Watching Silenos Shaiagrazni work was an exercise in insignificance. Sphera had considered herself a clever, educated, knowledgeable woman. She’d worked hard to become so. Like most who excelled, she had been born with a natural gift for magic and natural studies. Like all who excelled without peers, she had hammered that fluke of nature until it was tempered well beyond the limits of mere talent. Within her head lay a thousand secrets and a hundred thousand facts, each one contributing to an ever growing web of genius and enlightenment.

At least, she had considered it genius and enlightenment. That was before the towering, lithe man she’d made her new Master had shown her otherwise. Had revealed to her that what she’d called genius was mindless idiocy, that what she’d called enlightenment was the half-known truths of a simple child stumbling onto an apprentice’s book.

He had an orc, or rather an orc’s corpse, laid down across the table before him. He eyed it as if it were a book to be read, scrutinising it with inhuman eyes and probing it with fingers made into long, needle-thin instruments by his own magic. Sphera watched, thoughtful, silent, and just a hair irritated to be so far behind his cognition as to not even muster any meaningful deductions.

“You will learn much faster if you ask me about my work.” Her Master noted, speaking without looking up. Sphera felt the blood pool in her face. Somehow it had felt inappropriate to do such a thing, as if she might defile the sanctity of this testament to intelligence simply by adding her voice to the room.

“What are you examining in that body?” She asked immediately. The question had been bubbling for a while, and was practically launched from her lips the moment her Master gave it permission.

“Microorganisms.” He explained.

The man could not have gauged Sphera’s confusion from her face, because he did not look at her. Nonetheless he must have sensed the need for elaboration after a moment.

“You are familiar with insects, I take it.”

“I’m not a fool.” Sphera replied, carefully keeping her frustration from showing.

“Good. Then picture things smaller, so small, in fact, that they are to insects as insects are to you. Now imagine smaller things still, that are dwarfed by these new beings as much as these beings are by an elephant.”

She tried her best, but it was no small thing to be asked. Sphera wasn’t sure scales even functioned at such minute levels. How could life exist as small as that? How could anything?

“Are you picturing it?” He prodded, and she nodded, though was still not sure whether it was the truth.

“I think I am.” Sphera whispered. “What you just described, they’re microorganisms?”

“They are. Micro meaning one millionth, in this case one millionth of a metre. A metre, before you ask, is approximately thirty nine inches.”

She tried to envision that, and promptly failed. The human brain, it seemed, was not designed with millions in mind.

“And organisms? What does that mean?”

“It simply means an individual life form, which makes a microorganism…?”

He was testing her, she realised, and Sphera was eager not to fail so early into her education. She would have been eager enough not to fail so simple a test as that in any case.

“An…An organism that measures smaller than one millionth of a metre?”

“Yes.” He nodded, sounding slightly satisfied, if not pleased. “One millionth of a metre is called a micrometre, for future reference. You must learn proper units of measurement if you are to study under me.”

Sphera hadn’t wheedled her way into his apprentice to learn proper units of measurement, but she knew enough to keep her displeasure hidden as he continued his work.

“So what is it about microorganisms that you find cause to study?” She frowned. “It seems hard to believe such small things could matter much for such large creatures.”

He did not look pleased at this question, rather annoyed. As if the very asking of it were failing some subtle standard he’d laid out. Silenos Shaiagrazni nonetheless kept his voice level.

“Your body is made of structures as small, and smaller, than microorganisms, at its most fundamental level. The way these are arranged and built is what determines the difference between bone, muscle or blood. There is much to be changed by affecting matter on the micro-scale. In more direct, immediate terms, I am looking into which microorganisms live within orcish anatomy.”

“To try and remake them?” She asked, hesitantly.

“No, such a thing would be an uneconomic use of my time and power against an army of tens of thousands. I mean to see if any of the microorganisms living within their flesh are vital for life, responsible for sustaining it, or managing some bodily function they cannot do without.”

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Sphera thought about that, frowning.

“Why?”

“Because any weakness, or fault in their design, is a possible avenue of attack.” Shaiagrazni replied.

It was a lot to swallow at once, but Sphera did her best. She supposed if she really could learn this most powerful of magics, however far into the future, it would not hurt to gain some intellectual grasp of its mechanics first.

“Can you not create your own species of servitors?” She asked, finally. “Something that reproduces itself, rather than requiring your magic? Surely that would become a mighty army within years even without you altering anything, especially if it bred like rats or rabbits.”

He actually looked up at that, eying her, looking rather pleased.

“That is an intelligent question.” The caster replied. “And no, I cannot. Complex creatures, ones capable of reproduction, are made in accordance with…The best way to describe it would be design details, I suppose. We call it D.N.A, standing for deoxyribonucleic acid, a pattern of sub-microscale matter contained within the tiniest components of your body and ordering how they replicate and function. For sexual reproduction, you require it to be further adaptable through things called gametes which are designed to combine patterns with those of external sources, thus creating an offspring based on the material of both parents. Such matters are…Beyond me. For now. My Master and one other are capable of it in all of House Shaiagrazni, and I have not yet developed the raw skill and power required to mimic her.”

