Emma coolly unlocked the door to her cage, feeling the magic of the bars spark a little under her fingers, pausing momentarily as she realized she must not have been the first Dark One to escape the confines of her current enclosure. The voices in her head murmured sounds of approval behind her closed eyes as she felt the heavy latch give way. She stepped through the threshold and suddenly the murmur turned to a roar. She collapsed to the floor when her head became filled with a barrage of voices that screamed at her to take a thousand different actions.

"SHUT UP!" She screamed into the empty cavern. A familiar yet unwelcome voice answered her. "Well, that's no way to treat your only friends, dearie."

She looked up slowly, sliding her hands down her blonde tresses from where they'd gripped at her pounding head to steady herself on the cold stone floor. "Gold?" she asked hesitantly. "I thought you were in a coma in Storybrooke."

The man in front of her chuckled darkly. "I am," he stated, "or rather, he is. I'm just an incarnation of all of the previous Dark Ones. I'm here to be a guide, of sorts, although… If you prefer to consult with another, perhaps you'd fare better with Gorgon, the Terrible."

With a slight pause followed by a pop, the man she knew as Rumplestiltskin transformed into a massive, fiery beast with protruding tusks and a thick, bristly hide. It snarled and grunted viciously at her until she screamed at it in her surprise.

"STOP!" she wailed.

"Suit yourself," Gold replied, suddenly replacing the terrifying creature. Emma stood up slowly. "Can I get out of here now?" she asked warily, wondering where her sense of indestructibility had gone since she had left her cell.

"By all means," the crocodile smiled crookedly and stepped aside to allow the blonde to pass, though when she turned around to see if he was following her, he had completely vanished.

She followed the dark passageway lit by the occasional torch along the walls, and only pulled one down from its perch as she saw a spiral staircase at the end of the long stone hallway. As she placed her foot on the first step, the stairs began to ascend by themselves, however. It was a testament to her upbringing that her first thought was of an escalator instead of recognizing the mechanism as having magical properties.

Though when the darkness started pooling around her, filling her senses, sticking like a heavy grease to her eyelids, in her ears, surrounding her body in an oily mess of the blackest scourge, she realized with a start that she'd unwittingly just accepted her final transformation into the essence of the Dark One. Killing the guard had allowed her to pass the test and had proven that she had truly accepted the darkness into herself. A small part of her was screaming from a corner of the deepest recesses of her mind that she had to stop before she went too far.

"No going back now, dearie," came the familiar voice again from the edge of the small clearing, startling Emma ever so slightly. Her eyes flashed open, adjusting quickly to the soft, muted green light.

"What are you doing here?" Emma demanded, no longer feigning patience as the last of the black grease-like substance slid off her boots.

"I told you. Think of me as your guide to being the Dark One."

"I don't need a guide. I'm not one of you. I don't want to be like you. I'll never hurt the people I love. The people who love me!" Emma spat out her speech, wondering if her vigor had effectively hidden her uncertainty concerning her willpower.

It hadn't.

"Tell yourself whatever you like, dearie," the imp replied, seemingly unphased by her passionate outburst. "You're already one of us."