Humanity

He walked across the medial district's spacious square, with its fountains, and embellished benches and gazebos as well as magically preserved gardens, and approached the building.

A knight bearing the mark of the Order stood guard at the door, and Rethys ignored him as he casually strolled inside.

Inside, he saw a receptionist's office, with a pretty thirty-year-old lady with blond hair lounging about. She had the characteristic, absolutely bored expression of having sat there aimlessly for hours and expecting to continue to do so for hours more.

As far as Rethys knew, rarely did anyone show up at these Order branches at the outer cities, as these offices existed only for the purpose of scouting rare magical talents among commoners, and that scouting only happened in late autumn.

'Stairway on your right, head to the topmost floor.' Sevi's voice snapped him out of his pondering.

He shook his head and instantly headed for the stairs, climbing flight after flight until he reached the third floor.

'The second door.' Sevi instructed.

A corridor then unfolded in his vision, with a number of closed doors extending forward. The first of them was open and showed an office with an elderly, blue-mantled Mage going through paperwork at a snail's pace.

Ignoring that sight, he headed towards the one Sevi pointed out, and laying his hand on the doorknob, he applied his senses by physical touch, extending them only to the enchanted door lock. He then applied his weakest disenchanting spell, mindful to not let too much Origin ether linger in the air and swung the door open.

Within he saw many shelves full to the brim with paperwork and the occasional magic tool, he ignored all of it before heading towards the large shape on a distant table, covered in runed cloth. He removed the large sheet and underneath it was a large contraption of many enchanted parts that looked more akin to having been brutally glued together rather than made by an enchanter.

'How unfathomably inefficient!' Sevi exclaimed with an outraged voice. 'Your country seems much less capable than I anticipated if they use such antiquated designs and brute force methods. This thing is hideous!'

And though Rethys knew little of magic, he had to agree that the monstrosity of metal and glass before him, though perhaps the single most complex magic tool he had ever seen, was truly ugly.

'It matters not. Simply lay your hand...' Sevi had to spend a while looking for the interface of the magical device. 'There! I think... perhaps? Ether's sake this is outrageously convoluted.'

"Take your time." Rethys whispered as he laid his hand on the device and extended his senses through it.

'This affront to craftsmanship is far too messy for me...' Sevi grumbled. 'Can you determine how to interact with it?'

He pored through the device, checking its enchantments circle by circle and following the flow of ether, until he found one that absorbed energy but had no other circle to provide it.

"I think I found it." He voiced.

'Send your ether into it.' Sevi responded

Rethys turned around the large hunk of enchantments and laid his hand on the prominent metallic disc. He was about to send his ether to it when he heard Sevi shriek. "Wait!!"

He paused, frozen in his tracks while the elderly Mage next door walked over to the room and swung its door open to check what the ruckus was.

The Mage looked around the room with a frown, his bushy eyebrows joining as he scanned the room thoroughly before his gaze rested at the affinity detecting device, at Rethys himself.

He then walked over, mumbling something under his breath as he approached Rethys, who in turn froze like a statue before Sevi's voice shook him.

'He did not discover us, do not move a muscle!'

Rethys retreated, his back pressed to the closed window as the elderly Mage approached to inspect the magic tool.

The old man regarded the device thoroughly before nodding to himself. He crouched, grunting with effort as he did, and picked up the cloth laying on the ground before covering the device with it again.

"Must've been the wind." He shrugged.

'Is this man okay?' Rethys thought, seeing as the window was closed and the room was all but sealed.

The old Mage then checked around the room again before heading back from whence he came, locking the door behind him as he went, blissfully unaware that the lock was no longer enchanted.

"What was that for?!" Rethys whispered.

'You were about to break the damned thing!' Sevi rebuked 'You are supposed to let the device draw out your ether, not emit active magic directly into it! And of your element of all things!'

"Alright, alright." He sighed as he uncovered the device again. "What do I do?"

