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Chapter 2: The Apprentice
"The Part you fail to realise Sir Knight, is that there's no one in Bosheit who calls them self the 'Evil Queen' with a serious face, so your little visit over there would be a waste of your time and theirs." Weiss White to the White Knight during the 13th crusade.
Ever After High was created as much to be a school as it was a fortress. The most influential noblemen's children, wealthy merchants and respected generals all were sending their children here, so by necessity it was to be the hardest point they could find between Ever After and Bosheit. At the same time it was meant to be a school, which be necessity meant that it had to be a welcoming environment for it's students and staff. The point of compromise was reached about halfway up the mountain: where at the request of the Fair Maiden the Night Witch ripped several disused buildings and their foundations out of the ground flew them up the mountain ten stories, and then dropped them where they were then subjected to repairs utilising the services of a Dao and several trolls so now the random assortment of buildings that were little more than rubble when they got here were actually not that bad now. To the south was a series of winding path's in a zig zag fashion trying as hard as possible to go straight up the mountain and by all appearances failing miserably, to the north was the mountain top forest where the end result of a group of genies plowing a punch of bunch of animals lived mostly by tearing each other apart. Evidently someone had decided this place wasn't hard enough before because now on either side of the school was a check point and a dragon Stable. Some people would've called the mountain and forest over kill but then the bomb went off so apparently it was decided that they needed more. And while I could appreciate not having any more bombs smuggled onto the premises, but having this to two bit dwarf thug rifling through my bag with all of my clothes in it was just plain old creepy.
"Do you mind?" I allowed Nevermore to rise to her full height standing on the back of her tail as she loomed of the guard and he looked up in mortal terror at the mass of nightmares and scales. "I'd like to get to my room now."
"Ugh... yes, you should do that Miss Queen. Apologies for the inconvenience." The dwarf correctly concluded this wasn't his problem to deal with so zipped the bag back up as quickly as possible while Nevermore carried me side saddle style towards the converted apartment complex that had become the girls dormitory.
Evidently her mother had forgotten that she was a cripple because she was on the top floor, or so she thought until the elevator appeared to take her up stairs. I climbed inside together with Nevermore and we proceeded to the pent house suite at the top of the building. Her mother had already been here, or she had all this stuff installed before the rest had come, there was exposed brick for the walls, the clay each even it's own shield enchantment tied together with strings of runes instead of one large one so that the wards would have more give before they broke then one solid ward. A fire place had been installed here in what was probably blatant violation of most health and safety laws, suspended inside of the hearth was a large cauldron presumably for brewing potions, it was at the very least unlikely that her mother expected her to cook in here. The bathroom had a sun roof, or more likely a moon roof knowing her mother's personal preferences, a glass cut ceiling designed to take large amounts of moon light and channel into the a bath with a minor water spirit bound inside and a purifying herbal cocktail that would clean the water with every use because it wasn't designed to be drained, only store power for Raven to soak up and align herself with the cosmos as a whole so that she can manipulate the primordial forces of nature better. The fact that said measures would be equally effective at removing filth from her body was apparently of only secondary concern. Aside from that there was a attached greenhouse leading to what use to be a balcony full of rare plants used as potion ingredients-who even does this kind of stuff!?
"Mom. There's such thing as too much." Because I just know she set up a way to spy on me in here. The Painting or the statue? Too obvious. In my room? Well it was big enough considering it was mostly taken up by a bed big enough for me and Nevermore to sleep in together. For someone who reportedly abhorred luxury this felt like a lot of luxury coming from her mother.
"I'm going to have to take my mind off of this situation immediately." So Raven took out her itinerary for her classes. Ugh. Politics, she wasn't even in line for the throne of Bosheit and people were making her take politics! Alchemy and spell crafting at least was something she was actually interested in. Gym? For a cripple? Was this a joke? Well I suppose that it could be for physical rehabilitation what else? Common, the root language of the three major languages on the continent so made sense, care for magical creatures she can understand that, mathematics was also promising sounding. Then Raven saw the door open and Apple came in, lovely as ever.
