Arius had ridden roughshod over the Brotherhood, but more than that he had embarrassed all of them. In a few short weeks, Mephisto's scheming and counterplotting had eroded them from being the one major obstacle in his path to little more than a dirt track beneath the wheels of his well oiled machinations. Each pained gasp from the Telgradian, each groan of pain from the young Felicity Rhylolite and each moment that passed without Storm Veritas was just another paving slab in the road to unopposed rule, and the warlock savoured it with every kick and every punch. Arius was so ahead of himself, so sure of his victory that he wasn't even relying on his magic to maim anymore; a final, unbearable insult.

As the Telgradian looked up through blurred vision, past the crimson band of his own blood, he watched as the man he hated most cultivated a world of pain for his apprentice. A swiftly flowing stream of blows rained down before he finally reverted to magic again; a sign that he was ramping up the assault and getting serious. Felicity was dangerous when cornered, but even though she was smirking through the blows and absorbing as much punishment as her body could take, there were only flickers of her power and no sign of a full activation of her beserker magic.

His heart sank at the realisation of his foolishness. She had been his closing gambit. Gweneal himself seemed to be reluctant to interfere, or otherwise unable. Clenching a fistful of dirt, he cursed to himself as he pilated to his knees, crushing the blood-soaked grains of sand within his grasp in anger. Shinsou had been terribly naive, putting such pressure on her, believing that her unrefined abilities would come out of nowhere to save them all. Storm's sudden disappearance now signalled the worst case scenario for the Telgradian. Now because of him both his best friend and his apprentice, the two people who looked to him and trusted him, had been failed by his poor judgment.

It was too much.

With a roar of anger, Shinsou slammed his knuckles into the ground and ground the dirt beneath into pits. A surge of adrenaline shot through his pained chassis and, drawing upon every last drop of energy available to him, the Telgradian righted himself.

His head lifted to bring his eyes up to Arius, who had now paused his brutal assault on Felicity to gaze upon the broken man he had floored moments ago. As he stood, seething and as if lifted by the Thayne themselves, thoughts raced through his mind. All this time, Shinsou had been counting on everyone else to come up with a solution. Storm, with his mighty power. Felicity, with her unlimited potential. But what about Shinsou? What about all of the terrifying power at his disposal? Yes, Arius was almost beyond the pale, but had the Telgradian really ever used the extent of his abilities? The years of pain, of struggle, of suffering that he had endured to ascend to this point were telling, but he had never once let it all go in the name of anything. Not once; not against Felicity in the Citadel, not against Storm in Radasanth all that time ago. Why was he holding back, still, when he could still end this?

…because you’re scared of becoming something like Arius, aren’t you? Some power mad, bitter old man with a huge chip on your shoulder. Scared you’ll be hated again here like on Telgradia. You fucking idiot. You’ll never be him. You’ll never be anything if you don’t stop him here. You owe it to Storm and Felicity, and everyone in the Brotherhood and beyond to annihilate this cunt once and for all. You owe it to yourself. Stop holding back.

As the Telgradian reconciled with himself, he quickly rose his right hand parallel to his shoulder. It flirted with the air before violently tearing the powerful Enpera from its otherworldly sheath, a rift of dark matter conjured from a well of his shadow sorcery. Earthly scents of damp rock and cold electricity mingled in the air about Shinsou as the surroundings simply held their breath.

“Break, Enpera!”

The resulting snap resounded loudly enough to drive away the birds in the trees outside of Whitevale’s perimeter wall. A multihued shockwave of latent energy from the release of his sword’s seal sucked up an ever-shifting cloud of dust and stone and dumped it over an onlooking Arius Mephisto. Felicity used the window to roll out of the way, stunned at the sudden occurance. Immediately, the conjuror waved his hand to magically divert the debris, but as soon as the spell had punched a hole through the filth it only revealed the serious and determined visage of an onrushing Osiris. The Telgradian’s eyes glowed gold, Enpera’s blade overlaid with a pulsating kaleidoscope of purple and black.

Arcane power surged from Arius’s hand to stop it.

“Hakai: Enpera Asurendo!”

Mephisto’s eyes widened as the incantation split his focus. The power in his hand was meant to stop an anticipated Enpera Kurohitsugi, but what came instead was something he had never seen. The wizard gritted his teeth as he watched his magic career harmlessly past Enpera’s blade, and shouted in surprise as Shinsou drove the tip of it into the floor beneath him. Almost instantly, a deluge of razor sharp rocks rose from the floor, two ripping through Arius’s right calf and shredding the muscle fibres to nothing. A taste of tangy Underwood lemon filled the air as the badly haemorrhaging conjuror desperately tried to activate one of his teleportation glyphs.

Wha-?!

Calmly, fearlessly, the Telgradian reacted. He parted the portal beginnings with the sheer force of his sword, cleaving the membrane in two before gripping Arius by the throat within the same spin and slamming his body into the floor with such force that Felicity felt the thud from where she had escaped to. His wits slowed by pain and concussion, it took even Mephisto some time to work out exactly what just transpired as a trickle of scarlet forked down his lip. It was time that the young Telgradian used well, slipping his sword into the folds of flesh between Arius’s shoulderblade to pin him to the floor.

"How about that?" Shinsou, his lips soaked with his blood, glared daggers from golden eyes above him. "Looks like you bleed like any other man, Arius."

“It's not enough, boy. It will NEVER be enough!” Mephisto's voice growled gutturally from the floor.

“You’re right. Not enough. Not yet.” His response elicited a condescending snigger. Arius didn’t take him seriously, and it was not difficult to see why given the events of the last few months, but danger lay in delusion. "Not until I've crushed your corpse to dust!"

With a final glance over to Felicity, and then back to his nemesis, Shinsou closed his eyes.

“Hakai: Enpera Shinohaya.”

Blearily, Arius looked up, staring into a void of dark ebony that shot out from Shinsou’s feet. Six silver rings of light shimmered with power before drenching the pair in irrefutable brightness, so much so that even Arius’s arcanely attuned eyes were momentarily stunned. However, just before the powerful spell could take form, Mephisto winced in pain and snapped his fingers. Dark, raven-like wings folded from his wounded back, smothering them both and pinning the Telgradian to the floor. The dark sorceror smiled evilly in this new form, baring a row of sharp canine teeth as he removed Enpera from his shoulder, then spoke.

“Did you think you were the only one capable of sealing your power? Fool! I'll send you straight to hell!”

Rough hands reached out, slashing at Shinsou’s eyes with a magical light to disorient him, before quickly and erratically weaving the air behind them into another teleportation glyph. This time, the rune dwarfed the pair of them and activated with such force that before the Telgradian could protest, the gravity from portal’s surface wrenched his arms behind his back. As his blinded eyes snapped back, Shinsou kicked as hard as he could at where he thought Arius’s injured leg was. The reality continued to part behind him, until at last he found himself kicking against the conjuror’s exposed bone. Roaring in pain, the raven-like Arius momentarily lost his balance, and Shinsou tried to roll him over into his own portal.

It was too late, though. At a wordless command, Arius fully opened the gate and Whitevale watched as the swirling mass of leylines and blue whorls consumed both men entirely. As suddenly as it had begun, the wind died down to nothing, leaving only dust-blind eyes and cowering townsfolk in its wake. The bewildered Felicity Rhyolite sat there, unclaimed by the pull of the now closed portal that had wrought Shinsou and Aruis from the plane of Althanas. Her fearful and bewildered gaze around missed the shimmer that announced Gweneal’s arrival to her proximity.