The preparations for carving runes into his spine and skull were worryingly fast. Viktor's blood was brought forth and placed into his cauldron, and mixed with a dozen or so herbs he'd never seen before. It didn't take longer than five minutes, and finally, a cup of Arthur's blood was added to the mix.

  Vira had been the one to prepare everything. It was the first time anyone else had used his trusty bowl, and the ancient healer marvelled at how much more powerful her alchemy was. A 25% increase in potency was no small thing, and Arthur was worried he might have been too ambitious this time. Cyprus had already said the rune was impossible to bear, and he'd just gone and juiced it up.

  Arthur attempted to identify the completed ink, but Homunculus' Eye showed him nothing more than the mixture's name followed by a string of question marks.

  "This is your last chance, Arthur. I need you asleep to operate on you properly. Flinch at the wrong time or fight back, and I might put a hole through your brain."

  "There's no issues there," Arthur replied, "I'll have Wovan tie me down properly."

  Vira frowned. "Your funeral, Arthur. Don't say I didn't warn you."

  Vira led him to the centre of the Lupis Consortium and pulled a lever that was perfectly camouflaged against a pillar. The ground shook as the floor opened up, a platform rising steadily from it. Arthur wasn't very impressed by what he saw. The operating table, if it could even be called that, was shaped like a very large, ugly dentist's chair, only it was made out of a solid slab of marble.

  Vira mumbled something under her breath, and the operating table started to transform, hard edges smoothing and rounding out until it looked more like something he'd see in a modern hospital. Arthur sighed in relief. Thank the heavens for magic. The transformation process finally finished with four chains materialising out of thin air, one for each of his limbs, Arthur assumed, and a metal brace to secure his head in place.

  Arthur's strength stat wasn't the highest, but he'd breathe a little easier if Wovan used her webs to reinforce the shackles. Not the mythical grade stuff—it would cost far too much to produce enough—but the temporary kind she'd used when fighting the magma serpent. Finally, Vira pulled a surgical blade out of her storage bracelet. It was very different from anything he'd used on Earth, but then again, this one had to be capable of carving into bone, too. It wasn't anywhere near as thin and looked like it could be used pretty well in combat if the occasion called for it.

  "I'm going to need you to pour your energy into this knife. It'll allow me to cut your body without worrying about how durable it is. Some finicky magic that fools your natural defences into thinking the blade is a part of your flesh. No way I'll be able to cut you otherwise. Certainly not precisely enough to do any runework."

  Arthur took the blade from Vira, quickly dismissing any remaining doubts he had. He wasn't going to get cold feet now. Arthur pushed his ether into the blade until it couldn't accept anything else, dipping into his healthpool to do so. It topped off at a maximum of 27,345 points of energy. Not bad for a tool that wasn't meant for battle.

  Arthur settled into the marble chair, marvelling at how comfortable it was relative to its looks, almost like he was lying down on a memory-foam mattress designed specifically for him. The shackles latched around his limbs, tightening until he couldn't move them a single millimetre. The chair grew around his chest, covering him in stone. He was well and truly trapped now.

  Reaching out to Wovan, Arthur ordered four of her bodies to disengage from the battle outside. Whether it was because of her nature as an Ender or the fact that Link allowed her to easily use magic wherever he was, his Soul Splinter had no trouble teleporting past the wards that had stopped Vira. Giving her the go-ahead, she immediately set about reinforcing the restraints with her temporary webbing. Viktor just stared at the Ender who had suddenly invaded his home. If he was shocked or afraid, the ancient dragon did a good job of hiding it.

  "I'm not even surprised at this point," Vira said, glaring at the floating spiders with distrust. Wovan rarely walked anywhere these days. Since evolving, she used her telekinesis to maintain constant flight, just as she was doing right now.

  "Last chance for sedatives. I won't ask again."

  "Nope," Arthur replied. "You might want to hurry, though. The siege outside hasn't gotten any easier with a tenth of Wovan popping down here."

  Vira sighed and approached the table. "You do realise the patient here is you, right?" She said, placing the blade between his eyes. "I'd never tell my surgeon to rush things."

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  Arthur smiled at her, though it came out a little strained. The reality of things was hitting him now. He was about to get operated on, for the first time in his life, and he'd decided to remain conscious throughout the entirety of it. Thankfully, Arthur would be cheating a little. He wasn't entirely insane. Just as Vira applied pressure to the blade, Arthur Linked with the spider closest to his head. The surgical blade cut through his flesh like a hot knife through butter until it reached his skull. It hurt like hell, and Arthur would have definitely moved if he hadn't been so securely strapped down.

  "You good?" Vira asked

  "Yes," Arthur mumbled in reply, his voice strained. "I won't be speaking again until the surgery's complete, so no more questions, please."

