He raised, painfully, while his shoulder sorely protested being moved around with the knife still in place inside and peeked over the counter with the utmost prudence.

There was an ibis, perched on the windowsill.

Quite a big, black-and-white, gracious ibis, standing in all of its elegance, looking inside the room as if it was his own home, with its little eyes filled with hate and disdain. It was searching the room for one specific thing, and it froze when it locked eyes with Chico, transfixing on him.

In a matter of seconds, just the time to blink, and Chico screamed when he found another knife, lodged in his left thigh. The pain of the deep wound was astounding, even if it had missed his artery by inches.

The Ibis... the invisible knife throwing... Justin? Truetime?

His brain was trying to work faster, despite the blood loss. He took off his shirt and tried to tie it around the leg wound to slow the bleeding, but he was bleeding badly, even with the knife still in place. Moving wasn't doing miracles.

Luckily, a mage is never really alone. It took just a thought and the dark silhouette of Soballende crawled down from his shoulders, creeping on the wall.

He slithered in the few shadows of the room, until he had a good visual of the Ibis, who seemed to be meditating. He had just opened his wide black wings, when Soballende exited from the shadows right beneath him, materializing in his black cat form mid-air. Chico heard the snapping of his fangs on the air, as the ibis avoided the attack at the last moment, losing just some back feathers to his enemy.

A classic feline-bird chase scene ensued. Jumping graciously from surface to surface, Soballende was trying to intercept the ibis with tall jumps and pirouettes, while the winged beast started screaming menacingly, avoiding the attacks.

This time, a throwing knife passed sharp through the air, with a hiss. But it missed by a mile, hitting the bathroom mirror. Seven years of mala suerte, thought Chico. But if that shot meant something, was that the surgical hits of some time before were now much less surgical. The ibis was the key. Clearly, without the bird, he had lost some of his control on the situation.

Time for him to lose it all.

The ibis was so focused on avoiding Soballende's attacks, he lost track of Chico's movements.

Slowly, gently, he raised a hand on the kitchen table, feeling around. Luckily, Banshee was a messy cook. He was sure at least one knife had to be there.

And after two attempts at finding it just by touching, there it was.

Still moving slowly, he took it up. He just needed Soballende to bring the ibis within his reach. He told him so through their mental link, and without even blinking, the black cat started to pace his attacks with a more refined aim and scheme.

The ibis, mad with panic, thought only about saving his hide, not noticing that Soballende's last attack had been largely wrongfully calculated. Chico jumped from behind the flying animal, plunging forward with the meat knife and slicing off one of his wings with perfect precision, his shoulder throbbing with waves of pain.

The ibis's pain scream was heart-breaking, as the animal fell to the ground, spurting blood everywhere. With adrenaline crazed eyes, Chico took the animal's neck in his right hand, firmly. The bird weakly tried to squirm free from his grasp.

Chico raised the bird and the knife towards the window.

«Mira!» he shouted, to his mysterious attacker. And with the precise and premeditated movements of a madman, took the head of the ibis between his teeth and tore it away from its body with just one, incredibly powerful bite.

He felt the strange, eerie sensation of flesh and muscles tearing under his teeth, of the light bones of his neck creaking and snapping apart. Chico spat the head on the floor with disdain and allowed himself a delirious laugh of triumph, lightheaded from the blood loss.

A hellish yell resounded in the air. The scream of pain and sorrow of someone losing something fundamental, something pivotal. Of someone feeling a part of himself die horribly.

Then, when the scream faded, just a handful of seconds passed before Chico saw the slim, elegant figure of a man with black hair and mad blue eyes and two knives in his hands, slide inside the kitchen from the window, with a slender, exquisite movement.

Chico was standing there, a kitchen knife in one hand, a gory, mauled ibis' carcass in the other, the head of the bird on his feet and his mouth still framed with the familiar's blood.

He was a sitting duck. And the man in front of him knew it. Chico could see the unhinged expression of his face. A perfect indication of his suffering and incipient derange was the fact that he was pointing both of his knives right to his eyes, with a crazed smile on his face, contoured by reddened eyes shedding tears like rivers.

The door slammed open, making the Frenchman's head turn abruptly towards it. He obviously thought that it was the main door, so he turned his head right at it and threw one of the knives.

It was the fridge.

Vopros ran towards him, with a blank expression on his face and a burning TNT stick in one hand.

Enough to level the whole house.

The Frenchman turned his head towards the new menace, and just an instant before Vopros could plant the stick right down his shirt disappeared.

Vopros cursed in Russian and put the stick's fuse in a cup of coffee.

Chico started breathing again after being sure he'd die. Not sure it would have been from the knives or the fatal explosion but dying was guaranteed.

«Where he gone!» Vopros yelled.

«Vopros how...»

«Blender is also bug.» the Russian hastily exposed to his shocked companion. «Where he gone!»

«I don't know! He... he disappeared!»

Vopros grabbed a vodka bottle from over the fridge, unceremoniously opened it with his teeth and spilled it directly on the floor, forming an uneven puddle. He hovered a hand over it and concentrated. The image started forming in a matter of seconds instead of minutes. Chico had never seen someone manipulating fluxes with such natural haste.

