“I’ll do my best,” Damien replied as Henry headed out of the room. He turned his attention back to the runes covering the floor and drummed his fingers on his chin before grabbing one of the new books and flipping through it. If he wanted this spell to have any chance of working properly, he’d have a lot of research ahead of him.

The rest of the day went by quickly. When dinner came around, Damien rejoined Sylph and met all the others to get food. They spent a little while catching up about what had happened since Damien had gotten trapped in the Void, but Damien kept his own story limited. The less anyone knew about Henry and Herald’s true natures, the better. He really didn’t need Whisp breathing down his neck again.

The next several days were much of the same. Delph didn’t seek him out for any classes, and Damien didn’t question it. He made progress with the framework of his spell at a slow but steady pace. He wasn’t doing anything completely new this time - it was more of a significantly changed version of a previous spell. By the end of the week, he was relatively confident he had something workable enough to bring to Henry’s attention once more.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Damien asked, gesturing at the drawings on the ground.

Henry grunted. “It might. You can probably test this on inanimate objects without too much worry. I wouldn’t risk it on anyone else until you’re confident you can cast it properly.”

“Works for me,” Damien said, closing his current book with a relieved sigh and grabbed a nearby rock. He stood up, brushing chalk dust from his clothes and taking several motes of Ether from his core. He warped them as they traveled through his body, forming the magic into the proper patterns for the spell.

It was of little surprise to him that the Ether dissipated before he could get all the runes worked into it. The spell was just too complex to cast without any aide, at least at the moment.

He tried it again, this time drawing several of the runes in the air with his finger, pairing them together with the guidance he was giving the Ether within him. With a thought, he directed the magic into the stone resting in his palm and released it.

With a pop of dark light, the stone vanished. It reappeared several feet away from him and fell to the ground, split in two.

Damien grimaced. “Good thing that wasn’t a person.”

Henry just chuckled while Damien glanced back at his sketches, running through the runes to see where he’d gone wrong. He located the issue and quickly fixed it before recasting the spell on a new rock.

This one launched into a wall at max speed, exploding into smithereens. Damien grumbled to himself and set back to modifying the spell. This process, while considerably more exciting than the previous one, took easily as long. It was a little over a week later when Damien finally reached a level of proficiency with the spell to teleport rocks and small animals that Henry found for him safely.

“You finally done?” Sylph asked as Damien emerged from his room just before dinner, flopping down on his bed with a goofy grin on his face.

“How could you tell?”

“You threw a book out of the room and then started laughing a minute later.”

“The book was wrong,” Damien grumbled. “I wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out what a rune did, only to find out it was just a mistake that the author had overlooked. I could have been done a few days ago.”

“Better late than never,” Sylph pointed out. “We’re sparring, then? I want to see what you can do.”

Damien sat back up. “Before dinner?”

“Same rules as last time,” Sylph said with a nod. “You win, I’ll show you what I’ve learned. If I win, we do what I want for a day.”

“Those terms seem slightly unbalanced,” Damien observed with a grin. “Are you implying you won’t need to use your full strength to fight me?”

“Delph has taught me a lot,” Sylph replied. “And I doubt you can use whatever you learned in the Void quite yet, so technically I should have a lead in training again. Besides, don’t act like you wouldn’t like what I chose.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to choose.”

“Lose and you’ll find out.”

Damien rolled his eyes and laughed. “Let’s do it, then. The forest again?”

Sylph nodded and the two of them jogged out of the room, heading down the mountain and toward their training area.

The forest hadn’t changed since Damien had last seen it, which really shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to him. It had only been a little over a month and a half since he’d last been in the area. The large clearing and crystal blue lake sat there, waiting like they always did.

“How are we judging it?” Damien asked. “Until surrender?”

“First blood just wouldn’t make sense,” Sylph said with a nod. “Surrender is best. Henry stays out of this as well - he’s just unfair. I’m going to really try for this win, so I hope you’re ready.”

“Whenever you are,” Damien replied, lowering into a fighting stance. Henry popped out of Damien’s shadow and floated over to the lake to watch them, a smug grin on his face form the compliment Sylph had given him.

Sylph waited until the very last syllable had left his mouth before sending a black dagger spinning at Damien’s shoulder. He ducked out of the way, only to find Sylph’s knee blurring for his nose.

Damien warp stepped backward, gathering Ether in his hands and shielding himself with mental energy as best as he could. Sylph’s probe clashed with his powers a moment later, trying to find a crack so she could shut down his magic.

“You aren’t getting away with that again so easily,” Damien laughed, teleporting behind Sylph and sweeping her legs out from under her.

She twisted, hitting him in the chest with a powerful kick as she fell. He staggered back, the air knocked out of his lungs, and Sylph lunged for him, a scythe sprouting from her shoulder to extend her reach.

Damien threw a gravity sphere between them, forcing Sylph to jump to the side. He enlarged several stones on the ground between them, forming a wall. The rock exploded, his magic vanishing as Sylph’s gauntleted fist crashed through his barrier.

She was upon him in seconds, raining a flurry of blows down and forcing him to activate his mage armor.

The speed of her attacks was so incredible that it was all Damien could do to fend them off. He didn’t even have the few instants required to cast Warp Step. Damien took a cut along the cheek as he spent precious moments grabbing Sylph’s shirt with telekenisis and yanking her back.

