Rhovani’s ghost hadn’t yet withered when Shinsou stepped out of the smog of cloudy grey that enveloped their dreamscape. His breath, hot and heady, steamed from his cracked lips into the mists that wreathed the illusory road ahead and sighed.

“I don’t know how I got here, why I’m here, or even why you’re here,” Feeling their business was done, the Telgradian’s brown boots began to tread a crisp path away from the woman, who listened as Shinsou moved towards foothills on the horizon, “…but I do know this; this isn’t real, you aren’t real, and I don’t need the opinions of a phantom. I don’t belong here.”

He hadn’t a clue why he had decided to walk in that direction; perhaps something was subconsciously urging him to escape the hallucination that way, but nonetheless the Telgradian walked on as the beautiful form of the girl melted into the ether. Perhaps ten minutes after leaving Rhovani, he came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road. Beneath the scent of the heavy fog, beneath the aroma of barren lands, he caught the fleetest whiff of something else.

Blood.

There was a sudden, jarring disconnect with this strange world. The synapses in his brain wouldn’t let him place exactly what was wrong, but Shinsou felt a sudden jolt of pain in his chest, as if someone had slid a meat hook under his skin and was trying to hoist his body up via winch. He cried out in full voice; his scream of agony reverberating around the Telgradian wastes, and sunk to his knees. In the same movement he swiped at the invisible hook that tore at his chest, but could not get to the source of his pain. It was then Shinsou heard it; his heartbeat echoing, the world around him suddenly wordless and silent. Grey tendrils snaked through the world of formless fog that surrounded him before.

It was then that a white-cloaked figure rose from the shadows of the roadside. His familiar eyes gazed coldly at the Telgradian, but his otherwise masked features remained stoic.

“Arius?”


***

“Leave us,” Arius Mephisto declared to the Tylmerande medical staff, perching his wiry frame so that he sat at the same height as the bloodstained guerney. Without a second thought, the physicians quickly exited the room and left the wounded and drugged Shinsou Vaan Osiris in his care.

Seasoned and stained with centuries of spilled blood, the oak boards of the small medical facility’s floor groaned beneath the chair Mephisto leaned back on as he clutched the rudimentary chest drain pipe that had been set up to clear the Telgradian’s bullet wound. Having once been a medical student himself, Arius recognized the impressive amount of equipment that such a small town had at its disposal, and tapped the rubber-like pipe to show his appreciation.

“This really is cutting edge equipment, Shinsou. All Brotherhood funded, no doubt,” Gazing down, the right hand man could see the small hooks that attached the pipe to the anesthetized flesh of his leader, “It’s a shame it’s been squandered on you; there were far more at Radasanth deserving of its use. How many countless men died for our cause that could have used these facilities? Those people believed in the better world we were going to build, a world you threw away. You waste men, and you wasted our hopes. For what? The Faun? Storm? An easy peace? A quiet life?”

A simple tug at the apparatus encouraged a sea of red to leak from the barely conscious Shinsou’s bared chest. His cheeks, like pitted coal, clenched in slumber. Heaved air left his lungs as his heart sped up, trying to compensate for the blood loss. Funneling the his voice into the Telgradian’s ear, he slipped into spider-like tones as Mephisto drew closer, holding the bloodied, disconnected line in his right hand.

“This is the end of the line, my friend. We won’t allow you, or Storm, to demolish what we’ve built.”

He had entertained his own ego long enough. Arius knew Storm would soon be coming, and he knew further pronouncements would only serve to undo him. The blood-streaked hands of the Telgradian lay limply by their owner’s side as Mephisto finally stood, eyes locked onto the breathing tube that was maintaining Shinsou’s life, and started to methodically dismantle the apparatus. Tempered blue eyes watched as the metal connections between the air pipe failed, and a satisfying hiss echoed through the room. He upended half a cup of sterile liquid as the wily man spun to pull apart the last pieces of the medical equipment sustaining Shinsou vaan Osiris. There were no leering snickers accompanying his actions as he went; just a cold, matter-of-fact silence.

There was no need for a show. The Telgradian would soon be dead and Arius would be long gone before Storm got to him.