rethys could still see movements of ether going in and out of the magic stone that fused itself into his body.

"You know, you don't have to ignore me. I'm not angry or anything. I understand, Sevi. You saw an opportunity and took it, I really don't blame you." He struggled to speak.

But his attempt at establishing some communication failed again, and he was yet again met with complete silence. And peering through his ethereal senses, he saw the gem continuing to do whatever it was up to, uncaring to him.

Rethys didn't appreciate the silent treatment.

"Okay then." He sighed as he activated his infusion magic.

This time however, he didn't let the magic technique go through the entirety of his body. Instead, he focused all of the intensity he could manage, all of the ether volume he could muster, into his right hand, enhancing only it. He knew he could do this for a while now, but this discovery had the side effect of almost completely disabling the rest of his body, making it useless.

But this didn't matter as he was sitting down. And brandishing his empowered right hand, aimed it towards his rib cage.

And then stabbed it right towards where the stone dug itself.

"Stop!!" A voice resounded.

Right before his hand made contact with his flesh, it froze, and Rethys felt as if he lost control of his own limb.

The control imposed on him was flimsy, however, nothing like the Origin entity's smothering powers. It only took a little bit of effort for Rethys to wrest control of himself from the intruder, and flexing his right arm, felt it ready again for another attempt. Ether flowed into the limb and augmented its strength beyond the limits of both humanity and reason.

Seeing his own body refusing to listen to him there unearthed some very unpleasant memories for Rethys, and a switch was flipped inside his mind. He he felt that he couldn't allow this to be.

"Stop I said! You will only doom us both!" Sevi's voice echoed.

"Explain." He coldly declared.

He didn't know how she would manage to do without her sword, but reckoned that he himself could survive a hole in his chest long enough to use his healing stones. After all, it was still a much better alternative to being mind controlled again.

"I turned your body into a vessel for myself and my powers." She explained. "You will not survive if you remove the soulstone, your body will break apart."

Her explanation somewhat sounded convincing, as he himself could tell that his body was changed. And relaxing the enhancement of his arm, focused on the ether moving throughout his body. He could tell that it was different from before, though couldn't tell why, the best he would describe it is that it was now tinted with red. Nevertheless, he could tell that his soul itself thankfully remained as it always was, human.

The same didn't go for the soul contained in the stone within his chest, as it seemed that Sevi had either hidden her own inhumanity from his senses all this time, or changed when she left her blade.

But even if he was somewhat satisfied with her explanation, Rethys found himself completely incapable of believing it.

"I don't believe you." He stated as he once again charged his arm with prodigious amounts of ether.

He didn't care for the pain or wounds of it, or for the implications. This was only another encounter with a powerful dweller of these damned catacombs, and he would survive and prevail, or die. Such was the way of things, he figured.

"Wait!! You need my help to survive this place! You cannot hope to escape alone, you have seen what this place contains!" The voice argued.

'How quick you are to sing another tune...' Rethys sighed inwardly.

He could almost feel her emotions from where he was, her wariness, despair and confusion. Gone was the sorrowful but determined Sevi that seemed fully willing to murder him to attain her freedom. All that was left now was the miserable struggle to survive and the petty arguing.

"Everything is so fucking miserable in this place..." He sighed.

He felt like swearing like a sailor at the top of his lungs, yet knew that it wouldn't change his predicament, nor make dealing with the things ahead of him easier. Especially when the conundrum right before him could decide his fate.

For despite his protests, his thoughts ran calm and cold, judging his current predicament as actually perfect for the plan he and Sevi previously cooked up to escape.

He couldn't believe in her words anymore, but could rely on her will to survive and use her help. This promised great things if he could keep her and her powers at arm's length, figuratively of course, as the literal alternative was not possible anymore.

Yet in spite of all of it, he hated how he couldn't be mad at things anymore. He hated how his cold rationality was driving him to try and take make a deal with a devil, and feared what it could make him do for the sake of simple self-preservation. He felt like an animal, and didn't at all like that feeling.

