Author's Note/Disclaimer:
Hey all! I've wanted to write this forever. In my head, this is truly my best work. Whether that will translate onto e-paper, we will have to see.
This is a Disney crossover story with only one OC; the rest of the characters will be Disney (which I do not own). Be warned, though: I plan to take extreme artistic license with characters and pairings alike. No one is safe. Seriously, people, there will be some freaky-deaky pairings up in here. Now, please, enjoy!
"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.
Inside you they work their
Magic.
Ursula drummed her fingers slowly, deliberately, as she watched everyone gather around the extensive dining room table. Her long, black fingernails tapped against the polished surface, leaving a sharp click for each person that walked in.
Resting her fat chin on her other hand, she smiled a broad, indulgent smile at Hades, Lord of the Underworld, as he made his way towards her. His calm, blue flames had turned a malicious, bloody red in the glow of the lava, which poured down around them from all sides.
This would be a gathering that history would not soon forget.
Unfortunately, the room in which it was taking place wasn't quite her style, but technology was imperative.
Ursula had tried to persuade the others once without success. Only James had believed her before she had brought back the "tapes". After a few days of wondering through the worlds, looking for someone who would have the capabilities of watching them, she had found Syndrome, which is why they were in his lair now and not hers.
He had temporarily relinquished the head chair and was now sitting directly opposite her at the end of the long table. If he knew anything at all, it was technology. Ursula had to admit his tinkering had its uses, but she still preferred her magic. Oh, the magic…
Ursula caressed the shell necklace around her neck tenderly, remembering the time she had lured a certain, little mermaid's voice into it and trapped it there. Yes, it was a beautiful thing, the magic. She loved it. She had practiced it for years, but still –she thought with annoyance –had a long way to go before perfecting it. That was why she was jealous of any of those in the room who could perform it half as well as her, and yet…she needed them.
It was hardly a pleasant situation, she had to admit, but a necessary one, and that was why they had filed in, all of those villains, one by one.
Hades, the short-tempered master of death, had already slipped into the seat to her immediate right.
Syndrome, a man with a desperate need to prove himself, was greeting the others as they entered. The pride he held for his lair was written all over his face.
Frollo, who always seemed to have a permanent hungry look about him, refused to sit. He peered down his hooked nose at the lava falls that contained the room as if he had just entered the pits of hell.
Jafar, the cunning, deceitful vizier and backstabber sat to the right of Hades and engaged him in conversation. Ursula had taken great care to monitor the snake staff he always kept beside him.
John Silver, yet another tinkerer, whose self-centered greed caused him to stop at nothing until he got what he wanted, now took his seat next to Syndrome, who questioned him eagerly on his mechanical limbs.
The great cats, Scar and Shere Khan, a lion and a tiger, respectively, whose primitive instincts were bloody and depraved, reclined lazily on the floor.
Most important of all, though, to Ursula, was Captain James Hook, a man she highly esteemed for his dark intelligence. He was the one most crucial to this plan. Her closest confidant in this undertaking, he would perform the darkest deed of all…
He had been the first to arrive, yet refused to sit, opting to lean against the doorway instead. At first glance, he appeared unremarkable compared to the others with all of their eccentricities and black talents, and yet none of this would have happened had it not been for him.
Simultaneously perfect and broken, refined and wild, light and dark, his receptive, startingly blue eyes seemed to take in everything they fell upon in a single glance. When those eyes fell upon her, Ursula felt the world stop turning.
It was almost as if those days of poring over maps and plans on his ship at Neverland had happened only yesterday. The long summer had stretched lazily on and on until finally…everything had fallen into place.
It was time to begin.
When Ursula gave the signal, the rest of the villains, witches all of them, fanned out behind her chair at the grand table. They, she needed for their magic—their power, rather than their expertise. Ursula didn't trust a single one of them.
None of them could match her, of course. She was by far the most talented witch in this room.
Who had found a way into their respective worlds? Who had broken the barrier just to find out that their worlds even existed? Who had found out that their worlds were connected, all of them, including a wonderfully mundane little world that would serve her purposes perfectly?
It hadn't been Morgana, for sure. Her insolent younger sister's crackpot magic paled in utter insignificance when compared to her own astounding power.
It hadn't been Maleficent, who, Ursula found, cared more about reigning over even the smallest of places than risking it all to become something truly great.
It hadn't been the Queen, either, though Ursula was a tad bit uneasy with their alliance. She didn't like that she didn't know her name – that nobody knew her name. Names held power in magic, which gave the Queen something over Ursula.
