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Chapter Text

Folk who live in Fork-on-River, the city situated at the great fork where the great river that flows out of the easternmost point of North Lac branches off to the south and to the east, tell of a place high in the mountains above the northern pass.  It is a dark place where the greatest evil in the known world was cast into the black heart of the tallest peak.

They say that it is an evil place, the tomb in the mountain, and folk who live below it fear to venture there.  The northern pass that, in its meandering route, takes travelers directly below the entrance to that dark place is rarely traveled for this reason, travelers and merchants preferring to take south through the Fingerling Mountains – the Three Orphans as they were sometimes known - with their great peaks stretching upwards to scrape at the roof of the world like a giant's fingers of old.  On they would travel, past the great Fiery Mountain that stands guard between the Snowlands and the great plateaus of Ènell. No greenery could be coaxed from the dead rock and snow of the northern pass, and no birds cry in the air.  The evil lay there, trapped in rock and magic so old that the words of the very spells laid into the rock were forgotten, lost in the annals of time.  All was safe, so long as none strayed from the path and chanced too close to the door in the mountainside.  So long as the Fiery Mountain to the south slept on.

The old songs sing of a promise made by the black soul locked away beneath the earth and rock there.  They sing of the first time Fiery Mountain spewed forth black and ash and death upon the land, the famine and the death that spread from the witch's spell that drew the Fiery Mountain from its sleep.  The songs sing of a promise made by the witch, that the mountain will awaken once more, and the world will rue the day they locked away the black witch of the north and banned the magic that she created to quell the flames of the mountain once more. It will be her revenge, they say, for not believing the tale she told of how the mountain sprang to life the first time, and for rising up in arms against her rightful claim on the rule of the North.

Those with magic - that same magic that had once doomed and saved the world - were forced from society, from the highest kings to the lowest peasants.  They lived in the shadows, ever-watchful for when the Fiery Mountain came shrouded in smoke and black clouds once more.  The ways of magic were long-forgotten, but those with the ability knew their purpose when that day came.

They would look to the door-in-the-mountain then, they would look for their queen and pray she could save them once more and make good her promise of old.

The northern pass was steep and narrow, a thin spine of a walkway carved into the very mountainside.  It does not lend itself to travel well, and it was scarcely walked upon by those who would seek to clear the trail of boulders and avalanches that fall from the tall peaks high above.  The way was treacherous, and those who chance it were truly desperate souls indeed.

Far below the door-in-the-mountain, a traveler leading a stubborn horse that was bearing a child of no more than ten summers, caught sight of rocks and snow falling from the twisted peaks above them, shrouded in clouds though they were.  The snows were coming, and there was no time to linger and admire how the rocks rattled down as if from the very heavens above.  It was with careful, sure steps that the traveler led her horse and her charge along the slippery path.

They were cutting south and east across the mountains from the Snowlands far to the north, headed to the lands of her childhood, the windswept, sunny planes far to the south.  This had once been a mighty kingdom, the great northern expanse of The Northlands, it had been called.  Now though, as time and cursed ruin had set in upon the lands, it was splintered.  The Snowlands of the west and D’Alta of the east had created a schism, pulling away from the great keep at the center of the Enchanted Forest.  They were their own countries now, three where there was once just one, and all three slowly falling into ruin. 

"Do you think that there are birds that live this high up the mountain?" the child asked, voice wide and full of wonderment.  He was a young boy, a princeling, even though one would not know it, looking at him.  He was seated on the back of the traveler's horse, fingers tangled in the reins as the traveler picked her way through the snow and rock.

Had she had any other choice, she would not have gone this way, but the way to the south was already locked in snow. The Fingerling Mountains and the long-dormant funnel of the Fiery Mountain had been shrouded in clouds for weeks now, and it was only by the grace of a too-warm breeze from the east that this road was not closed as well.

"No birds will fly this far up into the mountains, Henry," she replied, placing her feet carefully.  She could not fall and leave the child all alone.  He had to be delivered safely to his great-grandfather at the keep in the heart of the Enchanted Forest before the snows set in and the way became impassable.

The child pointed then, a finger still clinging to baby fat and dirty from the dust of the road, and the traveler followed his gaze.  "But look, Emma," said he, and the traveler – Emma of the Snowlands - followed the line of his finger to an outcropping just beneath the thick line of snow and rock.  There, carved into the very face of the mountain, was a black door.

A chill cut through Emma then, and she gripped her cloak and long overcoat more closely to her chest as she stared up into the icy wind that blew down from the mountain side.  It wasn't a bird, standing; clutching the side of the mountain like falling free from the sky was no longer an option.  "That is no bird," she said, pulling her sword from its scabbard and passing the rest of the horse's reins to the child.  "You stay here.  Do not move from this spot, Henry."

“I promise,” he replied, twisting his fingers into the horse’s mane.

She climbed then, off the mountain path and through the icy snow and sharp rocks that form the heart of the northern range.  Emma's boots dug into the loose gravel, cast offs of avalanches long before.  It was not safe for anyone to climb so high, so close to the door in the mountain.  The very air burned her lungs and she sheathed her sword before long, fingers gloved in stiff leather digging into the rubble, trying to find safe grips to pull herself upwards.

It was slow, but steady progress, and when Emma pulled herself onto the outcropping at the very top of the spindly trail that wound further up the mountain, she realized what she was standing before.  Carved into the black rock of the door were runes so old that Emma could hardly even begin to parse out their meaning, save for the ill-feeling of this place.  The door itself was small, set back behind the great black stone that stood before it.  It was barely big enough for a single man to pass through, let alone the great host of dwarves who were once said to have hollowed out this very mountain.

The door was already cast open, and a great wind seemed to burst forth from the blackness within the mountain, curling around Emma's body and stealing the breath from her lungs.  She coughed and hacked, struggling to her feet.

"Come away from there!" she shouted to the cloaked form of what appeared to be a woman, standing on the far end of the outcropping.  She was clad in a black cloak, whipping as it was in the wind, her hair was cropped to her shoulders, but what little of it that Emma could see was flying wild outside the cloaked woman’s hood.  "This place is cursed!"

The woman turned then, and her face fell into the dim light of the sun as it filtered through the thick clouds overhead.  She was not pale as the northlanders, but dark like those far to the south of a place like this.  Her lips were painted blood red, and she moved with a fluidity about her person that Emma envied, still breathless in the thin mountain air.  "You are not who I would pick for my champion, but you will have to do," the stranger's accent was thick, choked with magic and something that Emma could not place.

"I am nobody's champion."  The traveler got to her feet and drew her sword from its sheath.  Too long had she spent dodging that title, she would not have some stranger put it upon her now.

"You are the swan princess of the Snowlands, daughter of the queen White as Snow, are you not?"  The question came so quickly, and so completely did it surprise Emma, that she found herself lowering her sword and staring at this woman with her intriguing dark eyes and painted red lips.

It was not a pleasant memory, the reason she no longer answered to that name.  Emma looked away.  "I have not held that title in many years," she confessed.

It had been stripped from her when she was hardly older than Henry; her body bore the marks – blood red and black birthmarks down the line of her spine – of a magic user.  Even her mother, who loved her more dearly than the old ways and tradition, could not mistake the signs for something else.  Though she had never once said a spell or conjured so much as a child’s bauble, Emma had been stripped of her name and title and banished to the Plateau below the Fingerlings.  Emma had grown up in the city of Ènell, living in the house of Queen Abigail and King Frederick, a student of the school and then a rider of the great Plateau Army there.

"Then you are a marked one – a magic user, come to the door-in-the-mountain just as the Fiery Mountain wakes," the woman replied. She gestures to the south, where the lights of Fork-on-River can be seen in the valley far below.  Beyond that, through a gap in the distant Fingerlings the long-dormant funnel of the Fiery Mountain was shrouded in black shadow and clouds.  Emma's breath caught in her chest, frozen and held there, as the clouds parted, and the black shadows pushed even further up into the midday sky, tinged with orange and red.  Fire.  The Fiery Mountain had woken up and a great doom was on all of the realms. "And you owe me your allegiance."

Her knees felt weak, so thin was the air of this place.  Emma turned to stare openly at this woman in her fine black cloak and her bewitching lips.  "You are the queen beneath the mountain?"  She asked, but in her heart she knew it to be true.

A great evil had been unleashed onto this world.

"My name is Regina," the Queen beneath the Mountain answered, her voice deathly cold and completely devoid of any of the friendly warmth of before. "And I am the Black Witch of the North."

High above them, thunder cracked and the gods saw fit to let the rain and snow that had been brewing all day spew forth from the heavens.  They had to get off the mountain before they were blinded or struck by the gods’ lightning.  Emma held her hand out to the Black Witch, "Come," she said.  "We must get down from here.  My charge waits below, and if what you say is true, we must get you to Fork-on-River so that you may catch transport to the Fiery Mountain."

There was a moment then, as the rain fell all around them, where Emma thought that the Black Witch might step forward and push her from this tiny outcropping to fall to her death among the jagged spires and steep cliffs that she’d scrambled up to reach this point.  The woman stared at her with such blackness written across her face that Emma, who was of the Snowlands and of Ènell, did not quite know how to react.  She had no bond to this woman, no honor dictated her actions.  Two people were all that they were.  Two people standing before the door-in-the-mountain, the mountain’s hot breath warm against the spitting icy rain overhead.

The Black Witch took her hand and Emma pulled them both off of the outcropping and slowly down the mountain to where the thin strip of road that formed northern pass was barely visible through the rain.  A little ways ahead of where they landed, Emma could see her horse and the small form of Henry, dismounted and shivering underneath his cloak, huddled under a low outcropping of rock that did little to keep him dry.

“I told you not to move,” Emma joked, bending and hauling him to his feet.  His hair was slick with rain, but he was smiling underneath his wool cloak.  The horse was no better, snorting and stomping its hooves in the gravel and mud of the road.  Emma leaned against its side, her fingers tangling in its mane. 

“Xiao said that he doesn’t like the rain,” Henry joked, blinking water from his eyes and staring up at Emma. The child had always had a gift with animals, even before his own banishment seemed imminent.  Snow White, queen of these lands, knew the child to be her grandson, but the laws were such that he could not linger too long within the borders of her kingdom.  Emma was taking him to King Leopold, father of the great Snow Queen, with hopes that his own skill with animals would temper the boy’s exuberance for his gifts.

“Did he now?”  Emma asked, narrowing her eyes at the horse, who playfully tossed his head and snorted once more.  Emma lay a calming hand on the horse’s side and said, “Best keep your talent to yourself, Henry.” Her voice was low and barely audible over the rain.  Travelers on the road were prone to frights, and to judging before they knew the full story.  She had told Henry many times now that he needed to keep his gifts to himself, but he was not yet a man and children are constantly on need of reminders. 

She tucked in a piece of loose strapping in the horse’s bridle and twisted it back through the buckle.  Xiao nudged her with his nose, and Emma smiled.  “This is Regina,” she said, gesturing to the Black Witch.  She stepped forward, out of the rain and shadow, to stand before the young princeling, her dark eyes catching in the dim light and seeming to illuminate her whole face.  She did not smile, not exactly, but her face was kind and not at all the stormy mask it had been up above. “We’re going to take her with us, down to Fork-on-River, alright?”

And the Black Witch of the North bowed low to the child, her skirts touching the muddy ground and the first true smile upon her painted lips that Emma had witnessed.  She caught his hand in her own, cupping it between her two larger hands, and held it firm.  "What is your name?" she asked.  Gone from her voice was the harshness of before, it was as though stepping away from the door-in-the-mountain tempered her and made her fully human once again.  Emma gripped Xiao's bridle and watched the exchange, the nervous working of the witch's jaw as Henry stared up at her with wide eyes. 

"Henry," he says, his voice ringing true.  "Son of Neal of Ènell."

The witch's eyes slid up to Emma and she shifted uncomfortably, knowing the question that was not asked.  He was a child of Ènell, yes, but he was of the Snowlands as well.  His face bore such a striking resemblance to the Snow Queen that it was oft spoken of in the quiet hours between first and second sleep, a rumor that no one could dispel.  Emma had tried desperately to keep his lineage private, and outside of Ènell very few knew that he was indeed her son. 

"A noble place to hail from, young Henry of Ènell.  What are you doing this far north?" 

"I go to school in Snowden," The boy answered, and Emma let her grip on Xiao’s bridle lessen.  There were a thousand answers to the Black Witch's question.  Henry was a child of two kingdoms, a child who was the heir apparent to the Snowlands, as the Queen's child - the Swan Princess - could not inherit the throne as the law was now.  His grandmother had asked to meet him and had seen his gifts with animals, so heralded in Ènell, and had sent him away once more.

They traveled deep into the Enchanted Forest, to the dark keep of the once-great King Leopold, fallen for his once-marriage with the Black Witch of the North.  There was hope, at least on Emma’s part, that maybe the fallen king would be able to teach Henry how to control his gift, to use it in such a way that it would not draw attention to the marks on his back that were the same as Emma’s own.  He had the potential, but he was the heir to all of the Snowlands, he could not have both; not at the same time. 

"Now we're going to go see King Leopold.  My family wishes that I spend time there to learn horsemanship from his masters." Henry glanced dejectedly back over his shoulder to the way that they had come.  He longed to linger in Snowden-upon-Hill, where the queen doted on him and he could feel like he had a family for the first time in his life. 

Emma would not mention how the Queen of the Snowlands wore two faces when it came to Henry.  He did not need to know how she would just as readily love him as she would send him away, so fearful was she of the power that he and Emma both possessed.  There was no point in telling him that, it would destroy him. 

The Black Witch's lips twitched and she nodded once to the child.  "I know King Leopold," she said, pondering and parsing out each word carefully.  Emma looked sharply at the Black Witch then, for she knew the stories well.  The Queen that King Leopold had taken by force had cursed him to live in seven generations of ruin, until the Fiery Mountain woke once more.  He was Emma’s grandfather, and they were only three generations removed from that curse.  Something, and Emma wasn’t quite sure what, was not right.  "And I will see you to the Keep's great white gate."

The traveler turned then, her fingers tangled in Xiao's reins.  "But your purpose is to the south," she protested. 

"You will find, Emma of Ènell, that there is very little that cannot wait until a good deed is done."

Chapter Text

The songs sing of a girl who came before the Black Witch of the North.  A girl who married the once-great king of the northlands, uniter of the Forest and Snowlands, his kingdom spanning as far east as D’Alta and the great sea beyond Mount D'Air.  The King saw the girl, saw her skill with horses, and he took her for his own. 

The Black Witch was born out of that union.  A girl who had to become a woman before her time, a girl whose love was corrupted and whose only hope for redemption came in a promise that she made as a curse.  "One day," she swore, "The Mountain will awake and you will rue the day you ever banished me to this black place."

