Author's Note: One Year Anniversary! Tomorrow, but I'm not picky, in fact: IMMA CELEBRATIN! WOOOO! Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 53: This is Truth, Grimm
Apple was in her's and Raven's personal bathroom, splashing cold water on her face in light of the recent truth she learned about herself. She, Apple White, loved her best friend and roommate Raven Queen. Or was this so called love a by product of the uniquely warped mindset created when someone is raised to believe that she is a character in a fairy tale and that she will forever live happily ever after just as soon as one person wills the universe in her favor through a single 'poisoned' apple.
"Huu..."
Apple needed some time to clear her head, just... go somewhere that didn't have anything to do with fairy tales for a while and try to think like a normal person for once in her life. Alas it didn't seem like she would be having that chance. Walking onto her balcony, Apple saw that the entire sky had turned red, a wall of fire had taken up the horizon on the far side of the forest, something was raining down balls of fire on the courtyard and masses of undead and armor were digging themselves out of the ground and fighting against the students.
"What the heck!?" Apple shrieked a horrified look on her face.
Daring slammed his great sword into the mid-section of one creatures that had tore themselves out of the ground, and followed up by slamming the weapon into the top of it's head bisecting it in the process. Not that the creature seemed to notice, the split down the middle resealed itself and the undead mass of metal got back to it's feet with the type of casual ignorance only a tree was worthy of.
"WHY! WON'T! YOU! STAY! DOWN!?" Daring punctuated his shouts of frustration by chopping his sword down on top of his opponent's head. A lasso reached out and grabbed two of their enemy around their necks and yanked them both down.
"Stop attacking them it isn't working!" Hunter shouted as he used a crossbow to pin the downed undead in place. "Incapacitate them as best you can and then retreat!"
"Working on it!" Sparrow shouted firing a arrow into the chest of one of the Undead, which then exploded. Suddenly, a knife from the cafeteria was thrown at the head of the undead, which then shrieked in pain before collapsing to the ground. The confused heroes turned around to face Mira who was holding a bag of silverware from the cafeteria, a roll of duct tape and a small cauldron full of what they quickly realized was some kind of blade oil.
"I don't know how it works, but I'll roll with it." Hunter taped the bits of silver to the end of his cross bow bolts, Sparrow dipped his arrow heads into the cauldron, and Daring used his hand to coat his blade in a layer of the stuff. This time when the three heroes struck their opponents they stayed down.
"Anyone know what these things are?" Daring asked watching as bits of flesh evaporated from the metal plated foes.
"They're called Draugr, warrior type Mid Rank undead, Riordan maintains a standing army of them, with a tiny bit more sophistication." Mira explained analytically adjusting her glasses.
"Good to know. But what are they doing here?" Sparrow asked as he pulled bits of silverware out of the downed enemy.
"If I could make a educated guess: The school was originally a fortress. Fortresses are typically the sights of large battles. Someone could have used a powerful curse to drench up their corpses and send them after us." Mira explained scratching her chin. "What I don't know is why?"
"How about we ask them?" More Draugr emerged from the forest in the direction that Daring's great sword was pointing in.
"CHHHAAAARRRRRRMMMMIIIINNNNGGGG!"
That nightmarish voice echoed throughout the battlefield, and it was a battlefield too, many of the trees of the forest were blatantly ripped out of the ground and torn apart, transformed into a weird mishmash of Archespores and warrior type undead. More important then what they were is where they were going, if these things were on different sides of a war then they should all be fighting each other, instead they were all walking in one direction, the ones that didn't stop to pay them a little bit of attention that is. This scared Kitty for two reasons, the first is that rather then two sides of a army fighting in a battle, these people were instead the victims of a one sided massacre, which means that they were about to face a one sided massacre. The second reason was the demonic voice that echoed out a few moments ago, demanding Charming blood, and Kitty had a Charming right next to her.
"You!" Momentarily distracted by the scorched battle field with trees turned warriors roaming about Kitty was soon reminded about the source of this madness when Darling pointed accusingly towards the Evil Queen. "What is this!? What did you do!?"
