Evie awoke in a fiery and blistery pain.
At first, she couldn't remember where she was or how she had gotten there. A crash of thunder had helped out with that problem. She was on the Isle, looking for one of Mal's Dragonfires. Queenie had been there. She'd tried to stop them.
Them?
Doug.
An image of her boyfriend formed in her mind and she groaned, struggling to turn over and face the huge room before her, expecting to find him fast asleep against the wall with a mountain of books before him.
No Doug.
She frowned only slightly. He had to be around somewhere, right? Maybe he just couldn't sleep and had gone for a walk. Around the Isle. At night. No...no way. Doug was far too smart to do something so blatantly stupid. He was even too afraid to go to a campus bonfire because the sun had already set. (She really needed to ask him what his problem with the dark was).
Later, she told herself as she weakly sat up and scanned the room, her frown growing deeper by the minute. The place was deserted. There were no signs of anyone living there. Evie knew Doug was a perfectionist but this seemed a bit ridiculous!
"Doug?" she called, her voice coming out more as a croak.
Silence. Evie hated the silence. It reminded her too much about what life had been like before...and that was not what she wanted to think about at all.
She slowly stood up, still feeling a bit dizzy. She blinked away the orange spots that danced before her eyes. What had she been doing again?
Oh...that's right...
"Doug?" she called again as she moved slowly towards the stairs. "Where are you? Doug?" She reached the top and peered around the corner into a small side room which was filled with books and notes for classes from their old school, along with some theories and papers on getting to Auradon (most of these were written by Carlos while he was building his gizmo to punch a hole in the dome), hoping to find him studying something or another as he tended to do when he was stressed.
She entered the room slowly, using the wall as a balance. She looked around hopefully for her boyfriend but was disappointed, and a bit worried, not to find him there.
She noticed a few books lying scattered on the floor and she walked over to kneel down beside them. They were reminders of the last time the four of them had been on the Isle before their parents had shipped them off to Auradon Prep. She smiled slightly as she ran a hand over one of the bindings, remembering how they raced through the streets, causing mayhem and misery to everyone they met. Good times...
But those days were long behind them. It had been almost three years. They'd changed. They weren't the villains they'd once been. They were heroes now. And, as they'd shown by giving up their talismans, heroes didn't need magic to survive. They were smarter and better off without it.
"Doug?"
Where could he have gone? It wasn't like him to disappear without telling anyone. Had Queenie come back? Was Doug in trouble? Where was he? Okay, breathe, Evie, breathe, she snapped at herself, trying to recall what Mal would say to her in a situation like this. You can't help him by getting all worked up. You're probably just overthinking everything. Besides, Doug is capable of taking care of himself...
But, then again...
"DOUG!"
She hurried out of the room and continued her search.
Mal winced as she stood up. Though the hole was dimly lit, she could still make out the laughing figures of Carlos and Ben standing over her. The latter holding out his hand to help her up. Jane, meanwhile, was busy running her hands against the dirt wall as though searching for something.
"It's not funny," she grumbled as she took Ben's hand and allowed him to help her up. Ben chuckled but it was Carlos who responded.
"I don't know Mal, it did look pretty funny."
Mal growled and chucked a handful of dirt at him. Carlos laughed and shielded his face, dancing away quickly. "Where are we?" Mal quizzed, just as Jane came hurrying over, smiling as though she'd just discovered something marvelous. "I mean, other than an abnormally sized rabbit hole in the middle of no where."
"Ben?" came a voice from behind them and they all turned to see Audrey emerge from a dark side cavern, peering cautiously out at them. "Is that you?"
"Audrey!" Ben sounded relieved as he gestured for the others to join him. "Yeah, it's me. And Mal, Carlos, and Jane too. Audrey...where is everyone?"
"This way," Audrey said carefully, turning away and starting back down the corridor. After a moment, the others followed. Ben took the lead and Mal hurried after him. Carlos and Jane took the rear, Carlos tripping and falling over every few seconds, yelping as he went.
The corridor was dark and damp. Mal grimaced as they walked deeper and deeper into the caverns. She wondered briefly how a tiny rabbit could make such a large burrow. Not forgetting that Alice had somehow managed to fall down it. Magic, she told herself. It was always magic. That had been the solution for everything back then. Though she knew all of Auradon was trying to do without magic now...she had to admit, this was pretty cool.
"How big is this place, actually?" she questioned.
"We've charted at least ten miles in all directions," Audrey informed her. "But, according to Ally, that isn't even close." Ever since Mal had managed to stop her tyrannical raid, she'd been a little bit warmer to Mal, even if was just the feeling of guilt that drove her. Mal wasn't going to complain about it. One less enemy to deal with...and if the legends came true, they'd have enough to handle already.
"Ally?" Carlos gasped, jogging now to keep up.
"Alice's daughter," Ben explained. "Who would be an expert in this department, having spent half her life down here. Rumor has it that this eventually connects to the Seven Dwarfs' mine up north."
Audrey wrinkled her nose slightly at the thought. Helpful or no, she was still Audrey. A leopard didn't change his spots all in one day and such. Same way with certain stubborn princesses.
The corridor suddenly opened into a large yawning cavern. Mal felt the dozens of curious eyes turn towards them as they stepped from the shadows. She spotted Fairy Godmother, fiddling with her baton, looking immensely relieved to see that they were all in one piece. Chad, however, was the first to move towards them, attempting to put an arm around Audrey it failing as she quickly shied away. There was a flash of turquoise and a familiar girl and her two best mates appeared at Mal's side.
