"What in the kingdom?" Milton blinked in disbelief at the scroll document in his hands.
"Something wrong?" Giles asked from his chair across the room, setting down his book onto the coffee table when in response Milton banged the palm of his hand against the side of his head and scrubbed at his eyes.
"That informant of yours, from that strange monster dimension that you've had dealings with in the past, he tracked down the university where Clawstorm attended, got her doctorate… and apparently has been working there as one of their top mad scientists for the past few years. She's famous for not only, get this, her groundbreaking work into microscopic nano talisman technology for the work of curing illnesses and saving lives, but during an experiment she had been conducting at her home seven years ago she had somehow gotten trapped in a dimension that seems to be behind all of the mirrors of another unknown dimension. But thanks to her knowledge in charms she was able to contact her colleagues from the dimension she was trapped in and because her research was so important the university they set up a series of charmed mirrors so that she could instruct graduate students while they act as her hands and eyes while conducting projects."
Milton picked up a paperback book and waved it in the air. "This is her published book, filled with diagrams and detailed algorithms on how to use these micro talismans to treat diseases and help treat poison victims."
Giles was silent for a moment. "Well Snaggle Tooth may be an odd creature at times but they are one of the best at what they do… plus with the sheer amount of information that I gave to them on your daughter there is no way that they'd mistake someone else for her."
"So you're saying that the same woman who poisoned Wonderland and a whole bunch of other worlds was somehow able to live a double life as a miracle worker and a respected mad scientist? From prison?" Milton demanded.
"Well that is her picture on the back of that book you're waving around." Giles shrugged helplessly.
Milton turned the book over to stare at mentioned picture.
"In the monster dimension she is known as Clawstorm Q. Grimmbook." Milton argued weakly.
"Grimmbook, Grimm, and Grimmreaper are all very common names there, and it is not uncommon for complete strangers to simply appear in the middle of the street, it's a perfect place for someone to live a double life without anybody batting an eye about it." Giles shrugged again.
"Grimmbook?" Milton emphasized.
Giles took a sip of his cocoa. "When I knew her while she was a student here she was very fond of using sarcasm when faced with her adversaries, and she found irony to be the universe's best joke. That sounds just like her to pick that last name as a private joke at our expense no doubt… though that joke may have turned on her now that she knows about you being her father…"
"Why would she even bother doing… these kind of good deeds? She's evil!" Milton exclaimed.
"…Clawstorm has always been good at misdirection?" The younger man tried.
"But the spell we put on her should have limited her magical abilities, surely she shouldn't have been able to charm even one of those mirrors to get into contact with the monster realm." Milton shook his head.
"A spell that can only be broken or circumvented by someone with the same familial blood as the caster." Giles pointed out slowly. "She probably tried the first day she was in there and just assumed that it had been due to her family's inborn knack with mirror magic and that we had been idiots not to realize such a thing from the beginning."
Milton stared at the witch's picture again, a hand covering his mouth as he looked at the image with wide eyes.
"I wonder why she never escaped years ago." Giles mused. "I mean when you are locked in a room what's the first thing you do? You check the sturdiness of the locks; you explore your prison from top to bottom looking for weaknesses so that you might be able to escape. If she was able to get a job as a mad scientist while trapped inside the mirror dimension then surely at some point she would have figured out that she could have escaped at any time… so why would she stay? Why would she feel the need to poison those worlds in the first place when all of our evidence shows that she is too smart and stable to do something like that? And for that matter why would she steal the Book of Legends in the first place and go to so much trouble cloning a forgery?"
In response Milton merely clutched at his head looking pained.
"I wonder which one of you was the one to contribute to this sneaky, misdirection trait of hers, you or Elenore?" Giles wondered.
"This is going to bug me until I manage to get some answers to all of this." Milton groaned. "I'm already losing sleep over trying to figure out just what my granddaughter has been up to and what dangers that she is trying to ward of with this mysterious contract that she has going on… I'm never going to sleep a wink again if this keeps up."
XXX
"I can't believe them." Apple sniffled into Raven's lap as the witch ran her fingers through the princess's hair soothingly.
