Eugene was dueling (not for real but practice) and he was sweating hard and swearing under his breath to himself as he went to retrieve his sword. He'd gotten in a couple of good blows but it was not going his way as it was the third time his sword had been knocked from his hand. He picked it up and growled at his opponent. "I'm going to get you this time. You wait and see."
Maximus, his opponent, just snorted. But what else could he do as he was a horse and he had a sword in his jaws. He couldn't help it if he was better than a puny human even if he had to hold his sword in his mouth but he had more power since he had all the strength of his neck muscles behind each of his blows. Besides Eugene was a wimp with a sword and Maximus was disgusted that he'd let the puny human even get in a blow.
Eugene yelled. "Yarrghh!" And charged with his sword flung back over his shoulder. If he could just get in close he could retrieve everything.
Maximus snorted in disgust at such amateurish behavior, stepped to the side and stuck out a hoof. There was a yell, a thud, and a cloud of yellow dust as Eugene's sword bounced away across the pitch causing the onlookers to wince and then the horse had his sword point against the prone Eugene's throat. "Snurff?" He asked with an evil light in his eyes.
Eugene said nothing. He was out cold. Maximus with a shake of his head withdrew to strut to the spectators' cheers as Eugene's chubby squire Dominick came forward to administer to his fallen master.
When Eugene regained consciousness he opened his eyes and saw his wife looking down at him with a concerned expression. He sat up in the bed. "Maximus won again, didn't he?"
"He certainly did, Eugene." Rapunzel replied as she applied a wet cloth to his head. She smiled. "You look worse than I do and I'm more than seven months pregnant."
He gently touched her stomach. "I know you had your checkup today. Is everything okay, with both of you?" He had not been allowed to attend; only her mother the Queen, the midwife, and the aged Castle Wizard Murherder had been allowed to be there. This exclusion had hurt and induced the frustration which had led to his reckless challenge of the castle champion, even if he was a horse.
"We're both fine." She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. "The wizard gave me a potion to drink for the nausea I've been experiencing and everything should be alright as our daughter will be born in less than two months." She sighed. "I still can't choose a name between Mother's suggestion of Schein or Dad's suggestion of Elaina after my grandmothers' names."
Eugene grinned impudently. "I had hoped for a boy. We could have called him Eugene which is such a nice name."
"And it just happens to be yours." She said with a smile. "I'm glad the wizard told us the sex of the baby. It makes it easier to plan ahead." She frowned. "But I still can't choose between the two names."
He took her hands in his. "Well, whatever name the baby has, I'm sure she'll be loved by everyone as she has such a loving mother." She swatted him on the shoulder before they both leaned forward and kissed.
The wizard Murherder smiled at servants and nobles alike as he swept down the hall in his grey robes after leaving the examination room. He had a quite common face for a kindly old man and his hair fell in silver waves to just reach his shoulders. He held a white staff with gold bands in his right hand and a small owl with black feathers sat on his left shoulder. The smile vanished as soon as the door closed behind him and the owl flew off his shoulder and turned into a small black dragon.
"If you smile any longer, it's going to be frozen there forever." The black dragon remarked with a sneer.
The wizard spat out the window as if he could cast the smile with it. "I know. I know. For twenty five years I've had to smile at the inanities of all these royal idiots and never once tell them what fools they are. But don't worry, Shaedel, our time is nearly here."
The dragon raised an eyebrow. "You gave her the Yellow Death in her anti-nausea potion?"
The wizard grinned savagely as he reclined in his sofa chair, kicked his sandals off, and wiggled his tired and aching toes. "Just as I did her mother nearly twenty years ago and in six weeks she'll fall into an illness for which only I will have the cure."
Shaedel smiled evilly as he remembered that moment when the queen had sickened. "And this time there will be no escape for the light bearer."
"No. There will be no escape." The wizard started laughing. "That witch Gothel who caused us so much grief before has been eliminated from interfering this time as she was killed by that stupid Eugene. Thanks to his true love true evil is about to win the day forever." They both laughed so hard that tears came to their eyes. They wouldn't have laughed so hard if they'd known their assumption about Gothel was dead wrong.
The scene is a very familiar ancient tower hidden in a glen deep in the woods. At its base is a mound, the last resting place of Gothel.
The mound of dirt and leaves sparkled and then heaved upwards and split open as the dirt and leaves pulled back in waves to settle down to reveal a soiled, elderly woman with white hair, wrinkled and pock-marked skin, a hump on her back, and scrawny boney arms and legs who was sitting in the crater formed by the opening of the pile. She blinked and opened her eyes taking in her surroundings without comprehension. She looked down at the torn skirt and blouse she was wearing and shook her head. "What happened?" She asked in a voice that sounded as old as she looked.
