AN: Hello, everyone! I want to apologize for disappearing for a month; I was busy adulting because, uh, Moving, and stuff. And also, this chapter ended up being a FREAKING MONSTER LENGTH... So please enjoy the extra long chapter!

On another note! I would like to give a HUGE shout-out and a lot of love to two very lovely individuals!: adaminaart and emixa26 have both reached out to me on tumblr to share the Beautiful and Amazing fanarts they've done of the Rise of Wizardry series! It's all just... INSANE! It's honestly a dream come true to see someone draw fanart of something I've written, and I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE IT HAPPENED! SO, A BIG Thank You and Lots of Love to both of you! And to everyone else I highly recommend checking out their blogs! They are both extremely talented artists, so please go give them some love! :)

REVIEWERS!:

Acecove: I have been DYING to get to this point! I am so excited to have Percy as part of the story FINALLY! I'm glad he was so well received! But don't get to confident, there are still MANY twists and turns to come! But don't worry, it'll all be worth it, I promise!

EversoGreen: Toothless angst is the saddest of angst. Yeah, I've been foreshadowing Percy for a while, so I wasn't gonna bother trying to hide it. Cat, in his delirious state, thought it was Jack, but that's because he was having a bit of a rough day... Yeah, I meant to mention the Voltron crew earlier in passing, but totally forgot and never got around to fixing it, Whoops! One of the many mistakes I've made, but it's fine cause they're only going to serve as minor side characters. Mr. Arrow totally recognized Hiccup, they exchanged a few looks, but Mr. Arrow's keeping quiet about it all. Thank you! And I sorry for the delay on the new chapter! Hope it's worth the wait!

Eris: Yeah, we've hit the dark places in full stride now. There's gonna be some ugly stuff in this series. All of those are questions yet to be answered, but I assure you they'll come in due time! Sorry for the delay, but I hope this chapter proves worth the wait.

Raxacoricofallapatoreous: EXCELLENT! That's right where I want you! :)

Adaminaart: Talking (typing?) to you feels like that one spiderman meme, except I'm the only one pointing because I'm an excitable nerd. THANK YOU SO MUCH ONCE AGAIN! I'm so glad you liked the chapter and that you like Percy! And thank you so much, you are too sweet! It's been a long road, but what started out as a fun little side thing to keep my writing while I didn't know what to write about has now turned into my number one project, and honestly it's become something so much bigger than I ever thought it would be. I'm so thankful to everyone who continues to come back, even when I'm not updating regularly, and who expresses to me how much my story means to them, it's so encouraging and so amazing, and I still can't believe how many people have come to love this story. :)

Music: "Dollhouse" by Melanie Martinez

NOTES!: "I'm being murdered by my own mind!"

Chapter 27: Dollhouse

There was a thick fog all around her. She couldn't see more than five feet in front of her except for the occasional, dimly and eerily glowing lamp-posts that she knew lined the cobbled streets of the Moor. The ground was stone but also with a layer of packed dirt on top. She passed two benches underneath the first of the lamp-posts.

"Am I asking too much?" The echos of a man's voice that she couldn't recognized reverberated in her mind and through the air. "I want what She wanted."

She kept running. She kept following those dim and flickering lamp lights through the endless fog and darkness. She moved from one patch of light to the next. She didn't know why, but her heart was racing. She felt rushed. Like there was something urgent that she was forgetting about.

She slowed to a walk and her eyes widened as she saw the silhouette of a child crawling on the ground, barely lit by the overhead lamp. She slowly approached the child, her stomach rolling as she saw the trail of blood let behind him and the fact that the lower half of his body was gone.

"Help, Emma! We need your help! Don't desert us... Again. Don't ignore us!" The poor thing cried, using his arms to drag himself through the dirt.

"Why do you suffer? The Queen's tyranny is just a memory. She has no power over you, does she?" Emma inquired, kneeling down in front of the dying boy.

"Our enemies come and go, but now a new evil reigns. And this fiend's malevolence has eclipsed the conquered Queen's." The boy told her, his face stained with blood and bruises. He reached toward her, but his strength began to fail him, and Emma watched as the light faded completely from his eyes just before he collapsed to the ground.

Emma pushed herself up onto her feet, looking down at the corpse silently in the flickering light of the lamp.

