Silenos felt an overwhelming sense of deja-vouz as they began the preparations to summon the very Entity which had displaced him. It was not the pleasant kind, rather the kind that came when one had already been burned and now heard the crackling of flame and smelled the sterility of smoke.

  “They will not be able to interfere with this, will they?” He asked Adonis, gesturing at their now-bound prisoners. Ensharia still glared at him with undisguised hate, Hexeri with unhidden fear. Both sentiments felt nostalgic to Silenos. It had been so very long since he had enjoyed a proper reception from others.

  “They will not.” Adonis replied. “I am far beyond your childish understanding of Esoterica, and have taken steps to ensure the Entity will not be able to communicate them at all.”

  Silenos nodded. “Good.”

  They continued their work in relative silence, neither having much to say to the other. Not compared to the imperative of combining skills and empowering their work. Once more, he was overcome with the satisfaction of using his powers alongside a near-equal. Silenos let himself appreciate the sensation while it lasted.

  But it did not last long. If there was any downside to the state, it would be that. They needed so little time to accomplish anything with their knowledge combined.

  The summoning was completed, and the world became an ocean of magical power.

  Silenos would have been impressed at any other time; it was, after all, the strongest Entity he had ever conjured. But his time in the Shallow Depths had spoiled him. Nothing he’d encountered there was a match for this creature, but the magical ambience was more than any one being could fill the mundane world with, however great its presence. He forced himself to look at the broken geometry of its body.

  Changed, since the first summoning. That was no great surprise. Entities were loathe to remain stagnant. Save for their magic. As always, this one was beyond impressive. Wielding the power to change the world, or break it. The power to do…

  Anything?

  Silenos felt a sense of unease building in the pit of his stomach, a mental conflict too abstract and distant for him to understand.

  “Entity, we have conjured you, and now we bind you. Defy us if you dare.”

  It dared, instantly. Magic thrashed against the walls of its existential cage like storm winds against a mountain, but the binding held strong. With Silenos and Adonis’ power combined, and levered by the hybrid’s esoteric nature, they had conjured a shackle even this being could not break.

  And yet he did feel it strain. A terrifying sensation, even with two Named of House Shaiagrazni amplifying their potence a hundredfold it was making the binding strain. Silenos again felt that feeling.

  It can do anything. A thought was brewing in the back of his mind, too great to give voice, too dangerous. Too wrong. Immoral and unforgivable. He banished it, yet it remained.

  What would you ask of me.

  Even now the Entity framed its response as a request. Silenos glanced at Adonis, and saw that his fellow Shaiagrazni, of course, had caught the deception.

  “Demand, Entity, we demand of you. You will obey us, no matter what.” The binding shimmered, constricting the being with a tightening noose of magic which would have beheaded a mountain. Even the Entity shrieked in agony.

  And what would you demand of me. The voice echoed in Silenos’ mind, unchanged by the torment inflicted upon its owner.

  He remained silent, letting Adonis speak. He was the one who’d mastered Esoterica between them. The results of his last attempt still stung, easily avoidable oversight though they had been.

  Adonis inhaled, readied to speak. The words came out.

  “You are to resurrect the magus known in this world as Arion Falls, freeing his cognitive essence from its Necromantic cage and restoring his body.”

  The silence was deafening.

  Granted. Silenos wondered whether he was imagining the note of amusement, or rather whether he was imagining it more than he was the Entity’s voice as a whole. It was gone before he could ponder the notion more, simply disappearing like a lost memory.

  Slowly, Silenos turned to Adonis. The look upon his face was not rage, nor, quite, disbelief. It was…Stupefaction. A simple refusal to respond, as if his face had been paralysed by the shock of what he’d seen.

  He must have been more practical in calling upon his magic, for Silenos’ cannon caught him directly in the face and merely blasted him back rather than removing the head from his body. Everything exploded into motion at once, after that.

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  Adonis erupted from the ground only a second into Silenos’ transformation. It was a very long period of incapacitation, by the standards of their inhuman reflexes, but not nearly long enough. The wall of flames wrapped around him bought precious milliseconds longer. Silenos used it to continue his transformation, to throw himself into the safety of war-form. To unbalance Adonis by drawing his attention to the imminent completion, and thus distract him from the great volume of blasting oil already conjured with his Fleshcrafting.

  It detonated just as he leapt over it, shaped container of keratin compressing the blast enough to direct a considerable fraction of it upwards. It was nothing like the shaped charges Silenos had seen cut clean through heavy metal plating, and Adonis’ magically-strengthened flesh was nothing like mere steel, but the primary aim had been to blast him from Silenos’ sight. Time was what he needed, every second was a treasure beyond price. He’d just won several more.

  Silenos did many things very quickly. He extended a tendril of nervous tissue from his shoulder, wrapping it around the Tempered Schism and interfacing with its magic via the tactility it provided. As he did, he stormed towards the bound prisoners. Hexeri and Ensharia were the closest. He would have called it fate, were he a savage imbecile whose intellect had been tainted by superstition.

