A/N: Hello everyone! Sorry for missing a few weeks of updates. I'm student teaching and things have been a little being said, I've so appreciated the love and support I've received during that time! Every like and comment makes my day, more than you can know. Hope you enjoy the chapter!

The Evil Queen was just as cruel-looking as Finn remembered her.

"Did you hear me boy?" she said. "I don't think you're supposed to be here."

"The same could be said for you," Finn replied. He held his head high, trying desperately not to let his fear show.

The Queen cackled shrilly, the laugh Finn had spent his high-school years hearing in his nightmares.

"Is that…" Jess started, out of the side of her mouth.

"Yup," Finn replied, swallowing hard.

"Just give me the pen, and no one will have to get hurt," the Queen said. "You don't know who you're dealing with, and believe me, you don't want to find out."

"I think we do know actually," Amanda sneered, before Finn could say anything else. "And we also know that we've defeated you twice before."

She went to lunge, but quickly found that her legs wouldn't move. Scared, she looked over to Finn and Jess only to see them met with the same result. Her heart started to race. The Queen had the upper hand: they were paralyzed.

The old Overtaker laughed and started to circle them.

"I guess you know the little secret," she teased. "How charming."

She was getting so close that Finn could feel her breath on the back of his neck, and, even though he couldn't turn to see her, he could sense her stare. It made his stomach turn.

"Yes, I know as well. I can tell that you wanted to ask, but of course you can't speak."

Finn's heart raced faster and faster as she continued on. If they didn't get control soon, everything would be lost. She'd get the pen, and they'd be back to square one, and, if his friends were still in the state they'd been in tonight, they might not ever recover from the loss.

"You see, our minds, being who we are, work a little differently than your normal ones," the Queen explained. "We exist across universes and planes, and so our minds do as well. So, when you took up your little plot to stop our existence, we were birthed a precious new opportunity."

Finn's eyes widened, and his nostrils flared.

"Don't look so surprised," the Queen continued. "We didn't plan this. You did that all on your own. But, once we woke up here, we knew we were finally in a place where we could never be stopped. In a world with no Kingdom Keepers, we had our second chance, and we didn't even have to do anything to receive it."

As she continued to explain her plot, Amanda was tuning her out, putting her focus somewhere else. She knew all she needed to do for them to be moving again was to break the Queen's concentration. She remembered that much from their earlier battles: once her concentration was broken, so were her spells, and Amanda knew exactly how to break it. She may not have been able to move or speak, but she had her mind.

It wasn't going to be easy; most of her energy was still gone from her last push. If she hadn't had to lift the case earlier, this would've taken seconds. She looked to the right, just with her eyes, to see Finn devastated and her sister practically ashen. That was all of the drive she needed. She was sick and tired of the Overtakers wreaking havoc on her life. She willed herself to push, and suddenly she heard a yelp.

She looked up and saw the Queen had stumbled back, almost fallen. More importantly, she felt the hold on her release. They could move.

With the small victory, she felt renewed, and before anyone could even respond, she pushed again, knocking the Queen to her feet.

"Run!" she shouted.

Finn and Jess didn't need to hear anything else. With the Queen still disoriented, they took off at a sprint towards the doors.

"I don't understand!" Finn shouted. "She's not supposed to have her full powers until they channel the energy from the storm!"

As his sentence finished, a fireball raced by their feet. They all shouted and jumped apart just in time to not get hit. They turned their heads to see the Queen rising to her feet.

"This doesn't make sense!" Finn insisted.

"Well sense or not, she's tossing fire at us!" Jess snapped. "So let's stop arguing and get out of here!"

They reached the store's foyer just as the Queen shot a ball of fire again, once again jumping just quickly enough to just miss it. At this Amanda turned with a final shout, and, quickly, a display case flew up and at the Queen, slamming into her and pinning her down.

"There," Amanda said, breathily. "Now, she can't follow us."

Jess looked at her sister in shock, almost horrified, but there was no time for explanations or wonderings. They nodded at each other and ran out the doors before Amanda pulled them shut and snapped the lock closed.

As soon as she was done, all of her newfound drive disappeared, and she collapsed to the floor again, this time with a cry. Finn went to help her up as Casey jogged over to them as Jess bent over to catch her breath.

"What happened?" Casey asked.

"You don't wanna know kid," Finn panted.

"Sure I do!" Casey insisted, but no one seemed amused. She brushed it off and changed the subject.

"Did you get it?" she asked.

Jess held up the pen, still too out of breath and shocked with fear to say a word.

Casey gasped and held out her hands towards it, a twinkle in her eye.

"Come on!" Finn said, still holding Amanda upright. "We need to get to Wayne, now."

Casey nodded, apparently understanding, and the four took off at a jog towards the firehouse.


Willa and Dell stared at the entrance had just opened up in the castle wall, still unable to believe it.

"There it is," Dell said, his voice small.

"Yup," Willa replied. "Escher's Keep."

She was too much in shock to be focused on her worries about the future now. This was too big not to completely occupy her mind.

"How do we get up?" Dell asked.

"I don't know. The books don't talk about that. I guess this is why."

She leaned into the room, trying to gauge what she could see, but it was pitch black: no use. She turned to Dell and shrugged.

"Well, if it really is exactly like the books, I sure as hell don't wanna experience what happens when we're wrong."

