Silenos Shaiagrazni, Named of House Shaiagrazni and one of the foremost wielders of arts most ancient, was bound in chains. They rattled as he walked, but did not chafe. Nor, he suspected, could they have impeded him in a serious effort to escape. They struck him as more of a formality on Adonis’ behalf, or perhaps a means of inducing the illusion of control over the soldiers who now marched alongside them.

  Living men, not undead. Silenos could understand that decision too- guarding a greater Necromancer than oneself with undead simply invited the sort of mayhem that permitted prisoners to be freed.

  What Adonis intended to do with him, Silenos couldn’t say. His former apprentice had not spoken a single word to him as they walked for the past few days, merely continued forwards and kept his eyes ahead. There were of course an abundance of uses for a caster of Silenos’ magnitude, though being subjected to any one would be rather an undesirable affair. He had kept his quiet regardless. If nothing else, he may find an easier opportunity to escape later on. And at best he might be subjected to some half-cocked rescue attempt by one of his moronic allies. He had time, there was no cost to using it.

  Now, fortunately, a change had come. Or unfortunately as it were, for the change was that Silenos now saw a fortress looming ahead. Made of inky stone, humming with contained arcane energies, the castle was a thing of many spires and immeasurably ominous aura. His enhanced hearing caught the sounds of screaming upon the winds, and his arcane sight revealed a rich tapestry of agony shaping the magical energies around its atmosphere. Any exertion of will imprinted upon magic, and one as great as horror and despair left a pointedly clear one. This castle was a greater testament to human pain than a face left tight and screaming by the sensation.

  A sudden stab of nostalgia hit Silenos as they approached it, and he found himself smiling. It was such a typical example of Shaiagraznian architecture.

  Inside, the fortress was much the same. Adonis had never been so very skilled in Necromancy, and had not even begun his studies in Fleshcrafting before Silenos was betrayed, however his potent mastery over the inert materials produced by inorganic processes had been…Considerable. Clearly they had grown a great deal more, for Silenos found the interior of the structure lined with alloys and compounds that few among even House Shaiagrazni could make. Two theories formed in his mind about the fact, and he tucked them away for later use. Then they reached the throne room.

  A Shaiagrazni’s throne was very much a reflection of the Shaiagrazni themselves, and so they were invariably grand, indulgent and performative monuments to unfettered ego and power- the two highest virtues. Silenos felt a stab of pride as he saw his former apprentice take his seat upon this one. He truly had done an incredible job in training him, just another entry onto the list of reasons all of humanity ought to be prostrating before him.

  “Leave us.” Adonis called, and all the room’s guards evacuated it to isolate the two of them. The heavy doors at the back thudded closed with a boom, and Adonis turned his gaze back to Silenos.

  “Make yourself comfortable.” He offered. Silenos recognised the challenge for what it was, and promptly altered the musculature of his upper body to triple its strength, then triple it again. The steel shackles around his wrists were inches thick, and even he exerted himself in tearing the metal apart. But he did, and the manacles flew from him as their cohesion surrendered against several dozen tonnes of tensile force.

  Adonis nodded shortly while Silenos reshaped his musculature to a less powerful, more practical configuration.

  “Why was I chained?” Silenos asked his former apprentice. It was the most relevant question, as its answer would determine what sort of conversation this was to be. Outside of warform, Silenos would die if things became violent. Near-instantly. The precious moments he needed to transform would not be afforded to him by one who knew of his power.

  But Adonis did not begin an attack, merely questioned him back instead.

  “Do you know how old I am?” He asked.

  Silenos considered the question, dredging the relevant answer up from his incredible mind.

  “Twenty three years, seven months and eight days.” He replied.

  “That was when you were cast out of our world.” Adonis corrected. “Which, from my perspective, was a quarter of a millennium ago.”

  That gave Silenos pause.

  “I was displaced in time as well as space?”

  “As far as I can tell.” Adonis confirmed. “I think the Entity did so to fulfil my own pact- to grow more powerful than you.”

  Silenos almost smiled. Naturally, the spirit of such a request would have been for Adonis himself to be empowered. But Entities did not care about a request’s spirit. By simply sending Silenos ahead in time, it had obeyed the letter of its deal without needing to satisfy Adonis by actually empowering him. It was one of the things Silenos had always been careful to look out for in his own deals, but then he’d had more time to prepare them than Adonis had that one.

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  “And what are you doing here?” Silenos asked. Presumably, if Adonis had come to finish him he would be dead already. Silenos’ former apprentice was now a caster of roughly double his own experience, and he had clearly mastered the combat magics of enhancing his own strength and resilience. Less mass-producible than Fleshcrafting, less scalable, but far more immediately potent. He had seen himself how a battle between them both would go.

  Silenos was not expecting to be told Adonis had come to kill him, and yet what he heard still surprised him.

  “I am here for you, Silenos. To find you, and bring you back to House Shaiagrazni.”