'Rest your hand on that disc, and then go with the flow.' She instructed

As he laid his hands on the disc, he felt his ether being drawn out. As instructed, he didn't reject the connection, allowing it to siphon his energy until the device began humming and its many parts began subtly glowing.

'Keep going.' Sevi ordered, and he did just that.

Eventually the device quieted, prompting Rethys to cut off the magic supply, and glass spheres on its surface began glowing, each with the color of a different element and at different intensities.

'Let us see...' Sevi began. 'Hmm... It is as you said, your Water affinity is high, and your Fire affinity is very low. Wind is average, Earth is above average. Light, Darkness and Gravity are all low. As for the ethereal elements, Mind, Life, Malice, Restoration, Creation and Destruction, they are all low.

'Purity and Chaos do not have affinities, but are rather a yes or a no, and both are a no in your case. And though the device does not account for them, if I were to make an educated guess your affinity for Blood would also be very low, while your affinity for Origin must be extremely high.'

"Is that a good thing? Sevi, you have to explain this stuff to me."

'For now, know that affinity simply means the element would be easier to deal with, which in the long run would mean better odds at achieving great mastery. Your low affinity with Blood is problematic, but all is well, seeing that your high affinity with Water is exactly what we hoped for.'

"You mean what you hoped for." Rethys clarified as he headed to leave. "Are you going to explain that plan of yours now or what?"

'Find lodgings for us while I mull over it a bit more. We will discuss things once we find a safe space.'

"Sure." Rethys grunted.

He headed for the stairs down, stealing a glance at the elderly man to see he had returned to flipping through papers, and from there moved to leave the building.

Yet as he reached the receptionist's office, he saw that a group of mages had arrived, six blue capes and the red of a High Mage, all bearing the Order's mark. He recognized this sight immediately; it was the yearly talent appraisers. They were poring over documents with the receptionist and talking among themselves.

'What are they doing here...' Rethys thought.

'Empowering spells.' Sevi notified. 'We should leave.'

"Wait, not yet." He whispered back. "They're appraisers, and they're not supposed to be here now. We should find out why."

'Very well. Let us be done with it quickly. I will check their documents.'

He approached the cohort of mages, eavesdropping on their conversations and even getting close enough to sneak peeks at the papers they carried.

All in all, their conversations carried only standard procedure and disgruntlement at their workload and things getting so delayed. The reason for all of it meanwhile, was more than a little surprising.

'Increased hours, shifts and occupied personnel...' Sevi spoke as she listed off what the papers contained. 'Countless delays throughout both Kingdom and Order hierarchies... all point towards a single incident that took place months ago... an attack by an Origin elemental on an unsuspecting expeditionary force sent out of Northwood outpost...

'Rethys, is this...'

"Yes, the one that... yes..." He muttered in response.

'Well, it seems that the ordeal had agitated both the Kingdom and the Mage Order terribly, and for good reason. It should very well be the only recorded attack by Origin creatures in history...'

Rethys paused, his mind turbulent as he thought about what exactly happened after he was whisked away to Yvtar.

"Sevi do the papers say anythin-"

'Rethys, we should leave. It will do you no good, tell you nothing you do not already know. For now, find an inn to stay the night. I will be pondering our plan until then.'

He frowned but nodded and headed for the building's exit, his heart heavy.

The walk back to the outer district was quiet, too quiet for Rethys' taste, up until he approached the market square again and the noise helped distract him.

From there he looked for an inn and instantly headed inside when he found one that looked decent enough. He swung the door open and entered.

He expected no one to so much as look his way, and while that mostly was the case, the innkeeper did notice. The burly man was shaken for a second, noticing the glowing blue eyes of an ethermaniac, before a Mind spell gently hit him on the head and made him ignore the fact. He stood there, blinking a few times in confusion, grappling with the sensation of having forgotten something.

