Author's Note: Point of interest, Fan fiction is having a fit lately, and won't let me write any new chapters, I'm gonna be a little pissed for a while. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 37: Stop sitting around, Snow White
The student body, the ones that they could find that is, had been evacuated to the relative safety of the Book End mall. Out of the magical forest. Away from the magical dragon that seemed to be bound and determined to kill all of them. That did not change the fact that said magical dragon could come out of the woods at any time and finish them off. On a more personal note for Apple, Raven's apparent role in the dragon's blast of Riddlish magic which caused this situation had not gone unnoticed. Now that the witch was actually no where to be seen the usual rumor spreaders were going about their business of ruining Raven's and Apple's hard work and drag the Witch's name through the mud. Apple however was in no position to stop them, being walking evidence of that incident, not that she was walking anywhere right now, which reminded her.
"Any luck finding Raven yet?" Apple asked seated on a bar stool while using her wooden arm to support herself.
"Divining's a tricky business Apple." Mira was dangling a crystal on a string over a map of the area. "Especially with Riddlish involved. First we have to find out who or what Raven ended up swapping with by tracking her unique magical signature. Then we need to find the magical signature that belongs to that person or thing on the off hope that it'll lead us to Raven. That is all working under the presumption that we all don't get eaten by some manner of Riddlish born monster first." "You mean that you're not even sure this will work?" Apple asked in a tone of barely contained fury.
To be precise Apple was angry at herself, for the first time in her life she felt truly, utterly helpless. There are many maidens who consider this situation to be a good thing, in fact many are trained to consider moments such as these to be among the highlights of their lives, because they usually immediately precede the point in time where they meet their special someone who will whisk them away to their happily ever after. This was not one of those moments. Calling for help does you no good when everyone already knows where you are. Her 'special someone' is sitting on the far side of the bar comparing his reflection in a metal ice bucket to his mirror, she couldn't even move by herself, and all the while a monster that makes more monsters was on the loose threatening everyone in the immediate vicinity. Who exactly would consider any of this to be a good thing?
"You would that's who!" Apple felt a voice in the back of her head seething with anger. "Oh sure, you put on a tough front, but your solution to all your problems is 'Call Raven and make them go away.' Well now Raven is the one who needs your help, and what are you doing? What are you Doing!?" Apple cringed at the sound of her voice screaming in her head, watching as others did all the work for her. "That's right, you sit on your throne, and watch, as others kill for you and die for while you smile and wave in approval so that the world that revolves around you can move on." The way that her mother raised her, educated her on how to stomach all the horrible things happening around her instead of going out and fixing it herself. "Oh don't blame her for this. You knew something was wrong ever since you fell down that well and you never asked a single question. Your ignorance is your own fault Apple White."
Oh sure, Apple read a lot of Kingdom approved books dictating that this was the best way of doing something, never once considering that there might be a better way of doing things, of looking for a better way, of thinking for herself. All of those straight A Grades meant nothing when you're just copying out of a book, in a point to point comparison between herself and Raven she could not think of a single category to outmatch her in. Raven should be the next Queen of Ever After. No, Riordan's royal family should be the ones at the head of the United Fairy Tale Kingdom, not Ever After. For the record, Apple had not suddenly developed a split personality disorder, but she was very depressed right now, and full of a lot of anger that was not being channeled in a healthy direction.
"Magic is not a exact science." The half wooden Girl briefly took the liberty of snapping out of her depressing and turned her attention to Schlechtester, who was leaning against a wall with the raven that she had apparently adopted on her shoulder. "It is inherently volatile and unpredictable, and that is with out Riddlish thrown into the mix. The real thing that we need to focus on is dealing with our rampaging friend."
"We need to find Raven, she can..." Apple stopped herself from repeating the same old mantra.
"No Apple she can't." The Mirror woman stated in a uncompromising tone. "Raven used her own magic to push a fraction of the magic effecting you out of your body, as a consequence she pushed a huge amount of her own power into the beast which is what caused it to grow at such an accelerated rate. As a additional consequence that monster's own brand of magic was pushed out of it's body and affected the entire surrounding area." The Mirror woman looked at the raven on her shoulder pointedly. "Not only did she drain herself of her own brand of magic, but she's also filled up with that beast's magic as well. She is a giant mass of Riddlish in a sea of the stuff. You are not finding her, and she can't brute force her way out of this situation. In other words, instead of a chainsaw, what we need is a scalpel, someone who can come in and cut through this chaos to remove the tumor at it's source."
