Henry once again found himself falling from a small purple hole torn in the sky. There was no pain until the end of what should have been a catastrophically injurious fall, and yet when he stood and brushed himself off there were no wounds. What little pain there was had been mended almost as quickly as it had come and he felt power flow into him to fix what had been damaged.

Xevis raised an eyebrow as he introduced himself and began to speak,

“Ah, the purple child returns. Welcome to my humble domain.”

He gestured broadly and Henry followed the tips of his long and withered fingertips, but not to where they pointed. Behind the thin fingers lay gangly arms and a long, thin man most easily described as a corpse just barely held together with white paper tape. He was paler than the moon except for two blackened circles under his eyes whose irises were a mirror of his skin— purely white and surrounded on all sides by darkness— and a small red scar that ran the length of his torso and down the left arm to the tips of his fingers. The man's pupils were missing, but from them Henry could feel the man’s scorn.

Clearly he did not appreciate Henry’s ignorance, but said nothing and continued to hold the same pose, quite obviously intending for his uninvited guest to observe the great and majestic hall he had erected in the year or however long Henry had been more or less present in this world. Calling the room grand would have been the understatement of a lifetime. As Henry’s eyes traced the ornately decorated walls carved in blood-red script he realized he stood in a dome, much like the diamond wall that surrounded the city he had gone into the void from, but this one was not crystal. It was pure gold to all sides and stood some few hundred feet in diameter. Inset at small intervals in the crimson script written on gold walls stood every color of gemstone Henry had ever seen and several he had not. It was the most gaudy display of opulence he had ever seen not just in real life but in any piece of media he had ever consumed.

“Why?” Henry thought to himself, “there’s no purpose in this—” and yet was cut off in the midst of his thoughts having not even absorbed the banners that hung so densely from the balconies to either side of him they could be said to be more architecture than decoration if one did not notice the thousand-odd kinds of script written on the surface of each piece of satin and cloth and jeweled silk.

When Xevis spoke he seemed to understand exactly what Henry was thinking. “You seem not to appreciate the finer touches... Fair enough I suppose, for one such as yourself whose only purpose is fodder what purpose is there in such things?”

Henry began to open his mouth, but Xevis hushed him and continued.

“No I’m not going to kill you, or, well, try. There would be no purpose in such an action. No, I have something much more… intricate in mind, though it does seem like I’ll have to trim down the details a bit for a mind lacking in such sophistication as your own.”

Henry did not object to these statements. They had long-since grown cold to him, but what did surprise him was how little they hurt. It didn’t seem like he had grown at all in the brief moments he had spent in this world, and yet he did not cry or break down. He did not turn to leave, he did not put on a face of brazen and fake masculinity to oppose the words of this one who would deride him. He felt nothing in response to these insults as though his anxieties had been swept away— tempered in the fires of… no, that was the wrong way to think about this. He realized something was missing within him, something he had always known and feared but ultimately understood as making him the person he always was.

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He did not miss the loss.

Xevis, clearly annoyed by his inability to get under Henry’s skin, continued to insult him as he went on. “...and yet I would grace your meager intellect with an opportunity even it could not fail to understand.”

He paused for a moment before continuing, “But first, you’ll need some background information. I trust you’re not so feeble-minded as to be unable to listen for a brief moment?”

Henry didn’t acknowledge the question, but Xevis went on anyway.

“This world has suffered a schism of sorts. The ancients have abandoned the seats of their shattered thrones and Yaldaboath has forsaken them. They dared to stand against his divine and emerald will to keep this world anchored in place and isolated from all the others, daring to go so far as to oppose him directly.”

Xevis did not stop this expositional monologue, and his voice, dead as the corpse of his body, did not move or inflect anything as he spoke the next words Henry was sure contained nothing less than spite.

“When the ancients abandoned their duties to the world it began to crumble, and though Yaldabaoth could easily have slaughtered these infants in their cribs he did not. A war in heaven caused star after star to fall and left blood to flow in rivers within the scars left even now. Though Yaldabaoth was clearly restraining himself, in the end something cracked. In the final battle upon the Earth he shattered the ancient thrones created to inherit his emerald will even as he himself bled so profusely from the onslaught the seas are stained red even now. And yet in this act something small tore open in the fabric of the world. In a flash of light Yaldaboath spoke one final phrase as he departed: “Do not make me return.””

Henry felt nothing in this account of history, and Xevis could clearly feel his impatience.

“Fine, I’ll get to the point,” Xevis said, “When Yaldaboath left, the walls of this garden world fell. He seemed to understand that in fighting the ancients he had opened something that could never be closed again.”

This time Xevis did not speak for some twenty seconds or so, and only continued when he saw Henry’s eyes open to the full width of their capability.

“Yes, that something would be this very little purple hole you’ve now twice emerged from. Though it took an eon to form, here at last we are.”

“You, my friend, have given rise to what we now call The Great Scourge. Don’t worry, I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say I want you to help make sure this little phrase can never be forgotten.”

At last Henry spoke, “And what, exactly, would you have me do?”

“Easy,” Xevis began, “put your feeble little mind to rest. All you have to do is join me and I’ll grant you anything you want. Or, you know, I could torture you for eternity as this little ball here knits your flesh together quicker than I can rend it apart.”

Henry began to flex his fingers, but quickly realized the whole spiel he had made in the void changed nothing.

“Surprised?” Xevis asked, tone flat and yet clearly mocking him.

“Just because your projection of a god says one thing doesn’t make it true. He’s not all-powerful and I’m not even sure he’s the one who tore this hole open, just the first to use it. Now, listen here, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even want to close this hole. My powers are likewise tied to it you see, so we have something of a mutually beneficial relationship on our hands here if you can understand such a simple thing.”

Xevis finally stopped speaking as Henry answered him in the only reasonable way.

“Sure. What’s next?”