Author's Note: Okay So new Ever After High Fic, did some work on and off again over the winter break, though writing is going to be at a minimal until I go back to work. In the mean time you all get to enjoy a new story. Basically me attempting a cross over with A Practical Guide to Evil, which you should all go look up immediately because it's good. I am going to attempt to write this entire story in the First Person Perspective mostly cause it's not something I do regularly and I figure it will be a good changed in pace. So Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 1: The Night Witch

At first there were the gods, then they grew bored with this state of affairs, so they made creation and filled it with their progeny but disagreed on how it should be raised. One side claimed that they should be guided to greater heights, the other that they should be ruled over. The debate raged but ultimately it was decided that man would be the ones to answer the question. And hence Good and Evil were born.

Paraphrase from the book of all things.


Smoking was not a good habit, let alone relying on it to control ones emotions, it was the reason why she only did it out here as opposed to when she was home in front of her daughter. Well compared to those happy times she didn't need to smoke either. School would be starting again soon after the winter break, instead of being home tucking her daughter to bed she was sitting out here, in the cold, doing Sudoku puzzles waiting for someone so far beneath contempt that he did not even have a name. Some... prince was it? Count? Lord? Whatever: it wasn't even worth remembering. The important part was that his agent meant to acquire her daughter for his master, and instead hurt her. Permanently possibly. That demanded a appropriate response.

Ah speak of the moron. He and his escort were arriving now.

"Ah the Evil Queen, how nice to see you again."

Annoying. This ink monkey needs to get his Name's straight: The Evil Queen is the ruler of Bosheit of which I am not, even that was the lesser sin since he mistranslated the damned Name to begin with.

"It's actually a pretty nice day out you know." I took my pipe out of my mouth and inhaled the cold wintry air below blowing the smoke. "The air is just cool enough to be refreshing, the Woolie Flies are in the sky letting out their adorable bleating. On days like these..." I glared at the lot of them, eyes reflecting the darkness of the abyss. Their horses reacted in that primal fear driven way their lot does: the moron's horse was smarter then him, but that wasn't a high bar. "...guys like you should be rotting in hell!"

"Ha! As if I would take advice on my life choices from someone who calls them-self the 'Evil Queen.'" I have never called myself that in my entire life. He drew his sword expecting a fight, time to see if he would have one.

"Do we have a deal?" I asked no one in particular, more interested in the taste of apple wood on my tongue from my pipe.

"With you? You must be-!" A loud smack parted the fool from his consciousness and his body from his horse.

"Do with him what you will." The leader of the riders took the whatever-he-was's horse in hand, tied it to his own, and took off back to where they came from. I reached into my pocket dimension putting my pipe and book away and replaced it with a large hook with dried blood on it. My chair soon followed suit as I kick it behind me into my personal pocket dimension. I threw in his weapons while I was at it too, waiting before he was conscious before I hooked him.

"Augh." Ah. That would be now then. "AAAUUUGGGHHH!" I got him by his foot and dragged him back to the fortress by my meat hook.

The last time I had to do this I got them by their hand to they chewed it off, the time before that by their chest and they managed to pull it out, if he managed to get the hook out of his foot I'll have to come up with a new way of dragging off my enemies to their doom. Again. The incident with the dragon was just a waste for everyone involved. The fool was screaming all the way over, not in pain, or at least not all of it, something about his father. Wasn't he the one who sold him to me? Meh. As we moved closer he gradually moved onto pathetic weeping, bargaining for whatever passed for life for him using all of his earthly possessions. At the moment that didn't even include the armour he was wearing. With a wave of my arm I dropped the ladder in my pocket dimension against the wall of the fortress and dragged him up before I got out the rail spikes.

"YYYEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!"

He moved onto indignant cursing from there, honestly if you're going to try and curse someone with your dying breath you should at least quote a passage from below first: they're into stuff like that. In any case I took my chair back down and sat down to resume my puzzle while the Revoltures came to pick him apart. What was Rye going to cook for dinner again? Whatever.

"AAARRRGGGHHH!"

Annoying.

"If you guys aren't going to kill him could you at least shut him up?"

"I DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE TO BE TREATED LIKE THIS!?"

I look up from my book and glared at him with crystal clear understanding, poring rage in to his being and boring a hole through his skull with my eyes.

"You tried to kill my daughter, or if you didn't try then you nearly did which has the same result." I took my pipe out and lit up for another round. "Honestly it doesn't matter what you were trying to do only what you did, now I need to make an example out of you or all the other cowards will think that I have gone soft and try to kill me through her." I wouldn't say it wasn't personal, it was very personal and I am rarely one to lie.

In the end the scavengers smelling of decay had their fill of fresh meat and I had another corpse to pocket. Ugh. I needed to drop those off some time, people who get tortured to death makes the absolute worst undead. Finding the nearest suitable mirror location was as easy as locating a lake that the ice had frozen over, Bosheit and area immediately outside of it was covered in leylines after all so creating a temporary portal was as easy as waving my arm as the water froze over and simply walking through into my home.

