The New Dark Lord: Book 3- Chapter 24 (Patreon)

The Schism remained stubbornly intact, defeating Silenos’ efforts to widen it with a contemptuous stagnancy and failing to so much as quiver against them. She did not let her frustration show. At first. But it mounted quickly as one failed attempt turned into a dozen more. She had noticeably drained her own mana by the time she finally took a longer pause to consider an alternative.

Only then did the hybrid’s head chime in, a smug lilt to its voice.

“Oh, you’re not able to open up gates between worlds under your own power?”

Silenos wanted to liquefy the head, then force it to drink itself. It would not have been an especially productive thing to do, however, and so she restrained herself.

“And you can?” She snapped back. Silenos had been snapping a lot, lately. The idea of keeping her emotions shackled and contained seemed somehow absurd. She was already a traitor to everything she had ever known, what did it matter if she added a few minor infractions atop that?

“I can.” The head replied eagerly. “Easily actually. I don’t think you quite understand how much more powerful I am than you.”

Something had raised its spirits after Silenos’ new body had finished the cloning process. She suspected the hybrid had been somewhat unsure of her ability to kill it, and had that confidence bolstered upon seeing the extent of her Fleshcrafting. If so, it was a fool. There was more to an Entity’s form than molecules and energy. 

But it did not need to know that much.

“Do it.” Silenos commanded the creature. 

“Say please.” The head replied.

Silenos shook it, for one minute, two. She continued shaking it until, at last, the severed head yelled out its apology and promised to commit its powers to the task. Then she watched as it did so. 

The Schism opened with infuriating speed, responding to the hybrid’s magic as if it had been waiting for it. Silenos made a note of the phenomenon. It seemed the connection between a hybrid and the Shallow Depths was greater than she had anticipated. For now, however, she had greater concerns. The Schism widened, a great light of mana engulfed her and she found herself drifting once more through dimensionless space.

Soil came down underfoot, a soft cushion that Silenos sank into under the momentum of her long fall. Momentum? She was under the will of rational physics again, then. She looked around…

And realised she was not in the New World. Distantly, figures clashed. Towering things the size of mountains, one a great bare-chested humanoid with a bloody fissure beneath one breast and a great whip held in each fist. The other a snake, coiling and winged with acid dropping from its fangs to sear a new chasm everyplace a drop landed. With each motion of either giant, the landscape changed around them. Blasted and thrust apart by sheer weight at play.

Silenos stayed very, very still. She did not need to look with her arcane sight to know that this battle was beyond her, even in war-form. A humbling realisation. Just as she had been a thing beyond the New World, so too were there worlds beyond herself. Perhaps there was one beyond even her master, too. 

“This is not the right universe.” She growled to the head at her side.

“Right.” It wheezed. “Sorry, one second.” The Schism above her, not yet fully closed, widened again and Silenos found herself dragged into it. The world distorted and broke apart for the second time as she fell again.

The High Shallows greeted her underfoot, and she scowled at the hybrid.

“You are an inept rat,” she informed it, earning a glare in return which would have seen the hybrid’s eyes plucked out were it not so- temporarily- useful.

“This isn’t an exact deed.” It snapped. “Be patient, and tell your companions to stick close.”

Silenos had just enough time to glance over and see both the paladin and vampire approaching her before a new surge took the Schism, and she was once again dragged through unreality. This time there was no choking pollution of magic in the air, which was a good sign. 

She dropped down into a building, slipping through its roof as the matter turned intangible to allow entry and landing on her feet before…Three men. All young, all above-average in height, all staring with the kind of look she’d come to expect in Collin Baird. 

One was of tan or brown skin similar to her own, another pale and scratchy, the third was a darker shade of black than any in Ado’s family. Each one of them was on edge, primed and ready to move fast.

“Who the fuck are you?” The pale one asked, the tallest by some margin. His voice was remarkably similar to Baird’s. In accent, surprisingly, but more pressingly in tone and direction. It had an almost unstable quiver to it that had Silenos’ own guard raising to ready for violence.

“I am Silenos Shaiagrazni.” Silenos explained. “Master of the arcane arts, Named of House Shaiagrazni and mightiest being your pitiable world has ever seen.”

“I made this pitiable world, cunt.” The tallest one growled, actually growled like some sort of animal. “And you don’t even crack the top ten.”

Silenos took one step forwards, raising her hands. The brown-skinned man, most muscular by far, took two forwards himself, and in a flash of arcane discharge his body was wreathed in armour of glowing white etherea, his hands clutched a long sword made of the very same material. She paused.

“Let’s not get hasty here.” The last of the strangers, a dark-skinned man only slightly shorter than the others, cut in. “We don’t know each other, and as far as I’m aware none of us have any reason to be…Unfriendly. Maybe, we can even work together, right? How did you get into my mansion? Let’s start with that, because that’s what has me really curious here.”

