Chapter 19

The moment that Katherine and I pass through the door, it slams shut behind us. We then find ourselves in a dimly lit entrance hall with a set of double doors ahead of us in the distance. The walls are painted brown and coordinate with the bronze colored armor statues that line the hall. There are also portraits of the esteemed Butterfly members on the wall. The portraits are the type that have eyes that trace the viewer, thus giving the whole corridor a dark, eerie, gothic feel. To make it worse, the black floor beneath us is invisible because of a knee-high mist floating about.

“You wanted a haunted mansion Katherine. I think you got it.”

Katherine slowly creeps behind me. “Is something going to pop out and scare us? I hate it when that happens.” She then moves to an armored statue on the left wall and looks into its eyes. “I wonder if one of these statues is a person in disguise. That would scare me.”

She nervously raps the statue in the chest with her wand. Right then, it stretches out its arms and grabs her. Katherine screams at the top of her lungs while kicking her legs. But before I can reach her, the statue spins around and takes her to the other side of the wall. When it spins back to my side, its arms are empty.

I hit the statue and wave my arms in front of it. Nothing that I do causes it to grab me like it grabbed Katherine. I get fed up with the stupid thing and stop trying to make it work. What kind of crummy device only works once anyway?

Disappointed, I smack my head with my palm. “Katherine, why did you do that?”

Now I’m alone in the entrance hallway with the ghoulish portraits starring at me accusingly. It wasn’t my fault though. I didn’t tell Katherine to do that. Of course, it is my fault that I brought her here. If something bad happens to her, then I’ll never forgive myself. I have to rescue her. This entrance hallway that I’m in only leads in one direction with no side halls or windows. There is absolutely nothing more to do than to go forward and pass through the double doors. So I do.

I push open the double doors and step into the next room. It is a long and wide room with nothing in it. Nothing other than two candles lit on opposite walls, that eerie mist bouncing off of the floor, and a small door opposite of the entrance double doors. I walk further into the room. I hate to say it, but now I’m starting to get a little scared. Suddenly, a bat comes out of nowhere and flies at my head.

In response, I scream and dive like a sissy schoolgirl. The bat simply passes by innocently. Embarrassed, I scrape myself up from the ground and dust myself off. I’m grateful that nobody was here to witness my brief moment of cowardice.

I get my wits about me and press on. Slowly, I shuffle towards the small door while shifting my eyes left and right to make sure that nothing takes me by surprise. I hear the sound of the bat flapping its wings as it approaches the back of my head. This time I duck and cover as if the bat were demolition explosives. Again, it flies over my head innocently. I’m starting to hate that thing.

When I reach the center of the room, I hear laughter. It’s the sound of a woman laughing. At first it comes from directly in front of me. Then it comes from the right side, then behind, and then finally the left. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up straighter than soldiers. I draw in a deep breath and push on. I reach as far as three quarters of the way to the small door when suddenly a loud voice booms out,

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING HERE?”

The voice sounds coarse and unnatural. It’s as if there are two voices speaking at once; one is deeper and darker than the other. I ignored the laughter, but I think that I had better respond to the voice. “My, my, my name is Souladonis,” I say shakily.

I hear flapping from my left side. I turn my head towards the flapping and see the bat darting straight at me. When I look at it, it bears its fangs threateningly. I give into fear and drop down ducking beneath it. It passes by overhead yet again. Now I really hate that thing. I scurry up to my feet. “I’m here to see Sidney Butterfly.”

After speaking those words, more unsettling laughter echoes out from behind me. I turn around to see the source; however, there’s nobody behind me. The room is still entirely empty. Then from behind me, towards where I had just been looking, the voice resounds,

“A FOOL’S ERRAND!”

I snap around to the front side. The bat flies to the center from the right side of the room. Then it shoots up towards the roof and then finally rockets down into the ground. Appearing from out of the mist, the figure of a young woman emerges. She has long platinum blonde hair, blue topaz eyes, black eye liner and harsh black lipstick. She wears a black corset, with a black skirt draping from it. She has long black high heel boots, fingerless black bridal gloves, and a black headband to complete the dreary ensemble. I take the woman to be Sidney Butterfly, but she looks nothing like her sister Silvia. I realize now that I may have made a mistake – a big, oddly sexy mistake.

