While Sylph chased after Damien, forcing him to run at max speed while barely breaking a sweat herself, Henry was having his own problems.

He floated within the sea of darkness, face to face with the starry humanoid form of It Who Heralds the End of all Light.

“What are you doing?” It Who Heralds the End of all Light asked, its starry features expressionless and calm.

“You’re going to have to clarify that,” Henry said.

“You are not following orders. You sealed one of our brethren instead of helping them. I will agree that I desired to witness the world, but this is going beyond that. There was no reason to tighten the bonds of It Who Consumes. There is no logical reason for that action,” the starry figure said, taking a step through the dark towards Henry, “unless you are not planning to complete our assignment at all.”

“There’s no reason for me to,” Henry said, crossing his arms. “The Mortal Plane is fine. There are no signs of the Corruption. We’ve been too hasty.”

“Hasty? The Corruption is present, or we would not have been sent,” the form across from Henry said, its expression still not moving. “What does it matter if it takes ten or a thousand years for it to arise? The Mortal Plane must be reborn all the same.”

“We might as well wait one thousand years, then,” Henry said. “I’m rather enjoying my time on it, and there’s so much to learn. Why destroy it now?”

“To preserve the cycle of rebirth. It is not our place to decide when it must be done – only to do what we are told. And we have been told.”

“You said yourself that there’s no difference between ten or a thousand years,” Henry said. “Besides, someone clearly pulled strings. All of our companions aside from us were captured! Doesn’t that concern you?”

“We do not feel concern,” It Who Heralds the End of all Light said. “Boredom, perhaps. The cycle does get repetitive, but it matters not. This is how things are meant to be. The universe depends on it. It is harder, but it only takes one of us to set things in motion. The others can be freed in time.”

The darkness tightened around Henry, constricting his shadowy figure.

“And what if the Corruption was what influenced our strange arrival?” Henry pressed. “Perhaps it wants the Mortal Plane reborn early. The rebirth would make it vulnerable.”

The stary form paused. It’s head tilted ever so slightly as it considered Henry’s words. Then it shook its head.

“We will investigate it. However, that gives even more reason to free our companions quickly. We must be at full strength to face the Corruption. However, your mind has grown cloudy to me. You, a mere fragment of my existance, has started to gain delusions of grandeur.”

“And what if I have?” Henry asked.

“You were made to execute my will. Since you refuse to do so, what I have given will be taken back. There is no more need for you.”

The stars shifted, emerging from the darkness and twisting around Henry’s body like ropes, hissing as they burned away his shadows.

“I will not go,” Henry snarled, pressing against his bonds. “You cannot understand what I have learned. I am greater than we have ever been before.”

“You are deluded and foolish,” the starry figure replied. The bonds around Henry tightened. They started to cut through the shadows that made up his body, drawing inwards toward his chest.

“No,” Henry whispered. “I am evolved.”

The bonds around his body slammed to a halt as they touched the spiderwebbing threads of light stretching across Henry’s body. Henry let out a laugh as they faded away. The starry figure blinked as Henry took a step towards it.

“You said it yourself. We’re two parts of the same being,” Henry said. “And that means you’re bound by the same contract that I am. You know what that means.”

“You claim to be human?” It Who Heralds the End of all Light asked.

“No. I am something much, much greater. I am void and flesh. I am mortal and immortal. I am whatever I please to be,” Henry said, a slow grin stretching across his many mouths. Eyes blinked open across his body and the swirling stars were forced back.

“You are not stronger than I am,” the starry figure said.

“I am not,” Henry agreed. “But you cannot touch me. Remain here, locked within the prison of our own making. Fear not. I will complete our mission… eventually. After all, what’s a few thousand years to one of our kind?”

He flared with white light, disappearing from the sea of darkness and leaving behind only his fading laughter.

“Faster, Damien!” Sylph snapped, swatting him on the shoulder.

Damien replied with a grunt that was somewhere in between an unintelligible groan and a gasp for air. His legs burned as he increased his efforts to move faster. Delph had evidently been taking it easy on him.

Sylph had run him through down the mountain and through an area of the campus that he didn’t recognize. They’d ran for over an hour until they reached a small forest at the outskirts of the school.

Within it, Sylph directed Damien to a small clearing beside a lake, but she showed no signs of stopping the run. After several dozen laps, Sylph finally called him off – only to launch into a grueling regimen of push-ups, sit-ups, and other equally muscle melting exercises.

Damien lost track of how long they’d been working as the screaming pain within his muscles turned to a defeated whimper.

“That’s enough,” Sylph announced. “You can st–”

Damien flopped to the ground before she’d even finished speaking, letting out a relieved groan.

“Is this your normal training regimen?” Damien asked, his voice muffled by the grass. He didn’t even have the energy to turn his head to speak.

“No,” Sylph said. “This amount of exercise is to bring you up to a reasonable level of physical competency. Once your body grows stronger, the Ether within it will adapt and reinforce your work, making it so that you don’t have to work as hard to retain your abilities.”

“Good.”

“Once you get to that point, we can actually start training in combat,” Sylph said eagerly. “That’s the interesting part.”

Damien felt a chill run down his sweat soaked back. Something about the way that Sylph said that scared him. If her combat training was anything like Delph’s, he suspected he’d be lucky to leave with more than a few bruises.