King Leopold of the Enchanted Forest was cursed by the Black Witch for his rape and his corruption of her youthful soul.  The songs never told the trust story, everyone knew that.  There were so many versions that there was almost no telling what truly happened.  The most common one, the story that was known in most of the taverns from Snowden all the way down to the Cliffs of Paris was thus: 

When King Leopold saw the girl who would grow up to become the Black Witch of the North, he was struck by her beauty and decided then and there that he simply had to have her.  Now, the girl’s mother – and she was but a girl at the time – was a cruel woman who thirsted for power that she, nor any mortal, should possess.  King Leopold was the ruler of a vast kingdom and he had the price that the girl’s mother was willing to take in exchange for her daughter.  He was the one, the stories sometimes said, who gave the Black Witch’s  mother the spell book that had caused the Fiery Mountain to erupt the first time.

Magic, as the world knew it at that time, was the stuff of gods.  It did not belong in the hands of mortals.  And yet it was King Leopold who’d told the Black Witch over and over again that all magic was real, as she tried to deny all that her mother had done to her with the blackest of spells.  He was the one who had driven her to try and destroy the spell book once and for all.  And when it was done, and the girl was in ruin, he had taken her as his wife anyway, forced her body to bear his child, and for that the Black Witch had cursed him.  Cursed with long life, a promise to see seven generations of his house fall to ruin, he has endured, far beyond the life of a normal man.  He was almost a phantom, trapped in time and unable to move on from this earth, a memory of what the once great Kingdom of the North was. 

The trio of travelers cut down the northern pass through three days of rain and wet.  Even the horse, on the morning of the fourth day when the sun rose weak and bitter, raised its head to the thin rays that peaked above the cliffs of the mountains.  They were cold, the damp had gotten into their clothing, and when they came upon the great bridge that spanned the East Fork of the river, they rejoiced.

Emma led the party, her hand on her sword, wary of bandits that lingered on the road even during the day.  Henry and the Black Witch came next, leading Xiao and talking excitedly about the town they were about to venture into. 

The Black Witch knew Fork-on-River as she knew the northern pass and all the myths of their land.  It was written into her memory like ink upon a page, never to be forgotten so long as something of her memory – her legacy - still survived in the world.  The bards sing of her entombment as though it happened an age ago, but Emma knew better.  She'd been locked up for a hundred years beneath the mountain, nothing more, nothing less.  There would be some, especially along the long-lived plainsfolk far to the south, who would remember her face. 

"Why do you talk to him like he does not know who you are?" Emma asked, as Henry stopped to examine a rock jutting out from the ground just off the road.  She adjusted her sword and cloak, her eyes staring hard at her companion.  "He knows the old tales; he grew up in Snow White's house, after all."

"And tell me, Emma, do you believe everything that the Queen White as Snow tells you?" Regina asked in response, her fingers reaching out like claws to wrap around Emma's bracer. Even through leather and cloth, Emma could feel her grip, it was a strong as iron, "Do you believe that a mere girl could be capable of all the sins that they say the Black Witch committed?"

Emma looked down at her mud-splattered boots, biting at her lip.  "Your magic stole my family from me," she hissed, turning her gaze upon the witch once more.  "Your magic stole my title from me and cast me out into the world to become a wanderer whose name had no honor when it should have had it all.  Do you not think my resentment merited?”

And the Black Witch who was once the queen of all the north looked away, her expression that of one who knew that she had done wrong.  "I did not know that they would make illegal the magic that would save this world from the blackness of the fiery mountain," she said, and Emma knew that her words came from truth.  "I did not know that even one as preoccupied by love as Snow White would case aside her child and grandchild out of fear of that very magic."

Emma looked up then, her straw colored hair catching the last light of the sun.  Her eyes were wide, and fear colored her every expression.  "I have no quarrel with you, Black Witch of the North," she said, her tone quiet.  "But you see much, for one who has been asleep for a hundred years."

"Not asleep," The Black Witch replied.  There was a haunted look in her eyes as she said the words.  "Do you know what the dwarves did when they dug that tomb deep into the mountain?  What the fairies wrote into the magic of that place?"

The traveler shook her head, watching as her charge gathered some stones from around the base of the marker for his slingshot.  "I have not heard tell," she confessed.  "It is forbidden to know such things."

The hand that had curled around Emma's bracer relaxed, and the Black Witch stepped forward, her fine cloak slipping to reveal the leather jerkin and long coat she wore beneath it.  She was dressed in the finery of a queen, even if everywhere on her person the signs of age, of mold and decay, could be smelled and seen.  Her lips almost brushed against Emma's ear and she shivered, her back straightening and her bow digging painfully into her shoulder.  "They salted the earth so that I could never sleep, and they trapped me in a dream world of fire and pain so I would not forget the foolish mistakes and incredible gullibility of my youth."

"The Fiery Mountain..." Emma breathed, and the Witch was gone, backed away to smile politely at Henry as he scrambled up the embankment and back onto the road.

The tales told of a girl with a book of spells so black that they corrupted her heart and turned her purity into wickedness, but those were just tales.  There was no truth in them, Emma knew that.  She'd heard the stories from Snow White and from the Black Queen's once-husband.  There was no way such a thing could be true.

Snow White had always said that the Black Witch had woken up the mountain to fuel her revenge upon all those who had wronged her once upon a time.  She had brought doom on the King of the Northlands who had stolen her innocence, the girl child he'd sired who'd stolen her one true love.  Seven generations, she'd sworn, and had cast their lot in with the black stone and fire of the mountain.

"They have good rocks here," Henry said, holding them out between his muddy fingers to show them.  His breath fogged in the air and his eyes shone with excitement.  "Fork's a lot better than Snowden for that.  There's nothing but ice there."

"But the ice is beautiful when the sun shines, is it not, young Henry?"  The Black Witch asked, her eyes shining with the same enthusiasm as the child.  Emma watched them, not knowing where it came from, for all the stories say that Snowden-on-Hill is a place of painful memories for the woman who was once the queen. It was once the seat of all the kingdom of the Northlands, where the innocence of the girl Regina was ripped away.   "When the light hits the high spires of the White Queen's tower and pure blue light shines down among the city streets. It's like the whole world is underwater and everything is silent as the snow falls."

The boy nodded, and Emma found a smile pulling at her lips.  She did not know where it came from, or why she wanted to smile.  The Black Witch's words were full of life and laughter, and she doted on Henry like her own child.  She gripped Xiao's reins and stepped forward once again.  "Come on, you two," she said.  "We must hurry if we're to reach the city before night sets in and they lock the gate."

The road into the city of Fork-on-River was deserted, and the trio made their progress quickly through the built-up hovels and market stalls by the sides of the road where traders without the necessary paperwork to operate within the city walls had set up shop.  There were fires and people sitting around them, steaming cups of stew and warm ale raised high in the late autumn night's chilly air.

Some two miles from the bridge, there was a gate, and Emma glanced over to Regina and pressed a finger to her lips.

The gatekeeper was a tall man, wide in stature and quick to smile.  He wore the red cloak of the city guard and underneath his linked mail armor shone in the torchlight.

"Why it's the Plainswoman!" he shouted, stepping down from his hut and clapping Emma merrily on the shoulder.  He had small, beady eyes, but they crinkled at the corners in merriment.  "What are you doing back here? I thought you'd gone back to Ènell months ago."

Emma smiled up at him.  "I had some business to take care of in Snowden," she admitted, even though he had no business asking.  She'd learned in her time that it was better to provide some information, rather than none at all.  If one walked clouded in enigma and shadow, questions were bound to be asked, and it was those questions that could get a person killed. "And now I'm on my way back home."

"And your friends?" The gatekeeper eyed the Black Witch, standing with her hand on Xiao's bridle and Henry, who sat astride the horse, his cloak hood pulled up, for his resemblance to the White Queen would surely not go unnoticed.

"Fellow travelers, from the Northern Pass.  The snows have closed the Southern Pass for the season," Emma explains.  "Best tell anyone who thinks of venturing that close to the Three Orphans and the Fire Mountain."

"That's an ill omen if there ever was one, I say.  Going that close to the door-in-the-mountain," The gatekeeper replied.  He stepped forward and placed one massive hand on the gate and pushed it open.  "Enjoy the city, plainswoman."

They made their way to the Dancing Dart, an inn of some repute.  The city was largely shuttered and closed at this hour, and everywhere, the orange glow of the Fiery Mountain filtered through the snow and ice that had already gripped the city.  Emma could see the Black Witch's eyes upon the mountain as they turned down the high street and started down the embankment to the inn's stables.

"The mountain weighs on your mind, does it not?"  She asked, settling Xiao into a stall and flipping a copper penny to the stable boy who moved forward with brush and comb to rub down the poor animal.

"It is not the mountain," Regina replied, her fingers gripping Henry's hand tightly.  He looked up at her with such adoration that Emma's stomach turned, wondering when her son (and she still was endlessly uncomfortable with that fact and all the responsibility it entailed) had become so corrupted by the woman.  "But rather the task ahead and a question of what blackness has awakened the fires once again.  The curse... it was supposed to last seven generations, not a mere three."  She pulled her cloak from her shoulders and shook it out, the blackness and wear of the door-in-the-mountain suddenly gone.

That night, as they lay three to the single large bed in the room they'd bought with Regina's gold coin, produced from a purse in her skirts that Emma had not noticed before, Henry asked for a bedtime story.  There was a fire crackling merrily against the center wall, their boots and cloaks steaming before the flames, drying out the cold and wet of the northern pass.  Emma had washed out her shirt and Henry's clothing in the bathwater once they'd finished.  She just hoped that it would be dry and not too stiff before they had to leave in the morning.

"What sort of a tale do you want to hear, child?" Regina asked.  Her hair was down now, playing around her shoulders and her face was scrubbed clean of the paint that she'd used to accentuate her lips and eyes before.  Emma found her beautiful like this, sitting on the edge of the bed in wool stockings and a loose silk camisole.

"You were the Black Queen of the North," Henry said, bouncing in his one clean shirt and stockings.  Both of them turn to stare at him then, eyes wide with question.  The child did not seem to mind, and curled himself under the blanket at the center of the bed.  "I want to hear the tale of the first time the mountain woke."

Regina ran a hand through her hair, pulling at tangles and sighing - a quiet sort of a sound.  "There isn't much of a tale there, Henry."

He pulled the covers up to his chin and grinned at her.  "I want to hear it anyway," he announced.

Throwing Emma a panicked look, Regina settled down beside him.  "Well, let me see," she began, fingers tugging at the fraying blanket.  "Do you know of the Northern Dwarves?"

"No."

"Well, then that is a good place to start," Regina began with a tired smile.  "The Northern Dwarves are an ancient people, different from their kin in the Yellow Mountains of the East, or those that grow olives in the Cliffs of Paris far to the south.  They do not come from female dwarves, as their eastern and southern kin do, but rather from the very rock itself."

"How do you mean?  Henry asked.  "Doesn't everyone have a mother?"

"No, child," Regina replied, and her voice was quiet and full of what could only have been regret.  "Not everyone does.  The dwarves come from the earth itself, she is their mother.  The mountain heart conceives them, and the earth carries them to term.  They hatch fully grown from eggs that grow deep within their mines.

"One day, a dwarf was born who was different from the others.  He could not be named, as dwarves usually can, and he went as the nameless one for many years.  The nameless dwarf was alone in the world, for none of the named dwarves wanted anything to do with him.  He would steal out, while they were at drink or song, and sit at the very roof of the mountain, watching the stars.

"He made a wish, to have a name, one day.  And it was on that day that he met a girl, climbing high into the mountains in search of his name.  The girl was running away, Henry, away from a family that did not love her and a marriage that was for power and not love.  Her journey had been long and hard, and the burden she carried heavy. When she'd run away, the girl had stolen the book of spells that had been given to her mother as a gift at the girl’s betrothal by her promised husband.

"The book was old, very old.  It had once belonged to the greatest sorcerer that the world had ever known – Rumpelstiltskin was his name, and the girl intended to destroy the book.  She sat with the dwarf at the roof of the mountain a for an afternoon, and told him of her plans.

"’Why not take the mountain down into the mine?' the dwarf asked, puffing on his pipe and blowing perfect rings of smoke into the cold night air.  'There is fire at the heart of this mountain, it would surely destroy a book so evil as that one.'

"The girl thought about what he'd said, and offered her hand in promise. `I will help you to find your name, if you will guide me,' she said.  At his nod of agreement, the girl added, 'Then that is where it will be destroyed.'

"The two unlikely companions went deep down into the mountain.  The nameless dwarf's absence went unnoticed, and after three days of journeying deeper and deeper into the mountain's mines, they reached the heart of the mountain.  There was fire there, and heat.  There was a black blight everywhere, and the girl stood with the book in her hands before flames, unable to move.

"The book, you see, was corrupted by the magic it contained.  It had seeped into the girl, its black ink writing lines of spells up and down her arms, binding its fate to her own.  The dwarf noticed this, his hands pulling the girl - the only person who had ever been kind to him - away from the flames.  'Do not destroy it,' he pleaded with the girl, 'You will only destroy yourself.'  The dwarf knew that it was folly to try to destroy the book.

"The girl was angry, because the book was the reason that she was betrothed to a man twice her age who she did not love.  The book was all her mother had wanted from the deal, you see, it was a trade.  She cast the dwarf aside and threw the book into the flames, not knowing... not realizing that he had been right.

"The fire at the heart of the mountain erupted, corrupted as it was by the magic, and the girl stood surrounded by fire as the mountain rose.  The magic protected her then, for it was only because of her that the magic lived at all.  Slowly the fires consumed the mines, destroying all in their wake.  The once proud Mines of Lindent, gone in a flash, the entire race of northern dwarves expired, and the Fiery Mount alight with doom.  The black queen of the north rose from that fire, Henry, for the magic had corrupted her completely, blackening her soul with the death of the ten thousand dwarves that lived in that mine."

"But the girl didn't know," Henry protested as Emma pulled the covers up over his chest.  She was looking at Regina warily, not sure how much of the story was true.  "How could everything be her fault if she didn't know what she was doing?"

Regina leaned over and pressed a presumptuous kiss to his brow.  "How indeed, my young prince, how indeed."

Chapter Text

The Enchanted Forest has not always had that name.  No, that name comes from recent memory, when the whole of the wood was cursed by the Black Witch of the North.  Once this forest was called the Brandle Woods, named for the weeds that grew everywhere along the forest floor.  Now, though, as the forest twists and rises, trees barren and branches reaching like spindly fingers up to the sky, it looks more like an evil place than one of wonderment.

Two horses slowly picked their way down the River Road, traveling eastward along the river.

“Do you fear,” Emma asked, twisting in her saddle to turn and look at Regina.  Henry stilled in front of her, his eyes pointed forward, but everything about his posture indicating that he was listening.  “Entering into these woods?”

The Black Witch tossed her head back and laughed, loud and long.  It was a wicked sound that echoed through the empty forest, rattling about on the sleeping trees and coming to rest once more on the leaf-covered ground. "Why should I be afraid?" she demanded. "The man who once took so much from me is but a shell of his former self.  It is he who should fear me."

Henry shifted beside Emma, and he too, turned to look at Regina.  He was tired, they'd been riding all day, making their way along the River Road through the grey mist that rises from the forest floor.  Henry had never had to travel like this, where the way might be closed if they do not make haste, when the nights are so cold that he shivers, curled against Emma's side.