Willa crossed her arms and exhaled. She hated being faced with a problem she couldn't solve. She considered the playing field for a moment, waiting for an answer that didn't exist to appear to her. Just then, she felt something, like a voice calling at her from deep inside herself.

Left

"Left," she said, voicing the thought out loud.

"What?" Dell asked.

"We need to go left."

"How did you decide that?!"

"I don't know it just feels right."

"It feels right?!" Dell exclaimed. "We're supposed to bank on a gut feeling?!"

Normally a comment like that would make Willa's blood boil, but for some reason now she found herself smiling. She started towards the left and stood in front of him.

"Have a little faith would you?" she teased. "It's not like we have any better options. Besides, if we're wrong, then we know we're supposed to go right."

Philby stood dumbfounded for a moment, but eventually went after her. They went fully unto the space, and the doorway that had opened in the brick closed. Before them, they saw a mishmash of tiles and staircases and hallways. It was all in bright colors, illuminated by blacklight.

"Well," Dell said. "Guess we're going left."

He went to take out a step, but Willa, acting unexpectedly on impulse, held out a hand to stop him.

"What?!" he yelled.

"Only the blue tiles," she said, and, oddly, she was certain that it was right.

They looked at each-other for a moment and locked eyes. In his stare, Willa could see the fear in Dell that she felt herself, but, at this exact moment, something in her said that she had to ignore that fear now. Something told her that he had to trust her, and that she had to trust herself. She tried to silently communicate this as best as she could, and apparently succeeded because, without a word, Dell nodded.

He took the first step, slowly dropping his toe onto the first blue tile. They both held their breath as he went, waiting for the moment that the ground would open up underneath and plunge him into a moat. As he fully touched ground, Willa squinted and looked away. How could she have made him do this? He was going to get hurt and it was going to be because she trusted some dumb hunch backed only by a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

But the splash she was waiting for never came. Slowly, she turned her head to open her eyes to see Dell safe and smiling on the other side of the section of floor. He threw his hands up in the air and cheered.

"How did you do that?!" Willa asked, laughing. She was looking down at the floor, and it was clear that there were too many blue tiles for that alone to help someone right way across.

"It was easy!" he called back. "It was like my feet just…knew where to go. Come on, it's your turn!"

"What?!" He was crazy. There was no way she could do this.

"Trust me Wills: you'll know!"

Willa didn't exactly like the option, but it was clearly the only one she had. Starting where Dell had, she reached out her right foot and placed it on the first blue tile before pulling her other foot over. She exhaled and smiled: one down.

Her next move had two choices: two tiles to the left, or one diagonally right. She thought for a moment, and then, just like before, something deep down told her: diagonal. She moved. Again, the floor didn't open. From the other end of the floor, Dell cheered her on.

"You got it!" he exclaimed. "Keep going!"

One by one, Willa jumped from tile to tile, moving faster every time. Eventually, she wasn't even scared. It was almost fun. By the time she reached the end of the maze, she was laughing at each tiny victory. Now though, there was one move left, and her heart stopped as she looked down and realized what it was.

"No!" she said to Dell. "No way, I'll fall."

"Come on," he insisted. "You can't have come all this way for nothing!"

She bit her lip. The last two rows of the board were made up entirely of white tile; she'd have to jump over both of them without stepping out of the tile she was currently standing on.

"You can do this Willa," Dell continued, "I'll be right here to catch you on the other side."

Willa took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then, she suddenly remembered something that was said in the Kingdom Keepers books. She hadn't read them in years, and she'd completely forgotten about this until now, but for some reason, it came to her mind. It was something that Sophia had said-coincidentally enough-and she remembered nearly crying when she read it: it's not what others think about you; it's the truth you know about yourself.

With that memory, something ignited in her: a feeling she'd never really experienced before. Without hesitating any longer, she bent her knees, shut out all of her other thoughts, and launched herself forward.

She didn't remember much about jumping. She thought maybe she blacked out. One moment she was leaving the tile, and the next thing she knew she was bumping into something hard, and there were arms wrapped around her. She let out a little yelp and opened her eyes to realize that Dell had caught her…just like he promised…and now he was staring down at her and smiling.

She couldn't help it. She started laughing, brighter than she had in years, and he was laughing too, and then, after what felt like minutes of laughing and laughing at laughing, they met eyes, him still holding her, and the laughing slowly stopped. Willa felt her heart start to race, and she somehow only then became really aware of how close they were standing.

"Good job," Dell said softly.

"Thank you," Willa muttered. "For saying that and for…catching me,"

"Of course," Dell whispered. He was staring at her with a bright smile, and his eyes were wide.

She looked back at him, and then, there was the pull, the one she'd felt in Disney Springs. She held her breath so that she wouldn't start hyperventilating. This kept happening, only now she knew she couldn't let it happen. If she let it happen, they were both going to end up hurt. She heard the pounding in her ears, and felt the drop in her stomach, and then she couldn't take it anymore.

She pushed away from the embrace and pushed her hair behind her ears.

"Let's keep going," she said.

Philby wore half a frown and looked towards the floor.

"We have to find whatever's up there, right?" Willa added.

"Yeah," Philby said. "I guess you're right."

A/N: Thanks for reading and stay magical!