Wow, it has been a long time and I do apologise for that! As I say, the story is fully completed so will be fully published eventually.

I realise people may have forgotten what was going on before, so it may be a good idea to skim over previous chapters to refresh your memory. If not, a brief summary is that Regina and Emma are exploring a strange land to try and restore lost magic to Storybrooke. The only thing is, they know nothing about how magic disappeared or who is behind it. So far they have been guided by a mysterious riddler and have had to get through various challenges to try and figure out where and what they are dealing with. Their only source of magic has been two amulets with a distilled amount stored within them, but their latest quest resulted in one of these finally draining. They did however rescue a valuable prize in doing so; a priceless cup. Now down to one amulet between them, their latest find allows them to force anyone to tell the truth, something they are using to their advantage in order to try and work out more pieces of the puzzle...


Chapter 12

Realising what he had admitted, the cat began to hop and stammer in desperate anguish.

"No! That is not what I meant. That is true, but caught or not it's how you get the magic!"

He threw his claws to his mouth and tried to run as Emma and Regina exchanged a look of doubt.

"So our magic is definitely in this place?" Emma asked.

"This is not my role! You cannot...keep me...here!" The creature strained trying to pop away but each time Regina tightened her grip on the magic, trying to keep her disposition cool so as not to give away her method.

"Oh look. The rhyming has stopped." She goaded. "That didn't answer the question though.

"It looks like we need to do it per question." Emma realised, quickly sprinkling again.

"Is our magic in this hall place?" Emma repeated more firmly

"Yes." The cat creased in pain trying to fight both the magical obligation and the magical pull.

"I do not take your commands!" The cat was incensed. "I guide! Do not test me!" He fumed, manic in his conviction to stay to his scripts. The two women were un-phased at his protests.

"Who sent you and who has our magic?" Regina jumped in as Emma quickly doused the note again.

The cat gripped down tightly on his lips and tried to muffle it with his scarf. The response was inaudible as he tried to pop away again, Regina's frustration growing, she jerked her arms down this time as she commanded him back.

"Who. Sent. You?" Emma demanded. This time the cat grabbed his tongue and began to spring around in front of them, making it impossible to understand. Taking advantage of their distraction to decipher it, he began to pick up his speed as he zipped around. Regina desperately tried to recall him but his pace and skill were too much and she let the watch slip into view in her haste. Before she knew it, it had been snatched back.

With the upper hand, the tone of the creature was now menacing.

"You tried to cheat, this was not fair! You can't pull shortcuts from the air. You stole my watch but you waste time as this must be your final rhyme." He croaked before evaporating into smoke with nothing but a sparkly shower.

"Slippery bastard!" Regina cursed, slapping her arms down in frustration.

"I knew it! I knew he was a plant. I knew this was a trick! How could we be so misled?"

"Regina. We don't know that-" Emma tried to calm her as the queen continued the tirade but soon her attention had switched to something else.

"We've been blindly following, doing his bidding. Manipulated to -"

"Regina!" Emma cut her off more firmly, pointing.

"What?" She snapped back.

Emma paused, looking ahead towards the residue the riddler had left.

"When did his glitter change colour?"

"His what? Emma, don't try to divert my attention! Nothing has changed."

She looked but saw no difference from before.

Frustrated, Emma bent down and scooped some up. "You can argue with me over grand cities but you cannot look at this and tell me this isn't a different colour from before!" She forced it into Regina's hand who examined it closer, still unsure of what change Emma was talking about.

Now with a new lease of curiosity Emma began to run along the last trail left by the riddler, her pace quickening as it led her out the forest into the field in front.

"He isn't meant to be evil. That doesn't make sense..." She was muttering as Regina grew frustrated, striding after her.

"Emma! Get back here." She whispered harshly, knowing they were drawing closer and soon would be seen.

"This isn't right..." Emma became possessed, following the line as it stretched towards some flower beds around the side. She tried to keep low to avoid attracting the attention of the guards.

"The flowers stretch round to the side. They're tall enough to hide in if we crawl."

