When Rethys regained some semblance of consciousness, he found himself in a strange place and an even stranger state.
Everything felt dark and heavy, and he couldn't focus his mind on anything. He tried to open his eyes and look around many times, but each time, he would feel that they were already open, and always had been. He tried to reach out with his arms, instinctively trying to find his bed's end table and the chiming magical alarm tool on it, but his arms registered nothing, not even the movement of his own hands.
He stewed in this state for a while, whether it was seconds or years, he could not tell, until eventually, he started seeing his memories flash through his eyes, almost reliving them.
It started with his days as a Fulgrith's assistant and apprentice in his magic materials shop, days of organizing materials, remembering their strange names and learning the ropes. He felt once again the gratitude and happiness for being free from suffering on the streets, as well as the frustration of his potential never blooming, before the visions moved to older memories.
He saw his years a street urchin before being scouted for his magical potential, one among many, though always alone. He felt again the hunger, the cold wind and rain, the contempt of the normal folk towards him, all ordinary things experienced by the destitute and abandoned.
Then he remembered the extraordinary things brought on by his powers, or rather their simplest manifestations, the voice first, then the headaches of not listening to it, and then the brute and petty violence committed to silence those headaches. These were supposedly the infamous initial manifestations of the Mind element.
The farther back he saw into his childhood, the more common these intrusions into his mind became, and the hazier everything surrounding them was. Everything grew foggier, days of desperate survival melding into one another, until he saw the earliest recognizable memories he had. They too, were of cold, damp and lonely streets.
From then it was only unrecognizable memories of a strange, dark and... blue world filled with strange bright lights moving everywhere. He could also vividly recall that he was not alone back then and could somewhat remember that a few of these lights were not like the others, that there were three lights that he knew. And though he could not make heads or tails of these memories now, he still longed for those three lights, their memory instilling into him profound and gut-wrenching sadness that dissipated before he could interpret it further.
Finishing his trip down memory lane, he could feel his mind growing sharper, and felt that he could now string two coherent thoughts together. But even though he could now make better sense of his situation, it did not get less confusing. All around him was nothing but infinite darkness, and his body felt limp and unresponsive, he could tell it was there but could not move at all. He felt as if he was at the bottom of the deepest, largest lake in the world, the way he imagined seas were, having never seen them himself.
'Where... am I?' He wondered. 'What happened with...'
As his lucidity grew with each passing moment, he began remembering all that had happened in the last few days that led to his current predicament. He recalled the expedition, the blisterhound attack set up by the Origin elemental. Then he recalled the last battle, with everyone being knocked unconscious by the mysterious elemental, himself included.
'Oh yeah... What was even up with that thing.'
He wondered if this is where the Origin elemental took him, it was after him for some reason, after all.
He then wondered about himself, realizing an extreme numbness pervading his mind. After all, his mentor was perhaps mortally wounded while he himself was kidnapped by the magical equivalent of a boogeyman, strange creatures with strange powers acting in the strangest ways.
The fact that he didn't mind any of it would normally scare him, but being scared like that seemed so unnecessary now.
'Huh...'
Eventually something else other than him seemed to have joined the now previously empty void. He could vividly sense that some presence was near him, around him, or however distance worked in this place. He tried to communicate with it but realized once again that he couldn't open his mouth, or perhaps didn't have a mouth at all in this place.
'Kindred.' It spoke.
And in a moment, Rethys realized exactly what it was, as it communicated in the exact same method his manifestations did.
He always wondered if that aspect of his manifestations was simply him having lost his mind. After all, having voices in your head was a telltale sign of insanity. Usually, he'd chase these thoughts away instantly, clinging stubbornly to the idea that it wasn't lunacy but rather signs of being gifted in the element of the Mind. This time however he didn't need to have an internal argument over it, and it was not because of the numbness placating him.
It was because he could very clearly tell that this voice was not a figment of his imagination, but rather coming from a completely separate creature than him. After all he could feel two presences here, and one of them he could tell was his. He also noted that he could feel his own presence now but pushed that discovery to the back of his mind for now.
Focusing his senses on the entity, he could feel it trying to reach him, extending its own senses towards him. Accepting the connection and embracing it, he could feel a stream of information flooding his mind. Feelings, images and notions that weren't his ran through him.
'Origin.' The entity intonated.