"I cast a curse, I thought that was rather obvious." Morgan replied in a casual tone of voice, using bare hands to rip chunks of Iron armor off of her body. "Sabrina's Crucifixion. Remember that name and tell it to someone smarter then you. In the meantime I have a tight schedule to keep." Morgan picked up her daughter's unconscious body and wrapped it in the cloak she was wearing before walking away.
"You are not going anywhere!" Darling snapped sword swung at Morgan to take her head off.
"I don't have time for this." Muttering that, Morgan snapped her fingers and immediately the dragon slayer wrapped itself around Darling's body. "A word of advice. Never attack a witch with a sword that she gave you." Morgan was suddenly greeted by the sensation of a invisible fist clashing against her face, Kitty making her presence known. "That isn't going to work you know." Kitty screeched as she repeatedly struck with near invisible claw, fist and at one point in time even bit the witch. "Are you done?" Not waiting for a answer, Morgan kicked the Cheshire cat sending her sailing through the air and landing behind her. "I would choose to evacuate this place if I was you Charming, she hates your kind."
"Who is 'She?'" Darling asked a ominous feeling going down the back of her neck. As if answering that question, Morgan turned around to face Darling with a evil smirk on her face.
"The Queen of Evil of course." Morgan snapped her fingers again, and both Darling and Kitty were sent sailing away.
Milton was very confused, the air hummed with magical power, the school was under attack by undead and magical bombardment, and now this person had appeared. Milton would be mistaken for thinking that she was Snow White, with her dark black hair pale skin and ruby red lips many would. But she was much younger, fourteen years old at the most, which as a father, grandfather and principal distressed him greatly when he discovered the tell tale bulge under her dress of pregnancy.
"Excuse me young lady." Milton politely greeted, putting his hand on the young mother's shoulder, only to gasp in surprise when his hand passed through her body instead of resting on something solid. "I see."
She was a illusion, but why was she here and for who's benefit. Then the floor started shaking. Milton was surprised in that the illusion was moving, not reacting to him but rather turning around with a frightened look on her face. Turning to face the same direction she had, Milton was surprised when he saw a sword made of various scrap metals welded together and super heated until it was red hot cut through the floor. The owner of that blade erupted from the floor in a shower of melted materials, a giant composed of bits of armor, parts of the school's foundation, and a chunk of wood here or there and all lit on fire.
"WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON HERE!?" Milton shouted, which seemed to get the giant's attention as a head which vaguely resembled a ball of flame turned to look at him.
"Isn't that what I should ask you?" A deep voice boomed from the head of the monster. "After all, this is my bed room and you are not my type." Saying that, Milton was shield bashed out of his office that was apparently this thing's bed chambers and landed on the lawn while spitting blood. "Now little snow white, where were we?"
"No, no Blue Beard! GYAAAHHHAHA!" That ear piercing wail shrieked throughout the entire campus.
The student body was evacuated to the Girl's Dormitory, quite possible the only safe place left with all of those monsters running around. Mrs. Yaga was currently composing a spell to locate all of the missing students, the hero and magic caster students were split into search parties to go look for all of them. In the mean time Briar was looking through the history of Evil Magics text books for any explanation as to what has hit them. Apple and her cousin Ashlynn had joined in on the search for the missing students, utilizing several birds and other small woodland creatures to aid in their search.
"I swear, we should just demolish the whole place at this point." Ashlyn seethed in justified rage, not even a day since everyone got back from the impromptu vacation after the Jabberwocky incident, and this happens.
"If we can't stop these things then we might just have to." Mrs. Yaga stated as she punted off the third seemingly very important ancient leather bound book that failed to provide her information about their foe. It was at that point in time that Apple's phone started ringing, prompting her to take it out and answer it.
"Darling? Hang on I'll put you on speaker phone." Apple placed the phone on one of the tomes Baba Yaga had been searching through. "What happened? The last time we saw you, you guys were chasing after that crook that mutiliated Raven's dragons?"
"That was before the Evil Queen showed up and dropped a huge curse bomb on the place." Darling's voice echoed from the Mirror phone causing a number of students to gasp in concern. "She punted Duchess off somewhere, and the rest of us into Wonderland. Also, she told me to mention 'Sabrina's crucifixion.' I take it that's bad?"
