Note: In which I shamelessly borrow from Dante Alighieri and his Inferno… *Thanks Mr Alighieri profusely.*

The Last Stand

Twenty-Six

Mildred scrambled to her feet.

"I think I know where we are," she said excitedly, taking in Miss Cackle's bemused expression. "You remember Granny Cackle's Dante?"

The headmistress nodded, and Mildred found her own mind cast back to the exquisite tome that sat in pride of place on the top shelf in the library. They had consulted it all those years ago when the castle had been dragged into hell, and now Mildred was remembering its lessons as if she had read the poetic prose only yesterday.

"The first circle of hell is limbo," she explained, "the home of those who cannot enter heaven but who do not need to be punished." She looked around the dimly lit room, hoping fervently that her theory was correct. "In the middle of the first circle, there is a castle. What if we are in that castle?"

It made sense in Mildred's head; it would seem to be the most logical solution. It was obvious that they had passed into what was known by everyone as 'the Devil's domain', and everyone had assumed this to be hell. But what if it was not truly hell, but more of a halfway stopping point between the real world and the depths of torment that led to the icy horrors of the ninth circle, where the most terrible sin of all was punished – betrayal. Mildred had been honing this theory for five long years, ever since Miss Hardbroom had first made the journey across into the metaphysical realm, and now she was certain of it. She just needed some proof.

"Wait here," she said quickly, standing up and ignoring the throbbing pain from her cut hand. "I'll be right back."

"Mildred, what if…" Miss Cackle began, but she broke off. "Be careful, Mildred."

The younger witch nodded and crossed the room to the flickering door beside the mirror, reaching out for the handle but feeling nothing but smooth crimson wall. Mildred smiled, not fooled by the mirage, and she turned away. Immediately the handle became apparent under her fingers, she could just see it solidify out of the corner of her eye. She opened the door, almost falling through it in her haste to find her way to the top of the castle and proof of her theory. A small part of her thought it strange that the door was not locked, but Mildred simply put it down to the Devil's arrogance; if he had not expected anyone to get past the glamour that had covered the door – and was disappearing along with him – there was no profit to be gained from locking it. She raced up the set of stairs in front of her, navigating the castle blindly, trusting her instincts to get her to the battlements. As she continued to climb, she wondered if the staircase was taking her where she wanted to go of its own accord. She would not put anything past the metaphysical realm, so deeply steeped in magic as it was. Finally her ascent levelled out and she was facing another door. Mildred turned the handle nervously and stepped out onto the castle's open battlements. She took a deep breath and looked over, grasping the nearest stone for purchase to prevent her losing her footing and plummeting countless feet. Mildred's breath caught in her throat. There, sprawling below her, was hell, its remaining eight circles falling down and down towards the epicentre, the ninth, where the Devil was entombed forever. She could not even see that far down, so immense was the mass of fiery brimstone below her. Even so far above it, Mildred could still make out the mournful weeping of the damned, caught as they were in their eternal punishment, doomed to remain in their designated circle until the judgment day. The sorrowful sound was occasionally punctuated with a sharp scream of pain that was all-too-quickly reduced to guttural groan.

Mildred shuddered. She was right; they were in the limbo of the first circle, within the castle that the Devil had created for the use of those that dwelled there. The castle that the Devil had created… There was small wonder that the ceiling was vanishing into the ether before their eyes. They had to get out, but even if they left the castle, they were still trapped in hell, faced with terrors that they had never before given imagination to. They could try and cross the river Acheron, and return through the entrance of hell. They could make a slow and precarious descent, like Dante had done, and try and come out of the other side, through the ice. The ice… A thought struck Mildred, a thought that was both wonderful and fear-inspiring in equal measure. What if the ice that the mirror had been made of was ice from the ninth circle? What if, all that they had to do was escape was to replace the ice? Mildred looked back at the door that she had just come out of, knowing that the rest of the castle would be disappearing into the Void soon enough. Perhaps her route back to Amelia and Constance was already blocked off. She looked back down into hell, straining her neck to try and see the invisible ninth circle, far below her. It would take months to climb down, years even. But there was a quicker way down…

Mildred took another calming breath and, not entirely trusting herself, stood up on the battlement. If she looked directly down, she could see a clear pathway down into the darkness below her.