Her heart squeezed, but she just felt numb. Her fists clenched at her sides and she gritted her teeth, but it was all out of the hate she felt towards herself for not feeling something... She felt nothing.

A different kind of flickering caught her attention, and Emma looked up to see the sinister glow of flames behind billowing smoke. The air became thick with heat and black clouds, the roar of a fire filled her ears. Emma started forward, walking towards the fire, getting faster and faster until she was sprinting towards it.

She skidded to a stop, looking up at a house being consumed by fire. The house looked like her home in Diagon Alley, the bottom shop windows blown out from the heat, the curtains in the upper windows being eaten away to nothing more than ashes. She could hear distant and faded voices echoing from inside; screaming and shouting, gasping for breath. Emma walked up the stoop and into the blazing fire as a bright white light consumed her vision and all of the noise grew until it was indistinguishable garble.

She blinked, finding herself somewhere completely new. Gone was the burning house and endless blackness, replaced by packed together life-size dollhouses and platforms with patch-work fabric for carpet. Crude stitches and rough wood made up everything here, and dirt and decay made it look even worse. An Isle of Misfit Horrors, perhaps?

Emma's own appearance had changed again, her hair golden blonde and tied into two ponytails on either side of her head. Her dress was made of multiple different fabrics and different patterns and textures, a crisp collar at the neck and big pink bow on her waist. Her heavy boots on her feet and a spots of blood on the lacy apron.

She stood on a floating platform of rough and stained carpeted wood. Looking around, she found herself surrounding by towering, crumbling houses. To her right she sees a balcony and one of the doors is falling off it's hinges, allowing entrance to the building, so she takes a running leap and rides her breath to the other side, her feet hitting the wooden terrace with a solid 'thunk'.

She slipped through the broken double doors and made her way across a very old toy room that was falling to pieces. The wood creaked under every footstep as she made her way through the upper hallway, finding a stairwell at the end of it. She jumped to the landings of the stairs rather than risking the questionable looking steps, and once her feet found the bottom she found a dining room before her, the kitchen just off to the right.

The table was set for four, but the glasses were cracked and the plates broken. Blood puddled and smeared across the top of the table. A giant cleaver knife was stuck in the wood at the center.

Emma shoved away the sick feeling in her stomach and looked to the left, finding a gaping hole in the wall of what was left of the living room. She climbed up the pile of rubble and found herself outside in a yard surrounded by crudely made barricades with wooden pikes sticking out of them. The dirt was blood-stained and puddles of decay bubbled here and there, but none of them produced any creatures eager to destroy, so Emma looked ahead to the most fortified of all the buildings.

It was smaller than the rest, but the double doors were huge and, from what Emma could see, multiple locks and latches had been added to them along with more barricades and barred windows. There was a tattered banner that hung above the door, but the letters were clumsily written, several of them were backwards. Still, Emma could understand what it was trying to say; "Fort Resistance".

The big, green doors opened as Emma reached the bottom of the steps and several tiny figures walked out to meet her. But even after everything she'd seen, she was not prepared for the sight of these children.

Mutilated and deformed, they were all covered with dried blood and patchwork stitching. One of them wore a straight jacket, unable to move his arms, and his mouth was sewn shut. Another was trapped inside a strange metal contraption that Emma wasn't sure what it was for, but it wouldn't let him move his head from it's forward position. A third child's brain was exposed; the upper half of his skull missing and the drilling tool still stuck in his head.

The fourth one, who appeared to be their leader, had her eyes sewn open and her mouth sewn into a forced smile. A giant cut ran across her forehead, but there were more stitches keeping it shut. She held a teddy bear with a missing arm and stained in blood that was likely her own.

They trembled as they moved, looking every which way as if they expected something to jump out at them at any moment. Emma waited patiently at the bottom of the steps, not wanting to scare them, though she did move a little closer when the children stopped walking and looked at her curiously.

"The unstable are more than merely mad. They have other parts. The Dollmaker will deprive them of what remains of their deranged souls. They need care." The leader said, her eyes still shifting around, but always finding their way back to Emma as she spoke to her.

"I know their pain." Emma murmured, her heart aching, but she forced her voice to be louder. "I would assist. But is sanity required for the job?"

