Silenos had been left with much to do whilst his new companions slumbered, all of it pressing. He decided, first, upon lobotomising himself. Only a little bit though, he didn’t want to become normal, Ancestors forbid, simply redistribute the raw processing power of his mind somewhat.

Long ago, he had scraped his brain for the emotional and empathic centres, forcibly reconverting their neurons and synapses into yet more spatial reasoning, mathematical power, working memory. All the mental characteristics helpful for solving the abstract logic problems that assailed a skilled caster so frequently. This change had sat perfectly well for him, for the last half-century, but his situation had changed. He’d walked into an ambush for overlooking what his enemy’s moves might be and how a magi of Walriq’s strength might have been killed. That couldn’t happen again.

Humans, people, socialisation, were no small blindspot to have. If he could not mirror the emotions and experiences of others, then he was denying himself the most important data stream with which to predict them. As much as it stung, Silenos got to work on optimising his intellect.

It was difficult to alter a brain, and limited. Silenos could not increase the number of cells and synapses available to it- magic simply didn’t allow such things. If it did, there would be no non-Fleshcrafting Shaiagrazni, and the entire House would have long since stolen the magic of Gods in their preternatural genius. A greater mind would find out how to make a still greater one, and the process would continue exponentially. The intellectual singularity. An interesting hypothetical, but not yet relevant to a caster of his people’s limitations.

Hours passed before Silenos had finally done enough work on himself to be certain of neither dying, nor violently convulsing the moment he withdrew his hand. Once that inconvenient grunt work was finished, however, he moved onto more intellectual problems.

Of course he’d have preferred to reason through such things with a complete mind, but they would doubtless take days, even weeks. Better to equip himself for survival as early as possible, even when the immediate task was weaponcrafting.

Several issues had made themselves known during the recent altercation, all stemming from the same root cause. Silenos was not a warrior.

He could make war, conduct it, he could command and plan and strategize, even design the instruments of death with which conflict was carried out, but he was not a fighter. No more suited to brawling in the mud than any other General. That had to change, through simple necessity. General or not, men caught in a mud brawl through circumstance would either learn to win, or die. He was far too clever to die.

The cannon had been promising, so Silenos started tweaking it. Reshaping his arm into the closest imitation of its previous shape he was able to manage, then working on his improvements.

Fleshcrafting was a powerful magic, but, like all, it had its limits. Most of which were practical. The most fundamental was that it by nature involved the manipulation of structures too fiendishly complex for even an augmented human mind to fully visualise. Layers of misdirection and approximation were needed to manage it, because there were quite simply too many cells in any sizable body part to be directly altered within a tenable timeframe.

Even by keeping one’s focus onto the scale of organoids, however, sufficiently complex constructs took some time. Silenos had estimated around ten seconds passing before he’d finished his weaponry during his fight with Walriq, such time could be fatal in single combat. The counter to this, of course, was through Templates. Shapes that his magic had taken and retaken so often that they came with but a thought, reflexes filling in for focus.

But he had not produced more than two, had never found the need. A Template was weeks of work, and Silenos always had more research to do, rituals to complete, summonings to manage. For the first time, he found himself forced into a more practical magic.

The newly reconstructed emotional centres of his brain quivered at that, oddly enough. Was it relish? Yes. He relished the challenge. Interesting.

Silenos altered and rearranged the weapon, adding a compressive gas drive to let him reduce the required amount of propellant- and thus allow for more shots. Finding a way to shape the projectiles more aerodynamically and mitigate their required size, further improving ammunition capacity. Ultimately, however, he found himself running into the same issue. A weapon that created and consumed materials would serve to reduce the amounts available in his body. Fleshcrafting did tacitly obey the laws of physics, and he could not create mass out of nowhere. Further, firing that mass away at supersonic speeds made it rather unfeasible to re-absorb afterwards.

His solution seemed obvious. Silenos, for the first time in decades, began to alter the Template of his natural, neutral body. Enlarging it, adding twenty centimetres more to the height and hundreds of kilos to its weight. He enlarged the bundled musculature, layered centimetres of keratin combat-plate over his epidermis, thickened vascular walls. The process did not require much creativity, he’d already made himself a workable inspiration through his combat form. The only deviations from that came as necessary sacrifices for the boon of convenience.

Capillaries laced the lowest layers of his armour plating, supplying them with blood at the cost of room which might’ve been otherwise used for yet more armour. Enzymes and bioreactants ebbed through his circulation, replacing additional oxygen in his veins to allow for maintenance that would sustain the body past its first hours of function. Its muscle fibres were adjusted to allow for more dexterity at the cost of brute strength, vision sharpened for contexts outside of combat, visage kept carefully human to keep from drawing unwanted attention rather than distorted into a thing of natural weapons and killing potential.

