Price

Rethys marched inward through a maze of winding caverns, amidst nearly identical tunnels only barely discernible by the magically shaped pillars holding them.

He marched on, guided by his senses and barely paying heed to the inhabitants' attempts to obscure the path forward. Neither the caverns' structure nor the many hidden magic circles they etched into the stone hampered or detected Rethys' advance.

"A surprisingly decent alarm system." Sevi commented. "They seem more competent than you make them out to be. Either that or they are simply not bandits."

He lingered for a little on her words before voicing some of his own.

"You're too relaxed." He said. "Didn't you say the teleportation may have gotten detected and that we'd be chased."

"I did, and we should have encountered some resistance by now already. But all my scrying and divination came up blank, and so I am left to assume that the circumstances of our arrival are different than what I anticipated."

"Meaning..." He sighed at her cryptic response.

"It remains to be seen, but I am certain that we are quite safe for now. Nothing has detected our presence yet, nothing malicious at the very least."

He shook his head and refocused on his senses, ignoring Sevi's stare.

It didn't take long after to reach the bandits' actual encampment. At first it was the sight of torches on the walls and trash on the ground, then a wall with a wooden door in it.

Rethys stood before the door, peering at its wooden form. It felt strange, seeing a normal door that wasn't enchanted to hell and back and made of precious metals. He shook his head and peered with his senses to see what lied beyond the door.

He saw the presences of the inhabitants' souls, eight meandering around randomly, with no visible pattern, and the last one, the awakened mage, deeper inside the caves.

Rethys' mind sharpened, preparing for combat. He first tried opening the door the old-fashioned way, and then broke it off its hinges when he couldn't.

He saw a long hallway, and one of the bandits sitting on a chair looking at the door Rethys just busted through. His soul core was active, and he was attuned to the element of Wind.

'Material element.' Rethys noted.

The bandit first jolted up from seeing the door broken, and then was utterly horrified seeing what came through. He didn't even run, simply standing there with his eyes wide open.

Rethys was about to act, to lunge at him and end him, when he felt the man's emotion echo into him. He hesitated, and the two simply stared at each other.

The man couldn't move, he was paralyzed by fear. He wasn't some grand mage, but still somewhat recognized what stood before him. He was staring death in the face. He couldn't even scream to warn his fellow bandits of what arrived at their cave.

Rethys stared back at the man and found himself incapable of doing what he set out to do. He looked at the fat, forty-ish year-old man with dirty blond hair and coarse, suntanned skin. He saw him stand frozen in horror, then trembling uncontrollably and pissing himself.

What he wanted to do, what he could and couldn't do, all of them clashed repeatedly in the young man's head, leaving him paralyzed as well.

Before either party could snap out of their respective daze, a wave of Mind ether coalesced on the middle-aged man's head, and his eyes glazed over as he sunk back into his chair.

"What is this place?" Sevi asked. "Who are you people and what do you do here?"

"Lord Antinem's laboratory. Near Dark spine mountains." The blank eyed older man responded, his jaw slack and his body unmoving as he spoke. "We are mercenaries. He hired us. We hunt beasts from the woods and the mountain. He uses them in his research. Sometimes we help him with his work. We don't know what he works on. We know it's illegal."

Finishing answering the questions to the best of his abilities, the man simply returned to inaction, his mind incapable of anything else.

"Who is this Antinem? Tell me all you know about him." She further questioned.

"Something-something Antinem. Can't remember his first name. Doesn't let us call him by it anyway. A noble. A Baron. A researcher. Very rich. Too rich for a Baron. Fire and golden element. Drunkard. Has a stick up his ass." The man recounted.

"Are you bandits?" She continued. "Do you raid the nearby villages?"

"No. No."

"What does this boy look like to you?"

"Water user. Wide eyes. Scary eyes. Ethermaniac. Demon worshipper."

His voice was completely emotionless as he recited all that Sevi asked of him and not a word more or less.

"That is enough." She said

"Enough." The man repeated absentmindedly.

"Sleep." She ordered, and the man staggered asleep into the ground, he even instantly started snoring.

The man cut himself on the stone floor as he fell, and from that cut a globule of blood floated up before being absorbed by Sevi. The man didn't even feel it, his face paled a little, but his sleep was undisturbed.

"And there you go, Rethys. Are you satisfied now?"

Rethys stood there, scowling as his brain was forced to think harder than it has in a very long time. He didn't like thinking this hard, action was easier and simpler, it had helped him survive Yvtar. He tried listening to the ether around him, but it carried nothing that could help him.

"You really need to lessen the use of your element." She said, her voice filled with concern. "Even if they are not bandits and even if mercenaries are not pure of heart, they remain normal people."

"Those we killed in Yvtar were people too." He uttered.

Silence lingered for a while before Sevi spoke again.

"This is not Yvtar." She spoke softly. "And we did not k-"

She paused, cutting off her own words. She pondered for a while before sighing gravely and resuming.

"We did what we had to do there. This place and these people are different, they still have a choice. They may not make it, but that is not our problem."

Rethys looked at the man sleeping on the floor at an awkward pose. Two visions fought in his mind, one seeing the man before him as a forty-year-old, frail man, the other only seeing a bright light.

