> "I have a concern," Markus spoke up, brushing his designer shirt off unnecessarily. "If they were affected by the Warlock, won't they keep trying to kill themselves?"

-

> The red-head jumped up shook herself from head to toe. Grinning at the others, she said: "Whew, that was a rush! Looks like I still need to get used to moving at intense speeds. I'll make note of that later. So, what do we do next? I assume we go after the real thing now, hm? And I have to agree with Markus here. Why wouldn't they try this again?"

Dora nodded. "We stopped them for now, but they will try again. That is why we must find the Warlock and put an end to the curse."

> "I...I got it. C'mon." She said as she started to lead them to where the sound was coming from. The closer Felice got to where the lair entrance was, the worse the sound became as more and more horrible noises were added to the the song that was coming from the entrance to the lair. Felice could start to feel something else...A sense of dread and fear. A sense that if anything in the lair got her, it would enjoy seeing her in pain, enjoy seeing her die a slow and agonizing death. A sense that inside was a creature of pure evil... It got so bad that at one point she had to stop completely. She covered her face with her hands and tried to take deep breaths. And that's when the sound of the lair's energy quieted, being drowned out by the sounds of the energy of those around her, her friends. Felice looked up at them and smiled a little. She wasn't alone in this, her friends would be by her side. With a nod to herself she continued on. 
> 
> Finally she lead them through some alley ways and stopped when she saw it. The entrance to the Warlock's lair. It looked kind of like a black hole, or maybe a black Whirlpool, slowly rotating and it felt like if you stood to close, it would suck you right in... "This is it. The entrance to the lair...I think the Warlock is somewhere inside..." Felice told the group.

"It's right here," Dora confirmed by looking at her Soul Gem, and opened her other hand towards the invisible entrance. Her Soul Gem shone brilliantly, and the entrance was suddenly visible to everyone, a black vortex that had some kind of black smoke-like matter seeping out of it. It gave a cold chill down your spines as it was approached. The vortex seemed to distort the space around it, reflecting and refracting light in impossible ways.

"It could have taken a while to find this one. Good work Felice," the blonde girl said, and her clothes changed into ones more fitting to fight in.

"This is your last chance to retreat," she said to the other Magic Knights around her. "Because once you are inside, there is no escape until the master of the Lair has been destroyed."

"I'm not backing out," Sofia said, and also transformed. "I'm not going to abandon my friends when they need me the most!"

"Sofia...thank you." Dora said, and jumped into the portal. You followed her, and plunged into the great unknown.

---

You entered a world of pure, unfiltered madness. The sky was green and filled with yellow clouds, while a square sun was shining down in a sickish hue of blue. Some of the red clouds were moving vertically in addition to horizontal movement, and you could barely see a corner in the skyline, hinting that the world was inside a cube of some sort.

You first mistook the place you landed on to be a sandy desert, but soon realized the desert was not made of sand, but bullet casings. A nearby river flowed with gold coins instead of water, which seemed to lead to a grey wall of some kind beyond the desert. The mountain range to the left of you, beyond the horizon, was entirely covered in barb wire.

Some of the landscape was alien and unwelcoming, like straight out of a sci-fi horror game: there were towers of futuristic design scattered here and there, their purposes unknown. There were also craters and green pools of living sludge. It was a wasteland of insanity, and one that would surely cause nausea in the weak-willed.

"Wow," you could hear Sofia whisper as she looked on, her hand covering her mouth. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Caution my friends," Dora said, and took a defensive pose. "We are now in enemy territory, and could be ambushed at any point. Ready yourselves for any familiars we might encounter while on our way to the Warlock."