-2-
The mortal girl eyed her with squinting eyes and lips covered in slowly drying blood. Her skin was white, whiter than, perhaps, some other mortals the Queen had been able to watch and follow many years ago, back when the treaty hadn't been created, back when creatures of the forest could come and go as they pleased. Her clothes were dirty but still spoke of someone born within royalty and that made Regina bare her teeth, letting the shadows and smoke disappear, making her look more real, holding a physical weight on the realm the blonde was able to see instead than feeling part of each leaf and bug that inhabited the forest around them.
Glancing quickly at where the seal had been, she narrowed her eyes at the traces of magic still coating the air. The enchantment had been broken. That much she had known when one of her hearts, the will-o-wisp, had fallen to the earth. Seeing it, however, made it much more real.
"You."
The blonde mortal had finally been able to find her voice; soft and deep, it hold a trace of the dizziness that was probably still overtaking her. At Regina's back the creatures that hadn't run away, afraid of her wrath, snickered and came closer, eyes lighting the forest floor in grays and reds.
"You aren't…" The blonde swallowed as Regina arched a brow, the sap that covered her body transforming ever so slowly, turning less liquid, less malleable, until something resembling leather and silk began to form. An appearance she had taken many moons ago; back when humanity was something desired, expected. The carriage at her back, one the mortal hadn't yet seen, trembled as it felt the magic that oozed out of her, calming and yet as black as the night. "…real. You can't be."
They didn't have time for pleasantries, the Queen thought, the wild hunt would be out shortly. Their power not hers to control.
"I can assure you, mortal, that I am real." She asked her voice to carry the chill of an autumn breeze as she rose one hand, beckoning the woman closer. She was curious. At least a part of her was. It didn't happen every day that a mortal was able to leave behind the paths made by their kind, finding a place that was supposed to be secluded and invisible for her. "Rise now."
The girl seemed a second away from scrambling away but, ultimately, she clenched her fists and, bringing with her dust and mud, she began to rose, pieces of dried vegetation adhering to her clothes. Blue was one of the few fairies still visible for the Queen and she winced at the damage done to the verdigris that covered her, that had created her, back when magic had been that strong. Regina, however, remained undaunted as the blonde pocketed her dagger, the distasteful thing glinting silver for a second, under the Queen's watchful gaze.
Waiting until the blonde was looking at her, slightly taller than what she had first thought, Regina tilted her head, the static of a summer storm what now filled her voice as she spoke.
"Do you realize what you have done?" Her voice didn't fill the clearing. She didn't need it to. Her tone was powerful enough for the fairies to kneel as well as for the human to swallow, knees wobbling as she, quite surprisingly, managed to resist her power. "Entering here." Regina began, eyes narrowed. "Breaking the treaty. Unleashing a Chernabog."
The blonde gaped at her, looking at her back momentarily before turning back at her. The doublet she wore was dirty, but the movement made the slightly golden thread that someone had interwoven on the fabric itself to glint. Someone, Regina thought with a witty smirk, still knew the stories. Even if the woman in front of her was useless.
"A treaty." The human mumbled, running a hand down her tresses, her dirty fingers sticky with caked mud and blood. "You… the stories are real?"
It was Regina's time to feel confusion crawling up her veins as the dress she wore shivered, answering to her sudden surprise.
"Stories." She wheezed between tightly clenched teeth. "That's what we have become, isn't it? Stories you mortals like to feign they aren't real."
The mortal eyed at her, eyes widened and mouth open. All of a sudden, at their right, the sound of a horn was heard, fog and the wet stickiness of upcoming rain beginning to fill the clearing they were in.
"What's that?" The mortal asked, turning promptly towards were the sound came. A mistake of course. The wild hunt always appeared from the opposite side their horn was heard.
"Nothing that should concern you." The Queen muttered, snapping her fingers, nails black as coal as a sudden purple spark grew between her fingertips. Like a puppet without strings, the mortal fell to the ground again, eyes closing.
"Your majesty." Blue whispered, fearful. The horn was becoming closer as well as the trepidation that seemed to fill the forest. The hunt had felt its prey.
Turning towards her, Regina eyed the creature as well as the nightmares that pulled her carriage, their inhuman eyes looking at her from their skeletal form, close enough to a mortal horse but not exactly. Never enough.
The faery was waiting, as well as the others that were beginning to mimetise around her, not wanting to be the ones present when the hunt eventually appeared.
