Second chance in Tallahassee
7
Even if the next few weeks were pretty calm, Emma and her family were tensed, mainly because there was still the potential threat of Peter Pan wanting Henry hanging over their heads and also because Emma felt something coming, something bad for her family.
"Why don't you just ask Gold to bring back magic like you planed?" Snow asked her daughter as the savior spent the day with her parents.
"Well... he's happy right now, reuniting with Belle, going on dates, bonding with Neal and Henry... I don't want to ruin it by reminding them that someone might be coming for Henry." She explained.
"You have to think about him though... If this Peter Pan is as evil and as dangerous as Rumpel and Neal say he is, and I think we should believe he is, then we need to do everything we can to protect not only Henry but the town as well." Charming reasoned with his daughter.
"You're right... I'll speak to him about it tonight, he and Belle are coming over for dinner." Emma nodded before they went back to talking for a while before Charming gave his daughter a sword fighting lesson.
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That evening, once dinner was over, Emma brought up bringing back magic, telling them about her bad feeling and how she felt it became urgent to protect the town and more importantly, her son.
"Do you get them often, these feelings?" Gold asked Emma.
"Not too often, but they always turn out right." Emma replied.
"Last time she had it, I broke my leg at work." Neal nodded.
"You're lucky it was just your leg and not your neck. I had been telling you to get rid of that rusty old ladder for weeks but since old Henry had it, you refused to let it go. It finally broke and you were lucky your leg was all that broke after your fall." Emma snapped at her husband.
"That day I swore never to doubt her word again." Neal smiled fondly.
"Well, I guess we could take care of it tomorrow but I'll have to find a way to prevent Regina from using magic once it's back. I'll work on it tonight and in the morning. I'll call you when I'm ready and we'll all meet in front of the library." The Dark One declared.
"The library? Why?" Belle asked him.
"In the basement under the library, Regina hid a dragon. In this dragon, Charming hid a golden egg for me. In this egg is a potion created with True Love. One hair from Snow White and one hair from prince Charming. We'll have to get it." He explained.
"Fight a dragon? That's all?" Neal asked, rolling his eyes.
"I'm afraid we don't have a choice if we want to bring magic back but it will be the hardest part of it. Once we have it, we'll just have to pour it down the well right outside of town." Gold smiled.
"How can we even kill the dragon? Gun?" Emma asked.
"I'm afraid guns won't work... A Sword will do. Your father did kill a dragon with a sword once. I actually still have it in my shop." Gold replied.
"So, tomorrow, my father and I will go down and get it, you'll stay up with Neal and as soon as we have the egg, you'll be ready to rush and pour it down the well. I don't want to waste any time." Emma decided and everyone nodded.
"Are you sure? I'd feel better going down there with you..." Neal protested.
"No, if something goes wrong, you need to be up there to protect Henry. Plus, I can still use my magic. We'll be fine." Emma replied.
"Fine." Neal nodded and Gold lead Belle to the door after saying goodbye.
.
The next morning, everything went according to plans and a little before noon, Gold brought to Emma a special cuff he made with the magic he had left. They placed it on Regina's wrist and after getting the confirmation that she couldn't be able to take it off, they decided to have some lunch and get the egg in the beginning of the afternoon.
Around 2 pm, Emma, Neal and Henry arrived at the library to see not only Gold waiting (Belle was minding the shop), but also Charming, Snow, Ruby and the 7 dwarfs.
"Wow, that's a lot of people. Dad and I are the only one going down there, you know that, right?" Emma asked.
"Of course Princ...I mean, Emma. But in case something goes wrong, we'll be ready to rush in and help." Grumpy replied and she smiled.
"And we'll be ready to escort Rumpelstiltskin to the well once we have the egg." Happy added.
"Okay... Let's go then." Emma sighted.
While her father had a sword that apparently used to belong to his twin brother and was completely golden, Emma had in her hands the sword she had seen her father used when he defended her as a baby.
"Be careful mom." Henry asked her.
"Don't worry kid, I'll be fine. We'll both come back completely fine in no time." Emma assured her son.
"I know. You're a hero, you're both heroes." Henry smiled as he hugged his mother tighter.