"Mildred?" Miss Cackle's voice came from the doorway behind her, and Mildred turned to see the headmistress staring at her in wild-eyed horror. "What are you doing?"

"Getting us out of here," Mildred replied. She swallowed. "Trust me."

Amelia nodded, her eyes glassy with fear and admiration.

"I always have, Mildred," she said softly. "I always have."

Mildred turned back, looking down at her final destination. She didn't even know if her plan would work, but it was the only plan that she had. She didn't dare look back in case the expression on her superior's face swayed her courage and she remained where she was. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and performed a perfect swan dive into the centre of hell.

For a few moments, she didn't realise that she was moving, her descent was so graceful and slow, but suddenly the wind was whistling in her ears; blowing her hair back and making her eyes stream with the intensity of its fury. Mildred turned her face to the side to try and avoid some of the full blast of the powerful wind rushing past her. She saw the full horrors that Dante had described in his Inferno so close she could almost reach out and touch the lost souls that were mourning their enslavement. She was falling past the second circle, eternal abode of the lust-stricken, and it was then that she realised why the wind was affecting her so much – the punishment here was for souls to be constantly blown about with no respite. As soon as she had passed the edge of the third circle, her descent would not be so uncomfortable; the wind would not be blowing across from one side of the circle to the other and causing the mysterious gusts and eddies that were buffeting her along her journey.

She saw a young woman at the edge of the circle, reaching out for her, pleading to save her from this hell, but there was nothing that Mildred could do, and too soon the restless spirit was caught upon another gust. Soon after she found herself outside the influence of the dread winds and back to her silent, uninhibited falling, a strange and eerie sensation since she knew from her surroundings that she was gliding down with great speed, yet if she closed her eyes then she would not know that she was moving. It would have been easier if she could have remained sightless for the entire journey, but she found that she was compelled to open her eyes and view the human destruction, like in a nightmare when one cannot turn from the terrifying monster and run for cover.

She passed the third circle, final resting place of the gluttonous, and she felt a shiver run down her spine as she heard the triplicate growling of the Cerberus that guarded its gates. She was most certainly picking up speed in her descent, falling faster and faster past the fourth circle; its souls pushing their dead weights in never-ceasing contest, and the swamp of the fifth. Everything was so vivid it was almost unreal, like a film or a dream, yet there could be no denying that she was there, experiencing the things that Dante had described first hand. When she had first read the oversized book, cosy in the shadowed corners of the library, Mildred had not thought of the images and their descriptions as particularly frightening, but now, when she was inches away from the damned and could see their plight in glorious and gruesome technicolour, her view was changed. She could quite see why Dante had broken down in terror at various points through his journey, and she was not even as close as he had been to the evils.

As she passed the threshold between the fifth and sixth circles, clasping her hands over her ears to block out the ferocious and haunting cries of the winged demons that acted as guardians to lower hell, Mildred could sense that her descent was slowing. The air around her, still as it always was, was suffocatingly hot, and whilst she could not see any human forms on the ledges that ran around her suspended body, she could make out gouts of flames bursting from the walls. Mildred tried to remember the sins punished here, and she felt her blood run cold. The sixth circle was the destination of the heretics.

The witches.

A voice in her head, a terrible voice that she was sure had not come from her own imagination, roared the words that Dante had observed on the entrance to hell:

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE!

It was trying to draw her in, take her to the ledges to join in her punishment with the rest of those who had been found guilty of heresy and witchcraft in their time; doomed to burn forever more in their inescapable coffins as they had been burned in life, from one infernal flame to the next. Hell had recognised her as one of magical leaning and was determined that she should scorch with the rest.

