Then.

  Ensharia- the Paladin- walked away. There was a multitude of things Silenos ought to have done in response. Variations of ending her life made up the bulk of them. She had disrespected him- challenged him- and left his service. She had made it clear her efforts would no longer be directed to aiding his ends. No longer was she a valuable asset, now she was only a non-entity. One who had defied the will of House Shaiagrazni.

  Silenos watched her turn and leave, striding along the field of convulsing, choking orcs and shredded metal. He did not strike her down, did not seize her for some work of transcendent cruelty. He did not do anything at all but watch.

  Turning himself, Silenos headed back for the ruined city of Kaltan. He moved his grotesquery to carry him with a thought, crossing the kilometres of land in under a minute and quickly deposited within the city. He was not exploring it long before finding King Galukar, littered with wounds of varying severity, panting with exhaustion. The man’s eyes were hard, and…Strange. Sympathetic, Silenos realised. It was almost novel to receive such a look from a being so immensely beneath him. He might have derived amusement from the rarity, were it not so immediately concerning.

  “It’s your apprentice.” The king told him, eyes not meeting Silenos’.

  With all that had transpired, with the carnage Silenos had walked through just to reach the inner fort, he would have been lying to claim he was surprised. All the same, the news irked him more than he had expected.

  “Where is his corpse?” He asked.

  King Galukar began to lead the way, wordlessly heading through the ruin that Kaltan had become. Silenos studied their surroundings as he followed.

  Everywhere had at least some trace of the combat, and most places had many. Silenos saw barricades still half-standing where they’d been hastily assembled and more hastily torn down, chokepoints clogged with arrow-riddled corpses, piiles of limbs where defenders had been overwhelmed by their enemy.

  Buildings were more rubble than structure for the most part, though those situated deeper into the city stood with less obvious a ruination. Silenos knew he’d find deep wounds in them, regardless, if he took the time to look.

  He did not of course, the devastation was no concern of his. Barely providing sufficient visual interest to be worth studying as he walked, and affecting only the most irrelevant worms who had taken part in the city’s defence. Still, he eyed it. A considerable level of destruction for a pack of orcs.

  The greatest surprise was stumbling upon a slain grotesquery. Silenos had known, intellectually, that his creations would be lost in the fighting. It still struck at the newly-grown emotional centres of his cerebrum to see it with his own eyes.

  “That one took a lot of killing.” The king noted. “Saw it go down myself.”

  “How did they kill it?” Silenos asked, even as he scrutinised the carcass.

  “Ballistae, a lot of them. At first. Then after a while they started dousing it with flames using their casters, the armour started to blacken…”

  Silenos sighed. It had been an obvious oversight on his part- he’d made the creature’s armour resistant to heat, but not to the point of total immunity. Flames could carbonize and weaken it, simply slowly and without any appreciable thermal transfer to the meat below.

  Now he knew the consequences of such a shortcut, it never paid to underestimate an enemy.

  Well, Silenos was not left to dwell on it for long in any case. They were soon at the hallway. He looked around, noted the dissipating magics of several moderately potent undead, and his apprentice’s corpse not so far ahead.

  Falls had exsanguinated, clearly. His skin was paled by the loss of blood, eyes glassy and staring out into nothing. It was strange to see him in such a state. The boy had been a fool, but not lacking for intelligence. Merely sense. However brash his judgement, there had always been that underpinning cognitive weight behind every thought.

  And now there was nothing.

  “He died well.” King Galukar said. “Heroically.”

  It was a ludicrous concept, good death. Death was death. No singular act could ever compare with the infinite potential a mind and talent like Arion Falls had possessed, within a century he’d have been among House Shaiagrazni’s Named. Within five he’d have been one of their finest.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  And now he was a corpse, body leached of its heat by the air. Inert as a rock.

  “What did he say?” Silenos asked, surprising himself with the question. “Before the end. Did he have any…”

  Last words? It was a laughably pathetic question, but Galukar was already replying before Silenos could recant it.

  “He asked me to give you his apologies.” The king replied. “He wanted me to tell you he was sorry he…Couldn’t be better.”

  “Leave me.” Silenos said, before he’d even realised he was speaking. The king hesitated, but only for an instant, and was soon gone. Silenos found himself alone. Alone with his thoughts, and for the first time since he could remember they were making themselves hostile, bitter company.

  Without even thinking about why he approached his apprentice- his corpse- and leaned down to lift him from the ground. Falls was light. There was no surprise there, bodyweight was a scant obstacle for his enhanced body. Silenos was in his laboratory within minutes, laying Falls down across the table. He began his examination.