Rethys looked around him. The inn was an ordinary one, with a tavern on the ground floor and presumably lodgings on the upper floors. Rethys noted that it was clean, well furnished, generally cozy, and quite empty seeing as it was only noon, before losing interest and focusing on the man behind the counter.

"Welcome to The Bearded Birch." The stocky, bearded man announced with a jovial smile. "A night's one silver, food is twenty coppers, company is OFF the table, and we hope you enjoy your stay."

Rethys applauded himself right there for not flinching at the exorbitant prices this man was charging.

'A whole silver... for a single night...' He thought, stone-faced as his mind processed the information.

'Pay for a night at the very least, we will be staying here.' Sevi insisted.

"Son, are you gonna pay or are you just gonna stare at the shelves?" The innkeeper asked after a while. He was taking great care not to seem offensive.

"No, no." Rethys answered. "I mean yes, I'll pay for a night, and for lunch."

He then counted out the money and put it on the counter, feeling as if he were tearing out his own soul as he did.

'It doesn't matter.' He repeated to himself. 'Money doesn't matter anymore... I'm never coming to this place ever again.'

"Right away! Thanks for your patronage." The innkeeper said as Rethys walked over to a table.

The young man plopped down on the chair, hearing it creak and croak from his weight as he readjusted.

'What a fine establishment.' He sighed.

"So, Sevi. Care to enlighten me about your so-called 'inkling of an idea'?" He asked.

'It can wait, you can have your food first.' She replied.

"Really?"

'Yes, I must make revisions to it and... just... shut up Rethys! Eat first, that is final!' Sevi snapped.

Rethys blinked in confusion before letting out a tired "Sure" and turning his attention elsewhere.

Yet that did not help, for the inn was horribly boring all throughout. There were barely any people inside aside from weary travelers who had just woken from their slumber at early noon, and the inn itself didn't have much going for it aside from its cozy, quiet atmosphere. Rethys had half a mind to nap while waiting for his meal to arrive.

The wait was boring and made the young man question everything that had led to this point. Shouldn't they be worrying about his magic affinities and learning better magic? Perhaps unlocking the secret of advancing to the unbound stage to gain new strength and his arm back? Or they could even worry about finding some way to establish themselves in Voldren.

What were they even doing in this inn, Rethys thought, while he could've just bought from food stalls and forsaken sleep entirely in favor of getting more things done? Why did he choose this inn in particular, it was absurdly expensive! Did prices truly rise this much since his departure from Aldeno? Was this what his master meant by "inflation"?

He wondered about the economic states of the Voldren Kingdom and its adjacent sovereign realms of Sirevin and Thalfionach.

He wondered then about his element, his future, and his life thus far. He remembered things his element showed him, his memories of his mentor Fulgrith and of cold streets, and then vague visions of a family he never remembered having.

The implications were never lost on him, he just never had the time to think of them, with things having been the way they were back then and there.

Should he try and search for them, now that he was out of Yvtar? Would that even be possible? He was after all, but one orphan of hundreds or perhaps even thousands in Aldeno, one of Voldren's major duchies.

And aside from being able to do so, should he? He might not know much of his origins, but he did know that he was born in autumn, as told to him by magic appraisers nearly five years ago, which most certainly meant that his presumably poor family abandoned him at the onset of harsh winter. What would he gain even if he did find his parents and potential siblings?

They were people that at the time considered him merely as one more mouth to feed, and had thrown him out into the cold streets to die.

He had always known that there was... someone... out there, yet had always either grappled with the stress of survival on the streets or that of his apprenticeship and unresponsive magical talent. Most importantly, for an orphan such as himself, family was always such an esoteric concept, one easily dismissed and forgotten once his indignation toward it faded.

But now that knowledge came back stronger than ever, felt realer than ever, and his mind was not in the best place.

He frowned, not liking where his thoughts had taken him. He tried thinking about his future instead. That didn't help either.

He was now at constant threat of losing his will to his element, and his life to most magic wielders of the world.

