As he wandered from one hallway to the other, Rethys was hit with just how badly diminished his powers were after regaining his freedom. His ability to navigate in the dark by measuring and comparing the different flows of ether was not only weaker and fainter, but also many times more difficult.
Before, he was in a constant state of focus and flow thanks to the Origin entity's very generous mind control taking away all those pesky human emotions and worries from him, whereas now he needed to do everything as a normal person, or as normal as he could get in any case.
His ability to sense the presence of the catacombs dwellers also took a hit, if before he could sense souls from what seemed over a hundred meters away, now he could barely manage half of that.
Both the increased difficulty and decreased power made it so that he had to advance slowly and take stops to make sure his way was clear, the process requiring his full focus to not bump into every wall.
It also made it so that if he were to get into a fight, there was a real chance that he'd have to do it blindly, as he wouldn't have the time to focus on his surroundings.
'Of course...'
Despite his best efforts, however, something did slip through the cracks, and he did run into something.
It was thankfully just a pale wretch, the easiest encounter here, as far as Rethys could tell.
Before he could finish that thought however, the screeching wretch lunged at him at full speed, sinking its claws into his shoulder while its jaws went for the throat.
'Damn it!'
Feeling searing pain spreading from his right arm, he lost his focus, his world plunging into complete darkness again. His reflexes, however, didn't fail him, and he managed to grab the wretch before it could tear out his windpipe, forcing it to the ground on its stomach.
As he restrained the frail wretch, it began to flail around trying to free itself, but to no avail, as it couldn't do much against Rethys' superior physical strength. Grabbing its head with one of his hands, he sent his ether towards it until the wretch stopped resisting, its body growing still as it blacked out.
Letting go of his adversary, Rethys staggered to the ground in a daze, his heart beating like a drum inside his chest and his panting so loud that it threatened to attract every other denizen of the catacombs.
'That was close.' He thought as he looked back at his fight.
If his reaction had been just a fraction of a second too late, he'd already be in a pool of his own blood right now as nothing more than a meal to the first creature he ran into. The thought terrified him beyond measure, and he tried to shake away the fear and jitters by focusing back on his surroundings.
He concentrated his senses, trying frantically to sense anything else that might sneak up on him. And only after he double and then triple checked his surroundings did, he then turned to check his wounded shoulder, finding it badly maimed and bleeding. It hurt, but Rethys felt that he could tolerate this much. Seeing the sorry state of this place and its denizens however, he realized that this wound was bound to fester, which was not at all good.
'Gods damn it.' The best he could do was wrap around it a cloth he tore from his shirt and hope to find something in those workshops he was looking for that could help him.
Finishing his checkup, he Looked back to the unconscious wretch, realizing he didn't finish it off.
'Figure I should get rid of them whenever I can.' He thought.
Approaching it, he took the time to memorize its ether and soul so that he could try to recognize them even from a distance. He then placed his hand on its back and replicated the sequence he used before to unshackle trapped souls, which he thankfully could repeat successfully, despite how complex it was.
Seeing the released soul float away, he rose to his feet. It was time to continue looking for the passages upwards, this time advancing even slower to not get jumped by anything else.
As he turned from corner to corner and walked from chamber to another, he also started fearing losing his way. But looking back, he could thankfully still feel the sealed sword's dreadful aura coming from a clear direction. It seemed his plan of finding his way back by relying on his senses would work well enough.
Reassured, he continued onwards.
After a while, he was met with two presences shambling slowly towards him, and focusing on them, could now tell that one of them was a wretch.
He could've avoided both with a detour, but chose to try something instead, remembering the ancient mage's words about wretches not being able to feel ether. And so, he lay in wait around a corner and started slowly releasing his Origin ether into the hallway.
As the wretch slowly approached Rethys' position, deeper into the growing cloud of ether that was invisible to its senses, its already stumbling steps grew increasingly clumsier until it tripped, falling to the ground face first.
'It worked!' He cheered inwardly.
Approaching his victim, he prodded it to check its state, finding it completely unconscious. He nodded to himself before resting his arm on its chest and releasing its soul.
'I can do this.' He repeated to himself, before resuming his search.