Sidney stands still about ten feet away from the small door. Her eyes gaze at me with merciless tension. I halfway bow my head at her not sure what else to do. Then, I cautiously step towards her careful not to look threatening. “STOP,” she orders.

I hold my hands up innocently and stop moving. Nervously I tell her, ”My name is Souladonis. I came here to talk to you. I’m a friend of your sister Silvia.”

“YOU’RE SILVIA’S FRIEND? THAT MAKES YOU MY ENEMY!”

O’ sweet crumble cake! That’s not the response that I was hoping for. Out of the blue, Sidney points her palm at me. I tilt my head diagonally, unsure of what she’s getting at. The next thing I know there’s a huge flaming Comet roaring at me. I dive and roll out of the way. Ensuingly, Sidney attacks me with Chain Lightning. I quickly create a barrier of mana energy around myself to lessen the damage from the attack. It still stings like a swarm of bees nonetheless. If Sidney is going to attack me, then I have no choice but to defend myself. –With offense.

I send a Comet flying Sidney’s way. She leaps off to the side with an elegant spin. Then using Summoning Magic, she casts the Stallion spell, thus calling upon a monstrous black stallion.

I prepare to get run down by the muscular black horse, but instead she jumps on top of its back. She then begins to ride it around me in circles. As she circles me she fires off spell after spell of Chain Lightning. After a few stinging hits, I try to stop the horse with the Ground Freeze spell. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work at all. I guess it’s harder to trip a monster horse than a normal horse.

Sidney shoots me again with Chain Lightning. I flinch from the pain. This is really starting to hurt. Irritated, I blast at Sidney with my own Chain Lightning spell. In response she simply stretches out her hand and nullifies my lightning with her own lightning. I didn’t even know that was possible. Master Simon had told me that Sidney was the inferior sister. I think that he must have been talking about a different Butterfly family because this Sidney that I’m fighting is amazing.

I create a Boulder in front of me. Sidney zaps me again with lightning as she rides around in a circle, but eventually she reaches the point where the boulder is between us. At that moment, I use my own Summoning Magic to call out my old friend the Ruby Red Dragon. My dragon attacks at once. It flies at Sidney and lowers its head for a ram-like headbutt. Yet before it connects, Sidney transforms into a bat and escapes. However, my dragon does manage to knock over the monster stallion.

It quickly gets back up to its feet as angry as a horse can be. It charges down the dragon and smashes it in the stomach with its head. The bipedal dragon is knocked a half-step back but nothing more. Responding calmly, the dragon simply waits patiently for the horse to come back at it. Once the horse is moving towards it in a straight line, my dragon breathes out a large fireball at the horse. The fireball connects causing the horse to unsummon inside a tall pillar of flame.

My dragon is doing quite well. Too bad that I can’t say the same about myself. Sidney resumes her human form. Right away, the dragon comes at Sidney for another attack. In response, she swings her hand through the air casting the Icicle Volley spell. From out of the air in front of Sidney, a cluster of sharp icicles takes shape. The icicles then expand in size and launch themselves at the dragon. Because it is flying towards Sidney at a high velocity, it’s not able to change its path in time to avoid being bombarded by the icicles. I watch powerlessly as my dragon takes hit after hit and then ultimately unsummons away.

Sidney and I are now even. Sort of. I’m breathing heavy and frayed from being zapped by lightning so many times. Sidney is untouched and not even sweating. It’s clear that this is not a fight that I will be able to end easily.

I cast the Miracle Heal spell on myself as a quick pick-me-up. What’s really troublesome about this battle is the fact that Sidney isn’t even using a staff. To be able to cast magic as quickly and as powerfully as she does without a staff requires an extreme degree of talent. In fact, I think that between us, Sidney is the superior mage. Nonetheless, Sidney is a pure mage, and everybody knows what a pure mage’s weakness is. I hate to sucker punch a girl, but I don’t see any other way. The only problem is getting close enough to hit her.