Snow White reportedly had pale white skin, Night black hair and blood red lips I however argued that if the two would stand side by side around the same age then Apple would be proven the lovelier specimen with golden blond hair, tanned skin and bright blue eyes but that was beside the point. What was she doing in my room?
"Raven? What are you doing here?" I responded to my question out of Apple's lips by showing her my room key, which matched hers, a short exploration showed another floor, because of course there was, which contained Apple's room.
"My mother is way too paranoid." Well, Apple was actually in line for Ever After's throne so it only made sense that she got the nearly indestructible room too. No actually it made more sense that Apple would get the nearly indestructible room, that made my case the abnormal one didn't it? "Let's get to class before I go mad trying to figure my mother out."
"I understand that you all are quite shaken up concerning what happened at the winter solstice party. But life moves on, I hope all of you haven't interpreted a explosive end as having a excuse for not having your winter work done now have you?" Mrs. Yaga, the crotchety old fossil, was ever the one to take on her role as guide and mentor of the young and restless. Which somehow landed her as their politics teacher. The fact that she had a no questions rule stemming from her curse that made it so she aged a year for every question she answered did not help at all. Home work, and the lack there of, was passed down to the front of the class where Mrs. Yaga spelled it into a neat pile before moving on with their lives.
"Now than, we will begin by briefly summarising the history of Bosheit." A map of the two countries was lowered from the top of the black board at the front of the classroom showing the mass of mountains, forests and lakes that was my homeland.
"The area that would become known as Bosheit, also known locally as Malice, had the unfortunate feature of having several genies bound to the land by a Cabal of sorcerers who were trying to harness their power, resulting in a situation that can best be summarised as... four tigers stuck in a bag together, who all really want to get out which is what led to the name Malice. The very land, lakes and air of Bosheit hates us all and wants us to suffer." Oh yeah, because that made me feel better about going to school here.
"Both in a attempt to escape their confines and towards the end of making people suffer in this manner the four Genies in Question, known as the Mountain King, the Lady of the Lake, the Storm King and the Fire Lady, all well, impregnate the inhabitants of the lands which not only include it's people but also it's wildlife."
Which in turn resulted in a whole host of horrors such as wolves with ice coming off of their bodies instead of hair, birds that could generate their own winds, and bears with a natural stony carapace. What 'fun' her home land was to live in!
"One sorceress attempted to rectify this, entered a communication with the four genies in a attempt to make them stop trying to kill her people. They wanted suffering, so she offered hers and hence the Name Ruler of Malice was born, though it would be erroneously translated to 'Evil Queen' as they interacted with outsiders." Why anyone would want to come here was beyond Raven's understanding truth be told. "To touch further upon what we learned in the month's prior to the winter break, we must first touch upon the kingdom's under."
Mrs. Yaga waved her finger through the air and drew out a map of the continent, and the seven Dwarven cities that dotted it, connected by underground tunnels one of which happened to pass right underneath Bosheit, since the Kingdom of Svartlheim itself was underneath Ever After.
"As you all know-" Even she knew that wasn't true. "-A Dwarf got into a particular scuffle with one of the more influential mage lords of Bosheit concerning some jewels the first had stolen from the latter, which in turn resulted in a attempt to buy them back from the Dwarf using a rather... unusual creature." Mrs. Yaga replaced the map of the continent's underground with that of what could best be described as a giant meat ball with tentacles sticking off to the side. Is that what we call that now? "This is a deep spawn, a creature with the power to consume other creatures and produce one perfect clone of them and nine imperfect ones, all fully grown, for the Dwarfs who have something of a fertility problem this was a major boon." One clone of me, plus Nine grossly deformed versions of myself with the mental capacity of children at the cost of all of my earthly flesh was not my idea of a boon. "What the dwarfs of Svartlheim didn't realise at the time though was that six identical creatures had been delivered to the other Dwarfen cities, so their attempts to expand and colonise clashed with one another and the 'Spawn Wars' ensued."
The meat ball was replaced by the image of a massive battlefield, well battle tunnel, again underground.
