A vast infinity stretches out before the eye. Off beyond immeasurable distances in space or time twinkle lights that pierce through the haze that fills the rest of the realm. The lights positions do not reflect our conventional sense of horizon, appearing in all directions and shedding pinpoints of light without granting any vision of land. This, dear reader, is the Starry Realm, a place of mystical convergence that houses the soul of one Belinda Athow.

The haze that permeates the nothingness takes on a pale yellow cast as it swirls. Slowly these mists begin to coalesce into the figure of a woman collapsed upon an invisible floor. Nude, the sight might invoke prurient thoughts in the mind of a male observer were her body more human. Instead, the light of the stars swirling in the mists under her skin disabuses any indecent thoughts. Standing slowly she stumbles forward a few steps and reaches a trembling hand into a beam of light.

Reaching inside she grasps about for a few moments before retrieving a sheet. Wrapping herself in the garment, she conceals her form beneath a makeshift toga. The cloth is a stark contrast to the misty yellow, it instead is a shimmering purple. Glancing about as she collects herself, Belinda expresses displeasure with the state of her abode in the form of looks and muttered oaths. Soon she begins to marshal the mists into corporeal forms, beginning with the painstaking construction of a mirror to confirm the proper alignment of her purple robe and ending with a floor and library to fill out her open home. Glancing about, she seems satisfied with her work.

The result is a free flowing space that has no demarcations for different rooms. No walls and no roof separate the spaces from one another. Off in one direction is a bed, a few paces away is a large bathhouse, beyond that is her library, and further still is a room built to allow easy viewing of a large crystal. To this crystal goes Belinda, murmuring an incantation all the while.

As she finishes, the crystal flattens into the form of a massive pool built into the side of the wall upon which images of Eldritch’s combat with Belladonna plays out. As Belinda watches Hailey summon forth the Malleus Malleficarum, she frowns in frustration and an expression of worry creases her face.

After watching the entire battle the crystal reforms and Belinda walks forth and lays her hand gently upon it. Then her voice reverberates throughout the realm as she reinitiates her mental communication with Hailey saying, “Child, I have returned. We must speak.”

A bruised young girl pauses in the act of helping her friend walk, standing in the middle of a sidewalk outside St. Cecilia High. Her face breaks out into an expression of immense relief as she sends back, “BEL! I was so worried! Are you okay?”

Inside the Starry Realm, Belinda winces at the loud voice tearing through her sanctuary. Then she begins speaking again. “I am alright child, but my eyes may not be. Do I see correctly, are you aiding your foe?”

Glancing to her ‘foe’ with a guilty expression as she begins to walk towards an ambulance again Hailey answers in a mollified tone, “She’s not my foe anymore, we had a talk and I think things are going to be better in the future. Speaking of, we do have one small problem I could use your help with-”

Cutting off her protégé before she can start chattering away, Belinda’s mental connection now carries a sense of admonishment alongside her austere tone. “You summoned the Malleus child. We have one large problem you will need my help with. We must speak in person”

Whispering to her companion, Hailey hands her over to the paramedics who re-bandage the woozy Bella’s wrist, who suffers from exhaustion and some blood loss, and stuff her into the back of an ambulance. Hailey, with a moderate number of severe injuries but no apparently life threatening ones, simply gets to ride along as her friend heads to far more competent doctors than herself.

Free of the paramedic’s immediate attention, and quite exhausted herself, Hailey soon slips into sleep. As her eyes close, her other eyes open, and she finds herself laying upon a bed of mist and light in the Starry Realm face to face with an irate Belinda!

However, her immediate reaction has far more to do with her appearance than the wonder of her situation. Screetching at her spiritual advisor she cries out, “Oh my God Bel, why am I naked!”

“Chi-” the spirit begins to reply before Hailey cuts her off with her reply, “Don’t look! Turn around you perv!”

Sighing, Belinda faces the other direction and reaches back into the beam of light, retrieving another robe and tossing it unceremoniously behind her to the girl on the bed who indignantly begins to wrap it around her body. After a few minutes spent listening to her spinning in circles trying to arrange the wrap so it will cover her and stay put Belinda sighs and waves her hand, causing the toga to cinch itself properly just in time for her to turn back towards Hailey.

“Thanks, I guess” Hailey grouses as she adjusts the robe. Finally satisfied with the wrap, she looks up, faces Belinda, and asks, “So what is this all about?”

Unready for the look in Belinda’s eye she steps back unconsciously, afraid. Belinda is angry, her expression one that promises a stern speech at best and a severe dressing down at worst. Her voice carries the same infuriated tone, reverberating through the endless space and seeming to touch the entire field of stars as she says, “You summoned the Malleus, have you any idea what you have done?”

Confused, Hailey replies, “I saved my friend?”

“Wrong!” Belinda shouts back, “you have quite possibly doomed her worse than she was before. The spell that summons the Malleus brings with it not only an anti-magic hammer, but a demon!"

Nervously, Hailey titters in reply, “Oh come on Bel, demons aren’t real.”

“What,” Belinda intones gravely, “would make you think that.”

“Um, well you know, like, history?” Hailey slowly replies.

“Dear child,” Belinda murmurs in sudden helplessness, “Oh dear child.” Then she raises herself up and stares down at her companion as she asks in a more controlled tone, “Where, then, did you imagine Thorm Athow suffers his eternal torment?”

“I guess Hell?” Hailey says cautiously.

Belinda levels a grave look at her. “Did you think Hell uninhabited? That it was a jail without jailors?”