“I do not have to explain myself to you, I am above you in every way. You are an imbecile.” Silenos informed him. She had not fully entered her war-form, but her arm had transformed itself to its primary cannon configuration. She gauged the thickness of the brown man’s armour. Going by the density of magic within its material, she suspected it would prove sturdier by far than steel. But even centimetres thick, that did not mean it would resist her weapon.

“Pretty gun you have there.” The blonde noted. “What’s it fire, arrows?”

Silenos’ eye twitched. Arrows. What sort of savage did he take her for? She unleashed the cannon, into the wall. Watched stone explode outwards as the men stared.

The tall, pale one was quickest to overcome his surprise.

“Solid shots then, eh?” He was interrupted as the darkest of them hurriedly spoke.

“Holy shit stop antagonizing her!”

The pale one ignored her. “Explosive propellant. An actual gun. Interesting. And you make your own ammo right? Using the same power that lets you reshape your limbs.”

“Dude,” The darker, calmer man continued, “She’s going to kill us.”

“No she’s not.” The brown man interjected. “I can take her.”

“No you fucking can’t!”

Silenos didn’t answer, not the blonde one’s question nor the bickering of his associates. She was not pleased with how much information he seemed to have gleaned.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” The pale man continued. “You’re not using sabbots? If you make smaller projectiles, wrapped in lighter material, you can apply more force without increasing barrel pressure to get higher velocities in your projectiles. Probably even hypersonic with that weapon. You didn’t think of that already though. Above us in every way?” He grinned. “Maybe in chromosome count.”

He had to die, Silenos decided. Such an insult to her could not be permitted, she took another step forwards, raised her cannon and saw the room explode into violence. Then the Schism widened again and displaced her all over. 

The Shallow Depths met her with their usual, unfriendly embrace. Silenos landed well, Hexeri and Ensharia did not. 

“What was that?” The paladin groaned, getting up to her knees. “Who was that?”

Hexeri was already standing, lip curled. “I don’t know, that blonde one though…” She shivered. “It was like his eyes were licking me.”

“Nobody.” Silenos cut in, rage bubbling still in her mind. “Nothing. They were an irrelevance.”

Encase the smaller projectiles in lighter material… She could up projectile diameter within the barrel, while increasing mass disproportionately. This would allow for a higher velocity while acceleration was still underway from the propellant, and the lighter fixture holding her projectile- the sabbot- would fall away as it left the barrel. So simple, so obvious.

That worm had thought of it, and she had not?

“I need you to take me back there.” Silenos growled to the head, already experimenting with a new pattern for projectiles fitting that description. She would see how smug the rat was when he tasted the fruits of his own design. 

“I won’t.” The hybrid replied. 

Silenos reached down, took it from its fixture against her hip and raised it high.

“Why?” She asked, biting back the urge to say so much more.

“Because that wasn’t our deal.” It replied. “I take you to where you want to go, a world you can do your work in peace, and you kill me.”

“I can do my work in peace in that world.” She snarled.

“No, you can’t. That boy corrected your weaponry at a glance, and claimed that there were at least ten things more powerful than you there. I don’t want to chance him being right twice. I’ll take you somewhere else. Bring me to another point.”

Silenos stood trembling for a moment, the rage animating her. She slowly forced it back down, and silently carried the head where it had asked.

It did not take so long, this time the head was rather eager as it directed her through the Depths.

“I feel this one.” It urged. “I feel it more strongly than any other, it reeks of fate.”

Fate. A primitive term for the phenomena of causality being gleaned by sights bolstered by more than mere biology. She did not bother to correct the hybrid, simply let it guide her on in its own satisfaction. Hexeri and Ensharia were similarly silent. She supposed the realms they had experienced would have been all the more disturbing for them than even for her, most things were for the weak.

Silenos paused. Was that empathy? From her? She felt her disgust mounting, and surprised herself by glancing at Ensharia as it did. Somehow, that alleviated the feeling. And replaced it altogether with a sudden rage that even she could not pinpoint the origins of.

“We’re here.” The hybrid announced, drawing Silenos from her infuriating mental disruption and bringing the group’s focus to…Nothing. A spot, like any other. Only to her arcane eyes was it different at all, and even then only by a slight…

No, Silenos saw more. Felt more. A strange tugging at her will, almost similar to the feeling of her magic connecting with tissue as she remodelled it. 

“What is this?” She asked, uncertain why exactly. If she had expected the hybrid to know more than her, she would have been disappointed.

“The right way.” He breathed, and the air began distorting again. Yet again Silenos and her companions were displaced. This time they landed hard on paved streets, battered by a hot sun and surrounded on all sides by towering buildings and staring guards. Guards wearing armour of impossible metallic perfection, wielding weapons bound with lesser Entities, adorned with sigils she had come to know more familiarly than even her own name.

It took all of three seconds for the assembly of Shaiagraznian guards to recognise her, and less than one more for them to lower their arms.

“Mas-Mistress Silenos.” The nearest one called. “It is an honour to behold you once more.”