A/N: This first part is just the introduction. Most of it contains a summary of Descendants and Descendants 2. So yeah. Spoilers. Also, the stuff in bold is my original writing, while the rest is summarizing in my own words. Most of the bold text is sassy commentary. Hope you like this, because I have only a faint idea of where this is going. :) Also, this is rated T for language and probably mentions of unpleasant things.
Disclaimer: I don't own Descendants. This is the only time I'll say this. Just know it's implied.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, Belle married her Beast in an extraordinarily lavish wedding, which included six-thousand guests and a big ass cake. Instead of a honeymoon, Best united all of the kingdoms and got himself elected King of the United States of Auradon. He resurrected all the- previously really dead, mind you- villains and sidekicks and trapped them without mercy onto an island far away, with a magical barrier to hold them there. No magic, no wifi, and no. Way. Out. This island was called the Isle of the Lost.
The rest of the kingdom was left with the Magic Ban. Only certain people would be allowed access to magic- Cinderella's fairy godmother, for instance- and only under certain circumstances. Say, another villain. However, since this was Auradon and all the villains had been shipped off to the Isle of the Lost, said circumstances never quite arose.
Even with the new peace the Isle and the Ban brought, a sect of the population were still unrestful. These were the few witches and warlocks and magicians and enchantresses who naturally possessed magic and used it for Good. Non-magical citizens, though, were not alright with living among magic users when all of the Heroes had been "harmed" by people like them. King Beast, Queen Belle and Fairy Godmother proposed a solution: the people who would not comply with the Magic Ban could live separate from the ones who would. Those who would not submit to the law would pack up and live beyond the Forbidden Mountains and Faraway. These magicians would take their families and live in the Borderlands. So they did.
Remember this, folks. It's important. Trust your nameless narrator. (I mean, it's not like there's anybody else to trust at the moment…)
Anyway, twenty years later, the sixteen-year-old son of Beast and Belle, Prince Benjamin Florian (why anybody thought that was a good name is beyond me), was to be crowned King of Auradon (and why anybody thought a sixteen-year-old with two non-dead parents should be king is also beyond me). As his first proclamation, four children of the villains from the Isle of the Lost were to be brought to Auradon and given a second chance (though, to be honest, they weren't really given a first chance). After a few protests from his council, Prince Ben was able to bring the son of Cruella De Vil, the daughter of Evil Queen, the son of Jafar, and the daughter of Maleficent to Auradon, and give them normal lives.
Or so he thought.
Mal, Carlos, Evie and Jay had other plans from their parents which basically boiled down to stealing Fairy Godmother's magic wand and breaking the barrier to free the villains so they could rain Hell down on Auradon. Preferably with matching thrones at the end.
Although that was their original endgame, somewhere along the line, Mal found herself falling in love with the Prince. At Ben's Coronation, the four kids from Auradon choose Good instead of Evil, but in a freak accident Jane, daughter of Fairy Godmother, grabs her mother's wand and accidentally broke the barrier on the Isle, freeing Maleficent, who crashes the Coronation. Jay, Carlos, Mal and Evie face down Maleficent, who had turned into a dragon, and stand up for Good. Maleficent was shrunk down to the size of the love in her heart (itty bitty), the barrier was restored and they all lived happily ever after.
Not really.
A couple months after the Coronation, Mal ran away, back to the Isle. Now King Ben followed her there with Evie, Jay and Carlos to get their friend/girlfriend back. King Ben, being a dumbass, gets captured (because nobody was going to recognize the King…) by Mal's enemy, Uma, daughter of Ursula, Harry and Gil. Sons of Captain Hook and Gaston, respectively. Anywho, there was this showdown between the two sides and a fake wand was exchanged for Ben and they all went home. Later Mal was introduced as Lady Mal at the Cotillion and everything was great.
Until Uma crashed the party, pretending to be Ben's new love. Mal and her friends were about to leave when they realized that Uma had put Ben under a Love Spell. (Figures.) And Mal finally confessed her love for Ben and broke the spell. Uma then turns into an Ursula-like creature with octopus tentacles. attempted to drown the yacht they were on. Mal and Ben are the only ones to attempt to stop her for some reason. They go to the edge of the boat and talk to her before Mal gets so pissed off she turns into a dragon. Yep, folks, you heard me right. A dragon. Couldn't have seen that coming. After throwing down for a few minute, Ben jumps in to stop the girls. This somehow works, don't ask me how, and Uma leaves with an empty threat she never fulfilled. Ben and Mal got back on the boat and they all lived happily ever after.
For real this time.
