Silenos was in a chamber once more, but one far more primitive than the containment he’d constructed for The Entity. Its surfaces were of stone, not tungsten, and were bare of any runic workings that might have worked to conduct magical energies. The place was cold, made colder by his being naked. Evidently, whatever magics had been called on to displace him, they had failed to permit his clothing passage too. An inconvenience. He’d had a great many useful tools and relics upon his person, being without them would impede him.

But he had more immediate concerns. Around him, Silenos saw a gathered crowd of people, circling him entirely and standing some half-dozen strides back. Eyes wide, faces slack with awe, postures cautious and tentative. They were headed by a woman of golden eyes and hair, taller than most, slender than many and stupider than practically all. Surely stupider, to be eying him with such open ferocity and conviction.

“It worked.” The woman whispered, as if disbelieving what her eyes told her. Silenos found that more irritating than anything else, incomprehension had always needled him, as it might any other of House Shaiagrazni. He felt the draft, suddenly, and considered making the people around him into clothes. As a Fleshcrafter, he could work living tissue well enough that even a single one could have covered most of him.

That train of thought was interrupted, however, as the woman spoke again.

“Forgive me, Saviour.” She lowered her head at the words, reverent. Silenos watched as all present mimicked her. “I welcome you to our world, and thank you for coming to save it.”

Silenos paused, and reconsidered. He wasn’t certain what these people thought to be calling him Saviour, but if nothing else they clearly acknowledged the respect he was due. That much was reason enough to leave them alive, for the time being at least.

“Who are you, and where am I?” He asked, aiming his question at the woman. With luck the savages now surrounding him had reason to have selected her as the speaker amongst their number, perhaps even good enough reasons for Silenos to receive some straight answers.

“Forgive me for not explaining already.” She replied, bowing her head so ludicrously low, Silenos suspected it might have injured her neck. “You are in the nation of Elkatin, and my name is Ensharia. We…Are in need of your help.”

Silenos could have guessed they needed help from their calling him Saviour, but he decided to forgive the tautology. Plenty more information had been passed his way, in any case. Most important among it the fact that neither name Ensharia had spoken correlated with any he was familiar with.

“Help dealing with what?” He asked. “I take it you are being…Attacked?”

“Oppressed.” She replied, spite dripping from her lips. “The Dark Lord, he calls himself, a magician of unrivalled power and evil. He uses his foul magics to ravage our lands with necromantic armies, twisting the very elements against us.”

He observed several things in rapid succession, the most important being Enshara’s description of necromancy as foul. It would appear that the magics forbidden to most of Silenos’ world were just as taboo in this new land, at least within the nation of Elkatin. That might cause issues. As a Necromancer himself, Silenos was well familiar with idiots attempting to kill him in some misguided zeal, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t well aware of the danger they posed. Taken off-guard and unawares, even a magician of his prowess could be slain. All it would take was a single stroke of luck at the right time.

But there were other things to be considered, too.

“How large are these armies?” Silenos asked.

He had no intention of actually helping, not in the slightest. Whatever these idiots thought they’d done to call on a Saviour, he could only conclude it had failed. House Shaiagrazni did not protect those too inept to defend themselves, nor did it risk its members in useless endeavours. But if Silenos was to navigate his new surroundings, he’d benefit from learning the scope and scale of its apparently largest threat.

Ensharia paused, though, mouthing out in silence for a few moments before she finally answered him.

“It may be best if you follow me, Saviour. My King and Queen can give you more in-depth information than any here.”

Resisting the urge to ask why they had not greeted them, Silenos merely nodded and stepped forwards.

“Take me to them.” He instructed her.

The woman hesitated.

“You…Would like some clothes first, yes?”

Silenos glanced down, then sighed.

“If you insist, yes.” He did loathe wasting time, and it was far slower to don new apparel than simply craft it around him from raw material, but he suspected that using his Fleshcrafting upon those now watching him would lead to a tenuous diplomatic relation.

Fortunately, the idiots had some clothing prepared for him. It seemed well made enough, largely silks and linens, fabrics Silenos didn’t see in the apparel of those around him, and with far greater craftsmanship. He supposed it was considered good work by the standards of the savages around him now.

Ensharia led him alone, which left Silenos to wonder about the purpose of her company. He eyed them as they made their way out of the chamber, considering the zeal and trembling hands so common across them. It was hard to imagine any people of substance would conduct themselves like that, but harder still to think ordinary rabble might have been given audience to the arrival of their land’s saviour. An irksome conundrum, and one Silenos was not given long to consider.

Winding corridors awaited him ahead, and he navigated them with Ensharia’s guide. Carefully committing the turns and twists to memory, employing the mnemonic techniques he’d spent a century accruing. Their walk lasted them more than a few minutes, betraying the scale of the surrounding building itself, and Silenos was able to glimpse it more directly as they passed by a long window betraying the sight of sprawling courtyards and towering spires outside.

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“Admiring the view, Saviour?” Ensharia asked, looking rather pleased to see him studying it. “Castle Vardrire is one of the largest in the world, dwarfing any other structure in Elkatin.”

In fact, he’d been trying to hold back a sneer. The architecture was primitive, betraying a lack of any complex working of glass or large-scale production of steel. He could only imagine it was wrought by a people too simple to manage such technologies.

“It must have taken considerable time.” Silenos replied. Typically, the woman interpreted his words as a compliment.

