Then.

  It had been five years since Silenos’ induction into House Shaiagrazni. After the first he had learned more about magic than he had known there was to learn. After two, he had learned more than most actual casters. In his fifth year Silenos would have been considered a master already, by most people’s standards. He could have fled the Household to make his fortune teaching the art anywhere, more or less. This was not entirely his own talent at work. The simple fact was that House Shaigagrazni’s mastery of the arcane was unrivalled.

  Save, of course, for the Shungard. Pagan deities; blood-drinking, heart-eating, soul-rending gods of old. House Shaiagrazni’s homeland had once been dominated by similar beings. Gestalt coagulations of nascent human will and ambient magic, formed and empowered over long millennia of consciousness and unknowing intent. He hadn’t yet seen one, not a true specimen, but he had heard stories. Boulders thrown across horizons, tanks torn fully in half, buildings reaching as high as mountains split from base to head in a single stroke.

  His first mission for House Shaiagrazni in the field was not to do battle with one of these beings, nor their bastard offspring. It was merely to lay waste to one of their outposts. And of course, Juragai was joining him.

  Fifteen grotesqueries accompanied him, each hand-made by one of House Shaiagrazni’s esteemed Fleshcrafters. Two, smaller, hung at the back. A contingent against unpleasant surprises. The assault began quietly enough. Or as quietly as lumbering tonnes of keratin and meat could manage. The grotesqueries encircled the encampment, opening combat by firing their rotary cannons into it.

  Great, screaming multi-barrelled death-dealers, spitting out thirty-millimetre projectiles by the centisecond. They tore through barricades, makeshift buildings and, most easily of all, bodies. Drawing the enemy out to foolishly engage them in the open, cutting them apart before any could so much as fight back.

  Save for one.

  This figure, close to three metres in height and perhaps half the mass of Silenos’ grotesqueries, came down upon one of the attackers with a hammer that looked close to half his own mass. It struck magically-woven metallic armour, a gift from Metallicists to overcome the limits of organic matter’s resilience. In this case, they did not overcome them. With a sound like lightning hitting steel, the armour buckled and broke. Ribs drove inwards, meat was pulped, the grotesquery shot back and fell down. Its rotary cannon continued screaming, then fell silent as the hammer came down again and again. Two more blows crushed its head to pulp. The first had destroyed its hearts.

  Savage though they were, the servants of Shungard had become skilled in killing grotesqueries.

  The warrior roared. Silenos estimated he was some champion of the Shungard Pantheon, likely bearing a blood connection to their deities. His body shimmered with an innate magic that even House Shaiagrazni could not match outside of temporary concentration. And he moved so fast that Silenos’ own eyes could scarcely follow, Fleshcrafted though they were.

  Within a fraction of a second, he was bringing his hammer to bear against another grotesquery as the remaining eleven fired. Shells wider than thumbs hammered into his back. They broke the skin, inflicted a thousand miniscule scratches and scrapes. They may as well have been bee stings or thrown gravel, for the towering warrior merely ignored the wounds and focused on breaking apart his enemy. He repeated the process for the next, and the next after that. Silenos orchestrated the grotesqueries, spacing them apart and overlapping their fire to ensure the Shungard bastard was never able to shield his body with any of his enemies’. Still, he killed.

  But still he slowed.

  “This won’t work.” Juragai muttered. “He’s going to out-last them, at the very least he’ll dispatch all of our grotesqueries before the contingency ends him. Send them in now.”

  Silenos glared at his partner.

  “He’s being pelted with hundreds of armour-piercing rounds every second, maybe a thousand. He’ll fall.”

  Juragai simply shrugged, not meeting Silenos’ eye, not challenging him. He’d left him doubtful anyway, the bastard, and as the enemy continued working, Silenos began to see that his partner had been right. Only a few grotesqueries still remained when he finally surrendered to caution and sent in the contingency.

  Fleshcrafted by Kammani herself, they moved like whispers on the air.

  One caught the enemy champion’s arm, just as he was about to bring it down upon a grotesquery. With a tug, it snapped his elbow like dry twigs and left the man’s weapon to clatter from loosened fingers. Almost simultaneously, the other skewered him with a great lance built into its forearm.

  Silenos winced at the sight. The weapon did not strike a spot of particular vulnerability, not an open wound or thin bodypart. It simply drove itself fully through the back and exploded out through his front, running his torso through and dumping his blood outwards by the litre. The champion spasmed, gurgled as ichor fountained from him.

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  That was when the first of Kammani’s grotesqueries struck, taking his head off with a single swipe and scything through preternatural tissue as if it were no sturdier than mundane flesh. For a few moments the body remained standing, twitched. Then it collapsed all at once, landing with a meaty thud in the dirt.

  Not much of the encampment was finished following that, much of it having been incidentally destroyed by the massed rotary cannon fire.

  It was no matter, Silenos doubted anything of much worth would be found among such a place regardless. The survivors would be vetted for ability or use, and killed if they produced further resistance. He began the doing of it.

