“How did you come into House Shaiagrazni?” Adonis asked abruptly. “I have always wondered.”

  Silenos found himself stiffening at the question. It was not one he had been asked often- perhaps ten times in his life. Each time it reached his ears, he found himself drifting back to the past. Shivered.

  “As most of us do.” He replied, slowly, carefully. “I was a simple villager at first, then, as a child, our people conquered my home. All of us were allotted use by House Shaiagrazni based upon our talents and abilities. In my case, I possessed potent enough magic to be inducted as an apprentice.”

  Adonis nodded, unsurprised. As Silenos had said, it was a typical story. House Shaiagrazni had a policy of ongoing expansionism. New territories were given to newly-ascended Named to govern, which they would then sift through for new talents among the recently conquered people. Those talented would be inducted into House Shaiagrazni, have their magical gifts tested and, if they proved intelligent, powerful and willful enough after several decades, ascended themselves to the position of Named, where they would be granted new territory to repeat the process over again.

  It was a steady, reliable sort of expansion which left House Shaiagrazni smaller than some of its rival empires, but ensured the continued quality of its casters.

  “I was born into it.” Adonis explained, which surprised Silenos quite a bit.

  “You always struck me as soft-willed, empathetic. As an apprentice at least.” He admitted. Adonis did not seem offended.

  “I was.” He agreed. “Fortunately I was able to overcome my weaker nature. What may surprise you more was my mother, Kammani.”

  Silenos stared at him, waiting to see some hint of a joke. There was none- Adonis was dead serious.

  “You are the biological child of my master?” He pressed, still not able to quite believe it. Adonis shared a rare smile with him.

  “It is not often I can see you made speechless.” He noted. “Yes. You may have noticed I inherited only a fraction of her talents of course, and talent was never what made her dangerous in the first place.”

  That much was true. Silenos’ master was unrivaled in power among House Shaiagrazni, there was no denying, but at least ten had a superior gift for magic than her. The source of her mastery was simply her age. Stories already spoke of her as an arcane demigoddess when primitive man was first learning to smelt bronze. Some estimated her age at five thousand, others ten. Others still thought her north of twenty.

  Whatever the truth was impossible to gauge, she had already been an ancient thing when records of time were first coined. The count of her years would forever be a task of historic deduction, not mnemonics.

  But she still reproduced, all in House Shaiagrazni did. There wasn’t a strong correlation between the magical prowess of one’s parent and oneself, but it existed, and was significant enough that all the talented casters were expected to help create more. Most never learned who their offspring were, and vice-versa.

  “How did you discover this?” Silenos asked. “And when?”

  “A hundred years ago, and quite coincidentally. I was testing a sliver of her genetic material as part of an experiment, and stumbled upon the similarity between my own.”

  “You are not a skilled enough Fleshcrafter to fully manipulate DNA.” Silenos noted. “Who else knows?”

  Adonis smiled. “Dimitar.”

  Ah, that explained it. Dimitar was among the Fleshcrafters whose skill exceeded Silenos’ own. For now.

  Silenos forced himself to his feet, and Adonis followed. They had rested for only a few minutes, but that was approaching the limits of how long they might safely do so in their current surroundings. It would not do to tempt more violence than they had to from The Depths’ inhabitants.

  For the future, Silenos noted to himself that he ought to travel in a smaller form. Already he had abandoned his towering war-form, finding that he needed to fight far less in its absence. It had seemed strange to him, but perhaps it was the Entities’ lack of physicality that made them so drawn towards larger examples of it. Their lack of comprehension, of shared tangibility, made the mass of a larger enemy all the more enticing.

  It had been, by Silenos’ calculations, somewhere between one hour and three thousand years since he and Adonis had set foot in the Shallow Depths. Granted he had stopped calculating some time ago, for obvious reasons pertaining to the accuracy of his attempts. Adonis was his only measure of progress, skill in Esoterica allowing him to track their quarry by magical sensation.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  And always, he claimed they were drawing closer.

  Crossing the landscape involved imprinting solidity onto it, not just in its geometry but in its basic space as well. It was tiring, like all things were in the Depths, and Silenos could feel the eerie emptiness of his mana as more and more of it was consumed.

  Time. Everything was measured in time, everything was rationed in time. It was another novelty, and another that Silenos would rather have done without. The prick of feeling his invincibility stripped away was not so harsh this time as it had been when he first found himself in the New World.

  But it still stung, as it might have stung any other. He continued on his way, Adonis watching him as he watched Adonis. There was a silent understanding, Silenos knew, between the two of them. If another Entity of significant power engaged them, they would simply retreat back to the Schism.

  They would have no choice.

  Scraping came from ahead, and low, pitiably mewling. Silenos glanced his silent question towards Adonis, who answered it with a nod. It was what they hunted, their task was nearing its completion.