Silenos took several minutes to complete the changes in all, and once they were done he took some seconds more moving, testing to ensure his newly altered body was functional. Then he reverted them, slipping back into his original form before restarting the process all over again.

That was the method of creating a Template, be it Fleshcrafting or any other magic. Repetition, reflexive memory. One had to make the acts so constant and familiar that they were like breathing. He kept at it for over an hour more before finding himself interrupted.

“What are you doing?”

Silenos turned. It was the magus who’d spoken, Arion Falls. The man was clearly recently awakened and still groggy from the fatigue of recent events.

“I am improving my transformations for battle.” He replied, turning his focus back to the deed. “You are familiar, at least, with the necessity of practice in magic.”

“Of course.” The magus replied, testily. “I’ve gathered that your people, wherever you’re from, are a bit beyond mine in knowledge, but Magira is one of the continent’s magic capitals, we’re not cavemen.”

Practically, they were, but Silenos saw no point in insisting on the fact.

“That weapon of yours, it’s like a trebuchet or ballista, yes? How does it propel things? Some…Spring mechanism, made from grown muscle, stored at the back?”

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Silenos glanced at him.

“A good guess.” He conceded. “But no. My people have knowledge of incendiary substances which burn far hotter and more rapidly than charcoal or oil, it functions off of those.” Hiding his smile, he waited for the boy to ask for further elaboration.

But he didn’t, only stared, eyes widening in realisation.

“...And releasing heat that quickly causes the gases to lower in density, which exerts pressure if you give them too little room to do so. Oh! That’s how you made breathable air on your flying machine, too, you compressed the atmosphere until it was thick enough to inhale, right?”

“Arion Falls.” Silenos said, outloud, committing the boy’s name to memory and ensuring he never forgot it. “Yes, that is all correct. Wisely noted.”

“I’m a windmage.” The magus grinned, taking a seat closer to Silenos. “I already knew about the principles of compressing air, truth be told, that’s how we make our shields, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there’d be ways of using the process in reverse with just simple heat. Still, a very rapid burn, yes?”

“Yes.”

Silenos said nothing more, focusing instead on his work. Falls, however, appeared more interested in conversation than him.

“How long have you been doing that?”

He took a moment to recall.

“Seventy three minutes.” Silenos replied.

The boy hummed, appreciatively.

“So your transformations are an innate ability, they don’t require mana?”

“Oh, they do.” Silenos corrected. “But this level of change is manageable.”

“Manageable.” The boy echoed. “...How much mana do you have?”

Silenos took a moment to study him with his arcane vision.

“Just under ten times the amount you do.”

“Impossible.” The boy replied, instantly. “Nobody has that much, there hasn’t been a magus in five hundred years who even equaled my reserves before the age of fifty.”

“I estimate I had equaled them at fourteen, or so.” Silenos shrugged. A pause followed, and he turned to see a mix of scepticism and irritation on the boy’s face. He decided to give further weight to his claim.

“You saw me summon half a dozen limbs of flesh, each weighing as much as ten of you, and two of the form I’ve been experimenting with now even at its heaviest.”

Falls swallowed.

“So why don’t you do that all the time?” He challenged. “If it’s nothing to you, as it would be with those reserves.”

“Because there isn’t always the necessary matter. Animal matter is typically made of several elements, the most common of which, mass-specifically, is oxygen, the rest of which are not often readily available. Usually, if I cannot absorb the biomass of other life through touch or near-proximity, I am limited to whatever mass my body can supply, perhaps with a few dozen extra kilograms depending on local air composition.”

The magus’ face fell at that, eyes dropping to his feet.

“And here I was looking forward to surpassing Walriq.” He breathed, then a tremble took him. Racking his body like a blizzard-born shiver. “Do you have a master?” He asked. “You can’t be much older than me, or…” He frowned. “No, wait, you said you were as strong as me at fourteen, so…You’re older than you look, or you have a way of increasing your mana?”

As it happened, both guesses were true.

“The former.” Silenos said, deciding to hide his plans of gaining magic centuries in advance of his age. “I am one hundred and fifty years old, and, to answer your first question, I do not have a master anymore. I ended my apprenticeship in House Shaiagrazni many decades ago.”

“Are you the strongest of them?”

“I am not, though my abilities are not the norm either. I would estimate your master would have been at least roughly close to the average Named of my Household.”

Falls was silent for a while, contemplative.

“Have you ever taken on an apprentice?”

Silenos felt a stab of irritation at the question.

“I have.” He replied, coolly. “And you are asking if I would instruct you?”

