As it turned out, they discovered the answer to that before even a few more seconds had passed. Sylph’s grin faded and she let out a racking cough into her hand.

“Choke on your own saliva?” Damien asked, laughing. His mirth vanished as he realized that Sylph’s hand was covered in green fluid. It dripped from her skin, sizzling against the grass beneath them and burning a brown patch into it. She doubled over as coughs racked her body.

Henry! What’s happening to Sylph?

Henry’s power surged forth, taking control of Damien’s body. He grabbed Sylph by the shoulder and pulled her head back, staring at her intently.

The coughs stopped for a moment, but then came back with redoubled strength. Sylph looked away just in time to avoid spitting some of the acid onto Damien. She drew ragged breaths in between coughs as the liquid started to pool and sizzle in the dirt before her.

“When did you last eat?” Henry asked, his voice coming through Damien’s mouth.

“Last night.”

“You need food. Using the Corruption’s healing and powers uses more energy than your body can provide, even with Ether,” Henry said, relinquishing control back to Damien. Sylph’s features flickered with pain for a moment before she got them back under control.

“The closest food is in the forest,” Henry informed Damien.

The boy nodded his understanding. He grabbed Sylph, slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and taking several brisk steps towards the lake. He slipped her into it slightly less than gently.

“Stay here,” Damien said. “I’ll get something.”

Sylph nodded, then let out another racking cough. Large splotches of blood mixed in with the acid on the ground. Damien spun and dashed towards campus. He drew Ether into himself, cycling it through his core and spinning the motes together. Damien weaved Warp Step in with his running, crossing ground with incredible speed.

He shot through the campus streets, arriving at the general store and practically blowing the doors down. The clerk glanced up from a book and blinked.

“Damien?”

“I need food. Immediately,” Damien said, ignoring the pounding headache in the back of his skull.

Something in the tone of his voice must have told the clerk that he was serious, because the man quickly rose from his chair and walked into the back. He emerged a few moments later with a small brown bag.

Damien tossed several coins onto the counter, not waiting to hear the man’s response before Warp Stepping out of the shop. He dimly wondered if there were any rules about using magic to move around campus grounds, since he hadn’t seen anyone else doing it.

It was a moot point – he didn’t care if there was. The headache grew stronger, tendrils of pain wrapping around his brain and squeezing to the point where the edges of his vision started to darken.

Damien staggered into the clearing, barely able to think straight. He’d covered what was normally nearly half an hour of travel in less than five minutes. Parts of Sylph’s skin had turned dark gray and stony, similar to how the mantis had looked.

He fumbled with the bag, pulling it open and grabbing an apple. She tried to raise a graying hand, but a spasm ran down it as acid started to leak out from thin cracks within it. Damien smashed the fruit open on his knee, then shoved a small part of it into Sylph’s mouth.

It was far from the most graceful way to feed someone, but she managed to swallow. He repeated the process with what remained of the apple, then moved on to a slice of bread and a large piece of cured meat.

Color slowly started to return to Sylph’s skin. The gray areas faded and the cracks sealed over with every bite. There was a good amount of food in the pack, easily enough for a small family’s meal.

Sylph ate all of it with the gusto of a starving woman. Only once she’d polished off every last morsel did she let out a relieved sigh. She looked normal again, and the only trace that anything had gone wrong was the bubbling patches of acid on the ground before them.

“Are you okay?” Damien asked worriedly.

“Yeah,” Sylph said, splashing some of the healing water onto her face. “I think so.”

Damien let out a sigh of relief. “I got worried. You looked like you were melting.”

“Felt like it too. Why did that happen? I didn’t feel like I was running out of Ether. There should have been no reason for my body to need more energy.”

Damien’s shadow twitched as Henry commandeered it. “Your Ether doesn’t work the same way it used to. Humans don’t inherently have any Ether within them – monsters do, and the Corruption are no exception. I don’t think there’s ever been a scenario where a human’s body was rebuilt using monster parts, so this is all new ground. However, it appears that you inherited the magical properties of a monster.”

“So whenever I cast magic I’ll use up my own energy in addition to normal Ether?” Sylph asked.

“Essentially,” Henry said. “That’s the price for power. You’re going to have to greatly increase the amount of food you eat if you want to use any of your new abilities.”

“Why didn’t this happen the first time I healed, then?” Sylph asked, frowning. “When you put the Corruption into my body to save me.”

“I padded it with my own energy,” Henry said. “It had enough fuel to run without killing you. Also, I’m not entirely sure what the distribution is between the energy usage of tasks. Healing might take less energy than whatever augments you gave yourself while fighting Damien.”

Sylph nodded slowly. “That would make sense. I’ll have to experiment a little more. I’m glad I didn’t try using all of my abilities against Mark when we sparred. It would have been bad if this happened in front of other people.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Damien said, shaking his head. “You’re really going to have to keep an eye on this, though. Towards the end there, your skin kind of looked like the mantis.”

“What do you think would have happened if I didn’t get food?” Sylph asked.

“Interesting question,” Henry said. “It depends on how much energy your body had consumed. If it was too much, you might have just… burned away, I suppose. Otherwise, well, it’s hard to say. Brain damage would be almost certain, though.”

Damien massaged his forehead. Now that the adrenaline was leaving his veins, his headache was getting more and more unbearable. He tossed his mage armor off and slipped into the water beside Sylph, dunking his head underwater.