“Almost sixty years.” She replied, happily. “With some of the finest architects in Elkatin dedicating decades of their lives to its various stages.”

Silenos knew some, a very fair few, who might have made a similar structure themselves in mere weeks, using nothing but their magic and the necessary raw materials. It seemed strongly evident to him that the nation around him had few magicians of power comparable to his own.

His pondering was interrupted as Ensharia took him to a large set of double doors guarded by a pair of tall men in glinting plate. Curious armour, Silenos could tell it was not steel by its colouration, and a glance with his arcane sight showed flickers of magical energy infusing the metal. That it had been worked into such large planes and articulated joints betrayed a level of craftsmanship he’d not have expected from the architecture, and both moved without the need for verbal communication or order.

The door swung open upon near-frictionless hinges, revealing an expansive hall on the other side.

At one end of it a pair of thrones were seated, carved of smooth stone and occupied by an aged male and female. The space between Silenos and them was carpeted in a long crimson streak, with great stone pillars connecting floor to ceiling on either side like the bars of a cage. Ensharia was immediate in making her way forwards, taking a dozen steps, then dropping to her knees before them. Silenos followed after, but did not prostrate.

Whatever world he had found himself in- and he was growing increasingly certain that this land did not share a planet with his own- he remained a Senior of House Shaiazrazni. Some could kill him, none could make him kneel.

“My King.” Ensharia declared, with her face aimed towards the ground. “The ritual was a success, I present to you the Saviour.”

Silenos moved his eyes to the male, meeting the old man’s gaze. He looked to be between sixty and seventy, physically speaking, but by the creases of stress and worry upon his brow, the man may well have been younger than his flesh would claim. Wispy silver hair clung lightly to his scalp, drifting as his head was animated by speech.

“It is an honour.” He said, surprising Silenos by nodding deeply enough to almost approximate a bow himself.

Resisting the urge to let himself soften at the show of deference, Silenos spoke.

“I have been told your people are being assailed by forces external to your nation, and that you expect me to aid in your plight. How, might I ask, was I brought here?”

The King did not seem surprised by the question, while the Queen did not seem to consider it at all. Silenos could only assume the males of this new land held rulership over the females. It was a common enough system, many civilisations- or things that thought themselves civilised- fell into it. A simple evolutionary flaw, he suspected, of one sex being larger and stronger than the other among a species which fought and hunted for survival long before accumulating the resources to build cities.

“There are stories in our nation.” The King replied, at last. “And there are truths in those stories, secrets…Rituals among them. One such ritual was known to have possessed the means to bring forth a being of great power, and greater danger. We used it during our time of greatest need, and it promised us a Saviour. You.”

House Shaiagrazni respected the value of knowledge above all other things, and so Silenos never quite escaped a state of awe upon seeing it handed out so freely by those in other orders. He’d just found himself saved asking another half-dozen questions.

“I see.” He replied. “And what, exactly, do you require me to save you from at the moment? I am aware of your general predicament, but what imminent threats are there?”

Another pause followed, forcing onto Silenos the choice of either allowing his displeasure to show, or making the effort of keeping it contained. He did the latter. It was to be suspected, he knew, that mental sluggishness was commonplace in this land, for it was rare that any human civilization evolved a culture as meritocratic as House Shaiagrazni.

“As we speak, the Dark Lord’s forces are marching on our city, the capital of our nation. Scouts have reported that they number in the hundreds of thousands, undead in almost their entirety, rotting, vicious abominations sustained only by magic. Our defenders number a mere ninety thousand, with a further forty thousand conscripted from the general populace. Historically…This has not been a ratio that serves to our advantage.”

Silenos considered that.

“How many magicians are counted among your defenders?”

“One hundred and six magicians of war.” The King replied. “Bolstered by a further hundred and nine conscripted from the city’s general populace.”

It was a meagre number. House Shaiagrazni’s surrounding nations had magicians numbering at one among every four hundred ordinary humans, and would have mustered several times as many in such a population. And as a rule, scarcity of magicians correlated with the talent of those magicians in a given population. Silenos worked through the relevant calculations in his head.

“When will this army be arriving?” He asked, distractedly. The King surprised him at that.

“It arrived before you did, and encircles our city as we speak.”

Silenos was led by Esharia to see the army outside, rather quickly demanding that he be allowed to study it himself, and thinking as they went. There were few reasons for him to stay, as he saw it. A magician powerful enough to conjure armies was likely more than worthy to dominate the primitives around him now, and far be it from Silenos to interrupt with the natural order of things. Still, knowledge was useful. He needed to see the forces in question.

They were, as it happened, rather numerous. Covering the landscape as a writhing black carpet of rotting meat and rusting metal, stretching out almost to the horizon. As far as armies went, he’d seen bigger. But rarely conjured by one individual.

Silenos studied it with eyes of magic, rather than light, to see what he might glean of the work. And he felt a stab of disgust .

Different densities of arcane power made themselves apparent to his sight with shifts in shade and tone, and he’d expected a respectable darkness. Instead he saw pale, fragile whiteness only barely discoloured at the edges. It was a frail magic that produced such colour, and a frail magic meant a frail magician.

This is who these idiots are being dominated by? This…Incompetent?

It was revolting, disgusting, and unacceptable. Silenos would not stand by and watch people suborned by such a blithering idiot.

They needed some proper leadership.