"A limited quantity. You're not mad enough to be rejected." She responded immediately, her eyes looking Emma up and down before rolling around in thought as her free arm tapped her chin. "You're like them... Of them, in a way. But not them. I should say not "us". For I'm them, but you are on your way. The way is clearly marked."

"I... Believe I know that way. And I'd rather not travel further along it." Emma replied slowly, fighting a shiver that was trying to make it's way down her spine.

A shriek echoed through the air, and the children jumped before shaking with fear.

"It's here, you dimwits! Get inside!" The leader shouted, pointing off in the distance before she and the other children ran inside. At the other side of the yard, a giant doll girl, with no eyes and wielding dual blades, burst through the barricade. She let out another shriek and toddled through the yard.

Emma didn't follow the children inside and instead turned to face the demented toy-child as the green doors slammed shut behind her. The seven-foot toddler reached the foot of the stairs as Emma started running down to meet her, and the doll used one of her long blades to swipe at Emma.

She jumped over the sword, landing at the bottom of the steps next to the doll's foot, and Emma swiped across the doll's leg, a clear cut with her Vorpal blade. On any flesh-and-blood creature, it would have taken the limb clean off, but with this porcelain monstrosity, her blade merely scratched the rock-solid calf with a loud clang.

Emma's eyes widened, and in the next second her eyes snapped up to see the doll raising her sword. Emma threw herself into a roll just as the sword came down above her. She managed to put a few feet of distance between them and the doll's sword got stuck in the ground. The doll, angered by her toy being stuck, shrieked and then focused all her energy on trying to get her sword free from the earth.

Emma planted her feet in the earth and pushed herself forward, racing to take advantage of the opening left to her. While the doll was focused on her sword, Emma leaped onto the doll's back and drove her blade into the joint of her shoulder, wiggling it into the crack. With her blade set, Emma set her feet and pulled back with all of her weight and all of her might. The doll shrieked as her arm started to come loose from it's socket, and she started flailing, trying to get Emma off of her, but the Emma held tight and shifted her weight to keep wrenching the two pieces apart.

With an echoing clang, the arm finally popped loose and Emma fell backwards, landing in the dirt on her back as the doll screamed, it's arm laying limp in the filthy dirt. Emma lay on her back, panting, but she was also smirking, happy that she'd managed to do some damage. The smirk fell, though, when the doll glared down at her with it's eyeless sockets.

With another scream the doll swung it's good arm, intent on cutting Emma in half with it's sword. Emma rolled backwards over her head, planting her feet on the ground and leaping backwards before she was even fully up right. The doll kept advancing, swinging it's one arm wildly as it sobbed and shrieked. Emma kept dodging, moving further and further back.

A hollow 'thump' made Emma look down to find she'd stepped onto wooden planks. She tilted her head, confused, but a shriek made her look up and jump back from a particularly violent swing from the doll. Her sword swung forward and broke through the wooden planks, leaving her with no leverage and the doll started to fall forward, losing it's balance.

Emma watched as the doll crashed onto the planks of rotted would, breaking all of them with it's weight and falling down into a pit with a final shriek before it was consumed by the darkness.

Emma stood on the edge of the pit on top of what was left of the splintered planks. Her back was pressed against the wall of one of the surrounding buildings and there was no distinct path out of her current situation.

It was just as she realized this that the wood she was standing on cracked and then broke away completely, dropping Emma into the pit. She screamed as she was suddenly plummeting into deep, deep darkness...

Emma groaned as she pushed herself up off of the rough, wooden floor. She rubbed the knot forming on her head and looked around to find herself surrounded by the shattered pieces of the porcelain doll, the sword stuck in the ground just in front of her, reflecting her image off of it's flat and slightly rusted surface.

Emma climbed to her feet and looked at her new surroundings. It was darker and resembled some kind of twisted dollhouse, labyrinth-type basement with traps and defenses that would kill her in an instant if she made a single misstep.

"Be careful, Emma. A person often meets his Destiny on the road he took to Avoid It. Believe me, I would know." Cat flickered into being just a little off to the side, and Emma turned to him.

"I've never avoided anything... Not on purpose!" Emma replied, climbing up to her feet and dusting off the colored patchwork of her skirt. "I've been doing everything I can to find the truth!"