The Frenchman was still very near.

He was downstairs, in front of Vopros's cellar, something in his hand as he was evidently trying to understand how to open it.

Chico saw Vopros shove a hand inside his coat and extract an eerily looking stick and a vintage box of matches

«Vopros, wait! You can't! You'll blow up the building!» screeched Chico, with a sudden panic attack.

Vopros didn't even look at him. He shoved the hand back in his jacket, on the other side this time, and took out a vial filled with a dark powder. He muttered some other words that made the puddle ripple and swell as if something was moving inside it. The image became even clearer as if he had just increased it resolution.

Then he opened the vial, fired it up with a puff of magic and smashed it on the puddle.

Not on.

Through.

Chico watched in awe as he saw Vopros's hand immerse in the pool and then retract, without the vial. Then, the image was gone. Vopros had just turned a scry spell into a Displace one.

He muttered again, and the vodka pool started rippling again. The image came back. There was a half-burnt shirt on the ground in front of his cellar, and the pavement was badly burnt. No traces of a body.

«Oh dios mio! You disintegrated him!»

«Thermite work fast. Not so fast, though.» grumbled Vopros, suspiciously.

«What do we care? He's gone! I have to get this knives out of me, they hurt like infierno! Can you please...»

Vopros didn't even look at him.

«Keep knives in. Is good for backbone.» sentenced the Russian.

He spilled more vodka, then closed his eyes and started muttering again. This time it took a couple of minutes, a clear sign that the target had moved farther. But also, a strong sign that the target was still alive. Had he been dead, Vopros couldn't have reached him.

The Frenchman was in an anonymous white room, void of any furniture for the little they could see. It was being incredibly hard for Vopros to keep up his concentration on the spell. The Frenchman was panting hard, the left side of his body sporting a horrible third-degree burn that would almost surely cost him at least his arm. He was clenching his shoulder with his hand, his face twisted with unbearable pain.

«Tch. Poor man. He suffers. I help.» whispered Vopros.

With eyes as cold as ice, he picked the stick Chico had protested against before. This time, the Mexican remained silent.

Justin was trying to endure his pain enough to reach the phone in his pocket. He had just fought enough with the torment to fetch it, that Vopros finished launching his spell.

A small portion of the air over Justin became strangely hazy. A big, work-ruined hand poked out of it, holding a well-lit, short-fused explosive stick. The hand dropped it and pulled back. The portal discreetly and silently close.

Justin saw the stick fall on his feet.

That was the last thing he saw.

https://youtu.be/zH_lYGF0aEI

Banshee slammed the door behind her. It was much less melodramatic when the door was the kitchen cabinet, though.

She looked around. Something was off at home. Chico was nowhere to be found, nor Vopros for that matter, but something was wrong. Maybe the smell.

Something familiar and metallic.

Blood.

Her senses stood at attention like soldiers on the field. She noticed the smudges of blood on the counter and some steps in front of her, on the floor. But it looked dry.

The fridge's door opened and Vopros came out.

«You home.»

«Vopros, the fuck?»

«Frenchman threw knives at Chico. We blow him up.» he summarized.

«Frenchman? You mean Justin?» she asked, shocked. «He threw knives at Chico?»

«Well. Chico said Frenchman stopped time to plant knives and retreat fast. But I didn't follow.» Vopros shrugged. «He good. He learns to take pain, he put backbone in.» sentenced the Russian, unfazed by the situation developed in the afternoon.

«Ye blew him up?» she passed to the next obvious question.

«He was problem. So, you have two ways with problem. Either problem is, or isn't. If problem isn't, no problem. If problem is, it blows up. Then, you go back to no problem. So, no problem.» Vopros explained his ultimate problem solving path. It was the main reason none of them was too eager to let him walk out of their sights, which was something Garaham directly and very openly asked of them when he assigned Vopros to the Coven.

He wasn't a bad man. He just relied too much on oversimplifying situations with explosives.

«Ye killed a Mage?» Banshee felt the blood drain from her face. She was figuring all the possible future scenarios in her head. None of them ended well. Each and every one of them ended up with them being cast in the lowest ranks of the Order, and possibly a dishonorable scarf around Garaham's neck.

That was the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario saw them imprisoned.

Not that killings between mages were anything unusual, on the contrary, mages had been at each other's throats, quite literally, for ages. But since the Order was formed and all of them joined that sort of "alliance", killing another mage of the Order remained between discouraged and completely forbidden. The penalty for such a crime was always severe, apart from extreme cases of self-defense.

«We're so, so fucked...»

«Who would know was us?» shrugged Vopros, apparently perfectly tranquil. Banshee shot him an unbelieving glare.

«Ye blew him up! We're facing a fecking trial because everyone understood it was us to do an impossible deed just because something exploded, do you really think nobody will suspect us this time? Besides, ye used magic, what if he was in a public place?»

«They can think. They have no proof. It all blew up. This time.»

«Hadn't ye at least checked if there were people around? Vopros, fer chrissake, ye could have killed dozens!»

«He was alone inside room. No other people. I solve problems. Many dead create problem, not solve it. He died alone. Nobody saw.» he concluded.

«Screwed. We're so fucking screwed...» Banshee whispered.