"I believe that is my cue." Apple was initially over joyed to hear Raven's voice again, until she realized that it wasn't Raven. Oh sure they looked alike, possessing the same black hair and purple eyes. But she was wearing a large magicians robe, and had a shield and sword strapped to her back.
"What are you doing here?" Apple asked in a accusatory tone of voice.
"My job, try doing yours: shut up and look pretty." Apple was legitimately taken back by the Woman's intentionally insulting tone of voice. "The Jabberwocky has already been loose for a day now, the symptoms of it's infection were accelerated on top of that. I say we have about twelve hours before we all break down in gibberish, and then nothing is gonna work right."
"Oh really." Schlechtester stated in a knowing tone of voice cocking a brow at the new arrival. "Your name, little miss."
"I'm a specialist." The newly arrived witch stated intentionally not answering the question.
"In what?" Apple asked in a equally suspicious tone of voice.
"Curses mostly, necromancy, transformation, chimera, demonic, both inflicting, removing, transforming and crafting. I have already prepared the most ideal weapon for eliminating that pest running around and causing trouble." The 'Specialist' stated holding up the sword from her back.
"A sword?" Apple asked serious making her disbelief known and rather apparent.
"A Vorpal blade." The witch replied corrective.
"That's impossible." Lizzie was the first to make her displeasure known, standing up and walking right up to the newly arrived witch. "There was only one Vorpal blade that has ever existed."
"Forged in a cooperative effort between the Queen and Heart's families in a effort to quell the Jabberwocky population of Wonderland stabilizing it in the process. Yes I'm aware." The Witch held up three of her fingers as she began counting off points. "Riddlish magic has three ways of defending the Jabberwocky, it switches parts of things around, it throws those things in reverse, and then for good measure it scrambles them." The Specialist retracted one of her fingers. "Firstly, the blade is made of Goblin forged metal, which greedily devours every thing it comes into contact with and discards everything that does not make it stronger. There is no way that even riddlish magic will make it give up the dragon slayer power that I've already infused it will."
"Dragon slayer?" Apple asked sounding surprised.
"Pseudo dragon slayer is more accurate. Dragons are such hardy beasts that you need a specialized magical formula just to cut through their scales and another one to release a type of magic based poison that will stop them from healing their wounds." Some of the students, specifically the male students, even more specifically the ones who had endured countless humiliating fights and injuries since the school year started, could only slap their faces with a look of 'obviously the fire breathing monster needs a specialized weapon to hurt it.' "Even though I say that, with Riddlish the effect would just be reversed, instead of a spell that softens the hard scales so that they can be pierced, they'll just become even harder then before. Instead of a spell that poisons the body, a super healing spell would be released instead. So the obvious solution here, is to imbue the blade with a spell that does the opposite, a hardening and healing spell. Well even though I say that it's not that easy." The Specialist explained leaning on the blade the same way one would a cane that was much too large for them. "Remember that in addition to reversing, there's also scrambling one has to contend with as well." Yes, if it was as easy as 'use the opposite of what you'd normally use and that will finish him off' then Jabberwocky's would not be anywhere nearly as terrifying as they are. "Just by entering the Jabberwocky's body, the magical formula inside the blade would get twisted beyond all recognition. In order to counteract that, what you must do is twist it in the opposite direction first."
"'Twist it in the opposite direction?'" Lizzie asked tilting her head and cocking a suspicious eye.
"If you know the cipher that Riddlish uses to twist something around, then you know how to decode that cipher. But..." The witch raised her finger into the air as if to silence the indignant Lizzie. "The opposite is also true, if you first use the 'decoding' on the message then when the 'cipher' is applied then the message will be unscrambled."
"That is impossible! Do you know how long my people have been studying Riddlish!" Lizzie snapped as if the facts presented to her were a lie. "There is no pattern! It is random! It has always been random!"
