a/n a magical crossover of hey arnold and quite literally every piece of literature with magic in it ever...

there'll be more as it goes on, but please, if you recognize a reference, tell me you noticed it it'll make me very happy

please enjoy, x, k.

PROLOGUE:

PART ONE

Arnold watched as his friend eyed a large knife in his work shop. It was arguably the largest in the compact space built by his mentor. Gerald kept his eyes on the knife, fiddling with a crudely made leather holster in his hands. Arnold used the knife for butchering, but he could only assume Gerald was not fancying a new profession. He caught his eye with a smirk, "you're mad," Arnold told him, a smirk dancing on his mouth, but gestured generously that the knife was Gerald's. Gerald picked it up, but with an annoyed stare at his friend.

"There's a wolf in these woods, Arnold," Gerald told him seriously, frustration seeping into his comment. Arnold laughed as he stepped out into the open air of the clearing, ruffling his hair back. "Don't laugh at me," Gerald pouted at him, sheathing the knife in his makeshift holder.

It was a lovely, bright day in Arnold's clearing, just set out of the thick wood that their village that contained their village. The sun shone thickly into his hair, it almost hurt his hands to touch. "I've been a shepherd for my entire life," he stepped over to their small stable for their only horse, Abner. He produced a carrot from his pocket, offering it to the contented animal with a pat on its nose, "if there was a wolf in that wood, it'd have come to visit by now." He reached out to untangle the knots in the stud's mane.

"Maybe it's not after your damned sheep!" Gerald insisted, with an annoyed gesture to just beyond the shed, where the woolen creatures filled the clearing.

"A wolf that's not after sheep?" Arnold reached up to the tree that laid just beyond the enclosure, grabbing its fruit. He bit into it, running a fond hand on its leaves. "Sounds like another one of your tales, Gerald." Some of the leaves had a small bramble of dirty and dead tree stuck in it. Arnold removed it gently, then smoothed his hand over the branches once again.

"That's a tree, Arnold, you do realize that, right?"

"All things grow stronger with love."

"And you think I'm crazy for carrying a knife." Gerald huffed, snatching the fruit from his friends hand as he stomped past. He moodily sat under the tree, right at the base of the trunk. It was, at least, a break from the over bearing sun.

Arnold watched him go, then leaned up against the fence of Abner's enclosure.

"I mean, seriously, Arnold, you have to come to the village with me. People are scared."

"People frighten when others encourage it," Arnold warned with a leer.

"People frighten when crops keep getting ripped at the root and the animals won't eat."

"And you think this is the doing of a wolf?"

"What DO YOU think it could be?!"

"I think you're getting hysterical," he held his hand open, indicating he'd like his fruit back. Gerald tossed it to him with a huff.

After a moment, he spoke again. "There's talk of forming a group, going to petition the Queen to station the guard at the edge of the wood. Or at least, send a huntsman."

"The Queen?" Arnold raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. The Queen was not unpopular in their village, but more unheard of. The monarchy in Arnold's lifetime had been inactive at best, peace sustaining between theirs and the neighboring kingdom, keeping taxes low and issues at a minimum. Of course, there had been a little bit of a political fuss when the King only had a daughter, so a Prime Minister had been elected, erecting a small parliament. They oft sent criers to visit the villages. The queen, however, did not. "It's several days journey."

"It might be worth it."

Arnold studied Gerald, the determined set in his brow, the way his hands were tense over his knees and his grey over shirt. "It's your idea, is it then?" Arnold asked finally, folding his arms over his chest. "This is no wolf hunt, this another attempt to join the guard."

Gerald often lamented being the apprentice of the blacksmith. It hadn't been at all what he was expecting, mostly horse shoes and the occasional pot. Very few swords and shields and things, because when peace was sustained, need for them was very low.

That didn't stop Gerald from practicing, though. He spent hours sweeping and stabbing at a sack of hay Arnold had given him years back.

"Gerald, you cannot rile up the entire town over your own pursuits." His own fruitless pursuits, Arnold added in the back of his mind, as the guard wasn't overtly needed in an overwhelmingly peaceful kingdom.

"What do you care about the town?" Gerald was officially irritated with Arnold, standing to his feet, dust rising around his ankles. "You won't come to market...ever."

"Gerald, my grandparents are very o-"

"Old. Yes, Arnold, I know."

Arnold wanted to warn his friend again against exciting the town, but Gerald never had a particular penchant for listening to his advice. So, instead, he grabbed a rod from the shack and asked Gerald if he fancied a trip to the lake.

She sat on her porch, scuffing already destroyed boots on the rooting wood. She leaned her head on the bannister, exhaustion making even holding her own head upright seem like a task. She fiddled with the ends of her hair, burnt brown, poorly concealed tied into the braid resting on her shoulder. She swiped at the dirt she knew was clogging the pores on her cheek, but she had underestimated the filth on her thumb. She sighed as she put her hands back on her skirt, as she had likely made the problem worse.

