She had understated things, Silenos found. Falls was dying, and yet the particulars of his demise were grizzly even measured against the deaths Silenos himself had seen over the years.

He was no stranger to the breaking down of human tissues, most of his knowledge had, after all, come from human experimentation. It was uncommon for a Shaiagrazni Fleshcrafter not to hone their skills by testing enhancements or toxins upon the bodies of prisoners before risking their own wellbeing. Still, the fate befalling his companion now was transcendentally gruesome.

Ribs were broken all down the left of his side, fractures severe enough that shards of bone made themselves visible where they protruded through the meat. There was little bleeding visible on the outside, but Silenos had long since mastered enough of human anatomy to know that the man’s ichor would be spilling and clogging tissues beneath his skin. And that was the least of his concerns.

The boy’s veins were turning black as whatever esoteric toxins he’d been stupid enough to let inside him did their work, already emulsified throughout his blood and acting quickly to assassinate cells wherever it was carried. There was no time to stop the spread, blood could circulate a human body in only one minute and had doubtless carried the venom to every inch of Falls’ already. Silenos had to counteract the substance itself, or his companion would die.

“I…” Silenos glanced up, surprised to see Falls’ lips moving slightly, his eyes staring unfocused out into nothing, his throat convulsing with the effort of turning breath into words. “I…Don’t…Want to die…”

A tear rolled down the boy’s cheek, fearful, disbelieving. Silenos was reminded by that single milli-scale volume of bodily fluid how young the magus was, how raw the world must have felt to him. Had he ever been inexperienced enough for fear of death to hit him as such a primal force? Silenos could hardly remember.

“You won’t.” Ensharia whispered, reaching out to take the magus’ hand without a moment’s hesitation. Silenos appreciated that, it distracted the writhing slab of meat attached to it from moving around in response to his ministrations, and made what would come next easier.

The first thing Silenos did was fray the delicate nerves responsible for carrying sensations of pain through Falls’ body. Those would be his biggest obstacle, and he’d not get another chance to remove them than the momentary distraction Ensharia was providing. His subject spasmed in responsive agony to the pain of having so much destroyed so quickly, but that pain was the last he would feel.

Instantly Silenos felt an unexpected resistance, and it took his arcane sight to realise why. The toxins in Falls’ body defied identification, but more than that they defied even the blind, organic deconstruction that all Fleshcrafters could apply to living tissue even ignorant of its nature.

There was a potent magic interwoven within it, intensifying its effects and keeping them from being opposed by external powers. Silenos had seen such things before, usually by Necromancers, sometimes by other Fleshcrafters. He’d yet to encounter it in the new world.

A smile threatened to form across his face. He did so like a challenge, on occasion.

Silenos’ mind came for the toxins as a horde of locusts, eager and hungry for the crops growing from Falls’ lifeforce. They transfigured before he could devour them, shifting to camouflaged lizards awaiting his probing power to draw it in. He became a bird, razored eyesight picking the enemy out and talons skewering them like kebabs, and then his prey became a den of gargantuan arachnids, snatching his diving hunters in thumb-thick limbs and digesting them to death amid a hail of squawking and disconnected feathers.

Magic was not a thing of pure rationality, however much knowledge could help its application in the real world. Silenos had not practised the art of such wholly arcane wrestling in an age, and he felt rusty synapses fire off with a new vigour as he sharpened himself even while doing so.

The birds became snakes, crushing the arachnids, which turned likewise into mammals of skin so loose and constitution so hardy that venomous fangs yielded no threat at all. His snakes were felines, then, gnashing apart throats, and then they were met by still greater ones. Tigers, muscled and terrible, then, as if to anticipate him, captive-bred ligers of hybrid strength and gigantism.

But Silenos’ enemy had betrayed himself in such an escalation, for though this toxin of his was clever, it was as ignorant as all other savages of the new world. There were deadlier things than any beast.

Silenos’ will became a virus, sub-microbial and voracious as it infested the toxin’s metaphysical blood and consumed cells from within. He detected a pause as the foreign magic attempted to adjust, too simple to realise that it simply lacked the will and cognition to comprehend a war on such scales as was being conceptualised. Silenos took the chance to bypass it whilst it still wrestled with his knowledge, splitting his focus to extend their war onto a physical, purely biological front.

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In that regard, it was still remarkable. The venom was not a killing thing, not wholly, which was doubtless the only reason Falls’ merely human immune system had withstood it for so long. As far as Silenos could tell it was a neurally-targeted construction made to maximise pain and suffering, stepping past mere physical agony, though there was no small portion of that involved, to induce a sort of delusional depression in whoever it affected. He actually took notes as he worked to denature the crudely-worked proteins making up its structure, finding himself rather admiring the cruelty involved in its manufacture.

Cruelty was not a substitute for skill, but there was plenty of that too. Just not enough to stave off the intellect of a man trained by House Shaiagrazni.

