Bones

Leaving the ritual wing and heading back up to the common catacombs, Rethys again decided on taking a new route back, trying to fill in his knowledge of this place as much as possible.

Instead of looping north around the catacombs' center, he decided to head southwards instead, through unknown paths. The venture may have seemed dangerous, but Rethys wasn't worried, after all his senses reached very far now, and he could avoid any and all creatures he encountered, especially the powerful ones with their overbearing auras.

The stone hallways he passed through were unexplored but nonetheless known to him, they remained part of the Yvtari catacombs. And he continued to do the same he always did, avoiding paths downwards all the while noting those that led upwards and remembering them for later, just in case.

His findings, or rather lack thereof, reassured him of his safety, but at the same time disappointed him as he only saw the usual he had seen everywhere else. After all he wanted to find any curiosities that might lead him to new discoveries.

'Even these are pointless.' He sighed as he passed near a crumbling corridor, signaling that he was entering into another collapsed region.

These areas were somewhat of a common sight for him, zones of extremely run down or outright completely collapsed rooms and halls. This spectacles of destruction were almost always the handiwork of one of the larger catacomb dwellers, shattering stone as they fell from the upper floor and tried to climb back up. And though Rethys worried that powerful creatures dwelt near these regions, the force that created these outlets almost always plugged them back.

And if that weren't enough, the halls seemed to rebuild themselves on their own or have some similar property, as Rethys had seen some traces of the passage of massive creatures without any of their characteristic destruction. He hadn't seen this process with his own eyes, yet all the evidence pointed towards it being the case.

'I should remember to ask Sevi about it this time.' He thought, hoping to not forget to ask about this peculiarity next time.

He continued to pass around the demolished area, all the while keeping his senses sharp to try and detect anything interesting within the broken stone galleries. But aside from the occasional lesser creature stuck underneath rubble, there wasn't much to note. All the passages upwards were sealed by stone debris, and the floor wasn't compromised anywhere so as to let out the hollow wraiths that dwelt below in the inner mausoleum.

"The usual..." He sighed.

"Hey... Can you hear me... boy..." A deep, ragged voice reverberated through the stone halls.

Rethys paused as he heard the words echo around him into the empty corridors. Instantly, his body grew deathly still, his mind completely quiet and his thoughts utterly cold.

'What the hell was that?' He thought as his senses frantically scanned his surroundings time and time again, only to find nothing.

"...Hey..." He heard the gruff, hoarse voice repeat. "...I am here..."

Hearing those words, Rethys had half a mind to respond, but instantly decided against it. His first thought was to retreat as fast as he could. He had after all faced many terrifying creatures in his stay here, and seen from a distance some even more horrifying things lurking in the shadows. What was to say that there wasn't a creature that could talk like so to lure victims.

"...I am here... come..." Before he could make a decision however, a new presence revealed itself in his surroundings.

He then saw it, an absolutely monstrous soul, shining unimaginably brightly, and in shades of unfathomable wrongness. It was the most dangerous and powerful creature Rethys had ever laid eyes on, stronger than even Sevi, so much stronger in fact. It radiated an aura of danger so intense that he felt dead where he stood, and could barely bring his body to move.

He was almost immobilized, not by fear but instead by a realization that inescapable doom had befell him. And instantly he recognized where else he felt this before, and what sort of thing elicited such a response from his very soul.

A creature from the surface.

Fighting against the invisible and overwhelming weight threatening to flatten his very existence, he struggled to move, but he couldn't.

'I won't die here!!' He screamed, inwardly for his lips couldn't hope to move.

Slowly but surely however, his body turned, then his legs. He then fought to move his legs, finally managing to take one step forward, then another. But just as he managed to move a few steps away from the horrid thing, its voice resounded again.

"Come back..." It wailed. "Do not leave me here... please..."