"Happy Hunting?" The maid asked looking at me brow cocked.

"Nothing of the sort." I extinguished the fresh flame by holding it to my cheek, the burn regenerated a few moments later, as is usually the case with Named. "Report."

"The doctors say the shrapnel is too close to her spine to remove, she's likely to be on a medical corset for the time being, enchanted to slowly wedge the debris away from her spine to where it can be removed with greater ease. In the mean time she'll be wheel chair bound for the immediate future." I breathed deeply. Don't throttle the hired help, they're difficult to replace.

"Chair or the dojo?" The maid asked unknowing or uncaring about the rage stirring below.

"I haven't decided yet."

Dojo ultimately, I haven't had enough satisfaction from whats-his-face yet to quell my feelings of inadequacy, after that it was the floor beside Raven's bed for the rest of the night.

"Ugh. Mom?" I opened my eyes to see Raven's shadow sitting over me, the maid from the night before wheel chair in hand.

"I'm getting up, I'm getting up." I quickly moved into a standing position as I stretched and then exited the room.

This one was suppose to have medical training, she'll take her word for it since the only patient I've ever had to work on was myself, so she helped Raven into what would become her wardrobe for the month's yet to come. The two of them wheeled out a few moments later.

"By the way Night Witch, a letter came for you last night." I glared down the maid until she figured out what she did that offended me. "By the way Morgan, a letter came for you last night."

I took the letter and examined it. I smelled it before I read it, Apples.

"What does Weiss want?"

"I do not read your mail for you." The maid stated bluntly.

"Go tell Rye to make breakfast or something." I shooed the maid away as I looked through the letter's contents.

Apologies for what happened to Raven, as she should since it was her screw up that let a bomb onto school premises in the first place, a notification that she'd be coming in the days to come, because of course she did, blah blah blah I smell food.

"Do we know how... this is going to work with school in the new year?" Raven was in the middle of peeling an apple for breakfast when I walked in.

"I haven't decided that you're going back yet." Rye, blessed saint in curly brown hair and a apron that she was, had a mug full off pumpkin spice coffee waiting for me by the time I got into the kitchen.

"Is this a permanent arrangement, a until I get better arrangement or..." Raven bit off the apple as she waited for answers to her question, the silver of the corset and shade of darkness of her clothes cut well against her figure at least. Was that something Teenagers got worried over? Ugh. I'm going to have to read teen magazines now aren't I?

"One of the thing's that I will be discussing with Weiss when she gets here." I dropped the letter in front of the younger witch in the room while I put a bagel into air to toast under open flame in my hand.

"Aunt Weiss is coming to visit?" Raven looked a little excited, not for the topic of the discussion though.

"Even if I could keep her away there's business to talk about." I buttered the toasted bagel and it let out a loud crunch. Ugh. I had a nice Christmas vacation planned out, playing video games with my daughter but no. Some uppity jerk decided to be a uppity jerk and now the holiday spirit was ruined and I have to work. Ugh, annoying.

"You aren't thinking that all of this is a bother again are you?" Rye asked armed with a ladle and I bought myself a precious few moments to come up with a retort by drinking coffee.

"Yes it is. I've got a billion better things I could be doing or thinking about than nailing losers to walls or attending meetings because somebody stuck their foot out for me to step on." I decided my honest opinion with a few expletives as possible was the best way to go.

"Huu... it's precisely because of that attitude that we keep ending up in this situation." Rye stated before following up with another infamous lecture. "You are Named. Therefore by default when you do something the entire continent looks at you, nailing people who upset you to the sides of our fortresses for birds to peck at is precisely the reason why people consider you to be 'evil.'"

"I thought that was feeding them to dragons." I countered recalling the last lecture I got, and vaguely recalling the one before that. Something about Goblin fire?

"Unnecessarily cruel and over the top death's invite Heroes to come and seek retaliation for the crimes committed." Rye snapped entirely missing the point of the earlier lectures in my honest opinion.

"He blew up a school! Where was the 'hero' on a white horse come to address that gross miscarriage of justice?" I snapped in return letting the darkness seep into my eyes.

"A bomb that nearly killed a villain's daughter, and her 'collaborators.' That is the way they see it, and until such time that you make a effort to change how they perceive you that is all that's going to matter to the forces above."

"I don't care about the forces above Rye." It was the ones down here that keep inviting the angels to mind rape their populace into going on 'crusades' and it was the ones down here that keep using those crusades as justification to carve up the lands into their empires.

"The root of the problem does not come from up there. It's down here in the mud with the rest of us." Annoying. "I'm going outside and cool my head. Raven do you want to come with me?"

"Ah... sure. Just lemme grab a coat first." Well, Winter's blood wasn't as thick in her as it was in me after all.


