Sylph led Damien out of Kingsfront’s grounds and into the wilderness surrounding the school. Despite how fancy it was, the area around it was surprisingly untamed. After a few minutes of walking, they were well within a fairly dense forest. They stopped in a large clearing within it.

“Well, this looks familiar.” Damien chuckled. “Do all of the colleges have a forest or something next to them?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. I did a little searching around, and I found that Kingsfront sources their healing water from a pool in the forest as well. It’s really similar to Blackmist,” Sylph said. “Either way, this is a great place to spar without having to worry about someone watching.”

“Perfect,” Damien said. “How serious are we getting?”

“Depends. The last time we went all out, you won pretty handily. I’ve gotten a lot stronger since then, but I suspect you have to.”

Damien nodded. “And Henry might have grown even more than I have.”

“Maybe just me versus you, then. I won’t use any of Human’s abilities to make it even,” Sylph suggested. “Henry can make sure nobody interrupts us.”

“Hey! I want to show off as well,” Henry complained from the shadows.

“I’m sure you’ll get a chance soon enough, but I’m more interested in sparring with Damien,” Sylph said.

Henry sighed. “Fine, fine. I’ll make sure we don’t get any eavesdroppers. Knock yourselves out.”

A pulse of purple washed out from Damien, rippling as it touched the ring of trees surrounding them.

“All safe,” Henry reported. “Damien burns through quite a bit of Ether when he fights now, so you might actually have to be a little careful. I won’t be able to block out things for too long against someone at Whisp’s power if he’s going all out.”

“That’s fine.” Sylph rolled her shoulders and raised her arms, arching her back in a stretch before lowering into a fighting stance. “The best fights don’t last that long.”

Damien drew Ether into himself. It churned in his core as his mental energy already prepared to mold it.

“Make sure you’re ready,” Sylph warned. “I don’t have that much of the healing water on me. I mostly just carry food around now.”

“Noted,” Damien said. “On your mark.”

“No,” Sylph said. “On yours.”

Damien cocked an eyebrow, then nodded. He picked a rock off the ground and nodded to it. “When it hits the ground?”

“That works.”

He lobbed the stone into the air. They both watched it arc through the sky and descend. It thumped against the dirt and Damien Warp Stepped. He appeared in the air, just below the canopy.

Sylph was already standing where he’d been just instants before. She flickered, and then she was face to face with him. Damien hardened his mage armor as she drove a fist into his stomach. He grunted and Warp Stepped back to the ground.

She wasn’t quite as fast as Kat, but she was closing on her. Damien sent Ether out into the air around him, binding several gravity spheres in place. The back of his neck tingled and he spun, raising his hands defensively as Sylph appeared by his side.

He barely managed to block the strike, and the force still sent him skidding across the ground. Damien detonated the spells that now surrounded Sylph, but she was standing before him before they even had a chance to go off.

“Shit, you’re fast now,” Damien said, catching another blow on his armor. “Kneel.”

Sylph slammed to the ground with a grunt and Damien skipped out of range, gathering his Ether once more.

Several pops came out of Sylph’s back as she hunched over. She rose to her feet, gritting her teeth as green veins pulsed beneath her skin. Two scythes sprouted from her back, reaching around to hang over her shoulders.

Her mental energy wrapped around Damien. He pushed back, but, without Henry, she wormed past his mental defenses and latched onto his Ether. Damien felt his connection to his Ether vanish.

“I was wondering when you’d whip that out,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “That ability is annoying.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Sylph replied. The ground beneath her feet crunched and she bounded toward him, moving with incredible dexterity despite the pressure bearing down on her from Damien’s direct casting.

Even as restrained as she was, Sylph was several times faster than Damien. Without his ability to teleport, Damien was forced to dodge out of the way as her scythes whipped at him. He dropped low, spinning to knock her feet out from under her.

His shin hit her leg with a thunk. She didn’t budge an inch. Damien cursed and rolled to the side as a scythe punched into the ground where he’d been.

“What have you been eating?” Damien asked, vaulting back to his feet. “Shatter.”