"Threats, promises, and good intentions don't amount to action." Cat said, his tail swaying back and forth. "You've come far, but you're still standing in the same place. Saving Wonderland means saving yourself."

"Where do I go then? The Red Queen said I'm not looking at what's around me, so what am I missing?" Emma asked.

"Only a few find the way, some don't recognize it when they do, and some don't ever want to." Cat told her, fading away and leaving his grin as the last thing she saw.

"Why must he always speak in riddles?" Emma muttered to herself before huffing and turning to look at the deep, dark place she'd found herself in.

The floor and walls were all made of the same dark-grey, rough wood. From her fall alone, Emma could feel the scratches, and possibly a few splinters, all up her right side. There was an eerie, indirect light that didn't seem to come from any specific source, which was possibly the reason it was so dim, but Emma decided not to question it's existance as it saved her from stumbling through complete darkness. There's only one hallway, so the direction she'll inevitably be going is obvious, but the wall on the far side of the room catches her eye first, and she walks over cautiously to take a look.

The wall is covered with scraps of newspaper clippings and photos and scribbled notes. All of the pieces seemed to be pinned to the wall randomly, but standing a few feet away, Emma could clearly see that the black ink on each parchment played a part in creating a familiar, dark silhouette. The shadow profile of Pitch Black sent a chill down her spine, and Emma questioned if possibly she'd developed some sort of obsession, considering this mural was so deep within her subconscious, but the thoughts were pushed away in favor of inspecting the strange art piece more.

Each of the pieces to this particular puzzle were bits and pieces of information she'd gathered on Pitch, or things she had assumed to be connected to him. It mostly consisted of recent events with a few references back to the times just before the Dark Ages which she used to highlight warning signs of a coming conflict. Her eyes drifted to the clawed hands of the figure that manipulated a dark splotch. Emma peered closer and found the newspaper clippings were about specific attacks on villages where the evidence wasn't entirely clear as to what happened and also instances involving dragons.

Emma determined the blob was made of things she'd initially considered related to Pitch but could never quite figure out how it fit in with everything else she knew. At the center of that blob was a pin with one end of a red string tied to it. The string looked similar to the colored yarns Auror's used on pin boards to map out their cases.

Emma followed the string. It was long and pinned to the wall in several places, but Emma kept following it all the way to the one corridor's entrance. She saw that the string stretched along the hallway and disappeared into darkness, so she drew her blade and kept following it.

Rusted nails stuck crudely out of the wall at every point the yarn was pinned down, and the rouch wood became splattered with dry blood. Small smears of oil made Emma's guard rise as her eyes carefully examined each new space she entered. Finally she came across a room with large glass tanks filled with preserving liquid similar to what Ms. Carver would use for her potions ingredients. Only these tanks didn't hold potion pieces, they held bodies. Emma spotted one of the Fish people from the deep, a goblin from Hatter's domain, but the most prominent specimen were the children of the Toy Village.

Emma tried not to look too closely, lest she get sick, and focused on the red string. The blood soaked string.

An empty wall wedged between two foggy tanks was plastered with moving images that Emma recognized as snapshots from her memories. Most of them had to do with her classes this year, Lady Tremaine's in particular, and also the few times she'd crossed paths with Claude Frollo. A few of her homework assignments were pinned to the wall, too. Emma noticed they were the ones she'd taken exception to and had questioned or argued against them, so Lady Tremaine gave her bad grades or outright punished her.

Pain shot through her head and Emma groaned as she curled in on herself, grabbing her head. Images flashed across her vision, memories and moments she had seen before, as voices echoed loudly in her ears.

"Every child has a purpose: it is the beholden duty of knowing adults to fit every young person to her calling." Lady Tremaine's voice lectured, the image of her looming over Emma with a satisfied look as the young girl was sitting in her seat in class.

"The proofs are legion! Every creature has a purpose. It is my sacred duty to fit every young person to a calling, be it for ornament or use." The Prime Minister's voice was profound as he spoke before reporters from various newspapers, the Guardians standing near with carefully blank expressions.

