Rain

When Rethys opened his eyes, he did not find himself in the familiar circular binding room, where he had last slept a very long time ago, instead waking up in the middle of a pool of water. He couldn't move his body.

He looked around, it was dark, wet and loud, so very loud. Water poured in from above, drenching the whole place in noise and wetness, it poured in from everywhere.

'Where...' He tried to think, only for his head to blank out and for his consciousness to disappear again.

It was a while, or at least it felt that way, before he woke up again. He took stock of his surroundings once again, it was wetter, louder and darker than before, water was everywhere, the pool he was in grew too large and threatened to drown him.

'I have... to move.' He thought.

He focused, gathering up the entirety of his strength to push his body upward and forward, in the end only barely succeeding to stand up properly.

He tried to figure out what happened yet couldn't remember a thing. He was most definitely in the waterways, he thought, the legionnaire must have led them or followed them down here. He had to get his shit back together before it showed up again.

He then unfurled his magical senses, taking in the entirety of what they could reach, only for them to detect far too many souls around him, and for the feedback to knock him unconscious again.

He woke up a few seconds later, choking from the water surrounding him from every side and angle. He struggled up again, the puddle he was in thankfully he wasn't yet deep enough to drown. He moved his legs slowly through, hopping to keep his face above the water.

He had to get out of here, he didn't know for sure what his senses had shown him, but he remembered thousands upon thousands of souls. He had to be in the catacombs for that to be the case, and in its central areas.

But how did water reach that far, that made no sense unless the underground caved in badly. Not good, he thought, especially when he couldn't use his senses.

He crawled out of the pool of water, his hand trying to find purchase somewhere in the wet rock. The stone of the underground was too smooth, he thought, and so he had to be careful.

Yet what his hand found was not slippery stone, but rather muddy earth.

'The caves...' He thought in absolute horror.

He was never supposed to go to the caves, ever.

He was startled. His entire body tensed and strained like a gods-damned siege ballista and his right arm catapulted him out of the water and straight into a wall he couldn't sense. The impact almost robbed him of his consciousness a third time.

He tried to get back up and recover from the shock when a loud noise of an explosion struck, and the world around him shook with light.

It was the clap of lightning, showing the silhouettes of trees in the ground and clouds in the sky.

Trees? The sky?

He stood, his limbs shaking from the exhaustion of the past... however long it had been, and looked around him.

The water only got louder and pelted him harder and harder in small, relentless droplets. He recognized this sound.

"Rain..." He muttered; his hoarse voice drowned out by the cacophony of it.

It most definitely did not rain in the undergrounds of Yvtar.

He reached out to the wall he had struck, which was actually a tree, and grabbed it. The tree protested, yet couldn't resist the strength of an eldritch host, and his fingers dug into it and carved apart its wood and bark.

He held his hand before his face and emitted a bit of ether. The ether glowed faintly, revealing splinters and shards of rain-soaked wood in his hands.

There also weren't trees in underground Yvtar.

Thunder roared, the shadow of its light jumping from cloud to cloud in the dark sky above.

Could the legionnaire have led them outside? To the surface?! It couldn't be.

He rose, looking around with his senses in small patches, sensing trees, water, small animals and their smaller souls, the sights were overwhelming even as he took it as slowly as he could.

He then found them, small traces of Space ether hanging in the air, and large chunks of Yvtari stone scattered all around them. Some were somehow seamlessly embedded into trees, while other large chunks sunk into the muddy soil of the forest.

"The teleporter..."

Did it work? If so, they should have been in Northwood or-

"The neighboring wildlands!" He yelled in realization.

He then turned his senses towards the soulstone in his chest. Its soul signal was faint and subdued, the one inside was sleeping, it seemed, recovering from weakness. She did carry the burden of getting them out of there almost entirely by herself at some point, and Rethys promised to thank her profusely when she woke up.

He walked around, trying to get a feel for the ether around him, to get an idea of what it spoke of and what it carried. He was wholly satisfied when the ambient flows spoke of trees, trees, and more trees, letting him know that he was in deep wilderness. Safe wilderness.

He searched around him, slowly stumbling his way through mud to find some sort of shelter. He doubted that this weather would affect him in any way, but still had to wait for Sevi to wake up before making any moves.

Eventually he found more of the laboratory that contained the teleporter, quite a bit of the place seemed to have teleported with them. These chunks seemed cleanly cut from where they had once been, with clear, smooth borders delineating the unnatural separation. The teleportation was rough to say the least.

This was what Sevi had feared would happen to them, and though he knew he was fine, the sights still prompted him to check his body for anything missing.

