There came a time when a man had to accept his fate, and Venka was not such a fool as to deny that of all things. Not when it was his own being stared down.
He had assembled his armies, trained them well and wielded them like razored scalpels against Collin Baird’s idiot defences. Aside from a single trick, which he had repaid tenfold, his stratagem could not have been more perfect, his successes could not have been more definitive. By all measures, he was a credit to battle and a great man among mere sheep.
But he could not have won a battle against the sun. He could not have held ground against a falling sky, or splitting earth. Could not have out-planned a shower of meteors or a flood. Some things were just nature, or God.
And some other things were neither natural nor divine, but something altogether more terrible and potent. It was one of those rare, wicked few that he gazed upon now. It made him shiver.
Whatever foul magic had made it, Venka saw nothing right in the workings. It was elegant, ingenious, but twisted and abhorrent. Like a sculpture made of human viscera. The lumbering thing moved, and as it did great plates of either chitin or bone shifted and rattled along it, all interlocking with a perfection in their overlap which left precious little area exposed, all thick and dense enough that he had no doubt they’d have staved off blows able to skewer an armoured Knight.
Below there was a dark flesh, bundled and tight like ropes about a sailing ship. They moved its great weight as if it were no mass at all, leaving the towering creature to slither, almost to glide, like some serpent. It was before him shortly, coiling, drawing back. The head came down just enough for Venka to meet the eyes of its rider.
It was not a man he had ever seen before, and he suspected he would never see him again. Never see much again. There was no pity to be found in that gaze, only molten hatred and fury.
Like gazing into the face of the Dark Lord. He realised, with a start that left his guts writhing.
“You are general Venka?” The man asked, with a tone of one who did not do much asking. For a moment Venka actually considered lying, but he steeled himself. How would he even be believed? He was the only human in his army, and his face and appearance had been well seen during the parley. There would be no fleeing from this. Better to face his fate like a man than scramble back like a rat.
“I am.” He replied, forcing his tone to remain hard and edged. “And you are?”
Venka saw the motion, but it was a near thing. The creature upon which his enemy sat sprang into movement so quickly and instantly that it had almost reached him by the time Venka noticed. His blade was flashing out, sabre coming down hard between the skin-thick gaps separating armour plates, biting deep through the softer tissues below. It was a stroke which would have bissected an orc.
It did not take off the tentacle, though, and he was grabbed before he could step back to try again.
There was a strength to large creatures that Venka had learned well. Oftentimes it was fragile, as if their bodies’ size forced whatever power lay within to be spread thin, and only sheer mass kept them forceful at all. None of that was felt now. Somehow, despite measuring thicker than his own shoulders, the great limb boasted more proportional power than a panther, hualing Venka through the air as if he weighed nothing and ignoring his struggling even in spite of the Vigour infusing his muscles. He was like a rat caught by a viper, and he’d seen that dance play out enough to know how it ended.
Within moments Venka had been drawn close to the man atop the creature, his kicking legs and thrashing arms failing to move its grip an inch. The caster continued speaking, as if he were watching nothing more eventful than the assembly of a shelf.
“I am not surprised that you do not know me.” He sighed, sounding almost irritated, suddenly, rather than wrathful. “I did not arrive in this world with the circumstances needed for my genius to find its use. But now I have the means to demonstrate my power, I only wish you could see what will be done with it.”
Venka spat, glaring his defiance. Every man had to accept his face, and he had long made peace with his.
“Do what you will.” He growled. “I don’t fear death, I have established my legacy and fought my battles. Thirty victories will be remembered with my name, thirty for each of my deaths.”
He hadn’t expected his words to make much of a crack in the caster’s smile, heroes rarely had much effect upon their villains after all. What unnerved Venka was how he seemed only to widen the twisted grin already splitting his enemy’s features.
“Kill you?” The caster echoed. “How unimaginative. No, I will not kill you. You see, general, you have crossed me, and crossed me dearly. Delayed me, attacked me, killed-” He paused, inhaling, exhaling. Mastering himself for a moment before continuing. “-Killed precious opportunity for my progress through this world. And I am well aware of your proclivities…No, I will not kill you. I am not so simple as that.”
More tendrils wrapped around Venka, pinning his limbs entirely as he was drawn nearer, and then he saw the blade raise up. It was a sharp thing, rounded and edged, bound into some curious limb which pulsated with musculature. A bizarre noise rang out from it, and it took Venka a moment to realise that it was some circular, serrated edge spinning so quickly he could scarcely even see. The caster spoke over the sound, calm as ever.
“This is a circular saw, it is not something your idiotic people will likely develop for some time now. My own people use it for cutting, precisely and against hard and durable targets. Like a skull.”
Venka’s fear was an engulfment of frigid water, squeezing the breath from him, leaving him panting and kicking as his eyes widened and throat choked with horror. There was no use, though, he might have been King Galukar and still failed to break such a hold as the abomination now enveloped him with. His desperate spasms seemed only to amuse the enemy.
