Chapter twenty two:

The last rays of sunlight on Sunday evening filtered through the hight, narrow window into the tower room, painting it a blood red shade. The sunlight glistened unusually on the black, purple glowing runes covering the golden walls of the room, and it bent at strange angles on the vast and complicated black magical seal drawn on the tower floor.

The Evil Queen was kneeling on the wooden floor of the tower at one of the edges of the black seal, there was an expression of deep concentration on her face as she used her inky magic to carefully draw the final part of the seal. Cautiously the Evil Queen lifted her finger away from her work, then slowly she sat back on her heals and admired her work, at last it was all ready.

Carefully she rose from where she had been kneeling, the Evil Queen then cautiously walked around the tower room checking over every spell rune and every part of the seal.

As she checked the runes on the wall the Evil Queen made sure not to touch them so she would not change them in any way. As she walked around examining the wall runes the Evil Queen made sure not to step on any of part the seal, as she knew if she did so it might somehow damage it and then the Evil Queen would have to begin her work on the seal all over again. This was something which would mean that the Evil Queen knew that she did not have time to do before her daughter arrived for her visit the next morning.

Once the Evil Queen was satisfied with the runes on the walls, she then moved onto inspecting the seal on the floor, making sure to follow every line and mark on the floor with her eyes to check that they were all perfectly drawn and positioned in the vast seal.

It was only when the Evil Queen had double checked every single part of every spell in the tower room to make sure that everything for Monday morning would go perfectly that she finally allowed herself to come to a rest and sit down on the floor in one corner of the room where she couldn't damage any part of her work.

The Evil Queen was at last completely satisfied that there would be no escape for her daughter from her nefarious plans. As she sat there admiring her work the Evil Queen went over in her mind exactly how it would all work once triggered.

As soon as Raven entered the tower room, the door would close behind her and be sealed up with dark magic in order to prevent anyone from getting into the room and doing anything to interfere with the transformation.

Once this had happened then the second spell would knock Raven out and keep her from regaining consciousness, the Evil Queen wanted this to happen to Raven in order to prevent her from trying to fight the dark magic. Then finally the spells on the walls would come into play making it impossible for anyone to break in through the walls or windows.

It was only when all of this had been done that the seal on the floor of the room would activate, at which point this magic along with the Evil Queen would start working to transform Raven from the light and back to the dark.

Once the transformation was complete Raven would be as evil as herself and they would take down this school together, before going on to conquer all the kingdoms and realms together.

As the Evil Queen thought about this idea it was so pleasant to her that a sinister form of smile turned up her lips, she could already taste the fear and panic they would spread. It would to her mind be glorious, Raven and herself would be the rulers of everything and all those who stood in their way would be reduced to ashes.

All the Evil Queen had to do then was make sure that Raven was kept close to her side as they conquered all the worlds, so that the Charming brat couldn't get to her and somehow set her free of the dark magic.

The Evil Queen was well aware that despite the layers of protection she had placed on her curse to prevent it those who shared true love were very hard to combat, it was a force so strong and pure that it could do many things, even break an enchantment this strong.

Still, she hoped that by the time Charming got to Raven there would be nothing she could do to change her back and that her daughter would in fact be so evil that she would destroy her own true love solving the issue of the annoying Charming problem forever.

"Soon…Yes very soon." The Evil Queen murmured to herself in a satisfied tone of voice.

When Raven woke Monday morning, she was still full of delight from knighting Darling and getting to spend most of the weekend with her. Her happiness started to leached away as she remembered that this morning was the time for her monthly visit with her mother.

The visits to her mother always made Raven feel horrible and if she was honest Raven actually detested them on one level, however she felt as though she had a duty to go and see her mother, at the same time Raven did also worry about her and on another level, she did love her mother in a way.

Whenever Raven did go to visit her mother, she tried her absolute best not to let her mother see just how much she disliked seeing her and having to suffer through the Evil Queen's constant needling over not being evil enough for her.

Instead, Raven tried her hardest to focused on moving their conversations away from the subject of being evil, by asking if her mother was alright, talking about her grades and the various school events with her until her time was up and Raven left not to have to visit her mother for another month.

Honestly the relief which Raven felt when she left the tower room should have embarrassed her, but years of experiencing it had allowed Raven to come to terms with the fact that it would always happen to her at the end of her visits.

Raven had absolutely no intention of telling her mother about Darling and herself, because she felt sure that if she were to do so, then they would more than likely get into yet another one of their arguments and might lead to her mother wanting to harm Darling or separate Raven from her in some way. Raven really didn't want to have to fight with her mother, she just wanted to be able to talk to her normally, but Raven knew that this was very much unlikely.

