Lacking any knowledge in Arcane rituals and runic carvings, Araminia could only imagine what he was cutting into her tender flesh. She had always taken care of her skin, her maids insisting that it was one of her best physical attributes and bringing her new scrubs to try and things to add to her bathwater, and as such, it was soft, blemish free, and very elastic. A vainer woman would have mourned that loss as much as she railed against the pain, but Araminia had only been doing as she was told, not realizing until she was 16 and her father had started parading her around to rooms of high ranking officials that she was nothing more than an object of beauty and a prize to be won by currying the king's favor. At one point she even remembered him jokingly offering her as the prize for whomever could bring him the Grandmasters head. In a cruel twist of fate it seemed only fitting that he would be the one to ruin the physical perfection that her father had placed so much value in.<br/><br/>Her fingers curled into tight fists, nails digging hard into the flesh of her palms as he added the jagged hooks to the ends of his carving, before she felt him move lower still, repeating the same movements as she shook with agony, afraid of what the end result of what he was doing would be. It took a while, but her mind slowly grew accustomed to the pain, her screams replaced with loud sobs, the occasional hiss and gasp as the knife bit into her skin, as the acid feeling intensified in subsequent marks, and the wounds slowly stitching themselves back together did nothing to alleviate the agony, through the pain was starting to dull.<br/><br/>And yet just as things had started to fall into a steady rhythm, to where she could steel herself against the worst of the pain, she felt the mists within her scars almost solidify and start to move, as though it were attempting to tear her back open again. She let out a pained cry as the grains of mist ground into her back like sand forced into the wounds, digging into her as though trying to make itself some kind of perinatal home within her skin. She could feel the warm trickles of blood starting to drip down her back, causing her to gag at the thought, letting out another pained sob.<br/><br/>She let out a long breath when he stepped away from her, shaking with agony at the pain in her back, daring to believe the end might finally be in sight. She yelped as he tore her sleeve free from her gown, dabbing at the blood as she twisted, the pressing of the cloth into her wounds only intensifying the sensation of sandpaper moving across the open wounds. And then the cutting resumed, along with her pained sobs, though she couldn't help but wonder how much deeper he could go. He was running out of back to carve. And eventually, stop he did, cleaning more blood from her back to do the final two half crescents, before circling back around to the front of her.<br/><br/>The words he spoke were, though formal and almost ritualistic, an explanation for what was being done to her, as she stared at the banner hanging above the fireplace, one that she recognised as his personal crest, she could almost trace the gouges on her back, marking her as his. And that was when the true torment began, another scream ripping from her lips as she twisted her body in agony. Almost completely stitched back together, the mists began their rending of flesh once more, tearing her open in unison, as if each of the cuts he had made were being carved simultaneously, but by thousands of granules of sand scraping away at her skin rather than a sharp blade of a knife. It was almost as if they were carving a chanel, forming their own passages along the cuts he had made, veins intended for his magic instead of blood.<br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#4da6ff">“please….”</span>she managed to gasp out,<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#4da6ff">“make it stop… please….”</span>her words were punctuated with a sob, her body twitching as it tried to writhe in agony, but forcibly held in place by the tendrils of mist. Her vision started to fade, the agony of what was being done to her too much to bear, she welcomed the darkness, hoping for the blissful painless state that was unconsciousness.