Emma snapped up straight as the images disappeared and the pain faded. She stumbled back a little, looking up at the wall as her heart raced and her mind tried to work through the jumbled mess. Why was this connected to Pitch? What was it that she wasn't seeing?

Emma looked back to the red string, where it zig-zagged through the information before her and then stretched straight across the room to the wall on the opposite side. Emma followed it, ducking under the string to the other side of it and stepping up to the other wall.

This wall was similar; captured moments of her life and some newspaper clippings. There were moments between her and her peers at school, mostly other kids at Hogwarts, like that time she was in the candy shop in Hogsmeade with Pippa and her friends. Or her fight with Vanellope. Or Jim and Claire kissing at the Ball. The newspaper clippings, front page headlines, had to do with marriages of important figure-heads, the new classes at Hogwarts, and stories of distant adventures by people like Humongous the Hotshot Hero, who were so far from being even related to an establishment like Hogwarts that people could fantasize all they like without the danger.

At the center of it all was a scarlet 'A', painted on the wall with blood. A mirror hung in the center of that 'A' and Emma saw herself in it.

The sick feeling started to come despite her avoiding looking too closely at the tanks, and she felt her eyes burn as she finally looked up at the cracked, foggy glass of the preservation cases that created two long rows down the length of the quite large room. Watery graves is all they were.

Her head flashed with pain again, and another voice echoed in her ears as images of her hands scrubbing the floors of the Kitchen and Great Hall flickered through her eyes. "Remaking children. Build them up, tear them down. Refashion them; teach them the new, forget the old."

Emma shook her head, trying to clear it as all of her research over the past school year came rushing back to her all at once. It was a hurricane in her mind; all the things she'd seen, all the things she knew, and yet she'd completely neglected what it all meant.

With dread and anguish rising up in her veins, she looked on to where the string was leading her. It bounced back and forth across the room, leading to another corridor that turned a corner to the right. Emma ducked under the string a couple of times, walking down the center aisle, surrounded by encased corpses.

Turning the corner, Emma found even squares on the walls and floors where spikes protruded from the wood. She carefully made her way around the deadly points, taking note of the porcelain baby heads piled in the far corner as she entered a new, larger room.

The oily sludge puddled and oozed here, leaking down the walls and through the cracks. The largest puddle bubbled and burst as three Insidious Ruins clawed and climbed their way out of the corruption, shrieking through the porcelain doll heads they had that were beginning to make more sense to Emma.

She lunged forward, meeting the Ruins as they charged towards her. Her blade bit into the slimy, sticky figure of the first as she ducked under the attack of the second one. She yanked her sword free and slashed at the first one's back until she got through the self-healing sludge and managed to slice the back of the head in half, killing it. The other two charged and Emma jumped out of the way, causing them to crash into each other and fall to the ground. Emma leaped at the opportunity and made short work of her opponents, their bodies melting into puddles at her feet when she was done.

She looked back at the string, ignoring the way her chest ached. She had to know. So she pushed herself towards the next wall. This one was surrounded by the oozing pollution, and Emma was surprised to find the cases that had been separated from Pitch earlier among many others. There were multiple cases of villages that were wiped out or burned to the ground, and the only evidence found was some black sand, but nothing else. None of Pitch's usual calling cards were left behind. Then there were the Dragon incidents like the one Mr. Arrow had gone to investigate last year but never returned. Emma had also discovered a few other mentions of similar, uncharacteristic Dragon Attacks, one of them occurring in Altea, a distant kingdom on a different continent. Apparently their Paladins of Voltron had been in charge of the investigation. All that had happened a few months before Mr. Arrow's case.

Emma's eyes scanned all of the pieces pinned to this wall and then her gaze locked onto the string again. She followed it, leaning more forward as her feet started running. She ran along the path that the string led her down. The corruption and pollution grew thicker, greater. Blood stained the spots in between and mixed with the black sludge. She splashed through a puddle of oil as she came to yet another room.

This one had glass tanks similar to the ones she'd seen before, but they weren't filled with liquid and chains and shackles hung from the walls and laid on the floor. They were viewing cages. Even with them being empty, Emma felt the contents of her stomach rolling as she imagined the exposure and humiliation. Like an auction pedestal.

The string led her to a viewing cage with the front glass pane shattered into a million pieces across the wooden floor. On the ground inside the cage were scattered files and papers and newspaper clippings.

