Two days later, Lilith led a quaking Sam/Starlight Stella down an ominous concrete hallway that ended in a reinforced steel door. Above the door was a black stenciled sign reading "STAGE ONE TRAINING".
The neophyte mahou shoujo could've passed for a very feminine young teenage boy, but her former masculinity was clearly reaching its twilight. She seemed to have regressed to the physical age of thirteen, and they both knew she was destined to lose a few more years.
She awkwardly adjusted her midnight-blue witch cap and tugged at her purple cloak.
"Do I really have to wear this?" she asked sheepishly.
"Keep asking me that, and you won't get dessert," Lilith said. "Standard operating procedures, honey. You'll be fighting in this outfit for the rest of your career, so better get used to it."
Stella gave her puppy-dog eyes. Lilith responded with a playful whap on the shoulder. "That ain't gonna work on me, kiddo."
She sighed and slumped her shoulders. She was quickly learning that cuteness went a long way for getting favors, but Lilith was a stark exception.
"So, this isn't going to hurt too much if I screw up, right?" Stella asked when they were halfway down the long hall. "I mean, I hardly know anything about how to fight. Er--with this thing, I mean," she said, holding up her staff. It was formed out of a branch, with its head terminating in a stylishly carved coil like a snail's shell.
"Fighting as a magical girl is much more intuitive than you believe," Lilith countered. "The more you overthink it, the harder it gets."
"But I only know the basic moves!" Stella protested. "How am I supposed to win against magical girls who've been doing this for years?"
"I'm technically not supposed to tell you this yet, but you won't be fighting magical girls," Lilith said under her breath.
Stella blinked. "What?"
The steel doors rumbled open, and Stella strained to see what was on the other side through the sudden burst of bright morning light.
"The key to victory is the element of surprise," Lilith said. "Surprise!"
She gave Stella a firm push before she could react. Yelping in startlement, Stella stumbled into the arena. The heavy doors unceremoniously slammed shut behind her.
Stella blinked again, suddenly feeling like she was in a gladiator movie. She stood in a large sand-floored hexagonal space penned in by reinforced, twenty-meter-high concrete walls. The morning sun shone through a thick plexiglass dome above.
"Dang it," Stella said, wishing she still could use more colorful language. "Fudging hailstorms."
In the center of the arena two figures stood side-by-side on a raised metal platform. On the left was a young woman in what looked like a modernized version of a Roman tunic. On the right was a man dressed in menacing heavy plate armor and a red-plumed galea helmet. Stella was more taken aback by the presence of a male than his strange clothes. It seemed like ages since she had seen someone who wasn't either a magical girl or a soon-to-be magical girl.
"I am Venatrix," said the woman tonelessly.
"And I am Venator," said the man. "We are Derelicts. And we know the world through the Broken Prism."
"You're weirdos, that's who you are," Stella muttered. Who on earth were these nutcases supposed to be?
"The little witch has a wayward tongue," Venatrix said. "Lend me your strength, Venator, and I shall teach her when to hold it."
"Gladly," replied Venator. He twitched wildly while a wave of distortion covered his body. The effect reminded Stella of an old home video tape that had been abruptly paused, leaving the viewer with a shaky still frame. She gulped and got a firmer grip on her staff.
Meanwhile, a series of bright orange points blinked into existence above Venatrix's hands. Like some insane connect-the-dots picture, lines of light began to crisscross the points until the woman appeared to be holding a net made of flickering unstable neon. A similar process occurred above her right hand, granting her an ethereal trident.
"You cannot understand the Broken Prism, little witch," announced Venatrix while she gracefully leaped off the platform. As she drew closer, Stella noticed that the woman's eyes appeared to be rapidly shifting through all colors of the spectrum. "You cannot understand what the Shattered Ones showed us. But perhaps we can teach you what it was like when we first saw it."
"Do I have to sign a waiver or something?" Stella quipped, playing for time while she mentally rehearsed her attacks.
A scowl swept across Venatrix's formerly expressionless face. She was now close enough for Stella to see the strange way her muscles rhythmically spasmed under her pale skin.
"It was agony, little witch. We were blind, stumbling humans one moment, and chosen soldiers of the Shattered Ones the next. And though your kind has..." Venatrix choked on the word, "ruined us, we will never forget the Broken Prism."
"Yeah, well, good for you. QUASAR BLAST!" Stella roared, suddenly thrusting her staff towards Venatrix. Instantly a brilliant, eye-watering white beam of energy shot out from the staff, spreading out into a wide cone that completely eclipsed Venatrix's form. The recoil was so intense that it took every ounce of Stella's lessened strength to keep the staff from flying out of her grasp.
It had all been theory up until this point, so Stella was wonderstruck by the sheer power she now found at her command. If she could do stuff like this, maybe life as a magical girl wouldn't be so bad after all...
And then the blast was gone. Venatrix stood in a small blackened crater, her arms wrapped protectively around her head. Her tunic was scorched, and she was spotted with soot, but she looked awfully healthy for a woman just hit by a cosmic energy discharge.
She slowly lowered her arms, revealing a subtly twitching smile. "My turn, little witch."