"Why do you speak of him so?" he asked, and his voice sounded almost hurt to Emma.  She rested a cautioning hand on his shoulder, but said nothing in response or caution.  She wanted to see what their companion would say.

Regina said nothing for a long time.  Her eyes were on the back of her horse's head.  They'd purchased the beast that morning from a soldier looking to unload his gear before he caught a boat to the Cliffs of Paris, far to the south.  He was a dapple grey, shorter than Xiao, but not by but half a hand or so, and even-tempered.  Emma had heard tell of the Black Witch's skill with horses; it was part of her legend, after all.  What she had not expected was pure mastery upon a horse unaccustomed to carrying her, nor the skill at which she corrected the horse's mistakes. The soldier, evidently, had not trained him well.

"Not everyone can have a father who is noble, Henry; not everyone can have a mother who is brave and true," Regina explained, twisting a handful of her horse's mane between her fingers. Emma realized what it was that was throwing her off then: the Black Witch rode like a man.  Her whole body was one with the horse. "To most people, children are just a means to get things that are wanted - money, power, influence, things like that.  My mother wanted a book of spells, and I got a husband out of the deal."

It sounded so simple then, not at all contrived and complicated.  Not the way that Snow White or even Queen Abigail of Ènell told the story, for that matter.

"And what of the other people you hurt then - the dwarf mine was an accident; anyone will give you that, a noble deed gone horribly wrong, but what of the others?"  It wasn't Emma who asked, but rather Henry.  He knew the stories as well as any child of this land.  He knew that the Black Witch of the North had taken the once great kingdom of the North and had pulled it apart.

It had been a great war, one that had consumed the land.  The great cities of Snowden and D'Alta were shadows of their former selves, and the queen had sat upon the mountain she'd set alight and had cursed them all.  "I will be victorious!" she'd crowed, vowing to make Leopold and the girl child she'd never birthed but was forced to call her own suffer for as long as it would take for their family – their kingdom – to fall to ruin.

The queen had hated the child, the stories said.  She'd been named by the king for her beauty and her innocence, but the queen knew there was none there.  She stripped it from the girl and cast her out into the wild - to raise an army amongst the forest and ride to one great final battle.

"Those were times of war, child," Regina explained.  Her choice had taken on a quiet timbre, and Emma felt bile rise up on her throat, listening to the Black Witch minimize her deeds so.  "You killed, or you were killed.  There was nothing more."

"They said you learned magic in the black mountains."  Emma moved Xiao so close to Regina's horse that she could see the other animal draw nervous breath in the cold air around them.  "That you are the darkest evil that ever graced this land."

Regina turned to look at Emma then, her eyes far-off and sad.  "Magic corrupts souls, Emma of Ènell.  Surly you know that that is why it has been made illegal."  She touched her chest, gloved fingers lingering on black fabric.  "And mine is the most corrupted of them all."  She looked up then, warm brown eyes meeting Emma's and a slow smile playing at her lips.  "They say only true love can save a soul like mine."

Emma looked away, sucking air through her teeth in disgust.  "Tsch," she said, spitting over Henry's shoulder and onto the uneven ground below.  "True love is a myth."

They lapsed into silence, the road by the river taking all their concentration to navigate.  It narrowed to a single, rocky path. As the day grew darker, the fog that rose from the river thickened and billowed around the horses’ legs.  It had become so thick that they could scarcely see the ground below them.

"This fog isn't natural," Emma muttered to herself.  She closed her eyes and looked for that little, pure-white spark that existed within her heart.  While she'd sworn to anyone who'd listen to her that she did not understand her magical gift, it was not entirely true.  Emma knew how to tap into it at times when it was needed.  She could look for guidance within herself; it helped her to be a reliable tracker and a skilled journeyman.

The woman who was once the swan princess let out a breath and pushed her mind outwards once more.  Her mind was locked around that spark, on her need to protect Henry from this unnatural place, and she could see the ground again.

"We must climb higher," Emma said, pointing to the embankment with one gloved finger.  "The fog is less dense up there, and we must make sure that we can see the road else our horses will surly go lame on an ill-placed rock."

Henry turned to Emma, blinking wide brown eyes up at her.  "Xiao says that he does not want to climb.  The road here is good."

Emma leaned down and pressed a kiss onto his forehead.  She pulled his knit cap further down his ears and let out a low chuckle.  "Xiao is very opinionated about such things," she said, grinning as she said it.  She pulled the reins hard and leaned back, digging her heels into the beast's flanks.  "Ya!"

Xiao climbed the embankment in two nimble steps, lingering along the tree line as the Black Witch led her own horse to a more gentle slope and urged him to do the same.  The fog now danced around her waist, and she seemed to rise from a cloud, horse trotting up to nuzzle Xiao.

"You never told me your child has the gift." Regina leveled accusatory eyes at Emma.

Emma tossedher hair in its braid over her shoulder.  Her arms tightened around Henry and she smiled almost coyly at the Black Witch.  "I never said he was my child."

"Please, he is the image of your mother," Regina folded her arms across her chest and scowled at Emma.

This was not the first conversation that the two women had shared regarding the boy’s parentage, or over the color of the sky.  Anything, really, and they would butt heads.  Just that morning Emma and Regina had found themselves at odds over the market wares at Fork-on-River, debating provisions and how long it would take to journey through the Enchanted Forest to King Leopold’s keep. 

Henry looked between the two women, his eyes wide and shining with joy.  Emma glanced down at him, wondering why he was so happy.  This was not supposed to be a happy time for him.  He was traveling with a stranger, a truly evil stranger that had nothing but ill-intent for the world at large. What made the situation feel even worse to Emma was that she was slated to leave him at the feet of the once-great king of the north and beg him to hide an aspect of himself that he should never have been forced to hide.  It was not an ideal situation, not at all. 

The trio stood perched on the ridge above the river road, staring down at the rising mist.  “Why is it following us, Emma?” Henry asked, tilting his head back and staring up at Emma.  He wiggled then, and Emma let out a small exhale of air.  He was getting bigger by the day, soon he would be a man and she would have missed it all. 

It was not by choice that she left Henry alone in the great Northern hold of Snowden, or left him to wander the plains of Ènell as she ventured East towards the Yellow Mountains.  It was where she’d first found Xiao, a gift from a great warrior and friend she’d met along the way.  Emma missed the mountains there, with their soil yellowed by the sulfur that was everywhere in the air.  She missed the companionship of the men and women she’d come to know, as well as the steady, even calm of the commander of the forces there. 

She had been a warrior of unmatched skill, a kind soul and everything that Emma had ever looked for in a leader.  Emma bit her lip, fingers treading through Xiao’s mane, wondering where the commander was now.  Was she leading the great Han army against the invading forces from the East?  They were dark creatures, skin blackened with mud and breath so foul it as though their very flesh was decaying as they walked.  They were animated by some spell, Emma had been the one to find that truth, and it was only then that the commander and the rest of the armies had devised a way to kill them.  Surly that rebellion had been quelled by now, though. 

“The mists follow us because the ground is still warm from the heat of summer, Henry,” Regina explained.  She’d drawn her horse level with Xiao and was looking at Emma oddly, as though she could tell that Emma’s mind was not here, but miles to the south and east, in the vast, cold desert of Han.  “The water from the river is as well.”

Henry wiggled closer to Emma.  “But it’s so cold!” he protested.

The Black Witch did a peculiar thing then.  She raised her hand into the air and curled her fingers in a twisting circle.  Fire sprung from the space between her fingers and palm and she held it out to Henry like a gift.  “Warm yourself, then, young Henry.  It will not burn you.”

As the boy reached out to take the flames from the Black Witch, Emma swatted at her hand.  The flames tumbled to the ground and vanished amidst the fog.  “We cannot do magic here,” she hissed, her eyes wary.  “This forest is cursed.”

The old tales tell of what had once lived in the Brandle Woods, long before the Black Witch of the North was even a twinkle in her father’s eye.  These woods were once home to the fair folk, the beings that were once guardians over all magic and that which could not be explained in these lands.  They moved through the darkness, never stepping into the light of day, and everywhere, the stories said, a fog heralded their presence. 

They were shape shifters, beings who could take any form.  Fair as the full moon and beautiful as the sirens who sang sailors to their doom if they sailed too close to the Cliffs of Paris on the Southern Sea.  Some said that they walked as wolves in the blackness, the fog hiding them from those who might seek them out, cloaking them in mystery.  Others said that they were beautiful – men and women alike, gracing the forest with deep-seated hatred for all those who dared enter its boundaries.

The forest was a dark place, even before the Black Witch had cursed its heart darker.  King Leopold had built his keep in the center of the forest to prove that he had mastered the evil that lurked here, just beneath the surface.  It was a faulty assumption, and the mists and dark of the forest had claimed much of his lands.  Still, he held the reflecting pool below the keep as well as the keep itself.  Travelers, however, knew better than to venture this deep into the forest.  Especially if those travelers strayed from the road. 

Emma drew Xiao up beside Regina’s horse.  “I want you to take Henry,” she said, her expression deathly calm.  There was something afoot in these woods, and Emma wanted to be prepared to defend them, should the need arise.  She could not do that with Henry before her on the horse, an added obstacle that she could not easily fight around.

The Black Witch looked at Emma with wide, almost fearful eyes.  She slid back on her saddle wordlessly, and Emma lifted Henry over to her.  There was a trust in that action, an acknowledgement of how important, how key this had to be for both of them. “I need you to stay with Regina,” Emma explained as he settled himself onto the back of the dapple grey horse and into the embrace of a woman who could kill him with a mere word.  Emma did not feel worried by this.  The Black Witch had taken a shine to the boy, and she seemed genuinely interested in making sure that he was delivered to King Leopold’s keep in one piece.  

“Why?” Henry asked, his eyes wide and staring.  He looked so young in the moments like this, when he was looking at Emma to be all that she could not be to him.  She was not meant to be a mother, she and Neal had both known that going into their union.  The spells to ward off the pregnancy that had resulted from their union had failed, and Emma had not been particularly interested in removing the life that grew in her belly when she missed her first, and then her second monthly. 

She’d written to the ghost of the woman who had once been her mother, begging her for a solution to the problem.

Henry was the heir apparent, even if he was a bastard child of a disgraced princess.  He would be king one day.  They knew that, and Snow White had opened her home to the child with open arms. 

She’d always been a better mother than Emma had, anyway.

There was evil in these woods, hiding in and amongst the trees.  Emma could feel it, aching in her bones. She wanted to draw her sword and stand tall, ready to fight. 

There was no time to explain to the boy.  Emma reacted before she could find the words to even begin to explain things to him.  A beast howled, a haunting sound that made the fine gold hairs on the back of Emma’s neck stand up on end.  She drew her sword and kicked Xiao forward, but the horse’s ears were pressed back in fear.  He would not move.

“That is no ordinary cry,” Regina said, one arm wrapped firmly around Henry and the other on the dapple grey horse’s reins.  Tension was spilling out from her body and Emma could see how nervous she was, shifting in her stirrups, her heels never moving, but her whole body poised, like an adder ready to strike. “That is the call of a shape shifter – and its close!”

“The fair folk,” Emma let out a quiet curse, sword level in front of her.  “We must fly.”

She kicked Xiao once more, and this time, the horse flew to life, surging through the mist and trees.  Emma ducked below a low hanging branch, looking behind her to see that behind Regina’s horse a great beast was darting trough the mists, driving them deeper and deeper into the forest.  Her heart thudded in her chest, for she had had little dealings with such creatures.  She did not venture into these woods so close to winter, or so close to dark.  To do so was folly. 

Xiao’s breath fogged before him and Emma sat low in the saddle, posting only when she could.  The hard leather and wood of it dug into her thighs and the leathers of the stirrups pinched at her calves, yet still she sat as low as possible.  Their only hope was to reach a clearing where the moon would be high in the sky.  That was the only place the fair folk would not venture. 

She felt, rather than saw, the pull of Regina’s horse, some five minutes of hard running later.  Her face had been cut by a branch and her breath was ragged with the force of her concentration.  Emma’s horse darted off to the right, away from the river road and even deeper into the forest.  Ahead Emma could see a clearing, and she let out a quiet breath of thanks, all that she could spare.

At the center of the clearing was a ring of mushrooms, growing out from the dead leaves and fallen branches that littered the clearing.  In the moonlight, the place seemed almost unearthly, and the Black Witch had led her horse to stand right in the middle of the ring.  It felt evil, full of misplaced energy and malcontent.  It was not the sort of place that Emma would venture willingly, if at all.

“Get inside.”  It came as a command, as a shout and a desperate plea.  Emma wasn’t sure what to make of it, and she moved Xiao into the circle just as the protection spell that was on Regina’s lips fell into effect. 

The beast lunged for the circle and Emma pushed her sword forward instinctively, but there was no need.  The beast fell, limp and whimpering, against the forest floor, as if it had hit a wall that could not be seen.

With wild, fascinated eyes, the three of them clung to their horses and watched as the great hulking shape of the beast – the wolf – twisted and mutated, its bones cracking and popping against the silence of the clearing.  Slowly, ever so slowly, fur receded into pale skin and teeth shortened and bones broke.  A woman lay sleeping before them, and it was only then that Regina let the protection spell flicker out into nothingness.

Emma slid off of Xiao and stepped out of the fairy ring, pressing one booted foot to the woman’s chest and leveling her sword at her throat.  This wolf was known to her.  She’d seen her once before, on a journey through these woods and eastward on to the town of D’Alta in the shadow of the solitary mountain, D’Air.  She’d had a different traveling companion then, one she’d left in the depths of the forest, unable to find her once the beast had taken her.

They had unfinished business, the beast and Emma.  And Emma was to see justice done.

“Hello, Red.”

Chapter Text

The wolf was a sorry creature, coughing with a haggard air about her and sprawled out on the forest floor.  Mud covered her body and Emma could see when she looked closely that underneath the mud and grime, the woman was quite naked.  Her breath was coming in uneven puffs of fog escaping her lips as her eyes went wide, staring at Emma's sword.

"Stay your hand, Swan."

The Black Witch's voice was cutting, icy and impossibly distant.  Emma took half a step back as the witch twisted her arms around herself and produced a cloak of fine red velvet from the space between her hands.  The magic was shocking in how easily it was done, and Emma wanted to cower in fear, watching as the witch spun fabric from nothing more than air.  She fought back the impossibly strong urge to make a sign against evil on her chest and to spit on the ground in the wake of such a spell.

Regina tossed the cloak down to Emma, who caught it with one hand.  She stared at the fine fabric for a long moment, feeling it against her fingers and turning to stare openly at her companion.  The woman had handed the dapple horse's reins to Henry and was in the process of dismounting.  "You should not interfere," Emma started to say, letting the cloak drop to the forest floor.  "My quarrel with this beast is long-standing."

"Be that as it may, Emma," Regina replied, bending and picking up the cloak. She shook it free of leaves and the pine needles that littered the clearing’s ground, and twisted her fingers into the fabric.  "I recommend you place this upon the girl before the clouds shift and the moon becomes visible again.  Even my magic could not save you from the maiming she is sure to bring about your person."  She held out the cloak.  "I've had dealing with the shape shifters of this wood before; I know what I'm doing."