"What flowers? Emma! I don't know what you think you see. Nothing has changed since we got here -" Regina paused, frozen in the spot. "The amulets...your power drained inside the cave..." She whispered to herself, her face flooding with fear as she looked down, placing a hand on the stone around her neck. "brighter...and there was the city...". Her eyes danced as she filtered through the thoughts. She ripped the amulet from her neck and looked at it, a ball of fear plunging through her stomach. "These aren't mine." She braced herself before raising her head to look at the world around them. The stone of the wall looked different, the light around was brighter and worst of all she suddenly saw the field she had watched Emma running through no longer appeared to be just grass.

"Emma don't go any further!" She commanded with a crack of fear in her voice that made Emma halt among the red flowers she was striding through. As she turned she began to sway.

"Regina...? What is...why do I suddenly feel -" she was cut off by her own collapse.

"Dammit Swan!" Regina cursed under her breath as she ran towards her, knowing what would follow.

She took a deep breath and grabbed the cup from Emma's hand. Taking the amulet in the other and wrapping it around her hand as best she could, fighting the pull. She shoved the cup into her bag using what magic she could muster to hide it, but her last drops of her energy were spent slipping the necklace neatly into her bra. Finally the weight of her eyelids became too much and she collapsed among the poppies.


Regina came-to lying on a stone bench in a cell. There was no sign of guards but the door was made of thick steel and it was unlikely that guards were needed. The cell was dark, apart from a thin veil of light coming in through a crack of a window near the ceiling.

She looked to Emma's restful body next to her.

"Wake up, Swan." She patted the leg beside her roughly until a groan emerged from among the blonde strands hung over the face it belonged to.

"Quit it..."

"I'll quit it when you get up. Though maybe having you unconscious is better, less chance of you doing something as moronic as running through a poppy field." Emma sat up, confused, brushing back her hair from her face.

"Poppy field? What does that mean? Do you know where we are?"

"Unfortunately, poppies appear in all our lands but what I do know is that wherever we are, the world was hiding itself...or its traps at least. I think there was some kind of glamour spell laced in the amulets. Everything around us is disguised if we are wearing them." She grumbled, leaning up against the wall.

"But you made them?" Emma tried to process the information as Regina clicked her tongue.

"Well clearly they're not my ones. They were changed or corrupted. I would have warned you in advance of your rampant glitter chasing but by the time I saw them it was too late."

"Then if you'd figured it out why did you come running in after me?" Emma defended herself wearily, her head throbbing from where she had knocked it with her fall.

"I couldn't exactly leave you!"

"You had your amulet...why not fly in, grab me and run?"

"I...was caught off-guard..." she fluffed, a little embarrassed she hadn't thought of that but quickly turned it into defensiveness. "The important thing is that these amulets aren't mine and they haven't been since we retrieved them. It's the only explanation." She reasoned. "It explains why they have been working strangely. It explains why you were seeing a different world from me." Her voice ramped up with frustration. "It explains why we are now in a jail cell because you insisted on trusting that damn cat!" Emma pulled her head up from its position in her hands, too drowsy to keep fighting her corner.

"Your irrational yelling at me aside, I don't understand how the world could be disguised? How could that have worked?" Emma tried to process the abundance of information.

"I never took my amulet off and you lost your power in the well. Only patches would have been glamoured and probably subtly. Bits they knew we'd recognise. We didn't notice because it didn't ever change right in front of us."

"Except I did notice...and I don't know why you're yelling at me. You're the one who made us use the amulets." Emma added resentfully, now having a new wave of energy to resume defending herself.

"Well that doesn't change the fact we were both tricked." Regina folded her arms defiantly. "That damn cat has been playing us all along."

"The cat wouldn't have the power to make those amulets and besides, we don't even know he did trick us -"

"He led us into a trap!" Regina spat back.

"He...well..." Emma stuttered, desperate to keep some hope. "Look, I just don't think we know he is behind this. He said getting caught was what was needed...and either way he led us away from the poppies! It was me that changed route. They're not meant to be evil, that's what Belle said."

"Oh spare me the naïve, inane optimism, Emma. You were a dark one. I was driven to destroy the lives of an entire realm because of a ten year old. In fact that ten year old even murdered my mother! Don't look me in the eye and imply that people - or things - can't be corruptible." Regina shot back, flapping her arms in anger.

"OK enough!" Emma halted their fight and took a pause. "We could go on bickering about it all day but none of that is going to help. You blaming me isn't going to change anything -"

"Well, blaming you is what I do." Regina snapped back petulantly before pulling back and feeling a flash of guilt, sitting back down. "I just wish I'd followed my gut." She groaned. "It's no more your fault than mine. I should have insisted, I should know better than to let Charmings call the shots." She conceded.

