Looking at the mass of blue ether in his hands, Rethys was in utter confusion over how he hadn't figured this out sooner. The truth seemed so obvious now that the ignorance he lived in just a few moments ago seemed insufferable to even imagine. And he could see that this truth he reached was echoed in every small speck of ether floating around him.
'The ether remembers its shape.' He repeated in his mind.
It turned out that this whole time, his attempts at completing the exercise give to him by Sevi were hindered by none other than his own ether, and his lack of understanding. For it seemed that the magical substance not only remembered the form it was assigned, but also constantly strived to maintain it.
The key to completing it, after all, was realizing that his attempts to get the ether to take on a second shape were only interfering with his existing first command. What he had to do instead was entirely supplant that command with a different one, and the same mass of ether would then perform a different function.
Transforming his ether from one form to another, he began to get the hang of this technique, and the speed at which he could manipulate the shape before him kept increasing.
The ether within his hands continued to shift rapidly between all sorts of shapes, until eventually it settled on the vague shape of a small, three-storey building, complete with grooves for windows and a slightly discernible storefront. Its details kept flickering in and out of existence as the ether struggled to maintain the far too complex shape its master wanted it to take.
Rethys lingered for a while on that familiar shape before commanding the ether to go back to its original form.
The ether then passed through all of the previous forms, each and every one of them without omitting even one, before then settling on the initial shape of the sphere.
"It remembers..." He muttered.
He then thought to try something else.
Telling his ether to stop accepting commands all together the sphere of blue ether suddenly shuddered before stabilizing, becoming completely perfectly smooth, and even resisting the ambient ether around it. Switching to his magic senses instead of regular sight, he could see that the ambient flows of ether began simply flowing around his sphere instead of flowing through it and affecting it like they always did.
It was as if all the magic he had casted until now had holes in it that constantly leaked away its energy, and now he could finally plug them. It felt as if now, his magic could finally be whole.
But why stop there? Could he assign complex commands to his ether and have it act them out by itself? Would that be what Sevi referred to as stable spells?
As he instantly moved to test out his theory, a voice broke him out of his trance.
"Rethys!!" Sevi yelled at him.
Awkwardly dismissing the ether in his hands, he turned to the azure gem staring at him.
"Uhm, yes?"
"You- Nevermind..." Sevi sighed. "Congratulations on achieving Command, I suppose."
"So is my soul core awakened now?" Rethys asked as he focused on his soul using his senses, only to fail to notice anything different.
"Not quite, as there is one final step, a comparatively easy one I assure you. You have done all the prerequisite steps, so now you need only spark the evolution of your soul to the next level." Sevi responded.
"And how do I do that?" Rethys blurted out impatiently, showing perhaps the first sign of enthusiasm in the two weeks he had been here.
"You must infuse ether into your soul core to trigger the process. First, visualize your ether pool, the space within yourself that contains the ether that you use as energy to fuel your magic. That energy is in perpetual motion, like the rolling and curling waves of an ocean. We can move to the next step once you manage to perceive it." The ancient mage responded.
Rethys nodded before closing his eyes and turning his senses towards himself, once again sensing the featureless, bright mote of light that was his soul. His previous exercise however, helped realize that he was probably entirely going about this too in the wrong way
Instead of trying to look at his soul as if it were a foreign thing and behold it externally, he thought to instead try to feel into it, as it was after all his very own soul.
He first tried separating his sensations into two sides, one being the physical that he had always felt since he could remember, and the magical which he only became aware of after coming to this place. He then delved deep into the depths of the strange feelings that arose from his soul, magic, and ether, and as expected, he managed to locate it.
It was as Sevi described it; a pool of ether settled into a vaguely contained shape. It kept moving, sloshing around as if it were a fluid, but in its own incorporeal movements. He could also tell how spent his ether pool was, which was a very useful ability. It currently was about three fourths full due to his training expending energy whenever he lost focus.
He could also sense something else within his ether pool, an object comprised of what he could only describe as solid ether, or however solid ether could get. It seemed at first glance to float around the middle of his ether pool, but the further he observed it, the more it was apparent that his ether pool revolved around that object instead.
