Perhaps predictably, the door to the throne room already had Ensharia and Falls hovering around it, eying the slab of iron as if uncertain how to get past. Their eyes lit up as they turned and recognised the sword in Silenos’ hands.
“You got him!” Falls noted, pointlessly.
“Step aside, both of you.” Silenos instructed. Both hurried to do so.
Silenos felt a new, alien feeling as he shaped the last few cubic centimetres of material needed to turn the insides of his arm into his newly designed cannon. He realised the anomaly came from within. He’d not experimented with the full destructive power of his weapon, not with his emotions restored to some approximation of human normalcy, and the thought of seeing its limits was a captivating one.
Steadying his aim and bracing his body, he fired.
Iron was not such a feeble material, even House Shaiagrazni found use in it to armour their battleships and other such constructions. But it was weaker than steel, and certainly weaker than any material potent enough to be equipped by a real Named entering into battle. The door surrendered quickly.
Scraps of mangled metal and cracked stone fell from the structure, and Silenos stepped over it all without a word as he headed into the room. He found Galukar trembling, as might have been expected, and staring upon him with wide eyes. Silenos greeted him by dropping the sword down just in front of the man, watching as its great weight deformed the King’s mattress. Recognition sparked in Galukar’s eyes.
“Your sword.” Silenos explained, just in case the savage didn’t understand what was happening. “Grab it, reclaim your power, then repay your debt by helping us in our quest.”
The King shook his head, staring at Silenos as if he were some ferocious creature lurking in the shadows.
“No.” He croaked.
Silenos felt his eye twitch with fury, then seized the sword. It was not so heavy as to make him struggle with it, though its length left it unwieldy. He nonetheless managed to stab it into the stone floor.
“Take it.” He insisted.
“I can’t.” Galukar replied, not meeting Silenos’ eye, nor any other’s. “I’ve lost the will.”#
“The will.” Silenos echoed, feeling his disgust congeal. “The will!?”
How he wished to kill this man, this pitiable, writhing insect. Ensharia spoke up before he could think of a suitable torment.
“Why not, my King?” She asked.
Galukar’s eyes remained low.
“Answer now or I shall activate every pain receptor in your body and remove your ability to adjust.” Silenos informed him. The King hardly even seemed moved by his words, taking his time in replying even under threat of eternal torment. He raised his withered hands, staring at splayed fingers as if they were attached to something more foreign than his own body.
“How could I?” Galukar asked, helplessly. “I’ve betrayed everything that sword stood for. Strength, courage, heroism. I’m not a warrior anymore, you’re best finding someone else to try and win it.”
Silenos felt tendrils of icy disgust run through his mind as he gazed upon the pitiable creature before him, then turned for the door and marched out.
He passed the slain humans on his way out, noting their corpses strewn about the hallway just where he’d left them. Some guards turned to the sight of him, seemingly on the verge of questioning the scene, then simply falling silent and scattering instead. Silenos considered resurrecting the corpses. It would be no great undertaking, doable with a single flick of his mind, but…Perhaps inconvenient.
Rumours of his Necromancy had travelled far enough from Elkatin to Magira, and caused plenty of issues. There was no point in spawning more, not in exchange for a mere dozen undead as weak as what could be made from such bodies. He moved past.
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Silenos was long gone by the time Ensharia had finished trying, and failing, to comfort Galukar. She was almost pleased by the fact. Talking with the Saviour was taxing, particularly when his apathy was spiking. Bad enough she had to follow him around keeping his iciness from starting international incidents, bad enough he’d no doubt realised she would and thus began to let more of his civil veneer fall away, she couldn’t deal with him when her mood was already foul.
“Well, this has been a nice waste of fucking time.” Arion Falls sighed, not even trying to hide his irritation, nor his blaming gaze as it shot for Ensharia. For once, she met it in kind.
“You do not get to complain about wasted anything.” She snapped. “For years you were one of the most influential men in Magira, and you didn’t lift a finger in motivating it to aid nations like Arbite. This is your fault more than it is Galukar’s.”
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He rolled his eyes, and Ensharia shut hers. Taking a moment to pray, letting God’s wisdom fill her as she reminded herself of decade-old teachings and long-finished meditations upon scriptural ethics. Smashing a man’s face in was generally not in line with those ethics, at least not when it wasn’t in the name of self defence.
“You’re a pig.” She told Falls, then started down the hall. Their walk was cold and silent, and that was just fine with her. Ensharia was beginning to fill up on cruelty and coldness, beginning to fill up on this entire endeavour. There were surely Paladins better suited to it than her, perhaps she could find one- or several- to replace her.
Silenos would have headed straight for a carriage, Ensharia knew, and so she went the same way. Falls trudged along beside her, as disinterested as ever, and her temper slowly unravelled while they moved. Her grim mood and broiling thoughts were interrupted only when a figure caught her eyes moving ahead.