Wind erupted around her, covering Sylph in translucent armor. She bounded toward him, growing faster with every movement until he couldn’t even see where she was. Damien didn’t think it was a possible, but she was easily as fast as Derrod.

He teleported into the air, then Warp Stepped again to reappear on the ground just in case Sylph had somehow predicted his movements.

As an extra precaution, Damien raised his arms and activated his mage armor. No more than an instant later, Sylph shot out of her camouflage and slammed into him, a scythe reaching for his neck to force out a submission.

Damien touched her with his hand, quickly drawing the aiding runes in the air with the other. Sylph’s eyes widened in surprise and she vanished in a puff of dark smoke, reappearing far in the air above him.

She adapted quickly, launching herself off a disk of wind magic and shooting back toward Damien. He teleported again, flicking a line of dark purple energy toward her. If it had been anyone else, Damien wouldn’t have risked using such a dangerous spell in a unmoderated sparring match. But, with Sylph’s incredible regenerative abilities, he wasn’t particularly concerned. She’d dodge it or take a minor injury that would heal quickly, and the spell would buy him time to reposition.

To Damien’s surprise, Sylph didn’t redirect her path at all. She took the attack head on and slammed into him an instant later, knocking them both to the ground and not giving him time to react.

The world went gray. Black lines of Ether warped around Damien and runes burned on his chest. A flicker of panic shot through his mind before it vanished into an endless abyss of apathy. And then, he no longer cared.

His mouth twisted in distaste and his shirt tore, possibilities stretching out before him but none even garnering the slightest spark of his interest.

Sylph pounced on his perceived distraction, her mental energy launching out and burying past his defenses. In an instant, his magic was shut off. Sylph pushed herself up with a victorious grin, sitting up on his chest as one of her scythes shot out to claim the win.

Doing nothing would have been the optimal solution, but the blade heading for his throat forced him to act.

A spell sprung unbidden to Damien’s mind, its runes jagged and broken as if pieced together from shards of glass.

Something deep within Damien bucked in rebellion, fighting with everything it could against the gray. Something about the strange runes filled that part of him with complete revulsion, and the momentary return to his senses was enough to break the trance. With a pop, the world snapped back into color.

Sylph’s scythe jerked to a stop inches from his throat.

“I win!” Sylph exclaimed.

Gray encroached on the edges of Damien’s vision and he shoved it away.

“Damien?” Sylph asked, her smile vanishing. “What’s going on? The runes on your arms are moving.”

“Side effects from the Void,” Damien groaned, struggling to resist as the world pulsated around him, rapidly shifting from color to gray hues.

Broken runes started to trace themselves in the air above him, remaining even during the flashes of color.

“Damien!” Sylph yelled, grabbing him and pulling him into a seated position without getting out of his lap. The runes paused and he glanced at her, struggling to maintain grasp over his mind.

He was dimly aware of Henry yelling something at him, but the outside world was starting to fade. Only Sylph and the runes remained. She shook him again, then leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

A jolt shot through Damien’s head and the gray blew away, releasing him from its grip as shock shot through his body.

Sylph pulled away, relief lighting her eyes at whatever she saw. “Are you back? Are you okay?”

“I - yeah,” Damien said, his stomach twisting. “Uh… how did you know that would work?”

“I suppose I told her to,” Henry said from beside them, too concerned to even look disgusted. “You were drawing on the Void, Damien. I was pretty sure a powerful emotion would pull you out of it. I couldn’t even get back into your body because the Void was blocking me.”

“Ah,” Damien said intelligently, raising a hand to touch his lips. The outline of the broken runes flickered in the air above them, visible only to him, for another instant before blowing away as well. “Thank you.”

“Can’t say it was how I wanted my first kiss to go, but I guess there are worse outcomes,” Sylph said, peering closely into his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Not really, but I think I’m in control again,” Damien said. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Well, you know-”

“I think this is where you would generally stop talking,” Henry said. “That’s what the protagonists in my novels do, at least. I actually just told Sylph to shock you somehow, so that was all her decision on how to do it.”

Damien cleared his throat, his mind still fighting off the fog from the Void. “I’ll do that. Thanks, Sylph. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten under control again. Henry, how do we keep this from happening?”

“I’m working on it,” Henry replied. “I honestly don’t know. No human has ever been able to use the Void like this. It’s not meant for someone with emotions, which is why you can resist it. Just… I don’t know, actually. There doesn’t seem to be a trigger. Eight Planes, I hate this.”

Sylph shifted in his lap, pulling Damien into a hug before rising to her feet and helping him up, her scythe retracting into her shoulder.

“Is there a trigger or something I can look for?” Damien asked, still holding Sylph’s hand. “Or maybe something I should avoid? So far, it looks almost random.”

“Still don’t know,” Henry said, his voice taut. “I don’t know. This hasn’t happened, and I don’t even have anything to reference that is similar. Just… be aware. You clearly have some degree of control over it, so you should be able to repress it for now. Whatever you do, you cannot cast Void magic without Herald or I to guide you. I’ll remain inside your mind whenever you fight so I can at least take over and redirect the Void magic so you don’t do something you really don’t want to or seriously injure yourself.”

“Right. I can do that,” Damien said. “Maybe Delph can help. He talked to Moon more than anyone else.”

“Good idea,” Sylph said, squeezing his hand reassuringly. “And one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“I think I still technically won.”