"Hmm. So this is one of hers eh?" Mrs. Yaga stated scratching her chin.
"So I take it that you know what this is then?" Apple asked cocking a brow at her teacher.
"Sabrina's Crucifixion was a particularly nasty curse developed by the fourth individual to take on the 'Evil Queen' title, Sabrina Konigan. It repeats the same day of a particularly bloody battle that took them all the way to one of the capitals, with undead taking the role of the once living soldiers. She is the one we have to thank for the massive army of undead warriors defending the inner most part of Riordan." Riordan's defenses can be broken down into circles, if the outer circle relied on the magically altered beasts to protect it, then the inner circle relied on the specialized undead warriors to do the fighting at key choke points.
"As if that place didn't sound terrifying enough as it is." Daring commented prompting others to nod their heads in agreement.
"Alright so what are these things weakness?" Apple asked in a shrill voice.
"There aren't any." That bit stunned the entire class. "At least not the usual ones. So much about these things are top secret so it's hard to figure stuff out about them. We can however make some educated guesses about their weaknesses based on general information about what they are and how they were created. For instance, undead are normally weak against fire, but this curse uses fire magic as a power source, so since they already got that coursing through their veins we can assume that it'll be effectively useless against them. Mira and Daring have already reported that other common undead weaknesses like silver and healing potions can knock them down, but the nature of the curse means that they'll just resurrect in about a day, and it's better not to waste resources when we know that they'll just come back in a day." Mrs. Yaga explained scratching her chin. "Right now, it's a war of information gathering. We need to know everything we can about our enemy, only through that will we be able to find a weakness."
"If we can find out what battle these things are suppose to be recreating I bet we can find a way of beating them." Apple stated as she started pacing back and forth. "If this is some legendary battle, then I bet some really famous person died here. We should try to learn the names of the Draugrs."
"If that's your logic then you should focus on the Draug." Mrs. Yaga stated prompting Apple to look at her concerned.
"'Draug?'" Apple asked her face twisted in confusion.
"High tier warrior type undead. The general to the Draugrs, it'll be larger, more intelligent, more powerful and can assume multiple forms depending on the situation." Mrs. Yaga stated in a lecturer's tone.
"So a super Draugr then. Has anyone seen anything like that around the school?" Apple asked looking to the assembled group of students.
At that moment in time, a loud crash sound echoed through out the dorm, as Schlechtester's boot went through the door forcibly opening it in the process.
"Why did you break down the door!? I just had it painted!" An exasperated Mira shrieked looking rushing over to her mother.
"Hands are full." The Chem-Myth-Ry teacher stated revealing that she was supporting the weight of the heavily injured Milton.
"Well... lets get him inside." Mira helped her mother move the Headmaster onto the floor of the dorm room and started running a medical assessment of the headmaster.
"Several of his bones are broken and his lung has been pierced. What happened to you?" Mira asked cocking a brow at the Headmaster.
"I was attacked by a fire giant who appeared in my office." Milton winced as Mira set to work trying to fix his broken body.
"You didn't by chance catch it's name when it hit you did you?" Apple asked moving behind Mira.
"Yes, I did." Among other disturbing details that he would have to look into at a more convenient time. "The Draug's name is Blue Beard."
"Uh oh..." Briar stated, history books stacked to either side of her.
"Do we want to know?" Apple asked cocking a brow.
"The last commander of this base before it stopped being a base and was turned into a school." Briar stated pulling out a book and opening a page.
"Okay so who did him in?" Apple asked shrugging her shoulders.
"We don't know, when they found him he was torn to pieces and his army was gone. Someone slaughtered all of them." Briar explained showing the group a illustration of indiscriminate body parts.
"RRRRWWWAAAAAARRRRR!"
"I think we're going to find out who." Apple commented, shaking a little bit as the magical bombardment started getting closer to the school. "Can we contact Sabrina? She can probably revert her curse."
"No, she sacrificed her life to produce the curse in the first place, the fact that Morgan's still alive is proof of just how monstrously powerful she really is." Mrs. Yaga stated letting out a sigh. "I have to admit. Our odds are pretty bleak on this one."
