A/N: This chapter contains non-graphic Isle awfulness. If you can name the obscure New Jersey Cold Case that inspired the Devil's Gate Ritual, you'll get massive internet brownie points. I apologise, as always, for the delay, real life is rough; but rest assured that this story will be finished, despite the sporadic updates.
Present Day: 31 Days After Coronation
"..and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon."
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu
For the second time that week, King Adam awoke in a cold sweat, drenched in the stuff, with his pillow and nightshirt soaked, and his wife sleeping restlessly beside him. For the second time that week, he crawled out of bed and fixed the blankets so that Belle wouldn't notice that his warmth was gone for another several minutes at least, and slid his feet into the padded slippers by his bed, making his way to the washroom.
When he turned on the bathroom light, a haggard face stared back at him from the palatial golden vanity (it cost more than most citizens made in a year); red rimmed eyes, and five o'clock shadow that he hadn't shaved from yesterday. He'd awoken from the most horrible dream, where he'd been chased through the narrow alleys and dangerous roads of the Isle of the Lost. He'd been raised as a Prince, and though tiny vestiges of his beastly strength sometimes came through for him in emergencies or times of anger, he was more or less defenseless here.
He'd been chased by an angry mob of villains, all out for his blood, and despite the utter terror in his bones, the chase was better than the quiet moments when he lost them. In the stillness, Adam had peered silently into the windows of the ramshackle buildings, curious about how the other half lived. He knew from periodic study of the magical map that he was in downtown, where conditions were much worse, and the heroes rarely used the map to spy, because so few infamous villains lived here. The theory had long been destroyed that villains usually loved their children, and it was a myth that Auradon kings and queens told their children to keep them from asking questions.
But because no one's villain lived in downtown, only common murderers and theives and rapists, no one really knew about conditions there. In his dream, Adam had looked through the windows of the houses (open, to let in the cool night air, with mosquito nets if they were lucky) and he'd been horrified. Parents down here beat their children, raped them, used them as slaves instead of treasured family. Not that some parents in uptown didn't do that too, but like the... Assault that Ben had almost seen when he was looking at the map as a ten year old, most heroes looked away before they really saw anything. Tonight, Adam saw everything.
Rinsing his face off, he growled. It was just a dream, just a figment of his imagination. There was no way on Earth that anyone could treat their kids like that, and he was convinced he'd just been riled up by that Gothel girl's comments on the news when she arrived from the Isle, talking about how her mother tried to kill her and Mal had saved them all at one point or another. It was all a ploy for pity, he thought. An impossible story from a known liar.
Nothing more than that.
It was the first official meeting of the coven in months, ever since Mal and her inner circle had left the Isle for bright and golden Auradon.
"So, what have you been up to while we were gone, oh glorious leader?" Freddie teased, while eyeing the luxurious dorm that Jay and Carlos shared. The boys' dorm was bigger, so they held the meeting here, and Mal glowed with pride as she opened Carlos' wardrobe to a magically expanded workroom and gave them the tour.
"Welcome to my new temporary Auradon workshop." Mal explained, and indicated Evie's potion lab to the side, all assembled from parts and pieces nicked from the old chemistry lab that had been disused, ever since dear King Ben had paid to have a whole new state of the art classroom outfitted for the students.
"What's the ritual you've got set up?" Hadie asked, pointing to the lines and symbols that were laid out in the middle of the room. Evie smiled, and she was the one who answered this time, giddy with excitement.
"The Devil's Gate."
The three new arrivals reacted with various levels of shock and surprise. Mal had talked about this ritual before, had even drawn up a rough draft schematic for it, but she'd never settled on certain aspects, and it required such a power level that it just wasn't feasible on the Isle. But no one could deny that it was theoretically the most powerful ritual they'd ever attempted.
In the center of the room, was a violet-painted trapezoid that sparked with magic. There was a straw effigy within the coffin-like trapezoid, with its larger part near the dummy's head, and smaller part by its feet. Even the newest arrivals recognized one of King Adam's well-known royal blue ties around the effigy's neck, with a golden embroidered Beast Family Crest as the identifying marker. Around the top of the trapezoid was a semi circle of exactly seven stones, each painted with a rune in the same magical violet ink that had painted the trapezoid. On either side of the trapezoid was a golden cross, painted on the ground. To the right was a normal one, and to the left, an inverted one.