“Ah, comprehension. It took you some time.” The caster breathed, and then with a gesture the mechanism- the saw- was closing in. Venka felt a stab of pain as it cut the skin of his forehead, then yet more. Wider, as the slice ran the length of his head. There was a deep agony as he felt his scalp lifted, sickeningly and wetly, from the surrounding tissue to be peeled back. His skull was exposed. Venka knew it, and he felt the fact burn around within his mind like an arrow coated with searing oil.
“What…What are you-”
“Be silent.” The caster interrupted, crushing his panicked speech with speech no louder or more hurried than before. “Be silent, and relish this. It will be the last sensation you are ever equipped to consider.”
Before Venka could even wonder what that meant, he felt the saw touch his skull, and screamed as the bone yielded. It was quick work the caster made, opening his cranium and exposing the interior near-instantly. He was panting and sweating, all the time, by its conclusion. Never had such a torment touched him, and never with such a confusion alongside it.
“What are you going to do to me!?” Venka cried, panic flooding his words with volume. He didn’t care about composure, not now, the uncertainty was stronger than anything else.
But his uncertainty was left to fester, because no answer came but the sensation of parting skull and the feeling of sudden, cold air on some place of him that oughtn’t to have ever been touched by a wind.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Hush.” The caster replied, looking at- no, looking through- Venka. As if he were glass. “As I said, I will not kill you.”
The sensation of touch caught Venka’s head again, and he gasped. His body kicked, jerking without thought, as new limbs wielding other, smaller instruments disappeared over the top of his sight and began jostling atop his exposed head. His mouth flooded with a bizarre sensation, taste. Minty, somehow, and the air filled with a grotesque, pungent reek of bloody iron.
“The cerebral cortex.” The caster began, as if he were giving a mere lecture. As if he were speaking to some hall of students, and not a man gasping and gurgling under his power. “
You have not, I assume, heard of it. It is a region of your brain- of most brains, for that matter. So named due to being the seat of what might be called higher cognition. In short, those measures of thought which humans overwhelmingly do, and most other creatures overwhelmingly do not.”
Venka was enraptured, in the way that was perhaps only possible for a man receiving speech while feeling his brain probed and sliced.
“This is a simplification of course. There are very few cognitive functions which a human categorically can do which most other animals categorically cannot, but there are, of course, enormous differences. What is less enormous of course is the difference between a human’s cerebral cortex, and an orc’s.”
A gasp left Venka, and he blinked as the caster continued talking.
“Theirs is not so far from ours, rather less dense in neuron composition but otherwise similar. What I am doing here will leave you roughly as far from them as they are from a normal human. A normal human, mind. You will…Well, you will no longer be that.”
Venka tried to think of something he might say, but nothing seemed to occur. Somehow he was having trouble focusing, blinking at his confusion as the…The things. The things on the big arms, they kept coming, kept poking. Cutting.
“I imagine you’ve noticed already.” Said the caster. “But don’t worry, I’m not done. For what it’s worth you’re now roughly as intelligent as an average ten year-old. I will be further reducing this, and doing so uniformly. Historically speaking, lobotomies tend to be rather unpredictable. My people have learned from that history, and have turned them into something of a science.”
It was all so exhausting, so difficult to pick through, but Venka managed. He was a clever man, always had been, the smartest, even. This was an enemy, and he fought against it as well as he could. If he just wrestled the limbs harder, surely they would break apart. Big things were easier to hurt than small ones, he thought, and he was a Hero.
“Around now, you should be finding your grasp of language somewhat reduced.” The mean man said. “Vocablibrary dimished, compensation reduced. You may grow confused at curtain words, miff them up or mishandstand them.” He smiled. “Ah, I see by your face that it is happening already.”
What was he talking about? And why did Venka’s head feel so…So…Hard to see through.
“You are now as intel gent as a chimp.” The mean man said. “All be hit, with the able tea to speak and handstand speech. How do you feel? I took care of a few member trees as well, those apple pie-ing to me at least.”
Venka stared, trying to know what was being said, frowning. His head hurt, and he was tired. He wanted something to eat, and he wanted somewhere to lie down too. He didn’t like this man, he looked all mean and spoke corn fussedly.
Opening his mouth, he tried to reply, frowning deep her as his lips did not do as it were told.
“Want go home.” Venka mum bled. The mean man smiled, maybe not so mean.
“Of course you can go home.” He nodded. “In fact, I will take you there. How a boat we get you some paper and ink, too? I know you love to write.”
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General Venka did not look much changed once Silenos was done with him, his scalp repaired, hair regrown. He stepped back from the lobotomite, smiling at his own handiwork.
“Perfect.” Silenos nodded. “Now nobody will see anything wrong, they won’t worry about you, they won’t judge you. They’ll know that everything you say comes from you, and they can enjoy your new books while you write away to your heart’s content. What would you like to write about next, Venka?”