It was a man, she saw, and a vaguely familiar one. He was tall, wiry, his body clothed in a long coat that seemed almost similar to the robes of a magus, his mouth moustached with needle-thin hairs kept carefully brushed and in place. Sharp eyes peered back at her from his sockets, and the intense focus of them told Ensharia in an instant that the man was here for her. He started forwards.
“Wait, I know you!” Falls gasped, Ensharia glanced over to see him shifting where he stood, body falling into a defensive posture as his hands raised. “Kraika, the Toxicologist.”
Her blood ran cold. That had been the second name on their list, the one they’d skipped over for fear of the Dark Lord’s spies beating them to it just as he had Walriq. And Ensharia could see only one reason its owner might be here in Arbite and heading her way.
The Toxicologist broke out into a run, hands raising, and Ensharia felt her battered armour creak as she moved with combative speed to respond.
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It was not hard to procure a carriage, though Silenos still found his irritation mounting as he did. In the lands of House Shaiagrazni a Named of his power would simply travel to and from a city as he saw fit, flying under his own power, or Fleshcrafting a mount more enduring and swift than anything evolution could produce. Such things would be reviled as an act of evil, here, and the more he did it the farther rumours of his doing so would follow.
Like the days before House Shaiagrazni’s founders carved out their territory, he was in a world ruled by ignorance and stupidity. Silenos suddenly felt tired at the fact, his new emotional core registering the fact more deeply than purely cerebral logic ever could.
Perhaps it was that that dulled his senses, slowed his reactions. Let precious milliseconds slip by before the sudden attack caught his notice.
Silenos whirled just in time to see the undead descending upon him, catching the scent of its putrefying magic long moments before impact. He lunged to one side and heard the stone crack where he’d been standing, rolling to his feet, then jumping again as another pricked his arcane senses in the attempt to strike him from behind while he focused upon the first.
He jumped, extending focus to the internal mechanisms of his arms and feeling no slight amount of satisfaction at how quick the process of shaping one into its cannon form was. Silenos had the weapon ready just as he reached the peak of his altitude, and fired it an instant later.
No projectile came free, rather he allowed the explosive propellant to launch nothing but boiling gases and overpressure through the barrel. Silenos felt the familiar force throw him back, and he fired a dozen more times to propel himself before twisting. His memory had served well, letting his feet come down first as his body reached the nearest building, and he turned again to sight the enemies.
Obviously he’d surprised them, for they were reorganising, and that alone betrayed something of their construction. These undead were capable of independent thought to some limited degree, else they’d all have been coordinated instantly by whichever singular intellect was controlling them. It was testament to a semi-formidable hand in crafting the things.
Silenos’ observations were cut short as the enemy finally galvanised, then flooded after him.
He’d noted the two that attacked him clear enough, recognising the magic and movements of mid-level undead. Around them there now swarmed a horde of lower class creatures, though still ones of considerable craftsmanship.
The act of reanimating an undead was one of imbuing an object with power, just like any other magic. Most stopped at the first step, blindly flooding an empty vessel with the means to begin moving once more, letting energy and force flow down accustomed channels and mindlessly re-start mechanisms that had once been active. Such methods did not create a servitor worth using, by Shaiagrazni standards.
Now, though, Silenos recognised the sight of magic flowing in excess. Carefully woven and directed, ensuring that every muscle fibre was reinforced in both contractive power and, perhaps more importantly, physical resistance. The amounts of energy at play were not considerable, but the fact that they deviated from the norm meant a lot for his approach.
Ordinary undead would break themselves upon him, these ones, at the very least, surpassed the basic threshold required to wound him.
The mid-level undead were upon him first, of course, reaching the base of the building and scaling it instantly. Behind them others drew out crossbows, clearly drawn with a force not possible to ordinary humans. Made in preparation of their wielders’ advanced strength, then. Well prepared. The volley of bolts was no great concern, Silenos simply covered the gaps in his armour and allowed them to harmlessly bounce from the keratin-geothyte plates. Below, the greater enemies were approaching the halfway point of their five-metre climb, which gave him just a moment to attack.
He used it well, aiming his cannon, conjuring the dense mass of its projectile, readying it. Then gasping as something struck him from behind.
Of course, he had jumped before, flown even, during the siege of Elkatin. No ambush would be readied for him with careful preparation that did not account for Silenos’ battlefield mobility. He turned and caught a glimpse of his attacker, even as the agony at his back intensified. It was a torture he knew well, remembered, even from half a century in the past, like the clawing nails of a nemesis.
Shadestuff, he had been struck with shadestuff. It was not so potent as his own, but easily enough to tax the density and tensile resilience of his armour. Silenos landed hard, body bouncing, rolling, barely rising to its feet before the enemy were converging from all sides.
Atop the roof, he caught a glimpse of the one who had cast him down. She grinned, black skin catching the light, eyes glowing with the unquestioning egotism of one who had no shortage of power.
For the first time since gaining his Name, Silenos Shaiagrazni felt the numbing, animal touch of fear