  Grotesqueries- only a few remaining now- encircled the settlement as people stepped forwards and addressed the attendants Silenos and Juragai had been lended. Analysts, trained and equipped to scan a person’s biology and arcane signature for traces of hidden potential. To determine what utility, if any, they could provide House Shaiagrazni. Depending on each one’s potential, their treatment would vary. Those of innate gifts deserved more than those without them.

  It was all tedious. Rarely would an ability of true note be discovered, and Silenos had not truly expected he would find the excitement of seeing one here. Still, he had been given his task and had no intentions of deviating from it. If only because House Shaiagrazni treated deviants…

  Well, he had just seen to the very way in which House Shaiagrazni treated deviants.

  Minutes passed, an hour. Silenos remained bored. His monotony was alleviated only at a fortuitous glance to the edge of the settlement, where he saw Juragai gesturing at something beyond his field of view. His stomach sank, and Silenos was heading towards the apprentice before he knew what was even happening. Instincts, in this moment, quicker than deliberative cognition.

  “What are you doing?” Silenos hissed, trailing off as he saw with his own eyes what the answer would be. A pair of children were just a few metres ahead of Juragai, freezing as they saw him. He’d been gesturing for them to back away. To leave, silently and secretly. The apprentice’s eyes went wide.

  “I-” Silenos punched him. There wasn’t an ounce of magic in his attack, it was a thing of pure physicality and fraying temper. Juragai was, however, a good deal smaller than him. It sent him straight to the ground and drew blood from his crumpled nose.

  “You fucking idiot!” He snapped, looming over the smaller boy. The children scattered. Silenos was too distracted to care. “You fucking, fucking idiot!” Juragai was slowly dragging himself up, wincing, flinching at every move Silenos made. It just made him angrier. How dare he be so pitiably fearful of something as minor as a punch to the face. Had he no idea what more he might bring onto himself?

  “I’m sorry.” The smaller boy began, not meeting Silenos’ eye. It made him want to throw another punch.

  “Was that what you planned on telling Mistress Kammani?” He snapped. “That you’re sorry? I’m sure she’ll understand that much. She has a reputation for forgiveness, right? It’s someone else I must be thinking of who’s famous for turning people into sentient sex toys.”

  That hardened Juragai’s eyes, which surprised Silenos. Not much could draw ire from the boy, let alone enough for his spine to harden in the face of conflict.

  “Why do you think I was being sneaky?” He snapped, looking around even as he said it. “You won’t…You know.”

  Tell her. Tell Mistress Kammani. Silenos would not tell the truth to one of the most powerful, cruel beings ever to live. Would he not? He-

  Footsteps behind them, Silenos whipped around. Kammani herself was approaching as if the very mention of her had worked as a summons.

  What had she heard. How much had she seen? Silenos realised, with a stab of terror, that Juragai’s nose was still visibly bleeding from the punch. From his punch. In his rage, he’d not thought that to strike an apprentice of House Shaiagrazni was to strike their master’s property. They were privileged, above the mere servitor caste, but only insofar as their potential to one day be more.

  Neither Silenos or Juragai had met that potential yet, and whatever punishment Kammani deemed suitable would be one he had no choice but to endure. She stopped walking just a pace or two short of them, eying Juragai with an arched brow.

  “And what happened to you?” She asked. The question was light, idle. She did not seem, particularly, to care. But Silenos knew better than to think that would have any effect on whatever punishment he received. Half the tenets of House Shaiagrazni had been written by the woman before him. She had not done that for a lack of belief in their wisdom.

  Just when Silenos was about to confess, Juragai spoke up instead.

  “A ricochet, Mistress.” He volunteered. “We were standing too close when the grotesqueries engaged one of the enemy’s supposed Demigods. A shot rebound from their body and, I believe, struck me in the face. It was from quite a distance, so most of its kinetic energy had already been exhausted, but it hit hard enough to do this. I am uninjured.”

  She studied him for a second, eyes seeming to pass clean through the boy’s body. Silenos hated his mistress’ stare. Hated how insubstantial he always felt before it. Like his skin was mere fog.

  “Idiot.” She replied. Juragai screamed as his testicles exploded as one, blood bursting from his groin. He dropped to the ground, foaming at the mouth, thrashing in agony, and Kammani watched as his pained spasms slowly weakened with exsanguination. At last, just as it seemed he would die, she healed him with a gesture, then turned and headed away.

  Silenos helped his fellow apprentice stand.

  “Why did you lie?” He asked, too stunned to even feel anything at the fact.

  “The punishment you’d have faced if I hadn’t would be…” He shivered, hand moving down to the now-repaired flesh between his legs. “Awful.”

  That was when the anger came, all at once like water through broken floodgates.

  “And if you’d been caught in your deception, it would have been a thousand times worse!” He spat. Juragai opened his mouth to respond, eyes hard with defiance, but Silenos cut him off. “No, no excuses, no buts. You need to toughen up Juragai. Your softness- your kindness- will get you fucking killed It’s a weakness here, not a strength.” He hadn’t noticed his own fatigue as he said that, his own draining exhaustion.

  Juragai remained silent, and so Silenos spoke again.

  “For your own sake, please, rid yourself of this compassion.”