"No Lizzie, your people haven't been able to properly decipher it, because you've only ever had the end result to work with, instead of the original message." The Specialist stated in a knowing tone of voice. "A particular researcher among the Scar Backs Studied the Riddlish relentlessly. She created a portal to their little corner of the universe and sat it down in a isolated area of the border forest in Riordan."
"The looking glass portal, the one in that village that all the magical ingredients came from." Apple stated cluing in, recalling the portal that Raven had been brought to during their field trip.
"Correct. The Riddlish coming off of that portal, it switching things around and reversed them. Then she shut the portal down, took a detailed account of the surroundings, let the riddlish leave the affected area, before reopening the portal. And do you know what happened?" The Specialist asked cocking her brow suspiciously.
"Everything was switched around exactly the same way?" Lizzie guessed sarcastically rolling her eyes. "Your researcher isn't the first person to try this experiment yah know."
"Oh heavens no, it was all different." The Specialist clarified holding up the palms of her hands defensively. "But it was different with a pattern." Lizzie continued to cock her suspicious eye. "When light reflects off of a mirror, that mirror in turn becomes a light source that hits a object, that object in turn casts a shadow on another object. But as the light source moves, say for example the sun, then the light reflected off of the mirror becomes different too, and then the shadows that it produces becomes different as well. The reason why the 'light source' has changed, is because it's position has moved." Lizzie's face had gone from suspicious to full blown disbelief, many of the students reflected the look on her face not quite computing this situation. "Is it really so difficult to believe? The moon and the sun moves around in the sky all the time." The specialist explained impatiently rolling her eyes. "Why wouldn't other celestial bodies change their position relative to one another?"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Apple limped over to the witch using Mira as a crutch. "If you can do what you say you can do then prove it." Apple used a wooden arm to gesture to the room full of mismatched people. "There's a lot of people here waiting to get back to normal."
"If that's all it'll take." Clapping her hands together, the Specialist released a small burst of magic that went into Apple, and then went after Cedar like a homing missile. Suddenly the life returned to Apple's limbs that had been frozen stiff, while Cedar's human arms that were full of stitches immediately went stiff as a tree branch. "Now if you'll excuse me." The Specialist stabbed the blade into the floor in front of the girls before turning around on her heel and walking towards the forest.
"Wait!" Apple quickly ran ahead and stopped in front of the witch. "You can't just leave all these people here!"
"Sure I can." The Specialist walked past Apple not paying her a second thought.
"No you don't!" Apple grabbed hold of the Witch's arm and made a show of trying to stop her by digging her heels into the ground. "There are a bunch of people in there who needs your help."
"Correction, they will live, and they will be returned to normal when the Jabberwocky is defeated. That on the other hand." The Specialist stated pointing to the sky, where a twisted mass of darkness was flying about, having ripped the top floor off of the school's top tower and tore it to pieces before scattering the resulting chunks all over the courtyard. "Will likely kill it's current host once the Jabberwocky is taken care of, and will go back to pestering it's actual host once that one has been dried up and blown away. However if I can catch it before that, I might be able to save two people who actually need my help, instead of a hoard of brats that need someone to kiss their boo boos better. Do I make myself clear?"
In that moment Apple realized something, it wasn't just the words of the witch, though she knew that the logic behind them made perfect sense. No it was that look in the Witches eyes. She hated her, this witch hates Apple White deeply and passionately. This wasn't the kind of a hatred one person holds for someone that they barely know. This was a lot deeper then some manner of half ass grudge. That was the hatred this witch possesses.
"Yes. I understand now." Apple stated in a knowing tone. "So if you lack the time to help my classmates, Can I at least make sure that the method gets into the hands of someone who does? Defeating the Jabberwocky would be a lot easier if everyone doing the fighting were back at full strength."
"Whatever." Immediately The Specialist shoved the book into Apple's arms before taking off to the school.