Once Silenos was certain he’d extricated every scrap of the toxin from Falls, he turned his focus to the damage left in its wake. There had been surprisingly little, another testament to the intent of its creator that he be left to suffer an extended death rather than perish quickly, but Silenos still hastened to fix what little remained. He didn’t leave it at that, however. There was an opportunity there.

Humans, as a general rule, disliked having their bodies changed against their will, and Falls had seemed similarly reluctant as most of the new world’s residents to have his form be made more efficient by Silenos’ hand. Which meant that anything done would have to be subtle.

He focused on genetic alterations rather than physical ones, changing the fundamental blueprints of Falls’ body to ensure that it would simply recreate itself over time. Organically-woven ceramics to replace bone minerals with substances an order of magnitude stronger, lengthened myelin sheaths along nervous tissues, muscular fibres altered into twisted, compressive shapes with a far greater contractile distance. None of it would be immediately apparent, but over time Falls’ cells would be replaced and his body reworked by all the processes that allowed for exercise or excess to produce changes of their own. Silenos added a finishing touch of select proteins added into the fibres of skin and soft tissue.

Given time, his companion would be more durable than any normal human. He could only hope that made him last a shade longer the next time he was stupid enough to fight something in such excess of his own power.

“It’s done.” Silenos sighed, leaning back and finding himself overcome by a sudden…Weariness? No, he’d not been focusing for so long, and hardly bored in doing so. Perhaps it was simple irritation. Whatever the emotion, it left him strangely hollowed.

The sensation was curiously mitigated by Ensharia’s eyes, practically inflating as she stared at him.

“He’ll live?” She asked, hope brimming from her as might sulphurous fumes from the pit of a volcano.

“He’ll live.” He confirmed. “And won’t be so long in recovering, either, though there may be some long-term effects. I had to take certain measures to heighten his resistance against the toxin, or else risk him succumbing to it.”

A blatant lie, but not one Silenos imagined Ensharia would ever possess the arcane or biological knowledge to recognise.

She nodded, seeming to swallow it easily enough, then gently scooped Falls into her arms.

“I should take him to…Rest, he needs rest, yes?”

“Yes.” Silenos confirmed. “Go and find one of the guestrooms, I suppose, if someone challenges you on placing him there, direct them to me.”

He’d expended a bit of biomass in the fighting, and already made use of forbidden magics obviously enough. Silenos might as well take the opportunity to replenish himself before leaving the castle if it was there.

Once Ensharia was gone, however, he found himself called on. The sheer novelty of such things had worn off rather quickly after his entrance into the new world, monarchs were prone to the habit after all, but Silenos found himself no less curious at the latest instance. It was, after all, a summons from the famous King Galukar.

The man received him in his throne room, and Silenos had to admit he cut an impressive figure. Great statues adorned the far walls of the rooms, though did not succeed in fully dwarfing their owner as he seated himself upon a great chair of hewn stone. Beside him was the Godblade, which Silenos now took the chance to properly study with his arcane sight.

As expected, its magic was a force. Not beyond his, not quite, but considerable nonetheless. He knew of perhaps three Shaiagrazni casters with the skill and power required to make such an artefact, and possibly only one whose work would have retained that much potency for millennia. The King seemed a match for it, and upon closer inspection Silenos saw that, despite his not touching the weapon, no small fraction of its magic was flowing through him, hardening and strengthening his body like piezoelectrics stiffening in answer to a current.

“Caster.” The King’s booming voice rang out, bouncing from the far walls like cannon fire. Silenos nodded, but did not bow. He held his silence, waiting to hear what the King had to say.

Galukar stood up before speaking, and began to talk only as he started down the steps leading up to his throne, closing in on Silenos one loping stride after another. Just as he came to within arms’ reach, he struck.

Silenos had done fine work on repairing his body after the battle ended, restoring the integrity of its composite exoskeleton. It was for this reason that he felt an indescribable shock run through him at the feeling of those same, thick plates cracking apart beneath the King’s knuckles. His feet were snatched from the ground, and the wind ran in his ears faster than if he’d rode a steam locomotive downhill at full throttle.

His body found a stone pillar to impede its flight, and for one moment he actually thought the bone-chilling crack that ran out came from him rather than the inferior architecture he’d impacted.

The floor caught him, and Silenos groaned while his head spun and chunks of rock rained down upon him from the torso-sized dent left in the surface above. The King was standing over him before he could rise.

“You resurrected my men.” He spat. “Using your foul magics. Your Necromancy. The Paladin has spoken well of you, and you continue to draw breath on her good word alone, but let me be clear right now when I say that if I ever catch you doing such a thing to my subjects again, I will tear the head from that scrawny neck and crush it like an egg between my hands.”

The head in question was alight with thought, conclusions being drawn before King Galukar had even finished speaking, and Silenos considered each one as carefully as he’d spent his decades learning to.