She heard her father banging around in their cramped cottage, clambering about the fire. He was exhausted, and quite possibly as filthy as she was.

She pushed around the basket of vegetation by her side, wondering whether or not she felt quite prepared to go inside.

Most women didn't engage in farm work, but she did. She did everything she could to support herself and her father, as her father spent most of his time…well, on a manhunt for the man responsible for the death of her sister. But despite Helga's best efforts, it never seemed to be enough for her father.

She'd never be Olga, at any rate.

She pushed herself on to weary legs, gathering her strength to pick up her basket, and push into her father's home.

Gerald didn't return for another five days, which was a far cry from his daily visit. Arnold figured he either completely ignored him and went to the Queen, or was just too irritated with him to justify the visit.

He appeared afternoon obviously in a right mood, as Arnold lay up the hill with the flock. Gerald fidgeted without speaking for a moment, then let himself into the sheep enclosure.

"The Queen wasn't there." He called flatly. Gerald clearly did not want to speak more of it, but he continued to talk without prompting. "She'll be back soon...she's throwing a festival, I think. That Prime Minister bloke is a nightmare."

Arnold squinted at him, and attempted to push his flock away from the growing patch of mud they seemed so fond of standing in a circle in to feed. It made shearing a disaster.

"Something else is bothering you," Arnold noted without looking up from the herd, gently gesturing with his staff. Gerald stayed down the hill, embarrassed of his own actions, for whatever reason. Arnold could tell by the uncomfortable shifting that the conversation was not yet over.

"While I was away, they found footsteps leading away from the destroyed crops."

"Ah?"

"Human foot steps."

"...I see."

"I'll find him, though. Whoever he is. I will."

Arnold was enjoying the breeze of the afternoon, and a lamb by his foot made a funny noise. In truth, his days passed slowly without Gerald's visits, and he had no interest in angering him again. He kept any bad feelings he has about Gerald continuing his hunt to himself.

"Helga?" Phoebe shoved at her friend's shoulder. "Helga," she pinched her cheek.

Helga awoke with a start, sitting up quickly, and on her guard. She looked out with panic, before realizing she had just fallen asleep under the Heyerdahl's tree in market square, and was surrounded by the usual chatter of town life and horse hooves passing by.

She slumped against it with relief. "I'm sorry, Pheebs." She yawned, "I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"You've never slept well a night of your life," Phoebe told her with sympathy, reaching her hand out from her token red cloak, brushing the mussed hair from Helga's face. "It's alright."

Phoebe looked back at the market, "you missed a stop by from Sid and Harold."

"Anything important?"

"More gossip," Phoebe shrugged, fiddling with the tassel that tied her cape together, "apparently, the Queen is throwing a festival, starting in three day's time, even, and the entire Kingdom is invited. Not that anyone from these parts will go."

If you took the sensible, safe route, the castle was a day's journey, two if you were being cautious and generous with your sleeping and only traveled by daylight. It was only a few hours if you could manage the bridge, but the river was filled with bandits that seemed never to be stopped by any of the efforts of the guard. With the short notice, and the lack of necessity of actually needing to attend a festival, Phoebe was right. Likely no one would go.

"Do we know why she's throwing it?"

"All speculation," Phoebe shrugged, crossing her feet at the ankle.

Helga, herself, was not a fan of speculation. She was teased mercilessly as a girl that her name wasn't Helga, that they only started calling her that after she killed her sister with witchcraft.

All of it, of course, was nonsense. Helga couldn't remember a time before her name was Helga, but she could remember Olga. And her father knew exactly who killed Olga, he hunted for him every day. The man with the eyes of a beast, and the skin of a snake, or at least, that's what her father told her. Helga had mild suspicions that the man hunt had driven her father mad, but he war promised by the Prime Minister if he could find him, they would bring him to justice.

And so he disappeared every morning and came back at the break of day, searching for the warlock that had given Olga the ability to spin straw into gold, only to later reclaim it…and her life.

Helga still wasn't much fond of her name, though.

"Well," Phoebe rubbed a hand on her knee, before standing to her feet. "I have to make a run for mother, but," she smiled down at her, sad lilt on her delicate features, "stay as long as you need, alright?"

"Ah," Helga followed her, putting herself on her feet with only mild difficulty, "I should be going."

Phoebe was giving her a worried glance.

"I've survived today," Helga put a hand on her shoulder, glancing up at the sky, the red of the sunset just beginning to peak over the horizon of the trees, clouds settling in thickly, "I've survived yesterday and the day before that." She glanced back to her friend, "and I'll survive tomorrow, too."

Gerald, with maybe slightly less irritation, was riding his horse back through the wood to market. He still had to face the village, the undoubted ridicule that was awaiting him there. He couldn't help but feel that his horse understood his melancholic attitude, and they slowly trotted on the path, the thick roots and vines of the forest being cleared away for the ease of the traveler.