After a long while where Apple had stormed around their dorm in a ranting rage filled fit, the princess finally calmed down enough to join Raven on the princess's bed and just allowed the witch to hold her while she allowed herself to cry over the news of what her parents had done all those years ago.
"I can't believe how rough the past few weeks have been for you." Raven shook her head in disbelief. "I'm sorry for not giving you enough credit in your abilities in being able to stand up against change in the past. I had difficulties talking for months after mom went off the deep end, you… you are so much stronger then I ever was."
"Well I don't feel particularly strong right now." Apple hiccupped. "If anything I feel mortified! Your people and your grandmother could have been wiped out that day and it would have been my parent's entire fault! They are such hypocrites! Drumming into my head about how I needed to be perfect and fair and follow the script when they-… I'm so sick of all of the lies! Here I am trying to sort my life out so that I can see whether or not I can be with you, the one person I'm starting to care about the most in the world and then they just… keep throwing all of these things at me and I'm all unstable all over again!"
"Be with me?" Raven asked.
"You said that you would go away after high school and my fairytale was done, on more than one occasion. And even though I'm starting to realize that a fairytale is not what I want, I still want a happy ending and… this may not make sense to you but the only happily ever after that I can see in my future is one with you in it. These feelings I have for you… they're so confusing because I care for you way more than a friend, but in a completely different way than a sister or a relative, the knowledge of this on top of all the other stuff is making it difficult to get my mind around these feelings and now I'm torn between losing you to someone like Faybelle, who is totally being a creepy pervert in her attentions towards you, or some other maiden with the same intentions, and hurting you if I act too quickly and enter a new type of relationship with you without getting my feelings all sorted out! It's so frustrating!" Apple cried into the fabric of Raven's night robes.
Raven froze. "Eh?"
"I told you it was confusing." Apple grumbled. "I'm not asking you to hold off forever if I take too long to figure my life out, I'd never forgive myself if I ended up hurting you because it took so long to figure out… something. But I refuse to lose you in at least being my closest companion and one of my trusted friends, so I'm going to stick by you in whatever insanity that life is going to throw at us, especially since right now you're the only major influence in my life that has been… sincere to me. Even when you were hiding things you were open about having to hide things and gave me good reasons for not telling me, you were so understanding and apologetic about it! And now that you're starting to tell me these secrets I feel… more stable than I have been in my life as sad as that is."
Raven was silent for a moment, gently prodding the princess to turn over so that she could look the other in the eye.
"I hired Dexter and Daring to look at a website for a small commoner's floral shop that is, oddly enough, owned by one of the richest lords who is known to be apart of my land's small group of enemies. They found something hidden in the data, a large coded account, and planning book of everything and anything having to do with taking out the Queen territories and our people. Dexter copied the whole file, closed down his old computer and got a new one just in case somebody on the other side realizes that they'd been hacked. He hasn't decoded all of it yet but we've gotten enough evidence on some individuals to get them arrested, leaving six main lords in total left who are believed to be running this thing, plus about twenty to thirty of their loyal underlings either still roaming free or unaccounted for in our list of names." Raven confessed easily, running her fingers over Apple's cheek.
"My maternal grandmother is keeping up the appearance of being ill so that if anybody tries anything on our lands she could transport over there through a mirror and give them a real nasty surprise. My father, who as you know is the Good King, is cautiously hoping that one day it'll be safe enough for him to declare me as his heir, my paternal grandmother is working with the Evil Fairy on strategies and quietly installing special defense grids that would help protect key cities from falling space debris, the civilians think that it's just a bunch of satellite discs for increasing our air space radar, and I need some help picking out a gift for Maddie and Kitty for their two year anniversary."
Raven smiled down at Apple. "I would like some help with finding an appropriate gift. Did hearing more truth help make you feel better?"
Apple blinked in surprise. "Yes." She eventually decided. "It did make me feel a little better. Thank you."
Raven smiled a little wider. "I am pleased to hear that my princess."
XXX
"So… what you two are saying is that the Evil Queen isn't really all that evil?" Briar asked Lizzie and Humphrey late in the evening. Her tone was slow and disbelieving.
"It all checks out thus far! Honestly I'm just as surprised as everyone else!" Lizzie shook her head. "My mother's most loyal witches have just confirmed that the curse swirling above our skies is in fact not a curse at all! It's powerful, and it's filled with lots of magic, but it's completely harmless."