The words of retort, the insistence that she, too, had had dealings with the creatures of this wood was strong in Emma.  Still, the light in the clearing was changing, the clouds were shifting.  She snatched the cloak from Regina's outstretched hands and threw it over the woman.  She pulled her foot away from the woman's chest gingerly.

"You are of the northern woods," Regina said, addressing the woman who was wrapping herself up in the red cloak. Emma knew of what she was referencing.  The river bisected the Enchanted Forest, wrapping cutting off a small section to the north, where the North Ridge dipped away into rolling, wooded hills that eventually gave way to the White Mountains.   "Why have you ventured below the river?"

The girl drew a shaky breath and it fogged in the air before her. She looked impossibly young looking, now that she was not trapped inside a beast or under Emma's blade. "The Fiery Mountain is awake.  I came to see if the spell on the keep had been lifted."  She pushed herself to unsteady feet and wrapped the cloak more tightly around herself.

“There is a curse on the keep?” Regina asked, her expression pensive and her brow furrowed. “I know of no such thing.”

Emma, too, knew of no such curse.  The only curse she knew was the one that the Black Witch had cast herself, plunging the entire forest into deeper shadow and mystery.  Shapeshifters lied, everyone knew that, they lied and stole and cheated their way through life.  The beast was surely lying, and she intended to make that clear to Regina.  “There is no such curse, Regina.  Obviously the girl is lying to save her own skin.”

“I would never!” the beast protested, her fingers reaching out to grip Emma’s arm.  Her grip was surprisingly strong, and her fingers dug into the leather of Emma’s bracer. “You came through these woods not two summers ago with a charge – Belle was her name, you were headed to D’Alta.  I befriended her while you were away, hunting.  It wasn’t wolfstime then.  I was just as I am now.”

The sting of that failure cut Emma deeply still, and she folded her arms over her chest, yanking her arm away from the girl.  “You took her, stole her away in the night,” Emma retorted.  “I was charged by her father to see her safely to the city by the mount and you ruined my good name.”

“A girl must make her own way in this world, same as a man,” the beast replied.  She’d turned her attention to Regina once more, and Emma watched them both with narrowed eyes.  The girl was obviously trying to trick them, she knew that: a wolf could never be trusted. The only question was why the wolf had chosen to explain her motivations at all.  She’d taken the girl, Belle, and she’d hidden her from Emma’s eyes. 

“Sit, child,” Regina said, holding out her hand.  There was such kindness in her tone that Emma wanted to scream.  There was no reason for it, this girl had done nothing to deserve it. “You have traveled far and we must know of this curse on Leopold’s Keep.  We are set to journey there.”  She glanced at Emma and nodded once.  Emma knew what her purpose was, and she did not like it.  She stepped around to help Henry from Regina’s mount and took both him and Xiao to the far corner of the clearing.  There was a patch of grass that grew there, untouched by the cold winter air that was just now starting to seep down from the mountains.  It would snow here in a few weeks, Emma was certain of that. 

Henry stood in the middle of the clearing, almost afraid to speak as Emma gathered fallen branches from the clearing’s floor and dropped them into a heap at Regina’s feet.  He looked almost fearful, as the beast and the witch sat beside each other on a low rock that protruded from the center of the fairy ring. 

“There has been a curse on Leopold’s Keep for a hundred years,” the beast explained, twisting the cloak more closely around herself and staring up at the moon above them with wide, terrified eyes.  Shape shifters like her had no control over how they turned.  They, like the tides of the great seas of this world, were ruled by the moon.  To see the moon and not be forced to change must have been an odd experience for a wolf so young, Emma reasoned.  She dug in her belt pouch for a flint and used the steel of the dagger she kept in her boot to light the patch of dry tinder beneath the fire she’d distractedly built, listening to the wolf – Red’s – tale. 

She told of the curse that the Black Witch of the North had put onto King Leopold for all that he had done to her, spinning words together in such a way that even Henry, who was so obviously frightened by the great beast that Red had once been, moved closer to listen in.  The king had refused to believe that he had been cursed, Red said, because he did not feel any differently --

“Well, he wouldn’t have,” Regina replied, smiling wickedly.  “Not at first anyway.”

The fire crackled and popped and Red leveled her gaze at the witch.  “My grandmother told of you, the great witch who helped the wolves to control the curse.  Her name is Eugenia, she was once of Thrice-Bend.”

“And bitten by a wolf of the northern woods, there on trade,” Regina finished, reaching forward to touch Red’s cheek.  “You are the very image of her, girl,” she added.  “You go by Red?”

“That is my name,” Red replied. 

“I am Regina,” the Black Witch explained.  “The boy is Henry of Ènell and this is Emma of the Snowlands.”  She placed her hands on her knees, fiddling with her overcoat and not looking at Emma as she poked at the fire with her dagger.  “We are charged to journey to Leopold’s Keep to leave the child in the care of his master of arms to learn horsemanship.  We heard no tell of a curse.”

Emma was grateful, at least on some level, that Regina was taking the role of leader in this situation. Her anger with the beast that was locked within the girl was enough to make her actions irrational and foolish.  She did not think it wise that she be the one attempting to discover information about this situation from Red.    She put her attention into rummaging around in the saddlebags to find the dried soup that they’d purchased in Fork-on-River and setting about heating it in the small saucepan that she usually used as a make-shift weapon when she needed something in her opposite hand.  She had never favored a shield.

“There is a curse,” Red explained.  “It is greater than the spell that lies over this forest.  It traps the entire keep in a deep fog, cloaking even the white gates from sight, save if you know how to look.  It was not the Black Witch – not you, Majesty – that cast the curse.  No, it was another who King Leopold had wronged.”

The look that Regina leveled at Emma was enough to make Emma’s blood run cold.  She had not yet known the Black Witch of the North to be afraid of anything, and yet she looked genuinely fearful, as though there were only a few people who she could think of who could have been wronged by the once-great King Leopold.  Emma did nothing, her eyes downcast, and resolved to ask Regina about it later.

“And I take it that your friend, Belle, ventured into the keep?” Regina asked. 

Red nodded.  “Not long after we’d first met.  Belle was trying to delay the journey through the forest. She did not want to go to D’Alta, to sit in that dark, cold realm under the shadow of the solitary mount by the sea.  I told her to simply run away, but that was not enough.  No, she had to ensure that her companion, a skilled tracker and a former rider of the Han and Ènell armies, would not find her.  I could not stop her, she would not listen to me, and she walked into the keep and vanished into the mists.”  Red spat on the ground then, her fingers drifting in a half circled at her chest, the sign that Emma had so longed to make against the evil of the Black Witch’s magic.  “I stood by the door for three months, but she never once emerged.  Winter was coming; I had to return to my pack before they thought me dead.”

“And the Fiery Mountain?” Emma asked, speaking for the first time.  “What of its awakening made you think that the curse would be lifted?”

“The Black Witch was King Leopold’s enemy, above any and all others.  It is logical that if the Mountain woke, that she would come back to kill him as she failed to do a hundred years ago,” Red explained, glancing at Regina through narrowed eyes. 

Nothing else was said that night; they ate in a nervous silence and fell into an uneasy sleep.  Emma took the first watch, standing rigid in the frosty night, sword resting, still sheathed, by her side. In the middle of the night, Regina rose in the blackness and came to stand beside Emma, silent as a shadow. 

“I do not mean to deny you revenge,” she said in a voice that was barely louder than the whisper of a breeze in the trees.  “It is a dangerous path to walk down, and I sense no evil in Red.  She merely wants to save her friend.”

They stood in silence for a long time, two people who were trapped by circumstances not of their own choosing.  Emma’s breath came in foggy clouds and she shivered, her eyes trained on a point across the clearing.  There were a thousand things that she wanted to say to Regina in that moment, but the most important seemed to be the hardest of them all.  “Thank you,” she had thought that she would have to force it out, but the words came easily and with a smile.  Regina looked at her with warm eyes and Emma found herself shuffling, looking away, not wanting to appear to stare.  She focused on the fire before them instead, not trusting the heat at her cheeks not to show. “For staying my hand.  Red is no threat to us in this form.”

The Black Witch’s lips quirked upwards into a smile that felt and looked real to Emma.  It was a strange look about her, the lines that seemed to be etched into her face vanished into the youthful look of a woman half her age.  It was intriguing, a beauty that Emma could not pull herself away from.  She knew it was no spell, but it was beautiful all the same.  She was drawn in by the tragedy that seemed to cling to the woman, so similar was it to her own.  She wanted… she did not know, she was no good with words or gestures.

“Perhaps we can be friends,” Emma replied.  Her fingers trailed a line along the back of Regina’s cloak, settling at her hip.  “Perhaps we could be more.”

Regina let out a low chuckle.  “I hardly think that’s proper, Emma of Ènell.”  She did not pull away, though, as Emma tugged her closer and kissed her in the blackness of the night.

The next morning, Emma swallowed all that was left of her pride and asked Red to accompany them to Leopold’s Keep, to determine if the darkness that was reported was truly as bleak as she’d made it out to be.  “We will try and rescue your friend,” Regina promised, even though Emma felt as though she should not make such a promise. The likelihood that Belle was still alive was very slim, to survive in a cursed place for so long would require all wits about her that Emma had never known the girl to have.

Henry was unusually quiet as he climbed onto Xiao.  They were going to walk, it wasn’t far, Red assured them. 

“Don’t worry,” Emma told him, making sure he was properly situated.  She pressed Xiao’s reins into his hands.  “We won’t leave you there if it truly is cursed.”

His lips quirked upwards into a wry smile that reminded Emma a great deal of her father’s, had she ever truly  grown up knowing him. She had come to know him later in her life, when Henry had gone to Snowden and she’d found herself faced with the people who had sent her away and the world of feelings and hurt that seeing those two, graying faces had brought up within Emma.  She had been grateful when they’d wanted to send Henry away again, for it meant that she would no longer have to be in their presence and have to stomach the fact that they sent her away.

King David – Prince Charming, as he was known in the lore – was a kind man, but even more stuck in the old ways than Snow White.  Henry had David’s smile and his father’s wit, he was such a strange combination of Emma and all those who had come before her that sometimes, when she looked closely; she felt as though she was hardly a part of his upbringing at all.  “That makes me feel so much better.”

“Sarcasm will get you smacked,” Emma replied with a grin. 

“You and Regina are going on a quest,” Henry pointed out in a mournful tone. “You’re going to have to leave me somewhere.”

Emma bit her lip. She’d spent her entire life leaving Henry behind.  It wasn’t in her nature to mother.  “If anything, it will be in Ènell, Henry.  You can see your father and Queen Abigail and King Frederick.  You like them, and you can learn horsemanship from Neal.  You know he’s one of the best in all of Ènell.”  She touched his knee, resting her other hand against Xiao’s flank.  “I will not abandon you without reason, I promise.” 

They journeyed for most of the morning, and soon Red’s voice rose in song above the silence of the forest just as winter gripped it.  She sang an old song in the language of the Northlands, the red hood of her cloak slipping from her head to show long brown hair spilling down her back.  Regina had loaned her some clothes for the journey, but she insisted on going without shoes. 

The song was one that Emma remembered from her childhood, a song to herald in the coming of winter.  It was not one that was oftentimes sung with such a passion, but as Red sang, Emma found herself taken by it.  She sang the words as she recalled them; the language of the north was not one that was known to her. 

Óraunverulegur

Þú birtist mér

Engum öðrum

Og verður að engu - "oooo" –

 As they traveled, the world seemed to grow darker and darker.  Emma saw the mists creeping up around their feet once more.  They were far from the river now, and she could see that way that Regina drew her body closer to her horse, every line of her body tense and fully of a nervous energy that could so easily be spilled out into a vicious magical attack. 

And Red’s voice rise high and true as the silence and the fog descended around them.

Við höldum andanum - "oooo" -

Eins lengi og

Við getum náð

Við lokum augunum - "oooo" -

Höldum fyrir eyrun

Heyrist pook

 In the rising mists above them, the trees seemed to vanish into the cloud and in the distance, Emma could hear the sound of water crashing down a falls.  Long ago, when she was still a child, she’d memorized all of the maps in King Frederick’s library.  The information had become invaluable, and Emma had gained a reputation in adulthood as a skilled tracker and a savvy navigator.  Now though, she found that she could not recall there being a falls in this part of the wood.  Surely they had not strayed as far south as the First Falls. 

Andardráttur

Hjartasláttur

Andann köfum niður

Og leggjumst - "oooo" –

“There,” Red said, pointing with one finger towards the white gates that rose stark and silent above a half-frozen waterfall. 

There, shrouded in the mist, was the keep that they’d searched for.  It was dark and silent, not a single light illuminated in the windows.  Once, this place had been a haven in the dark woods of the Enchanted Forest, a keep at the base of a mountain, by a falls that fell into a deep mountain lake.  It was said that the fair folk that frequented this forest lingered in the lake, drawn in by the pull of the keep. 

“Óraunverulegur,” Emma finished the song in a hushed voice.  Unreal.

All around them, the smell of death and evil lingered.

Chapter Text

"This place feels wrong," Henry announced, clinging tightly to Xiao's reins with one hand, the other clutched around his slingshot.  Emma glanced at the open pouch of perfectly smooth, round rocks that he had resting in his lap and hoped that he would not find cause to use them.  "Why would the Queen send me here?"

"I don't know," Emma said truthfully.  She did not know Queen Snow White to make decisions on a whim, and she would not have sent her heir to a place like this.  Not knowingly.  There should have been heralds and messengers proclaiming their presence.  Snow would have sent word with the birds as they flew south to the Cliffs of Paris before the snows. Something was not right here.  Emma sucked in a deep breath of the dead, earthy smelling air and turned to stare around at the misty lake and the unsteady stone walkway that they were slowly making their way up.  It didn't feel natural, and her bones were ill at ease.

Regina, walking ahead of them beside Red, said nothing at all.  Emma knew that there was not a pleasant history between the Queen of the Snowlands and the Black Witch of the North.  Regina was quick with her tongue and would not hesitate to point out to the boy everything that was wrong with his assumption regarding his grandmother.

Their pace slowed, the wolf and witch halting a few paces before Emma and the two horses.  She stood, her fingers tangled in Xiao’s bridle.   “What has changed about this place?” she asked Regina, for the Black Witch would know.

The white walls were stained gray with mildew and wood rot, creeping ivy trailed up the once proud shell of the keep that had once been the center of the entire northlands kingdom.  They stood before the great white gate, their feet half hidden in swirling mists and everywhere the cold icy fingers of the place gripped their souls. 

“The curse was never meant to do this,” Regina whispered, her fingers touching her chin thoughtfully.  Her cloak was wrapped tightly around her and she looked as though she was almost shivering in the shadow of this place.  Emma closed her eyes, reaching out with all that she did not dare admit she possessed, and saw the fear in Regina.

The fear that this place brought upon her, even one hundred years removed from all that had transpired within these walls, radiated off of her like waves of black, malevolent energy.  Emma took an unsteady step backwards, Xiao nuzzling her back affectionately as she tried to recover herself and not make it too obvious what she was doing.  She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, turning to brush her fingers against Xiao’s cheek and distract from what she’d been doing.