"Thank you!" The witch visibly flinched at Apple's thanks, which she figured was a good thing, as it would probably fill up her magic for the fight against the obscuris. When Apple ran into the mall again she was immediately swarmed by her mis-matched classmates, though a loud whistle quickly dispersed them. "Listen up!" Apple stated in a tone of surprising authority. "You see that thing up there?" A tendril of dark magic smashed part of the roof top of the school in a overly eye catching manner. "That thing isn't going away just because we deal with the Jabberwocky! But we might be able to save the people caught up inside of that hell if we can beat it while she is fighting against that thing!"
"Who cares about that thing?" Apple turned her attention to the person who opened his mouth to talk back to her in that manner. One of Daring's classmates, or more accurately one of his cousins, a lesser charming family, not that he looked the part, what with channeling the orcish look and all. "That person is already a goner right? There is such a thing as being cursed to death after all. So instead of trying to save a rampaging corpse like that, shouldn't those of us still among the living be the priority?"
"Shush!" Accompanying that shush was the blunt side of a long sword slamming down on the formerly Charming individual's head with a ring not unlike that of a bell. "It is the responsibility of Heroes to save everyone they can! Go back and properly do your homework Lance!" Daring scolded donning his best 'Charming' look complete with a smile that for once didn't make people cringe. Mira just rolled her eyes at the concept of Daring telling someone to go do their homework and just assumed that the Riddlish had scrambled his brain before she took the book from Apple.
"'The Effects of Riddlish, by Morgan Konigan.'" Those that understood the implication of that name audibly gulped. Mira opened the book and the magic in her glasses went to work processing the information within the book. "She was right, this information is complex. But the logic is sound, and since it's not coming directly from Wonderland, some of it doesn't necessarily apply."
"Do you think you'll have it ready by the time we find the Jabberwocky?" Daring asked pulling the Vorpal blade out of the ground and stuff it into the sheath on his back, only for someone else to immediately take it from him. "Yah no, I've seen you fight normal dragons." Some kind of glamour turned the blade into a ring that was promptly slipped onto Lizzie's ring finger. "I'll be taking this."
"Hey wait a minuet." Lizzie grabbed Daring's hand as he reached out to her ring and broke his wrist, before delivering several palm thrusts to his throat and chest and throwing him to the floor. "Is there any one else who would like to argue with me?" Lizzie asked pointedly looking towards the young man writhing in pain on the ground.
"We'll willing to cure anyone who wants to help right now." Apple stated stepping forward and putting her hands on her hips. "We need all the help we can get yes, but we lack time to help everyone. I will make myself clear that we have a limited amount of time to work with, and can't waste too much of it when all of you are going to be cured anyway when the Jabberwocky is beaten."
"Speaking of time." Daring stated getting back to his feet using Apple as a support. "But has anyone seen where Raven's fire breathing monster went? Because I really don't wanna waste any on that thing."
The Jabberwocky stumbled through the woods, it's injuries were painful, and there were still shards of broken blade grass sticking out of it's feet. Another figure appeared, just as large, dark body and nightmarish teeth seemed to glare down the other dragon. It would make since that those who spent any great deal of time would also be affected by the Jabberwocky's magic, though she did a fair bit more then merely spending time with him. Her glare seemed to question his sorry state, not his numerous injuries but rather coming back home empty handed. The Jabberwocky could only moan apologetically, not even a boulder for their nest. She fetched a bush of familiar looking plants and dropped it in front of the Jabberwocky, growling at it to chew but not swallow the leaves while she went about removing the shards of metal, just as Raven did for her when she was hit by that arrow the one time. Using the paste made from the Jabberwocky's saliva and the leaves, Nevermore sealed up the wounds that had the bits of metal pulled out of them. Now that he was healed up Nevermore went back into their shelter made from several fallen tree's they had piled on top of each other, growling at the other dragon, after all what kind of mate can't even bring back building materials for their nest?
Review Section:
DJ: Basically yes, but the Narrator isn't going to help. There is no figuring out, she already knows. You say that like Raven ever believed that her mother was as bad as people say she is.
Aya Rose: Hmm. That is a flaw in my formula isn't it? Mostly because it seems that we're facing off against magical enemies a lot, I need to work on that. That said you have given me a few ideas for the story.
Wade: Thank you. Don't worry, they've gotten their point across by now.
Charlie: The only flaw with that plan, is that the least dangerous thing in existence is going to become the most.