"So does that mean that the quarantine will be lifting soon and you guys can finally be able to go home?" Briar asked a little breathless, because for as long as she had known Lizzie the girl always longed to go back home to her mother with a desire so strong it hurt to look at her sometimes.
Lizzie breathed a heavy sigh. "It's not that simple."
"Read the pages that have the orange sticky notes on the sides." Humphrey instructed, waiting patiently as the princess did just that.
"Shit!" Briar hissed her entire body tensing.
"My mother had a similar reaction." Lizzie scratched her ear. "And while there is no excusing the Evil Queen's methods, my mother does concede that having a group of the likes of that going after your family and queendom does merit that the Evil Queen's punishment be downsized from being beheaded and her corpse paraded through the streets to being sentenced to ten years working as a gladiator in the royal coliseum. Though privately my mother confessed to some reluctant respect towards our land's greatest enemy, she is a mother and a queen too after all so she can't help but to understand."
"So what are you going to do?" Briar asked.
"Raven and I will have to discuss that very soon, since she is the only one that can break the spell cast in Wonderlandian skies, however the risks to her homeland if she does free us could be dire so we must reach an agreement quickly." Lizzie's somber tone set Briar's nerves on edge.
XXX
Daring felt weird.
His fairytale was a lie.
The original Evil Queen was a good guy.
And he felt like he had missed something with Raven, an opportunity that got ripped away when the witch informed him that she had married Faybelle.
Before all this insanity with Raven trying to keep a war from breaking out, Daring hadn't spared the witch much thought. She was never really into his charms and she was not a maiden so she had been rather irrelevant as far as he had been concerned, so he ignored her, and her cause, and just continued on with daily life of trying to be as charming as possible.
And then he found out that she was a lesbian, came up to him and actually turned him down (even though it had been a simple case of mistaken identity she still turned him down!) and that stung him, it stung him because if he wasn't at least charming to everybody then he was a failure at being a Prince Charming, and that had been the only thing that mattered for as long as he could remember!
She merely humored him and his attempts to charm her, which had stung even more, it just didn't compute in his brain that there wasn't a girl out there that he couldn't win over. She had even grimaced when he had kissed her in an attempt to break her of a curse!
And then he saw her hooked up to that machine to get her blood strained in order to extract a curse that someone had poisoned her with when she was small, he saw her old scars, and he realized that she had more things to worry about than to be at all concerned with him.
Daring didn't know how to feel about that.
Then his fairytale turned out to be nothing but one big lie and he had been heartbroken, completely devastated. But Raven had been very nice to him about it, doing what she could to make him feel better, knew just the right things to say. She was like the friend that he never knew that he had craved to have until she came into the picture. Helping her when she needed him made him feel good inside, he was worried out of his mind, but he was glad that she at least wanted his help.
Daring wondered if she had felt the same way he did about his fairytale being a lie when her mom dishonored the Evil Queen title. She had confessed to him once that when she was very little, becoming the Evil Queen was an honor that she used to be excited to receive, before that honor was taken away.
And now she would never know because her birthright had been taken away, and for some reason he felt like Faybelle was taking Raven away too along with the witch's title.
With a sigh Daring was broken from his musings when his phone rang, he sat up in bed, plastered on the best smile he could muster, and answered the call.
"Hello- uh." The boy froze when he stared at the half dressed woman on the screen. Her black hair with blood red highlighted streaks was haphazardly mussed, she wore no make up on her young looking face but the determined set in her lips and the clearness of her violet eyes more than made up for that, and the thin straps of what he guessed was her bed clothes was completely off her shoulders, making the fabric covering her chest precariously close to slipping off the swell of her-
"Um… your shirt…" Daring swallowed, his mouth felt dry.
"Wha-? Oh! Dreadfully sorry about that, I was in such a hurry to put on some clothes and contact you that I didn't notice that. I'd hate to give off the wrong first impression and terrorize your poor eyes to this old woman's crippled body." The woman's voice felt like velvet to Daring's ears.
Daring had to disagree, he was the exact opposite of terrorized. Of all the carefully planned first impressions girls have made to him over the years, this completely unplanned one made his heart beat frantically in his chest.
