Leaving

"Are you sure this will work?" Rethys asked, his face the very epitome of unease. "This is giving me the creeps."

He was now in one of the ritual test chambers in the outer section of the ritual wing, a room previously occupied by a failed test subject of the cultists.

The poor thing was a cluster of floating golden glowing crystals, no longer bearing even the smallest indication of the human it once was. It was supposed to have abilities of Creation, yet it did nothing but float around the room aimlessly until Rethys released its soul.

The room was built of a different kind of stone than the rest of the catacombs, a more magic resistant material fit for a room where experiments of all kinds would occur. It had a ring in the center composed of an even more resilient kind of stone that would withstand even the most rigorous of ether discharges and explosions.

'No, magical experiments aren't all explosions.' He thought.

Though by looking at how bare the room was and how it was structured, he was hard pressed to deny it probably having been designed to deal with explosions of some sort.

Sevi had brought them here with the intent of using the runic lexicon to make the mother of all magical circles. It was to be a construct of extreme proportions that would use the power of the stone dagger, a nameless ancient artifact of Death they found no mention of in any of the documents they went through, to slowly rid the entirety of the Yvtari capital of all life, effectively cleansing it in one go.

That "one go" however, would take dozens of years, and would only extend to areas they inscribed with linking circles that would extend the range of function of this central one. They would essentially set it up and leave it to do the work on its own.

The central circle by itself was apparently going to free all the trapped souls in this place, since Sevi judged the ordeal to be a waste of time, and Rethys stubbornly insisted on freeing the souls first and would not budge.

"If Yvtar was inhabited, we would already have mages detecting the signal our activity is emitting and bursting through the door to put the two of us in Veternium cuffs. No one is left in this place to protest us making this monstrous affront to all things good in magic. The common dwellers will not be able to get through the door of this wing once we seal it, and the stronger ones will not notice any difference before it is too late.

"And I have already told you the both of us are immune to its effects." Sevi explained.

"Still, would've wanted to free them myself..." Rethys shook his head. "This feels like a cheap and roundabout way of doing it, just doesn't sit well with me."

"Well, my dear student, this shall then teach you the most important lesson of magic: compromise. The relationship between ether and mage is one of give and take, and now you must give a little. Trying to cleanse this entire place your way will take years; do you want to lengthen our stay here by years?"

"No." He sighed.

'Though, it still doesn't feel right...' He thought.

"This circle itself without extensions will take care of the catacombs and most of the old city waterways' lower levels, so we need not worry for a while. And, as I have told you, your element's powers allow us to bend the rules quite a bit. And by a bit, I mean too much... ether's sake, what some would give for this power..." Sevi sighed.

Rethys was assisting Sevi with drawing the magic circle, moving from spot of the room to another to allow the Blood mage to channel ether of all sorts of elements from etherstones and various materials the two collected before using it to draw the circles and runes on the ground of the test chamber.

He had to use some regular and other not-so-regular tools and processes on preserved herbs, powders, animal parts, and all sorts of magic materials, extracting from them the latent ether of one element or another, which then collected into special vials that with the help of specialized tools.

Those vials filled with raw ether would then be used by Sevi to draw the magic circles, using ether as if it were ink.

He was quite good at these tasks and enjoyed them quite a bit, it was his specialty after all. The complex and convoluted processes felt familiar and comfortable, despite the fact that he understood little of how everything truly functioned. And despite the strange and unusual tools used, as well as the difference between Fulgrith's methods and Sevi's, his proficiency and thoroughness still managed to impress her.

"Being able to splurge like this in crafting is a pleasant experience, but my heart aches for the sheer amount of valuables we will be leaving behind in these workshops." She sighed.

"You said you could store a few things with your Blood magic, didn't you?" Rethys asked. "What can't your element do at this point?"

"This is only because I am good at it. It is my specialty; it is not as if you see me using any other element. The only other element I can use as I am now is Mind, and my affinity even in that is comparably abysmal."

She had further explained that Blood magic was not just rare, but a bit forbidden. It was seemingly the domain of particularly powerful and dangerous daemons of the ethereum, chief among them the eldritch. This was why evidence of its use would lead the two to be hunted down by mages of the surface.

It also implied that the vampires Rethys had heard of way back when were possibly related to the escaped eldritches. A concerning piece of information.

On the other hand, however, it meant that, if it truly came to it, they could join those daemon and eldritch worshippers to obtain at least some measure of safety until they figured things out. Sevi was even confident she could impersonate the Mother of Grace and get a lot out of them. Before she killed all of them, that was.

"Even then, I could only store a few things Rethys, not whole rooms worth of magical treasures. We cannot take any of this with us, though it will guarantee the potency of our frankly unholy creation. I am sorry for ranting as I do, but know that it feels unfathomably wrong to go against all I have learned and to make... whatever this is."

"You're overreacting." He shrugged as he looked at the ethereal circles arranged before him. "Really don't get you mages..."

He didn't know how elements such as Darkness, Chaos, Wind and Light had to do with a magical circle whose main purpose is to spread Death around the remnants of Yvtar, yet according to Sevi, every element had functions in runescript that went beyond its regular confines.

It was also apparently the case that every magic circle required different ether and runes of different elements to build. Rethys did not at all know this before, since the finished product only emitted ether of the primary rune's element.

'Confusing stuff...' He sighed inwardly, figuring that it wasn't worth it to focus too much on these things.

There would come a time when he learnt runescript properly, but now wasn't the time since Sevi could just take care of it. He had his own duties he had to focus on.

Looking at the numerous concentric and connected circles drawn with ether and adorned with numerous etherstones, he saw their very ether beginning to shudder, a violent reaction was on the way.

