When Rethys regained consciousness, he found himself once again in the formless dimension where the Origin entity conversed with him and briefed him on what it wanted with him, only to then proceed to mind control him for good measure. And surely enough, he also felt the entity right there with him, same as last time. The sight made him panic for a second before realizing that he was safe from its control.
He wasn't in the same pacified and lethargic state of mind he experienced when he was last here, rather he felt that his faculties were wholly intact. He needed only a second to realize that it was thanks to both Sevi's curse isolating his mind from the ambient ether as well as the entity's influence, and thanks to his increasing power helping him cope with the overwhelming sight before him.
Looking around with his magical senses, he noticed that he was actually still in Sevi's room, but at the same time, not there at all. He could see Sevi's soul hovering within its gem some distance away from him across the room, it felt both unfathomably distant and infinitely close.
Distance in this place seemed strange and made no sense. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. He couldn't move, but felt that if he just reached out, his senses could reach even things completely out of this world, though he obviously refrained from trying such a thing.
'The Ethereum.' He repeated in his mind, the place where he currently was, or rather, always had been.
He remembered Sevi telling him about the realm of magic, the Ethereum, that was much, much more than aimless, ambient flows of ether. She told him that it moved with intent, and he agreed with her, from what he first saw when he first came to Yvtar, and from what he was seeing now.
The way she had put it, it seemed the goal of every great mage to try and understand the ethereum and "plumb its depths for the most holy and forbidden knowledge", as she put it.
Though, from what he could see, the ethereum was much, much more than even she could imagine. In fact, even observing its motions from the sidelines as he did, all of it seemed... too much. Tides and waves of thoughts and emotions manifested through the ether moved by him in a beautiful spectacle. Its beauty however did little to nothing to mask the mind-boggling force it moved with.
Rethys felt that if he so much as tried touching them, his soul would be eroded by the sheer, cosmic weight of the oceans of ether flowing in their incomprehensible movements.
As he continued to appreciate the majesty of the ether in its full, soul-crushing splendor, the time arrived for the entity to communicate with him again, as it did once before.
'Kindr-' It tried to say, before Rethys promptly ignored it and turned his attention elsewhere.
He truly didn't have the patience in him at this point to humor that thing's attempts at controlling him, convincing him or even apologizing to him. After all, it displayed its willingness to completely control him and stifle his own free will, and to Rethys, that was tantamount to being willing to kill him.
'You could've asked nicely, gods know I would've listened.' He thought listlessly.
The entity had displayed what it thought of him, after all, and he wouldn't for a moment trust it.
Rethys knew his time in this place was limited, and wanted to put it to good use, but couldn't resist the temptation of looking out of Yvtar, into the living world.
Turning his senses to his homeland, the Voldren Kingdom, he beheld it in its entirety. The sight was comparable to looking at one of the many maps of the Kingdom he had seen before. Except this time, the visage of the kingdom wasn't charted in roads and cities, but in ether and souls.
He saw where souls treaded, leaving behind trails of their ether, thoughts and emotions that delineated roads. He saw where souls congregated, first forests, then towns, cities, and then the largest among them, the capital of Voldren, the Great City of Naldras.
A kingdom named after its founder, and its capital named after his wife.
'Pretentious bastards.' Rethys thought.
He could almost see them, privileged, entitled assholes living in their peaks of magic ivory stone, hoarding power and riches to themselves like parasites while the streets of the cities crawled with the destitute and needy, doomed to suffer forever until they died.
Rethys hated the privileged just as much as any else who grew up in the streets, but could never accept in himself the injustice of it all. He dragged himself through a cold hell every day and night, while they lived in uncaring splendor. They owned all, claiming the heavens as theirs by right, while those like Rethys could only watch, as the good in life was only claimed by those born better than them.
He remembered seeing them, gilded carriages carrying all the fineries of life to better places and better people, while he starved in the sidewalk, clad in rags. For when he had to be colder than the streets themselves to survive, others enjoyed warmth.
At least commoners understood his plight, and his life was saved by their generosity many times over, for they knew cold and hunger. But he could never stomach nobles, those who owned all, and who only ever ignored him at first, and showered him with disdain because of his potential later.