"What should we do?" Asked the creature, the question beneath that one obvious and loud. "We could probably bring her to the forest limits."
Regina shook her head. Not tonight. Not with the hunt so close. Even if she liked to think she had given her back to the mortal world there was something still binding her to it after all. With one fluid movement she climbed to her carriage, looking at the still form of the mortal still at the soil at her feet.
"Bring her in." She said, her form beginning to dissolve inside the carriage. Around her she could hear the whispers of the fairies. Not a single mortal had ever mounted the Queen's carriage. "Once the sun is out we will leave her at the limits. Tonight, however…" She didn't finish the sentence; she didn't need to after all.
By the time the forest floor was covered in gas and glimmering fog, tentacles of darkness swallowing the little light the moon was able to channel through the thick leaves and branches, nothing but the broken seal welcomed the party of spectral, bloodlust creatures that appeared out of thin air, veins as blue as water and gold leaves covering their form the only thing visible under mortal eyes. With a collective roar, they all stared at the spot the mortal had been.
They knew they had lost.
Emma felt the return of her senses as a slow trickle that made her wince. Opening her eyes slightly, eyes protesting, she needed a couple of seconds until the tremulous blue light that floated above her became clear enough for her to take on her surroundings. She wasn't in the forest anymore however, that much was clear. Or, at least, she wasn't where she had first been, the absence of mud and water telling enough. Beneath her hands there was only wood, soft and seemingly to have been slowly carved into with gentle movements, gentler than any carpenter would be able on her parents' castle.
Groaning and licking her lips as she felt the cupric taste of dried blood on them, she swallowed thickly, wincing again as she felt her throat impossibly dry.
"You have water at your side." A feminine voice said at her back, soft but cutting. "I remember our magic making your kind thirsty."
Emma turned slightly, narrowing her eyes at the figure that stood on one side of the oval-shaped room. Even without any windows to speak of, the room was deeply illuminated with the aid of the globules that floated silently a couple feet above. The figure was in one slightly more shadowed corner however, and, from where Emma sat, only her profile was slightly visible; the sharp lines of her face blurry as a sudden wave of nausea threatened to overtake her once more.
"You." She managed to rasp, the memories of the clearing coming back to her. She felt the same dizziness than before, mixed with a burst of panic. She had heard the stories, she had known them by heart and yet, faced with the reality of them being something else than mere tales, she felt like her mind was about to break.
It was something they could do after all, right? Turn one mad; force them to forget who they were.
The figure shook with a mirthless laugh and turned, holding on her hands what seemed to be a handful of ash she promptly scattered, not a spec of it dirtying her fingers.
She looked strangely human, Emma found herself thinking, and yet terrible on her beauty, as if something she wasn't supposed to be looking at. The dress she wore glimmered like freshly poured tar and, for a moment, she wondered if it wasn't blood.
She didn't seem all that impressed with her though, one brow arched as she pointed at the wooden cup Emma hadn't realized that was there.
"Drink." She repeated again, a strange accent on her voice, holding something there that felt like power to Emma's tired mind. Perhaps it was, she thought while turning and picking the bowl up, stopping at mid-movement as she remembered the warnings: "Don't drink or eat anything they offer you."
"I'm good, thanks." She said, placing the bowl down and slowly standing to her usual height. Her words seemed to amuse the woman if the slight smirk that appeared on her blood red lips was anything to go by but Emma pressed her into a tight line and feigned that the itch on her throat didn't exist.
"Perhaps your kind hasn't forgotten everything about us." The woman said, off-handedly before waving her hands in one quick movement, the bowl disappearing in a cloud of purple dust. "Keep in mind, however, that our enchantments only work if we want, mortal."
Emma didn't say a thing, her eyes still trying to make out what she was seeing, where she was.
"You are…"
"The Queen of the Faeries, yes. I thought we have already established that." She didn't seem amused anymore, but there was no irritation on her face, only boredom. "What I want to discover, however, is what were you doing on my forest, outside the usual path. You aren't supposed to cross the lines."
"I thought you were mere tales." Emma wanted to wince as soon as she spoke, her blurted words floating between her and the faery in thick lines that almost shimmered in the air for a second, dirty white.
It was true though; there were tales about a Queen, one so terrible many wars and deaths had happened during her reign.