He held his breath for as long as possible before rising back up. The pain had lessened slightly, but it was still there. Damien repeated the process a few times, but the headache stubbornly refused to drop below the level of ‘more than mildly annoying’.

“Are you okay?” Sylph asked, mirroring his words from earlier.

“Just used too much Ether,” Damien said. He massaged his forehead and sighed. “Well, at least we’ve both figured out our limits. Better now than when we’re trying to fight something that’s trying to kill us.”

Henry shook his head and let out a chuckle. He slipped into the water, returning Damien’s shadow to him and allowing his power to fade. Damien and Sylph remained in the water for several more minutes before they finally gathered the energy to get out of it.

Sylph was the first to leave, and she extended a hand to pull Damien out and to his feet. They laid out in the sun for a few minutes, allowing it to dry their clothes off.

“I suppose this isn’t the best way to start our vacation of hunting reality threatening monsters,” Damien said with a small laugh.

“You said it yourself,” Sylph replied. “Better now than later. At least you don’t leak green goo when you mess up.”

“There is that,” Damien agreed. He sat up, pulling his mage armor back on. Sylph rose as well, and the two of them headed back to campus. They made a beeline towards their room, where they both flopped into bed.

It didn’t matter that it was barely the middle of the day. They were both asleep within minutes.

The next few days passed without any further excitement. None of the professors seemed interested in them now that the year was over, and the number of students on campus decreased with every passing day.

Mark was the first of their group to head off. He didn’t mention where he was going, and nobody asked. Damien suspected they wouldn’t have even known he was leaving had they not been bringing back the corpse of a large elk they’d killed for dinner.

The sword wielding boy had bid them a brief farewell as he headed down the mountain. From the sound of it, he planned to return to Blackmist the following year.

As for the Grays, there were still no signs of anything. The curtain in front of their cave remained closed, and while Damien saw light from his rune faintly glowing from beneath the curtain on occasion, he didn’t run into the siblings.

He and Sylph continued to train, although they kept things at a much more reasonable speed, focusing mostly on physical exercise. Sylph also took to carrying around a large amount of cured meat in a pack at her side.

The students on campus thinned further and further until it was little more than a ghost town. There were a good number of people that had opted to remain over the summer, but compared to the normal bustle of the college, it was almost empty.

After about a week after the incident, Damien could practically feel Herald’s ire starting to build up. It was clearly reaching the end of its patience.

“It might be about time to get moving,” Damien said once he and Sylph finished their breakfast that morning. “Assuming you still want to come with me, of course.”

“I do, and I was wondering when you’d decide to go,” Sylph said. “I’ve been packed for a while. Where are we going first?”

“Oh,” Damien said, flushing. “And actually, I’m not entirely sure. Let me check.”

Henry?

“What would you do without me?” Henry asked, laughing. “This is your decision to make, Damien. Are you trying to find the Corruption? Or are you trying to find the Void? Because I know where all the Void creatures are, but I still don’t think you’re going to have any luck convincing them to help you.”

But there’s a chance?

“A small one,” Henry said reluctantly. “How would you convince them that they shouldn’t restart the cycle when the Corruption is clearly present? In fact, they’ll be able to detect the fact that Sylph’s body is built out of a Seed’s corpse.”

So what should we do? Just seek out the Corruption and try to destroy it ourselves?

“It would be risky,” Henry said. “But that seems to be what Herald wants you to do. It doesn’t gain anything from you dying, so it’s probably not a terrible idea. Frankly, I suspect its plan is to get you to realize how dangerous the Corruption is so that you agree to restart the cycle.”

Wonderful. We’ll start with destroying some Corruption then, I suppose. I say that like it’s a walk in the park rather than a fight for our life, but I don’t think there’s much of a choice. I feel like Herald is going to start taking some seriously drastic measures if I don’t do this.

“Almost certainly,” Henry admitted. “It won’t speak with me anymore. I don’t know what its plans are, but I’ll be keeping an eye or ten out.”

Keep a few peeled for the Void as well. I know you said they were all still bound, but I want to make sure. We also have to eventually figure out why and how they got bound in the first place. I don’t think that dark tendril that messed up my rune circle was the Corruption, was it?

“No,” Henry said, his tone darkening. “It wasn’t. As for finding the Corruption, Herald might actually have a better idea about that. As much benefit as your human spark has brought my soul, it’s also made it harder to spot certain things. Herald knew the mantis was coming a good bit before I did.”

That’s not good. Do you know why? Is it something to be concerned about?

“It’s hard to describe, but no. I don’t think so, at least,” Henry said, picking his words carefully. “Before I got the spark, everything was dark. I didn’t mind that, as that’s what I’d always known. It was easy to see things because there was nothing interfering. Now, with the spark, everything is brighter. I can still see, but it’s harder.”

I see what you’re getting at. So Herald is the Corruption-spotter. I guess that means I’m going to actually have to deal with him.

“Yup.”

Damien let out a heavy sigh. Sylph cocked an eyebrow.

“What’s wrong? You look like you just swallowed a fly.”

“I’ve got to talk to the murderous chump that keeps ruining my sheets,” he said. “It’s the only one that knows where the Corruption is with any high degree of accuracy.”

“Have fun,” Sylph said, her face completely straight. “I’ll get the shower running for you, just in case.”