"You failed the SSSisterhood is what happened." A voice hissed. "And paid for it by aging four hundred years in one minute. But in order to make sssure you sssuffered the rest of your life for your failure you didn't die." She looked up fearfully and a black snake nine feet long rose out of the grass to regard her with its cold yellow eyes. "You can ssstill sssave yourself." The snake shot out its tongue as if testing the air and then said coldly. "This time. There will not be a sssecond chance."
The old woman groaned and wiped her dirt-caked brow. "How can I do anything when I'm like this?"
The snake came closer and stared intently for a minute as it watched the old woman drool and then it sighed. "I hate to waste the light energy we worked ssso hard to gather, but I'm going to have to change you as you're right. You really aren't much use to us in this form."
Two bolts of light shot from the snake's eyes and struck the old woman, outlining her body in fire. She convulsed and as the fire ran along her limbs they refilled with flesh and muscle. Where the fire touched her hair the hair turned black and as it ran over the hump it sank out of sight. When the glow faded a very familiar forty-some woman stood there staring at her hands. "How did you do that?"
"That's not important." The snake replied. "Now what do you remember?"
The woman frowned as she considered the answer to this question. "My name is Gothel."
"Very good. Now do you remember who I am?"
She frowned again. "Schlange. Your name is Schlange."
The snake flicked out its tongue. "That'll do for now. Now do you remember what happened to the light bearer?"
Gothel stood there as images assaulted her mind of her charge Rapunzel with her glowing hair that had to be ten times as long as she was tall pleading for the life of someone that she loved. She also remembered part of her urging herself to grant this last request of the woman who had nearly been her daughter, a granting that the influence of the Sisterhood had twisted from one of generosity to enslavement. She remembered the young man cutting her daughter's hair and destroying her ability to be the light bearer. She also remembered that as she reeled from the punishment of the Sisterhood for her failure that part of her had tried to end their evil influence by causing her body to fall out of the tower, praying that she'd die. But if the snake heard that she had tried this its wrath would be terrible. Instead she told it what it wanted to hear.
"I got careless." She replied. "I had maneuvered the weakling girl into swearing slavery to us forever by allowing her to save the young man. My problem was that I did not realize the weak human had such cunning that he would cut her hair before she cured him so he could free her. He did not know he was destroying the light bearer we needed too."
The snake hissed. "No good deed, no matter how evilly intended, such as you allowing her to cure him, ever goes unpunished. But all is not lost. The SSSisterhood has determined that the light bearer will be reborn through Rapunzel's daughter in two months. If we take her we can convert her to the SSSisterhood's desires." It considered her coldly. "You know you were the reason we originally failed?"
Gothel looked away not wanting the snake to see what was in her eyes. "Yes. I fell in love with the baby and for twelve years I raised Ray as if she were my own child and hid her in the magic tower."
"Yes, you did." The snake hissed in anger. "And it took us all those years to regain contact. Fortunately for us those thugs attacked you in the woods one night, ssshowing you what mortal humans are really like and sssending you reeling back into our loving arms."
Gothel remembered with horror the men with magic defenses against her powers descending on her as she came back from the market with more paints for Ray and the pain of the beatings and the violations of her flesh before the Sisterhood had saved her, but they had taken her and twisted her soul so she could serve them. After that she had tried to save Ray from the evil of men by working with the Sisterhood. She said sorrowfully. "My re-awakening to the perfidy of men was too late as the light bearer was too old and it was too late for us to convert her to the next stage."
She hung her head. "It was my greatest failure but." She looked up with pride. "I still managed to feed the Sisterhood all the light energy I could harvest from the girl over the next seven years."
"Yes." The snake replied. "It was why you kept re-aging so fast after each dose that ssshould have lasted you sssixty years. The SSSisterhood appreciates your sssacrifices but it does not tolerate failures. Remember that."
"How could I forget such a thing?" She complained.
"Come." The snake commanded. "In two months the child will be born and we must claim her."
"Wait." Gothel looked down at her dirty clothing and skin. She knew she had to stink. "I need a bath first."
"Oh very well, but don't take too long." The snake coiled itself on a rock beside the river where it could keep an eye on her.
Gothel stripped down, washed her clothing, laid it on some bushes to dry, and dove into the river waters. She then scrubbed her hair and used sand scooped from small bars in the river to help scour the foulness from her body. Finally she floated there in the river waters for a time and wondered what in the hell she was going to do. Was the Sisterhood the only means left her to save Ray and her unborn child? And why did it seem there were other choices hidden now from her? She shook her head but it made things no clearer. She remembered some things from before the Sisterhood but her mind was still ensnared by them. She sighed in frustration. She really didn't have much choice but to do what the Sisterhood wanted for the moment. When she knew her clothing would be as dry as it was going to get she swam back to where the snake awaited. "Let's get started." She declared as she stepped into her damp skirt and then pulled her blouse on.