As 'Meg' leapt to Aries's side, curling around him, one of the figures in the doorway charged forward out of the blinding light. It was a stocky, clay-colored horse-creature with a set of gold-and-blue eyes running up its sides--the eyes, along with a sabre-shaped golden horn sprouting from the creature's forehead, were trained on Aries as it thundered towards him.

It only took an instant for the creature to close the distance between itself and Aries, but in that instant, Aries almost idly took hold of a tag hanging off the collar of his jacket. It appeared to be just a white slip with the words 'PULL TO RELEASE' printed on it, until Aries tugged on it sharply, snapping the thin ring holding it to his collar.

A spark leapt up where the metal had snapped, as though Aries had struck a match. It cast a brilliant red light over Aries's chest, and then the glow was beneath his feet as well, forming into an elaborate circle inscribed with pentagrams and smaller circles containing more geometric figures. The light pulsed upward, and suddenly everything seemed to bend away from Aries and Meg, leaving them hovering gently above the circle in an egg-shaped, pitch-black hole in space. The unicorn was practically on top of them now, but its head seemed to collide with the edge of the black hole and run off to either side in smudges of color.

There was a split second, as flames started to blaze around him, that Aries met Hawk's eyes with a silent anger. Hawk could not help but stare back at him.

And then Aries and his animal had vanished with a loud sound and a burst of flame that the unicorn had to rear back to avoid.