Gerald was, perhaps, staring moodily about, when he spotted the man.

He was, at a distance and with great caution, sneaking around the trunk of a great tree. It was odd to see anyone off the path of the forest, let alone someone Gerald had never before seen. He wore black leather gloves and a thick black cape with a hood, virtually undistinguishable. Gerald halted his horse, watching the man with interest.

A few yards ahead was a young girl, one he did know, adorned in a heavy red cape, jumping over a dead tree and disappearing further into the thick of the wood. He wanted to call out, warn her that she was being followed, but the only person he would alert with his call would be the man, most likely. They were too far away for Gerald to catch on foot, and his horse wouldn't make it through the forest without a path. And then, as if it were a trick of the light…the man was gone. Gerald leaned forward, squinting, but he couldn't see him at all. The girl climbed further into the forest, red cape disappearing between green trees.

He straightened up, kicked his heel, and he and his horse galloped to town.

"I've seen a man!" Gerald cried at the town post.

"I see men every day," Sid told him tiredly from his stall a few yards away. "No one else stands there and yells about it." A few of the people in the square laughed, giving Gerald an amused glance, while continuing to close their shops for the night. It was just after night fall, a man lit the candle by Gerald's head, in the post, so people could see.

"No," Gerald insisted, reigns stiff in his hands. "I've seen the one responsible for the crops gone missing!" People were looking up with a wary, distrustful interest.

"How can you be sure?" One asked, setting down his hammer.

"He lies back there-" he gestured behind him with a non-specific wave, "at the edge of the wood. Off path! I've never seen him before in my life." He explained to the growing interested crowd. "Dirt on his knees, madness on his face!"

"Why didn't you call to him, ask his intentions?"

"He disappeared! Into thin air, there then gone!" Murmers of interest spread throughout the crowd, and Gerald tried not to shine in the attention. He heard the soft whispers of witchcraft, which, after the incident surrounding Olga's death, was the highest of crimes in their town. He turned to Sid, who had Harold by the neck, butcher's knife still in his hand. They listened intently. "He was following someone. If I'm not incorrect…" He turned around to the specific family, mother and father standing outside their cottage, with not their own daughter, but the Pataki girl, who looked unamused and rather bored, "the daughter of the Heyerdahls."

Helga looked up with concern, turning back to her friend's parents, who clutched each other, and then to Gerald.

"Then what are we standing around for?!" She yelled to the square, gathering up her own belongings by her feet, "let's ride."

Helga allowed herself to fall into the middle of the pack, standing on the outskirts, surveying the forest for any sign of her best friend. She could give a rats ass about the man Gerald had most likely fancied up in the hopes for adventure. She saw it then, by large rock by the river, what seemed to be the glimpse of her infamous red cape. Helga stood off to the side of the pack, letting the villagers pass her by, squinting in the distance to be sure.

But, as Gerald had mentioned earlier, how strange it seemed, it was as if the cloak disappeared before her very eyes.

And with it, any hope that it had been Phoebe.

Helga thought she must be imagining things, dehydrated or worse, rubbing a hand on her forehead with exhaustion. She, however, stepped forward anyway.

She ambled, ungraciously, over the thick roots and fallen branches, forward, off the path and into the wood.

Arnold had no good feeling when he saw torches pass by his house in the dusk, not the organized, steady march of the guard, but the jumble of villagers.

He couldn't help the feeling that Gerald had something to do with it, too.

He was tempted to shut his curtains and tell his grandparents to not worry, and to tuck in for bed. It was what he, ordinarily, would have done. He'd reprimand Gerald in the morning, or during his next visit. But Arnold found himself so anxious by the unorganized bramble of villagers, that he grabbed his boots and his cloak, and called out that he was going out.

He had a man to find – but it was not whoever everyone else was looking for, surely.

It was a lead far better than anything the ring of idiots on the path before her had. She wouldn't stray far, just as long as she could see the fire of the torches of the villagers.

She was cursing her own pluck and urge to walk her own path as she stumbled her way through rocks and fallen branches, barely able to keep up with the lights of the villagers that were starting to fall out of sight. She wasn't even headed in the direction of the cloak she saw in the first place, not anymore, or at least she didn't think so. It was very difficult to tell in a dark wood which way was where. She felt lucky to have kept track of the villagers, even. She had basically given up entirely, just trying to forge her way back to the villagers, when she tripped on a thick vine. She fell to the side, away from the villagers, grabbing on to the nearest tree for support. Except it was a thick tree, and she slid around it, knocking herself into another human.

He, with basic human instinct, grabbed on to her as she fell, black leather gloves nearly up to his elbows was the first thing she took sight of. Her eyes followed the sight, and grew wide at what she discovered lied just beyond them. In the small space between glove and sleeve, was skin the texture of scales… and perhaps green, maybe an iridescent blue? They shone under the light of the stars above their heads.

She jumped back, perhaps in fear, at the man's odd appearance, glancing up to his face.

