Unrepentant

Silas put down the pestle, the faint stench of old leather still wafting from it.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out several rolls of high-quality gauze. After inspecting them for any sign of contamination, he was pleased to see they were all still sterile. With the gauze and the mortar containing the freshly prepared ointment in hand, he moved towards the unconscious Selen.

As he passed by Zinnia and Nyx, he couldn't help but notice the portly crow diligently sketching and writing descriptions for Zinnia, who leaned in close, scrutinizing his work.

Silas smirked at the sight of Nyx’s ink-dipped feather not only scribbling on paper but also leaving inadvertent marks on Zinnia’s face. A fleeting thought crossed his mind—Nyx might have been secretly studying the humanoid anatomy scrolls Silas had given him long ago, judging by the realism of the artwork. But Silas quickly dismissed the idea, after all patience was not one of Nyx’s virtues.

Reaching Selen's side, he placed a hand onto her neck to check her pulse. Her recovery was still progressing a little too well…

Her blood levels had improved beyond even his usually accurate expectations after administering only a single restorative.

Yet, strangely as her muscles regained their healthy shade, the malleable properties she exhibited earlier seemed to weaken.

"I wonder if she could survive without blood," Silas mused silently. "Hmm… something to test perhaps."

Zinnia sneezed suddenly, rubbing her nose. "Watch the damn feather," she snapped at Nyx.

Nyx squawked indignantly, flapping his wings in outrage as Zinnia had smudged the ink on her face.

Ignoring their bickering, Silas began spreading the ointment onto the clean gauze. He removed the blanket covering Selen and then started wrapping her from head to toe with the mixture covered gauze, starting from the bottom.

However, after less than a minute passed the skin which made contact with it had an unexpected reaction, it began to blister as if burnt by an open flame, releasing a rather heavy stench. The odor of it was so disgusting it even made Zinnia gag. She stood up from the floor and asked Silas what he was doing.

He raised an eyebrow. "I have mixed together a salve called [Gift of Salamander]. Usually, it functions to—"

"It's [Gift of the Salamander]," Zinnia interrupted proudly. "It gets the dead layer of skin on top of the body to draw in moisture from the surrounding air and forces it into the layers underneath while the top layer peels away. Standard beauty-enhancing procedure for those moneybags who want to keep looking 'perky.' Why are you dolling her up? That your kink?" She says with an annoyingly smug expression on her face.

Silas continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "—distribute energy evenly across a cultivator's body. At a low concentration, it causes the top layer of skin to peel off due to the inability of most bodies to handle an additional energy load focused into such a thin part of the body."

Zinnia's eye twitched. "Wait, what about the water that forms on top of the skin? Isn't it named after salamanders shedding their skin?"

Nyx flung a piece of paper at Zinnia with two words: "Sweat" and "Sal'amand."

Zinnia read it aloud, and Silas nodded towards Nyx while mixing something else into the mortar with the ointment.

"The beauticians who sold you that garbage added something to the mixture to force your body to sweat, without giving enough time for the sweat to mix with your bodies natural oils," Silas explained calmly. "The creator of the salve was named Sal'amand. Over time, his name got bastardized into Salamander."

Zinnia raised a clenched fist in anger upon realizing she'd fallen for a marketing scheme. "I'm going to have a nice long talk with someone as soon as I get out of here."

Nyx squawked with mirth and finished his drawings.

Silas dipped a fresh gauze into the revised mixture and carefully placed it onto the same portion of Selen's foot that had blistered earlier. This time, there was no such negative reaction. He watched as the ointment settled into her skin, the flesh remaining calm and unblemished.

"Fascinating," he said, his eyes alight with curiosity.

Zinnia, glanced over at him and asked, "What's so fascinating? And why are you even applying that to her?"

Silas didn't look up from his work. "Simply killing some time while we wait for Poliana to set up our next stage for us."

Zinnia rolled her eyes dramatically. "Oh, of course~, but what's the point of doing what you are right now?"

Silas finally met her gaze. "I wished to see how such a strange physiology would react to a substance that overly enriches the largest organ of the body with energy."

Nyx flew up onto Silas's shoulder and cawed questioningly, looking down at Selen's foot. He squawked a few more times as if conveying his thoughts.

"I added Niacarine to the ointment," Silas explained, nodding at Nyx. The crow nodded back before flying onto Zinnia's head, much to her annoyance.

"What did that do to the [Gift of Salamander]?" Zinnia asked, swatting at Nyx.

"It's a substance usually used to delay the effect of pills without diluting their potency," Silas replied. "The problem earlier was that her flesh seems to be a better conductor for energy than even some of the arcane metals used by Magicrafters for their tools. As soon as the original mixture touched her flesh, it began to burn because all of the energy within her body at once focused on the area touching the salve, essentially cooking herself from the inside out due to the heat generated."