"This is... Impressive..." Ginny murmured, leaning down to get a better look at the runes. The effigy looked to have been splattered with blood, and it smelled of rust and pepper. "Did you use war water on the straw doll? That's almost overkill."
"Nothing is overkill when it's life or death stakes." Mal answered, somewhat bitterly. "Besides, I've never done magic this side of the barrier before, and I wasn't sure how much to use. There was only the four of us to charge the ritual after all."
Freddie recoiled at the smell. War water was traditionally a voodoo potion, but she'd taught it to Mal, who might have been the first fae to ever learn her family's closely guarded recipe.
Three rusted nails in a bottle of water. Salt of the earth, cayenne pepper. Wait for the water to get good and rusty and red, like blood. Shake well, and put it on your enemy's threshold, or drip it on their footprints, or splash it in their face like acid, and it's the magickal equivalent of declaring war with all the armies of your friends on the other side.
"We're here now, Mal." Hadie smiled, cracking her knuckles. "We're here, and we'll help charge it again. Since it's still here, I assume it's a perpetual ritual that can be charged again?"
"Yep." Jay replied, yawning, and glancing at the ritual area like it had personally offended him. "Unfortunately, we can't tinker with it now. We've got school to go to."
"How are we supposed to... Act around them?" Ginny asked hesitantly, and with no small amount of contempt in her voice. There was no denying the fact that she looked down on these kids who'd lived a sheltered life, and who'd spoken about Mal and Evie and Jay and Carlos when they first came over on their talk shows, broadcast even to the Isle over ANN. If one of them made an effort to treat her like a human being and not like a plague or an endangered animal from the zoo, she might change her mind, but until then, she would sneer at them in the privacy of the dorms to her heart's content.
"Act afraid, like traumatized little kids who can't quite understand the world they've been thrust into." Carlos murmured, smirking off into the distance, as if recalling his own first day. "Talk about how bad life on the Isle was, if it benefits you, and take no shit from anyone. They expect a certain level of snippiness and sarcasm from us."
At that pronouncment, the new arrivals relaxed a little.
"Good." Freddie snorted. "I don't think I can act all that well. I ain't a brown-noser like some people."
Evie raised her eyebrows. "Something happened?"
"Celia attacked again, the day we got Ben's proclamation." Hadie replied, examining her nails with an air of disinterest. "Freddie's been kind of pissy that it seemed like she was running away when we left."
"Hey, shut your fucking mouth." Freddie called from the other side of the group, and Mal rolled her eyes, holding up two hands for silence as her eyes glowed a neon warning.
"Listen up, bitches and bastards." Mal announced, using their personal gang slang for ladies and gentlemen. (Because people on the Isle could have a code of honor, but not even Evie could be considered a proper lady.)
"We're all here today because I have a plan. I've always had a plan, even when you all only had each other." Mal looked to every face in the room, and saw that they were listening. "In all my years as leader of this group, I've never steered you wrong. Now it's time for you to trust me. You fuck up my plan, and I'll make you regret being born."
Not one of them, even her closest friends, doubted that she would do it, and none of them would let her down. Not only because they owed her their lives (they were villains, a life debt was easier to ignore than a broken promise), but because they each wanted to be here, their own little slice of paradise, and no one would keep them from it.
"Please pass the message on to Dizzy for me." Mal smiled softly at the end of her speech. "About how to behave here in Auradon, I mean. Even though she isn't a member of the coven, she's still in our gang, and under my protection."
"I'll make sure of it." Freddie replied. She was rooming with Dizzy for this year, when technically the younger girl should be in a different dorm. The staff didn't want to separate the new Isle arrivals though, so Dizzy was currently rooming with the older students.
"Good luck on the first day of school." Evie chirped, with a mischeivous smirk. "This time, you'll actually need to pay attention in your classes to pass them."
Her words were met with a terrible chorus of groans.
Jane had such great potential, Mal thought, as they sat together in the library for their free period. They seemed to be working together on algebra, but Mal was really helping Jane channel her fae magic. They were two different species of faery, she and Jane, but despite the fundamental difference in magic of the seelie and unseelie courts, the same basic principles applied. Mal could sense in Jane's aura that her meditation had been working, and the magic she'd been fighting to suppress her whole life was beginning to bubble to the surface, wild and chaotic.