They missing peoples cases. More specifically; Dragon related disappearances.

Off to one of the far corners was Hiccup's case file, stabbed through the center with a knife and spotted with blood. Emma winced and groaned as pain burst through her head again and images of the boy's bathroom and then Pitch Black's wicked grin and glinting eyes, along with Hiccup's voice.

"I'm no toy. He wanted me to do things I didn't want to do."

The larger pile consisted mainly of three major cases; Mr. Arrow's investigation in Gabylonia last year. Then there were the Paladins of Voltron disappearances after going to look into a string of dragon attacks along their coastlines, an occurrence that surprised everyone as dragons hadn't occupied Altean Land in hundreds of years, even long before they were chased from the Allied Kingdoms and into the Far North.

Emma's eyes went to the last case, easily the largest of them all. A newspaper stuck out from behind the case information with a headline; 'Auror and Guardian Percy Frost Disappears After Investigating Mysterious Dragon Sighting In Kingdom of Corona! The Question Remains: Pitch Black or Drago Bludvist?'.

There were several other cases as well, smaller ones with names and faces Emma didn't know, but it didn't really matter because she couldn't take her eyes off of that center one. Her heart pounded in her chest and ears, and her breathing sounded loud.

"Perhaps you would do better to join your friends at the feast. A young lady's social life is very important. It would be a shame for such a pretty face to waste away in some Dark, Rotted corner." The Prime Minister spoke slowly, clearly.

Emma took a step back, her hands trembling. Pitch didn't have anything to do with those dragon incidents, and she was starting to think she knew who was... But why? What did he have to gain from all of this?

Emma stumbled out of the cage, forcing her lungs to expand with air as her eyes searched for the other end of the string. The red was still easy to spot against the dark wood, even with all the sludge and pollution covering everything in it's filth. Emma made her feet follow, though they felt as though they were made of lead, she had come too far to give up now. She was so close to the truth.

The string guided her to another hallway, but this one was dark. Complete blackness that seemed to stretch on and on the further she went, but she good see a dim light at the end of it. A flickering, red and orange light. She started going faster and faster, trying to escape the darkness, until she was fully sprinting towards that eerie light. She felt as though hands were reaching out of the darkness to grab at her clothes, hair, and limbs, anything to slow her. To catch her. So she kept running. Her breathing coming in ragged gasps as she raced for that blood-colored light.

She reached out, and her hand suddenly hit the wood of a door. The light was fire that was burning behind the window on the top half of the door. Emma stood there, staring at it for a long moment as she just tried to catch her breath, nothing else quite registering in her whirling mind.

Very, very, slowly, Emma reached out her hand and grabbed the doorknob. She turned it and opened the door, stepping into the fire...

...There was nothing but fire all around her as drawn figures, with choppy and awkward moved about. She saw a man with a shadowed face sneak away with a satisfied smile as screams echoed and Pitch's silhouette grew, blocking her view of the man.

"Pitch never had anything to do with those dragon incidents." Emma thought to herself, and her vision rushed passed the scene before her to look on at an image of Lady Tremaine cornering her brother and his friends in her office. "They blamed it on Pitch because of the evidence of Dark Magic, but why should that immediately make him the first lead? The Ministry has made it clear they're not afraid to use Dark Magic if it suits their purposes, and if they can, why can't others?... Still, I think there's someone hoping to gain something really big from all this..."

Her view turned sharply to the right, and Emma found herself face-to-face with Cat's drawn image.

"This game is a treacherous one, Emma. Do not trust the Prime Minister." Cat had told her, what now felt like so long ago.

As the fire, and everything in it, began to dim into darkness, Emma could hear one last echoing voice. It was her mother's voice, rebuking, but sharp only with worry and care.

"You're not a cat, my dear. One life is your allotment! Please be more careful with the carving knife!"...

Emma stepped calmly out of another door, finding herself back in a familiar place near the center of the Toy Village. She could see the roof and the banner above the door for Fort Resistance, and she decided to go back there and inquire about this Dollmaker the tortured children had mentioned.

The sight that greeted her was sickening.