His mind grew cold, then the coldness went away, then came back, then thawed just as quickly. For the first time in a long time, Rethys didn't know what to do. He didn't like the feeling of confusion; it left him exposed and instilled into him an urgency to attain decisiveness again.

"Deactivate your senses." Sevi ordered.

"I can't. They're still in there, the rest of the mercs." He responded.

"If you are referring to the mercenaries, I have already put all of them to sleep. The mage too. They could not hope to stand my power. Nothing outside can threaten us either, because there is nothing outside. We are in the middle of nowhere, like you yourself said."

She was right, Rethys could tell that all of them were fast asleep, their souls' signals dim and subdued. But he couldn't just give away his greatest advantage just like that.

"It's fine."

"It is most certainly not fine." She rebuked. "Your mind cannot stand the rigors of that element. You must reign in your fears. We are no longer in Yvtar, we are safe now. Nothing can threaten us any longer, nothing I cannot stop. You need not continue to exert yourself like this."

He frowned, yet against his better judgement decided to listen to Sevi, recognizing that he owed her that much.

Deactivating his senses, he felt the world shrink back into its physical constraints once more, and the ever-present symphony of the ether silenced. He could feel the winds of ether still caressing him, yet felt blind to their movements. He felt naked, and the world around him felt suffocating.

"I am sorry. knew I should not have let you take it this far." Sevi uttered, her voice grave and regretful, yet Rethys couldn't hear her above the sound of his own intensifying dread.

It didn't get better, only more and more stifling. He closed his eyes and crouched to the ground, his body crumpling like a snail retreating into its shell. He tried reaching into his pocket to pull his dagger, it wasn't there, and he didn't even have a pocket.

He felt like a fish out of water, taken out of the ether and left to flop in complete helplessness. He felt that if he spent too long like this it would kill him, that he'd run out of the real air he needed and suffocate. How could anyone ever live like this? He asked. How could HE be expected to live like this?!

He looked around, half expecting to see dark stone halls etched in desperate pleas and mad ramblings. Every time those halls weren't there, yet every time it felt as if they were.

Many times, he almost gave in, yet just as he was about to, the same coldness that set into his mind made him realize the extent of the stress he had been putting it through.

'Focus on my voice.' Sevi's words resounded in his mind. 'Focus on your breathing. Focus on the light of the torches around you. You are safe here. I am here.'

He refocused on the physical world as best as he could, only to find it spinning on its axis. He focused on his breathing, he was taking deep, rapid and labored breaths. He tried to slow them down, remembering his mentor's words from all that time ago.

He focused on Sevi's aura, still as dreadful as when he first met her, and just as reassuring.

The world began coalescing again, taking stable form. He could see clearer now. He tried standing, only to find that he couldn't walk. He staggered to the ground. His body was completely numb, he could barely move anything without his Origin senses telling him where everything was.

He stood up, trying to balance himself using his arms, only to realize he only had one now. He lost his balance and promptly fell back again to the ground.

He saw a layer of red magic cover his skin, lathering it with some strange property he couldn't understand.

"Spread your senses as far as that layer, and ONLY that far." Sevi instructed.

He was about to do as she asked when a wave of cold, primeval fear washed through him. He felt afraid to return his senses now, for he knew that if he did, he would never again be able to subdue them.

He was wondering where the entity had been all this time, why it left him so conveniently, but this is where it had been. Was he ever free from its control if his mind was always subject to the ether? Was this its plan?

Or was he simply overthinking? He couldn't know.

Worry pulled and tore at him from every side, and in the end, he could only resolve to trust Sevi.

He spread his senses as far as the layer of Blood ether she traced and felt control of his body return to him, he still couldn't feel his body yet could now feel the ether coursing through it, it was better than nothing. He stood on his two feet again, yet it still felt all wrong. It didn't feel that there was earth underneath him, he couldn't feel it.

Feelings of wrongness permeated him, yet he did his best to ignore them. He stood somewhat stable, taking uncertain steps back and forth. He could do this.

"I can do this..." He repeated.

"You have done much harsher things." Sevi commented. "Follow the corridor, through the last door and into the laboratory. Their resident aristocrat there must have more and better information."

"On it..." Rethys answered as he took uneven steps forward.

Slowly and surely, he was walking. Foot after the other, it felt a little stupid, and he still felt weak and exposed.

"You seem to need a little more push." Sevi sighed as a tendril of blood shoved him stumbling forward and into the laboratory door. He almost fell but managed to gather himself in time and not tumble to the ground.

"Sevi, please..."

"Come now, you are stronger than this. In your own words, 'you've got it.'" She chuckled before turning her attention elsewhere. "Arise."

Hearing her word, the man slumped down slobbering on the table rose, pulling his chair back and turning towards Rethys.

For a second, Rethys thought that the orange-haired, gaunt man was awake, but looking at his eyes he realized that he too was completely under. His demeanor wasn't as limp and flaccid as the mercenary's, probably because of his greater power, yet he nonetheless couldn't escape Sevi's magic.

"Hmm..." Sevi deliberated for a while. "I think we will start by having you tell us everything you know about this Kingdom of Voldren, leaving nothing out. I want the full and comprehensive picture, your lands, your magic, your nobility and royalty, your very lives, all of it."

"This'll take a while." Rethys sighed as he pulled out a nearby chair, plopping down on it with such force that he almost broke it.