Emma and her father, prince Charming, both entered the elevator that Gold was maneuvering, showing Snow and Ruby how to use it in case it was needed later.
"First father-daughter outing? Personnally, I would have prefered an awkward shopping session at the mall." Emma joked.
"Don't worry, we'll be fine." Her father smiled.
"I know. I'm just saying, shopping is usually less dangerous than fighting off a dragon." She replied.
"Usually? Tell you what, tomorrow, I'll take you shopping, just the two of us and you can make this as awkward as you like." He suggested.
"Deal." She nodded with a bright smile before the doors of the elevator opened and they both got out.
Of course, they didn't have long to wait before they were welcomed by the dragon. Apparently, she didn't like being disturbed after being alone for so long.
"Maybe if we tell her that we can free her from this place and this form, she'll be less hostile..." Emma suggested in a voice loud enough to be heard by her father above the noise.
"You can try, but I doubt she's in any mood to listen to us." He shook his head, brandishing his sword while Emma mimicked him.
"Maleficent, we don't want to hurt you. We just want the golden egg hidden inside you. If you give it to us without fighting, we can make a deal and free you from this form and from this place. Regina is locked up, paying for her crimes. She can't hurt anyone anymore." Emma yelled at the dragon who answered by breathing fire on her.
Thankfully, the savior was able to protect herself with her magic.
"Told you it wouldn't work." David chuckled, enjoying this moment that reminded him how it had all started for him.
For the next few minutes, there was a lot of running around.
Maleficent's dragon form seemed to know the place very well, which made sense since she had been locked in there for over 28 years, and she managed to trap Charming behind a pile of fallen rocks, some of them over one of his legs. If he was conscious and could see his daughter and speak with her, he couldn't move or join her, not until she managed to help him out if there (or more likely get the dwarfs to do it).
Emma knew that she was alone with the dragon now. It was up to her to get the egg, to protect her son.
"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm taking part in the first task of the Tri-wizard tournament?" Emma muttered, making a mental note to ask her father in law later if Hogward existed or if it was just fiction.
Of course, in Harry Potter, the egg was outside the dragon, making it all much easier. Harry Potter didn't have to slice his dragon open in order to get the egg, the boy who lived had it easy. What she wouldn't have given to be able to use a simple attraction spell like Accio... Although she felt better having a pointy sword in her hands rather than a supposedly magical piece of wood and she remembered that in the book, Harry had wished to trade his wand for a sword.
The boy who lived vs the savior, who would get the egg faster? Emma shook these thoughts out of her head. She could always compare her own skills with Harry Potter's later on, when nothing was threatening her loved ones' safety and when she didn't have a giant dragon breathing fire on her.
"Okay bitch, it's just you and me now. I gave you the chance to play nice, now it's too late." Emma decided, getting a firmer hold on her sword.
Her father was watching her and it was her chance to make him proud, to show him that she was his daughter, that she could do this. It was her chance to save her father's life just like he had fought for hers when he carried her to the wardrobe 28 years ago.
Running away from her father so that Maleficent couldn't hurt him anymore than he already was, Emma suddenly turned around, surprising the dragon as she threw the sword as hard as she could, using her magic to guide it right in the dragon's glowing heart.
Of course Maleficent didn't go down easy.
She breathed more fire on Emma, then turned her head to breath fire on Charming but it didn't last long. In a few minutes, she was on the floor, unmoving but still in her dragon form. Emma rushed to her and grabbed her sword, who was still firmly planted in her chest. She wasn't used to cutting living things open but she concentrated on Henry's safety and managed to free the big golden egg rather quickly.
"Is she still alive?" Charming yelled from his stone prison.
"I think so, yes. What shall I do?" Emma asked but before her father could reply, Maleficent turned back into a woman, healed but still on the floor and still unmoving.
"Thank you... It feels nice to be free from that thing." The woman on the floor breathed out.
"Are you going to be okay? Do you need help getting out of here?" Emma asked her, willing to give the woman a second chance, as long as she could sign some sort of magical contract with Rumpelstiltskin.
"I... I can't leave this place alive, Regina made sure of that. I can already feel that I'm weakening." Maleficent breathed out with difficulty.