"With the deep spawn the Dwarfs could produce a limitless supply of soldiers and send them out to battle each other. As long as they could retrieve the bodies and get them back to the deep spawn they could continuously produce more and more soldiers to fight the battle." Geez they ripped off a vicious and spiteful Warlock and he responded by delivering them the one thing they needed to take over the entire continent, what could've possibly go wrong? "The Spawn Dwarfs eventually broke off from their mainline counterparts resulting in them forcibly sealing off the tunnels, still raging their civil war below even as it devolved into a sea of pointless violence, disease and cannibalism. Which now leads us to the second reason Bosheit is known as the Land of Malice: The Hells." The image was replaced by the sight of a new horror, a hole ripped open in the fabric of reality resulting in creatures spilling out of it, dead were rising from the graves while the Dwarfs mutated into monsters.
"Three things happened to the Spawn Dwarfs, the order we're not sure about. We believe the number of dead quickly escalated beyond what the Spawn are capable of consuming and the end result was naturally occurring undead of a variety of flavours. Additionally it's believed the Fire Lady and the Mountain King somehow injected themselves into the Dwarf Spawn resulting in Fire, Earth and Lava variants, meanwhile the constant violence, disease and cannibalism met the conditions for minor breaches into three separate hell's allowing demons and devils to spill in to further twist the creatures below while large numbers of the Dwarf Spawn moved into and formed colonies inside of the Hells in question. This is significant to us for when these mutated abominations started making their way to the surface and we had to deal with them. We studied the creatures as we fought them, as we had to, and eventually figured out how to make use of them." Hence how Bosheit got a reputation for Demons, Devils, Undead and all things evil, something that would bite us in the arse hard.
"Though the existence of demons and Devils was new to us at the time to others, specifically to those above, they were not unfamiliar with their hated enemies. They sent their mortal minions, and the first crusade would be launched." And wasn't that a blood bath? Because as it turns out the psychopathic genies happen to like people invading their private areas even less then they like people living there, and when you manage to figure out how to fight the land, water and air all at once please let us know. "The failed remnants of this crusade were settled into the lands of Ever After, and named such because of how long they intended to stay: Forever After." Because apparently the 'good nations' enjoyed puns a great deal. "Ever After has long since prospered under a economy of constant conflict with Bosheit, and a long standing alliance with the dwarfen kingdom directly below them."
Because as it turns out it's hard to build a civilisation entirely underground, sure there's lots of precious metals and gemstones but there's no where to grow any food!
"Ever After benefited from the dwarfs strong military and technological base, the dwarfs got to benefit from access to Ever After's excess food stores and prayer from the house of light." Yeah. Lets see how long that lasts since the ones above seem to hate our guts. "The twelve subsequent crusades have continuously drawn in more forces of good and evil to these to countries as time progresses, making these countries the most racially diverse locations in the entire known world." This world, the next few over... "In more recent times, the work done by Bosheit's Chief General the Night Witch and Ever After's Fair Maiden Weiss White has managed to sponsor a unprecedented era of peace between our lands. Currently Bosheit's biggest export consists of a variety of materials with inherent magical properties stemming from centuries of unique magical energies sunk into the landscape from a variety of sources." Ah yes. Come one come all to the land of the damned! Buy two Lava Wolf Skins and we'll throw a free undead minion for free! It doesn't exactly help any that centuries of being buried under horrors from another world mixing with our own and racist beliefs stemming from that hadn't reigned in our mad scientist tendencies and perverse sense of curiosity one bit.
"Similarly Ever After boasts one of the largest grain and cattle exports in the entire world." Including into Bosheit, because as it turns out when seventy percent of the land you're trying to cultivate actively hates you and the other thirty percent is being held in a choke hold by magic it's really really hard to produce edible food products. Go figure. "This concludes the recap for returning students." The witch clapped her hands in time for the bell indicating the end of first period to go off. "I will be holding a study session after class to help all the students finish their winter work."