Black lines erupted from his hands, zigzagging out and passing over Sylph. Her eyes widened in surprise for an instant and she blurred, but his gravity had weighed her down just enough to slow her reaction time.

One of the lines caught her in the side. A crack echoed through the clearing and Sylph staggered, the side of her shirt torn along with the runed bandages beneath it. The skin where his spell had caught her stomach turned stony, and green acid trickled down her side. It quickly patched itself over and Sylph rolled her shoulders.

“Is that a fat joke?” Sylph asked. She flexed her fingers and gritted her teeth. “Damn, this magic is annoying.”

Damien grinned, but he froze as a strange sensation tickled his mental energy. His direct casting was giving out, the Ether draining out of the environment. The smile on his face faded as Sylph’s grew and her back straightened.

“Eight Planes. You’re consuming the Ether,” Damien asked.

Sylph thrust her right hand out to the side. Ropey green magic erupted from her flesh, twisting together like the roots of a tree and covering her arm. She thrust her hand into the ground, sending ripples through it.

Damien dove out of the way as a jagged spike erupted beneath him. He cursed, breaking into a run as the very earth came alive, chasing after him with grasping green roots. Without his magic, and with Sylph pulling the Ether away as he tried to use it, she wasn’t leaving him many options.

“You look cute when you run like that!” Sylph called.

Damien threw himself into a roll, but a spike shot up and caught him by the hem of his pants. It lifted him into the air, growing at a rapid pace and wrapping around his lower half. Sylph sauntered up to him with a smug grin.

“Well, I didn’t expect that,” Damien muttered. She’d completely cut off most of his abilities.

“I’m just thinking about what we’re going to be doing for my day,” Sylph said smugly. “I’ve got so many ideas.”

“Don’t think too hard,” Damien said, his vision going grayscale as he grabbed the cold, dead wood of his void staff. Sylph’s magic had yet to cover his hands, and he drew jagged runes through the air with rapid efficiency.

A bolt of black light leapt from his fingers and struck Sylph in the chest, launching her across the clearing and smashing her through several trees. Another series of runes sent a wave of rippling black flame across the roots holding him, burning them away.

Damien dropped to the ground and rose to his feet, the lantern at the top of his staff flickering with pale light. Sylph blurred out of the treeline, her mental energy reaching for him once more.

“What is this?” Sylph asked, her eyes going wide. “I can’t touch your Ether!”

“It’s not mine,” Damien replied, raising a hand. He clenched his fingers, digging into the air, and pulled.

A patch of earth beneath Sylph erupted around her, slamming into her back. Dozens of gangly blades sprouted from her body, carving the dirt apart. Each blow weakened his Void-empowered telekinetic hold over the dirt until nothing remained.

The blades retracted back into Sylph and she shifted her stance before darting at Damien once more. He met her, Void magic churning through his body. There were no more words to be traded – they both respected each other’s abilities too much to risk the distraction.

Damien kept his draw on the Void limited, not willing to risk many of the spells that tugged at his consciousness. He didn’t trust the Faceless, and it was already all he could do to properly control the weaker Void spells without losing himself to the apathy.

The two tore the clearing apart, their powers roughly evenly matched. In the end, it came down to magical energy – and Damien had that in leaps and bounds. Sylph’s core ran dry after a few minutes of fighting and, without Damien’s Ether to pull from, she started to slow down.

However, Damien wasn’t far from reaching the limits of his safe Void magic usage. The tides shifted once more as he was forced to release the staff. Using his Ether would have just given Sylph an energy source to draw from, so with no little amusement, they found themselves sparring with just their hand-to-hand abilities once more.

He wasn’t sure how long they’d been fighting, but Damien was exhausted. He desperately wanted to draw on his Ether, but that was as good as losing the match. They traded blows for nearly a minute. Damien drove his open palm into Sylph’s stomach, sending her stumbling back a foot. As long as she wasn’t cut, her body didn’t turn to stone. She returned the blow with a powerful kick to his side. He failed to harden his mage armor in time and was sent tumbling across the ground.