*****
As Rethys beheld more and more of the underground complex, a picture began forming in his mind of what had happened in this place, as he noticed more and more details he had missed during his first walk through the place.
Chief among these details were the faintly glowing circles that seemed to dot the entire underground maze.
Within each of the endless burial chambers that filled the underground maze in a chessboard-like layout was an active magic circle, bearing an element Rethys failed to recognize. Wondering what these circles were responsible for, and why they were active, he searched his memories for anything useful.
'They can do more things than spells, and they're long-lasting.' Rethys repeated his mentor's teachings, but they weren't much too helpful.
The magic circles he found were extremely complex, not to the level of those in the sword-sealing chamber, but still impressive. They were composed of a large, intricate rune, surrounded by concentric glowing rings that had smaller runes in between them, and Rethys could clearly see ether flowing between them in a myriad of directions, and could feel it changing throughout its movements.
The most interesting feature however was a tether of ether pulling on the magic circles from somewhere. Focusing on them, the ethereal link seemed connected to distant moving things within the catacombs, which Rethys guessed to be the inhabitants of this place. Following that logic, these circles could very well be the mechanism responsible for trapping them here.
'Huh...'
Curious what this might imply, Rethys rested his hands on the stone tiles upon which one of the concentric circles glowed. And as his hands made contact with the cool stone, he began to feel the steady flow of ether within the circles' runes and pathways.
He didn't know what any of the runes meant or did, he was after all uninitiated in magic, let alone runescript, but he had ideas on what to try.
He first thought of trying to break the stone that housed these ethereal structures but decided against it. After all, it seemed such an obvious thing that whoever made the circles would have also thought of it, and thus must have installed protections in one way or another.
'But what about the Origin element?' He guessed no one would think to protect against it, or be able to even if they did, as he felt his very being telling him he could do this.
'The runes themselves must be the important part, not the pathways.' He theorized.
Placing his hand on one of the smaller runes, he began sending small amounts of his ether into the circles and could feel their own flow growing fainter due to the Origin element disrupting them. Seeing no reaction from the circles themselves, he kept increasing the amount of ether he sent until he began feeling lightheaded, a symptom of expending a lot of energy he guessed.
Eventually though, the rune under his hand completely disappeared.
'Please don't blow up.' He thought as he instantly rushed to put distance between him and the rune circles.
Rethys had already seen in his mentor's workshop how runes provided with power would often perform some sort of reaction and hoped that the new combination of runes wouldn't do anything dangerous, like exploding, a surprisingly common result from what he knew.
As he stared at the magic installation expectantly, time passed, and nothing happened. He couldn't tell if something had changed or not but didn't care either way if it wasn't immediately dangerous.
For a moment, he thought of following the magic circle's connection to its bearer and seeing if any changes happened to them but decided against it in favor of staying on task. After all he did accomplish his immediate goal of confirming that his magic could indeed mess with magic circles and enchantment.
Satisfied with his little experiment, he turned away from the tampered circle and resumed his search for the magic workshops.
The walk from there proved uneventful, as Rethys got more and more used to navigating the halls, keeping an eye out for danger, and reacting to that danger.
He also managed to dispatch two more wretches by intercepting their march with his debilitating ether trap.
Eventually he found one of the ways leading up, replacing one of the usual passages and burial chambers. Carefully climbing the spiral staircase, Rethys found himself in front of a dead end. He tried sensing through the ether if there was anything beyond the wall, but felt nothing, either because there truly was nothing but more wall behind this wall, or because the stone blocked his senses somehow.
'This has to be a door of sorts, right?' He wondered as he tried his hardest to notice any identifiable clues upon the stone wall.
Straining his senses to the extreme, he could detect a myriad of magical installations instilled into the stone wall, adorning its every inch yet remaining extremely faint, blending into the passive flow of ether almost perfectly to Rethys' senses.
He tested each of the magical circles, physically prodding them to see if he could provoke any interaction. Soon enough one of the circles responded to physical touch, and resting his hand on it, could feel it going through some process.
'A process that's hopefully not a trap.' He thought to himself while preparing to leap backwards, just in case.
Thankfully however, after a few seconds, the wall, or rather door, registered his input and all of its enchantments began glowing. Eventually it slid open, revealing the familiar sight of a magic workshop on the other side.