Hearing its voice, Rethys paused a second time as he took another look upon the formidable creature. And seeing what he did, he hesitated to leave. For where all but one of the ethereal senses he grew to trust told him of impending doom and ultimate danger, the remaining one gave him a wholly different signal.

It told him, beyond any shadow of doubt or illusion, of true sadness, of so, so much of it. It told him of gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, bottomless sorrow and loneliness. And the weight of it hit him like a blacksmith's hammer to the head, overpowering any coldness of thought and emotion his element infused into him.

He felt it burrowing into the deepest recesses of his soul, dredging memories of his mentor and of the family he never remembered having. Tears ran down his cheeks as he was forced to experience once again every time he had ever been sad in his entire life.

'This'll... take some time to deal with...' He thought as he wiped the tears from his eyes, his body seemingly freed from the weight impeding it.

Eventually, the experience subsided, and Rethys once again was at an impasse. His instincts told him to leave, to survive this most fatal of encounters, as he had done before and would continue to do forevermore. Meanwhile, his heart cried out to him to seek the poor creature, for if he didn't, he would regret his decision for the rest of his life.

'But I can't...' He thought, struggling with starkly-opposing emotions.

Realizing that it was too much, that all of it was too much, Rethys turned around and began walking towards the bright light that now lied before him. His steps were free from doubt and uncertainties, as if the realization of it all, whatever it was, was embedded into his very soul. And soon, he arrived before the creature, and saw it in all its horrifying sadness.

It was an absolutely massive skeleton of pitch black bone that barely fit into the corridors of the catacombs. It was frozen in a sitting posture, with its back against collapsed stone and its head reaching all the way to the ceiling. Its legs seemed to have been torn off, their charred bones thrown some distance away. The same went for its arms, except that one was stuck into the stone walls, while another was gripping what seemed to be a huge sword planted deeply into the stone ground.

Rethys had to stay away from the creature, for he could tell its mere aura was eroding his soul away. It was mighty, this creature, so much so that the young man wondered how anything like this could exist in the world. It had immense powers of the Mind element, yet he could also feel from it lesser, but still robust, attunements to the elements of Corruption, Malice, and Chaos. However, none of those were its primary element, for that honor went to the pathetically weak Earth element it harbored.

Each and every one of the creatures of the catacombs Rethys had encountered thus far were attuned to an element, even the inept pale wretches bore the Corruption element. But none of them had more than a single element, and were completely unlike the one before him that bore a whopping five.

"Hello." He calmly said. "Sorry I... didn't hear you the first time."

"Are you... truly here boy? Or is my... mind playing tricks on... me?" The voice uttered.

"Yes, I am here." He stated. "You're not imagining it."

"Oh... oh gods..." The voice collapsed into sobbing. "...finally..."

Rethys stood there, looking towards the source of the voice, his face wearing a complicated expression.

The creature seemed dead, but was anything but, as he could see its soul bound to its broken form, cruelly and gruesomely glued to it. Its mouth didn't move as it wept, its empty sockets didn't pour out tears, and its hands didn't move to wipe its non-existent tears, yet its sadness felt more profound than anything the young man had ever felt in his life. Simply standing near the tragic being filled him with emotions he could hardly withstand. He couldn't imagine what was going on inside its mind.

Nothing short of madness of the highest order, he guessed.

'And suffering too... can't forget that...'

Rethys didn't know how to proceed, he was in a situation so wildly different from anything he ever experienced or ever imagined himself to be. He was completely stumped as to what to do, but he couldn't do nothing.

"Can you tell me your name? Mine is Rethys." He said.

"I... am Kithil..." The voice stuttered, barely forcing the words out. "I am... was... a stonemason of Yltrid."

"Why did you call out to me, Miss Kithil?" Rethys asked.

"I have... seen you... setting them free..." She uttered. "Free me too... I beg of you..."

Looking at the mass of utterly cursed bone before him that once upon a time was a simple stonemason, Rethys wore a pained expression. Whatever she was now, she was too powerful for him to simply get close enough to exorcise, if it would even work. It had been a while since he approached her, and he already stood a distance away, yet his instincts never stopped screaming at him to run away as fast as his legs could take him.