Narrowing her eyes, Regina stepped towards Emma and Henry, her fingers curling into an open gesture, one that Emma had been taught long ago was the basis of all magic.  Magic had to come from an open hand and an open heart.  It could not come from a mind that was closed off or unwilling to see all that there could be in the future.  She’d learned that in Han, where they were not so harsh on people who had gifts like Emma’s.  Her commander, when she’d ridden with the riders through the Yellow Mountains and on to greener plains beyond, had told her that she should not allow the strange rules of the north to rule her life. 

“You are a princess,” her commander had pointed out.  “And their rules stripped you of your birthright.  No one in this land would fault you for returning and claiming the throne of your own volition.  You would make a good queen, Emma of Snowden. You care about the common people.”

The words had haunted Emma ever since.  They’d been uttered in a quiet moment, but now they felt like an albatross around her neck, a yoke she’ll never be rid of.  She did not want the throne; it was never hers to have in the first place. 

Once, in Emma’s youth in Ènell, she’d asked Queen Abigail why it was that the king and queen who sat in Snowden hall did not want her to be queen.  Abigail hailed from a kingdom far to the East, an island set deep in the heart of the great sea that lay beyond the lands of Han.  The people of that isle were witches and mystics. The histories wrote of the uproar from the north, when King Frederick had married a woman from the Eastern Isle.  It was by some miracle that the queen was not run out of Ènell on sight, given how the population of that kingdom and the Snowlands intermingled though trade around the Three Orphans and through the southern pass up to Fork-on-River.  The histories that Emma had studied as a child always speculated that it was because she lacked even an ounce of the magical gift of her people.  She remembered the men of the Snowlands who had settled in Ènell, grumbling about how the queen, even without the gift of her people, was unnatural.  They had no cause to want her gone, though, for she brought with her none of the magic that had the northmen so scared. 

The queen had had no answer for Emma save that time would eventually correct all wrongs.  There were so many, she’d cautioned, that Emma must have patience for them all to be fixed.  The people of Abigail’s kingdom had welcomed Emma once, Abigail had said.  Ènell would never turn her away. 

“What was the curse supposed to do then?”  Red’s voice drew Emma from her thoughts, depositing her harshly back on the steps to the great white keep on the lake.  They were in trouble if they didn’t figure this out soon.  The mountain would not wait forever. 

Regina turned her attention back to the great white gate, her eyes sweep up the high arch.  “There is a great magic here,” she confessed.  “But it is not one that I know.  My curse was specific in language.  Seven generations I swore, and here I am, barely three in.  I am not supposed to be awake, young wolf.  No, something far more evil is afoot.”

“Then we must break the curse and rescue my friend!” Red said, her tone urgent and her eyes lit up with delight at the prospect.  Her fingers reached out and clasped the witch’s and Emma noticed that the witch did not pull away.  She wondered what it must have been like, to be so caught up in being evil that one would forget the more base nature of humans.  They crave contact and people who care for them. 

The Black Witch pushed the girl away sadly. “I fear that this is not a spell that I can break.  At least not here.” She gathered her skirts and stepped towards her horse, taking the reins from Emma and climbing nimbly onto its back.  She settled herself into the saddle and held out her hand to Red.  “Get on, there is one place where we might be able to find the solution.”

“Wolves don’t ride horses,” Red protested as Emma swung her leg up and settled herself into the saddle behind Henry on Xiao’s back. 

Regina bent and took her hand, pulling her up.  “This wolf might have to,” she explained in a voice that could have been kind, “if she wants to save her friend.”  At the wolf’s shaky nod and her wrapping of her arms around Regina’s chest, Regina kicked her horse into a fast trot and led Emma in quick pursuit down a narrow, winding trail that she had not even seen before Regina had turned her horse, vanishing into the overgrown underbrush. 

The terrain was rocky and the footing was uneven, yet the horses made good time as they made their way down the steep terrain.  Emma’s thighs ached as she struggled to keep herself grounded and firmly on Xiao’s back.  She let Henry steer the horse, but Xiao’s footing was sure as it was.  He followed Regina’s mount down into the swirling mists that rose up from the lac to cover the white keep in fog and shadow. 

As they climbed down, Emma called out to Regina.  “Where are you taking us?” she asked.  She had heard of no lower door to this place, only the one entrance that they’d been standing before.

“There is but one place where this keep is cursed,” Regina explained, turning in her saddle to look over Red’s shoulder at Emma.  The mists were swirling around her shoulders now, and she looked as evil as the stories made her out to be.  “That is the catacombs.  It is probably where Red’s friend found entry into the keep.  If we are lucky she found her way back out again, if not, I fear it may be too late for her.  That place is a maze.”

The way into the catacombs was a deep cut into the very cliff side upon which the keep was built.  It was a black hole that Emma feared to enter as soon as she drew level with it.  “I won’t go in there,” she said, arms wrapping around Henry and holding him close.  “To do so would be madness.”

From deep within her cloak, Regina produced a ball of yarn.  “Do you know the story of Theseus and the Minotaur?” she asked, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

“If there is a great filthy beast in there, let it be known that I am even less inclined to venture inside,” Emma replied testily.  “And everyone knows that story; it’s of the old world.”

“All stories, Emma of Ènell, are based in truth.  This is the thread of Ariadne; it will keep your path true.” She threw the thread to Emma, who caught it with stumbling fingers.  “Red will stay behind and watch the horses and Henry.”

“Glad that you guys are under no delusions that I’d be willing to go in there,” Henry joked.  Emma nudged him and cast a nervous glance over to Red. 

“Don’t worry,” the young wolf smiled prettily at Emma, flashing sharp canines that did little to make Emma feel any less ill at ease.  “It isn’t wolfstime – a full moon.  If I change now, I am the one who initiated it.  I control the beast.”  She pressed her hand to her chest, the gesture of an oath of honor in any culture that Emma had ever lived among.  “You have my word that no harm will come to Henry or the horses.”

Emma nodded her agreement.  She slid off of Xiao’s back and touched Henry’s arm gently.  “I will come back,” she promised fiercely.  She twisted the ball of string that Regina had tossed to her.  “You hold this,” she said, handing the end to him.  “And guide me back to the light.”

He swallowed and took the end of the string.  “I promise,” he said.

She didn’t tell him to not make promises that he couldn’t be sure he could keep.  Instead she turned and pulled her sword from its scabbard on her back.  It shone in the low light of the day as the sun climbed as high it dared in the sky this late in the season.  “Let’s do this,” Emma said grimly, and followed Regina into the darkness of the cavern.

It took a few steps for Emma’s eyes to adjust to the gloom.  Regina twisted her wrist and brought the same flames to her fingertips that she had conjured by the River Road. She held her hand aloft and looked around for a moment, before throwing her cloak’s hood off of her head and starting down one of the two forking paths. 

“How do you know this is the right way?” Emma demanded, hurrying to keep up with both the Black Witch and the light. 

Regina turned then, looking over her shoulder and her black hair making her face seem like a floating mask in the darkness.  “I spent many years locked away in this place, Emma, I know it better than most.”

Emma bit her lip and said nothing, trying to keep her footing sure as she followed Regina, her sword held out at the ready.  The light was flickering and it cast everything Emma saw into shadow and doubt.  She wanted to ask Regina what sort of a curse was on this place, she wanted to step forward and take the queen’s hand, their fingers lacing together in power.  It was not practical, she knew that.  They both needed two hands to fight. 

“The spell is weaker here,” Regina announced a few moments later, as they circled around a bend in the path.  The air smelled better, Emma noticed, less like death and far more like the air had outside. 

“Do you know what sort of a spell it is?”

She had not meant to ask the question.  She had no interest in knowing the magic of this place, or any place really. Magic would not win her battles, nor the coming dark times that the Fiery Mountain’s awakening heralded.  Emma had spent her life operating at the very edges of her talent and she knew it.  There was so little that she actually knew about the craft that had damned her that she almost felt as though she should be trying harder to know it.  At the same time, she was repulsed by it, her body bore the marks of a gift she’d never wanted.

Her breath fogged in the icy air of the caves.  Emma frowned; caves were supposed to be warmer than the air outside.  Everyone knew that.  She’d spend some time at the Cliffs of Paris, after all, they were littered with caves that the pirates of the Southern Sea liked to frequent, to hide their treasure.  Those were warm and full of light that reflected off of the shiny rocks that formed the caves.

“There is but one spell that creates such a powerful stasis,” Regina murmured. She was standing very close to Emma, her hand on Emma’s shoulder.  “It is a freezing spell far beyond the skill of most common magic users.”

Emma shivered.  “Can you um… break it?”  The air temperature was plunging rapidly and her free hand, still clutching the ball of thread, was stiff.  Her lined gloves were doing little to keep her hands warm and she could already feel her grip growing weaker on the hilt of her sword. 

“Not without a great deal of time and magical energy that I’d rather save for other things,” Regina said.  She bent and moved her hand towards the floor.  The fire caught the shadows on the ground and Emma could see footprints in the muddy ground.  “I think,” Regina said in a very quiet voice, “That we might find your missing ward yet.”

“She’s hardly my ward anymore,” Emma answered.  “That was almost two summers ago now.  I’ve been in Han ever since.”  Truthfully, she’d thought the girl dead and had retreated to the Yellow Mountains in shame and penance for the life lost.

The way twisted then, and Regina took the lead, grim faced and breath fogging heavily now.  She held her cloak closed around her chest with her free hand and Emma wished that she could do the same. The last thing that she needed was to find herself tangled in her heavy cloak while trying to fight off whatever beast might lurk in this dank place. 

She drew breath in slow, even pulls, and it stung her lungs as she did so.  She shivered, her mind already feeling slow and addled by the cold, creeping darkness.  “It’s the middle of autumn,” Emma muttered to herself, her breath a hazy fog before her.  “The snows haven’t even closed the passes; the river is not yet ice.”

“Quiet.” Regina’s tone broached no argument, and Emma’s lips slapped shut.  She took a protective step towards Regina and then another.  They had come to a wide, open chamber with a low ceiling but more space to move about than the narrow maze of tunnels that they’d navigated with very little trouble.   At the center of the room was a great block of what appeared to be ice.  It glimmered like a diamond in the blackness that surrounded the pool of light that Regina’s fire cast around them.

The room had breath, air pushed from the far side of the room to the entrance where they stood, pushing them, urging them to fall back and away from the evil of this place.  Emma drew herself into a ready stance, numb fingers tightening on the hilt of her sword.  She was ready for whatever might come out of that blackness, her jaw set in a determined line.

In the distance, a great roar could be heard, the breath of the room blowing straight past Emma to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end.  Fear gripped her, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

“What…” she asked in a low voice, “is about to come out of there?”

Regina’s lips pulled upwards into a wicked grin.  “The beast who lives in the castle and protects the maiden’s soul.”

“I need light,” Emma said, throwing off her bow and quiver.  They landed on the floor with a clatter and Emma barely had time to brace herself before the beast charged from the darkness.  It glanced off of Emma’s sword, howling and spitting as Emma braced her legs and heaved with the entirety of her upper body strength to shove the beast off her and into the wall.  “Light,” she hissed at Regina, already preparing herself to charge.

Regina uttered a word in the old language, a harsh guttural sound that set Emma’s teeth on edge.  The language was forbidden for a reason, she knew that.  It even sounded evil when spoken with the want to help a friend. 

Pure white light filled the room and Emma caught sight of the beast just as she pushed her sword forward to graze the beast’s underbelly.  It was an unsightly creature, its visage a twisted mask of malicious intent and deep sunken eyes.  It looked as though a raven had flown down and plucked out its eyes.  There were only bloody sockets pointed blindly at Emma as she twisted, her footing not quite sure as she slid in the hard-packed dirt of the floor of the chamber.  She let out a gasp of pain as her ankle twisted painfully, but it did not snap or break.  She’d have to fight through the pain.

Emma could tell after taking in the sorry sight of it, that the beast had been a man at one point.  It had the face of a man, blind as it was.  A full beard and mustache grew over a protruding upper lip.  It wore rags of what had once been fine clothes, silks from the far eastern kingdoms by the looks of them, and its hands were more like the paws of a bear, ending in long, pointed claws.  It pawed the ground on all fours, like a bear would, and it’s hulking size seemed to dominate the entire far end of the room, hissing and spitting like an irritated cat.

It stood to its full height, arms stretched out wide before it charged once more.  Emma knew no other strategy, and threw herself to the ground.  She pulled her dagger from her belt and flung it just as the beast passed above her, the short knife embedding itself in the beast’s stomach.  It let out an anguished yell and Emma struggled to her feet.  Her ankle screamed in protest as she pushed forward off of her left foot and her sword scraped along the floor as she lunged forward.  The beast lashed out with one of its bear-like hands, the other still clutching at the knife in its stomach.  She was ready this time, and twisted, pivoting onto her good foot and bringing the sword home.  

The blade sliced clean through flesh and bone, a great spurt of blood flying forward and splashing, hot and angry, onto Emma’s cheek and shirt.  She set her teeth and turned on her bad foot, spinning through the air to avoid putting too much pressure on it, and brought her blade down on the beast’s neck.

It was in that moment, as the beast let out single, garbled sound, that she noticed the insignia on the beast’s good hand.

It was the mark of the swan with a crown above it, the mark of the regency of the Snowlands.

She had slain the beast that had once been her grandfather.

Across the room, Regina let out a low chuckle.  “The king is dead,” she intoned as Emma struggled to her feet, eyes wide and staring. 

“What…” she couldn’t even get the words out, she was cold and she was tired.  Her ankle screamed in protest as she hobbled over to the large ice structure at the center of the room.  Inside, she could see the girl that she’d lost two years previously.  She looked as though she was asleep, and Emma felt something seize up within her.  She turned then, and emptied her stomach onto the chamber floor.

Chapter Text

The room fell into blackness when Regina broke the spell of light that she’d cast to assist Emma.  Only the pale blue glow of the ice-like structure at the center of the room illuminated the already poorly lit space.  In the semi-darkness, Emma could see that Regina’s skin was slick with sweat from the exertion of her magic, she looked frail and unsteady on her feet. 

“You killed the king, Emma,” Regina said again.  Her voice, despite her obvious physical fatigue, was still strong and cut through the darkness around them like a knife.  “You’ve broken a key element of the curse.”

And in her exhaustion, Emma did not think to ask which curse, exactly, she had broken.  She pressed her palm down hard onto the icy surface of the chamber that held the girl she’d once been tasked to protect, and tried to put weight on her ankle.  Pain shot up through her leg and Emma gingerly let her weight rest on it, breath slow and even. It wasn’t so bad when she was deliberate in her movement.  She took another tentative step towards the slain beast, bending and pulling her dagger from its stomach.  “I have slain a beast,” she said to Regina, her expression hard.  “It may bear the mark of my kin, but it is not known to me.”

