Arius wiped his beaten brow with a white sleeve soaked with the Telgradian’s blood, a memento for his hand in Shinsou's 'surgery', and stood menacingly over the exhausted Storm Veritas with a slight smirk. Today had been an excellent day. It had come sooner than expected, but he was holding all of the cards, including the card that told you how to play. The electromancer lay broken at his feet; perhaps not physically, but spiritually. He could tell. Those determined, resolute eyes no longer burned with defiance, but dimmed in defeat as his friend Shinsou slowly bled to death, out of reach, on the gurney. As Arius knelt beside the finery clad wizard, mindful of his own cut shins, he extended out his fist and pressed the Castigar signet hard into Storm’s cheek as a final insult, gritting his teeth between words.

“Beneath the bluster, and the bravado, you’re just a bag of fucking meat,” Arius whispered into Veritas’s ear, “Take the greatest mage, strip away their power and what remains? Watch as they try to cope, and you’ll see nothing more than a mere man, woman…a child. ”

A click of his fingers caused the cramped medical room to erupt with an ear-splitting crack, as the portal from earlier tore itself open. On command, dozens of red needles burst into life from the recesses of the ocean blue membrane as a crude imitation of Shinsou’s Enpera Kurohitsugi made itself known. The sudden summoning of crimson lances hung, frozen, within the portal, awaiting a command. Storm’s soured expression told Arius everything he wanted to hear.

“I was going to wait, but I thought it’d be a fitting end. This is Shinsou’s favourite spell, no? A tribute, so to-”

Before he could finish the sentence, an object dropped at his feet with a sickening thunk. It was a single, fleshy digit with a silver signet ring adorning its base.

His digit, with his ring.

The pain didn’t come instantly; a side-effect of the anti-interrogation “escape and evade” techniques that he had learned during his time in the Brotherhood to become more resistant to torture, but after a second or two the former number two screamed. It felt like his whole right hand had been dipped in molten lava, and as he instinctively tried to grab at the wound, he heard the sizzle of scolding flesh and instantly pulled back. Arius’s left hand had just wrapped around something caustic, and as a sickly smouldering odour filled the air and waves of nauseating pain flowed and ebbed through his arms, his eyes swivelled to meet the pale, surprisingly awake face of Shinsou Vaan Osiris staring hazily up at him with unfocused, dreary and fatigued eyes. Arius’s features twisted into a feral snarl, the single blade of dark matter from the Telgradian’s shaking hand still glistening, slick and wet from his blood.

“You…” Shinsou said, voice trembling as he struggled for air and fought unconsciousness, “…cunt…”

Deliberately, as quickly as he could summon the energy to do so, Storm took the opportunity to kick low, knocking the severed finger and iron bangle back under Shinsou’s blood-soaked gurney. The electromancer almost crumbled with the effort it took out of his body.

“This isn’t over; seal or no,” Arius replied, languid and arrogant. Through vision that seemed as if everything he could see was an oil painting that had run, Shinsou noticed his former friend’s features seemed more twisted than before, somehow sculpted to be more intimidating than he had previously appeared. His eyes glinted with a deep green hue; angry in the portal’s light. For all purposes he might have been a ghost, or a spectre, save for the blood dripping down his side that glistened very, very real.

Slowly, and with a scream, Arius peeled away from the dark matter blade that had pinned him in place and quickly spun. Shinsou’s involuntary gasp, as the force of the movement jarred his muscles and caused more blood to seep from his grievous wound, harboured both agony and fear. He grimaced, clutching at his chest as he tried to grasp the final throes of consciousness, not really knowing his own life hung delicately in the balance.

“You’re going nowhere, you traitorous shit!” Storm cried at his adversary, drunkenly sliding his splintered body up the emulsioned wall of the room in attempt to right himself. Without his ring, Arius would be vulnerable, and Veritas knew he only had a split second to act. “You’re done. I will…”

“Too late.” Arius interrupted him, winking lightly as Shinsou’s arms fell to his side, limp and frightened. Storm’s gaze flicked from him to the Telgradian, and there it froze as the mortality of their situation became ever more apparent. Taking advantage of the electromancer’s hesitance immediately, Arius quickly stepped away from them, his feet light upon the blood-slickened wood panels, and the dozens of gleaming needles hanging in the portal immediately gave way to his body. The ageing wizard caught on to his sudden move to escape, tried to move trickily, almost slithering in front of the portal ahead of Arius, but lost a step as the fatigue in his legs folded his muscles.

A final desperate shout echoed throughout the room, but as Arius phased through the gateway and snapped out of reality, the pair were suddenly all alone.