  Vira nodded, as if such strange requests were regular occurrences in her life. For a healer as old as she was, they probably were. With that confirmation given, Arthur took Link a step further than he ever had before. He detached his consciousness almost entirely from his body, as much as the skill would allow, and settled fully in Wovan. He could still feel the pain of a knife wedged in his head, but it was muted now, almost like it was happening to someone else.

  Vira worked incredibly quickly after that, making a series of cuts around his eyes and the top of his skull, shearing off his beautiful hair as she did so. The reclining chair he was lying on adjusted as she worked, rising up until his body was in a seated position, the support on the back of his head disappearing to grant Vira full access to his skull. His head was kept in place entirely by magic now. Forty-seven seemingly random cuts through flesh and muscle later, Vira took a step back and massaged her hands.

  "You're one tough bastard, even with this knife. Let's see if I've still got my touch." Vira placed the tips of her fingers on the top of Arthur's skull, right in the centre. "They used to call this the bloody flower when I was a kid," she murmured.

  Three seconds later, Arthur saw why. He got a front row seat to the sight of his skin and flesh peeling back from his skull, two centimetre-wide strips of it that dropped down and hung from his neck like the petals of some macabre flower, his pristine white skull revealed at the centre as the protruding pistil.

  "I'm glad your blood's so thick," Vira chuckled, as if the sight of Arthur's degloved head didn't bother her in the slightest. "You just can't be normal. Can't complain though. Makes my job so much easier when I have a clean canvas to work with."

  Anatomically speaking, Arthur had no idea how Vira had done what she had without cutting any of the veins and nerves located around his skull. So far as he could tell visually, it seemed like they had simply ceased to exist.

  Wasting no time, Vira pulled a mallet from her storage bracelet and began to carve into his skull. It was very different from the runework he'd learned from Cyprus, where you had to work with the essence of an object, but runecraft had never been a linear subject. Not once did Vira pause to consider her work or second-guess herself. She was a master at her craft, and Arthur wondered how many decades she'd spent dedicated to honing it.

  Contrary to common misconceptions, bones did have nerves you could sense with, and having his skull carved into wasn't pleasant, even as detached as he was from his body.

  The entire process took a grand total of seven minutes, after which Vira peeled back the strip of flesh covering his spine through a hole that had conveniently appeared at the back of his chair. Carving the runes there took far longer. They were far smaller and required a delicate touch. The ancient healer only messed up once at the end as she worked on his tailbone. She had to heal the lower third of his spine and start over again, but she didn't curse once, attending to her task with a clinical precision that was more machine than human.

  By the time Vira had finished, almost two hours had passed, and she was drenched in sweat. She fell back into a summoned chair and leaned back, breathing deeply. Arthur ordered the body he was 'borrowing' to float closer to his skull and used Wovan's eyes to inspect Vira's work. It perfectly matched what he'd shown Cyprus. The woman had done an incredible job, thousands of runes, all carved into his skeleton, some of them a centimetre deep and others a few millimetres.

  Viktor, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke. "Rest now, my child, and let me finish the job." The fiery dragon head turned to face him—not his body, but the spider he was currently inhabiting. It seemed the dragon had caught on to his trick. He had made it pretty damn clear, after all.

  "This is your final chance, dragon eater. You can still walk away. Heal your bones and call this a failed venture. This is the path of no return, the final bridge you must cross."

  "Show me some magic if you wish to proceed."

  Wovan summoned a tiny portal.

  Viktor grinned. "Let us finish this, then, Arthur Ward."

  The dragon's blood, which had been simmering in his cauldron for the last few hours, rose into the air and plunged into Arthur's exposed skeleton, filling the runic grooves Vira had painstakingly carved. There was far too much blood, and far too little space to work with, but the laws of physics didn't matter much in the face of draconic magic. Viktor's blood bonded with Arthur's skeleton, the runic carving becoming a part of his very soul, his new natural state. This was different from what he'd seen on the undead, so much more powerful.

  His skeleton began to heal, the carvings filling in with bone, though this time with a reddish tinge. Arthur's skull was glowing red hot, along with his spine, like steel freshly removed from a forge, only Arthur's temperature was rising instead of dropping.

  3,000 degrees. 4,000. 5,000. 10,000.

  At this point, Arthur was hotter than the surface of the sun, and only Viktor's magic prevented him from combusting along with everything else in the Lupis Consortium.

  There was surprisingly little pain to accompany the process, which he was infinitely grateful for. All his nerve endings had been fried to hell and back. It took a while for his skeleton to cool down, almost an hour, during which Viktor and Vira carefully helped him maintain his body's functions. Finally, Arthur's consciousness stepped back into his body, and the healing he'd kept at bay all this time exploded into motion, reknitting his peeled-back skin and flesh.

  The bloody flower had closed.

  Arthur was whole again.

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