Hi, friends! I'm just gonna briefly get a few things out of the way; I was taking prep. courses last week and have begun my new semester, so I will be switching back to the 1 update per 2 weeks scheme that most of you are probably accustomed to. There may come times when I'll be exceedingly busy and won't update for up to 3 weeks, but rest assured, the story will continue. The second thing I want to mention is that this week's update was delayed due to me attending special seminars at my faculty, and I have been reaching out to one of my mentors in regards to my (almost completed) fantasy novel. If all goes well, I'll send the first draft to a publisher by the end of the year, and I'll see where it goes from there. Once my novel is released, I'll probably mention the name as well as provide a link for anyone interested. I'll also post the first 1-2 chapters somewhere to give everyone the option of deciding for themselves whether they'll want to read it in its entirety or not.
archivewriter3: Well then, this one is a bit longer :P
Rock Raider: Yes and no, this is where things take a turn. As for Buff Frog, well, you'll find out.
Disclaimer: I do not claim the right to Star vs. the Forces of Evil or any of the characters that appear in the show. They belong to Disney and the show's creator, Daron Nefcy. I do, however, claim the right to the plot as well as any original characters that may appear in this fic, and would kindly ask you to inform me should you want to use anything from this fic in your own story. -jolleIQ
Beta read by ElleFreak.
Story cover by Luzz015. Be sure to check her out on DeviantArt!
Star vs. The Forces of Evil: Staring it up!
Chapter 9
A Thirst for Vengeance
Part 2
On the edge of their vision, far in the distance, the two guardsmen posted at the gates of the Mewman province spotted two small dots approaching the gate. As they drew closer, the guardsmen could make out the silhouettes of two figures, one taller than the other.
The two guardsmen exchanged a look and a nod, took their weapons in hand and waited patiently at the gates for the two figures to arrive and announce themselves.
Upon drawing to a distance of about a hundred or so yards, one of the guardsmen shouted to the two figures, the first, a woman, and the other a girl, both with hoods over their heads, to halt in place and both obeyed without protest.
"I'll inspect, you stay here in case there's trouble," one guard told the other and walked over to the two figures, keeping his sword aimed at the ground but ready to pounce if the need arose. With the recent increase of monsters roaming the area and some even sneaking into the castle walls only to be subdued thereupon, the guards were ordered to stay on the highest of alerts, even when facing two as seemingly harmless figures as the hooded girl and woman.
"Who are you and what is your business?" asked the guard.
"We're here to seek counsel with Queen Moon Butterfly," said the girl. "May we enter?"
"Pfft!" the guard scoffed. "Are you joking? Our Queen lacks the time to deal with two peasants. If you wish to talk to her in person, you must first announce yourselves in advance and wait for permission to see her majesty."
"Oh, but that would take so awfully long," the woman replied. "Besides, I do believe I am overdue a meeting with dear old Moon by quite some time."
The guardsman arched an eyebrow at the hooded woman.
"And who exactly are you?"
"Oh, goodness me, where are my manners today?" The woman said with a chuckle and reached for the hem of her hood. "Allow me to introduce myself," she said, pulling back her hood and revealing her face, upon which the guard dropped his weapon and stared in shock at the face that was a mirror-image of his queen apart from the purple hair and purple eyes, a smile so sweet yet so sinister adorning her red lips, and her piercing gaze sent shivers down the guardsman's spine.
"That was easy," said the smaller figure as the two were now walking towards castle Mewni. She pulled her hood back, revealing herself to be none other than Jackie. "What happens now?"
"Now?" The woman giggled. "Now, my dear daughter, the fun truly begins. Very soon, Mewni will be ours."
"What about... you know...?" Jackie reached into her pocket and drew forth a sharp blade inscribed with odd symbols and rimmed with gold, the handle of which was in the odd shape of a mermaid. She looked up at the woman questioningly.
"That, my daughter, is for you to decide."
Unbeknownst to the Mewmans, their Kingdom was headed towards its doom.
Castle Mewni, Throne Room
Star, Marco and Zora at last reached the central and arguably the most important segment of the castle and were greeted merrily upon arrival as River ran over to them and immediately kidnapped Zora from Star's shoulders, put her atop his own and began running willy-nilly all about the throne room at a frightening pace as Zora giggled and laughed.
Star and Marco exchanged a warm smile and interlocked their hands.
When they announced their abrupt move to Mewni and their decision to adopt Zora into the Butterfly family, they were worried about how their decision would be received. At first, Moon and River stared at them, shell-shocked, uncertain how to respond. Just when the two teenagers thought that they would get the scolding of their lives, the royal couple (River in a more literal sense) jumped from joy and rushed over to embrace the three and their newly-adopted granddaughter. Despite hardly knowing her, both Moon and River welcomed her as their own without any hesitation whatsoever and rushed to make the announcement public, sending out numerous messengers to the villages and towns of Mewni.