Eventually, as he looked for one chunk or other that had a decent roof, he happened upon something else carved apart by the rough teleportation, the remains of a daemon.

"Gods..." He sighed as he looked at the legionnaire's corpse.

The giant skeletal warrior appeared to have been cleanly cleaved in half, it must have been very close to killing them at some point for its corpse to be here.

He double then triple checked that it was truly dead, before then resuming his search for shelter until eventually finding something serviceable.

He sat down slowly, easing his battered body down and against a wall. And from there took to enjoying his hard-earned freedom. He looked at his body, healed all wrong as it was, and realized he would need help from an actual healer. The corruption had also intensified extremely, with his entire torso now looking utterly daemonic.

'It's not so bad.' He thought.

After all he could cover it as long as it didn't creep up his limbs or face. It was manageable, he figured, and decided not to pay it much attention.

He then turned his sight towards the sky and trees around him. He had never seen rain this furious and thunder this loud, they had to be quite far north for the weather to take on such an extreme nature. He wondered how the soil could ever soak in this much water, but later shrugged away the worries and questions and simply immersed himself in the sound of rain and the symphony of tranquil ether.

There were no silent screams of the damned here, no churning muck of regret and pain, no reminders of human failure, of how needlessly vile and cruel everything is and of how pointless it all was. Here there was only the soothing symphony of rain and thunder and sleeping trees, and though his senses were overwhelmed by it all at first, he felt he could release them outward just fine.

He sensed trees, then small animals within the soil and within the branches and even bark of the trees, hiding from the furious storm outside. The beautiful sights of nature, even in such turbulent weather.

He stood up, reached for a nearby empty glass flask from the remains of the workshop, and used it to gather and drink rainwater. He couldn't taste anything, not only because the water was tasteless, but it nonetheless felt heavenly.

Rethys sat there, calmly basking in the serenity of it all, of the victory that he... they achieved, until he fell asleep, his face the very picture of contentment.

*****

"...Rethys... you need to... have to move... wake up!"

Hearing the familiar voice, Rethys jolted awake, wide-eyed and alert. He instantly tensed his body, readying himself to run or fight at any moment, before realizing where he was once again.

"Oh..."

"Where are we?" Sevi asked, her voice projecting loudly to be heard above the rain and thunder.

Sobering up from sleep and readjusting to his surroundings, Rethys took a moment before he felt calm enough to speak.

"Somewhere in the northern wildlands, hold on for a second." He answered as he looked to the west.

Thunder then struck, as if on cue, to show him the silhouettes of distant, jagged mountains. The distant peaks looked especially ominous in the backdrop of the tempest, and Rethys could see that one of the mountains, an especially titanic looking one, looked terribly out of place.

His observations aside, he recognized the sight as that of a mountain chain known as the Dark Spine, home to earthen elementals, as far as he knew.

"We're definitely in the northwestern wildlands, maybe near Kalantor, but I'm not sure. It's near the Dark Spine." He added.

He recalled what he knew of Voldren's geography. Kalantor was definitely the westernmost town he could remember, belonging to the Archduchy of Aldeno and being the closest settlement to the Dark Spine that wasn't a small village.

"The Dark Spine..." Sevi repeated. "So, we are this far south... It matters not, we need to get out of here as soon as possible. The teleportation went catastrophically wrong and must have been detected by every mage in the damned continent. We cannot afford to let ourselves be found. We need to move now!"

But go where? It just dawned on Rethys that he had absolutely nowhere to go and that the mere sight of him would send whole towns into panic.

He wasn't delusional, he fully realized what kind of threat he'd be seen as, just as he realized what kind of threat he truly was. He didn't know enough about magic beasts, threats and whatever ranking they held, but figured that he'd be placed quite up there, and that wasn't counting Sevi.

'Not the time for doubts.' He concluded.

This wasn't the time for second guessing himself. Getting free from Yvtar was just the first step, a very good, happy and liberating step, mind you, one that would be remembered for years to come, but still the first in a long line of things he and Sevi needed to do.

"Just head west and follow the Spine's fringes. Keep an eye out for magical beasts, we need blood of any kind to fix your body." Sevi explained.

"Alright." He nodded, remembering that his body was currently a mess.

He stepped out of the cover of the stone roof, letting the heavy rain pelt him and rob him of whatever warmth his body had gathered during his short rest. He expected the rain to feel cool, but it didn't feel like anything.

'It's fine.' He thought as he started his journey west.

Meanwhile, in the distant horizon and unseen by all but the earth itself, a mountain moved.