Eyes, that maybe some would call brown but she would call gold narrowed at her, and then, by the will of nothing other than witchcraft, the man was gone.

She jumped with fright even further, stumbling backwards, staring around in awe. She grasped at the branch of a nearby tree, needing anything to support her. It was as if when he disappeared he had snatched the air right out of her lungs with him.

Brushing by her ankles was fur… she jumped again, gasping for air as she held on to the branch as if it held her life in it's leaves. It was the fur of a wolf… which leaped athletically to a nearby boulder. It leaped to a fallen log, and then it turned back to her.

The same golden eyes leered at her, as if it were a challenge.

"Go on," they whispered without actually making a noise, "go ahead and tell them what you've seen, and see if they don't think you're mad."

The wolf bounded forward, and away.

The villagers were out of sight as she rasped for breath, clutching around herself as if she wasn't sure how she was still alive. She let her hands fall on to the cool rock of the boulder, then pressed her face on it, allowing the crisp, clear air of the night fill her lungs.

The skin…the eyes…

It was then that she realized exactly who she had seen, and her body collapsed onto the rock, shaking…of course her father could never find a man who wasn't really a man.

Her hair was sticking to her neck, she rolled over on the rock with exhaustion raking her body in a way it perhaps never had… She blinked at the stars in the sky through the leaves of the trees. Her mind was zipping away, at the possibilities…of what to do then. Suddenly, finding the villagers was the furthest thing from Helga's thoughts. She couldn't predict her father's reaction…she would have no idea, really. It could help…it could make things worse.

Helga wasn't sure exactly what things getting worse would mean for him.

And then, like a flash, it hit her, so suddenly it made her chest ache. The Queen would want to know if there was a werewolf walking her forests…and a warlock at that.

And Helga happened to know for a fact the Queen would be home the following eve…

"Gerald," Arnold called, pushing his way through the pack, to his best friend who was leading the charge on a horse near the front. "Gerald!"

"Arnold!" Gerald enthused from atop his horse when he reached him, continuing to move forward. "I was beginning to think you were bound to that house by some sort of spell."

"Gerald," Arnold was annoyed with his friend, and with the cold beginning to set in in the night. He wrapped himself more tightly with his cloak, "exactly what do you think you're doing?"

"We have a man to find Arnold," Gerald answered with determination. It might have been the sudden height difference, because Gerald was riding a horse and Arnold left the tired Abner at the farm, but Arnold felt as if Gerald was speaking down to him. "Not that you would care, you wouldn't even recognize the girl he was following if you saw her."

"Gerald," Arnold was astounded by the accusations of his friend. He was insulted, in the least, that Gerald took his dedication to his Grandparents as a lack of caring about anything else. "This is mad." He settled for saying that, in lieu of what he wanted to say, that Gerald was acting like an entitled idiot because he wanted to impress the town.

"Arnold," Gerald replied crossly, leaning forward, eyes scanning the forest in the dim light they had. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

Gerald then kicked his horse, picking up the pace, and so did Sid by his side. They rode forward, and so followed the rest of the town, leaving a baffled Arnold standing where he stood, in the thick forest, alone.

"Gerald!" He called after him, knowing it was utterly useless, "when you've actually figured something out, no one will…"

Arnold trailed off, watching the crowd disappear further on the path. If a friend yelled a warning at another friend and no one was around to hear it, did it even happen?

He kicked angrily at a rock, shoved his frigid hands in the pockets of his cloak, and turned around, making way for his home.

"What's all this, then?" Her father stared at her, in surprise she was there that late in the morning. She'd ordinarily be at the farm before cock's crow. She had one or two things left on the table, but the rest was in her rucksack. She had actually hoped to have been gone by the time he awoke.

"I'm…" She glanced down at the table, what was left on it. A portion of bread, and a canteen. She rethought her original statement, and phrased it like a request, instead. "I wish to go to the Queen's festival, father."

"You?" He guwaffed loudly, tension broken by what he considered to be absurdity. He slammed himself down into the chair by the fire, clearly amused, "you don't belong in the Queen's orchards, let alone her ballroom. Just look at what you're wearing, girl."

It was her best, she noted grimly as she glanced down. It wasn't fancy, but it was practical and clean, without holes, even. She swallowed again, building herself up from the attacks of her father's ridicule.

"I have information that I think might be of interest to the Queen," she swallowed thickly, "and now is the only time to go when I know she'll be in."

She, like everyone else, had no idea where the Queen so oft went. But the fact was inarguable- she was hardly even there, let alone holding court.

"Oh, yea?" Her father leaned on to his knees. "What information would that be, girl?"

Helga felt faint. It might have been the skipping rations the night before and that morning, to ensure that her father would have to eat while she traveled. It might have been nervousness.

She could tell her father what she knew…but she worried it would drive him even further towards the brink. He'd become more obsessed…more angry. It was in his best interest to never know, but it wasn't as if she could tell him that.