The object didn't seem to have any concrete shape, at least not one that Rethys could understand and visualize. It almost looked like a sphere to his senses, but he realized that it was only because he willed it to appear that way.
Also, unlike the ether that constituted his ether pool and that clearly didn't have any element, being rather pure and featureless, that object of condensed ether bore Rethys' element of Origin. He concluded that it must have been his soul core.
"I see it, Sevi." He said.
"You... do...?" She paused. "Good, I suppose. Now look around in that mass of energy that is your ether pool and try to find your soul core within it. Once you do, command all of the ether you have stored to enter it and infuse it with power. You will then fall into a deep sleep from which you will emerge an awakened mage. Though the process may hurt at first, so do bear that in mind."
Doing as she instructed, he sent a command to his entire ether pool like he did to his usual training spheres, and watched as the pool of energy infused itself into his soul core.
Rethys was then instantly taken out of his magical senses and thrusted back into the material plane by a wave of unimaginable nausea caused by his ether pool suddenly being depleted. He almost fainted on the spot before then being overtaken by second, different wave of overwhelming sensation.
This second wave filled his body with warmth and strength as he felt his powers being amplified to unimaginable degrees. For the briefest of moments, his magical senses were so unfathomably sharp that they passed through every wall, floor and ceiling of the underground complex that was Yvtar's crypts, and glimpsed things he would've regretted seeing if he didn't forget them only seconds later.
Eventually the wave of power subsided, and with it came a third wave of sheer lethargy. His body was getting stronger by the second, but he got so tired that he couldn't think of anything else than closing his eyes. Trying his hardest to stay awake, he eventually let go, letting his mind drift into sleep, or rather sink like a rock into it.
As his consciousness faded into sleep, all he could think of was that it felt good to finally be making some progress again.
*****
Seeing the boy in front of her falling to sleep as he underwent his soul core evolution, Sevi, or rather Sevindris, tried her hardest to remember whether she ever once met one as gifted in the Ether Arts as he was.
After a while however, she realized that she couldn't think of anyone. In fact, none she could recall could even come close, after all, the boy's talent was nothing short of superb. He was the most magically talented human ever born in the history of mankind as she knew it, and by a landslide at that.
Which terrified to her to no end, as his gift for the ether was nothing short of horridly inhuman.
She questioned many times whether he even was human, his element after all had many implications, and none of them were good.
For all Sevindris knew, he could be an Origin elemental stuffed inside a human corpse and somehow made to live like one, to believe itself to be one. A disturbing possibility.
'But it cannot be...' She reasoned.
After all, everything about his personality and bearing pointed towards him being a normal human, as he possessed all of the nuances that would set him firmly apart from approximations of humanity. She would know, after all, she spent quite the bit of time observing him.
If that wasn't enough, he was also in complete defiance to the entity trying to control him, which Sevindris could very easily tell truly existed, and wasn't just a lie spun by the boy in an attempt to seem more human.
However, upon remembering how he had mastered Intent in two days and Command in two weeks, her suspicions instantly resurfaced. And as she recalled seeing him manipulate his ether at the terrifying speeds that he did and at the level that he was, even a Noble cored mage like her couldn't help but feel a cold fear seeping into her soul.
'Are there more like him, out there?' She wondered.
Sevindris was powerful, very powerful in fact. As both a mage bearing a Noble core as well as an eldritch host, she had access to powers inconceivable to any regular practitioner of the arts. She would even go as far as saying that this new form of hers afforded her powers on par with the mightiest to ever walk Tevohs' soil, except of course for the Custodians presiding over the intelligent races.
No matter how powerful she was however, the possibility of her knowledge being so outdated in such a changed world horrified her. Especially so for the existence of individuals capable of subverting every single established notion of magical practice and the arts. She shuddered at the thought.
'No, not among humanity.' She concluded. 'The Titan would not allow it.'
Rethys' powers must have been an anomaly among anomalies, she concluded, perhaps even one that mankind's custodian would not tolerate the existence of.
'He may even be observing the boy this very moment.' She pondered, a faint hint of hope almost taking root in her heart before being squashed coldly. 'It is no matter, I need only worry over my own predicament, for the time being.'
Sevindris could only hope in the end that this ordeal would see her freed, one way or another.