Regina stepped down and into the room then, her fingertips glowing with flame once more.  Emma could see a multitude of emotions passing across her face, each more confusing and difficult to comprehend than the last one.  “King Leopold has long gone from this place, if he has trapped a girl inside these walls by magic.”  She let out a bitter sounding laugh.  “Times were once that he had merely to state it as his well and they would stay without question.”

Emma stared up at the witch for a long time, her expression never wavering.  It was a dirty, nasty trick of Regina to play on her – and yet Emma couldn’t help but think that there had to be more to the story than what she was letting on.  There was no way to know that the beast of this cursed place was Leopold, her grandfather and the king of old.  No, there was no way of knowing that at all.  As much as she wanted to trust Regina’s word, to see the truth in the location and the ruined, but once-fine, clothes that the beast was wearing, Emma could not accept that, she would not.  The stories, the histories, everything said that Regina  had cursed Leopold to watch out the ruin of his family, until the Fiery Mountain woke once more and there was once more a doom upon the land.  She would not let him die by another’s hand.

And yet… here they were.  Nothing about this seemed right or reasonable to Emma.  The Black Witch was supposed to be cold when she was warm, heartless when she so obviously loved. Regina had been so willing to take Henry this far, to divert her attention from the Fiery Mountain and task it with helping a little boy she scarcely knew.  There was so much about this that didn’t make any sense to Emma.  How could everything written, everything sang, how could it all be so wrong?  She looked up at Regina with questioning eyes and saw only warmth in her eyes, gratitude for what she had done.  Was she truly the queen’s champion now?

It was not a question that Emma thought she could ask, so she posited another, if a more obvious one: “Do you think the curse will break now?”  She still felt breathless, but the shooting pain in her ankle was enough to keep her concentrating on the present and focused on what was happening around her. 

The witch shook her head to the negative.  “No,” she said shortly.  “If the curse is to break then we must be the ones to do it.  It is only through this that this girl will re-awaken.  I can only hope that her sleep has been peaceful.”

“Why would it not be?”

“Cursed sleeps, Emma of Ènell, rarely are.”  Regina drew a deep breath and the flames at the tips of her fingers burned blue.  She reached out towards Emma then, and Emma took a hesitant step forward, unsure of what she should be doing.  The gesture seemed obvious, take the witch’s hand, but everything in her mind screamed desperately at Emma to not do so. 

They stood like that for an untold number of minutes, their bodies close but never touching, over a girl cursed into sleep and caught in an icy grave.  Finally, it was Emma who decided not to listen to her better angels, and her fingers made contact with the blue flames that danced over Regina’s hand.  Their bodies touched and Emma nearly lost her balance, so overwhelmed was she by the force of the power that coursed through her veins in that moment. 

It felt like a rebirth, a drug she simply could not get enough of, and it hurt her to the very core of her being.  She wanted this magic, she loved this magic, it was her nature to have such a power and yet she could not find herself ever wanting it.  She was a woman of the sword, not the spell or the cloth.  It was not her duty to do things like this.  No, she was here in one capacity and one capacity alone: she had to lend power to the witch, or else all would be for naught.

The old tales of the Black Witch of the North told of her great evil and how one day, it would be a magic user that would be her greatest ally and her eventual undoing.  Emma knew that she was that person in that moment, if it had not been obvious from the start of this venture.  The Fiery Mountain had woken up, and it was her duty to protect this world, same as it was any other fighter of the realm. 

Magic was a consuming force, it ate into her, seeping into her bones and corrupting the very blood that coursed through her veins.  Emma knew better, she had to know better, than to do this thing.  She did it anyway, because she was unafraid of the consequences in that moment.  She had a chance to correct a wrong, and she was going to do just that.

Power crackled like lighting through the room and Emma threw back her free hand to cover her eyes as the unmistakable sound of smashing glass filled the air around them.  There was a pause, and then a scream filled the room.

“Belle!” Emma shouted, and let her hand drop from Regina’s. 

In the dim light, Emma could see Belle’s lips draw breath, and she let out an excited whoop and fell to her knees before the girl. She grasped Belle’s hand between her own and smiled down at her.  “I thought I’d lost you,” she said.  She felt breathless from the exertion of the magic that she’d helped Regina to use, and terrified of what she’d done.  But Belle was safe, and that was truly what mattered. 

“Where…” Belle’s voice was weak and Emma caught her as she started to drift and fall once more.  She held on to the girl’s shoulders, covering her shivering body with her cloak as best she could.  Regina came to stand beside them and Emma could see the pain on her face now, evident in her every movement.  Was this truly the price of magic? 

They followed the thread back out of the caverns, Belle supported between the two of them in the creeping darkness that told Emma that night was soon to fall.  They moved swiftly and silently through the shadows, the thread rolling itself back up and into a neat ball before them.  It was only when they’d successfully stepped out into the last light of the sun that Emma felt as though she could truly breathe again.  Her breath fogged in the crisp forest air, and Henry was sprinting forward to hug her almost before she’d had a chance to straighten to her full height.

“Emma!” he shouted, excitement blossoming across his face.  “Red helped me to find winterberries!  We’ll have a feast tonight!”  He faltered then, catching sight of Belle, supported in between the two women.  “Who’s that?”

He didn’t need to ask, though.  Red came out of the woods then, a red and brown streak that caught Belle in her arms and pulled her into an embrace that, although exhausted beyond all reason, Belle returned effortlessly.  She clung to Red like a lifeline, tears streaming freely down her cheeks as she sobbed into Red’s shoulder.

Emma glanced over at Regina, a smile playing at her lips.  “I must say,” she spoke in a quiet undertone as Regina bent and untied the free end of the thread that had been their guide from where Henry had tied it around his wrist.  “That that was a truly fantastic bit of enchantment.”

Regina glanced up, her fingers playing at the sleeve of Henry’s tunic and the thick wool sweater that he’d pulled on over it.  “Thank you,” she said.  “You should not grow accustomed to it, though. It is not the sort of thing that I think one such as yourself should be doing often, especially given the times.”

Biting at her lip, Emma looked away.  “I know that,” she replied.  The only thing she hated more acutely than how much she could not use magic was her grim awareness of her own mortality.  Henry was the one thing, the one good and true thing that she’d ever done with her life.  She’d fought in wars, perpetuated so much chaos that she felt as though her hands could never be free of the blood and sin that clothed them so effortlessly these days.  Henry was her legacy. 

“We mustn’t linger here.”  Emma straightened at the words, because she did not want to spend any more time in the shadow of this once great place.  They could not linger in a place like this, no matter how much she wanted to.  “Get Belle onto one of the horses,” she said to Red.  She would have to lead them from this place.  “We make for the First Falls.”

From the great frozen body of North Lake, a single river ran south and east through the land.  One branch twisted northwards, emptying into the Northern Sea after draining into a series of lakes upon which the northern kingdom of D’Alta earned their commerce.  The other meandered slowly south through the Enchanted Forest and through a series of waterfalls, eventually widening and emptying at the Great Falls over the Cliffs of Paris, far to the south.  The first of the waterfalls was at the mouth of the Enchanted Forest, where the water spilled downwards and out of the great plateau upon which the forest grew and the great chain of northern mountains stretched their peaks to the sky. 

It was slow going, leading the horses back up the steep hill and away from the secret entrance to the catacombs beneath the White Keep.  Emma was struck, as she took her final step from the sloped path and back onto the main road, at just how empty the keep looked. How had Snow White ever thought that sending Henry to this place was a good idea? 

As they traveled south along the lake and took their position back upon the river road, Emma asked Regina what she thought of the situation. She did not dare voice her concerns to Henry, as she did not want to trouble the boy with any more burdens on his already troubled mind. There was clearly something else going on here, she couldn’t put her finger on what it was just yet. 

“The Queen made a grave error, sending Henry to this place,” Emma said in a low voice. Red quietly sang a traveling song with Henry as they led Xiao and his precious cargo down the road ahead of them.  They were leading Regina’s dapple grey, and Emma was debating naming him after her once-commander in Han.  It was better than just calling the horse ‘the dapple’. 

Regina made an affirmative nose at the back of her throat.  “I knew Snow White, once upon a time,” she said.  “She was not the sort of person who would throw away anyone that she cared for without reason.  She sent you away because you have the gift of magic, but Henry?  He does not have the gift – at least it is not as apparent as yours.”

Emma tilted her head to one side, not quite following.  “What do you mean, apparent?”  She didn’t think that her abilities were that apparent at all.  Maybe she’d been mistaken in her youth, but even Queen Abigail in Ènell had not said that her magic was particularly apparent.  The queen had lacked a gift, but her people were inherently magical save the select few who were born without it. 

“You glow, Emma,” Regina said quietly, reaching out and seemingly touching the air around Emma with a lover’s caress.  “All around you there is pure white light – you possess a rare gift, one that I do not think that Snow White or any of her ilk truly understood before they banished you to Ènell.”

“Queen Abigail is of the Western Isles,” Emma replied testily.  “Her people are the most gifted in the world, and she sensed nothing in me.”  She was lying now to herself, to Regina now, the idea of glowing, of being somehow that magical was terrifying to Emma.  She did not want to be a person who was so plagued by her gift that she could never live in polite society again. 

“If I am not mistaken, Abigail is one of their alm blanc, is she not?” Regina tapped her chin thoughtfully.  “How can a woman who has no gift at all see something so desperately profound?”

Emma didn’t know the answer.  There was really no answer that she could articulate save that she simply could not be who Regina wanted her to be.  “I don’t know,” she said, hands clenching into fists and her bracers digging into her forearms.  “I do not wish to be that person.”

“I do not believe that you have much of a choice in the matter, Emma,” Regina said, and her fingers reached out and brushed against Emma’s.  Emma turned her hand and she let Regina’s fingers lace around her own.  “You are incredible, don’t let anything lead you to believe otherwise.  It was your magic, rather than mine, that saved young Belle from that curse.  I merely cast the spell, you provided all the power.”

What she did not say was all that Emma feared most in the worldShe could not be a magical being, because it was only in hiding it, in pretending to be normal, that she’d been allowed back into the home that had forsaken her in the first place.  She’d met her parents, she’d come to know them, and they had embraced her as their kin.  She couldn’t lose that, she refused to, no matter the cost. She swallowed, and let Regina squeeze her hand tightly in her own. 

On the second day of their journey, the River Road widened as the river narrowed.  There was a portage here, and Emma knew that if they strayed from the road that they would find themselves staring down a cliff face.  She touched Red’s shoulder as they drew close to the place where the River Road would turn westward and lead them down a meandering path off the plateau. 

“This is where we would leave you, unless you’d like to travel to Ènell,” she said. 

Red looked to Belle, who was looking stronger, and then back to Regina and Emma, walking as they were, side by side.  “I cannot leave this forest,” she said quietly.  “It is not that I do not wish to see the great city on the hill, but rather that the woods are home to me.  I would stay, if by your leave.”

“I am no queen,” Emma said, stepping forward and grasping Red’s hand in her own.  “You needn’t ask such things from me.”

Red shook her head, her brown hair spilling down onto the stark red of her cloak.  “You do not understand, Emma.  You have broken the curse on the White Keep; you have freed this forest from the creeping mists of time. You are already our queen.”  She glanced towards Belle, who nodded encouragingly.  “You stilled your blade and you righted a terrible wrong.  Belle is free because of you.”

That was true, and they both knew it.  Emma looked to Regina, who was smiling warmly and far more kindly than she could ever recall the Black Witch smiling before.  They stood at the fork in the road, staring at each other. 

“Belle,” Regina said, and her lips quirked upwards into a kind smile.  “What will you do?”  They’d discussed, the previous night, all that had happened since Belle had become trapped by the curse on the White Keep.  Emma had apologized for not understanding why Belle was so hesitant to travel to D’Alta, she could not fathom why anyone would want to be forced into a marriage that they didn’t want. She was right, Emma had told her, to run away from that fate.  No one deserved that.  She’d tried to impress on Belle that her choices mattered as much, if not more than those her father had made for her. They’d talked about how being a woman in this world put a person at a disadvantage and how it was a horrible position to be in.

Belle looked from Emma to Red and back again.  She did not speak much, she never had.  Emma had thought her a dreamer before, but she knew better now.  Belle’s strength was in her mind, and it was sharp as a tack.  “I would like to stay in the forest,” she said – her accented voice cutting through the quiet of the road like a whip crack.  “Try and restore the keep.  There are others there, Emma.  They will need more help than I adjusting to the curse being lifted.”

The parting was bittersweet, and Henry cried for his newfound friends as they walked back up the way that they’d come, hand in hand. 

“I would leave you with them,” Emma said, touching his shoulder.  “But it is not safe for you among the wolves, Henry.  Ènell is a safer place, and your father is there.”

Henry looked down the portage road, his jaw stuck out in defiance.  “I suppose,” he said.

“Oh, come now Henry,” Regina said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and pulling him in to lean against her hip.  “You are a prince of the Snowlands.  As much as you’d like to run wild in the forests of this land, that is not your destiny.” 

Chapter Text

They made their way down the portage beside the First Falls, the horses treading in slow, steady steps as they stood with their ears pinned back.  Emma knew that they were fearful of the roar of the falls, tumbling down hundreds of feet below them.

"Soon," she promised Xiao, fingers tangled in his mane.  His ears twitched and Emma smiled at the horse, he was the best mount that she’d ever had, and had carried her into battle and bloodshed and had escaped with nary an injury.  He truly was a marvel, as were all the horses of Han.  "We will be on the great road to Ènell and we'll be able to let you run."

Regina, one hand wrapped protectively around Henry's, smiled at the comment.  Emma found herself smiling back at her traveling companions.  It was a sad day to see Red and Belle vanish back into the forest.  Emma did not want to see them go, but she knew that they had to go.  There was no choice in the matter.  They were safer in the woods - and the curse would soon be lifting, the Enchanted Forest would change again.

"There is a great feeling of change in the air," Regina said, sucking air in deeply through her nose.  "You have done this great forest a boon it will not long forget."

Emma looked down at her scuffed boots, splattered as they were with mud and caked almost white with the dust of the road.  "There is no honor in what I did," she confesses.  "I have killed my own kin."

"You did not know it to be true," Regina pointed out.  "I did not know it to be true until it was too late to stay your hand.  The King was a horrible, cruel man, but no one deserves a curse like that."

"Who would have cast such an evil thing?"  Emma asked.  They were nearly down the portage trail now, and the horses had calmed as they were led away from the roar of the waterfalls that led the river down off of the forest plateau and onto the great, rolling plains on Ènell below.

The river flowed south from this point, turning three times before the city on the third bend.  Thricebend was a trading port, a way station of the world and a place that Emma wanted to avoid at all costs if she could help it.  Ènell proper would be a safer place to go.  She had friends and allies in the court there, and she could ensure that Henry would be protected before she took Regina on to the Fiery Mountain.  Thricebend was a den of thieves and people with obscenely long memories.  Emma had no interest in returning there for the rest of her days, if she could help it. 

As they made their way down the portage, the Fingerling Mountains rose like fingers to the heavens in the distance to the west.  Henry paused, his hand gripping Regina's tightly.  "You cannot wish to go to such a place," he said, fear in his eyes and written clearly across his face.  Emma knew that the boy had been raised on the stories of old – of the days when the Fingerlings had played host to the great dwarven kingdoms that were now relics of a great age long past. He knew, at least on some level, who Regina was and what her presence in this world meant.