"I can't tell you." She said definitively.

"You…" He stood up, looming over her, "what?"

"For your own protection." She tried to look him in the eye, but she could hear her voice wavering. "It is best if only I…and the Queen, of course," she swallowed thickly, "know."

He grit his teeth, staring down his nose at her. "And what, exactly," he leered, grabbing her frail chin with his large hand, "could you," his eyes jumped down to her body quickly, and back to her face, "protect me from?"

Yourself, she thought grimly, but not speaking it. She let her eyes fall to the floor, feeling the blaze of her father's angry stare on her forehead.

"You're a disgrace," he all but spit, furiously walking around her and grabbing her rucksack from the chair it sat on. "You want to make yourself useful? Go out, and find a boy to marry, like every other maid in town." She kept still, keeping her eyes on the ground.

She, in her heart of hearts, tried to keep the fury building up in her chest shoved under her skin. He spoke to her as if she was a child, as if she weren't the breadwinner for their family. As if she weren't the only reason he was alive.

"It's about the warlock." She muttered under her breath…and told herself that she didn't say it in spite.

"It's…" her father's footsteps halted, he was no longer moving away from her, "what?!" He growled.

"It's about the warlock who kille-" she couldn't finish her sentence, because her father had the neckline of her dress fisted in his hand. His face loomed into hers, threatening and dangerous. She twisted her face up, tossing her head back, attempting to put any and all distance between them.

"You're meaning to tell me…" her father sounded like a beast himself, all anger and heat radiating from his face, "you had information on that man, and you waited until now," his fist tightened, "to tell me?"

"You won't find him." Helga replied grimly under his breath.

It was either the right response, or the complete wrong one, because her father released her, but aggressively, and she fell backwards, into their chimney.

"I WON'T-"

"YOU WON'T FIND HIM," Helga shouted over her father, helping herself to her feet, "BECAUSE HE'S NOT HUMAN," she brushed off the edge of her skirt. "OR, HE'S SOMETHING IN BETWEEN. BUT THE MAN I SAW," she didn't know she was yelling her voice raw, but she was, and her father only stared at her. "WAS A BEAST ONLY A MOMENT LATER."

"…you've gone mad," Her father backed away from her, shaking his head. "Stark-raving."

"Father, no!" She insisted, straightening her hair around her face and moving towards him, "if you'd only listen to me. We need a witch-hunter, or a huntsman. And I know the Prime Minister was no help, but if I can speak to the Queen…she'll help! I know she'll…"

As she spoke she watched the expression on her father's face twist and remorph back into the fury it once had earlier in the conversation. He still had her rucksack clutched in his hand. His brows lowered, and he interrupted, pointing at her furiously.

"You're enough of an embarrassment as it is, Helga." He grabbed her sack from the bottom, and tipped it over, dumping her belongings all over the floor of their cottage. "You're not embarrassing me further. You are not riding up to the palace dressed like a service wench, and begging to see the Queen." He threw the bag at her. It missed her, and narrowly missed the fire behind her. She wondered which one was his aim. "You're," he pointed at her again, "not going to that festival."

He walked back into his bedroom and slammed the door.

Helga sunk to her knees, and cried.

Helga sat furiously in the orchard later that day, unable to pick or be productive in the slightest. Her eyes were, finally, for the first time in hours, clear and dried of any tears. She had her hair tied at her neck, angrily tugging at the leaves she had in her lap. She wouldn't be able to bring home nearly any rations that day, as they took a portion of what they picked.

She racked her brain for any memory she had, any story her father had told her, any tidbit of information she had ever known about the warlock.

He had abilities that were unheard of…straw into gold…conjuring, instant death, Helga recalled with a swallow. Apparently, now, shapeshifting.

The story never really changed…he, told Olga that she would be required to come with him. Olga didn't want to, and he told her that in exchange for her freedom…he, oddly, required her to know his name.

She didn't.

And when legend spread through the town, and rumors upon rumors came back to their family. After discovering an embroidered satchel, and thinking themselves quite clever, the only name they had to present him with was Rumplestiltskin…

He had laughed, gripped at the air, and in the next moment Olga had turned purple, and dropped to the floor.

Her father had screamed, grabbing the man's own dagger from his hand and lunging it into his chest.

He had laughed again, pulled it back out…and the man healed before his very eyes.

He sheathed the dagger and walked away.

"Rumplestiltskin…" She muttered to herself, wringing her hands restlessly, "who are you, Rumplestiltskin!?"

Helga shoved her face into her hands, and grew worried, for only a moment, that she had gone as mad as she suspected her father was. She wiped at her eyes, though they held no more tears. Wind had picked up in her clearing of bushes, she listened to them rustle as she went over the details in her mind once more. How does one defeat a warlock without the interference of the Queen? Why was her father so stubborn?

She glanced up, looking at the bushes sway together and then apart in pattern that seemed…unnatural. She stood up, trying to not let her sudden fear creep all the way up her neck.