I don’t wait for Sidney to make the next move. Instead, I lead off ahead of her with the Comet spell. While the comet approaches her, I charge behind it using it as a screen. Sidney returns fire with her own comet. When the two meet, the comets explode forcing me to dodge away from them. I had intended to use the comet to cover more ground than what I gained. Now I’m at midrange, where I still have to worry about her magic.

She casts a barrage of icicles. I use the Boulder spell to block the icicle shards. Next, I launch the boulder itself at her. While the boulder flies towards her, I scramble to gain ground. Sidney spins out of the way of my spell. As she comes out of her spin, she launches the Water Shark spell at me. I kick out my left foot to grind to a halt. Just before the shark plows into my chest, I’m able to push off to the right in an aerial cartwheel. Sidney responds with her trademark Chain Lightning spell. The lightning spell I just accept to the chest as I charge towards her.

My sudden omission of evasive maneuvers startles Sidney. I think that she now knows what I’m trying to do. To prevent me from succeeding, she tries casting the Wind Push spell. It knocks me unto my back, but I immediately kip up to my feet and continue charging at her. Only this time instead of running blindly, I point my staff out ahead of me and triple cast the Fire Pebbles spell. Nine little burning coals spray out of my staff and attach themselves to Sidney. While she hastily brushes them off of herself, I’m finally able to close the distance.

I jump high into the air and come down swinging my staff for Sidney’s head. She shrills and barely manages to dodge to the side. I land and pivot. Then I make a sideways swoop for the side of her head. She points her finger at me and calls out, “Bind!”

Suddenly a ring of yellow energy loops around my arms. It squeezes tightly and prevents me from using my arms. Sidney quickly follows up with two more spells – Silence and Enfeeble. Despite its name, the Silence spell does not actually prevent a person from speaking. Rather, it prevents a person from using magic. Her last spell “Enfeeble” is a spell unique to Witch class mages. It makes the rest of a witch’s spells more effective on her target. I should have guessed that she would use Status Magic, or as Master Simon calls it, “Curse Magic.”

I’m now powerless and in deep, deep trouble. Sidney walks directly in front of me. Then she runs her index finger alongside my face. “Prepare to die,” she says in her creepy, unnatural voice.

I try to stall her. I don’t have any plans. I’m just throwing chaff to the wind. “I thought you’d be happy to hear that I’m Silvia’s friend. What do you hate your sister or something?”

“No!” she snaps. “I love Silvia! Everybody loves Silvia! But nobody loves me!”

“I have a thought on that Sidney,” I begin humbly. “It may be, and this is just a thought, but there’s the ever-smallest chance that it’s because you make a really bad first impression.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to criticize, but it’s generally considered rude to try to kill people whom you’ve only just met. That’s all I’m saying.”

Sidney looks me in the eyes squinting. It seems that she’s actually taking my words somewhat seriously. I continue hoping for the best. “Rather than trying to kill your guests, might I suggest offering them a drink instead? Perhaps a cup of tea?”

Sidney takes a step back and juts out her palm. “This is a trick. I’m going to kill you.”

“Either way Sidney, I still want that cup of tea. It’s terribly bad form to kill a dehydrated man.”

Sidney puts her hand down and steps close to me again. “Do you really want tea?”

“Yes. I really, really do want tea.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“What’s it matter? We already fought once and you won. You could just as easily defeat me again if I were to try to attack you anew.”

Sidney stares me in the eyes intensely. After a brief moment of consideration, she finally agrees. “Fine,” she says, releasing me from the Bind spell.

“Right this way my lord.”

She turns and walks towards the small door, and I follow behind her. It’s strange that my ploy worked, but I think that I can make a fairly good guess as to why. Sidney isn’t some diabolical, evil, kidnapping psychopath. She’s just lonely.