The leader girl, whom she had spoken to upon first arriving, lay dead on the door step in a pool of her own blood and her eyes gouged out. The doors to the fort were broken and splintered, barely hanging on to their hinges, and as Emma stepped into the house, she quickly found all of the other children too. Not one of them was still breathing.

In fact the only thing that was alive in the fort, were the monsters Emma guessed were responsible for this destruction and murder. The Ruins of varying shapes and sizes turned towards her and shrieked. Emma screamed back, and clashed into battle with the filthy beasts that had invaded her mindscape and destroyed such innocence.

There were two smaller Ruins that were about Emma's size, and then a giant one with a big, hulking arm. Emma's sword caught in the first one, dragging through it's body. The second one lashed out, it's sharp claws biting into her shoulder, and Emma burst into a thousand fluttering pieces to dash forward, away from the two, but the larger one was waiting.

The giant arm, bulging with veins of oil, grabbed Emma's whole body in it's one hand. Emma shouted and pushed against the hand with the arm that didn't get pinned to her side. The beast didn't even notice as it swung her back and forth, rattling her teeth and brains. The monster paused a moment and roared in her face before throwing her across the bottom floor of the dollhouse.

Emma crashed through the living room wall and landed on top of the kitchen table, which broke into pieces upon impact. Emma rolled as the two little ones charged at her, and her hand grabbed the first thing it touched and she swung. She smashed a plate across the porcelain face of the first Ruin and leaped back to avoid the attack of the second. She willed the Vorpal blade to reconfigure in her hand, and with a puff of smoke it did just that. Emma lunged forward, driving her knife right into one of the Ruin's eyes.

The creature shrieked, falling to the ground as Emma shoved it down, her blade cutting through it's face. Within a few moments the struggling stopped and the sludge began to dribble, puddling on the ground.

Emma yanked her knife free and rolled away again as the big one slammed it's fist down on the floor right where she'd been crouched, splashing it's fellow Ruins' remains. Emma ran forward, leaping first onto one of the chairs with one foot and launching herself from there onto the large Ruin's back. The chair clattered to the floor as Emma scaled her way up the Ruin's back as it swung around, roaring angrily. Pulling out her knife, Emma stabbed at the Ruin's neck and hulking shoulders. Plunging her blade into the oily sludge over and over.

Her face was splattered with oil and blood by the time she jabbed her knife into the monsters neck, reveling in the final shiver and collapse of the massive body as it died. Emma fell to the floor with it, but the impact made her lose her grip and she fell to the side, landing hard on her back before she rolled away from the abomination.

The final Ruin screamed, but didn't charge. It pulled back, glaring at her as it began to circle. Emma ignored it's move and lunged for it's throat. Her knife dug deep and cut through with a clean strike, her feet sliding across the floor on all of the oily filth, but she remained steady and balanced.

The porcelain head fell to the floor from the body that was already melting and dripping to the floor. Emma stood panting as anger burned in her gut. She felt so, so stupid.

Looking around at the destroyed kitchen, Emma spotted a door that was slightly ajar. Going over to it, she pushed it open with a long, loud creak. Stairs led down into the darkness of what she assumed was the basement. Another part of the underground area she'd been trapped in earlier. Emma took and breath and steeled herself before slowly walking down the stairs.

The darkness seemed to swallow her as she went deeper and deeper. She would occasionally find a landing and have her direction changed, but no matter what she just kept going down... down... down...

When the stairs finally did end, Emma found herself on a wooden ledge, high above the burning fires below. Pieces of a broken pathway remained, allowing her to jump across to slightly higher ground. There were more stairs leading on and on, going up and down. Occasionally the path would fall away and she'd have to leap from one place to the next, but the dreary darkness remained. The further she went the more viewing cages she saw with dolls inside. She kept her guard up, her nerves buzzing with Danger!, but nothing leaped out at her.

She finally came to a set of stairs leaping upwards, but everything was dead quiet. There was no sound at all. With a prickly feeling on the back of her neck, Emma climbed the stairs, crossing a couple of landings before finally reaching the top.

