Three years rolled by and Aurora grew up into a slightly awkward but ultimately kind 13-year-old. It seemed Merryweather's blessing had stayed strong.
In the time she had spent training under Maleficent, she had grown into her magic and was much stronger than most her age.
Archimedes, as promised, kept a watchful eye on her, though he did not know how his presence would deter The Mistress of All Evil from doing anything.
Aurora had felt oddly safe here. Granted, she'd have preferred to live with her parents, but Maleficent had not once struck her or even raised her voice in anger. To her, anyway.
She was currently practicing an invisibility spell. She held her hand in front of her mouth as a patrol of those goblin like 'men' Maleficent called minions started to walk in her direction, communicating in that grunting language she didn't understand.
She bit her lip, trying to not give away her position by giggling. They had no idea she was here!
It had been difficult to convince Maleficent to let her play and have fun or generally do things that weren't eat, sleep and learn, but when she'd called it 'applying her teachings', the towering woman had allowed her.
The two porcine people walked right past her.
Aurora bit down harder. She couldn't cheer. Not yet. She watched them leave, breathing shallowly.
She listened carefully for the sound of anyone moving.
"Aurora!"
She jumped at this, clapping a hand over her mouth upon hearing her name. Archimedes!
"Aurora, where are you? You know I hate it when you do this!" the owl fretted, flying through the hallways.
"Archimedes, slow down!" implored Ellis, the dove flying right after him. "Fretting at her like this won't help!"
"Oh, I know that, but you can't tell me YOU feel safe in here, can you?" Archimedes turned, flapping his wings to stay aloft.
"Well, Maleficent has never directly tried to harm us…" Ellis said sheepishly.
"She is the Mistress of All Evil!" the owl stressed. "Goodness me, both she and Aurora are going to worry me into an early grave!"
"I'm fairly certain she'd enjoy that." Ellis said. At Archimedes' surprised look, she shrugged. "I'm aware of what she is."
Aurora trembled with the effort it took to stop herself from giggling at the antics of the two birds. She had to stay quiet, she had to stay quiet!
"Ugh, forget it, she's not here." Archimedes groaned. "Come on!" he flew right past Aurora, but Ellis stayed and looked right at her.
Aurora's eyes widened.
"I know you're there." she said softly.
Aurora froze, but said nothing, holding her breath.
Ellis waited, looking at her, until she sighed. "I was hoping that would have worked." she flew away from the Princess and after the owl.
Aurora let out an explosive breath. That, had been so close.
Soon enough, she found her goal. The exit of the castle. Now, she just had to get past the drawbridge and the two minions at the entrance. Shouldn't be too hard.
She took a breath and carefully let it out.
The young Princess slowly walked out of the castle, taking care to make as little noise as possible, though the howling winds of Forbidden Mountain helped to mask her presence.
However, waiting outside the Forbidden Castle was its mistress. Maleficent.
Maleficent was looking up at the sky, as if searching for something.
Biting her lip to suppress a giggle, she tiptoed over to her side and dropped the spell.
"Something on your mind, Teacher?" she asked innocently.
The two porcine guards jumped in surprise upon seeing her appear out of nowhere.
"I am awaiting Diablo." she didn't even blink. "He comes with news."
"News? What of?"
"Your parents' return." she said evenly.
Aurora blinked. "Has, it, really been three years already?"
"It has."
Aurora looked at her hands and made a pair of fists. She conjured crackling black lightning around them before letting them dissipate. "Why me?"
"You will have to be more specific." the fey didn't even turn to her. She lifted a hand and as if on cue, Diablo swooped in from the skies and landed on her shoulder.
"Why did you choose to gift me with magic?" Aurora clarified. "I was a baby."
"Precisely. As the body grows old, it is far less malleable. A baby is the perfect subject for a test."
"A, test?" Aurora frowned. "What manner of test?"
"Simple. I made you into second most powerful sorceress on the face of the Earth because I wanted to." Maleficent smiled. "You should be grateful. Without me, you would have lived a life of utter mediocrity."
"You wanted to." Aurora repeated numbly. "You did, all this, because you wanted to?"
"I wanted to see what would happen. Black magic has a terrible habit of corrupting the soul of its wielder, if said wielder is a mortal. It drives them mad. And madness is only so entertaining. I knew that once I gave you my gift, Merryweather would do her best to counteract it. How did she put it? Ah yes. 'will of iron and heart of gold, that you may yet one day grow old. Your mind shall be as pure as snow, your soul untouched, that Maleficent's wicked roots may in you never grow.'" She chuckled to herself, "How quaint. She never stood a chance against me in the first place. Either she gave you a different blessing and let the dark magic drive you mad, or she laid the foundations for exactly what I wanted. A sane black sorceress."
She returned to her castle, letting Aurora process the revelation that she and everyone else she knew, had played right into her hands. Diablo had told her that the carriage holding the royal family was on its way here.
She watched the reunion from atop a tower, seeing Merlin practically age before her eyes from the sheer relief that she was alive and well, her parents crying as they held their now grown little girl, and those insipid fairies flitting about her, most likely running their mouths about how they were worried and how they knew that leaving her here was a poor decision.
But in the end, there was nothing to do save take Aurora home.
"Goodbye for now, my little sorceress. I look forward to seeing how you grow in the future. Until next we meet. Do try to be entertaining in the meantime. I'd hate to have wasted three years on a project only for it to go nowhere." Maleficent mused out loud.
The End
Author's Note:
So, when I started Gift of Magic, I intended it to be an anthology called Moments in Time set in this AU. That didn't happen. This story also took much longer to complete due to a series of personal incidents that very much ripped away any drive to work on this story I had. But, thanks to my beta, Aprion, and my friend Azure Sandora, I was able to recover some of my drive and I decided to finish this story. In the interest of transparency, I don't know whether I'll make a sequel to this or not. But if I do, I hope you give it a read. I hope you've enjoyed The Gift of Magic.