Faer whimpered in his stone tower as he held his hand. With one shaking hand, he strained to pull out the red shard that was embedded in the other. But the pain was too much for him, and he couldn’t manage it. He didn’t even want to look at his foot right now.

“This is not going well for you”, said a somber, deep voice without any emotion.

Faer looked at The Shaper with contempt in his eyes, but he kept his mouth shut. He hadn’t lost control of himself so much as to speak out against this thing.

He heard Vina’s voice through the still open portal. “Faer! This book contains every portal ring address known to the Halos Family. If you leave now, I will visit every single one and convert them while you recover. Or, you can take it from me.”

The Shaper moved and their other voice spoke this time. It was the voice of a woman, “Go back, Faer. We need you to capture Vina. Alive. Unless, of course, you have a way to send us or Oyna.”

Faer hesitated. He didn’t have a way to send The Shaper of course. Vina had disabled the Ctomina portal ring, and he could only send himself or creatures through his portals. Oyna was a possibility, but she would be an experiment he had never tried. Even if he succeeded and she didn’t die in the process, the divinity cost would be absurd. He was on his own here, but he knew The Shaper was right. This was not going well at all. He couldn’t abandon his efforts though. He was the newest among The Twelve, and failing here would put a halt to his rise.

“I’ll get the book”, Faer said. His voice trembled slightly from his pain.

The Shaper seemed to examine him for a moment before both voices spoke as one, “That is not what we asked you to do.”

Faer felt his heart flutter when their voices spoke in unison. What they wanted was quickly looking to be impossible for him. At the same time, Faer knew defying The Shaper would have consequences. He had witnessed first hand what those consequences could be.

He had spent far too much time with them at this point to have not learned how The Shaper operated and what they wanted. He knew The Shaper was ancient. They were so old that they predated The Watch. They existed even from the times before The Severing when Trina’s Tragedy happened and Langternem Disease spread across the world. Despite their age, he knew they somehow found a way to live through it all without the Aspect of Life. The story of the twins was no fantasy and even now he was intently aware that the source of Trina’s Tragedy was alive and well. In fact it was sharing the same room as him at this very moment.

“Let’s start with the book. I’ll take appropriate next steps after I’ve recovered”, Faer said. He struggled to pop the top off of a mixture with his last good hand, but managed it after a moment. He downed it immediately and waited for the healing to take effect. Then he waited for his racing heart to slow down. He took a deep, steadying breath and created a portal directly above the book. He reached his uninjured arm in and snagged it. He immediately felt something warm and wet slip around his wrist. He tried to pull his arm back in, but unfortunately he wasn’t strong enough.

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Faer began to panic. He peeked his head through the portal to see what was holding him in place. What he saw froze him to the core. Several pulsating tendrils of red blood had wrapped themselves around his wrist. More blood was slowly crawling up his arm. He shrieked and tried to shake it free. Then he remembered that he was forgetting someone.

He looked up and saw Vina closing the distance between them at a speed he had only seen high agility classes achieve. In the next moment, Faer saw Vina pull something out from her strange liquid cloak. “A claw?” he thought, but then she had him. She pulled his torso further out of the portal, and he hung face down. His back was completely exposed to her.

He wasn’t too worried. He knew the runes carved into his body kept him nearly invulnerable to damage. It was a marvel to him that Vina had managed to figure out how to hurt him at all. He would fix those deficiencies once he escaped this situation.

Faer tried to create a portal beneath himself, but only managed to free his hand from the blood entangling him. He was unable to fall through. Vina had grabbed him with that claw and held him wedged against the boundary edge of his portal. He flailed about and grabbed at her, but he couldn’t free himself.

“Faer… I wondered what you had written on yourself, but I never imagined you would do this”, she said.

“She’s reading my runes?” Faer thought.

Faer suddenly felt pain from a pulling on his feet, and hope blossomed in his heart. Then he remembered the portal timers. Without a portal ring to stabilize it, this one would close in a matter of seconds, and when it did it would cut him in half if he wasn’t safely inside. He struggled harder against Vina, but he sensed she began to do something. When he looked down, a ball of blood began to gather from all of the creatures he had sent through. It quickly grew to the size of his fist and splashed against his chest. It crawled over his skin like a living thing. Then it began to take shapes he was not familiar with.

“Milly sends her regards”, she whispered in his ear, and then the blood began to burn. He wailed in pain even as the pulling in his legs grew stronger. He began to slide back into his portal while she tried to hold his hand. Faer’s head was pulled back into his tower all at once, but his hand and the book remained with Vina when the portal closed.

Faer cried in agony as he gripped the stump of what used to be his hand even as the runes continued to burn him. He began to feel the runes draw from his own blood, as they prepared to activate. He knew now how thirsty they were without their asharaina to feed them. He looked up at The Shaper. “Help me!” he cried.

“We did help you. It was an obvious trap, and you made the wrong choice. Apparently we made the wrong choice with you too”, The Shaper’s voices said.

Faer could see the writing on the wall, but he thought himself to be no fool. He had made other friends in high places. He created a portal directly beneath himself and fell through. He closed it immediately when he arrived in the Travel Wing of The Committee back rooms. He lay on his back, breathing through the pain that raged through his body. He felt the blood runes stop drawing upon his blood and begin to sustain themselves with just a drop every couple of seconds. Whatever they were, they were fully activated now. He wanted to try to understand what Vina had done to his body, but he had more pressing concerns.

One of the portal rings flashed into existence beside him and a brown haired woman stepped through. He recognized her instantly. “Keres! Send for help! I’ve been attacked.”

Keres just looked at him. Her eyes stared intently at the red glowing runes emblazoned across his torso. Then she inspected the two aspects on his chest, which were just as prominently displayed. Faer knew that look. Those were the eyes of a predator. He created a portal once more beneath himself, but this time he did not fall through. He didn’t even have time to see why before Keres stabbed him through the eye.