This wasn't right, it couldn't be right, there had to be some other way. Mildred thought frantically, she was alive, she couldn't end her life like this. She had entered hell voluntarily; she had not be sent here as punishment for the sins of life like the evil witches whose names she heard whispered through the rows of flaming caskets. She used her craft for the good.

She thought desperately of Dante, wishing that he could provide some clues. Had he been a wizard? Mildred did not know for certain, but she had always suspected that was the case. How else had he been able to find the entrance to the afterlife whilst still living? How else had he survived the extremes that he had experienced. Dante had been a magician, and he had come through the sixth circle, so Mildred was going to do so to.

"No," she whispered as she neared the ledge, the searing flames missing her by inches. "No, you cannot have my soul. I will not abandon hope!"

That was it, she thought as the air immediately became cooler around her. That was the key. That was what separated her from the guilty. If she had nothing else, she had hope, and it was that hope that was the ultimate skeleton key to everything that had happened to them in the past five years. The Devil had spoken of an unassailable bond between the women of Cackle's, and it was hope that had strengthened and protected that bond. Why would they be here, Amelia and her, if it was not for the hope that they could rescue Constance from her terrible plight? The Devil had always said that he could not touch their bond, and it seemed only natural that his minions here in the circles of his domain were equally restrained by this uncanny emotion, this fierce and irrepressible hope.

She was flying downwards now, free from the snares that had pulled her in to the heretics, and the seventh and eighth ledges had passed in a blur of mournful cries and awesome images, the ten partitions of the eighth circle merging together as the thieves and the whores and the corrupt seemed to share in their myriad punishments together, all reaching out for her, their possible saviour, and all howling in despair when she continued to fall past them, intent upon her goal. The light from the fires and the lightning had now dimmed, and Mildred could only make out the vague forms of the giants on whose shoulders the upper circles rested as she entered the ninth and final resting place. It was here that she would find the ice, the Devil himself, and their salvation.

Mildred cast a spell to slow her descent and allow her to manoeuvre herself into a standing position so that she would not hit the freezing surface head first, but the impact after such a long fall still sent her sprawling across the glassy surface. Far beneath her, Mildred could see the faces of the traitors, frozen forever more in the solid rime that formed the bottom of hell itself. She started momentarily as she viewed Agatha's anguished visage in the ice, remembering the events that had occurred when she had made her first journey to this realm all those years ago, and the Devil had taken Agatha's soul…

Mildred forced herself out of her recollections, prepared to continue her task at hand. In theory it was comparatively simple: use a severing charm to loosen a piece of ice, and another to hew it into the correct shape to fit the frame high above her. As she set about cutting through the surface, however, Mildred's mind was full of misgivings. Would there need to be any enchantments to allow the mirror to work? Would the ice reflect of its own accord? The surface that she was cutting seemed to be completely transparent like a clear glass; she didn't know whether it was silvered in order to produce its shine. She shook herself crossly as she eased out her new ice. They would find a way. They always had. Since the place in which the ice had been formed was so inherently magical of its own right, Mildred was sure that the ice itself would hold mystic power enough.

Finally the piece was free, and Mildred smiled an exhausted smile at her reflection. The glass was mirrored on the underside, like a one-way glass in a police station, no doubt another punishment inflicted upon those below it, never able to see the outside world. Now, the most pressing problem was how to get the ice back up to the first circle. The journey had taken her only a few minutes in her descent, but she had not brought her broomstick and so she could not return to the surface with the same method. But Mildred had a plan, one that she had formed even before she had dived off the battlements. Admittedly, she had never performed the feat she was about to perform over such a large distance, or in such unusual conditions, but she was damned well going to try.

Smiling wryly at her wholly inappropriate language, Mildred cast a spell to bind the glass to herself before crossing her arms, closing her eyes, and disappearing…