He'd never seen anyone more gorgeous.
"I can assure you that I am not terrorized at all." His voice came out slightly wobbly, a blush painting his nose and cheeks. "It's lovely to meet you Miss…?"
"I'm Elenore Queen. If you are Daring or Dexter Charming then I'm sure that my granddaughter has told you about me." The woman smirked, a little bewitchingly. Completely different from the temped sweet smiles that maidens would always give him.
"Me is Daring!" Daring rushed the words out, somehow not wanting to be mistaken for his brother.
"I hope that I'm not troubling you but this is rather urgent, I need you to do a keyword search on those encrypted documents that you and your brother have been looking into lately!" Elenore instructed while pulling her shirt up to more modest standards.
"Right." Daring nodded, leaping from his bed.
It was easy to literally yank Dexter out of his bed thus waking his brother in the process, but words to describe what was going on seemed to escape him due to the fact that he was dangerously close to declaring that the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was on his phone and that his heart felt like it was going to take flight and soar to the heavens and he didn't know why.
Dexter was less than enthused by being so rudely extracted from bed in the middle of the night and being held up by his shoulders by his brother who had apparently lost his mind.
Fortunately Elenore Queen had piped up from the phone that was still on Daring's bed asking if everything was all right and Dexter had taken things from there, which was a good thing because Daring didn't think that he was capable of doing much except staring at the beautiful woman on his phone screen.
"You want me to do a keyword search on the words; Ordinem de Malleus Maleficarum et Maleficorum?" Dexter asked his eyes going wide and panicked. "But that's… don't those words translate to the order of the hammer against witches and warlocks?"
"Indeed they do." Elenore nodded grimly. "Did my granddaughter tell you about the talismans found in her blood?"
"Yeah, they were there to mess with her magic right?" Dexter recalled.
"Correct, but there's more to it, her doctor found two sets of talismans, one designed to hinder her magical progress, the other was to ward off a certain group, the same group named Ordinem de Malleus Maleficarum et Maleficorum. I believe that this is the same group that tried to kill my granddaughter seven years ago."
The room went silent.
"I'm typing those words as we speak." Dexter declared, turning on his computer and doing exactly as he promised to do.
Several moments later the boy exclaimed softly. "Woah." Dexter blinked.
"You find something?" Daring demanded, now successfully broken out of his love filled daze to focus on more important matters. He picked up his phone and made it face Dexter's computer screen so that Elenore could see what was going on.
"More than something." Dexter murmured. "Those keywords automatically decrypted all the files, we have access to everything." The boy spoke as he clicked to the first document.
"Hey, that picture looks familiar." Daring pointed to a black and white illustration of a woman strapped to a burning post with a bunch of men feeding kindling to the fire all around her. The words; Ordinem de Malleus Maleficarum et Maleficorum were written at the very top of the page in big font letters.
"Damn it!" Elenore cursed viciously.
"We are so very over our heads." Dexter breathed.
XXX
There was a whoosh of warm air that traveled into the dorm, stirring Raven into the waking world of early morning.
"Hmmm warm." Apple stretched lazily, observing the sight of Raven blinking herself awake.
"What was that?" Raven groaned trying to move up but finding herself pinned down by Apple. "I thought I sensed something."
"'S too early for crazy to happen." Apple protested as she snuggled closer. "I dun wanna let you go."
"Are you feeling better?" Raven asked sleepily.
"It still hurts." Apple whined, tucking her head under Raven's chin. "But being hugged like this helps."
"…Speaking of not wanting to let me go…" Raven began remembering their conversation from last night. "I fell asleep before I could ask you… That princess you've asked me to wait for until she's figured out what to do with her life… is that princess actually you?"
Apple's grip on Raven's waist tightened and she opened her mouth to speak-
However the sound of loud music floating in through the balcony interrupted her.
Raven grumbled as she sat up and made to get out of Apple's bed. "What in the world is going on so early in the mor- EEEP!" She screamed as her bare feet slipped on the unfamiliar sensation of the floor being covered in a blanket of flowers.
"Raven?" Apple called, looking down at the fallen witch in worry.
"What the hex is all this?" Raven demanded as she pushed herself up, flowers clinging to her face and short hair. "It's way too early for this kind of insanity!"