But nobody knew where Uma went and nobody bothered to look. They really should have bothered to look.
Five years later, King Ben and Lady Mal got married in a slightly smaller event than the previous King and Queen.
And that's all she wrote, or so they say.
Nobody ever bothered to find Uma, but here's where she went:
The Borderlands.
She swam around the coast and walked right through Winter's Keep and Schwartzvald within a day or two, hardly any time between crashing the Cotillion and escaping had passed. Certainly not enough time for someone to hear the news and recognize her. Had Uma been able to, she would have gone straight back to the Isle for Gil and Harry- they were her crew, after all- but she had no way to open the barrier. So she found herself traveling in an unknown direction. It wasn't like anything was forcing her there. It was more like a gentle tug, as if she was on a rope and a friend was guiding her back. Uma hadn't known what it was that was tugging her, but it wasn't unpleasant. So Uma, daughter or Ursula the Sea Witch, let herself be guided.
And that's how she found herself walking through the Forbidden Mountains, on foot, for several days straight.
Needless to say, when Uma arrived she was tired, hungry, thirsty and stunk like Hell. After a rest that almost rivaled Sleeping Beauty's, Uma awoke refreshed, and somehow complete, despite still being hungry and thirsty. And gross.
It took her a second to understand the reviving feeling.
Magic. It was something completely unlike Auradon. Here magic was used freely, with much less restriction than outside the Mountains. Magic thrummed through the air here like a lifeline, like blood to a beating heart.
For the first time Uma didn't feel completely miserable, and felt a pang as she thought of Harry and Gil, and wished that they could see this. This was the type of place Uma and her crew had dreamed of.
And Uma didn't want to ruin it, for she wasn't like her mother. She wasn't evil. So she followed the rules. She learned the history and culture of these magical people. People like her. When she uncovered the truth- that these people had, in a way, been banished, just like her mother- she felt an odd sense of disheartenment. What was the true Good, if Auradon was the country to banish not one, but two groups of people? Send them away, unwilling to give just one more chance? And what was really Evil? Having grown up on the Isle of the Lost, Uma understood where almost all of the villains came from. They were the ones who were let down by Good; had been forgotten to the point where their actions became unforgivable because Good didn't want them. Sure, the villains had down cruel and malicious things, but the Heroes had been petty in the first place. Who was wrong here?
Uma eventually grew up, and explored the Borderlands with a crew that reminded her so much of the one she had on the Lost Revenge that it almost hurt. Much to her surprise, not a lot of the land had been claimed for civilization. She and her crew eventually settled in a lush, modest, valley between two of the many towering mountains that were spread throughout the Borderlands. Nearby was a lake that was fed through a series of small rivers and streams and led back to the Sea of Ariel. Uma named the lake for the ship she and Harry had raced for so long ago. The Lost Revenge Lake. The town that she settled, she named in homage to the place where she'd grown up and had made her who she was. Uma called this valley, the Valley of the Lost.
The Valley of the Lost is anything but lost. (This is where I come in.)
For starters, there are trees, flowers and grass everywhere you look. It's peaceful here, and people come from all around the Borderlands. Although we live in small communities, roads have been carved through to connect all of us. Our fastest runners can reach the west side in under two hours. We don't have any of the technology that Auradon does. The Baroness told us stories about their technologies when we were children. They at least had television of some sort on the Isle, she told our class one day back when I must have been seven or eight, but in Auradon they had Internet and wifi and the news was almost instant. Here our fastest form of communication is the Runners. I'm not jealous, though. Technology like that sounds noisy and distracting. Sure, a shower sounds nice, but baths will do.
The Baroness is the leader of our valley town. She handles business with the other Barons and Baronesses of the Borderlands, of which there are fifteen total. Fifteen towns, fifteen people who need to agree on laws that affect us all. We don't have a King or Queen. Not one person to rule us all. That's too much pressure to place on just one or a few people. Each Baron must hold a council meeting within their town to discuss every law that will be passed, and will then carry that decision to the other Barons. You must be seventeen to vote in the council meeting.
I don't know exactly how old I am. I assume somewhere around fifteen, but I was found crying one morning just outside of the Forbidden Mountains when a team went to collect the shipment from Auradon. At the time, they were at a low and were struggling to sustain themselves, even with magic, due to a conflict that was taking much longer to resolve. Anyway, I digress. I must have been less than a year old when I was found, and nobody really took me in. I look different, that's why they didn't want me. They just called me the Town Kid. They fed me and clothed me when I was too little to do it myself, but by the time I was six, I was on my own.
From the day I was brought here, I truly was a Lost Kid.
And this is my hood.