He was already sustaining some damage as he was now, and felt that even a single step forward would already be too much.

But he would try nonetheless.

"I don't think I can, Miss Kithil." He answered. "But I'll try. If you could control your aura please."

"I... cannot... I am sorry..." The voice answered.

Hearing her answer, Rethys knew that his attempt would be pointless, but he went through with it regardless.

Wrapping himself in his barrier spell, which didn't seem to protect him at all from Kithil's aura, he advanced forward, only to retreat just as quickly.

'It's too much.' He was willing to go to great lengths to help the person before him, but knew that he'd die a pointless death if he were to try.

"Sorry. It's not possible. Not as I am now. You're... too strong." He answered.

"I still remember... that day... what those mages... did to us... curse them all!!" She screamed with righteous anger, her booming voice shaking Rethys to his core.

Suddenly, he was assaulted again by a deluge of foreign emotion, this time of anger instead of sadness. Though he could control and stifle the intrusion this time around, and struggling to recover from the shock, eventually regained his bearing.

"My... apologies..."

"It's fine." Rethys sighed. "I'm sorry but I have to ask. How are you not like the others in this place?"

"I do not know... It was a nightmare... I woke up from it... one day... tried to find them here... I failed... began losing myself... again... so I... did this to myself... anything is better than going back... anything..."

'Figures.' Rethys thought, concluding that nothing could possibly harm a being of this power here.

He guessed that the "them" she referred to were the mages, or rather cultists as Sevi called them, that turned her and many others into nightmarish beings. He was sure that these cultists were the robed unbound creatures that roamed the ritual rooms that he left just a while earlier.

It was interesting information but there was nothing Rethys could do for this poor soul, his power was simply not enough. And something told him that those powers would never be enough, not against the monolith of accursed yet great magical prowess that lay before him.

He also knew that Kithil couldn't hold any useful knowledge. He was doubtful she knew even a lick of magical knowledge prior to the change, perhaps save for her Earth element, which she would have used for her craft. It seemed that she was never a mage, only perhaps an artisan capable of basic magic.

Yet he couldn't stay here forever. And he didn't know how to tell her that he had to go, and that he might not ever be able to set her free from her prison of eternal suffering.

'This is too much for me.' Rethys thought.

Of all the horrors he had faced thus far, the one that felt most harrowing was a conversation. It felt that he had hit his limit with this one, and he truly did not know what to do.

Yet the cursed being spoke first, making the choice for him.

"I know that you have to... go... but please... do not forget me... do not forget us... all..."

"I won't. I promise I will free you from this." Rethys spoke.

"Please... take this..." Kithil said as her massive sword glimmered with the gray glow of the Mind element. "Thank you... for trying... thank you..."

As the great sword shone, its light illuminated the otherwise completely dark hallway. The glow lit up both Kithil's horrid form and its massive blade. The weapon seemed completely covered in spiky growths that emitted the glow of the Mind element, and one of them in particular shined the brightest. Rethys wouldn't dare use his senses in the presence of a being of Kithil's might, yet could nonetheless tell that some process was happening with her sword.

The process continued until only the brightest of the stone spikes adorning the blade retained its light, before breaking off and falling to the ground.

Rethys would normally feel apprehensive about trusting in this sort of gesture, yet his interactions with the tortured soul inhabiting those dark bones instilled into him the conviction that she harbored no ill will. He didn't know if it was due to his element or its entity, but he knew for sure that Kithil wished to help him.

Walking towards the glowing stone, Rethys picked it up, after which it dissolved into dust while its ether flowed into him. He didn't know what it did or how its Mind ether would interact with his curse, yet could feel something was different about himself.

"Thank you." He uttered.

"No... thank you... and good luck..." Kithil answered.

And so, Rethys gathered his bearings and resumed his journey back.