There was nothing that made Emma swell with pride like way that her son carried himself around Regina.  He never asked after her deeds, save on that first night in Fork-on-River, and he never judged her for them.  Emma had spent half her life trying to teach him, when she did see him, that nothing was as it seemed.  Everyone knew that his mother was a disgrace, a child who was born with the mark of magic and therefore could never be queen.  She’d been banished and had spent half her life trying to keep Henry from suffering the same fate. 

He was going to be a good king, he was kind and fair and smart as anyone that Emma had meant.  And he never judged without fully understanding a situation.  He was to be Regina’s greatest ally, Emma was sure of this, she just wasn’t sure how it would play into the story just yet. 

The Black Witch of the North smiled kindly at the little boy.  Her eyes, too, were trained on the Fingerlings and the black smoke of the Fiery Mountain as it glowed with the evil fires that lurked deep within its heart.  "We have no choice, Henry," she confessed.  "You know of fate, do you not?"

"It governs all choice in this world," Henry responded mechanically, a schoolboy’s answer.  It was one of the first things that all children were taught: how to understand fate, how to recognize true love, and how to spurn the teachings of magic.  Those three tenants where the first three lessons that every child learned at school in the Snowlands.  "And we are but slaves to it."

Regina tossed her head back, her cloak's hood falling off her shoulders and her short, fly-away hair shining a void of ebony against the colorful, still-changing leaves of the forest.  She laughed loud and long at Henry's comment, and Emma found herself chuckling at the comment as well.

Children, after all, are so innocent.  They do not know the truth in the words they speak.  The fates truly did govern all life, but there was the possibility, there was always the possibility, to throw off the mantle they forced upon each human.  There was a certain time when the thread was cut, and until that time, anything was possible.

"Fate doesn't work quite like that," Regina clarified.  She would know better than most, Emma reasoned.  The Black Witch was supposed to linger behind the door in the mountain until such a time that she would be able to protect the world from the magic that she herself had birthed.  There had been a time attached to the prophecy, and now that time line had accelerated.

For what reason, Emma did not know.  Things were moving in the shadows, a deep-seated evil had taken root in the Enchanted Forest, and had now set its sights on the Fiery Mountain and the once-great mine that now stood as a warning and a testament against the destructive power of magic.

This was no time for distraction.  Emma turned her attention to the road.  There were many dangers that would await them, and they had to hurry.

They mounted the horses again at the base of the portage.  Emma took Henry again, settling him down on Xiao before climbing on herself.  "We must make haste if we are to get out of the shadow of the First Falls by nightfall."  It would not do to linger in such a place.  There was danger in the very air below the falls.

The ride was long and hard, but the road was clear of snow still.  Xiao's breath fogged the air as he and Regina's Dapple finally drew to a stop at a campsite some three leagues from where they'd started.  The forest was but a memory behind them now, and the moon rose full  and clear in the late autumn sky.

"We'll rest here tonight," Emma said, and moved to dismount.  Her legs were bowed, sore from hard riding and sitting uncomfortably far back in the saddle because of Henry.  She turned after dropping down low to stretch out her thighs, and helped Henry from the saddle.  "Can you get some firewood?"  Emma asked, watching as he nodded once and scampered off towards a bluff of trees some one hundred paces off.

Emma watched him go before she turned to Regina.  "Something does not sit right with this journey," she confessed.  "The White Queen would never send Henry to such a place as that keep, and the road should have far more travelers."

The Black Witch's gaze turned towards the Fingerlings, a blessing to the Three Orphans on her lips, where the dark orange glow of the fires that burned within the mountain could be seen against the growing dusk.  "Something moves in the shadows," she told Emma, gathering her things and lifting the saddle from her dapple grey.  "It is an old evil, and one that I think I may know well."

"How do you mean," Emma asked, fingers froze, half-way through undoing Xiao's bridle.  "What could you possibly know about this evil?"

"Evil begets Evil, Emma of Ènell.  You would do well to remember that I am not good or kind the way that you would like me to be."  Regina looked away, her arms cradling the saddle to her chest.  "I am not as good as you think I am."

Emma shook her head violently at the assertion.  All her life she'd grown up on stories of how terrible a person the Black Witch of the North had been, but she saw nothing of that in this woman now.  There was a cruel streak in her, but Emma had one as well.  She was put on this good earth, same as everyone else, to serve her purpose.

"You are who you are," she replied.  She stepped forward, her hand resting on the saddle still cradled to Regina's chest.  Her hand lingered on it, and she bent, her lips brushing against the scarred lips of the witch who'd once cursed her entire family.  "And I like you for who you are, Regina.  I will help you complete your quest because it is what I want."  She stepped back, gloved thumb brushing over Regina's cheek.  "Besides, Henry's a good judge of character, and he likes you."

Henry, who is her son, but who’s name belongs to another place, another family. Henry who will take the throne that was never truly meant for her.  Emma had wondered, as a child, if her gift was enough to turn her into a wolf in sheep's clothing.  She'd met Red, she knew that there was no such thing as someone who was truly innocent - but Red's love of a girl that she'd scarcely known had swayed Emma's heart.

"We are walking into certain doom," Regina said, turning away from Emma and spitting on the ground.  She made a sign against evil on her chest and did not look towards the Fiery Mountain.

"That's hardly queenly behavior," Emma joked, taking the saddle from Regina and setting it on the ground beside her own.

"Then it is a good thing that I am not a queen any more, isn't it?"  Regina shook her head, eyes narrowing in the growing dusk.  The road was not safe at night, but Emma did not feel threatened.  She stood with her back to the road and her son away in the bluff and she did not fear for him or for the horses.  This woman with her strange ways would protect them.

Folding her arms over her chest, Emma chuckled low in her throat.  "No, I suppose that you are not."

"The Snowlands and their White Queen will soon learn of the death at the White Keep, Emma," Regina pointed out - her eyes trained on the bluff where Henry was emerging, his hands full of sticks and fallen branches.  "She will send word to Ènell, to Thricebend and maybe even the cities in Han, trying to find you."  She bit her lip and looked away.  "I've a mirror, if you'd like to tell her what happened."

Emma had not thought about it.  Her goal had been to put as much distance between that cursed place and Henry as she possibly could.  She had not thought about what might happen, should the White Queen discover the true nature of her errand.  Despite her banishment, Emma had always loved her mother and father.  They’d welcomed Henry with open arms when she’d told them of his birth – an accident that she had not meant to have happen.  They were kind and caring people – and they would surely be worried.

“Could you?” she asked.  She did not understand that magic, as she did not understand a great many magics that she’d encountered over the course of her life.  Queen Abigail had said that Emma had a stubborn mind as a child, and that she would only learn if she found it suited her needs.  As an adult, Emma liked to joke with her adopted family that this was why she was so good with the ways of war, because she was so full of anger for being rejected by her birth parents.

And it wasn’t the sting of the rejection that filled Emma with hurt, but rather the fact that she never saw magic as a threat.  It was because of Regina’s actions that it was viewed that way – and Emma hated it on the same level that she hated most things.  She didn’t understand why it was her fate to suffer. Or why she was the one who would be stuck, as always, with this albatross around her neck.  She was the one who’d gone to the door in the mountain and she was the one who’d found the once evil queen.  She was not evil, nor was she a queen. She was just a woman, same as any other woman; and she was someone that Emma felt as though she could spend forever following. 

Perhaps that was the problem of an infectious personality, but Emma was more than happy with being the knight sworn to protect this queen. 

Regina bent and pulled a curved knife from her boot.  She held it out between two fingers to Emma, like she was about to throw it by its blade.  Emma took the knife and held it as Regina dug into her skirts and produced a small mirror.  “I’ll need your blood,” she explained, gesturing to the knife.  At Emma’s unabashedly horrified look, Regina’s expression softened into something that Emma supposed could be considered bemused under the right circumstances.  “Oh Emma,” she laughed, and leaned in close, taking the knife back from Emma and holding it carefully.  “Give me your hand.”

Although all of her better angels screamed at her to not do it, to back away and never allow the Black Witch to touch her ever again, Emma held out her hand and felt the barest prick of pain as the knife pressed against the tip of her index finger.  A single drop of blood welled from the wound and Regina tucked the knife back into her boot sheath and pressed Emma’s finger to the mirror.  She spoke words in a quiet, low voice that Emma did not understand. 

“What do those words mean?” She asked as Regina relinquished her hold on Emma’s hand.  The mirror glowed with light and Emma couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this was the purpose of Regina’s doing this – to see the girlchild who had so wronged her, once upon a time. 

Regina looked up, her brow eyes impassive.  “It is the old tongue – the speech, I think, it is called in this language – it is the language of all things.  Mastery of the speech is what allows a great magic user to fully control their gift.  Henry shows signs of being naturally gifted with it – usually those who understand animals at a young age are among the most gifted.”

“He cannot have the gift,” Emma replied.  She said it in a resigned voice, because she knew that there was no way she could squash Henry’s gift into non-existence.  It was a matter of hiding it, and teaching him to not use it.  That was all that they could do to help him as he went through life.  He’d already been named heir to the Snowlands. 

“I know,” Regina intoned.  The mirror in her hands shimmered and Emma stared at it, sparkling as it was in the growing twilight.  Henry was making his way across the field from the bluff now, his arms laden with branches.  “I will help Henry,” Regina said, “Speak to your parents and explain to them what has happened.”

“And you?” Emma’s gaze met Regina’s eyes as she pressed the mirror into Emma’s hands.  “What should I say about you?”

A quiet breath escaped Regina’s lips and she leaned across their still-joined hands and pressed her lips against Emma’s cheek.  “Preferably nothing, but tell them what you must.”

The image in the mirror flickered as Regina stepped away, a mysterious smile playing at her lips.  She turned to go and help Henry with his load of firewood while Emma stared down at the mirror.  The image was twisting and warping until Emma realized that she was looking into the main chamber of the Queen’s hall in Snowden.  The White Queen – Snow White – was sitting on her throne, looking disinterested in the court proceedings.

Emma stood there, watching for a moment until Snow noticed her presence and took an alarmed step back before grabbing at her husband’s arm and pulling him over to the mirror that hung in one corner of the throne room. 

“Emma?” Snow asked, reaching up to touch the surface of the mirror.  “What trickery is this?”

Laughing, Emma waved a hand.  “There is no trick.  I met a woman on the road who had a mirror from olden times. I needed to tell you about what happened at the White Keep.” Emma waits for the Queen’s nod before she begins to relay the story of what had happened and the curse that had been laid upon the land.  “The Fiery Mountain is awake, mother,” Emma intoned in a much quieter voice as she ended the story.  “I am taking Henry to Abigail and Frederick in Ènell, and then I am going to the mountain.  Someone has to quell the flames.”

“Emma,” The Queen replied, shaking her head.  “You are not skilled with magic.  You have a gift, yes, but you could never hope to quell the mountain’s rage.” 

“Fool’s errand though it may be, mother,” Emma replied stiffly, wiping at her nose.  Her finger had stopped bleeding, but a scab had already started to form. “I must do this, I must fulfill my destiny.”

Chapter Text

The White Queen’s disapproval of Emma’s plans did little to dissuade her from sitting watch next to Regina at the fireside that night, discussing at length what was stirring in the shadows.  “There are very few who could awaken such an evil without considerable magical aid,” Regina explained, her fingers curling around Emma’s upper arm as they huddled together under a blanket for warmth.  By Emma’s side, Henry slept, curled up in a hat and under all their spare blankets.  It was growing too cold for children to be on the road and Emma felt a pang of guilt, watching as he shivered in his sleep. 

“Do not fret over Henry,” Regina added, poking at Emma’s cheek with her free hand.  “There is no way you could have known, and he’s probably safer in the house of Frederick within the great walls of the city on the plains than he would be at the White Keep.  Leopold was not a man to be treated lightly.”  She shifted, looking away.  Her profile was drawn and worried, but her eyes held all the compassion in the world. 

Emma wished, she desperately wished, that she could understand why any of this had happened.  “Henry is the heir to the Snowlands, and I am charged with protecting him.  I cannot simply leave him in Frederick and Abigail’s care.  Even if Abigail is an alm blanc she knows that he is skilled with, well, I guess it’s the speech.  I cannot trust anyone to not attempt to leverage his skill against my mother and father.”

“They are good people, the king and queen of Ènell, are they not?”

“The best sort,” Emma answered firmly.  She knew that her worry was unfounded, but she could not shake the feeling.  She did not want to leave Henry, not when he was on the verge of manhood and needed consistency in his life.  This was not a quest for young boys, or even slightly older boys.  Emma hardly felt ready for it and she was fully grown.  Biting at her lip, Emma tilted her head back and stared up at the inky blackness of the night sky above.  “I merely do not wish to leave him.”

“What of his father?”  Regina asked.  “Could Henry not stay with him?”

“Neal is a knight, same as I am – last I heard he was somewhere across Han, maybe even in the Eastern Isles fighting the half-men half-monster creatures that have been cropping up as of late.” 

Regina said nothing for a long, drawn out moment.  “Tell me about them,” she asked eventually, her breath a fog in the air. 

“They’re monstrous,” Emma laughed, waving a hand dismissively.  “Great brutish beasts that understand very little aside from the order to go, maim, kill.  We fought them with the company I was with in Han, my commander’s family was a noble one and her father was older – she’d taken up his mantle in his name – and she saved the capitol from an attack by them.”

“Yes, but where do they come from?” Regina asked, and there was an insistence in her tone that made Emma tilt her head to one side, curious. 

“Do you know of them?”

Regina looked away.  “Not in so many words.  I know of the magic that it would take to make them, and I am starting to think that there is more to this than meets the eye.”

"I could've told you that," Emma replied smartly.  "They came from beyond Sherwood Forest, the black lands to the west. They cut a swath across the plains and through Ènell, but the city was able to hold them off.  That was when I'd learned that they'd come up from the sea, taken the Yellow River through Han and had sacked some of the cities there as well.”

Regina's lips drew into a thin line, her face cloaked in the blackness of the night.  She looked like her namesake then, truly evil and malevolent. "They're created by magic," Emma prompted, because it was the conclusion that she'd come to over the course of fighting against the bastards.  Her mind was racing, knowing that Neal was heading into battle against them and not knowing if he knew the same fact.  Her commander in Han knew, that much was for certain, but there was probably still the matter of putting those two people together.  She closed her eyes, wishing desperately for a way to send a message to Neal, to tell him to take care.  He carried no mirrors, though, and no carrier bird could find him the Yellow Mountains this close to winter.  He was on his own, trapped fighting a magical foe.  At least her commander in Han knew that if a being was made by magic, then they can be unmade in the same way.

"It is a spell that is so old I shan't speak it here," Regina affirmed.  She held out her hand, and flames winked into life, blossoming red across her fingertips.  "All magic comes with a price, and it is the price that is interesting. A spell like that, so old, so completely and utterly basic in the nature of its evil, would have a cost so horrible I cannot imagine who would be foolish enough to wish it into being."