"Rethys, if you will."

"On it." He replied, crouching down to do his most crucial task.

Laying his hand on the cold stone of the test ring, he felt the flows of ether going through the motions Sevi had laid out for them, moving back and forth in intricate patterns imbued into the stone underneath. They were trembling with instability. The magic circle was unstable, since its creator was not at all experienced in the runology of the main elements involved and was also pushing the limits of the circle.

She did her best, but her knowledge of runescript was seemingly basic except for the elements she used in her previous life, those of Light and Mind. The circle was also too large and too impractical to function properly and wouldn't survive the creation process.

During crafting, magic circles were unstable and at risk of failing and wasting the mage's resources. If they survived that process they would seemingly harden and become completely stable unchangeable, sort of how Rethys figured out how to stabilize his own spells.

And since the circle they were creating was of such extreme proportions, it would normally never survive the creation process, perhaps even killing the creator in a spectacular explosion of magic. That is, until Rethys' new spell, Stabilize, came into play.

By periodically applying this new side of the Origin element to the impractical magic installation, it could get through the crafting process safely, thus allowing something ordinarily impossible to exist, with all the implications that such a feat carried.

But apart from that use, Rethys saw the spell as lacking. It had no combat applications, and the only situation where it could be used was when stabilizing unstable ether. It could not strengthen ether, he could not simply cast it on himself and have stronger magic, he could only use it to restore his soul's own strength if it had lost its stability somehow.

Sevi had explained to him how to create the ability as the counterpart to his destabilizing Enfeeble, and had walked him through the process needed to figure out how to do it. It took a lot of mental exercise for the young man, and when he eventually figured out how to do it, he did so by remembering Levantros' own ether-placating Purity ability and drawing some parallels from it. He had since wisely refrained from sharing that fact with Sevi.

All in all, it was an ability that made unstable ether return to some semblance of order, though not its original state. And needless to say, Rethys would need a while to understand the full scope of its powers.

The duo did find a secondary powerful use for its function, in the form of restoring the soul fatigue brought by overuse of the unbound ability. And though Rethys rejoiced at the find, Sevi was quick to snap him out of his celebratory mood by telling him that it most certainly had a hidden side effect, and that one couldn't simply achieve infinite energy.

Ether functioned that way, she said, with power always coming at a cost.

And so, after many rounds of Sevi uncomfortably, almost unwillingly expanding the magic circle, and Rethys stabilizing it with the help of his element, the "horrid thing", as she called it, was complete.

One would think from her visceral reactions that what they had made was many times more horrible than what the cultists did. A mage's pride, it seemed, was no joke.

"We're almost done, no?" Rethys asked as he cleared

"No, we are done. All we have to do now is inscribe the focal rune of Death using the stone knife." She explained as dark, slow-moving ether floated out of the stone dagger, assuming the shape of a rune, the same rune currently depicted in the runic lexicon.

The lexicon turned out to be an enchanted stone tablet that showed any runes it registered according to the user's commands. He didn't know how effective the item was, but Sevi attested to being able to use it to do just about anything, especially with the availability of materials around them.

Rethys then snapped out of his thoughts as he saw the circles all assume the same color of Death before the whole ensemble suddenly lost its air of instability, instead becoming completely stable. The circle was finished.

"That is all, it will activate in a few hours. We will now leave, seal the entrance to this place, and leave the catacombs, preferably for the rest of our lives." Sevi explained.

"Yeah." Rethys replied as he reached to pack their things, the items barely fitting into the satchel.

They had found a plethora of useful items from the cultists' inner sanctum, and though they took all they could, it only amounted to a few artifacts. They were ancient artifacts with terrifying powers over the ether and magic, yet at the same time ones that had little to no use to Rethys.

He had learnt that one had a limited amount of magic they could carry on them before things became volatile, and Sevi had judged it only logical for them to carry only the most valuable items, even if they were not immediately useful. And in the end, his satchel was full of items of very great power and extremely dubious nature.

"That bag contains probably the most amount of wealth for such a small space in the whole world." Sevi mused.

"It's dead weight." Rethys repeated for the umpteenth time.

"Yes, yes." She shrugged. "Now on to that teleportation circle of yours before we head out to the upper levels."

And so, the duo headed out to the halls of the ritual wing, out through its door, and after sealing its entrance continued onward to the odd workshop containing the hastily scrawled teleporter circle. They then promptly got to work.

Sevi scrapped the Space element circle, and after siphoning the ether that made it up, crafted another, stabler one. Rethys meanwhile tried his best to remember the specifications of the teleporter he had seen in Northwood all that time ago, helping the two teleporters match to one another as much as possible. From there, it didn't take long for the circle to be finished.

And staring at the finished product, Rethys couldn't help but want to use it. Freedom was right there, part of him even wanted to ignore Sevi's reasoning.

'Not that I can...' He sighed inwardly.

He would've activated the circle instantly if his life didn't hang in the balance, regardless of her wishes. She had already double-crossed him too many times, he had every right to do the same.

Yet no matter how he justified not escaping and staying here longer, it never felt right. And no matter how he tried justifying betraying her, it also didn't sit well with him.

"We should move if you are done appreciating it." Sevi commented.

"Can't we just use it?" He asked, his eyes not leaving the faintly glowing purple circles and runes.

"It is a trap, Rethys, laid by your own desperation and ignorance." She sighed gravely. "Our chance for true freedom lies up there, not down here. If naught goes well, we can always find our way back, and try our luck then. But until that moment, we must give our all in a real attempt to escape, you said that yourself, no?"

"Yeah..." He replied, swallowing his frustrations.

From now on, for better or worse, every moment going forth was one spent in Yvtar willingly.