"I guess that's the best apology I'll get so I'll take it." Emma folded her arms, sitting next to her. "And for what it's worth, I know I should pay more attention to you. I just get carried away."

The two of them sat in silence for a moment before Emma noticed Regina still had her bag.

"Did they take the cup?" She asked, seeing it was much emptier than before.

"Not if my concealment spell worked." Regina struggled, reaching into her bra where she had hidden the amulet. Emma gave her a puzzled look, raising an eyebrow.

"You got the cup in there too?" She teased as Regina placed the necklace around her neck

"I was using my assets." She retorted defensively at the widened blue eyes. "I couldn't hide it with magic so I improvised."

Emma tried to suppress a smirk.

"You can have an opinion on my decisions when you stay conscious long enough to voice them." The queen silenced her, picking up her bag and reaching through her hiding spell to feel the cup was still there. It had clearly been searched with anything of value removed but the spell had worked to conceal the treasure.

"The amulet still works but there must be a magic block on the cell." She mumbled, assessing their surroundings. "They wouldn't be that stupid..." She looked to the walls but decided to try anyway. Her purple smoke had barely cleared before she came crashing back down, snarling a curse.

She slapped her hands off the floor. "I knew that was too good to be true." Emma helped her off the up as Regina squinted up to a stream of light, glinting through a crack of a window near the ceiling.

"So what are we dealing with?" Emma decided to bring it back to business. "What changed with the glamour? The riddler's dust was more greeny yellow, the poppies were disguised. They knew that we would recognise the city...or you at least you would considering you'd probably tried to conquer it at some point and I doubt they were expecting me to -"

"What did you just say?" Regina cut Emma off briskly, catching onto new information. Emma looked back, eyes widened and began to backtrack.

"I don't mean it as an insult, just that they'd know you would be more likely to recognise - "

"The dust, Swan!" Regina shook her head, flustered. "What colour did you just say?"

Before Emma could answer they were interrupted by the sound of an altercation outside.

They both ran to the door but there wasn't enough of a gap to see. There was a clatter and a shout and a key then appeared in the door. It clicked open as the two stepped back.

"You need to move. Now!" A voice shouted. It was obscured by a helmet and the body by full armour.

"You expect us to just follow you? Who are you?" Regina interrogated him.

"We have a common enemy in this land. If you want to ever get your magic back you need to trust me." He put a hand to his chest.

"I know that voice..." Emma whispered, a look of confusion growing across her face.

"Then that's all the confirmation you need. Now run!" He added, grabbing Emma's arm and pulling her out. Regina ran behind just as another selection of guards appeared. Regina threw them back with a blast as Emma shook off his grip but continued to follow. As they ran to another corner, two guards appeared ahead of them. Swinging his sword he knocked one out as Emma booted another and Regina sent the two coming behind to the floor.

"In here!" Their rescuer yelled, leading them into a room with a fireplace. He pulled a candle stick on it and a door opened up into a hidden room. It was a tucked away study with a desk and books scattered around, but most importantly the guards had not followed them.

Deciding to take their chances, they ran in and he closed the door behind them. "They don't know this room exists." He panted as Emma looked him up and down, recognising the voice again.

"Wait a minute..." She paused as sudden realisation hit her. Kicking him backwards against the wall she ripped off his helmet and stole his sword, pressing it against his neck.

"Regina, prepare to fire." She ordered as the man yelped in fear. Regina drew a fireball as his Adam's apple pulsed dangerously close to the blade. Tearing down his collar she found the scar on the right of his neck and instantly knew the desperate look in his eye.


"Call me a sidekick again and you'll feel just how powerful I am." Regina retorted, flinging the ball inches from his head before conjuring another and moving a step closer. Taking advantage of the moment of silence she leaned in closer to Emma. "Whoever this is, we need to get out of here. You said the dust was greeny yellow - "

"Not now Regina!" Emma silenced her, so haunted by what she had in front of her and the memory of how he had manipulated her that she had room in her brain for nothing else. Regina huffed out her frustration, realising that intervention was futile.

"How do you expect me to trust you after what you did?" Emma barked, pressing the sword against him closer, but desperately trying to find some look of regret.