  The Vampire was free already, and the paladin, Silenos saw, had already half-snapped her own shackles when he tore them asunder with one swift tug. She glared up at him.

  “This changes nothing.” Ensharia spat. “You’re stil-WHAT THE FUCK!?” Silenos interrupted her as the Tempered Schism split reality once more by reaching out to grab the woman by her head, then hurling her across the expansive room and through the break in reality. Hexeri had barely even reacted when he did the same to her, and then it was his turn to lunge for it.

  Adonis burst back down from the ceiling, slamming into the floor before him. Silenos’ cannon screamed. It was a blank shot, filling the air with more smoke than Adonis would have expected, clouding his vision and confounding him just long enough for the streak of shadestuff to hit home. Silenos saw his former apprentice stumble away, and then blasted him with his primary weapon.

  He double-loaded it, pressing it beyond its structural limits and feeling even his own augmented bones and armour-plating shiver at the strain of its own power. But the results spoke for themselves, and they spoke loudly. Adonis shot back as if he’d been the object caught in Silenos’ barrel, barging into a stone wall and breaking it beneath his mass. Silenos didn’t pause to check the damage, he couldn’t afford to grant his enemy even an instant. He’d almost been beaten by Adonis before- had been beaten, and would have perished without interference- this was an enemy who demanded every screed of his focus.

  So he fired again, while Adonis was still reeling. The explosive shell engulfed him, and a moment later another solid slug drove him farther into his den of cratered stone. Silenos let off another shot with every other stride he took towards the Schism, tempted to hope that each would prove the last his enemy could survive. Of course, he knew better. His makeshift weaponry had not been made to slay an enemy of high Shaiagraznian war-magic. It would struggle against his own defenses, and Adonis may well have exceeded even those. He cast more shadestuff over him to compensate, fired again, again. Another step to the Schism.

  Motion exploded outwards, seeming to shake the entire room. Silenos’ next shot went high as Adonis went low, scraping beneath it and driving his mace upwards for Silenos’ ribs. His free arm, now shaped into a shield, caught the blow and Silenos stumbled away. Adonis tried to close, hissed as Silenos’ tail whipped out to drive a self-destructive litre of shadestuff against him. The Necromantic substance ate away the very limb which had wielded it even as it attacked Silenos’ foe. He ignored the pain, shut the relevant nerve-endings off, and fired again.

  Somehow, Adonis twisted aside from his cannon and smashed his mace down against its barrel. Keratin surrendered, collapsed inwards and Silenos was disarmed. Almost. His shield rammed against Adonis’ chest and sent him stumbling before he could follow up- Silenos had learned a thing or two about melee, however undignified it was. He used his chance well, reshaping his cannon.

  There was no time for a complicated firearm, so he settled for a lance of hardened nacre and restructured his mangled tail-tip into a similar barb. Adonis backed away for a moment, cautious. Silenos drove on before his former apprentice could gather his wits and realise that he still had the vast advantage in close quarters experience. A thrust, which would have been parried were it not a feint. Silenos feinted again with the whip of his tail and used Adonis’ chance to flinch as he cracked the shield down. His limbs were longer by far, owing to his towering height, and the reach was his. Between his long lance and short shield, also, he had greater options at any distance.

  But the strength was Adonis’. The speed too, and perhaps even the resilience. Silenos’ war-form was, fundamentally, a compromise. If it could match an equal master of close-quarters magic, then no Shaiagrazni would ever choose anything else. If it was unstoppable in the New World, it was only because Silenos himself had such a laughable excess of raw power over its residents.

  That was not an advantage he enjoyed here. Close to double Silenos’ age, Adonis was his equal in the fields of mana reserves and magical weight. Perhaps, by some small margin, even his superior. Silenos roared.

  It was not some animalistic bellow, of course. The indignity of that would kill him as sure as his enemy’s mace, no Silenos roared to make use of the carefully reconstructed abdominal musculature he’d devised following his and Adonis’ initial bout. They proved effective. As Silenos’ ears warded themselves off and barricaded against the sound, Adonis’ remained vulnerable. The stone underfoot split apart under the atmospheric pressure of an engine made to generate sound more perfectly than any other. Pneumonic strength, blasting oil, other hydraulic mechanisms that all worked in cohesion.

  Blood trickled down Adonis’ ears, running out of his helmet. It was, Silenos thought, remarkable. He had not only failed to instantly perish, but was still conscious. An utterly infuriating display of contempt for his will, demanding punishment.

  But not now. Silenos’ ability to torment Adonis at his will had been left in the past, for the moment he settled with smashing the caster aside and hurling himself through the Schism. He watched, falling back into it, as Adonis righted himself, clambered to his feet and prepared to give chase.

  Then paused, and, with a gesture, closed the opening after him. Silenos was given a few moments to wonder which of them had actually gotten the better of the other in that exchange, then the Schism sealed itself and rendered his question moot. It was over now, which meant Adonis was no longer a problem.

  Not until Silenos had survived whatever he was falling towards…Or failed to.