Chapter 1 – Coerced

It's amazing the things people will do with a gun pointed at their head. Flynn Rider, at that very moment, had a gun pointed at his head by a huge burly man who probably didn't even need the gun to kill him. And because one huge burly man wasn't enough, there was another, his twin, a short distance away with a huge knife in his hand.

"Come on guys, I showed you where it is, is it really necessary for me to go in?"

"Yes,"

"It is," they replied. The Stabbington Brothers were ruthless criminals, both with ginger hair, and a motley assortment of scars which provided the only way of telling one from the other. They spoke slowly in deep voices, which they often used to finish off each other's sentences with eerie precision.

The one with the gun threw Flynn a length of rope.

"Tie it around your waist,"

"-And we'll lower you down," they ordered.

"How about we tie a camera to the end of the rope and lower that down? I mean, this could be a waste of time and energy for you guys if there's nothing down there…"

"You saying you led us to the wrong place Rider?" the brother with the gun cocked it menacingly.

"No, no, no of course not. What I meant to say was, maybe we should come back at a time that isn't the middle of the night. I mean, how will I even be able to see anything?" amended Flynn quickly with a nervous laugh. One of the brothers threw him a flashlight.

"That's how you'll see."

"Oh great. I'm so glad one of you had the foresight to bring a flashlight. Quick question, what if there are giant insects down there? You see, I have a phobia of giant insects, they paralyze me with fear, and if I can't move I won't be able to reach the treasure so maybe it'd be better if one of you guys went down to scope the place out and then-"

"Shut up-"

"-And stop stalling."

"Alright, alright. Just saying, I am the talent of this operation, and normally I get paid for this sort of thing, not forced at gun point. If my work isn't up to its usual standard, you know why."

"Just tie the rope."

Flynn did as he was told and double knotted the rope around his waist.

They were in the middle of a forest. The trees there grew so thickly that the forest floor was heavily gnarled with roots, and not much moonlight made it through. The trees themselves were immense sequoia trees. They loomed like still, silent, giants.

It had taken them two hours driving from the city, and then half a day worth of hiking and plunging waist deep through rivers to arrive in that spot. Flynn could still feel water sloshing around in his boots.

Before them was a gaping chasm, a few meters across. Some time ago a tree had fallen, leaving behind a gap that let moonlight in through the thick canopy. Flynn could hear the rushing sound of the river nearby.

The hole in the ground before them supposedly contained what the Stabbington Brothers were so desperate to find, the lost treasure of the fallen Kingdom of Corona. The location had been calculated by an old archaeologist, the instructions on how to get there were encrypted.

That was where Flynn had come in. Decoding the instructions and reading the map.

"Go on-"

"Jump." Urged the brothers.

"Yeah, yeah. Give me a second." Flynn took a deep breath, and then he was unceremoniously shoved into the hole from behind.

"Oh Shi- ... Arrhhhh!" he fell into the darkness for a few moments, until the slack was gone and he was suspended in the middle of blackness. He turned on the flashlight and peered around.

"Well Rider?"

"What do you see?"

There were wooden beams around him, covered in spider webs. This used to be a building of some sort, and he was in what used to be the ceiling.

"Nothing much yet!" Flynn called back.

They lowered him slowly and he avoided the wooden beams, but it was impossible to miss the cobwebs and he got a face-full.

"Gross." Flynn muttered, wiping the dusty threads away as best as he could with his forearm.

Suddenly, the floor came into view. Flynn gingerly pressed a foot against the ground to check its stability. It seemed fine, so he untied himself and stood.

It was very very dusty. The air was musty and stale.

Flynn could make out two small orange dots far above him, and beyond that, tiny pinpricks of light that were stars in the night sky. They didn't afford him much light down here.

He slowly turned in a circle, peering into the darkness with the aid of the flashlight.

There was a very dated sort of cooking apparatus in an alcove in one wall, a bookcase, and then a set of steps leading up to a doorway. A large fire place was set in one wall with an ornate chair angled towards it. Flynn couldn't tell what color it was through the layer of dust that covered it.

