"Thou Sword of Truth, fly swift and sure,
that evil die and good endure!"
Her world plunges to an end at the point of an enchanted blade.
It pierces her chest, cleaves her heart, and she shrieks with rage and agony, convulses, incinerates from the inside out, feels every vein erupt, every nerve shatter until there is nothing left of her, and yet this searing pain, the most excruciating she has ever felt, does not subside.
She falls.
She falls, and burns, and falls, and burns.
She screams, though she has no lungs.
She writhes, though she has no body.
She sees, though she has no eyes.
A vision swims before her: oceans rise, mountains fall, rivers coalesce into a vast swampland surrounded by jagged cliffs. At its edge, her castle, a familiar black blight on the countryside, growing closer, closer, closer, beneath a swirling, flashing vortex she vaguely remembers is of her own making.
She plummets through it and, as the stones rush up, somehow retains the presence of mind to brace for impact. Parapets crumble, towers become ruins, wooden gates succumb to rot, and still she falls.
There is an unpleasant lurching sensation, a feeling of being stretched beyond all possibility, of turning inside out, before finally, blessedly, the Mistress of All Evil knows no more.
An eternity passes, or perhaps no time at all.
When she awakens, it is to incoherent screams of untold loss rending the mists of dawn.
It takes her a moment to realize the screams she hears are no longer her own.
"Maleficent, I've come to warn you. They mean to kill you!"
Her world is wrenched away from her in chains of iron.
It is without a doubt the worst pain she has ever felt in her life, a horrid, throbbing thing that pulsates with every heartbeat from the burnt stumps on her back, seeps into her joints, pounds mercilessly in her head. She cannot even bring herself to move from the forest floor at first, and why should she? No one hears her cries, or perhaps they have all been frightened away. Maleficent is truly alone in this ordeal.
The hours pass, and she drifts in and out of fevered delirium.
Please, you have to trust me.
I like your wings.
Trust me.
Your wings.
Morning bleeds into late afternoon before she can gather the strength to rise, limbs shaking, body racked with a deep, dull ache that has nowhere to go. She stumbles, weak and unbalanced as a newborn fawn, and so she fashions a staff out of a broken twig to help her walk. Slowly, slowly, she makes her way out from beneath the cover of trees, away from the Moors, a place far too stifling now for her to bear.
As the sun sets and the temperature drops, she crosses arid grasslands studded with rock outcroppings and hardy shrubs. Ancient ruins loom on the horizon.
Night has long fallen when she takes her first steps on the worn staircase winding upward, cobblestones loose and precarious underfoot. It drains the last of her remaining effort to shuffle to a corner of the highest platform, shielded on two sides by eroded walls, where she sinks to the floor amidst dust and weeds. Numb from her journey, she lowers her head and rests a cheek atop bent knees.
A loud flutter disturbs Maleficent from her repose. "Awk!" cries the raven. It leans forward from the parapet, beady eyes reflecting the moonlight. "Awk!"
Begone, Maleficent thinks, and breathes her will to the wind. So knocked from its perch, the raven squawks in indignant surprise and flaps away to wherever it is their kind go.
Alone once more with only her thoughts, Maleficent closes her eyes. Yet try as she might, sleep does not come, those same thoughts a jangling cacophony in her head. Past and future battle for attention: she attempts to recall the sensation of flying high above the clouds and has to suppress a swell of panic when the memory comes back faded; she tries to imagine a lifetime trapped on the ground and cannot fathom it at all.
So distressed is she by these incessant turnings of her mind, many minutes go by before she notices the presence of another. She slides her eyes open with a quick intake of breath. The platform is empty.
"Get up." A voice whispers from everywhere and nowhere, whirling about like eddying winds, increasing in force with each pass. "Get up."
It does not take kindly to being ignored, and snarls, "Get up, I say!" The stones beneath her rumble at their very foundation.
Maleficent lifts her head high, expression set in a glower, but makes no further move.
"Cease your pathetic snivelling." No longer a whisper, the voice sounds like it once belonged to a most powerful woman: full, dark, regal. "Who are you?" Accusatory.
She stiffens, the hunch of her shoulders erased in an instant, and though it sends jolts of fresh pain down her spine, draws herself up to stand at full height. "I am Maleficent, Protector of the Moors."
"YOU are-?" the voice starts with a boom, then falls abruptly into disbelieving silence.
Maleficent waits. Formless magic pools at her fingertips, preparing for... what? She doesn't know. Fight or flight are the two most natural responses in a situation such as this, but she has done neither before without the aid of her wings. So she waits, even as an unseen presence circles her, not touching, but close enough that she can feel the pinpricks upon her skin as of one who is being observed in minute detail.
The voice tsks. "So young," it drawls. "You think this is the greatest injury you can suffer? How wrong you are."
"And how would you know?" Maleficent snaps.
"Silence, you upstart!" A harsh gust of wind knocks her back a step. "It is I who shall ask the questions."
Thunder rumbles low in gathering storm clouds.
"What are the Moors?"
"The realm of the fair folk, bordering the Kingdom of the East and the Land of the Singing Vale."
"Who rules the Kingdom of the East?"
"A foolish and greedy king, Henry." Maleficent does not bother to hide the bitterness in her tone.
"Has he an heir?"
"It is said he has a daughter, but named no successor."
"I see." A pause, and then, curtly, "You had wings? What happened to them?"
"A coward who thinks himself a man stole them from me," is all she can bring herself to say. Fury and shame roil deep within her. How could she have been so blind? So stupid?
The air fills with derisive laughter. "Protector of the Moors? Look at you. You cannot even protect yourself!"
Maleficent crosses her arms in front of her chest. "What would you have me say?"
"Oh, say nothing at all. Remember well this feeling, that you may never make the same mistake again." The voice grows fainter, as if moving away. Maleficent's wooden staff levitates off the pile of rubble it had been leant against, turning this way and that. "Crude," the voice remarks, closer again. "But I suppose it will do for now."
"Do for what?"
The staff flies at Maleficent's head and she catches it reflexively.
"Why, for your training, of course, to strike back a hundredfold at those who did this to you! I did not take you for one to simply lie down and die of self-pity. Or am I mistaken?"
"You are not." Maleficent feels a new sort of burning throughout her being, the fires of vengeance roaring to life. She holds her staff upright, rooted to the stone floor as magic flows through her, twisting, changing. Atop the staff, the inset crystal flares gold, then bright green for the first time. "Show me."
The laughter, when it comes this time, has taken on a harder edge. "Oh, we will have fun, you and I. Now tell me, young Maleficent, what do you know of shapeshifting?"