Is this what mymagic would be like, if I was never sent to the Isle? Mal thought, and the words crept into her stomach like ice water. Ever since she'd gotten to Auradon, casting spells had been easier, but she felt so drained, and her magic wasn't like Jane's - like a rolling, living, angry thing, with mana to spare and leaping to her call whenever she wanted it. Mal's magic was more of a slow poison, a building rage, a toxic grudge that never went away or lessened, no matter how many years were put between it and the event that had created it. Jane had so much fucking raw power that her problem was keeping the damn stuff under control, and Mal was deeply jealous of her.
I could be like that too, if Adam hadn't robbed me of my birthright. She couldn't help but think, and the envy whispered in the back of her mind like a devil on her shoulder. (Her own magic levels suddenly spiked, the runes on the Devil's Gate lit up, and across Auradon, King Adam was struck with the worst case of heartburn he'd ever experienced.)
"I get the sense you're not exactly pleased to be here." Jane murmured, just when Mal was in peak brooding-mode, and getting ready to excuse herself. "I... I don't blame you. I'm probably an awful student."
"You're really not." Mal sighed. "I taught everyone in my group of friends on the Isle, and you show the most raw talent out of anyone I've ever met, let alonetaught."
"If that's the case, I'd hate to see how you treat the talentless ones." Jane quipped dryly. It wasn't that she didn't believe Mal - that girl rarely joked about anything, and she was proud to be able recognize her sarcasm. That last statement contained none of her patented snark, so Jane could confidently say that her purple-haired classmate was actually impressed with her. It didn't explain how grumpy she was acting.
"It really isn't you, Jane. It's just..." Mal searched for a metaphor that she could understand. "You know malnourished children? I know there are none in Auradon," Or so they'd have you believe.
"But just imagine it for a moment. Picture Carlos. He wasn't fed nearly often enough as a child, and because of that, he'll probably never grow to his full potential. He'll always be... Stunted." Mal explained.
"Like a plant that doesn't get enough room to grow." Jane murmured. "If it's roots can't expand, it can't get bigger."
"That's how my magic is, because of how I grew up behind the barrier." Mal swallowed, and stared up at the ceiling, her favorite trick to keep tears from falling. "Stunted. I'll never be as powerful as you, even though I'm the heir to the Unseelie court. I should be as strong as you are."
"Is that why you don't hide your pointed ears or the gleam in your eye when you feel the magic?" Jane asked, feeling the ends of her newsboy haircut that hid her fae ears, and the lumpy blue dress that kept her wings from getting crunched against her.
"It's part of it." Mal swallowed when her voice cracked, and she forced a smile. "You have wings, right?"
"Yeah." Jane muttered. "I hate them."
"Don't." Mal hissed with malice. "Be glad you have them. You're lucky. Some of us were denied our birthright because of your mother's magic."
"I - I -" Jane sniffed. "I thought you just forced them under your clothes, like I do -"
"Oh please." Mal laughed, clear and pure like a bell in the winter, when it echoes in the valley long after the bell ringer has left. It bounced around just like that in Jane's mind, and made her scalp tingle. "If I had wings, I wouldn't be able to hide them if I wanted to. They'd be longer than my arms, mottled brown like my mother's, or Raven black, like my uncle Diaval's. They'd be big enough for me to soar into the air, and not just for decoration."
"Mal, please." Jane whimpered. "I'm so tired of being plain and average. You might not have wings, or the same volumes of mana that I have, but you almost don't even need magic to do what you do!"
"First things first - you're gonna have to stop whining and simpering like a baby." Mal explained, eyes flashing with magic. "I understand it's hard, life is hard for all of us in different ways, but you can't show that it hurts."
Jane's eyes were swimming, and Mal tilted her chin up.
"Look at the ceiling without moving your head, and try not to blink." Mal smiled, a bit more gently now. "My mother taught me how to keep from crying when I was very young."
Jane did as she was told, and obeyed Mal's orders, also recalling what Evie had told her about putting on a smile, even when you didn't feel like it.
"A big part of your problem, Jane," Mal began almost conversationally, trying to ease into her next topic. "Is that you have too much power with no where to go. It just so happens that I have a little project in mind that could use a little flair from a talented fairy."
"It isn't dangerous, is it?" Jane asked warily.
"Would that make a difference?" Mal asked, raising a violet A/N: This chapter contains non-graphic Isle awfulness. If you can name the obscure New Jersey Cold Case that inspired the Devil's Gate Ritual, you'll get massive internet brownie points. I apologise, as always, for the delay, real life is rough; but rest assured that this story will be finished, despite the sporadic updates.