Despair

As the barrier separating the sealing chamber from the rest of the world faded away, Rethys could feel himself subject once again to the ambient flows of ether, and with it, the sway of the Origin entity.

He could feel pressure building up around him, and a force trying to worm its way back into his very soul. The curse though, making his soul incompatible with any and all influences of the mind, prevented the entity's attempts at reconnecting with Rethys, its power not finding purchase within his soul as if it were not even there.

"Interesting..." The voice uttered, though Rethys was too busy focusing on himself to hear her.

The entity's power, however, continued to hover around him, it seemed unwilling to simply let go and, even after waiting for minutes on end, remained anchored near him.

"It seems your eagerness has borne fruit." The voice commented.

'Thanks for turning off the barrier, gave me a heart attack.' Rethys grumbled in his mind.

"Thank you for your aid, milady." He actually said, his slight smile displaying a convincing amount of relief.

Hearing his reply, the ancient mage began laughing loudly, her beautiful voice cackling madly as if she had just heard the funniest joke of her entire life, making shivers run down Rethys' spine.

'I messed up, didn't I?'

"Uhm, l-lady mage?" Rethys asked nervously.

"My apologies, boy. I did not wish to mock or startle you. I am simply curious as to what your next course of action would be, now that you have gotten ridden of your most pressing of issues. Do you even know where you are, boy?"

Now that he had heard it come out of someone else's mouth, or in this case strange magical gem, Rethys realized that he knew little of his current predicament aside from the bits of information the entity fed him. He was after all so busy with securing a way to retain his free will that he couldn't worry about all the details around him.

He did know that the place where he was right now was either part of some deathland or, with some luck, a wasteland. Wastelands were regions that could bear no life due to the calamities that took place upon them, reflected in the ether in them running awry and preventing anything from thriving within them, in which sense they were the antithesis of wildlands that brimmed with magic and ether. It made sense for this place to be one such location.

On the other hand, deathlands were like the aforementioned wastelands, but instead are actively extremely dangerous regions that exist only to threaten the lives of all living in neighboring regions. They were regions so dangerous that any attempt to conquer them was either unfeasible or downright impossible.

He knew this as much as any other inhabitant of the Voldren Kingdom, as the kingdom itself had a few isolated regions that fit these descriptions and necessitated information about them to be as widespread as possible. These regions always appeared on maps even though travel through them was forbidden, and Rethys was even familiar with the names of a few.

The most memorable and peculiar one he could recall was Aantiel, an immense magical beast that roamed around the southern borders of the Voldren Kingdom and was so unfathomably large that a huge area around it was constantly considered completely uninhabitable deathlands.

He knew for sure he was in one such region, seemingly the ruin of some fallen civilization of the past, though he did not know which, and even if he did, he probably wouldn't be able to recognize it. Perhaps if he had focused well enough when the Origin entity was "enlightening him to his sacred duty" then he would've been able to realize which spot he was sent to, though in retrospect, he did not really have much of a choice.

'It can't be that bad right?' He wondered.

The more he thought about it however, the grimmer his predicament seemed. Though eventually, he figured brooding over it by himself wouldn't do him any good, he had to face the facts, harsh as they were.

"No, I do not know where this is." He replied to the voice's question.

"Then allow me to enlighten you. This is Yvtar, or what is left of it I suppose. Previously home to the human realms' brightest runescribes and some of its greatest mages. Currently, however, a city of the dead and damned from which there is no escape, or perhaps many cities, I would not know, my senses cannot reach much farther than the capital walls"

Wait...

'Did I hear that right?'

"Lady mage, d-did you say Yvtar? The ancient kingdom located to the far north-west of the continent of Inverra?" Rethys uttered, each word being forced out of his throat against the slowly setting despair.

"The very same. However, it was not a kingdom, boy, though I suppose it would indeed be considered ancient now, strange as that may be for me to hear it. A rare and strange privilege I suppose, to hear your very home be spoken of in such a way." The voice mused on her own.

As Rethys stood there, the sheer extent of just how fucked he was setting into his bones, the azure gem regarded him with pity.

"Ah, that look of realization, better you make peace with the facts now than live in false hope. For even if by some miracle you manage to reach the surface, the things waiting for you up there will be many times more dreadful than whatever still wanders these halls. For while they may not seem it, these old city catacombs were relatively spared of the destruction of that day, you see.

"The only way I could think of for you to escape this place is to obey that higher entity of yours and accomplish its task. Though I am more of the opinion that it would then simply send you to where it needs you next, were you to become its slave again. A pyrrhic victory at best.