Falls narrowed his eyes, and Silenos turned back to his work.

“No.” The young magus replied. “I’ve done all my learning already.”

Silenos and his newly-growing party came to the nation of Arbite merely two weeks after their forced departure from Magira. Their travel was uneventful, and hastened by the use of magic to aid in transportation. The long hours gave ample opportunity for much progress to be made in personal projects, and allowed Falls to properly integrate himself into the group.

Which was not to say there was any lack of tension between the magus and Paladin. Silenos had been watching the two, careful to keep the friction already between them from growing. If nothing else it had proven manageable thus far.

“Arbite is an ally of Elkatin.” Ensharia declared, as they approached the city. “With luck that will mean we can expect a warmer welcome.”

He examined the supposed ally and found himself tasked with not curling a lip at the sight.

The capital city of Arbite, Abaritan, was unlike Magira, and not quite akin to Elkatin either. Far broader and more expansive than the former, far more jagged and angular than either. Its perimeter was lined by a towering wall of stone, curiously edged and cornered in such a way as to far more closely resemble the modern star-fortresses of Silenos’ own world than the circular structures more common to people of this one’s technology.

Diabase was nowhere to be seen in the construction, and as they drew closer he made out the tell-tale sight of mortar binding rock together in numerous, irregular sizes and shapes. Clearly it had not been fashioned with magic, or else the stone would have been fused into its structure with far more homogeny and precision.

A gate sat midway into it, covered by a portcullis that had been raised out of its sockets. The thing was mangled, iron twisted and warped by some great force in its past, fixtures broken apart. There was an abundance of guards around the exposed opening left while a new one was lowered into place, and their suspicion was scarcely thinned even after Ensharia revealed their letter of introduction and secured passage into the city.

Past the wall, things were hardly better. Silenos saw cobbled streets pockmarked with cracks and craters, small buildings nursing collapsed walls or fragmented roofs. Scared, dirty people scurried around, some carrying water or food, others blankets. Some carrying nothing but fear. All seemed far from pleased by the sight of his group, and him especially.

Subtlety had been one of the priorities of his new body, and so it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as his towering combat form, but Silenos had raised his height to almost exactly two metres. Even if much of the keratin armour plating was hidden by clothing, and the rest difficult to make out as anything much more than a disfigurement, the lean musculature he’d built to support his heightened mass would have been a sight.

“It’s a shithole.” Falls frowned, lip curling with disgust much like Silenos’. “How do you even fuck a city up this much?”

Of course Silenos had yet to find a new world city that was half the equal of House Shaiagrazni’s, but there was a clear downgrade from Magira to Abaritan even if one disregarded the clear battle damage. Magic, it seemed, was as useful a construction tool in any world. Those few buildings that had more than one story in this city almost invariably remained limited to two, and the rare exceptions were far less proud and unweathered as would have been normal in the magus capital.

But it was the wounded and sick that truly caught his attention. Grimy, desiccated faces set with shrivelled, hopeless eyes. They seemed of every age, though few were elderly, and all cowered in the streets.

“There are no healing magics in this world?”

Ensharia’s face darkened at Silenos’ question.

“There are.” She growled. “And enough for all of these people, I’d guess, but healers charge money. I’ll need to come back here later and see if I can help.”

“A foolish system.” He noted. “When one allows a random child to perish or go without education, there is the risk of denying the full potential of a truly great individual.”

The Paladin’s agreement was not as fierce as he might have thought, no doubt she found it blunted by Silenos’ motive in his suggestion of healthcare, but she nodded all the same.

“And it would be all the easier if those magi in Magira would offer their aid, with less injured to begin with if they’d helped the world’s cities defend themselves.”

“Well, we have more important things to do.” Falls cut in, clearly needled by the target their criticism had found. “The studies of a magus are manly things, you see, and require a degree of stoicism. Spine, even. We can’t lose focus in progressing the sciences just because we hear a crying baby, that’s what women are for.”

“And why is it that House Shaiagrazni are so much more advanced when they allow women into their ranks with no conditions, then?” Ensharia shot back. “Are the women of Silenos’ land just different than ours?”

Falls smirked.

“Perhaps they’d have progressed even more if they put their cock-sucking machines to more efficient use and gave their proper researchers some incentive.”

The two began their bickering quickly and continued it intensely, rather reminding Silenos of the exothermic propulsion of his new cannon as they went back and forth. For the first minute he idly listened, finding his newly reconfigured mind oddly susceptible to the previously alien sensation of boredom, and eagerly seeking the break to his journey’s monotony. Then he realised how much less interesting the arguments were to the many sights around him, such as dirt, cobbled roads, a cloudless sky or the empty space of air.