John now sat silently stunned with his companions, their triumphant escape from the Labyrinth of Memories. It was too vast an emotion and had befallen them. Aether had shown them that it was far more than some kind of artifact yielding only power; it was ancient, alive, and waiting. Its influence reached through time and reality, guiding them into a labyrinth from which they barely managed to emerge alive. Now they knew their job was much more dangerous than they thought it was.
What had once seemed woods threatening were now preternaturally still. It was Evelyn who found her voice first, and it shook. "So. what now? We know what the Aether is, but we still don't know how to stop it."
"The Labyrinth was but the beginning," John wheezed. "Aether had hidden beneath its true form and was just hiding itself, but with that it showed us something else: its origin.".
Dr. Whitmore, the scholar of scholars, pushed his glasses up. "Yes, I saw it, too. The sea. Those visions. it was as clear as day. The Aether's true history is tied to a place far beyond these forests."
As the thoughts whirled inside his head, he remembered those shattered images they had glimpsed in the Labyrinth: ancient ships tossed on a storm-tossed sea; forlorn islands upon which time never moved. The image in his head was quite vivid-the place where Aether's journey started, together with the forgotten sea.
"That's where we have to go next," he spoke firmly. "The ocean. Something is hidden down there, something that the Aether does not wish to be surfaced."
Caleb's face screwed up in doubt. "What, so we're to sail into some ocean no one's heard of, on account of some vision? We barely made it out of that forest!"
"It's much more than just a vision," John said. "That's the Aether's history. If we're going to try and figure it out, we'll need to suss ways of blocking it-where it comes from, why it got tucked away."
Evelyn shivered. "And if we don't find the answers there? What then?
John did not need to respond. They all knew it in their minds: no room for failure.
It was two days later that they stood on the docks of some small, isolated coastal town. Before them lay the great ocean, mysterious and huge, its surf dashing against rocky shores. The wind carried the scent of salt but also something else, something long ago and forgotten. John could feel it right in his bones.
"Here it goes," he told himself, as he and his companions prepared to board an older, shabby fishing boat that just groaned with its age from its hull. The captain was an old man with a scar running down his cheek, saying nothing as he prepared the vessel. His silence wasn't without its notice; locals rarely ever ventured into the deeper parts of the sea.
The heavy mist suddenly began falling around them as the boat cut through the waves. The world went silent; the noises from the shore were drifting further and further away. Soon enough, they were faced with an endless expanse of water all around them, with the horizon well eaten up by the fog.
Evelyn said it, whispering softly, as she crossed her arms over her chest. "This place. it feels wrong."
Caleb nodded, looking around the mist. "It's as if the ocean itself is spying on us."
He held the courses, eyes unblinking, as he watched the waves in front of them. Somewhere at the back of his mind were still the visions within the Labyrinth. They had seen an isle-mystery wrapping around it—where long ago the Aether had been hidden. He knew that was just where they were headed.
So the time went by until the mist thickened yet more. The boat rocked gently under their feet, and it was only a little disquieting that no bird called, no fish splashed in the water; it seemed as if they had passed into some other world.
Suddenly, the captain spoke, his voice rough from years of salty air. "We're close. It's not on any map, but it's there. The island you're looking for."
John's heart was racing, as the Aether had brought them that far but was on an edge where it was trying to unravel another piece of its mystery.
Through the mist, a form was gradually taking shape-an island rising out of the sea. As in their vision, it rose steep out of the sea, rocks and cliffs tugging upwards from the water's edge in sharp forbidding ways; the air lying heavy and thick around it. More strongly than ever before, John could feel the Aether's presence.
And as the ship sailed closer to the land, there it was—a gigantic stone structure located at the very center of the island, half-submerged into the ground. The wind and the weather had eaten away at it, but upon its surface were markings; ancient symbols—precisely those they had seen in the Labyrinth.
"This is it," Dr. Whitmore was saying, his voice full of awe. "The last stronghold of the Aether."
They waded onto the rocky shore, their feet sinking into the wet sand, and the noise of the waves breaking against the cliffs rose in their ears but little served to drown out the unease which had taken hold of them all.
John advanced; he had not taken his eyes off the stone building since. Each one of his steps seemed to burden him with the history of Aether. He could almost feel it-a living thing that watched their every step.
There, at the base, it most certainly had an entrance: an archway cut out of the stone face, a good deal of the strange symbols etched on its surface. In they went and the inside was cool and musty; steps echoed off the walls as they entered. There was a way now inward to the island, and the farther he went, the deeper John found himself attracted into the aether. It was as though the island itself were alive and the aether its heart.
Soon enough, they found themselves in a large chamber whose walls told, through the carvings, the story of how the Aether had come to be. In the center of the room stood a pedestal with a glowing crystalline entity, shining softly with otherworldly light, which was the Aether.
"Oh, it's been here all along," Evelyn gasped with wide eyes of disbelief, "hidden in plain sight."
John approached the pedestal, his heart pounding, and the power of Aether began to flow from the crystal, filling the room with its presence. He reached out, and his fingers brushed the surface of the stone.
And then the visions began. He watched an ancient civilization rise, tame the Aether, and mold a world to their whims. Of course, such power was corruptive. Wars were fought, empires crumbled, and eventually the Aether was sealed away, lost to darkness at the bottom of the sea for fear it might fall into the wrong hands. But now it was found out. John jerked his hand from the crystal, gasping. They were gone—the visions—yet the weight of the Aether's memories remained. He knew well they had uncovered something dangerous, something to remake the fate of the world. "The Aether is not only a tool, it is a living thing," he said thickly with deliberation. "It has been in wait for someone to find it, and now since we have, we really need to sort out what we are doing with it. The rest exchanged queasy glances; they had come thus far, but the Aether proved to be stronger than their belief-with a power that came with a responsibility they were not so sure they could handle. John stood in front of the crystal, the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. For while the Aether had shown them its past, its future remained uncertain at best. Their journey was far from over. And it was left to them to choose what that future would be.