At first, it showed him a strange vision, seas of blue, flowing in all possible and impossible directions all at once, weaving around one another and folding into each other at the same time, cresting with sparks of bright colors.
They were seas of Ether, and all around he saw them moving in mesmerizing and impossible ways that he could nonetheless comprehend. He then saw that some regions in the vast tapestries of the ether were darker than their surroundings, denser.
'World.' The entity said.
The visions then focused on one of these condensations of ether. It was a sphere, the most common shape among these regions of gathered ether. Looking deeper into it, he could see countless bright lights dotting the sphere of ether, shining faintly but in the brightest shades.
'Life.'
He felt he could comprehend each and every one of these lights. They were souls. He could tell because he recognized a few of them, even his own, adorning the sphere of condensed ether that he now understood was their world.
Not seeing his mentor's soul among them saw waves of unfathomable grief and sorrow assaulting him, but his apathetic state of mind had him dismissing those emotions almost instantly.
'Past.'
He then saw how his world was in ages past, a record of its past as the entity remembered, writ in souls and ether.
He saw lights being snuffed out by other lights, repeatedly, pointlessly, and in immense numbers. He saw how the ether would gather in regions, before many more lights would simply vanish all at once, leaving no trace of them having ever existed. He also saw how at times, souls remained permanently in place and, for whatever reason, were stuck where they were for all eternity, never to rejoin the ether.
He saw how souls were lost time and time again for seemingly no reason or purpose the entity could fathom and could feel its confusion and grief.
'Loss.' The entity said, Rethys feeling its anguish at all the potential it had to see squandered and lost, by no fault of their own.
He then again saw the world as it was currently and could now see a few new lights that weren't like the others. They seemed to move differently, their aura completely unlike that radiated by any other soul, they were at harmony with the ether around them, moving along its twists and turns. They were creatures of Origin.
'Kindred.'
He saw and felt them moving according to the will of the entity that was now with him, as they went from one spot to the next fulfilling its directives. He saw them maintaining order, guiding flows of ether, disposing of the dangerous and ill-meaning, making sure that the lights of the cosmos could have a chance to shine their brightest.
At that moment the image of a familiar face appeared in his mind, that of High Mage Zeritel, the leader of the expedition, whose actions prompted the entity to send one of its elementals after him.
Rethys then felt how the unique aura that set these creatures apart from other souls was also possessed by himself. He too was a creature of the Origin element, just like these elementals, and just like the entity of will that controls them, hence why it referred to him too as its kindred.
'Insufficient.'
He then felt the entity of will's disappointment towards its creations, as their rudimentary intelligence was often not enough to solve the many, many, many problems the entity could see all around it. He felt its distress towards its own incompetence, and its frustration towards all the issues it could not solve.
'Hope.'
Then, Rethys sensed the entity's hope as he felt it peering towards him.
He was the only one of his kind, a creature not made by the entity of will, but still bearing its power of Origin. He felt its pure joy and exhilaration upon finding out about his existence, and its fervent attempts to reach out to him, that eventually culminated in one of its elementals finally having contact with him.
'Future!'
He now sensed the entity's relief. Having finally secured him, it now could begin addressing the issues it had to begrudgingly ignore. He also sensed its hopeful anticipation that many more like him would rise in the future, bringing about an age where such pointless suffering would cease to exist.
'Duty.'
The entity then showed him a place in his world where millions of lights lay trapped in stagnation, and where some were trapped in eternal suffering. He felt its sorrow towards the unfortunate, and its solace in now having him.
'Time.'
The visions abruptly ended, snapping Rethys out of the beautiful and stupefying sights the entity showed him.
He was once again back in the calm darkness, feeling strange after losing the great and grand understanding of the ether that the entity shared with him. Instantly afterwards however, he could feel himself undergoing changes, he could feel great heat and pressure building up in his chest, or rather his soul it seemed, before bursting outwards, filling him with feelings of extreme intoxication and elation that seemed to overpower the numbness that overtook him.
'Power.'
He felt the change permeate every speck of his being and felt fundamentally different than he did moments ago. If before he could sense only the two presences in the darkness, the first of himself and the other of the entity, he could now sense all the ether flowing around and in him. He still couldn't feel his body but could now feel the ether running through it very vividly.
As the changes in him became more pronounced, he could feel reality suddenly taking shape around him once again.
'Go.'