  Slowly, the two of them moved up towards the noise. Silenos readied his cannon, though he was uncertain of what use it could be, and Adonis himself flared with preternatural force as kinetic energies infused every strand of his anatomy, shielding from harm and bolstering strength. Ahead, they finally saw what they had come here seeking.

  It was…Repulsive.

  Perhaps three metres tall, and standing naked as a newborn. Its skin was dark grey, rough and uneven. Parts were scaled, others covered in tufts of fur, and everywhere it sprouted welts and blisters, pus oozing from them and cracks opening along the surface with every motion. Its head was bald, hands twice the size which might have been expected from a creature of its height, and fingers tipped with yellow, jagged talons that looked better for ripping than cutting. Its lips seemed non-existent, and needle-pointed teeth were easily visible through its cracked mouth. Orange eyes gazed back upon Silenos, and when the creature moved he heard- and saw- the shifting of disjointed vertebra in its back, each one popping from one position to another.

  “You…What…What do you want?”

  Clearly, the creature was not accustomed to speaking in large sentences. Silenos could actually hear the sounds of its vocal chords shifting to accommodate polysyllabic conversation. Entities as a rule did not use speech, nor any other “physical” modes, among one another. House Shaiagrazni had yet to determine how they communicated with their own kind, as even their minds were too alien for conventional telepathy to be efficient.

  It was fortunate, then, that this one not only spoke verbally, but seemed affected by the same translation magic woven around Silenos when he was displaced between worlds. It backed off as he and Adonis drew nearer, arrow-head eyes narrowed with suspicion. Oddly astute of the creature, it had to be said.

  “Greetings, worm.” Adonis began, shocking Silenos with his politeness. Perhaps a career in Esoterica had affected his mannerisms as well as his knowledge, when it came to the Entities. “We are of House Shaiagrazni, masters of arts most high and casters with power beyond…”

  He had been about to say powers beyond the creature’s imagination, but caught himself before accidentally making the claim. Under normal circumstances, it was correct. Among potent casters it was, if flattering, in the right direction of the truth. Speaking to a being fathered by an Entity, it was patently ridiculous. Even now Silenos could feel the magic humming off the creature, and it demanded every screed of his will not to take a self-preservative backstep.

  “Other humans.” He finished. The creature shuffled backwards, head jerking from side to side as it studied them.

  “You’re here for me.” It croaked. Adonis nodded.

  “We are.”

  The creature spat, and its saliva sizzled into the ground. Acid, potent acid. Entities did enjoy spitting acid.

  “Well leave now, and save yourself the pain. You can’t have me. I want no part in your plans, machinations or schemes, you have nothing to offer me, nothing I need, nothing I desire. I want only to be left alone, to be left in peace. Let me live my life, as I have let you live yours.”

  Silenos looked at Adonis, and Adonis looked at him. They did not need words to communicate, nor, really, did they need to communicate at all. Their next course of action was somewhat…Obvious.

  “No.”

  Silenos aimed his cannon and fired, blasting the solid shell clean into the creature’s neck and perfectly hitting the spot connecting it to the misshapen shoulders below. It tore through, burst apart, ripped head from body and left the shrieking thing to roll while its separated torso spasms and kicked metres apart from it. Adonis reached down to pluck the head up off the ground, and without another word they began moving back for the Schism.

  Their walk back was actually far shorter and easier than their initial trip. Perhaps they had grown acclimated enough to the Shallow Depths that they could navigate more easily, or perhaps it was mere chance. It occurred to Silenos that the Entities’ attacks, which now came only once or twice rather than over a dozen times, may have been partially deterred by the creature’s head he now carried.

  The head in question was a loud thing, barking and snarling, oscillating between threats, insults, weeping melancholy and a dozen other states, each more irritating than the last. Silenos focused on tuning it out while he worked.

  Within the Depths, or any other highly magic-saturated environment, Silenos knew that anything so highly tied to an Entity’s nature would be able to withstand an infinite variety of physical destruction. Aside from decapitation, he might have dropped the hybrid into a star and still failed to kill it. Just like any other Entity.

  Unlike its purebred cousins, however, it was not a being of magic alone. There was a physicality to it. Silenos was not sure it could survive in the New World forever, and certainly not that its head could. So he stood ready to perform any hasty alterations which might prove necessary to sustaining its life. If the thing died before they could make use of it, their entire affair would have been for nothing.

  He needn’t have worried. They reached the Schism, the Depths distorted around them, and Silenos felt the increasingly familiar sensation of transdimensional movement take him once more. He clutched the hybrid’s head tightly, closed his eyes, waited for it to end. And then his feet came down upon solid ground.

  They had only a moment before everything around them exploded into motion and violence.