  The cold, mechanical realm of diagnosis and appraisal was something his mind was far more accustomed to, and the focus of it swept over Silenos like a cooling rag banishing desert heat. He probed Falls physically, first, finding no trace of arcane malfeasance in his wounds. Then he turned to the purely supernatural examination.

  That was always the harder. Magic was not natural to humans, not innate. Everything he understood about it was learned only through hard, tedious efforts to defy his own nature. But Silenos had done that for so long that it had become his nature. He persevered.

  He had expected to find familiar sights in Arion Falls’ body, a cursory examination merely meant to confirm his suspicions before the process of reanimation could begin. That would have resolved nothing of course- his apprentice would be his apprentice no more. Robbed of the ability to grow, to properly learn, even, and forever stagnant at the power he’d held upon death. But it would have been one ally more if nothing else. A short term gain, partly compensating for the loss of so great a long-term investment.

  Silenos did not even get that, however .

  There was interference about Falls’ very essence- that deep, innermost point of magical and cognitive coalescence that primitives throughout history had called a soul. It was not a carefully made kind.

  Not an attack, of that much Silenos was quickly sure. Had something managed to strike at so sensitive a part of his substance, it would scarcely have been left intact. And no traps awaited him, which might have been left by a cleverer and more subtle enemy.

  Besides, this world did not seem to have many, if any, who had mastered Necromancy to such an extent. The Dark Lord certainly hadn’t, and unless Sphera was merely a poor identifier of talent no others could exceed even him.

  Silenos probed the work more carefully, concern slowly mounting as he noticed its endless peculiarities. It followed no structure he had ever encountered; not House Shaiagrazni’s, and none of the more formalised hedge-casters his people had long since absorbed back in their own world.

  If he had not known any better, he’d have guessed that it was some mere improvisation. An attack, perhaps, that unexpectedly struck through Falls’ defences but…No, he had no such defences against this order of assault. It didn’t make sense.

  The answer came to him all at once, a flash of inspiration that banished ignorance and calm both in a single stroke.

  Silenos could find no trace of external attack, because there was none. Falls had done this to himself.

  With that in mind, he looked at the work through a new lens. Stopped searching for design, and instead focused upon intent. The boy was a greater genius than he had suspected, from what he saw, for only a true prodigy could have wielded Necromantic soul magic even this precisely with only the barest relevant training. Could Silenos have managed that with his experience?

  He wasn’t sure. It seemed increasingly likely that Falls’ talent was greater even than he had believed.

  And increasingly likely that he might be saved.

  There were an endless number of things a Necromancer might do to the soul of their enemy, but Silenos could imagine only one a panicking, dying man might think to try and do to his own. Sure enough, Falls had begun the delicate process of anchoring his spirit to its body and keeping himself from truly detaching.

  It was that moment of transition which truly separated the dead from the living, magically speaking. House Shaiagrazni had yet to learn specifically why, but they knew very much about its significance. It made all the difference in the world.

  And it was useless.

  Silenos saw the fact quickly, but he kept looking. Not willing to allow so valuable a prize as Falls disappear, stubbornly clinging to the notion that he might save him and wasting ever more time in the useless effort. But there was no saving him, and no salvaging what he had done.

  In his genius, Falls had successfully kept his soul from undergoing the transition between veils. In his inexperience, he had done so by binding himself. And it was a clumsy, delicate thing.

  If Silenos tried to forcibly extricate his soul from it, it would shatter. He would be dragged from his corpse and cast out beyond even the typical sea from which dead things were drawn.

  There would be no bringing him back from that. No bringing anything back. That was a realm beyond even the reach of House Shaiagrazni.

  Silenos’ Master had proven as much by her efforts to claim it, and the ever-present traceries of lightning scars that crisscrossed half her body no matter how many times they were Fleshcrafted away even centuries later.

  Entities dwelled there, and Silenos trembled at the very thought of attempting to pilfer what was theirs.

  He did not realise that his fist was coming down atop the counter until impact had already shaken it. Silenos saw the stone crack beneaeth his strength, felt the vibrations run up his arm like the recoil of his cannon. Then he felt the pain. A distant, cerebral thing which nonetheless told him his damage’s extent. Aching bones, burst capillaries, tortured muscle. The actual fist itself was by far the worst for wear. Knuckles caved in and gushing ichor, misshapen and deformed by their harsh strike into the stone.

  Silenos stared at his hand, disbelief almost banishing his thoughts as he took in the sight.

  What in the world was happening to him?