Silent. Invisible. Psionic magic couldn't be seen or touched. Had they not sensed the faintest ripple of magical energy within Bella's body, the assembled Kamar-Taj sorcerers wouldn't even have known she'd cast a spell.
Their composure stood in stark contrast to Victor's agony. He reeled as if struck by a thunderbolt. It felt like someone was driving a white-hot branding iron through his skull. Memories shattered in droves. Beautiful moments and bitter ones alike were ground to dust without mercy.
Physical torment was pain. The ravaging of the mind was something else entirely—a form of cruelty that existed on a wholly different plane.
In a half-dreaming haze, he saw himself ascending to the pinnacle of human achievement. Everyone sang his praises. He was a god among mortals. Then, in the next instant, his true identity was cruelly exposed—he was a fraud. Every honor was stripped away, his limbs were broken, and the world spat on him.
The moment he tried to mount a defense, the vision shifted: the scientific community had unanimously embraced him. He married Susan. Reed, his old rival, offered his blessing willingly. But before the thought could even finish forming, he discovered Reed sleeping with his wife—and the two of them were plotting to kill him.
Terror. Confusion. Helplessness. Inside the landscape of his mind, he was weaker than an infant, powerless to do anything but endure the spell's assault over and over again.
Every good thought, every dark impulse—all of it was ripped out of him by force, then flattened by the psionic magic like a steamroller making pass after merciless pass. That was Bella's 5th-circle spell: Mind Crush.
The technique was designed to reduce its target to a drooling idiot.
Victor's willpower exceeded that of an ordinary person by a considerable margin. Even after his dignity had been trampled a thousand times, ten thousand times, he managed to cling to a thread of self.
He clutched his head. Veins bulged across his forehead. His face was a mask of anguish as he staggered backward by pure instinct.
His back slammed into the front door with a heavy bang.
Humiliated. Furious. Ashamed. However impressive he'd been walking in, he looked exactly that pathetic now.
Not every sorcerer at Kamar-Taj was a monk like Daniel, tempered by years of ascetic discipline and bound by compassion. Many of the younger ones watched Victor's disgrace with barely concealed glee. They didn't dare make a scene in front of a senior like Bella, but murmuring to the person beside them was fair game.
"Not much to him, huh? One move and he's down."
"Obviously. Did you see who he's up against? That's our Martial Great-Aunt—the Sorcerer Supreme's own disciple, probably the next Sorcerer Supreme. This idiot picked the wrong door to kick in."
"Wait... is he recovering a little?"
Victor felt as though his skull was about to split open. He'd never encountered psionic magic in his life, and his underestimation had been catastrophic. He was surviving on nothing but sheer pride.
With trembling hands, he produced another straw doll—the last one his mother had ever left him.
His fingers shaking, he began the incantation, trying to redirect the debilitating effects onto the doll. But psionic magic operated directly within the psyche. Gypsy hedge-witchcraft couldn't ward against it.
Bella didn't bother watching his parlor tricks. By her standards, Victor's magic was kindergarten-level.
She pointed with her left hand from across the room. A 2nd-circle Energy Suppression spell severed the link between Victor's cells and his magic. While he panicked, convinced he'd lost his power all over again, she followed up with one of Kamar-Taj's most famous techniques: the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, binding his soul in layer upon layer of unbreakable crimson chains.
"Mr. Von Doom, kindly send over the medical bills for my juniors. I won't be keeping you for dinner. You're free to go."
Bella turned down Daniel's proposal to ship Victor to Kamar-Taj for imprisonment. From what she knew of this man, the odds of him staging a successful jailbreak—and ransacking Kamar-Taj in the process—were disturbingly high.
If she wasn't going to kill him, she wasn't about to lock the fox in the henhouse.
Her solution was to cripple Victor Von Doom's magic permanently. No more spells, no more sorcery. He could go back to being an ordinary person.
Daniel didn't object. Compassion wasn't the same as stupidity. He'd nearly been beaten to death moments ago; forcing the attacker to "lay down his weapon" aligned perfectly with his values.
Bella's Energy Suppression had severed the connection between Victor's cells and his magical energy. The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak bound his soul tight.
The soul was the essential vessel for spellcasting. A body wasn't strictly necessary—plenty of spirits could still wield magic without one. But without a soul? There was nothing left.
Under her spells, Victor would become a thoroughgoing magical blank—unable to sense, channel, or cast anything, ever.
Bella wrapped up the matter quickly and excused herself. Kitty, her little sister, was back home, and she'd left the Divine Dragon on babysitting duty. She wasn't entirely comfortable with that arrangement, and she needed to get back immediately.
The Sanctum doors swung shut with a muffled thud. Victor stood in the street, scarcely able to believe they'd just let him walk away. But before relief could set in, the hollow emptiness inside him was utterly unbearable.
From brimming with magical energy to utterly vacant. Cells that had been thrumming with power moments ago were inert and dead. He seemed to have reverted to his state before the space station—back to being an ordinary man.
"No! I won't allow it! I will never allow it! There has to be a way!" He raged on a New York sidewalk, screaming at the sky. Passersby stared at him the way they'd stare at a lunatic.
His knowledge of the magical arts was too shallow. He didn't have the faintest idea what had been done to him, and Bella—busy coaxing her little sister—was certainly not going to come out and explain.
Ignoring the debt collectors and bankers hounding him for repayment, he locked himself in his laboratory and tried to use science to determine what had gone wrong with his body.
When he realized he couldn't solve the problem on his own, he turned to the Fantastic Four.
Because of his greed—because he'd gone straight for the New York Sanctum and smashed headfirst into a cliff face—he and the Fantastic Four had never actually come into conflict. On the contrary, the two sides were still on excellent terms.
Reed Richards, his college classmate and best friend, went without saying. Susan and Johnny went without saying as well. Even Ben Grimm, the most distant of the four in personal terms, still called Victor by the affectionate "Vic" rather than the formal "Mr. Doom." That alone spoke volumes.
Mr. Fantastic subjected Victor to a battery of tests, running every diagnostic available.
"Vic, I can't find anything wrong with you. Perfectly healthy, perfectly normal. Every metric is within standard range. Your blood pressure's a little high, I'll give you that. But other than that, you're actually healthier than average."
Mr. Fantastic had no idea his old friend was on the verge of a complete breakdown. He even cracked a joke about the blood pressure.
Victor had held onto one last shred of hope. Mr. Fantastic's verdict hurled him into the abyss.