Silas paused, studying Selen's form. "I'm surprised she chose to be an Artificer. With this property alone, she could easily become the jewel of Magicrafters, perhaps even having her name resound throughout the continent."

"Really?" Zinnia asked, eyes wide with shock.

"No," Silas deadpanned.

Zinnia gave him a deadpan look in response but then noticed something strange. Selen's shaved head was beginning to fill up with luscious silver hair at an alarming rate.

"That is unexpected," Silas said, tilting his head.

"What is unexpected?" Zinnia asked.

Nyx decided to show her instead. From atop Zinnia's head, he plucked a hair, causing her to yelp out with a profanity. Ignoring her protests, Nyx hopped down and grabbed onto her belt before quickly pecking at her arm and plucking an almost invisible yet unmistakable hair.

"Ow! Damn bird!" Zinnia swore again but finally comprehended what Nyx was showing her. She looked again at Selen—specifically at her arms, legs, upper lip, and even the private area still wrapped in gauze. Unlike the hair on her head, there was no growth anywhere else.

"That is weird," she agreed.

Silas rubbed his chin in thought before reaching into his satchel and pulling out a set of square crystal containers.

Before Zinnia could ask what he was doing now, Silas yanked out a few strands of hair from Selen and placed them into one container. He drew some blood into another container and pulled out a sample of fat from her hip into yet another one. Unceremoniously but rather disgustingly to Zinnia's eyes, he squeezed the inside of Selen’s cheeks and tilted her head so saliva could flow into one of the containers.

"What are you doing?" Zinnia finally snapped out of it and asked.

"Sampling," Silas said stoically as he flipped Selen onto her side and grabbed one of his silver needles.

He pointed it at her spine while Zinnia quickly turned away not wanting to look at the process of his sampling.

Selen found herself still stuck within the strange realm of dreams, her consciousness slowly reawakening as she found herself on all fours. Her hand felt as if it were mired in something thick and unyielding—a red, viscous substance that clung to her skin like tar. Her vision was obscured, her eyes stung by the same material that covered her face, clinging to her eyelashes in a sticky mass that made even blinking a struggle. She instinctively shook her hand, dislodging some of the sludge, and wiped away the grime from her face. With a groan, she pushed herself upright, her gaze sweeping over her surroundings.

The world around her was blanketed in an oppressive mist, dense and humid, that seemed to wrap around her like a shroud. Below her feet was an endless expanse of thick, cloying mud, stretching out in every direction into the fog's obscuring veil. The light in this strange place was peculiar—ethereal glows emanated from patches of the mist, casting an eerie luminescence, while other areas were draped in shadow, as if the light itself had been drained from them.

Tentatively, Selen took a step forward and felt something firm beneath the mud. Curiosity piqued, she reached down, her fingers closing around something solid. She pulled with effort, her heart racing as she brought the object into view.

What she held was disturbingly familiar, yet utterly alien—a figure, vaguely human in shape, though far from complete. It was as if a sculptor had abandoned their work midway, leaving the form soft and unrefined, its surface pliant and textured almost like flesh. Yet as she watched, the arm she held began to fragment, splitting apart to reveal that it was most definitely not made of flesh at all, but of the same mud-like substance that surrounded her, its interior hollow and unsettling.

A chill ran down her spine, but before she could fully comprehend what she was seeing, a sound cut through the heavy air—a cry, sharp with frustration, followed by a mournful wail that seemed to echo from an ancient soul. She spun toward the source of the noise, but the mist obscured her view, revealing only shifting shadows. The voice changed, its timbre shifting, growing younger and younger until it became the plaintive cry of a newborn.

Selen hurriedly rubbed the last of the mud from her eyes, her vision clearing just as she caught sight of something extraordinary. A multitude of clay hands, rising from the mud, held aloft a tiny, newborn figure. The glowing mist coiled around the infant like a protective cocoon, its luminescence casting an almost serene light over the unsettling tableau.

“What is happening?” Selen’s voice broke the silence, but it was not her voice. It was deeper, more resonant, and the very sound of it caused the world around her to shudder as if the dreamscape itself were reacting to her words.

The dull shadowy mist began to move, rolling toward her like a living thing, its intent unmistakable. Panic surged through her, an instinctual fear that urged her to flee. She struggled to free her legs from the mire, each step an agonizing effort, until she finally managed to break into a run, her eyes fixed on a distant strand of glowing mist. She reached out, her hand grasping desperately at the light, just as she felt a tendril of the dull mist brush against her back.

But she was faster. With a final, desperate leap, she hurled herself into the bright glow, leaving the encroaching darkness behind. Safe within the light, she paused, breathing heavily, and absently brushed a few strands of hair from her face. The touch of the hair against her fingertips felt unfamiliar. She glanced down and froze.

“Silver…” she murmured, staring at the strands of hair that gleamed in the ethereal light. “This is not mine...”

As she stood there, the light surrounding her grew even more intense, until it consumed everything around her in a blinding brilliance.