This Scene was kept partially in the original, though it was re-written almost entirely from scratch.
After following Eris based on her nail for what felt like forever, Ben felt a sharp pull in his navel. Up ahead it was exactly as Sinbad had described, with the sea suddenly falling away as if the world had suddenly ended. Beyond the drop was a doorway that looked like a rip had been torn in the sky. Mal stopped on a small, pitiful-looking island and morphed back to herself with a slight stumble. Ben materialized beside her.
"So, that's it." He breathed.
"Ugh." Mal groaned. "I get not wanting neighbors, but did she have to make it so far?" Ben laughed as she caught her breath. "Can you feel if the place is locked up?" Mal asked.
Ben examined the gates tactfully. "They're not." He decided. "At least, they don't feel like they are."
"Okay." Mal nodded. "Let's go, then."
Ben dissolved and waited for her as she grew her wings out and took to the air. She was unsteady in the air, he noticed. Off-balance.
They flew to the drop off and broke over the edge of the chasm. Ben couldn't see the bottom. Carefully, Ben slipped through and began the descent towards Tartarus. For once, he could feel Mal following him.
They fell through the doors and plummeted towards the ground at a ridiculous speed. As they reached the ground, they naturally slowed, but Ben wasn't worried. He reformed himself on top of the vast golden sands and felt Mal land besides him. She clutched her stomach. "Ugh." She groaned.
"What's wrong?" Ben asked with a frown.
"I just… feel awful all of the sudden. Headache and stomach cramps. Ow." She bent over for a few seconds, then stood back up. "Okay." She sighed. "Where would we find Eris?"
"Me?" A de-personified figure asked. The desert floor shook beneath their feet and rocked back and forth. The sand withered around them to reveal black bricks laid beneath their soles. As the sand blew away further, it revealed a pillaged city built only out of broken beams and black bricks. A figure with greasy, black flowing hair appeared, skirting around the edge of a ruined dwelling.
Eris looked, in a word, horrible. Red sores circled her eyes and something black and smooth had dried on her left cheek. She floated like an amputee would walk – with obvious pain. Mal frowned to see her.
Eris gestured at her city. "You like?" She asked. "I was planning to do the whole world like this, but I don't suppose that'll work now." She sighed. "Have you come to kill me?"
Mal snorted. "Kill a goddess? Surely you respect us enough to know we aren't that stupid."
Eris hummed. "Then, have you come to make me promise to stay in Tartarus? Or to not attack your cities anymore?" She sat down on a pile of black bricks and sighed.
"The promise of a villainess?" Mal snorted.
"Of a goddess." Eris corrected. "Don't you have any gods or goddesses in Auradon? I could have sworn that one of my monsters killed a daughter of a god or something." She buried her face in her hands. "Promises. That's how Sinbad defeated me in the first place." She moaned. "Oh, how the mighty fall."
"I wouldn't trust your word lower than I can curtsey." Mal raised her eyebrow.
Eris hummed. "Interesting." She commented. "Then, pray tell, what is your plan?"
"We're here to seal up Tartarus." Ben blurted out.
Eris looked genuinely surprised. "Really? To be honest, I thought that the whole killing gods thing was a bit more straightforward than that." She disappeared and rematerialized in front of the two. Ben took Mal's hand and held on tight. "Don't you know only someone with sand powers can do that?" She asked.
Ben let a smile pull at the corners of his lips. "You're right." He agreed. "An impossible task."
Eris narrowed her eyes. Ben raised Mal's knuckles to his lips. It pained him, what he had to do, but he trusted her. "Can you cover me?" He whispered.
"Go." She nodded, taking his sword off his hip. She unsheathed her knife and put herself in between Ben and Eris. Eris rose up, became exponentially taller, until it was Mal, the little doll-sized dragon filled with three-hundred cubic pounds of sass and Eris, a goddess who was becoming increasingly alarmed as Ben turned towards the wall and summoned every lick of sand he could around him.
Eris screamed in rage as the sands of Tartarus responded to Ben's will before being tugged back by her. She lashed forward and Mal drove Ben's sword into her finger. Eris screamed as Mal began to chant various spells. Ben couldn't hear anything over the rush of sand in his ears and Eris's unholy screams.