She stared around, now that she was taller, because she was standing, but couldn't find the source of the wind that only seemed to be affecting the bush directly in front of her.

It split, down the middle, and forward fluttered a small piece of parchment; adorned with only a word in red ink. A name.

Mordred.

Gerald decided that morning that surely a hunt for the missing girl wouldn't be too badly taken by his employer, when he chose to explain himself at the start of the following work week. He gently caressed the mane of his horse, wondering if Arnold was right, if maybe the animal was working too hard.

The horse nuzzled it's hand, and although he worked it hard, he knew his horse knew that it did not go without love. He stroked at its nose.

He glanced back towards the house...the idea would not please his parents now...but if he could return with the girl.

She would know the man, she would tell them. It would redeem him. The town was furious the prior night when they returned to the village empty handed, no girl, no man, no nothing. He glanced down at his knife in it's makeshift holder, and back at his horse, and decided he could stand one more day of the search. And this time... this time he wouldn't fail.

She searched the orchard for a wolf wrathfully for the next quarter of an hour, enraged with the entire situation. She was frustrated, hurt, and upset, and she had worked herself so much that she paced in a livid circle around herself.

She, however, knew at that time of day, there was no chance of her father still being at home…and she did have her bow by the door.

She wasn't the best hunter, but she was pretty damned good.

She abandoned her basket in the orchard, stomping her way back to her cottage. She noticed the clear skies above her, the light breeze in the air and way the sun wasn't hitting her head too harshly.

She supposed if there was ever a good day for hunting, it would be that day.

Arnold was checking on the meats they had curing when he had seen it…Gerald's girl, he could only assume, rushing past the sheep enclosure at the top of the hill. No one was ever up that far off the path but himself. He wanted to call out to her, assure that she was alright, but his breath caught in his throat.

Hot on her pursuit was a wolf. He stumbled backwards a bit, watching it with nervous fright. It would, undoubtedly, attack his sheep. And if there was one wolf, there was more than likely a pack of them somewhere.

To Arnold's astonishment, the wolf stalked past, keeping a steady track, snout on the ground, of what Arnold could only assume to be the girl. As Arnold rushed into the cottage for a cloak and a knife, he figured he owed Gerald several apologies. He ran out without a word to his grandparents.

By the time he had gotten to the top of the smaller sheep enclosure, the wolf was gone, but it couldn't be far moving at the rate it was moving at.

Arnold eyed the forest with a distasteful distrust, but his worry for the girl in the cloak won out, and sheathed his knife, before stepping into the entirely disorganized wood.

He thought he had seen the wolf, and he was following it carefully, even just to track it to its den, so he could alert, and apologize to, Gerald. He carefully stepped over branches and heavy vines and overgrown roots. He stumbled then, over a dip in the earth, and he stumbled into a clearing.

His heart sank, he must have not been on the right trail. He knew he shouldn't be so disappointed in himself…he didn't have any experience in tracking wolves. He was naïve for believing he could just…do it instinctively. He didn't fancy himself much of a huntsmen, at any rate.

A rustling persisted in a bush across the clearing. Arnold held his knife with caution, warily bouncing back and forth on his toes, stance insistent that he was prepared for whomever-or whatever it was, despite his own heart being ready to leap straight out of his chest.

"For the love of the Qu-" An undoubtedly irritated, but unmistakably female voice quipped, and a blonde girl all but fell out of the bushes. "Oh," the girl remarked from the forest floor, "hello."

Her dress was tattered and her face was smeared in dirt.

She considered him, grimly, and then as if she were suddenly suspicious, she jumped back to her feet, equipping her bow with slick skill.

"State your business in the wood." She told him firmly, walking in a deliberate circle around him.

"I'm…" he'd feel like a right ass telling her that he was wolf hunting, "I'm looking for someone." He held his knife out, but he had no idea why, he wasn't threatened by her, not really.

"Who?"

"A girl." They were still circling each other, but the distrust in her crystal clear blue eyes was fading.

"And…your business with her?"

"That's," he swallowed his smile, "that's a bit rude to ask, don't you think?" He sheathed the knife, showing her his clean hands.

She lowered her bow. "Who are you?"

"I'm the lad of Phil Shortman, the shepherd on the hill." He grinned at her. "I don't come down to market often."

She rolled her eyes, "of course, a bloody shepherd." She put her arrow back in her quiver, "I was ready to shoot down a damned shepherd." She chastised herself, leaning down to retie her boot, come loose and riddled with dirt and small twigs.

"And your name?" He asked, leaning on the tree with crossed arms.

"'m not sure if it's any business of yours."

"I told you mine."

"You didn't, actually." She had her blonde hair braided away from her face, and thick eyebrows framing in a wonderfully beautifully face. Arnold regretted his lie, in that moment, that he was looking for a girl.

"Arnold," he held out a hand. She reached to grab it, but he pulled back a moment, "and your name is?"