Translation: all you lazy bums who didn't get your work done over the winter break now have detention with me and your other teachers, don't keep us waiting. Raven was only half paying attention, she knew better then almost anyone why everyone wanted to kill her, hells she had the flipping Night Witch for a mother, does she really need to be here at all? Well, there's socialisation, she didn't want to end categorisation the entire world into 'interesting' and 'annoying' like her mother does but refuses to admit as much.
"Raven, are you coming?" Apple turned to look at me indicating that class was leaving.
"I'll come later, I want to check on something first." I patted Nevermore to indicate movement as she left through the door, and I then pulled her away from my next class and in another direction.
"I'll come with you." I rolled my eyes, now would be the part where Mom would glare at somebody who said something that displeased her in order to make them leave her alone.
"I'll catch up later. I want to do this on my own." I on the other hand was not a rude jerk to my friends.
"Alright." Apple knelled down and rubbed Nevermore by either side of her face. "Keep our girl out of trouble. Okay?"
Nevermore growled pleasantly as she carried me to where I wanted to go. I didn't know what they were planning on using the auditorium for now, considering the giant hole in it, and the bits of it pointing threateningly at my spine. It was supposed to be condemned before they fixed it, maybe they would just do that again?
"That should be where the blast started." A black vaguely star shaped blast pattern with most of the pointy parts aimed at where I was sitting at the year end assembly, but why weren't they pointing in the other direction too? "Let's go back stage girl." Nevermore growled in displeasure, they were suppose to be at her next class right now. "We won't take long." And so, reluctantly, Nevermore carried me out to the back stage. "Yep that'll do it." Two chunks of steel, welded together in a corner and lodged in the wall when the bomb they had meant to redirect went off. It didn't make me feel better, knowing I had been targeted, knowing I had been attacked. God damn it you people, why won't you understand that we don't want to fight you!? Isn't bad enough your antics have driven Mom half mad? Now you've got to come after me too!? I came here to Learn not to expose some target on my back for you people to shoot at!
"I can see I am not the only one who has developed a unhealthy fascination with this place." I turned around to face the voice, old man grim was pudgier then I remember and walked with a cane now. Oh sure, he was standing on at point blank range and all he got for it was another leg and a beer gut.
"If this is meant to be some pity party..."
"I came here because you are missing your class and I had cause to be concerned." Huu. Don't rip the nice principal's head off on your first day back Raven. "It would appear to be more than I had thought as well."
"And what's that suppose to mean?" I asked cocking a suspicious brow at the old man.
"Hmm. Yes, I'll escort you back to your class. Do remember to let your teachers know if you notice anything different about your classmates please." I shot the cryptic old man a look before we carried on to my next class.
"Morning Headmaster." Rumpelstiltskin was a goblin, all green and warts and nasty habits, didn't live long that lot as I understand it, not without some pretty nasty alchemical concoctions and magic rituals any way, or by being Named. Which he had tapped, a lot, hence the words Alchemy lab on the door.
"I hope you don't mind me borrowing Miss Queen for a spell. I thought she needed to get some closure." The Headmaster stated while the goblin's eyes went wide with surprise.
"Yeah... I guess she got some. Alright you get to your seat, we made space for the monster over there." I went over to a section of the alcove that had a chunk of the desk and the one behind it removed to make room for the mass of scaly flesh I had been sitting on all day. He started his recap lesson but I felt... something go up my spine, or what was left of it. I had a look around and picked out the eyes on me. Daring had apparently been watching me the entire time I was inside of the class room, charming butt pain, wasn't it enough that he had cheated on Apple when he slept with Rosabella was he making eyes on me too.
"The Beast..."
Words I knew not the source of trembled in the back of my mind, cause I sure as dung wasn't the one who thought them. I felt more eyes on me as I looked around the room. Sparrow thought himself a merry prankster when in fact he he was more of a generalised pain in my butt who sneaked schnapps into the punch at the winter solstice party and the entire thing had to be thrown out.
"Generous Thief..."
What the hell? Do I got ghosts whispering in the back of my head now? I swear if this is one of Faybelle's schemes.
"Raven are you okay?" I locked eyes with Apple and she with me and both of our eyes went wide in surprise.
"Heiress..."
"Apprentice?"
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