He delved into the sands and began to examine them. There were two parts to his magic. One matched the makeup of the sands of Tartarus, and the other matched the nightmare horses. The first was imbued with chaos magic, and the second with fear magic. Unlike Ericka or Jessie, this magic seemed to be pretty evenly mixed. Perfect.
Ben cast his eyes up to the roof of Tartarus and frowned. Even though he didn't have Mal's magic sight, he could feel instinctively that the roof was a completely different brand of magic. It wasn't as chaotic as the sands, but rather very balanced and structured. Ben wasn't sure he could stitch the roof together using the unorganized chaos magic, but he lifted his hands and began to try anyways.
The floors of Tartarus shifted and shook as Eris shrieked. Ben planted his feet as firmly as he could on the rolling sands and sank every ounce of his concentration into the task at hand. He became completely oblivious to the crusade occurring behind him.
From the moment Mal had woken up, she had known she was off her game. Maybe it was Ericka being maybe immortal or knowing today was the day she took Eris out of the war for good, but she had been unsteady and off-balance since the moment she'd opened her eyes. She braced her grip on Ben's trusty sword and bared her teeth at Eris.
"Go ahead." She goaded. "Make my day." She felt her old Isle habits slipping back, even though they were rusty and not used to the new body she had, which was slimmer, healthier, and not to mention about three months pregnant.
"Fools!" Eris boomed. "How dare you? You have taken my daughter and my partner, leave my home!"
"We will." Mal promised. "Just as soon as we make sure you'll never hurt anyone again."
Eris let out an unholy shriek. She tried to reach over Mal's head for Ben, But Mal jumped up and swung her sword at Eris's wrist. Great drops of black blood spilt to the sands. Eris howled in pain and tried to swat at Mal. Mal jumped back and took another swing at Eris's fingers.
Eris, being about twice the size of one of the apartment complexes Mal had built on the Isle should have naturally held the upper hand, but Mal knew how to pick a fight, and she was fast, if suddenly clumsy. She took swings at the goddesses' legs and, when she reached for Ben again, stabbed the entire sword through the length of Eris's foot. The tip of the blade appeared on the other side of her foot as Eris grabbed her foot and screamed.
Above their heads, the walls began, not to seal together, but to become more circular. It looked less like a rip now, and more like the opening to a fishbowl. Ben's whole body shook as cold sweat poured down his face.
Eris pulled the sword out of her foot slowly, inch by inch. "You simpleton." She hissed through the pain as black blood mixed into the sands at her feet. "I will eliminate you, and your stooge of a husband who dares steal my powers!"
"Let's go then!" Mal called. "Bring it on."
Eris laughed cruelly. "You have no sword." She declared. "You don't expect to fight me with a toothpick, now do you?"
Mal sheathed her sword. "You're right." She agreed. "If you're not going to come down there and face me, I might as well take the battle to your level."
As Eris brought a fist down a top Mal's head, she dodged and spread her arms about her. In a flash, green flames burst at her feet, and Mal began to morph, growing upwards, until she was even taller than Eris. Ben broke his concentration long enough to see what was going on, and then dissolved his feet to carry him up to the sky. The hole in the roof of the chasm was slowly growing smaller.
When Mal finished morphing and let out a huff and the now-small Eris beneath her, the goddess of chaos at least had the decency to look amazed. Mal summoned a torrent of fire from her lungs and breathed scorching green flames down on Eris as Ben worked, high in the sky.
Eris shrieked and hurried to over her bare skin as Mal's breath melted her dress, parts of her hair, and the sand. Hot, molten glass now covered the ground. The city of black rocks was slowly sinking away and disappearing.
Eris looked up at the doors and shrieked in anger. "No!" She howled and launched into the sky. Up, up above their heads was Ben, with both hands on the sky, trying to piece in back together with his bare hands. The hole had gradually shrunk to about the size of three people, all head to head.
Mal launched into the sky and knocked Eris to the ground. Eris screamed as she tried to throw the dragon off of her. Mal blew another torrent of flames into Eris's face as she arched her back and tried to get away. Her cries of agony rang in Mal's ears as Ben continued to work up above.