"I'm so sorry... What can I do to help you?" Emma asked her.
"To help me? Nothing. But Regina... She hid something down here... A fail safe to her curse. You can't let her get her hands on it. It's a small black diamond shaped stone. If hit with the strongest of the dwarfs's axes, it will destroy this town and everyone in it, at least everyone born in the Enchanted Forest." The woman had a hard time speaking and Emma was thankful that she used her last moments to help them.
"That's horrible. Do you know where it is?" Emma asked her and Maleficent pointed to a glass coffin.
"In there. Be careful." She adivsed as Emma rushed to the broken glass coffin and managed rather quickly to find the black diamond that could kill them all.
"Can it be destroyed?" Emma asked the witch.
"I don't know. Maybe the Dark One will be able to help... I... I can't... not anymore..." Maleficent replied, unable to speak more.
"It's okay... Thank you for your help. You can rest in peace now." Emma told her and the once evil woman closed her eyes for the last time.
"She's dead." Emma annonced to her father.
"I'm surprised she helped at all. Anyway, well done Emma." He congratulated her.
"I don't think I can get you out of here on my own, I'll call Grumpy and the others to help." Emma said after rushing to him and trying to move the rock on her own.
"I'll be fine a while longer, don't worry." he reassured her.
"I'll be right back with help." She assured him with a bright smile before she ran to the elevator with the big golden egg.
Once she was back in the library, she gave the egg to her father in law who rushed to use it with Henry and Neal while Emma went back down with Snow and the dwarfs to free her father and get Maleficent's body away, give her a decent resting place.
"Maybe we should check the place out some more, maybe Regina hid something else down here..." Snow suggested, obviously worried.
"We'll be able to do that later. Once Rumple brings back the magic, he'll be able to scan the place and tell us excactly what is left here that's dangerous." Emma replied.
They all agreed and made their way back to the elevatore with Charming, who couldn't walk on his left leg because of the rock that fell on it and with Maleficent's body, who would be burried in the cemetery.
.
Bringing magic back had been rather easy once the egg was out of the dragon. Gold let Henry carry it to the well and he even let his grandson the honor of opening it before he poured it down. Soon, a light purple cloud elevated in the air and passed over the entire town.
"Did it work?" Neal asked his father.
"Yes, I can feel it. My magic is back... but now we have a problem." He replied.
"What is it?" Neal asked.
"I don't know if it's Peter Pan, but I can feel a dark evil coming to us, danger for us all. We better get ready, place more protections around the town. I need to start working on helping Emma control her magic. With her brand of light magic, she could be even more powerful than me, which would be a good thing." Gold explained.
"What about your dagger? What if someone finds it?" Henry asked his grandfather with worry.
"Right now it's hidden in the clock tower. I'll go and get it as soon as we're done here. I can hide it in my shop, protected by blood magic but then Peter Pan could get it if he came... or I could hide it with other kind of spells..." He explained as they slowly made their way back to the town.
"You could also place false clues to false hiding places. Like a map leading to a place in the woods were you supposedly hid it when it's really somewhere else..." Henry suggested.
"Good idea Henry." Gold nodded.
As they walked, the Dark One thought over Henry's false clue idea and slowly started forming many different strategies and ideas while he thought of the perfect hiding place for his dagger: himself. He could use his magic to absorb the dagger inside him, this way nobody would be able to get it and he could hide a false dagger in one of the fake hidden spot. It would be perfect and he would be sure that nobody would control him.
.
When everyone was done doing what they were supposed to do, they all met at Granny's were Charming had a cast on his leg and was telling everyone who would listen, meaning over half the town, that Emma was great with a sword and his rightful heir. The blond savior was blushing under all her father's compliments but she liked it too. Hearing her father proudly compliment her was something she had dreamt of her entire life and she couldn't be any happier than she was in this instant.
Later, once they had all eaten and drank a bit, Gold and Emma went to work on placing protections all around the town and settled a schedule for Emma to practice her magic.
So, what did you think of this?
I truly don't know how much longer it'll be... But I can tell you that it will end with the death of one of the main character...
Thank you for the love you've been giving this story!
Don't forget to review please!
Lorelei Candice Black