It was an open space with only a small bridge to get in and out. Settled in that space, was a giant version of a man; the Dollmaker. Only his torso was visible, the rest settled somewhere below the floor boards, but Emma really didn't care. His eyes were nothing but sockets, oozing with black pollution that also flowed from his mouth and nose, his chin completely black with the oily sludge. There was a big ugly cut on his forehead that was crudely stitched together, his clothes were dirty. His teeth and fingernails were yellowish-black and pointed. The veins on his hands bulged, nails were driven into the flesh like extra needles into a pin cushion, and two doll heads had been fused to the flesh on the backs of his hands.

The Prime Minister made a horrific sight in Wonderland.

"Am I not the most wretched and selfish of fortune's fools?" Emma exclaimed, stepping up before the man as emotion flooded her voice. "Oblivious, I live in a training ground for prostitutes! Our Prime Minister is an abuser and purveyor. I've been complicit with my father's murderer, and the killer of my family, as he corrupted my mind! All this time I proclaimed to be seeking the truth, but never once did I actually look at what was right in front of me."

"You were almost there. Almost free from what you fear. You could have been cured. You could have Forgotten." The Dollmaker told her with a voice that was gravelly and echoing. He picked up a child from somewhere off to his right. The child squealed and wriggled as the man regarded him thoughtfully before reaching up and fixing doll pieces into place, erasing the child for a lifeless doll.

"Abandon the memory of my Father? My Mentor?" Emma demanded, thinking back to her father's mysterious disappearance, that now Emma knew the Prime Minister had something to do with it. And Hiccup... She knew the circumstances of his disappearance, but it didn't change the fact that the Prime Minister was creating the dragon incidents. He was making anyone who investigated them disappear. Her father, Mr. Arrow, the wizards from Altea...

"They are gone... And you should be, too." The Dollmaker stated simply.

"You misbegotten abomination! Murderer! You blood-sucking parasite! The damage you've done to countless people, to children... The abuse." Emma shouted at him, all of her rage boiling to the surface.

"I provide a service to the Allied Kingdoms. In the great and awful metropolis, appetites of all sorts must be gratified: Lust and Power. To protect, we must attack. To acquire Power and strength, we must take. Sacrifices must be made." Frollo told her.

"My Family, My mind, The Infernal Train!" Emma exclaimed, thinking of all the people who'd been affected by his actions. So many people killed or missing, Hogwarts was falling to pieces as members of the Ministry brainwashed her peers into society, and her own mind was falling to pieces right before her eyes...

"The Train is your... defense. I merely set it's schedule and itinerary." The Dollmaker informed her. He continued with a sing-song rhythm, "The train is coming with its shiny cars, with comfy seats and wheels of stars. So hush my little ones, have no fear, the man in the moon is the engineer..."

"But how did you do it? How did you curse my mind? Inject your poison?!" Emma demanded, glaring up at the man.

"Amazing what magics can be done with only a tiny piece of hair, especially when mixed with the boundless potential of Dark Magic..." The Dollmaker mused, glancing down at her vaguely. Uncaring.

Meanwhile, Emma's memory flashed before her eyes; She pushed her way out of the office, only to bump into someone right outside the door... Slowly, Emma looked up at the man standing over her and her shoulders tensed a little when she met the unimpressed gaze of Prime Minister Claude Frollo...

"Curious," He said, drawing out the 's' just a little with his quiet tone. It reminded Emma of a rattle snake. "And what is someone so young doing in the Auror's Office during the evening meal?"

"Nothing, Sir. Just some filing. Getting the older cases out of the way to make space for all the newer ones coming in." Emma said, accepting the file when the Prime Minister held it out to her...

"Perhaps you would do better to join your friends at the feast. A young lady's social life is very important. It would be a shame for such a pretty face to waste away in some Dark, Rotted corner."...

Emma's fists clenched at her sides as she ground her teeth. "I'll stop that Train... If it's the last thing I do!"

"As you wish... It will be." He said, reaching out a massive hand and grabbing her. Darkness enveloped her as his voice reverberated through her head. By the time the darkness cleared from her mind, she'd been fitted into one of the Dollmaker's dolls; bare body and giant head. Her limbs felt like they were made of lead. She couldn't and only hung limply in her grasp. He regarded her for a moment and then reached over and dropped her down a chute. She landed on top of a pile of other doll pieces and rubbish. "You're lost. And where your body is, your mind will follow. Perhaps it's already there." He said.

And then everything gave out below her and she was falling...