The moron thought for some time, about as slowly as might be expected of a man missing roughly two thirds of his cerebral neurons.
“War.” He said, confidently. Silenos nodded, smiling.
“Of course, war. You’re good at war, aren’t you Venka?”
“The best.” The imbecile replied, speaking with the kind of certainty which nature reserved for the truly, stultifyingly stupid. Silenos thought for a moment whether he’d gone too far in stripping away his cognition.
Then he smiled again. No, this was just as he liked him. This was perfect.
From the corner of his eye, Silenos caught movement. Not the sluggish, twitching kind of a dying creature melted from within by his virus, nor the rapid, explosive kind of an imminent attack. It was slow, purposeful, deliberate. A woman walking, and as he turned to the source, he felt a sensation too strong and unfamiliar for him to even identify washing through the reconstructed centres of his brain’s emotional processors.
Ensharia, the Paladin. The first face he’d seen in the New World, and the body that seemed ever between him and danger.
“You live.” Silenos breathed, taking a step towards her before he’d even realised he was moving. She surprised him, then, by stepping back just as he did, flinching and gazing up at him as if he were something dangerous. Something unpredictable.
“You did this.” Ensaharia whispered, speaking with a tone left hoarse by emotion and…Something else.
Silenos only frowned, his confusion blooming instantly.
“Did what?” He asked.
“THIS!” She snapped, gesturing at the sights around her. The dead and dying, the ruin Silenos had made of the battlefield.
“Ah.” He understood instantly, then. “Yes, I did. I used a virus- imagine a grotesquery too small to see and able to feast on flesh to multiply its number by the moment- to infect the orcs and kill them. It was the easiest way of destroying the army.”
Her stare was the sort he might have received from Venka, had he not known better than to try polysyllabic communication with the man. Pure incomprehension, followed by rage, and then…Then it was disgust.
“These were people.” She snarled. “You…Silenos, you didn’t kill animals, whatever they say, you killed people. They were capable of kindness, compassion, they could learn-”
“-I am well aware.” He cut in. “Yes, I examined their brains. Less intelligent than humans, but not by so much, I know.”
“Then why did you do it?” She snarled. “How could you do it?”
Silenos frowned at that.
“I did it because they were a threat to my plans, and as for the how…Well, my Fleshcrafting provides many-”
“-HOW CAN YOU BRING YOURSELF TO DO IT!?” Ensharia screamed, her fury, apparently, reaching a critical mass and boiling over entirely. “Every one of these people had friends, hopes, they…They had lives!”
It was then that he realised the miscommunication between them, and sighed. It was such a simple thing.
“I see.” Silenos replied, calmly. “You still cling to your simple ideological quirks. I really had been hoping to avoid truly conversing on this, it was my wish that you might simply learn a better way yourself by watching me, but if we must discuss it openly then I will start by telling you that there truly is nothing about any of what you just described that holds moral weight to House Shaiagrazni. I needed them dead, and so I killed them.”
She stared, as if the ground were falling out beneath her. Speaking slowly, quietly.
“...Could you have spared them?” Ensharia asked. Silenos thought about it.
“Hm. Yes, I suppose I could have, if I’d been so inclined. A less deadly virus would still have incapacitated them, there would doubtless be deaths in the fighting but they would not all have perished. I achieved plenty already, in any case, and have more biomass to be used now that more of them have perished. It would not have saved time to make a weaker pathogen.”
Ensharia took another step back, and just stared at him. Stared like he was a man she’d never seen before, like he had just told her his name was not Silenos, and his House not Shaiagrazni.
Silenos felt a stab of irritation at that, and was not certain where from.
“I have a lot to explain.” He continued. “You have missed much during your…” He considered the facts. Ensharia had seemed rather attached to the orcs. “Imprisonment.” Silenos decided. “We will soon be moving on from Kaltan, whenever I have finished mustering our new army, come with me and-”
“No.”
That single word halted him, like a jutting strip of iron choking the gears of his speech.
“No…? No what?” Silenos frowned. “What do you mean no?”
Ensharia stared, and for a moment he wondered whether she’d even heard him.
“No.” She said at last. “I will not be coming with you.”
Now it was Silenos’ time to pause, mind halting, somehow, delayed and clicking precious moments late as some new flash of emotion ran through it and slowed the cerebral brilliance like thick tar in a mechanism.
“Be serious.” He replied at last. “You summoned me to this world, you knew you would have to-”
“I have made up my mind.” Ensharia spat, and Silenos saw tears, now, glistening in her eyes. “I…Took too long to do it, spent far too long denying what was right before my eyes. But now I see. Kill me if you want, but I’m leaving. And I’m not fighting alongside you again for as long as I live.”
She turned, at that. Storming away from Silenos and leaving him alone. He watched her go, trying to think of something to say, to do. Something to give him direction towards anything but the internal storm leaving him near-wittless.
Nothing came to mind, and the Paladin was out of sight before he next moved.