Damien vaulted to the side and rolled to his feet, narrowly avoiding Sylph’s follow-up attack. His heart pounded in his chest and exhaustion gripped his body. She still had an enormous advantage in physical combat.

Going to need to do something fancy and hope I get lucky.

They traded several more strikes, but Sylph continued to gain the advantage. Damien’s weary eyes caught her rearing back, preparing to drive a powerful strike into his stomach. He leapt forward, thrusting his leg behind Sylph and throwing his shoulder against her as hard as he could.

It wasn’t fast enough to stop the strike from slamming into his stomach and knocking all the wind from his lungs, but Damien didn’t let go. He threw every last ounce of energy he had into the sweep.

Her feet left the ground and Damien thrust his weight down, spinning and slamming Sylph into the dirt. He immediately jumped on her, wrapping her in a tight grip and trying to lock one of her arms behind her back.

Sylph wiggled in his grip, somehow managing to free her arm and spin to face him. She wrapped her legs around his back and thrust a palm into his chin, snapping his head back and throwing her weight to the side, flipping them so that she was on top.

Damien grabbed a paper from his belt and thrust it against her stomach at the same time that Sylph’s finger formed into a blade and she put it against Damien’s neck.

“I win,” Sylph said, breathing heavily.

Damien cocked his eyebrow. Sylph glanced down at the paper.

“Runed?”

Damien grinned. “Enough to melt through steel.”

Sylph rocked back with a groan, sliding off and flopping down beside him. “We tied?”

“Looks like it.”

Sylph scooted closer to him and rested her head against his chest. “Damn. I really wanted to win that.”

“You damn near did,” Damien said, staring up at the sky. “Seriously, that was terrifying. Since when could you just consume Ether like the Corruption? You aren’t feeling any… adverse side effects, are you?”

“No. I’m not really consuming it,” Sylph said, pausing to catch her breath. “I kind of just expanded on the ability to stop you from using magic that we share. I realized that I could see all types of Ether through the Corrupted parts in me, but I can’t actually use them. But, I can temporarily kind of… pull them. It’s more like shifting it around than actually using it. If you look, you’ll see that the Ether around us hasn’t actually reduced like it would have if the Corruption ate it.”

“Good.” Damien sighed in relief.

“What about you?” Sylph asked. “You looked… intimidating when you were using that staff. Did you finally figure out how to properly use your Void magic?”

“To a degree. No more random bursts of apathy,” Damien replied. “Honestly, the real one who had progress was Henry.”

“That much?”

“You won’t believe it until you see it.”

Sylph whistled. She reached into a pocket and pulled out two strips of jerky. She handed one to Damien. “Another day. I don’t think I’ll be able to properly fight again today. I’m completely out of Ether.”

She ate the jerky, yawning once she finished. “I haven’t sparred like that in weeks. It feels good to really push yourself to the limit.”

“Agreed. I’m not sure who won the bet at this point, though.”

“We can split it fifty-fifty,” Sylph suggested. “I’ll get to choose what we do for the first half of the day. Then you can choose for the second half.”

“That works. Tomorrow? I don’t think we’re going to get all that much more accomplished today.”

“Yeah,” Sylph said.

The purple energy surrounding the clearing flickered and fell. Henry arose in his spherical form and crossed his tentacles, glaring down at both of them.

“I hate both of you. I didn’t get to pla– ah, fight, at all. Next time, include your companions when you fight. I’m sure Human wanted to do something as well.”

Sylph paused for a moment, then gave a slight nod. “She does. I think she’s getting a competitive streak in her. We still aren’t really talking with words yet, but I’m getting a lot of images of her kicking you in the butt.”

“I don’t have a butt. I’m a sphere with wings, a mouth, and tentacles.”

“She’s very imaginative.”

“Can she imagine me a goat?”

“Let’s not start with the goats,” Sylph said wearily. “Let’s head back to my room. I want to take a shower.”

She and Damien both rolled to their feet, each going to offer the other one a hand before realizing they were both standing. They laughed, then headed back toward Kingsfront, Henry grumbling behind them the entire way.