Apple cautiously put her feet to the floor and helped Raven up. "Let's find out what's going on."
The two walked carefully to the balcony, both noting that their dorm neighbors had been disturbed by the music as well (they could not see if their dorms had been covered in flowers too), Briar was particularly stormy faced when she nodded to them in greeting.
"Is that Edward Spider?" Apple asked as she and the witch peered over their balcony.
Edward was standing on the lawn facing them, his mirrorpad (which was playing a song with lyrics that kept repeating the words "I'm sorry my love" every few verses) held up to the dorms with two of his arms, and a large banner spread out on the ground with the words; I'm sorry Tiffany! You can be whoever you want to be! (Please tell Duchess to stop hunting me! I won't bother her anymore either!)
"Should we tell him that Tiffany's dorm is in the wing opposite of us?" Raven murmured to the three princesses within hearing range.
"I think that I'll just call her over." Ashlynn volunteered while giggling to herself.
"Better yet, call Cerise to rush her over, it'll be faster, and there will be a better chance that she'll get the message instead of just turning her phone off." Briar suggested with a yawn. "I'd be just cruel to not do something after all this work he's gone through with this display and the freaking flowers invading our dorm." She grouched, casting a squinty-eyed glare over her shoulder to the mentioned room.
"Flower explosions!" Raven realized with a snap of her fingers. "I knew I sensed magic in the air! Flower explosions are these little satchels that are magically compacted with fresh flowers, and when they are thrown or set off flowers explode everywhere!"
"He must have thrown more than a few onto our balconies to get this much coverage." Apple murmured with a hint of respect. "Though where did he get so many? The ones that they sell in the village are teeny tiny, there is no way that he would have been able to stockpile this many fresh flowers in such a short time- …unless…" The princess peered back over the balcony suspiciously.
"Unless what?" Raven asked.
"Well I know that in one of the campus grounds work sheds they keep larger bags of flower explosions for upcoming events… like for the school's spring fair…" The princess sighed pityingly. "I hope that they get Tiffany here soon… because Edward is going to be in a lot of trouble."
"And he didn't even get the right wing of the dorms…" Raven shook her head sadly.
"Prrrp? Mah!" Nevermore complained from their dorm, the witch and princess moving back inside just in time to see the tiny dragon pop her head out of a pile of flowers and look around her territory in bewilderment. "Peep? Peep!"
"Awww. Everything looks different compared to last night when you fell asleep, huh Nevermore?" Apple cooed through her giggle fit, walking forward to collect the confused dragon into her arms.
"I'll see if I can get permission to take her to class with me." Raven chuckled with a shake of her head. "Once she gets over her shock she's bound to come to the realization that lots of these flowers are edible. If we leave her here she'll get fat off of treats she should not be having."
"I'll ask too, so that we can tag team if either one of us has a class that she's not allowed to be in." Apple proposed, kissing the top of the dragon's slender head.
"Oh dear gods is that Edward?" Tiffany's voice exclaimed from Ashlynn and Briar's balcony. "And the flowers- where did he get so many flowers? And why are they scattered all over your dorm?"
"Maw!" Nevermore appeared to agree with Tiffany.
A frantic knock sounded at the front door, drawing Raven's attention.
"I'll get it." The witch volunteered, unable to help chuckling again when Nevermore looked around the room frantically and continued to make confused sounds while Apple tried to calm the creature.
"Emergency!" Dexter cried as he rushed into the room after Raven opened the door. "We found something very import-EEEP!" The boy cried out as he tripped over the flowers and fell to the floor at Apple's feet.
Daring walked in at a more sedate pace. "What happened in here?" He asked in bewilderment as he looked around the flower-covered room.
"From what we can gather Edward wanted to apologize to Tiffany but he didn't know which balcony to send the flowers to." Raven informed as she helped Dexter back onto his feet. "What are you two doing here so early in the morning?"
"We finished decrypting the entire file that we cloned from that website." Dexter spoke while adjusting his glassed and rubbing his sore nose.
"Raven." Daring's voice tuned serious, he placed his large hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye with his pitying ones. "Get dressed quickly. There are a few things that you have to see. You are not going to like it, but you have to see."