Sphera reckoned she didn’t understand even a single word of that, up until being told that her new Master couldn’t do it. A pity, she decided. There was something rather appealing about creating life, doing as God did…Doing better, even. She’d seen the sort of creatures Shaiagrazni could make, there was no comparing them with the petty efforts of nature.

“Do microorganisms attack each other?” She asked, suddenly. Another smile.

“They do, in a way.” Shaiagrazni replied. “Diseases are caused by them, or rather, they are them. A cold, a cough, a deadly plague. All of them are one kind of microbe or another. They enter the body and multiply within it, their simplicity letting them do so without the need for complex reproductive patterns, and are quickly numerous to being negatively affecting the activity of the body’s smallest components- its cells. Some, called viruses, are even more efficient, small enough to actually sink inside the cells and affect them from within.”

Sphera glanced down at her hands, feeling suddenly, terribly sick. It was a pointless effort, trying to see any microorganisms that might be clinging to the skin, but she found herself doing it nonetheless. Shaiagrazni evidently took note.

“You needn’t bother, we are all of us covered with microorganisms at all times, more or less whatever we do. Most are harmless however.”

That didn’t make her feel better about the damned infestation, not in the slightest. It was simply too big a thing to be told all at once, like having it revealed that the world was actually hollow under her feet, and falling through a crack may leave her falling forever.

“How…How did you learn such things?” Sphera whispered, staring at the man with new eyes, now. She had taken him for a genius, for a being with knowledge beyond her world. She had underestimated things to a grotesque extreme.

A rush of something ran down Sphera, starting in her chest, and blooming as it shot straight to that spot between her legs. She’d not felt such a feeling since the Dark Lord first demonstrated his might to her, and it hadn’t been mingled with such a delightful, dangerous touch of fear, then. She found her lips dry, voice uncertain, as she spoke to her Master.

What she said, however, was swallowed by the sound of an opening door, and Collin Baird stormed in. Sphera’s first thought was to punch the stupid bastard for ruining the atmosphere so thoroughly, her second was to study him.

Kaltans were a hard people, harder than most. Generations spent choking in mills and workhouses, then decades more being sharpened by one of the finest military minds alive, had left them about as difficult to shake as boulders. Which meant that it was more than a shade concerning to see their new Governor, and General, soaked so thoroughly with his own sweat.

“Venka.” The boy gasped, clearly having sprinted the entire way to the workplace. “Venka is here, to parlay. What-”

“Take care of it yourself.” Master Silenos snapped, without looking up. “I am busy.”

Baird stood there, blinking and dazed as if the retort had been a blow between the eyes. Sphera let her amusement show with a grin, and he recovered quickly.

“But this might determine the fate of the city,” The Governor pressed, “We need-”

“It is your city.” Shaiagrazni interrupted, irritably, “And I would entrust it to no other, now go and take care of the matter yourself. My incredible mind is required for the task it is currently applied to.”

If Collin Baird considered it comforting to hear that such an incredible mind was being worked, he did not show the fact. Merely scowled.

“That’s it then?” He snapped. “You spend all this time working on defences, and now the time’s come to actually negotiate with the fucker they’re made for, you-”

“I am making defences at this very moment.” Shaiagrazni interrupted. “Now leave, I have given you more leeway than I would most other men, out of respect for your father and talents, but my patience is finite and rather lacking compared to what you are doubtless accustomed to. I will snap soon, and painfully. Begone.”

Baird paused, stared. He worked his mouth in silent, considering discontent. Then nodded sharply, glared jaggedly, and made his way out through the door he’d come in through. Shaiagrazni spoke again only when he was almost past it.

“Two days.” He called. “That is my current estimate, give me two days, and I shall give you a victory.”

Baird hesitated, and Sphera half expected to see the boy crumple under the demand. Instead he hardened, like molten brass setting into a cast.

“Two fucking days.” He replied, voice like a starving dog’s. “If I can resist taking that bastard’s eyes out for that long.” He was gone a moment later.

Sphera found herself turning back to her Master, and only one question had any true weight in her mind.

“Do you really think you can turn the tables in two days?” She asked.

He did not look certain.

“I can, but there is no guarantee. It is, however, the only hope any of us have.”

Sphera nodded at that, thoughtful. One city, one outer wall, and a few thousand normal humans against the greatest army assembled on the continent in over a century. Any other time, she’d have fled from such odds like they were death itself.

But she’d seen too much, glimpsed too much more, to live satisfied with not wringing all the secrets her Master had. She realised then why he’d been so encouraging of her questions.

What better than promised knowledge, to ensure a caster’s loyalty?