Henry waited. At first minutes bled into hours, then the sun rose and fell, rose and fell until more days than Henry had patience had passed. He was surprised that he had waited for so long, and yet supposed that given eternity no number of days could amount to even a second of his lifespan. And yet despite this monumental patience, his rage began to boil. Despite his own immortality the strength of his enemies grew in each and every day Amanda had spent absent. He would wait no longer.

It did not matter where she had gone, Henry could sense her now. Despite the energy being expelled immediately after its receipt, Amanda’s soul had been contaminated with his influence and this distinctive mark could not be mended by the simple removal of what had been absorbed. It is not so simple to unstain that which has been forever marked.

It did not matter whatever distance was between them, he would find her. His feet rose and wind began to flow over his short black bangs. His waist bent forward, but arms remained locked to their sides as he accelerated. This would sap his strength, and yet it was necessary. He was no longer bleeding power in this form as he had when coming into the body of the new man, but every use of his power opened it up to the cleansing influence of the essence of Yaldabaoth that permeated the air.

He flew for an indeterminate amount of time. It wasn’t like the exact details mattered. Once he had tried once again to teleport, but it had just exploded as before. As he expected a failure this time, he paid closer attention to the details of what happened. It seemed that instead of making a tunnel through space, he was tearing it and the tears were being forcefully closed by the presence of stabilizing energy in the route and on the other side of the connection.

The time would come when Henry would strip this world of the latent influence of its protector, but unfortunately he would need to waste time in this moment to circumvent it. Henry only stopped once more on his path toward the one who had claimed she would never abandon him.

Many miles above a forest, far above the clouds, Henry began to feel something powerful coming from below. It blocked his ability to sense Amanda with its sheer magnitude, blowing out all sense of direction and precision to his senses, masking them instead with a grand energy far beyond anything he had ever sensed before in this world. It was so close to his destination, and yet he could find his way no further through the overwhelming mass of energy.

Drool began to drip from the side of his mouth and a sense of overwhelming hunger formed as the infinity of a bottomless pit in his stomach. Any sense of direction or purpose Henry had once felt vanished. All restraint was lost as he began to fly a straight line toward the source of power. Whatever it was, he would have it.

Henry’s billowing gray robe draped calmly over his body as his feet touched the grass-covered earth of this pine forest. There were a few speckled patches of snow and a buildup of pine straw nearby, but Henry landed next to a small clearing where an extremely old man stood, hunched over a knobbed cane as if unable to right himself fully in age, stirring a small gray metallic pot held in a tripod over a fire.

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“Welcome. Would you like some soup?” the old man asked, not turning around.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Henry attempted to say, but the obvious rumbling of his stomach caused the old man to thrust a bowl upon him despite Henry’s objection. “No” was not a possible answer.

Henry devoured the bowl, and as the first solid food he had eaten in weeks it settled like lead in his stomach, and yet it craved so much more. Standard procedure would be to ask “Who are you?” but Henry didn’t care. He merely strode up to the man, placed a left hand on his hunched-over shoulder, and attempted to consume him as the meal following an appetizer of soup.

His hand began to burn as though Henry had just touched a blazing flame. He blinked twice, slowly, trying to gather his bearings and determine if this was real, and when he looked again his hand remained firmly in place, old geezer unmoving. No, that was inaccurate, the geezer was getting him a second bowl of soup.

The veins on his hand were enlarging, becoming plainly visible though Henry’s body should not have any definition. First the veins of his hand, then forearm, then bicep grew larger until Henry’s fingers could no longer be recognized as distinct from each other.

“Careful now, it’s hot,” the man said, almost mocking him.

Henry tried harder to consume him, and his stump of a hand grew larger-still. It was no longer anything but a worthless mass of flesh whose arm was also becoming unable to bend. The joints locked up with flesh on all sides, and then, slowly, the skin became unable to grow any further. First stretch marks appeared, and then, in a moment of pure rage at his inability to take on the man’s power, Henry pulled harder still.

His fingers exploded, and a mass of blood and pus drained from the worthless arm, size decreasing as the fluid was finally expelled. The mixture of fluid glowed a dull light as it sank into the earth, but the pain of such a thing meant nothing. The only feeling Henry felt was shock at his own ineptitude. Henry was so weak compared to this man he couldn’t even take the man’s power into himself? That was absurd! He was a god, a God, a GOD of consumption, of intake, of confluence, of growth, of power and magic and strength itself. How could he possibly be unable to take on this man’s power? Was he so strong it was impossible? How? By what means? In what world?

“This one,” the man said presciently, thrusting a second bowl of soup at Henry’s abdomen. It squished his stomach, and Henry took it in a daze with his still-functional right hand. The left had already begun to mend itself— having extra power meant it was easy to repair the flesh destroyed in the process of intaking it— and yet the arm did not recover instantly. It wasn’t just that Henry was unable to absorb the geezer’s power, it was that he was only able to absorb and use a tiny fraction of it, but if it was just a question of the difference in strength this outcome made no sense. No matter how wide the gulf in power between lighting and the earth, the earth could always absorb more lighting. It made no sense for energy to be repelled from a capacitor, a battery, the ground itself.

“So many of you try this when we first meet. It’s always amusing. Please, sit and tell me why you’re here.”

Henry obeyed, still in a daze, mind racing and unable to comprehend what had just happened. He wished his other persona would come out and fix this, but it didn’t. He didn’t understand why, but the outcome flustered him. Henry had grown used to having his problems magically disappear, and yet this one did not. Why?

“I’m Chen-Thai,” but you can call me “Master Chen.” “Please,” the man gestured to Henry as he sat on his knees, back still rounded, “now go on.”