Frowning, Hailey hesitates before answering, “No, I mean I didn’t really consider that.”

“And have I not instructed you on the history of the witch hunts and the role of the text, the Malleus Maleficarum, in such oppression, in such murder? Have I not warned you that spells in latin often invoke the powers of the Catholic's priestly magic and such a thing is not to be trifled with? Yet you decided to incant a Latinate spell associated with the text anyways. Did it ever occur to you that not all demonic rituals involved obvious human sacrifice?” Belinda says sarcastically.

“I didn’t know demons were a thing okay?” Hailey answers slightly annoyed and very much cowed.

Belinda retorts, “Neither did you know Death was ‘a thing’ until the mall and yet you did not run to its embrace there either.” Seeing her hurt expression at the low barb, Belinda pauses and calms herself before continuing in a slightly apologetic tone, “I am sorry, child, I suppose I could not expect you to know, the fault is with the teacher and not the student."

Taking on an instructional tone, Belinda continues to speak, "Demonic summons involve perversions or acts of darkness that stain the soul of the magician enough to attract the attention of the summoned creature. Different demons prefer different sins, note that the hammer requires a spell to summon and yet aids in combat against another witch. This is because the demon of the Malleus takes perverse delight in turning sister against sister and witch against witch.”

Hailey grimaces before saying, “I hate to bring this up but that means I need your help with Bella sooner. If the demon beats us, we can’t leave her behind like a ticking bomb." Thinking for a moment she pauses before resuming with, "I didn’t see any demon or demons when I used the hammer, how long do you think we have until they show up?”

Belinda pauses to bring forth a pair of chairs from the mist, allowing the two to sit for the remainder of the conversation. Then she says, “I do not know, I have never known anyone foolish enough to summon a demon. You did not actually kill Bella, and that may work in our favor. These creatures reside in Hell, in a place of the dead. They require life to allow them to return, even for a time, to the land of the living.” With a troubled expression, Belinda stands and begins to walk towards the library, calling back over her shoulder, “Tell me of your friend, what ails her?”

“She’s cursed, possessed, or bit off more than she can chew, magically.” Hailey answers.

“What did she do?” Belinda asks in a curt tone.

“She found this book, something that let her transform into a toxic avenger. She’s going to keep transforming until her spell runs its course, which will only happen after she kills three people. I don’t want her to do that and neither does she, so were in a bit of a bind.” Hailey pauses before continuing. “I was hoping you could whip up some kind of counter spell, or at least a way to keep the transformations under control.”

Belinda’s expression changes to an introspective look as she stands and begins to walk over to the spectral library. As she does, her chair vanishes transforming back into mist. Looking over her shoulder, Belinda says to the waiting Hailey, “Come child, you may search with me. Perhaps you may take this opportunity to catch up on a number of studies in which you have demonstrated a deficiency in lately.”

Wincing, but smart enough to bite back her retort, Hailey follows her mentor silently into the library. There, the pair begins to pull books from the shelves, paging through them at preternatural speeds and casting them aside to the ground after reading. The texts disappear into mist, sinking into the floor, before reappearing on the shelves as though they never left.

Time passes in silence as the pair move through the library, occasionally Belinda or Hailey will pause to ask a question of one another or place a book aside for the other to consult. Hailey finds herself looking at quite a few books on demonic rituals as Belinda silently makes her point. In the Starry Realm nothing ever changes, no indication of passing time exists, so it is impossible to judge exactly how long it takes before Hailey throws her hands in the air and shouts, “Alright Bel! I swear I’ve gone through this same tome twice already! We’re not getting anywhere with this.”

Setting aside her current text, Belinda gives her apprentice a contemplative look. Then, apparently satisfied with her conclusion, she nods and says, “Then I will need to see this spell and your friend. We must bring her here.”

“Here?” Hailey asks, confused, “can you do that?”

Belinda marches out of the library towards the crystal, casting those unfortunate bookshelves in her path into the mist. “Of course I cannot, I am a spirit. My spells cannot extend beyond the dagger or it’s owner. Yours, however, can. So it is your power that will summon her here with the help of my spell, so I say that we must bring her here.”

Waving an arrogant hand in the direction of the crystal, Belinda watches it contort back into the pool. This time it does not peer through space, merely time as it hovers over the slumbering form of Hailey sitting next to her friend in the back of the ambulance some time ago. The recording begins to play out in fast forward, soundless as the moving figures race at impossible speeds.

Together they watch as paramedics pull the pair out of the back and into the hospital proper. As the doctors whisk Bella away, the nurses notice that Hailey seems to have trouble waking. Checking, and confirming, that her vital signs are not dangerously out of the ordinary they discuss options for what seems only a few seconds before carrying her to one of the beds near the room Bella eventually arrives at. The nurses then maintain a close eye on Hailey, checking in every few moments in the vision. However, while her slumber is not ordinary it is far from dangerous and so they find no cause for further alarm.

With a sudden rush, the sound returns as the images catch up to the current moment. Snapping back to the present, the pair looks around at the empty room. Belinda looks calmly at Hailey and says, “Well then child, it is time for you to wake up.”

Nodding, Hailey begins to dissipate into the mist. As her outline fades away, Belinda turns back to the pool as the image suddenly shifts signaling Hailey’s return to the mortal realm.

Join us next week as Bella meets Belinda for the first time and the three attempt to counter the ritual of revenge that lies dormant, but waiting, to rear its head once again in… “Chaining the Beast!”