As she dressed Raven decided that she would eat breakfast after she visited her mother. Raven was well aware that she wouldn't be able to stomach any food this morning, this was because of the knot in her tummy and the nervous butterflies flittering about inside her which always happened before visits to her mother.

Once she was dressed, Raven quietly took care of her morning ablutions, then silently slipped out of the dorm room, leaving Apple to sleep on in peace.

Raven made her way through the school, heading strait to the headmaster's office, she arrived there even before Mrs Trollsworth had arrived at work for the morning. Politely Raven knocked on the door to the headmaster's office and then waited to be called inside. "Come in!" Milton called out from inside the office.

With this permission now given to her Raven opened the door to the office and stepped inside. As she came into the room Milton looked up from his paper work, as soon as he saw it was Raven there, he picked up the necessary paper work off of the top of the desk, he stood up, Milton came around the desk and held it out to Raven saying as he did so. "Now, Miss Queen please don't forget…"

"Not to touch the glass. I know!" Raven said to him in a tired voice.

With a nod of the head the headmaster stepped back around the desk, he used the hidden button under his desk to open the concealed door in his chambers, with a small grateful smile for the headmaster Raven walked through it and then made her way to the tower room where her mother's mirror was kept.

Milton who would not usually leave the office until Raven returned from her visit with his mother was over would in fact leave his office this particular morning due to an unexpected turn of events.

When there came a knock on the door of Milton's office and he looked up from his work before barking out. "Enter!"

Duchess Swan came into the room and started speaking to the head master in an over dramatic woe is me voice. "I am sorry to bother you headmaster, but a small altercation broke out between the Royals and Rebels at breakfast this morning. I'm afraid it has become a large argument which has now gone out of the castleteria and onto one of the lawns. Things are becoming so heated between the two sides that it looks like things might degenerate into some sort of brawl!"

"Oh, not again!" The headmaster groused, as he got up from the desk and followed Duchess out of the room and made his way with her towards where the trouble was.

Once she reached the top of the tower steps Raven opened the door to the tower room and stepped inside, the moment she was inside the door snapped shut behind her, strange symbols around the room started glowing a dark purple and a black smoke started oozing from them.

She barely had a chance to let out a small scream of fear before, the dark shadows swallowed Raven whole and she knew nothing more.

The Evil Queen cackled evilly to herself, as she carefully drew dark glowing runes into the air around Raven's floating body. She watched in delight as they absorbed into Raven's skin darkening it for a moment, before the magic seeped in further darkening Raven's veins to an inky black shade.

Raven's magic aura which was flared out around her body in response to what was happening was going from the light lavender shade, back to its deeper purple around her body and right at the edges of it, the colour of the magic was becoming an even darker shade of purple then it had been before.

The Evil Queen started to chant a spell, as she did so the Evil Queen walked around and around her daughter drawing even more runes as she went. In response to her chanting and runes Raven's pale skin started to go a ash grey colour, the darkness was spreading slowly but surely through her veins towards her heart.

When the dark magic reached her heart, a bright rainbow edged golden light erupted outwards from Raven. It caused the Evil Queen to let out a shriek of dismay and shade her eyes with her arms in a feeble attempt to prevent herself from being blinded by the light.

Somehow the light grew brighter and brighter, until it filled the room, then all at once some of the light then rushed outwards in an explosion. There was such a force of power to this explosion that it threw the Evil Queen across the room and into a nearby wall.

She hit the wall hard, it pushed all of the breath out of her, pain lanced through the Evil Queen, while at the same time fear and pain spread its way through her. She didn't know what was happening, but the true love Raven felt for Darling shouldn't have been able to protect her like this.

The Evil Queen tried to push away from the wall, but the power radiating from Raven was too strong, she could hardly move any part of her, it was as though she had been glued to the wall. The light in the tower room was now so bright that the Evil Queen couldn't even look directly at her daughter.

She brought her magic forwards in an attempt to move away from the wall, but this strange and powerful light leached her power away, simply seeming to swallow it whole without it affecting the light in the slightest.

The Evil Queen started to panic a little, she had no idea what this was now, it couldn't just be true love, it as far to strong and true love should not have been able to respond to her magic in this way, it should have laid dormant inside Raven until Charming triggered it.

The light pulsated again, then an ear-splitting scream filled the room, it was so full of pain and terror that it sent a shiver of fear through the Evil Queen. Whatever was happening here in this room at this moment, was well beyond her control now, she was nothing more than a prisoner of this situation, with no hope of escape.