Unlike Sevi, he didn't care one bit about keeping his humanity, yet he understood mankind's need to weed out such creatures. After all, Yvtar had shown him the consequences of messing with such forces.

Yet that made it so that he had naught to do but hang around the fringes of the Kingdom and away from any truly competent mages, only to eventually get unlucky and be found regardless. There was a limit to chance, after all, and each moment they spent idling by was one closer to their deaths. Sevi probably knew that too, the urgency of it all, but no good would come from hurrying her, not for either of them.

He sighed gravely. Once again, his thoughts wandered too far into demoralizing regions.

'But what will we do?' He wondered as he threw his head back.

Eventually a waitress arrived with his food, smiling as she deftly placed down the plates of steaming food.

"Enjoy your meal!" She said as she beamed her best smile.

He looked at the food before him, a plate of roasted meat strips, he couldn't tell from what as it was all just meat to him, a plate of roasted mushrooms and vegetables and whatnot, and finally a mug of ale.

It seemed that someone noticed his disability and made sure the food was already cut up and ready to eat. It would have indeed been very tricky to cut into food with a knife in his state. His opinion of this inn shifted favorably.

The ensemble looked impressive, and would have probably tasted heavenly, not that Rethys cared much about that sort of thing. If his life had taught him anything it was that food is food, end of the discussion. Still, it was a shame that the cook's efforts would be wasted on someone who couldn't taste a thing.

'Enough thinking about it.'

He grabbed the fork and brought one of the morsels to his mouth, hoping to not spit it out by reflex.

And yet to his absolute surprise, it did not taste like nothing, instead tasting like delicious, perfectly seasoned, and immaculately cooked meat.

He tried to keep his composure and alertness, dismiss this as a small insignificant thing and ask Sevi what the hell she had done, yet a part of him yearned once more for that familiar feeling, and he couldn't stop eating. He finished the delicious meat and the savory salad and downed the ale in one go. It was bitter, yet he found its fizziness and the strong flavor pleasant.

An honest smile found its way onto his face once he finished the meal. He felt fulfilled, and felt a weight shift off him and thud to the ground, leaving the young man freer from the nightmares of that dark place.

"Thanks, Sevi." He sighed in contentment.

'You are most welcome!' Sevi replied cheerfully. 'It is the least I could have done. And... thank you too... for taking my side against that Titanic arsehole, damn him...'

"Damn him indeed..." Rethys chuckled.

'I got a chuckle!' She giggled in turn. 'The effort for this was worth it.'

Rethys smiled. He was genuinely glad that she regained some of her pep, she had been quite downcast ever since the legionnaire messed up her plans and forced them out of Yvtar in such rough shapes.

"Are you sure you're okay? You've pushed yourself hard getting us out of Yvtar and you're now asleep most of the time. And don't dodge the question like last time."

'Thank you for your concern, but all is well. I have indeed sustained some soul damage from abusing my magic during that last stretch of time, but I am mostly recovered now. It was nothing plenty of rest could not undo.' She reassured.

"I see." He nodded. "Okay now, tell me what did you do? And what's the 'plan'?"

'I undid some of the damage you have done to yourself, using that Life Discipline that I inherited from the Mother of Grace. I believe that by taking it a step further, I can do more than just repair etherical damage. That is my plan.'

"Do more..." Rethys lingered on those words. "Like what?"

'It is clear that extreme measures must be taken to achieve our goals, and for that we need to both entrench ourselves into some political body in the world and acquire wealth. And the best way to do so would be to grant you entry to this kingdom's royal academy.'

"I already said that I'm too old for that to be possible. And what does that have to do with-"

"I was getting there." Her voice whispered, no longer solely speaking in his mind. "We cannot afford to settle with the mediocre, yet we can indeed wait. We are both immortal, by the way. We can wait while I master the powers of the Mother of Grace. Using them, we could manipulate Life itself, turn back the sands of time for you, allowing you to enter the academies of Voldren unimpeded.

