The Inquisitor interlocked her fingers and unleashed a powerful wave spell that shot through the confined space with murderous intent. Lila erected a barrier at the very last second to deflect it, the magic bouncing off of it as if it were a harmless beach ball, but just as she was recovering from it, another spell was already airborne, coming from behind her. The boomerang tactic wasn’t new and nothing she hadn’t handled before, yet it was still dangerous. Lila sidestepped the second attack and picked scattered threads of it to weave her counter-offensive, a lightning storm that filled the room with bright yellow and orange hues.

Momentarily blinded by the incandescent display, Magdalene reached into the core of her magical essence and faded from view, her molecules scattered in the air, invisible to the naked eye. She reappeared to the right of the good witch, her hands glowing red, and grabbed Lila by her shoulder before hurling her against the protected walls. The impact was powerful enough to make Lila cough blood and gasp for air. 

“I told you you’re not strong enough,” Magdalene hissed. “Make things easy for you and give in.”

“That old shit again?” Lila rose to her feet, every muscle in her body hurting. Her lungs felt heavy and she was having a hard time breathing. Had she ruptured something? Fueled by both an adrenaline rush and her primary survival instinct, she used her right hand to cast a light healing incantation while keeping the left one in a defensive stance. “I’m not bending the knee to your Mistress no matter what you do to me.”

“You really are as stubborn as she said, which is unsurprising given your family relations. It will be a shame for your mother to see you broken and defeated, but I’m happy to oblige!”

“Leave my mother out of this, bitch!” Lila growled. “She’s a better woman than you’ll ever be.”

“No,” Magdalene smirked. “She’s ancient history, a remnant of a time soon to be forgotten, and my Mistress is the future. Her desires will unite our kind. I’m proud to be in the front row for the greatest spectacle of all, and so should you.”

“Unite us how?” Lila wiggled her fingers to move from a defensive position to an attack formation. “By enslaving the innocent and corrupting their minds? Is that what you call freedom?”

“Freedom is overrated, Lila. When you’re weak, having thoughts of your own is a curse and not a blessing. Everyone needs order and discipline, and my Mistress provides that in spades. She takes hold of our minds so that we can achieve our true potential. Servitude is the only true to enlightenment.”

“Spoken like a brainwashed bitch. I pity you, Inquisitor.”

“Pity this!” Magdalene pushed another multi-layered attack, hitting Lila from every direction. She stopped the first blow, the second, and even the third but the fourth burned her right shoulder and clavicle and she collapsed on the translucent floor, her eyes going dark.

“Sweet dreams,” the powerful magician said as the reality Lila knew gave way to an empty abyss.

* * *

When Lila came to her senses again, she was no longer in the headquarters of the Congregatio Magica, but in an entirely different place, a luxurious mansion with crimson walls, golden curtains, and hundreds of different rooms, many of which seemed superfluous. Her wounds had been tended to, and her old clothes lay crumpled on a chair in front of her. She was now wearing a white mid-length dress and black varnished shoes, her hair magically altered to give off the impression of rebel curls. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make her look like a living doll about to tour her new place.

“Ouch,” she mumbled, a pang of pain running across her shoulder. Despite her treatments, there was still some bruising that would take some time to heal. The room she was in was big and comfortable, with the furniture being a mix of classic items and futuristic decor that shouldn’t work at all, but somehow did. A diamond chandelier above her head projected moving shadows across the carmine walls and there was a faint mist swirling at her feet and impregnating several of the objects she was looking at. A quick examination of the sofa to her right and its colorful seats made her realize that not everything in the division was really there. Several illusion layers had been placed on top of one another to create an inviting three-dimensional space for her to walk around, but what did that mean for the rest of the house itself? Lila continued to observe the slight discrepancies in reality around her and concluded that, no matter how fancy everything looked, it was still a prison. She still had her magic, but phasing and teleportation techniques had been disabled by the aura enveloping the mansion.

The main door was tucked to the left and was unlocked. Lila peeked outside and saw a sprawling network of corridors that moved on their own when she wasn’t looking. Outside of that relatively secure haven lay a labyrinth that defied logic and, sometimes, gravity, with spider-like lamps scurrying across the cherry ceilings and rows of naked statues looking at her with their soulless, gray eyes. Lila retreated inside and stood by the warm fireplace for a minute, weighing her options. It was safe to assume she was in the evil witch’s lair or at least one of them, and that she was waiting for her somewhere inside the mansion. The open door was an invitation to exploration, and perhaps a mental game to make her feel more unease with each step, but it could also be her only way to look for an exit. Standing still was a viable option, yet something that made her skin crawl. When confronted with such an impossible situation, playing the waiting game was an act of cowardice, and she would not allow surreptitious intimidation tactics to mess with her brain.

“You can’t stay here, wherever this is,” she told herself as she turned away from the fireplace and returned to the meandering collection of corridors that welcomed her curiosity and desire to survive.

Lila moved forward, taking notice of the fluctuation in magic levels with each step she took. She tried to make a mental map of the mansion but after a handful of twists and turns, she realized it was a waste of time. Her surroundings were always changing. Wide spaces became dead ends. Going to the right had her appear on the left side and flights of stairs that went down ended in the ceiling or raced across the cherry walls. The disconcerting effect became more pronounced the farther she got away from the opening room. Even Time moved differently, seconds echoing in her head like thousands of clock strikes, and minutes being dragged into the darkest pits of eternity.

