It was dark when they reached the farm, but the light from the burning pillar, which shot up through the roof of the barn, illuminated all of the buildings and most of the surrounding forest.
"Whatever's going on in there it can't be good", Wolfgang said as they approached it.
"It's Zelena's time portal", Emma responded. She was holding her phone to her ear, listening to a recorded message.
"Somehow she died and triggered its activation", she continued.
"Wait, she's dead?" Clarissa asked. "How?"
"I don't know, David just said she died and that her death triggered this", Emma responded and took the phone away from her ear. The closed doors of the barn squeaked as if pushed and pulled by a strong force, but Emma seemed unfazed by this. She marched towards them, only to be pulled back by Hook.
"Wait", he said. "Let's get out of here."
"Not until we find a way to close it!" Emma protested.
"You got your magic back?"
"No", Emma responded, "but they could..."
"Emma, we definitely do not know how this thing works", Clarissa said, "let alone how to stop it."
"Well", Hook said, "then we're not bloody well messing with any of this. Let's go!"
He had hardly time to finish speaking before the doors shot out due to a gust of wind coming from the portal, knocking them all to the ground. Above their heads the doors soared past, landing somewhere close to the edge of the woods. The four of them did, however, not have much time to think about that as the portal now turned from pushing them away to sucking them in. The dirt covering the floor of the barn scraped against their backs and none could keep themselves from screaming as the origin of the pillar drew nearer and nearer; a black vortex that went straight down into the ground.
"Clarissa!" Wolfgang shouted as he rolled onto his stomach and clawed the ground with his fingers for something to grab on to. Eventually they found one of the few remaining murky floorboards. He grabbed onto it with both hands and felt Clarissa grab hold of his legs to keep herself from falling into the vortex. To his right he saw that Hook had managed the same thing, though he had the advantage of actually having a sturdy hook to grab onto the board with. This allowed him to hold on to Emma with his free hand.
"Hold on!" the pirate shouted as the portal's sucking power intensified, as if it could sense that its preys were trying to keep it from swallowing them. Emma screamed and tried to hold on to Hook. At the same time Wolfgang could feel his fingers slipping.
"I can't!" Emma suddenly screamed. A ripping sound was heard as the cuff of Hook's jacket was torn off; Emma had tried to secure her grip by holding on to it as well as his hand.
"Wolf!" Clarissa screamed as his fingers started to lose their grip on the board. Only his fingertips were securing them now. He glanced to his right, meeting Hook's gaze.
"We won't make it!" he yelled. Hook grimaced.
"One day", he promised himself, "I'm going to stop chasing after that woman."
With that he let go of the board and allowed himself to be pulled into the vortex. Wolfgang and Clarissa followed suit, screaming as the portal sucked them all in.
"Where are they?" Miranda sighed. "They should have been back by now."
"I'm sure they're fine", Arianne responded. Miranda shook her head and dialled the number to Wolfgang's phone again. Still no answer.
"Look, Emma needed some convincing and they're probably busy with that", Maryse filled in. "After all that's happened I doubt they'll go anywhere near that thing."
She nodded at the gleaming vortex beyond the trees, clearly visible in the dark.
"You think?" Chris said. "Have you seen what Emma gets up to sometimes?"
"Well, even she would avoid that", Maryse responded. In that moment Toby, Indira, Rachel and Tessa entered the room. They were at Granny's Bed and Breakfast again, all of them standing in a room, just like they had done when they first got here. Well, almost; now there were definitely more of them.
"They're not back?" Tessa asked.
"They will be", Catriona said. "I'm sure of it."
"And until they come back, maybe we can discuss some other things", Indira said. "Gold wants me to stay here and help him manage the shop."
"What?" Ella said. "Why would he want that?"
"He says that he's met me before, a long time ago, before he became the Dark One", Indira responded.
"But that's impossible", Filipi said. "Time travel isn't possible."
"Considering Zelena's time portal being functional, I don't think that applies anymore", Toby pointed out.
"It never did", Rachel said, causing everyone to turn towards her. She had walked over to the yellowing calendar hanging on the wall.
"We just forgot that it already happened to us", she continued.
"Oh my God, we've travelled in time", Jade breathed. "We've already done it!"
"So Ollivander knows how these things are done; maybe he's the one to send you back?" Ella suggested, looking at Indira. The Indian girl nodded thoughtfully.
"That's why you want to stay as well, isn't it?" Chris asked and looked at Rachel.
"Who said I'm going to stay?" Rachel asked.
"Oh come on; you practically moved in with the Charmings last night", Rowan huffed. "It wasn't exactly hard to figure out."
Rachel shrugged.
"I don't see what else there is to do but remain here, that's all", she replied and turned back towards the calendar. "At this point in time there's another version of us somewhere out there, our past selves. It's not like we can go home."
"She's right", Catriona said. "It's either stay here for three years until we can return to Orlando and act like we never left, or hope that Ollivander shows up and lets us go back there now."
"But if we stay here for three years", Miranda said, "we'll have aged. We won't look like we did when we left Orlando. We've already spent a year in the Enchanted Forest; we already don't look like we did when we left."
Silence enveloped them as the words sunk in.
"Then what are we going to do?" Jade eventually asked. No one was able to answer before the ground beneath their feet started to shake violently. Cracks appeared in the floor all around them, revealing bright, white light.
"What's happening?" Arianne asked.
"I don't..." Toby begun, before the floor disappeared all together and they all fell down into the light.
When they woke up again they were surrounded by whiteness, but it was no longer blinding. Bright, but not blinding.
"Where are we?" Filipi asked.
"It looks like some sort of control room", Rowan replied. He had walked up to a set of white desks, placed in front of a number of currently white screens. Most of them had guessed the number of screens before they actually counted them; fifteen. Their number.
"Look", Jade said and walked past the screens. They seemed to be suspended in the air, or perhaps an invisible wall, but from the back they all looked just as white as the walls around them. However, unlike the unidentifiable walls where they had first landed, the walls on this side of the screen contained doors. Fifteen doors. They were marked with the same symbols that they had seen on the hide and on their wand boxes back at Hog's Castle.
"I wonder where they lead", Chris remarked.
"I think we should focus on where we are right now", Toby said. "What is this place? Rowan's right; it does look like some sort of strange command central."
"It's your command central", a familiar voice said, causing them all to spin around. Toby was the first to speak.
"Ollivander."