As expected, the announcement was received with mixed emotions. Some were happy that the ruling family had a new heir to the throne while others, mainly nobles, found the prospect of introducing a girl with no noble background into the royal family and breaking the age-old Mewman tradition abhorrent, but sent their best wishes nonetheless, although Star pointed out that they were just trying to kiss up to them, to which all present agreed.
The next few days that followed were very hectic for the newly-arrived trio. First, they had to go to the Mewman council and announce that Star's exile would be pardoned for the sake of raising the new heir on Mewni, to which they begrudgingly agreed under the condition that Star and Marco be wed. The two then explained that they had already agreed on a date, namely Star's 18th birthday, which took the council by surprise. At first, they called it an outrage and an offence to the sacred mewman marital laws, but Marco pointed out that there existed no such law that determined how far in advance the wedding could be set, after which the council fell silent and, after a brief reviews of the laws wherein they found confirmation for Marco's claim, allowed Star's planned exile an early end and she was officially re-granted the title of princess that she'd been formally stripped of after her previous wedding fiasco.
Once those formalities were settled, they went on a restless and sleepless 5-day trip around the main province, as Marco summarised, parading Zora instead of doing anything remotely useful with their time. A rotten tomato or two were thrown at them and they saw the occasional disproving glance from a few villagers and townspeople, but overall, they were received much better than anticipated, which was relieving.
The only noteworthy incident that occurred was when they arrived in one of the more remote villages only to discover that it was being raided by a group of monsters. The event ended on a positive note, for once Star and Marco and a few of the guardsmen accompanying the carriage were done subduing the monsters and the townspeople were safe once more, they were both applauded and wished the best of fortune. The monsters were then piled onto several prisoner wagons and hauled to the castle's dungeons where they could keep Toffee company, although Marco questioned whether it was a good idea to do so, but Moon and River assured him that it would be alright. He didn't fully trust their word.
Upon returning to the castle, sleepy and worn out, they were given a night of well-deserved rest. The three were all assigned to the same bedchamber. Zora was given her own room while Star and Marco were assigned to the same one, a decision that was deemed mandatory and left the two teenagers blushing madly. The moving in was a huge blur and Marco recalled River dragging him away from the others at some point and saying something about ending him should he find out that the boy had done anything 'indecent' with his baby girl, and Marco assured him that no such thing would happen, which River was pleased to hear.
The next morning, the trio headed down for a truly royal breakfast and were thereafter given their assignments for the coming weeks. Zora would spend far too much time attending classes on proper princess behaviour, Mewman history, battle tactics (this was the course she was least fond of), resource management, politics and various other subjects, all of which would build up the skills she would one day need if she was to assume the title of Queen. Marco frowned upon seeing her schedule and pointed out that this was far too much for a six-year-old to handle, and while Moon was in agreement with that, not much could be done about it since Zora had a lot of catching up to do. When he asked if Star had taken the same courses, Moon replied 'she was definitely physically present at all of them' and left it at that. Somehow, Marco wasn't surprised.
But he didn't have much time to worry about Zora's schedule since his own was stuffed like a turkey on Thanksgiving; if Zora had a lot of catching up to do, then he was chasing a high-speed bullet train. He spent an entire week attending prince-to-be and king-to-be classes from sun-up to sun-down since they wanted to stuff as much information into his cranium as mewmanly possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Being a fast learner, it didn't take Marco that long to get a good grasp of things and even improve certain aspects of his teachings, so once the hellish week was over, Moon assigned him to oversee the cross-kingdom trades and general resource management as the boy had displayed a gift for keeping things overly-organised.
As for Star, she spent the majority of her time with Moon, and for good reasons. Albeit the Mewman Queen was certainly thrilled about Star assuming such a great responsibility with the adoption of Zora, she also didn't see her old enough to be a mother - or rather mature enough since she herself was not much older when she gave birth to the blonde-haired, hyperactive princess - and thus wanted to help her get a hang of the ropes and teach her some of the most important things. This didn't have all of the intended results as Star took some things too literally and thus became somewhat overprotective of Zora, and at some point, she called a search party to go looking for the girl when she went to the bathroom without informing her first. Moon didn't point out Star's needlessly-frantic behaviour since she only had herself to blame. Thankfully, and surprisingly, Marco acted as the counterweight and allowed Zora much more freedom, explaining how she "was just a kid and there was no harm in letting her goof around as kids do," which resulted in many small arguments between Star and Marco over what was best for the small girl, and sometimes one would concede the argument, sometimes the other. Mon was tempted to step in at times, but flashbacks or her arguments with River that were not all that different from Star and Marco's popped up whenever she was about to speak up, and she would then chuckle to herself and leave them to figure it out, which they usually did.
And so the trio slowly settled into their lives at the castle.
Marco and Star approached Moon, and the formed greeted the Mewman Queen.
"You wanted to see us?" he asked, and Moon nodded.