Flynn spotted a small table, and decided that was good a place as any to start his search.

He had to blow a bit so he could he could see what was under the layer of dust. The table was covered in knick-knacks, but nothing of real value. A basket of half-finished knitting, half a dozen candles, a box of paints, a partly done puzzle, and a chess set with most of the pieces scattered all over the table as if someone had thrown a hissy fit. From the corner of his eye Flynn caught something glittering on the ground on the other side of the table. Treasure?

No, it was a skeleton. Dead bodies didn't faze Flynn Rider in the slightest. He'd had come across quite a few corpses in his line of work. He crouched down next to it to get a better look.

It was wearing a very old fashioned red velvet dress underneath a long black cloak, and it still had curly dark hair clinging to its skull. It was slumped over, clutching a glittering jewellery box in its bony hand.

It took a bit of effort, but Flynn managed to pry the thing free. He polished it off with a bit of his sleeve. It was round, with an elaborate golden flower painted on the lid. It was pretty, but not worth very much. (Flynn had an eye for these things.)

He opened it, and was disappointed to see no jewellery. His earlier assumption was wrong; it was actually a music box. A miniature ballerina popped up, and started twirling around to a slow sad tune.

Flynn popped the thing shut and shoved it in his breast pocket.

He took a step, and found himself tripping over something.

"What the..." he shined the torch downwards, and saw something gold. Treasure?

He bent down to get a closer look. He grabbed a handful of the stuff. The texture was smooth and silky.

"Is this... hair?" he said aloud.

It was. Golden, human, hair.

Hair probably meant that there was another body nearby.

Flynn followed the golden mass with the light of the torch, but it seemed never ending. Who had hair that long? Maybe it was fashionable to have crazy long hair in Corona a hundred years ago.

It looped around the room, crossing over itself. The room seemed to be filled with it, and Flynn was at a loss as to how he hadn't noticed it earlier. It eventually led up the stairs, and through the doorway. There was something oddly disturbing about it. It made Flynn think of giant golden snakes coming down here to shed their skin.

Flynn stepped over the coils of hair, careful not to trip up again, and made his way up the stairs. With every step he took, he felt an impending sense of doom.

"Man up Flynn. Hair is hardly the scariest thing you've ever come across." He muttered to himself.

He pushed the door open and shined the torch in. There was a four poster bed with drapes in the middle of the room. The hair disappeared into the dark folds. He could make out the silhouette of something that looked body-shaped.

He shuffled further in, and found himself tip-toeing for some strange reason. It was silly, not like he could wake the dead.

Flynn pushed aside one of the drapes carefully, and shined the flashlight downwards. He nearly dropped it when he saw what was there.

It was a young girl, curled up on her side. She looked as if she could be sleeping, but she was perfectly still. She wasn't breathing: there was no rise and fall of her chest.

Flynn didn't move for a moment, and neither did the girl.

Frowning, Flynn leaned in a bit closer. She had freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose, and long eyelashes. What was she doing here? Did she fall down here, and curl up on the bed to die?

If she was dead, it had to be recent. Very recent. Decomposition happened rapidly. One of her hands was clutched around the handle of a fancy looking hair brush. Flynn reached out to pry her fingers off it, he wanted a closer look at it, but he recoiled in shock when his hand brushed against her skin.

She was warm. Her skin was soft. As a rule, dead bodies were cold and clammy and stiff.

Suddenly he noticed a few other things about her that he'd failed to notice earlier. Her dress was grey with age and even more ridiculously old fashioned than the dress on the other corpse. Dust had settled onto her hair, and there were even little clumps stuck to her eyelashes.

Flynn took a panicked step backwards, and the momentum caused the music box to fall out of his pocket. It bounced once, and sprang open. A haunting melody filled the room.

Flynn bent slowly to retrieve the music box, keeping one eye on the girl warily.