The woman smiled; her eyes glinting purple with a type of magic Emma hadn't ever seen before, not by any sorceress or magician of any reign.
"I guess that's what they wanted us to be. Evil stories to tell your children." There was anger now, boiling and strong beneath her words and Emma found herself shuddering. Not entirely out of fear but due to the pain also present there.
"I'm sorry." She whispered back, subtly trying to feel the dagger on her belt and realizing with a startle that the weight was were it was supposed to be. That alone made her breathe a little bit lighter. "Am… I didn't know. I only wanted to run."
It was strange, she thought, how easily she felt the compulsion to explain the woman in front of her –not a woman, not a mortal one at least her mind muttered to her.- everything. She narrowed her eyes at that; was she already hexed?
The brunette locks of the woman shuddered as the woman turned abruptly towards the shadowed corner where she had been standing until a few moments ago. It was a strange corner to be, Emma realized, something on the perfectly symmetrical room amiss.
"That still doesn't fix that you set a Chernabog free." The woman said, fingers pointing at something above their heads, the bluish lights twinkling for a second.
"A Chernabog?" The name didn't ring any bells but Emma felt like it should. Like, at some point, humanity had known.
The queen sighed and gave her her back completely, her shoulders hunching for a moment before she straightened her back once again in such a perfect posture Emma couldn't but feel impressed for. The woman should have been her teacher's favorite with such manners.
"A spirit of the forest." She said, turning again and walking towards one side of the room in where a throne rose with one humming sound, the wood around them growing and morphing in front of Emma's very own eyes. Seating daintily on it, the Queen crossed one leg over the other, hand on her chin. "They are dangerous to even us as they feed on fairy dust. Their magic helps but it comes with a price." She smiled mirthlessly. "And there is one roaming free on our forest, human, because you broke its seal."
Emma swallowed at the words, the itch on her throat becoming stronger by the minute. She could remember the light on the clearing, the voice that had whispered to her as she, stupidly, tried to seek what the light was about. Touching her diaphragm, she felt her stomach jump again, a soft twinkling light detaching from her fingers. Sparks, she thought but when she rose her sight again the Queen's own eyes were focused on her, power glimmering.
"You will leave once the sun reappears." The woman said, her voice louder than before. Her face, however, didn't shine with the same terrible beauty she had had previously. More human, maybe, she let her back touch the one of the throne. "A faery will escort you to the limits; before you can do any more damage."
That was unexpected; Emma had already surmised she was going to be chained because of her hubris. Yet a sudden pang of anxiousness hit her, almost like a punch onto her ribcage. She couldn't go back. Not now that she had managed to cross this far into the forest. And because precisely of that, or maybe because the Queen's power had slowly morphed into tiredness, Emma took a step forward, her boots heavy where the other woman's feet had been light.
"Let me help." She said, surprised of how her voice didn't tremble.
The Queen laughed at that, a short sharp laugh that carried with it the sound of an autumnal rain.
"You shouldn't worry about this." She answered, tongue sharp. "You are nothing but a mortal."
The blonde pressed the tip of her tongue against her teeth.
"I can help. I can try. I don't want to go back, I didn't intend on breaking that… that seal. I didn't know." She felt young, young and stupid as the Queen eyed her, eyes glimmering purple again but she also felt fiery anger on the pit of her stomach. She could help, she thought to herself. That had been the reason why she had left after all. To show everyone she was capable, that she was more than just a title and an inherited throne.
The woman waved her hands again, the dust she had thrown before quickly gathering between her fingers once again, morphing until a small cage was made, matte and strange.
"You don't have the magical prowess for that."
It was a simple reasoning; one Emma knew to be true. She wasn't a sorceress, she hadn't been granted with the powers that certainly run through the woman's veins. If she did have veins. But she wanted to help. And wanted to keep on crossing the forest; leave her former life behind.
"I was able to break the seal. Let me help. It's the least thing I could do."
The Queen narrowed her eyes at her and stood, never looking away from her hands, her fingers glimmering in the same kind of spark Emma could still feel her own filled with.
"Careful, we are deceiving creatures. I may want to lure you and eat your heart."
It felt like a truth until it didn't and Emma wondered if that was the peculiar way the Queen tried to joke with her.
"You can do that?" She asked. But her question went unanswered as the woman walked past her, caressing a wooden wall with one palm. "What's your name?" She called.
"Don't you know?" She heard the other say. "Never give or ask a name to a faery."