She hesitated a moment, as if she didn't like the answer she had to give him, but held her hand out anyway and said "Helga," after a moment.

They shook hands. Her grip was firm, but her wrists were slender. Arnold found her…really quite fetching, actually. He smiled at her, and she tentatively removed her hand from his.

"Are you on your way to the festival, then?"

"Dressed in this?" She looked down at the robe with the tatters and the dress with holes, "no, I don't think so."

"Right," he smiled at her. She glanced up behind him, the way the sun was beginning to set behind the trees.

"I must be going," She pushed passed him. He watched her go, desperately wanting to call out to her, but knowing he, himself, should be going too.

"Wait," he called after her retreating form. He didn't know why he bothered- no one ever listened to his calls. "I'd…I'd like to see you again!" He called feebly, anyway.

After thoroughly ridding herself of the …sweet, if not slightly irritating in the moment, shepherd boy, she had stalked her way further into the forest. When disappointment had nearly soaked her up to her knees, she saw Phoebe's red cloak. Wolf be damned, she realized, her friend had not yet made it out of the wood.

"PHOEBE!" She screamed at her with an enthused wave, running forward into the thickness of trees.

The cloak did not disappear this time, it, thankfully, only got nearer. She was on top of a boulder… or a large rock. Helga waved and stumbled forward, but wondered why her friend hadn't replied at all to her cries and calls. Helga wondered if she herself had gone invisible, for a moment.

She stopped meters shy, because the wolf was hissing at the edge of the rock. Phoebe didn't reply to her cries, just stared down at it. She didn't seem as scared as Helga would think she would be.

Helga, cursing her shaking hands and fumbling fingers, drew an arrow from her quiver, and before thinking her shot through, before doing anything at all, really, shot an arrow at the wolf.

The wolf howled, dissolving into man right at the base of the rock. If Helga hadn't seen the magic she had seen that week already, she wouldn't have believed her own eyes. She would have thought it a hallucination.

The man's hood covered his face, and he stood up, drawing the arrow from his chest with, again, a laugh. His long leather gloves flicked the arrow away as if it were a toothpick he pulled from his teeth.

"You foo-" He didn't get to finish his sentence, because Helga, filled with hatred and an unforeseen spirit, barreled into him, sending them both flying towards the rock.

She reached into the sheath he had at his thigh, procuring his dagger in his confusion at being tackled in such a…human way. She kicked his chest then, pushed further away from her, and she flipped around, holding out the dagger, back pressed against the boulder.

"You will pa-" He held out his hand towards her, as she had been told he had done to Olga, years and years ago. She could still breath, raggedly, from all the movement, but breath. He dropped his hand, if she could have only known the look on his face. He reached at her again, but with no change.

"I will not, Mordred," she hissed at him. The dagger in her hand glowed then, and finally, appearing in script on the side, was the name. She understood, she thought, at what it was calling her to do. She looked up at him again, and how he was moving backwards, stumbling over branches and rough terrain, away from her. She ran forward, and with all her strength, lunged the dagger into his ribcage.

He grabbed her forearm, and they fell, together, into the earth.

She coughed as dirt flew up around them, and she had narrowly avoided banging her head into the trunk of a tree. She pushed herself to kneel up, hacking as she knew there was dirt in her eyes, and very little breath in her lungs.

A hand reached out and grabbed her, tugging her back to his side.

"You," he hissed at her, clutching the front of her cloak, "know not what you do." His hood fell of his face, and had he not such a tight grip on her shirt, she would have fell back in fear. The scales from his arm continued on to his face, ghastly skin toned scales around his eyes and falling down his cheeks.

He dropped his grip on her, letting his head fall back on the earth. He twirled his finger around the handle of the dagger, shutting his eyes. "Magic," he drew it out of him slowly, grotesquely. Helga looked away with a flinch. "Has no place in your world." He threw the dagger with the gold handle by her feet. "And it always comes with a price."

She stood up, watching him open his eyes. He stared at the sky above him, an almost plaintive smile on his face.

His eyes met hers for a final time, "you will have until midnight." He warned her.

She wanted to know what that meant- what any of it meant, but he almost…dissolved into the earth under him, vanishing in a cloud of purple mist.

By her boot was the dagger, she picked it up carefully.

As his body faded, so did his name, and the simple name Helga appeared, in swirling script. It turned the blazing gold color his had in the moments prior, before it, too, vanished into the blade.

"Phoebe, I…" Helga turned around quickly, stumbling over her own feet.

Phoebe, as well, was gone.

Arnold had also lost his way, he realized, after he lost the girl. Lost the wolf, lost the girl, lost his way. He felt, well…like a right loser.

Dark had fallen by the time he had managed to find his way to a path at all, and he was exhausted. He stumbled his way back to his cottage, trying to figure out the best way to phrase shirking his evening responsibilities to his grandparents.

When he could, finally, see the sweet, sweet sight of his home, he had to stop.

