Prologue: Song of Doom
In the Reptile Room… where the baby screams
"What the hell is this place?" Crystal gasps in horror. They should have listened to their guts when the man offered to show us his collection… collection of reptiles. Allowed to be taken in by this woman's alleged kindness, now… now she was alone, in the strangest place that was best described as the worst acid trip of all time.
Weirder creatures loom than in all of your dreams
A strange looking snake, with eyes on its scales, slithers past the young adult and she steps back in shock and unease. It was as if the entire world was now a gigantic hallucination. What was once a decent sized greenhouse had expanded into this vast landscape and thick jungle, like everything, had just transformed into Jumanji. It seemed to become bigger overnight, a maze of wilderness and now snakes…
"Snakes," she hisses. "Why does it have to be snakes?"
Emma, Killian, and Henry were all missing and the daughter of the Dark One is now alone in this crazy place. The one good thing was that her magic was still working so fighting whatever threats she might encounter would not be a problem.
In the reptile room… hither and thither
Suddenly, there's a crack of a twig from behind her, Crystal snaps to attention letting her hands light up in anxiety and fear. Was it another freaky looking snake coming to attack?
"Who's there?" she calls.
The girl suddenly feels thrown against a tree by some kind of invisible force. She grunts in pain and lands in the mud, stunned but not knocked out. Anticipating a fight, her hands light up again.
"Who are you?! Show yourself!" she screams again.
Rumpel's daughter creates a shield just in time to feel the brunt of yet another attack. Something powerful is pressing against her defence, but she can't see what it is. Fighting against it is not easy, it's putting a strain on her own body, but with no way of knowing who or what it was, she had to do something to fight back.
Crystal lets her anger take over and fill her up completely. Normally, she hates using her shockwaves, but in this situation, the attacker would never see it coming.
The power expands outward from her body, slicing creepers from their vines, leaves from their stems, and making the mud beneath her crumble slightly with the sheer magnitude of her ability. She hears the thud of a body behind another group of trees. Knowing she's gotten her assailant, she goes to investigate.
It is not what she expected.
A girl lays on the ground stunned from the shockwave attack. The girl had hair that at one point must've been shaved because it was growing back in an unruly fashion. It was dark brown in colour, to match her eyes. She was wearing what looked a hoodie and fashions that must have come out of the 1980s. A dribble of blood is coming out of her nose.
Feeling bad for hurting her, Crystal goes to help. She offers her hand to the girl, but the stranger bats it away looking very angry.
"W-Who are you?" Crystal asks the girl.
The girl's eyes go wide for a moment as if a deer in headlights. She stares at Crystal's chest for a long time. Unsure of why this stranger is staring at her, she looks down to see the golden locket that once belonged to her mother has been opened, most likely from the fall. The girl gazes at it as if hypnotized. She reaches up, Crystal flinches thinking she's going to attack, allowing her hands to light up. But the girl merely points at the picture.
"Mama?" the girl asks in a weak voice.
"Uh, yeah, that's my mother, her name was Lillian… Who are you?" The daughter of the Dark One holds her necklace for a moment before shutting the latch, her hands still glowing purple.
The wide brown eyes then go to the glowing purple light emanating from this stranger's hands.
"You… are like me?"
"Do you have magic too?"
"Magic?" the girl says in confusion. "Magic isn't real. Mike told me that"
"It is where I come from..."
"The Upside Down?"
"What?"
"Are you from the Upside Down?"
"N-No whatever that is, I'm from Storybrooke Maine… I'm from Earth if that's what you want to know. Whose Mike and who are you?"
Crystal, while confused offers her hand again. This time the girl takes it, although reluctantly.
Once they are on their feet, the girl speaks again.
"Mike… Kali! My friends! My friends are missing!"
"You're missing them too?"
"You have friends?"
"Yes, a woman with blonde hair and white light coming from her hands, a man with a beard and piece of metal where his hand should be and a teen with your kind of haircut."
An eyebrow goes up in confusion.
"What is this place?" the girl asks.
"I wish I knew."
"That woman… that old woman…"
"You saw her too?" Crystal gasps.
The girl nods. "She is no friend."
"No, she and her son, he's some kind of scientist or monster or something. She trapped me and my friends in here."
Like Papa, the girl thinks but says. "Mine too. I have to find them."
Crystal grabs the girl's arm to stop her from running off. "We need to be smart about this, we can't just run off into the jungle, it's like Jumanji met the Amazon and had snake babies."
"Jumanji?"
"Not important, this place is crawling with snakes and who knows what else. I think we need to stick together. That way we can find our friends and then get the hell out of here."
The girl looks at the young adult with confusion at first and then understanding.
"Stick together like friends?"
"Uh… sure, friends and allies, I'm Crystal by the way. Crystal Miller," holding her hand out for the girl to shake.
The stranger steps back for a moment but then accepts the hand. "I'm Jane… but I usually go by Eleven."
All rights go to Netflix for Stranger Things, to ABC for Once Upon a Time and Disney for Descendants. All rights for the song lyrics go to The Gothic Archies.
A/N: Just bear with me to see where this goes. It was a very detailed dream and I felt that I had to write it down.