"We could also restore your arm, and disguise your eyes' glow by changing your eye color into a bright blue, or perhaps we could even change your features to lessen suspicions. Colorful hair and a more pronounced countenance would help us pass you off as a noble bastard, thus explaining your unnatural magical talents and helping you blend in better. You would also have mastered your magic by then, and-"

"Hold on, hold on..." He interrupted as he signaled to one of the waitresses for more food. "All of that sounds incredibly sinister. And you said it'd take a while, how long?"

"It would take me a while to work out the subtleties of this power and know for certain if it is safe, but I know I can accomplish this. It would only take me a few dozen years to reliably master it and achieve much greater things than simple restoration of your sense of taste and without any risk."

"A few dozen years..." Rethys sighed. "So, we're going with becoming hermits in that cave and researching away with stolen equipment till our minds grind to mush. Brilliant plan Sevi..."

"It is our best plan. Ample caution and patience will see us triumphing over our unjust fates. We need only exercise caution and vigilance."

Rethys grew pensive, poring over all that he knew for now.

He trusted Sevi quite a bit, even if she didn't think he did. She knew that he had some way of detecting lies, yet her actions for a while now still carried a certain candidness to them.

Yet no matter how much he trusted her knowledge and judgement, a few dozen years was just too much.

He thought of her proposition. It sounded like an outlandish claim, but if he could use her questionable powers to gain back lost time, he definitely would. Wasn't it everyone's dream to turn back the sands and do things differently?

"You said 'without any risk'. Does that mean you could do it as you are now?"

Silence lingered after his question, he seemed to have struck a chord.

"Yes." Sevi answered. "But that is beyond foolish, and you of all would know. You have been in Yvtar, you have seen what the actions of damnable fools have done."

"Foolish how?" He asked. "I have to know enough to make an informed decision, don't I, Sevi?"

"It... may exacerbate your already rampant corruption. It may make you tip off the edge entirely into inhumanity. You would still look human, I would make sure of it, but... I do not know..."

"Let's do it." Rethys declared.

"What?!" Sevi shrieked, in a voice heard by everyone in the tavern.

All the inn's patrons around them paused whatever they were doing, looking at Rethys' table with surprise and confusion. Rethys tensed, getting ready to move before Sevi's voice resounded again.

"Omit and Obscure!" She commanded, and everyone looked away and continued on with their business, their faces disoriented but slowly growing sober.

"Didn't know you yell spell names." Rethys noted.

"Rethys that is not-" She paused and sighed heavily. "This is no decision to be made lightly."

"I didn't make it lightly." He retorted. "Do you really want to stay in another underground cave for 'dozens of years'? What if we get unlucky and someone or something rolls around and exposes us, and then we're forced on the run for how long... an opportunity is right in front of us."

"But... you may lose your humanity, completely and forever."

"Well, you're doing fine, aren't you?" He chuckled. "Doubt it'll be any worse for me, what with my 'peculiar element' and all."

"Rethys, this is no laughing matter."

"You know..." He began. "All my life I've been less than human, a gutter rat, and even when I managed to crawl out of the shit and mud, all of it was ripped from my hands. I don't care for my 'humanity', Sevi, gods know it never did me any good, not that anything ever did. I'll do it, if it gets us out of here, gets us moving, gets us both to safety."

Silence hung heavy in the air after the young man's speech, and that silence lingered for a while before Sevi spoke again.

"I will... consider it..." She finally answered.

Rethys sighed, looking into his image in the refilled ale, seeing two blue lights staring back at him through the murky reflection.

For a moment, he had second thoughts about rushing things and going too far, yet mere moments later he remembered all of it. Memories of hunger, scorn, and cold, then those memories shifted to pain, anger, and a different sort of cold, and his resolve was reaffirmed. He would be free of it all, by any means necessary.