There were horses, certainly not his own, certainly not Gerald's, stationed outside of his house.

And if he didn't know any better, they were decorated, by the fancy blanket under the saddle, with the sigil of the Kingdom.

There was yelling inside his household, and there were men he didn't recognize in his sheep enclosure, they were braying unhappily as they were careless knocked in every which direction.

He dropped to his knees, glad he wasn't carrying a light, and crawled forward, towards his house with caution. He crawled under the fruit tree, right up to Abner's enclosure. Abner was in his stable, looking out his little horse window with interest. Arnold held a finger to his lips, praying the horse would understand, and crawled over the wall, into the enclosure, about the closest he could get to the house without detection.

He heard the sound of a glass pot breaking.

"WHERE IS THE BOY, OLD MAN?" An angry male voice demanded, and he heard loud footsteps on the stairs, which led to his room.

"He's not here," came his grandpa's feeble reply.

There was a sound of a smack, hopefully on wood. "HE OBVIOUSLY LIVES HERE, AND HIDING HIM IS JUST GOING TO MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOU."

"I done told ya's, he's not he-" His grandpa gave a shout of pain.

He didn't know what the Kingdom wanted with him, he didn't know what he could have possibly done wrong, but whatever it was wasn't worth his grandparents being in pain. He couldn't kneel in the hay and listen to his grandfather yell, he would never be able to do it.

He hoped over the fence of Abner's enclosure, ready to walk, proudly, into the house of those who had raised him all of those years.

He was stopped by a sudden light in the attic, coming from his window, which was in his closet. He glanced up at it, even it meant detection from who he could only assume was the guard.

It was his grandma.

How she even managed the steps up, he had no idea.

She fiddled with the hatch, before finally forcing the window open.

"Arnold," her frail face did the best loud whisper she could manage, "run!"

"What?!" He was completely baffled, and worried the men in the sheep pen would hear them.

"We didn't keep you here all these years for this to end this way…you have to run!" She told him quickly, and then shutting the window before he could get a word in edgewise.

Ordinarily, Arnold never would have listened. But he was never one for ignoring what his grandparents told him to do. And so, he did. He accepted whatever sacrifice they were choosing to make for whatever reason, even though he understood absolutely none of it, turned around, and ran in the other direction.

He left Abner, and prayed that his grandma could use him to make her own escape.

He couldn't help but curse himself, as he ran downwards on the path that Gerald took daily to the village... he had thought himself a huntsman.

He was, quite clearly, now, the hunted wolf.

Gerald was almost finished making the third loop that the path allowed for. He stopped his tired horse with a sigh, glancing out over the wood, wishing Phoebe would show herself. If he couldn't have the man's head, he at least wanted to return with Phoebe. He was worried about her. She couldn't spend another night in the wood, not alone.

He stopped to wash his hands, sore from the reigns, and his face, sore from exhaustion, in the creek. He refilled his canteen with the cool water, careful not to get himself too wet, as the night's chill would be settling in soon, as night itself had just fallen.

He was wrestling the crust out of the corner of his eye, staring at his starlit reflection, when the water rippled unnaturally below him. In a circle, then growing out. He stared at it.

It repeated itself in a bizarre pattern, like a slow, slow beat. And then…one circle was also met with the ground shaking, ever so slightly.

The ground shook again.

And again.

And again, and then Gerald was on his feet, almost forgetting his canteen, racing back to his horses, who was wrestling against the reigns Gerald had tied to the tree. Gerald untied it with shaking hands, as the ground shook again, and again, and the thumping got louder and closer.

It blocked the light then, just as Gerald had his horse unhooked. Not that the stars were the ideal light source, but they were something, but he was in a world of black. He shook as he felt the neck of his horse, thankful it was loyal, thankful he knew his animal so well. He fumbled around, finding the stirrup in the darkness, glad he didn't accidentally kick his horse.

He mounted his horse quickly, and the frightened animal took off in a speed Gerald hadn't known it to travel by. As the distance grew, and they traveled on the path downhill, he looked back. He could see it, rising just above the line of trees, pushing forward, still creating massive, thumping footsteps.

It was a giant.

a/n ahhhhh giants and magic and queens and kingdoms and so. much. forest. at one time i was so done with making it clear that the forest has paths and if ur not on them it gets hard that i wanted to be like THE FOREST IS HARD TO WALK IN, YOU GET IT, IM SURE lol

i swear to goodness, unlike most of my fics, things will make a lot more sense in the next chapter. but give me predictions! tell me what you think! ahh i like this so much i hope someone else is excited too lol. ten points to u if u can tell me what everyone's fairytale was...except olga she doesn't count bc i literally named hers, haha.

anyway thank you for reading this big ol chapter, next one will not be nearly as long :/ probably about 6-8 chapters for this guy? alternating lengths between this and about half as long, if you're wondering. big love to you all, let me know what you think!

xx, k.