The days sort of just roll together when you're on vacation, it's easier than you'd think to lose track of time, before you know it work pops up again.

"Morgan." Ever After's Queen appeared from the white carriage after it had rolled up to the front of her house when she wasn't looking.

"Am I dealing with Weiss or 'The Fair Maiden?'" The first was a friend but the other one? The other one nearly got her daughter killed with her negligence. Weiss's girl Apple ran into the house, she was Raven's friend and was likely concerned for her well being. Good. She could use a friend.

"Weiss. Morgan we need to..." I narrowed my glare. "...we should talk."

"Am I going to like this conversation?"

"The bombing was my fault. I didn't plant it or plan it but it did slip by us." Admission of guilt, good, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards fixing it. "But not letting Raven go back is not going to fix anything."

"And what measures are you willing to take to keep this from happening again?" Target is there and always will be, it was there since before she was even born and from creatures much worst than a group of religious fanatics, greedy merchants or whatever quandry of mortals it was that was annoying her. The question then becomes where do you put the target that people can't see or find it? The same way you hide a needle: in a giant pile of needles.

"What do you want?" My homeland to try and stop killing itself would be nice, lasting peace with other nations so that they would stop throwing themselves on the mass of living natural disasters that surrounded our nation if the gods were feeling generous, a barista who could make a cup of pumpkin spice coffee without giving me lip about how I conduct my business.

"I will be the one to make the wards for the school, and the dragon will be allowed on the premises of the school for now on." Weiss was going to retort but I wasn't having it. I didn't have the patience, didn't since my daughter got hurt. "She needs a service animal now, it just so happens that said service animal is going to be immune to most forms of damage." Weiss sighed to my perfectly sound logic.

"Only you would use a dragon for a service animal." Not true, Terriblis the II the Crippled use to ride around everywhere she went on one, till it ate her anyway.

"Is there something else you're here to talk about? Because if not I have a Yule log to make and a den of nightmares to dive through to do it." Rye was nice enough to have pack of jerky made for her when she broke for the day.

"Normal people don't pick fights with Demons for their holiday shopping Morgan." Weiss stated the obvious while rubbing her temples.

"It's not a demon it's a demi-god, and I'm not going to fight it I'm going to avoid it like a plague." If we balked away from squatter's from other worlds living in our yards then we would have moved centuries ago, because it's a guarantee that they wouldn't have.


It was thus that I went out to the Winter Woods, where the offspring of the lady of the lake and the king of storms stayed, and worst things too. I had nothing to fear from the first, wolves feared fire and with good reason, doubly so when their fur is made out of ice and snow. Normally she'd have Raven to catch the branch for her, but she was crippled right now, this place was too dangerous for the current her. Instead I set the cloth to float in the air while I climbed the Yew tree and pulled out the stone saw from my pocket dimension to cut off the branch, the branch fell down and was caught by the cloth. Then the sound of crunching snow echoed out and the monster who lived here emerged.

"Damn it!" I jumped down and took what I came for as I ducked behind a tree while the horned god came into the clearing.

The crunch of hooves on the snow echoed out as a large hairy hand used the tree I was hiding behind for support while antlered head with bells hanging from it poked out through the side. Normal people didn't have to deal with demi-gods for their holiday shopping, but normal people didn't have to deal with the horned god if his wife doesn't get the offering she wants. That was what people had decided being The Night Witch was about after all, dealing with all the critters living in the dark corners of the world. But fate had been kind to her now and then and so the deer centaur left carrying his pregnant wife on his back, I on the other hand still had to go fetch some mistletoe from this forsaken place before the new year came.

"Grr..." Of course she had to fight ice wolves now. Why not?

I stood up and brushed myself off as I glared with contempt at the icy creatures that had meant to surround me, they were so skinny that their bones could be seen through the snowy fur.

"Cute. Bind!" The dogs all yelped in surprise as my aspect wormed it's way through their minds and commanded control over their partially Genie biology. "Sit." And the dogs did as they were ordered. "Take me to mistletoe." And so I found the second thing I came to the Winter woods for, and then took my escort back to the nearest lake suitable for a mirror portal. "Leave this place and resume your business." And so I returned home.

I sat in the dining room while Apple and Raven played the latter's games in the living room, Weiss understood the purpose with which I braided the mistletoe around the branch, though not the reasoning.

"Why do you pay tribute to these creatures?" We all have our vices, mine was smoke and Weiss's drink, both were taken in moderation or so we tell ourselves.

"They're horrible yes. But without tribute they'd be much worst." And for this reason I threw the Winter Goddess's tribute into the fire place and watched it burn. "You, for all your political clout, only need concern yourself with the affairs of mortals. This is how we negotiate in Bosheit." The Spring Goddess would remember the tribute given for her mother and thus those under her command would become more amicable until she grew into winter again, if only dealing with all the minor deities were so easy. "We throw kindling on the fire, and we watch the world burn."