"I see you're still in one piece," Uma commented, twirling her already twisty hair and blowing a piece of Evie's gum. ( Mal wasn't even going to ask how she'd gotten it. In fact, she didn't really want to know).
"Don't act so disappointed," Mal retorted with a friendly smirk.
"It would take more than all of the villains of the Isle combined to stop Mal," Ben commented, slinging an arm around her and pulling her in.
Harry, who'd been quietly observing all of this, now pulled Carlos away for a private conversation. Mal's sensitive ears picked up on the conversation, wondering if it be anything to do with what she thought it did. "Carlos, mate," Harry began in his heavy Scottish accent. "Do ya mind if I ask you a bit of a personal question?"
Carlos glanced up at him warily. "What if I said yes?"
Harry laughed. "You see," he pointed off into the distance with us fake hook. "I need some help."
"What kind of help? I believe Flora is a psychiatrist. I could ask her for yo-"
"Love help," Harry cut him off. Carlos stared, frozen in shock. The great Harry Hook, was in love with someone? This was some kind of cruel joke, right? Someone had to be pulling the wool over his eyes. And he wasn't about to buy it.
"Right. Yeah. You need love advice. Ha ha. Jay put you up to this, didn't he? And who are you supposed to be in love with? Uma?" He chuckled slightly but Mal was pleasantly delighted to see the tips of Harry's ears turn red. It just confirmed what she'd been assuming all along. A certain son of Captain Hook was in love with a certain sea witch.
Gil, meanwhile, was talking with Ben about something or another to do with pirates and sunken treasure. Mal couldn't even begin to guess. Instead, she decided to go and talk with Fairy Godmother. Maybe the woman could use her magic or something to help them find Maleficent.
"Mal!" FG made her way down from the back of the cavern towards her. "Dear! Thank goodness you're all right! When I asked Ben to go and find you, I knew he'd find you. I was just afraid that, well, Maleficent would find you first. But...where are Jay and Evie?"
"Evie and Jay are on special missions of their own right now," Ben answered for Mal, stepping up behind the purplette. "And I sent Doug and Lonnie with them. Don't worry, Fairy Godmother. I'm sure their just fine."
Even as he spoke, Mal's phone began to vibrate. "Oh! That's probably Jay now," she told them, hastily pulling it out and glancing at the number.
It was Evie.
"Um..." Mal glanced up nervously to see the two of them watching her curiously. "Do you mind if I take this?"
FG shook her head. Ben looked a bit confused but nodded just the same. Mal didn't wait. She turned and, shielding the screen from view, brought it up to her ear and practically ran out of the room. Carlos and Jane spotted her and quickly started after her.
"Mal? MAL? Are you there?" Evie's voice was cracking, possibly with fear.
"I'm here, Evie, I'm here," Mal assured her as she moved away from the cavern and back down the silent passageway where no one could overhear her. "Evie, what's wrong? Are you crying?" She wanted to ask how she had cell service but she figured that could wait for later.
"Mal, I don't know what happened. One minute we were fighting Queenie's shadows. The next...I just...I lost control. We...we escaped but, I...I passed out. And when I woke up...Doug..."
"Evie!" Mal barked sharply. "What are you talking about? Where's Doug?"
Evie started to speak but coughed and broke down into a fit of tears.
"EVIE!"
"He's...he's gone, Mal!"
Gone? Surely not...he couldn't be...she couldn't have...even her powers aren't that strong...
I can't...I can't find him!" Evie blurted out. Instantly, Mal relaxed and silently whispered a 'thank you'. "Mal! What if something horrible happened to him? What if my mother found out we were here? What if she has Doug?"
At that moment, Carlos and Jane came running down the corridor to join them. Carlos, surprisingly, was the one out of breath. "Mal?" Jane questioned, looking worried. "What's going on?"
"Mal?" came Evie's voice. "Is that the others?"
"Yeah..." Mal said, not taking her eyes off of Carlos and Jane. "Yeah, Evie. We're here. You just hang tight, all right? We'll find our Dragonfires and then we'll be over there lickity-split to help you look, all right?"
"All right," Evie sniffled and hung up.
"What was that all about?" Carlos questioned.
Mal opened her mouth to answer but was cut short as Ben suddenly appeared out of the darkness. "Hey," the king interrupted. "Sorry...but...FG's ready to tell us where your Dragonfire is."
Mal took a deep breath and nodded. She signaled for them to about-face and walk back down the corridor. As she went, she couldn't stop the thoughts swirling through her brain. It was all overwhelming. The omen. The war. If they didn't stop it, all of Auradon would crumble.
Beware the daughter of magic and death. Beware the unseen force. Beware the shadows of hate and pride. Beware the coming of the warring tide.
None of the others knew anything about it, of course. It was just a legend, something her mother had once told her in place of a bedtime story. But now, she knew better. This was Auradon, the world of magic and prophecies. And what scared Mal the most was knowing that, when it did finally decide to come true, there was nothing she would be able to do to stop it.
"Hey, Mal?" Carlos suddenly piped up. "Did you really just say 'lickity-split'?"
"Yeah," Mal answered with a slight smirk. "I did. But let's never speak of that again, all right?"
They all laughed and, for the moment, all her fears slipped away. They had to find the Dragonfires. The omen could wait.
Besides, it wasn't like it was about to come true...
Right?