He wouldn't dwell on this contempt of his however, as no matter how great those so-called nobles thought of themselves, the visions showed them as just more motes of light.
'Agreed.' He heard behind him.
And turning his senses around, he saw and felt what the entity stubbornly wanted to communicate.
It felt his plight, and that of all others like him, of suffering untold and potential unfulfilled, of those hoarding the world while others were unable to fulfill their own destiny. It wanted to help, and wanted him to help with it.
'The irony...' Staring at the entity, he wondered how a being able to comprehend the ethereal cosmos in its entirety couldn't notice the simplest thing.
Shaking his head, figuratively as he was only there in spirit, Rethys decided to focus and not waste the precious time he had in this place complaining about nobles.
Turning his sights to back Yvtar, he first saw the surface, and hurriedly moved past it, not even bothering to note any of its features as the blood-curdling sight of the souls dwelling on it was enough fright for several lifetimes.
Peering into the underground complex, he saw all four floors of it, and moving his sight to the last floor, focused on the ritual rooms that Sevi described to him.
There he saw it, the inner mausoleum, shrouded by shadows of ether so dense he couldn't look past them, as well as the ritual rooms, located to its western fringes.
He saw creatures moving there, and they were just as Sevi described, strong enough to pose a problem to him, but not enough to simply squash him like a bug.
'Can't be that simple.' He thought, as he made a note to remember that simple ether density would not be an entirely trustworthy measurement of strength.
He had, after all, encountered in the past few weeks a few creatures whose power did not at all coincide with the aura they emitted. Those creatures wandering the ritual rooms were bound to be a dangerous kind, especially considering the name of that place as Sevi called it.
The area was also dense in ether, he couldn't tell whether it was the place itself or what it contained, but nonetheless made a mental note to be careful when treading there. It seemed that the whole location was nothing but workshops and empty rooms that still shone with ether, presumably used for some kinds of rituals if the name of the place was anything to go by.
Rethys tried searching for the runic lexicon as Sevi had described to him but had trouble finding any etherical signal that stood out from the countless others dotted around the entire zone.
Eventually he gave up on pinpointing the lexicon and instead tried committing to memory the general layout of the place, as well as which of the rooms shone the brightest to his senses.
As he tried to make the best mental map possible of his destination, his thoughts began running slower and his vision of the catacombs were turning cloudier. He was beginning to wake up, and his senses began gradually being constricted into the room his body was in.
Eventually his eyes opened and he was thrust once again into the physical world.
He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but noticed that his entire body was completely limp. His muscles seemed completely spent, and despite his best efforts he couldn't move at all.
He was forced to stay in that same position until his body was responsive again, and until then he could only stare upwards at the ceiling.
"Sevi, are you there?" He struggled to ask, as the act of speaking took far too much effort.
"Where else would I be, Rethys?" Sevi responded, her pleasant voice for once reassuring the young man. "Congratulations on a successful awakening, you are now a proper mage. No sudden moves for now though, your body needs rest."
"Yeah..."
A proper mage. Those words echoed in Rethys' head like the tolling of a bell. He got what he wanted since he could remember, to become a powerful, reality-bending mage. He wasn't anymore like the magicless commoners and the occasional lucky bastard among them who could use a single element for household chores.
No, he was a proper mage now, and wouldn't need to struggle to survive like he always had. He wouldn't have to watch the angels basking in their riches from afar while he starved, as he would now carve his own piece from the world. A destiny first, a legacy later. As was his right.
'As is everyone's right.' He repeated in his mind, remembering what the entity conveyed to him, only to then inwardly shake his head in exasperation.
No matter how much he loathed the unfairness of things, he understood deep down that things were not so simple. Not as simple as he thought they were, and not as the entity put them. He knew that if he listened to it that, apart from potentially losing his freedom again, he would be chasing an unachievable goal.
Most importantly however, Rethys was no hero, and did not want for even a moment to try becoming one. Such stupidity, he thought, was reserved for those who had a life to waste, not for those who had yet to build one of their own.
And in any case, he had to get out of this place first.