The two teens noticed that Moon was not in a particularly cheerful mood as her husband, and their smiles were replaced with deadpan looks of slight concern.
"Mom, are you ok?"
Moon sighed and stared at the two for a time, then turned around and briskly added, "Come."
She led them to one of the small side-rooms of the throne room. Awaiting them inside were two mewman generals standing on opposite ends of a wooden table across which lay a map of the Mewman kingdom. The two soldiers were placing and moving around numerous small figures shaped like mewman soldiers and monsters, the latter of which were clustered together on certain points of the map. It didn't take long for Marco to discern that they were probably discussing the attacks that had been going on and interfering with many trade-routes and raiding villages and smaller towns. By the looks of things, the monsters had made in deeper into the kingdom, as the figures showed.
"No, no, no!" one of the generals, a woman with dark hair that just brushed her shoulders yelled at the other general, a man slightly taller than River and nearly as broad, as she slammed her fist on the table and knocked over several of the figures. "This is a terrible plan! We need more units defending the south!"
"So they'll more easily come flooding through the west? I think not!"
"I haven't heard you suggest anything better! We lack the troops to execute your plan!"
"Then we'll just recruit some of the farmers! No big deal!"
"Men-at-arms against trained monsters? Are you joking?"
"Lady Rayden, Sir Digby, enough with the shouting."
The two generals froze and looked towards the source of the commanding voice and bowed immediately.
"I apologise, my Queen!" they both exclaimed in unison.
Moon sighed irritably and ordered them to rise up. Marco edged closer to the table and gave it a good look.
"My Prince," said Lady Rayden. "I will explain everything in a moment, you see-"
"Huh, so they've managed to get this close?" Marco commented. He honestly wasn't surprised that the monsters were progressing so rapidly given that he'd deemed the Mewman army as utterly incompetent. "I should have mentioned this sooner..."
Lady Rayden blinked a few times, then cleared her throat and spoke awkwardly, "Well, um, yes, your highness. Unfortunately, the force with which the monsters have been pressing us has been far greater than anything we'd anticipated."
"After Toffee was imprisoned, we were hoping that they would just give up and go home," Sir Digby added, arms folded. He scoffed. "Damn monsters!"
"But we've been piling more and more of our resources into supplying our soldiers, how could you allow this to happen?" Moon asked in a scornful tone.
"My Queen," Lady Rayden spoke, "with all due respect, our troops are more than capable to put an end to this blight in a fair fight, but those beasts keep using Guerilla tactics and refuse to engage in fair combat. There are just too many small raiding groups. The moment we restation one of our regiments, they attack another unguarded area. We just don't have enough men to go around to defend every plot of land, I'm sorry."
"No, it's not your fault," Moon said in an apologetic tone. "It was harsh of me to put the blame on you, but I'm just tired of hearing that this or that town has been raided or destroyed."
"Can't we just ask for some help?" asked Star. "We're friends with the Lucitors and the Pony Heads, why not just ask them to send a few soldiers over and help us out?"
"I don't want to resort to asking for help."
"Why not?"
"Star, you'll understand this when you're older, but a ruler has to show no weaknesses. If any of the kingdoms we're not friends with were to find out we've been weakened and are seeking aid, they could use the opportunity to pressure us into accepting various unfavourable agreements to ensure they won't use the opportunity to attack us or any of our allies," Moon explained calmly.
"Well, we have to do something about this, don't we? We can't just sit here and do nothing! Let me go out there and-" Star reached for her wand, only to remember that it was no longer in her possession. "Argh, never mind..." she grumbled, and Marco pat her on the back a few times to cheer her up.
"I am working on a solution to this problem, but this isn't what I wanted to speak about. These aren't your problems to deal with." Moon clapped her hands twice and dismissed the two generals from the room. "Good, now that we're in private, I need to talk to the two of you."
"Ok? Talk about what, mom?"
Moon went silent for a moment before answering. "It's about Marco's magic. I think I know why he has the ability to use it so effectively despite being a mere human."
Mere human? Aren't I Star's boyfriend? Marco took her comment with a grain of salt, then said, "Wait, how do you know that?" He didn't doubt Moon's level of intelligence since he did perceive her as a very smart Queen and one of the wisest people he'd ever met, but how could she possibly know anything about his magical powers?
"Marco, non-magical beings don't have the inborn gift of magic. You are the first human to have ever cast a spell successfully, and you don't have magical heritage, so there's only one logical explanation; someone imbued you with it."
"I don't remember anyone shoving a wand down my throat."
"No, but something did happen that infused you with magic and it was by someone with a wand." Moon looked at Star.
"Huh, me?"
Moon nodded calmly. "You see-"
"My Queen! My Queen!" Lady Rayden came bursting through the door, startling all three. "There's someone here to see you."
"Rayden! Who in the Underworld is so important that you had to break down the door just to announce their presence?"
"Well... You!"
To be continued...
'Till next time!