The only reason Ursula had allowed it in the end was that the Queen was a shallow, silly creature, more concerned with being the most beautiful thing in the room than being the most respected.
Beauty.
Ursula hated the word. Magic was the only truly beautiful thing in the world. It was a dangerous mix of human limitations and the dark unknown of hidden potential. She was going to harness it from these other witches, but there was another she would borrow it from as well.
The plan was this: the villains were going to take all of the heroes, the princesses, the irritatingly loyal sidekicks of their worlds and dump them all into one world, a narrow little world filled with disbelief and ignorance where the heroes, surely, would wither away.
With them gone, they could easily take charge of all of their worlds. There was just one thing that Ursula worried about.
Even with the help of all of these witches, Ursula would need more power.
Had all of the heroes been together in this world, it would not have taken nearly as much magic to send them all away. But because they were scattered, littering all of these worlds far from each other like the stars in a constellation, it would take more concentration.
And more magic.
Which was why Ursula had found, to her delight and horror, a witch in the "real" world, as the inhabitants there called it.
Interestingly enough, the witch had no idea of the gift they possessed. People in that world didn't really believe in that sort of thing, after all.
But the fatal flaw in the plan was this – the witch seemed to know all about them, and magic, unfortunately, was a contagious thing. If the witch's powers awakened when Ursula made use of them, the witch might help the heroes back, and that would be a problem.
She had reasoned that the possibility was low considering the way the inhabitants of that world seemed to go about with blinders, unable to see all that was even a little bit extraordinary and difficult to understand.
But this was not an undertaking where chances could be taken.
Ursula needed to eliminate the witch as soon as their purpose was fulfilled. So, once the heroes were plucked out of their worlds and were all sent spiraling into the new one, once they had forgotten everything, once they were left defenseless in a world so unlike their own…Ursula would send James Hook into that world, making sure to keep his memory intact…and, once there…
He would kill the witch.
There was one other loose end, however, that had been overlooked, missed entirely, by Ursula, and he was standing oh-so-quietly, watching intently from the entrance of the room, only a stone's throw away from the brooding captain at his position by the door.
Here was another who loved the magic, who had sold his very soul to the magic, and who was angry – very angry – and bitter about being left out: Dr. Facilier.
The lava cast dull shadows along the marble floor, but his shadow stood in sharp relief beside him, its expression impish.
In rejecting the idea of including the good voodoo doctor, Ursula had made a dangerous enemy, an enemy with a chip on both shoulders, everything to gain, and nothing to lose, save himself, and he was determined to involve himself with this endeavor.
A connection to other worlds? It was too glorious to resist. To think he could have not only his world, but an endless realm of worlds full of souls right at his very fingertips.
With all of this magic on the table, spread out like a dangerous fortune spelled out in tarot cards, they would change the fate of many.
All at once, a terrible moment of silence came over the room, a silence of anticipation.
Tension and energy and everything volatile and changeable were suddenly tangible in the hearts of everyone in the room. Even Scar's great tail stopped flicking as his body fell to stillness, and he opened those malicious green eyes to see what would happen next.
It was time to make magic happen.
Facilier's shadow swirled in unbridled excitement as he began to feel the heroes go out like little lights while Ursula took charge of the spell. He felt them rushing, rushing towards their destination, struggling to put themselves back together again as if they had been torn apart and left without a clue as to how they should recreate themselves in such a strange world.
Twisted. Raw. Beautiful.
James straightened and walked forward, captivated by the sight of the largest gathering of witches the world had ever known.
But as he did, Dr. Facilier leapt forward, skeleton cane in hand. His shadow flew ahead of him in its excitement, its mouth flapping in a silent, mirthful laugh.
The pirate captain spotted the spiteful little thing too late, and the others were too transfixed to notice what was going on behind them. Jafar was watching the spectacle before him as if he were a victim of his own mesmerizing staff.
Only Ursula, when she opened her eyes for a split second, saw the encounter. Quickly, she gave a cry of warning. Facilier's shadow recoiled, looking from master to sea witch uncertainly.
That's when, tapping him in the shoulder with the ominous cane, Facilier knighted Hook with all of the feelings of anger and oppression and jealousy he had ever felt and sent he and himself to that other world along with all of the other heroes in a shower of malignant purple sparks.
Falling into the void, Dr. Facilier smiled his crooked smile – a smile mirrored by his shadow. He had single-handedly set Ursula's plans back a step in true villainous fashion, and the game…was no longer just hers.