The winding corridors led to countless doors and most of them were open as well. Besides the usual bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage closets, Lila came across a private movie theater where the only things being shown were random memories of her reenacted in front of an invisible audience who couldn’t stop laughing at her past miseries. There was also a ballroom that only played her favorite songs albeit with distorted lyrics that evoked nothing but gloom and despair and a game room where everything was lit with bright neon colors and the myriad of controllers gathering dust were all labeled with different parts of her body.

“I’m not a character for you to play with, bitch!” Lila said disdainfully as she locked the door behind her and watched it disappear before her eyes, replaced by yet another set of stairs that led to an underground area.

Lila followed the new path into the darkness. The air was thicker down there and filled with heavy scents of festering death and decay. To the right was another section featuring a dimly lit gallery with a handful of self-portraits of her painted in different styles. One of them resembled a gothic Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile covered in a swarm of black flies while another was like a cubist Picasso whose angled shapes felt completely unnatural and out of place. She left the room, disgusted, and peeked at the next corner where the most disturbing sight of all awaited her.

It was a dungeon, dark and dank, filled with Medieval torture instruments and splatters of blood on the walls and floor. Big, hairless rats with bloodshot eyes gathered in a corner, fighting for the decomposing remains of another unidentified animal. An axe hanging on the farthest wall smelled of fresh meat and in the darkest shadows, with both hands and ankles shackled and her face drowning in acidic tears was her friend, Penelope, begging for the sweet release of death.

“Nelly?” Lila gasped, her heart sinking inside her chest. “Nelly, is that really you?”

“Lila?” Penelope rattled her chains while she kicked one of the nasty rodents away. “Lila, oh Thank God! Get me out of here, please! She’s insane!”

Lila approached her friend with caution. The magic levels in that section of the house were off the charts so the chances that she was looking at yet another elaborate deception were greater than ever. However, every fiber of her being was telling her it was real, and that Penelope had already been dragged into a dangerous situation beyond her control.

“Lila! Get me out of here!” the non-magical human begged.

“On to it,” Lila replied, creating a thin ether blade that cut through her chains like a knife through warm butter. The panicked rats tried to run away but were stopped in their tracks by a rain of fireballs that extinguished themselves automatically when there was no more movement around. Penelope’s legs trembled forward as she hugged her old friend.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she cried. “Thank you. Thank you!”

“You’re hurt,” Lila said, inspecting her wounds closely. “This will help,” she sent a healing balm throughout her body, filling it with wondrous light. “How long have you been here?”

“I... I’m not sure... everything is messed up in my head.”

“It’s the magic of this place. It’s messing with my perception as well and I’m trained unlike you. Do you remember how you got here?”

“No, I don’t. I was at the gym and suddenly, everything went dark. When I woke up, I was in this horrible maze where she started fucking with my head. God, it hurts so much!”

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

“You want to poke inside my brain, too?”

“Just a little check to see what’s been done to you. Tell me if it’s too much for you to handle, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lila closed her eyes and began the inspection, staying on the surface of her mind to pick up on any magic remnants that could still be lingering there. She found none, which was a good sign, but not all of Penelope’s memories were intact. There was a gap in them, anything between a couple of hours and a whole day, that couldn’t be attributed to anything other than selective tampering. The missing information would not be easily recovered, not even by her magic.

After backing away from her mind, Lila examined her friend’s body for other signs of distress, including the existence of any recent tattoos.

“What are you doing now?” Penelope asked.

“Making sure you’re not branded like Cindy.”

“Cindy? What does she have to do with this?”

“Everything, even if it’s not her fault. She’s been targeted and enslaved by blood magic, Nelly. You two have been caught in something beyond your comprehension.”

“What about you? Why are you here, Lila?”

“It’s a long story. We’ll talk about it after we find a way out of here, okay?”

“Working on it. In the meantime, tell me everything you can about this woman that’s been torturing you. Did you see her face? Do you know what she looks like?”

“I thought I did but, like I said, everything is a mess in here. She was always laughing though, like a madwoman on crack.”

“Now there’s a colorful description,” Lila chuckled even if the situation was dire. Being trapped inside an enemy playground was already hard enough, and now she had an innocent to protect, a pawn her rival wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice to her advantage. 

Lila and Penelope left the dungeon and followed the main path back to the staircase. However, this time the steps no longer led to the upper floor, instead sinking down deeper into the moldy earth. There was no other visible path. They were being funneled downward, straight into the center of the nightmare.

“Do we really need to go down there?” Penelope held on to her friend’s arms, her legs trembling like jelly.

“Yes. Stay strong, okay? I promise I won’t let anything else happen to you on my watch.”

“I’m not sure that’s a promise you can keep...” Lila coughed. “This is all on me, isn’t it? If I hadn’t come talk to you about Quentin and Cindy...”

“Don’t say that, Nelly,” Lila comforted her with a soothing grip. “Just focus on me and keep yourself together. We can handle whatever is waiting for us, I know it.”

“Liar...” Penelope coughed again, fear in her eyes and in her soul.

Yes, Lila was lying. She too was terrified from the inside out, but perseverance was key. With Penelope always close to her, she began the descent into the all-absorbing blackness below.

((to be continued))