Then suddenly light burst forth, something on the bed was shining like the sun. Flynn was too shocked to move. The light was traveling fast down the length of the hair. As it streaked past him, Flynn broke out of his trance.

He sprinted out of the room as fast as he could, but not faster than the light of the hair, which illuminated the main chamber fully now.

Flynn could now see that tree roots had grown into the building, warping the shape of the chamber.

The walls were covered in paintings that had obviously once been very colourful, but were now faded with age. Swirling patterns, dancing people, birds in flight, flowers, and a plethora of other things were haphazardly splashed all over the place. They should have been beautiful, but instead they looked sinisterly misshapen through the layers of dust, and the long shadows cast by the light of the glowing hair.

Flynn grabbed the rope still hanging through the hole and clumsily tied it around his waist.

"Get me out of here!" he yelled.

"Do you have the treasure?!" one of the brothers called back.

"No! There's nothing down here!" Flynn screamed back. He let out a very unmanly yelp as the hair started to shift across the room, getting pulled up the stairs through the open door.

"What's that light down there?"

Flynn cursed loudly.

"JUST PULL ME UP!" He let out a sigh of relief as he was hoisted into the air. As he moved closer to the hole, the light from the hair faded bit by bit until below was blackness once again, but he could still hear the sound of hair sliding around the room.

There wasn't much that could frightened Flynn Rider, but the sleeping girl, and her sliding, glowing hair were too creepy for words.

As soon as he could reach the edge of the hole, Flynn grabbed on and scrambled out back on to land.

"What's down there Rider?" demanded one of the brothers.

"There was the dead body of a woman, and you're not going to believe this, like 70 feet of hair and then-"

"The treasure?" interrupted one of the brothers. Flynn mentally scolded himself. He'd been babbling out of panic. Flynn Rider did not panic. Flynn swallowed his words and decided that he wouldn't tell them about the girl. Let them see for themselves.

"I found this." said Flynn with forced calm. He presented them with the music box. One of the brothers snatched it off him, eying it greedily.

"See the golden brocade? And the detailing on that flower? It's in very good condition, all things considered. It's an early representation of the golden magic sun flower of Old Corona. Collectors would pay an arm and a leg for a piece like this, you could probably get 5000 crowns for it, at least." lied Flynn smoothly. The music box didn't even have any brocade on it but Flynn was certain that the Stabbington brothers wouldn't know brocade from stripes, and it sounded good to throw in.

The other brother pointed his knife at Flynn's face.

"You better not be messing with us. You saying there was nothing else down there?"

"Would I lie to you?" they just looked at him.

"I'm hurt." said Flynn sarcastically.

"We'll come back tomorrow to do a more thorough search."

"Thank god." said Flynn emphatically. Hopefully he'd be able to give them the slip in the night, and then the dark hole filled with slithering golden hair could become a suppressed memory…

Suddenly the Brothers smiled at him. Flynn cringed. Somehow they looked even more lethal when smiling.

"No Rider, us two, we'll be back tomorrow,"

"You'll be spending the night in the hole."

"What!? No way! Guys, listen to me, there is something else down there! The hair I told you about, it was moving when you pulled me back up-" calm Flynn was gone.

"Enough of your excuses Rider."

"You're spending the night down there so you don't get any ideas about running off with that treasure without us."

"No seriously! Listen to me, something down there isn't right-"

"Don't be such a pussy-"

"I'm not a pussy!"

"In you go."

Flynn was seized by the scruff of his collar and thrown in the hole once again. This time he was left free falling until he was a meter from the ground. The brothers slowed his decent just enough so that he wouldn't be permanently damaged, but his collision with various beams on the way down, and then the floor, still hurt.

"Sweet dreams Rider!"

And that was the last thing Flynn heard, before something hit him in the head and everything faded into blackness.

Well hello there!

This is the first time I've written anything for Tangled. I've had this chapter/idea in my head for a while now and today I decided to just post it and see what happens...

Please let me know any thoughts/ideas/criticisms/questions you may have.

Thanks :)