He didn't just want to survive and escape. He wanted to live, and do so like he wanted.

"I can't trust you." He declared. "You better make a good case as to why I shouldn't just doom the both of us right here and now. And you better do it fast."

"You need my help." She coldly snapped, her mood seemingly changing from despair to frustration. "I do not need to weave some grand tale of history and arcana. You will simply not survive this place without my aid."

"And you will stay here without mine." He sharply retorted. "How would I know you wouldn't try to control me again?"

"The fact that you are speaking back to me now is proof enough. I do not know why, but I cannot control you." Sevi explained.

"I need more than just your word. Explain why. Is it because of my element or because of the curse or what?"

"Ether's sake Rethys!" Sevi exclaimed. "That curse does nothing for you. Yes it protects you from the Mind element but you already seemed to be immune to mind control since the first time I freed you. I admit it, I instilled into you that thing to better control you, yet now I cannot do a thing and we are stuck like this, and I do not know why. What more can I tell you?"

"'You seem to be' just doesn't cut it. And I've felt before how the circle stopped the entity from controlling me. Tell me the whole truth." Rethys insisted.

"The truth does not care what your uneducated self thinks it 'felt' before, and the truth is that you seem to be immune to mind control. My best guess is that it is because of the fact that you seem to process magic and ether completely differently than anyone or anything else, freak of nature that you are. And because of that, I am now stuck like this. And if you were to ask me how that itself happens, Rethys, here is my most candid of answers: I. Do not. Know. Why!

"Maybe if I there were... ten mages here, I could hatch up something filled with enough jargon and gibberish to satisfy you, but the only truth I could tell you is that I do not know. I cannot formulate an understanding of a wholly new, weird element in a decrepit run-down crypt! And all by lonesome no less! I am but one mage damn it!"

'Wish I could rely on that lie detection of mine.' Rethys sighed wistfully.

It seemed that his pestering had fully riled Sevi up and peeled back her facade of cold professional magehood. It was natural that she had her own set of frustrations and grievances to let out. At times he forgot that she too was from Yvtar and had spent centuries rotting in captivity.

But he couldn't believe her on the simple account of her having had it hard. After all she could have simply asked for his help, there could have been a compromise between the two.

'But would I have helped her?' Rethys pondered, remembering that he had displayed more than enough wariness to get her wary of him in turn.

Despite his internal conflict about it all however, Sevi was far from done.

"If you want an apology Rethys, then you can have it. I apologize for misleading you. But I will never apologize for wanting to get out of this damned cursed place. You said it yourself, I saw an opportunity and I took it. And it seems that despite my best and worst, I remain a damned rock! I cannot seem to get anything right..."

"Okay, I get it, calm do-" Rethys tried to interject, but was promptly ignored as Sevi continued.

"Oh, by all means, Rethys. Go ahead! Gouge out your own flesh and throw me into those cold stone halls and kill us both! If it makes you feel better, who am I to stop you? I Doubt that much would change as we are already doomed as we are. Gods am I sick of this place... I never asked for any of this damn it!!"

Sevi's voice, filled with more than just warranted anger, echoed into the large empty room that the two were in. And silence reigned for a while afterwards before one of them decided to speak.

"Better now?" Rethys asked.

"Yes..." She sighed tiredly in response.

'What now?' He thought, only for his thoughts to loop back to trying to survive somehow.

It seemed that underneath all of his indignation, there was a willingness to put aside his grudge to guarantee his survival. Rethys didn't know if this was his element talking, or the entity's interference, but decided to entertain it nonetheless.

'I mean... I sort of expected her to pull something after I freed her.' He thought.

And though what she did went beyond his expectations, what happened in the end was still workable, if a bit unbearable.

"Well..." He began. "If we really have no choice but to cooperate, then you'll need to fill me in on things. You need to tell me exactly what you are, the reason why you were locked up here, and what you are capable of with that weird element of yours. It's only fair since you already know pretty much everything about me."

"Why, that is very rich coming from you... weird element he says..." She muttered vehemently, seemingly done with it all. "Very well..."