The battle continued. Mal sent back equal firepower for every blow Eris tried to administer. The goddess tried to launch around Mal, but Mal clamped her jaw down on Eris's hair and threw her, tumbling, back into the sands. Eris summoned waves to her will and tried to bury Mal, but the dragon was simply too tall and strong for Eris to compete with. Blow after blow, parry after parry, the fight continued. Meanwhile, Ben remained up ahead, slowly cinching the doors closer and closer together.
Here's something Mal discovered immediately that she hadn't known before: summoning flames, or using any kind of magic, while in her dragon form was extremely taxing. She felt almost like she had after pouring her magic into Ben, trying to melt the sand in his soul. It wasn't like this was her first rendezvous with fire before; she'd summoned flames briefly when attacking Duloc. However, this was on a much greater scale, with much greater stakes. She had to keep the flames from incinerating Ben, who, despite his newfound magic, was still extremely flammable. Meanwhile, the sands were melting with increasing rates and turning into jagged glass sculptures with horrifying points.
She managed to claw Eris down her cheek, though Mal knew her wounds would never have the same effect as Helena's poisonous touch. Eris was growing more desperate. She called the sands to her will, sacrificing some to battle the fires catching in her hair and on her dress, and hurling more and more toward Mal in the forms of whips and ropes that seared her scales and rubbed off her joints. Despite all this, Mal managed to keep Eris back. She and Eris were both failing in terms of energy at a steady rate, though.
After almost two hours of Mal throwing Eris back as Eris tried with all her might to knock Ben down from the ceiling, the hole had finally shrunk to a size just big enough for someone to slip through. Ben turned around and called her name over the roars and shrieks coming from the two brawling girls. Every muscle in Mal's body was on fire. She was shaking from exertion and swaying in her dragon form. Still, she knew she had to do something to keep Eris subdued long enough for the two of them to escape.
Ben dissolved and appeared on the ever-shifting sands beside her. Mal almost had a heart attack as a mountain of golden sands collapsed on top of him, but he simply rematerialized above the pile. He rubbed his hands together, and held his palms outstretched towards Eris. For a space of a breath, nothing happened. Then thick, midnight blue sands appeared from his hands and raced back to Eris, who shrieked at them both as she tried to hurl sand at the small hole in the sky.
A distinct cold crept down Mal's spine as she glimpsed the blue sands. This was not the normal sands of chaos that Ben would summon. This was fear magic. Pitch's magic.
Eris batted the sand back, but the moment it made contact with her skin, she paused and began to slow in her own movements.
Mal used her two front feet to push Eris back into the sands. She began to shake as more fear sand swirled around her. Mal inhaled and let loose the largest blast of fire she'd created that day. As Eris struggled to get up from the thick black and golden sands, they began to melt and hold her fast in place. As the hot glass touched her skin, Eris screamed. She pulled her hands up – two glowing red molten blobs and howled in agony.
"Let's go!" Ben yelled at her. Mal wasn't sure how she heard him. His voice seemed to be coming from all directions.
Eris arched her head back and wailed. The very walls of Tartarus shook as her voice thrummed in Mal's ears. She shut her eyes and forced herself, on the last dregs of her magic, to return back to herself.
The swirling piles of sand were a lot more threatening once she was small. It was impossible for her to keep her balance as the sand seemed to be pulling her legs down and her ankles apart from each other. The glass, which was still being heated from Mal's fire, was streaming in a fast river for her. Ben yelled her name. Mal concentrated hard for her wings and shot upwards, out of the sand. Ben dissolved and headed towards the ceiling as she followed. The hole was still there, but the longer it was left alone, the more it would pull apart.
Ben reappeared hanging onto the edge of the barrier. "We need to finish it on this side before we head over." He coughed. His throat was as dry as her entire body felt.
Mal nodded and lit her eyes up as she examined the magic of the wall. Ben didn't have much experience, but he had worked slowly, doing his best, and the bindings were strong. Mal quickly set to work, despite the fact she had next to no magic left in her body. She spelled the edges of the hole to pull open when Eris wasn't powerful enough to leave and to pull closed when she was. It was a bit of work, with Eris herself being so far away, but doable. Ben took her arm to support her as she finished. Her last dregs of strength were ebbing away.
"Good job." He whispered when the last spell had been cast. "I knew you could do it."
"Help me up." Mal ordered as her eyes slipped into the back of her head for a few seconds before returning to their normal shades. Her wings faltered and began to beat again.