  A second passed in silence, bloated and slow. Then Silenos replied.

  “You are the one who left me stranded here.” He felt his treacherous neurons fire off at that, rage bleeding into his mind, addling his magnificent intellect with simian violence and primitive hate. He ignored it. Adonis did not seem to have noticed.

  “That was a long time ago, for me. I have…Realised the error of my ways. To do what I did was wasteful of House Shaiagrazni’s resources, yours is a talent we could have used.”

  Silenos was actually unsure what to say, if only for a second.

  “You are aiming to redeem yourself?”

  “On command of the Elders.” Adonis confirmed. That did explain a lot, but Silenos saw his former apprentice was far from finished. “However now I am not sure if there is any hope left. When I first heard of your rising power here, I was pleased. Watching you overcome your initial difficulties, adapt to direct combat, innovate- it’s all been fascinating. The weapons you’ve developed for personal use here may well become the prototypes that usher House Shaiagrazni’s Fleshcrafters into a new age of combat. And yet you have behaved…Erratically. Sparing those who it benefited you to kill, killing those whom you may have used. I doubt your judgement, Silenos.”

  Silenos was silent, even as Adonis waited a moment for some answer. His former apprentice continued then.

  “Your self-sacrifice to save King Galukar confirmed my suspicions. The man is useful, as a pawn, but you could match his abilities with any three of your finest grotesqueries. That you would risk your own existence for his…You have changed.”

  Silenos wanted to hurl himself at Adonis with fists and fingernails, and caught himself only just before he did. It was a warning of how deep the taint of his new emotional core had taken root.

  So why do I not remove it?

  The practicality was still there, he still needed to predict others, to understand them. Soon he would be free. Soon he would be himself again.

  “You are not wrong.” Silenos said, at last. “My behaviour has been…Sub-ideal. But perhaps the arrival of a fellow Shaiagrazni is what was needed to correct that. We are both still of the Caster’s House, trained by them, studied under them. Both of us believe in Shaiagraznian philosophy. We are the most suited to rule this world, and any other.”

  Adonis hesitated, studying him long and hard, slowly nodding.

  “You are still an asset.” He conceded, slowly. “In power, if not in mind. At worst…Your behaviour can be corrected by House Shaiagrazni proper should we return.”

  The thought of being disciplined like some lowly apprentice made Silenos’ lip curl.

  “Very well.” He replied, letting the anger uncoil from within him.

  Again, Adonis paused. When he continued speaking it was slowly and deliberately, almost with hesitance. As if even he wasn’t certain what he did next was wise. An unacceptable failing in any Shaiagraznian Caster, doubt was the root of all evil. .

  “I have been experimenting with a means for House Shaiagrazni to make their way through to this world, permanently.” He revealed at last. “A means of breaching the dimensional walls and producing a portal through the very Dreaming itself.”

  The thought was…Perhaps the most ambitious one Silenos had ever heard.

  The people of this New World were weak and of limited use, for now. But there were great talents amongst them which might bolster House Shaiagrazni. Further, there were resources. Minerals, ancient magics. A wealth of knowledge to be studied- already Silenos himself had bolstered his warform using the Vigour of this world, and begun work on The Clone by furthering those studies into a more perfected form. The knowledge that his latest project was still buried in his laboratory, beyond his reach, irked him somewhat. But the time for it to emerge would come. As would the time for House Shaiagrazni to emerge.

  Silenos imagined, for a moment, the future Adonis was promising. Entire dimensions combed for magical talent, resources concentrated, secrets unlocked. And more. Silenos’ Master was a being of incalculable power in no small part due to the many millennia she’d had to grow it, but universes with altered flows of time were not so uncommon. If what Adonis proposed came to pass, House Shaiagrazni might leave a Named to study for one century and return to find their power grown by a dozen.

  Silenos’ Master might become the standard of power, not the pinnacle. The thought was almost too grand even for him.

  “And you need me?” Silenos frowned. That uncertainty was the one thing which nagged at him, but even as he voiced it the sheer exaltation of what was being suggested washed over him again and returned a grin to his features.

  “There is a vital component involved which I lack the power to utilize.” Adonis replied. “An Anomaly.”

  Silenos understood instantly.

  “You need my Fleshcrafting.” He guessed. “And perhaps my Necromancy?”

  “Affirmative.” His former apprentice confirmed. Silenos could see why.

  An Anomaly was a being of potential magic more innate and considerable than any other House Shaiagrazni had ever seen, potentially. Most were thin things, their unnatural powers watered down and manifesting instead as primitive mutations or madness. Some, though, held a more potent balance in their heritage. For an Anomaly was spawned when an Entity bred with a creature of baryonic matter. A rare thing, but a known thing. And every so often, one time in a million, such unions yielded something which actually held a sliver of its parents esoteric powers.

  Yes, such a being as that could certainly hold open a hole between worlds. Silenos found himself rather eager to work on one.