"But that of course would necessitate you to fully carry out the cleansing of Yvtar to begin with, which I doubt you would be able to. This place harbors horrors beyond your comprehension, and I assume beyond that entity's sight as well, since it sent you here weak and unprepared as you are. If you wish to blame someone for this, blame it, because it would be quite comical if it sent you here knowing the dangers involved.

"Even free of its control, I presume you will stay here either until you give yourself back to that entity's control or until you starve. I suppose I shall enjoy your company until then. Feel free to stay in this room, if you would like, it provides the closest thing to safety that there could be within these halls."

Rethys just sat there, his face blank as he soaked in the voice's revelations. And while he was indeed of the skeptical sort, he recognized that the voice had little reason to lie to him, her power so great that she seemingly saved him out of curiosity and helped him on a whim.

'Not going to give up just like that.' He thought, trying stubbornly to not let himself drown in despair.

This wasn't the first time he was completely on his own in a hostile environment, after all, every day of his on the streets was basically just that. He wasn't going to just lie down and accept that blasted entity's fervent attempts to take away his life. It was time to examine his situation and come up with a plan.

If he truly was in Yvtar then he would expect to stay here for a long while before securing a way back home, and with that extended period came the worries for water, food and shelter. He already had shelter in the form of this room which no dweller of the catacombs would approach, he only had to figure out food and water, the single most pressing concerns.

"Lady mage, is there any source of water around here?"

"Planning to choose stubborn survival, are we? Do not think I would not appreciate that. As for your question, none that would service you in time I'm afraid, and I myself am not attuned to the Water element." The ancient mage replied, confirming Rethys' concerns. "You could however find passages around the catacombs that lead to workshops and labs used by the cultists that dwelled here. All their artifacts and tools should still be intact despite the passage of time, so you should be able to find at least one of the water conjuring tools they must have used.

"If you plan on trying to find one such location, only take passages leading upwards. Avoid at all costs any passage into the inner mausoleum, if you see a stairway heading down, turn in the opposite direction and run."

'That sounds... oddly manageable.' Rethys thought, remembering that he saw a few stairways leading upwards during the time he spent wandering the catacombs. He also recalled ignoring them because they lead away from his "targets" at the time, which meant that they were safe.

"Your next concern would be food, would it not?" Asked the voice, interrupting Rethys' thoughts. "I doubt anything found here would fill that role, not in large enough quantities in any case. The only thing that can even remotely qualify would be the creatures that wander these halls."

"You want me to cannibalize those people?" Asked Rethys, completely and utterly revolted by the idea.

He might have thought of himself as a survivor, but even he had to draw the line somewhere.

"If it is any consolation, those things are not people anymore, so it would not be considered cannibalism. Even the pale wretches that resemble their previous human nature the most of any other native of Yvtar, are not human, not anymore. If I were to put some thought into it, those things could already be considered a type of lesser daemon. A pathetic rendition, but still, those things are not worth your compassion. This of course is not to mention everything else that you could encounter."

Rethys found it hard to accept the voice's reasoning, especially as he saw that the souls of those trapped in this place looked human.

"I can imagine you trying to rationalize it all in your mind now." The voice chuckled. "But I do not have to convince you at all, my boy. When desperation changes your mind, and it will, bring the corpses to me first, their flesh would very probably be poisonous to you."

'But they're still... whatever. If what she said is true, there should be preserved food in those labs and workshops.' He considered, diverting his thoughts away from the voice's suggestion.

He rose to his feet, dusting and putting his clothes back on and then stretching his body. Everything still felt like a combination of sore and limp, even with the new strength provided by awakening his element.

He couldn't idle around for too long though, he felt that he had to do something, and the voice was generous enough to help and point him towards a destination.

Looking at his hands from where slowly poured out the dark blue ether of Origin, he frowned.

Firstly, because he had yet to process that the long-awaited awakening of his powers was of this damned element, complete with some god-like thing that controls it that he would have to deal with.

Secondly, it was because it once again hit him that he knew little to nothing about how to use it, now that he was separate from the entity giving him those powers. He felt the confidence granted by his powerful element fading away, and he even felt a small part of him wanting to return to the entity's guidance.

Disturbed by the direction his thoughts took him, he shook his head and thought about what he knew he could do. He could mess with ether and spells as he had seen the Origin elemental perform, and he could also mess with the consciousness and even souls of living things by interfering with them.

He also retained the ability he had before to sense presences, now augmented with being able to also sense ether. And though he didn't know for sure if he retained the ability to detect lies as well, he decided not to trust either it or the cryptic messages, seeing as he now knew where they came from.

'I could just... knock out anything I come across.' He thought. 'Shouldn't be too hard if I stay away from them too.'

Gathering up all the motivation he could muster, Rethys decided to head out to find one of the passages he ran across before and ignored.

"Good luck boy. And do try to return in one piece."