"There is one way to contact her." Milton stated prompting the surprised student body to turn around and face him in shock.
The Legacy Orchard, near the end of the school year, this orchard, magically rooted to the Story Book of Legends, appears containing gifts from various fairy tale fore bearers to aid their descendants in their respective stories. Before that though it was a vault, made to house so many magical artifacts that something inside of it finally broke one day leading to this situation, that vault had been dragged out of whatever manner of alternate reality it spends most of it's time in and was now in the physical plain once more. Sparrow, their stealth expert, was leading a group consisting of Faybelle, who was using magic barriers to defend themselves from the incoming magical bombardment and Apple who was supporting the weight of the Headmaster. The constant magical bombardment was creating fox holes all over the courtyard, finding hiding places to hide from the undead monsters wasn't hard.
"Sabrina's inside of the book?" Apple asked surprised to Milton's earlier explanation.
"The Story Book of Legends takes a piece of everyone who signs it inside of itself. Sabrina is theoretically inside of the Story Book of Legends." Milton explained in a corrective tone of voice.
"Okay. So assuming that we make it inside of this building that theoretically has this back door into a apparently broken magical book that possibly has some remnant of this two hundred year old woman inside of it we then get a one in a hundred chance that that there's a slim possibility that we'll learn how to punt these S.O.B's back to whatever after life that they came from." Sparrow summarized looking around and determining the coast was clear for now. "Assuming that none of that happens and we instead fail miserably what do we do after that?" Sparrow asked, spotting one of his classmates in a far off tree and sniping a Draugr that was harassing her.
"Die." Milton stated in a manner of fact fashion.
"Fantastic." Faybelle stated rolling her eyes.
The trip over was comparatively easy, whatever manner of monster that was turning the Draugr into so many smoking craters was hunting them relentlessly. That also meant it was getting closer too, Faybelle could make out a vaguely humanoid figure floating in the sky as the source of the attacks, either Morgan had decided to double back and finish them off, or that was what killed all of these people, which meant it was going to kill them too.
"Can we step it up a little bit?" Breaking the lock on the vault was child's play for Sparrow, he might not have Blondie's knack with locks but this thing is a dinosaur compared to the modern day and age.
"Well it looks like a vault anyway." Sparrow commented looking inside at the vast array of items that had been carelessly thrown in. "But I don't see anything that looks like what you described."
"Give me a minuet." Milton held his hand out and it briefly glowed candle light yellow causing the back wall to take on the form of a huge doorway sized book that opened up. "The story book will only allow 'characters' from their respective stories to enter the appropriate area, there fore, to reach the 'Evil Queen' we will need 'Snow White.'" Immediately both Faybelle and Sparrow turned and looked at Apple.
"I get it I get it." Apple stated going towards the giant book door, only to be stopped by Faybelle.
"Raven keeps nothing from me." Faybelle growled in a low tone. "I don't know why you wanted in there, but if you do something stupid and you don't come out of there on your own, I will come and get you, and if you die, then I shall rain every violation I can think of down on your corpse, am I understood?" Apple gulped and nodded her head.
"At least I know that I won't be stuck in there forever." Apple stated summoning as much courage as possible.
"I am serious! That book is broken! Do you know what happens when you go inside of a broken book?" Faybelle asked her voice barely containing her rage.
"I guess I'm going to find out." Apple stated sounding nervous.
"While you're doing that, the old man and me will get the book back, it wouldn't be good if Ever After's future monarch is lost inside of that thing when it finally snaps." Apple nodded to Sparrow's words. With that the princess of Everafter entered into the keystone that holds the world together.
Author's Note:
Zwei Eis: Thank you for saying so.
DJ: Thank you for saying so. I did. Anymore questions?
Wade: Well I had to do something with that little MacGuffin, the people holding onto it kept getting face punched. Phoenix only until Duchess turns back, and Morgan doesn't want the Djinn, think of it as a type of high capacity battery whereas the Obscuris is a nuclear reactor. But yes, it will not end well. Thank you for saying so!
Charlie: No it isn't. Morgan's been fighting tougher for the better part of two decades, Duchess needs to squeeze in some combat experience.