Emma tilted her head to the side, fingers tentatively reaching out to touch Regina's hand.  The flames did not burn, but rather warmed her skin in the cold night air.  "It would take a great gift?"

"It would," Regina confirmed, closing her fist and plunging them once again into semi-darkness, their faces only lit by the light of the dying embers of the fire.  "You should get some rest, Emma, I'll sit the first watch."

For all the world, Emma wanted to tell Regina that they could sleep together, that no harm would come to them on these plains, but she could not make that guarantee.  She nodded once, and curled protectively around Henry, her mind drifting into an uneasy slumber.

Ever since she was a child, Emma had dreamed vividly, almost prophetically.  It was one of the first signs of a gift, the old teachings said, and Emma had grown used to never speaking of her dreams to anyone.

On this night she dreamed of a blackness that rose out of the column of the Fiery Mountain and oozed across the land, consuming all in its wake.  Emma stood at the door-in-the-mountain and watched as the blackness swallowed the village of Dell and progressed across North Lake to Fork-on-River and into the waters.  She saw Snowden fall, and the Enchanted Forest consumed by a blackness so dense that no light shone from the sky above.

The world was changing, mutating into something that Emma could not understand.  The blackness, the silence that would consume all life on Earth was rising from the mountain.

And if it rose, then it would spell their failure.

She woke, sweating, just as dawn was breaking.  Regina was curled beside her, Henry between them.

They had to get moving.

The road to Ènell was wide and full of travelers in the early morning light.  Henry rode with Regina that morning, to give Xiao a break.  The dapple grey - that Regina still refused to give a name to - was better suited to heavier loads than Emma's nimble-footed war mount anyway.

Travelers, traders mostly, hailed them as they passed.  It was not often that a woman would travel with only one escort and a child - but Emma wore the colors of the house of Ènell, and her cloak was fine enough to be noticed at a distance.  She was known to those who hailed from the city on the plains, and those who knew her called out to her with news of the north.

They rode alongside a caravan hailing from Han for several leagues, and Emma spoke at length with their leader, a man named Sheng, in his own tongue.  She wanted to know if the troops had moved on to the Western Isles, or if they were still fighting near the overlook of the Western Sea.

"They are moving slowly," Sheng told her.  "The army is not built for speed.  Fa Mulan and the other commanders have split off from the main group to ride in company of others - northerners from the Briar Woods.  No one wants these creatures in our lands."

Emma clasped his arm and smiled kindly at him, "I will tell this to people who can send Fa Mulan reinforcements." There was much that she could tell him of the foes he was set to face, but she held her tongue.  There were people, even in this small gathering of travelers, that would fear such words.  She did not wish to cause anyone undue strife.  And she did not know Sheng, for even though he dressed in the manner of Han, there times when he spoke the language clumsily, and with a northern accent.  There was a chance he was still a northerner at heart – and Emma did not want to fight him down for the supposed crime of discussing magic.

He made a sign, a traditional salute of those who had grown up and had fought in the army of Han, and bowed low.  Emma returned the gesture, seated as she was on horseback, and fell back to maneuver Xiao to walk beside Regina and Henry.

"What news?"  Regina asked, her fingers white with the frigid air of the day.  Henry shifted in front of her, his knees bumping up against the dapple's shoulders.  "I do not speak their language," she clarified when Emma looked at her oddly.  "It was never a priority of mine to learn.  My interests were with the north, not the plains or the Yellow Mountains."

Nodding, Emma relayed the information that she'd just been told.  "They're part of this," she added at the end, her lips drawing into a thin line and the tension of the road clearly evident on her face.  "There is a blackness set to ooze out from the mountain, poised, ready to strike."

Regina reached across the space between their two horses, her fingers closing around Xiao's reins and pulling the two horses close to each other.  "Do not fear," she said, and her voice was firm and expressive.  "Ènell dawns on the horizon and we will soon arrive in the arms of friends."

The city of the plains, they called it; Ènell, the great walled city on the plateaus of the midlands that boarded Han.

They said that Ènell sprang from the very ground upon which it was built, a natural fortress in the basin of an old volcano - red stone walls rising up out of the ground and carved into the rock of the far plateau that rose still higher towards the Fingerling Mountains and the Snowlands beyond.

Emma had grown up in this place, and when she saw the sun's weak rays hit the red walls of the city for the first time, her heart brightened.  This errand had not been in vain.  She'd been returned to her home - the place she'd found herself when she'd be so impossibly lost.

"What is that?" Henry asked.  He pointed in the distance, where a black blur was approaching them from the city gates at rapid speed.  Emma narrowed her eyes, one hand shading against the sun while the other pulled the strap that kept her sword in its scabbard loose.

"I don't know," Emma said.  She squeezed Xiao and he danced to the left, away from Regina and Henry.  She couldn't tell what it was, but it was moving far too fast to be a man or horse.  "Keep him safe," she said to Regina, and kicked Xiao into motion.  She drew her sword and twisted Xiao's reins into a knot, tight and low on his neck.  He was a war horse, he and Emma were one.

Emma sucked in a slow breath of air and sat heavily, her heels digging into Xiao's sides. His pace sped form a canter to a full gallop and Emma clung to the knot of the reins with one hand, the other holding her sword tight and ready.  She knew what the blackness was, even now.  The dread had settled of the pit of her stomach.

Long had there been tales of the black creatures that had come down from the mountain - forged in fire from rock and ore.  They were beings beyond human reasoning, perhaps, or maybe just men and dwarves who'd lost their way in the blackness.  Either way, Emma thought grimly, they were not to be trifled with.

There had been a few appearances of these creatures, black and shiny and full of hellfire that they were, when Emma was a child.  Her first kill as a knight of Ènell had been one of them, slain on this very field before King Frederick and his new queen.  She'd raised the beast's head to her king and had sworn her loyalty - even if she was not worthy of the protection that the house of Ènell had given her all these years.

The presence of this beast now, as the mountain burned anew, proved all the stories true, and Emma let go of the reins as the beast - low and feral like a bear hungry after a long winter - charged forward.

Emma let out a yell, twisting her blade into the glowing red rock of the beast's stomach.  It glanced off the beast's skin as though she'd hit it with a feather and Emma grit her teeth.  This would not be easy - but there were travelers on the road and Ènell proper just beyond the next hill.

It was with a heavy heart that Emma let her blade slash downwards, Xiao dancing out of the way of the beast's claws, his eyes wide with fear, but his heart one with Emma's.  She knew the language of horses - not the speech language that Henry spoke so easily - but rather the easy language, the one that let her propel Xiao forward when he wanted to run away.  All of her concentration was on her blade, on watching the beast and the black smoke that billowed from its lungs.

This creature was a creation of the Fiery Mountain.  There would be more.

An arrow glanced off of the beast's back, and then another followed.  Emma kicked Xiao backwards as a full volley of the queen's company's black and white feathered arrows rained down upon the beast.

"Now!" came a voice that Emma had not heard in what felt like years.  "Strike him now, Emma!"

Emma turned, glancing over her shoulder to see Abigail herself, wrapped in the rust colored cloak that marked her husband's court, seated on the top of the hill.  Emma raised her sword in salute and then twisted, Xiao moving beneath her as one and surging forward, towards the charging beast.

Count five, four three…

Emma twisted her blade downward, raising her arm up to allow a blow from the beast's claws to glance off of her bracer, and plunged her blade into the beast's neck.  It let out a howl that made the hairs on the very back of Emma's neck stand on end and she twisted her blade viciously as she was pulled away by Xiao once again.

The queen approached as the beast lay dying, Emma's cloak scorched and covered in blood and sweat.

"Well met, Emma," she said in the way of her people.  "You've come a long way from the Snowlands if you've taken the Southern Road."

"King Leopold-" Emma gasped out, shaking blood and dirt form her blade.  "-is dead.  The door in the mountain has opened and the Fiery Mountain is awake once more."

Queen Abigail's lips turned downwards in a pensive, almost worried expression.  Behind her, Emma heard the sound of another horse's approach.  Regina, Henry curled close against her chest, drew level with them.  "Emma!" she cried, and reached for Emma as soon as their horses were level with each other.  "What manner of beast was that?"

"A creature of the mountain," The queen of Ènell, matriarch of the Golden Hall, said grimly.  "Well met, Regina of the Northlands."

Chapter Text

The Golden Hall on the hill was a monument to the power of Ènell.  Carved from the very rock of the hillside to stand high above the city, a winding gravel path led to the great, beautifully painted oaken doors into King Frederick's hall.  He was a beloved king, his bride even more beloved by the people.  Emma stood beside Queen Abigail now, her expression perfectly neutral as the large doors swung open and accepted the travelers, dusty and dirty from the road and unprepared for the finery of the court.

It had been nearly a year since Emma had last stepped foot in this place, and it was largely unchanged.  Great woven tapestries decorated the hall, and long tables lined the far walls.  Knights of Ènell and courtesans sat in small groups around various points in the table in the Great Hall, and the quiet murmur of conversation filled the hall even as the queen led Emma, Regina and a reluctant Henry across the room and into the king's private study at the far end of the hall.

"Husband," Abigail said, knocking just once on the beautifully carved door of the room with two knuckles and a look of feigned disinterested expression on her face. Emma knew that her mind was working quickly and efficiently, assessing the risk and knowing that there was much still that had to be said.  The people of Ènell were horse masters, they were tradesmen, they were not warriors.  And with winter just around the counter, they could ill-afford a war.  Even her though her husband was no longer a particularly young man, he maintained his youthful features and a boyishly good look about him, but he was no warrior.  Not truly.  “We have guests.”

King Frederick sat amidst stacks of papers, his short hair sticking up at odd angles underneath his crown of office.  It wasn’t a formal crown by any means, just a simple, pointed circle that drooped towards the back of his head; pulling his bangs from his eyes and making him look far older than Emma had ever known him to be.  Setting down the paper in his hands, Frederick’s face lit up with childish delight clearly written across his face.  “Emma!” he exclaimed, and rose to his feet. 

Emma grew up in this king’s court, but he was the closest thing to a friend – to a father - that she’d ever had.  She took his hand when he held it out to her, and let herself be pulled into a warm, one-armed hug.  “You’re back,” he said excitedly, drawing out the word and thumping Emma hard on her shoulder with his open hand.  “What news of the Snowlands?”

There was much to report, but Emma couldn’t find the words.  They felt as if they were jammed into her throat, choking her and not allowing her to speak.  All she could think of was the fire beast, so far down into the plateaus, and the sick feeling at the pit of her stomach that only intensified with every step closer to the Fiery Mountain that they took.  “I come by way of the River Road,” Emma started, fingers reaching behind her and almost unconsciously tangling in Regina’s hand.  “We took the Northern Pass from Snowden down to Fork-on-River.  The Fiery Mountain has awakened, my king,” she stressed.  “I was standing at the Door-in-the-Mountain when it glowed orange with fire once more.”  She glanced over her shoulder at Regina, and she could see that the Black Witch’s face was twisted into a perfectly neutral expression.  She’d spent a great deal of her life in courts far more formal than this, Emma realized, and she was trying to keep herself from appearing to lose her cool.  “This is Regina,” she said quietly.  “She is the one who walked out of that door.”

Abigail drew a sharp breath beside her, but said nothing at all. Emma knew she had recognized the Black Witch before, but to hear it pronounced so openly before the king must have shocked her.  Emma bit the inside of her lip and kept her gaze evenly ahead.  She would not acknowledge their fear or their shock.  Regina was not the person the songs and histories made her out to be. 

King Frederick stepped forward, his shoulder brushing against Emma’s and feeling deceptively warm and solid as he came to stand before Regina.  Regina let go of Emma’s hand and dipped into a curtsey that looked as perfect as any that Emma had ever seen.  “Well met, your highness,” Regina intoned in a quiet voice that was so unlike her that it gave Emma pause and made her turn surprised eyes on Regina, one hand raising to brush dusty and slightly singed bangs from her eyes.  “You know who I am?”

“The Black Witch of the North…” Frederick breathed, and bowed low in return.  “Why have you come to Ènell?  Your quarrel was never with my people.”

“That would be my fault, actually, your majesty,” Emma began, stepping in before he could call for the guards and haul them all off to prison for bringing someone so dangerous into the kingdom.  “I was tasked by the White Queen to take Henry to King Leopold’s White Keep at the heart of the Enchanted Forest.”

“Why would Snow ask for such a thing?” Abigail wanted to know.  Her arms were wrapped around herself and her fair face was drawn into a picture of unrestricted worry.  “Everyone knows that place is cursed.”

Emma let out a quiet laugh, not wanting to speak ill of the people of Snowden, but also thinking that she had to say something.  “Well,” she said, glancing at Regina nervously and biting her lip under the intensity of Regina’s gaze.  “I’d imagine that it probably has something to do with the fact that they’re snowed in for six months out of the year and they get very little news from the outside during those months.  But if I’m honest with you both, I think that she honestly didn’t know.”

“He is her father,” Frederick protested, a picture of kingly ire.  “How could she not know?”

“There is a curse upon his land, upon all these lands,” Regina’s voice cut through the quiet room like a knife and one by one, all eyes turned to regard her with interest.  “The Enchanted Forest was wrapped in mist and shadow, the White Keep consumed all that dared to enter it.  It was only with the help of old magic that we were able to venture into it at all. The king is dead, corrupted by a spell so evil that only a few could cast it, and at an unimaginable price.”  She drew her hands up to hold them before her face, her expression dark.  “I hated that man with fiber of my being,” she explained, she was speaking to the king as an equal, which Emma figured that they were, but it was still odd to hear it.  It did not sound like Regina, or really like anyone that she had ever come to know.  Frank and practical, it seemed like Regina merely wanted to alleviate any confusion regarding this situation and quickly.  “But even I would not wish that fate upon him.”

“Then why are you here?” Abigail asked.  “The Fiery Mountain is alive once more, witch, shouldn’t you be fulfilling your prophecy?”

Regina looked down at the floor, and Emma wanted desperately to reach out to her and to comfort her.  Queen Abigail was a good woman and a fair one.  She had not called for the guards immediately to throw them all into the dungeons, which Emma thought was a solid start.  She didn’t lower her guard, and her hand was still resting on the hilt of her sword, casual, but alert.  She would fight her way out of here if she had do, but she hoped to all the ancient gods that it would not come to that. 

“The timeline is in disarray,” Regina looked up and met Abigail’s gaze evenly, her expression nigh unreadable.  “I cursed Leopold’s family to see seven generations of ruin before I would return.  When the fairies imprisoned me in that black place beneath the mountain I did not sleep, I did not rest.  My mind was drawn inside itself, to try and understand why everything had gone so wrong with my plan.  The mountain drew me out of the blackness, my dear queen, and thrust me into the light once more.  I travel with this knight because that is what she wants and what I desire as well.  The child was to go to Leopold to learn horsemanship, obviously that cannot happen now.”  She looked down at Henry, who was gazing up at her with such adoration clearly written on his face that Emma felt her heart sag and nearly bust for the joy of seeing such love on her face.  “We brought him here, with hopes that he would be safe in your court, or with his father.”

“Neal is gone to the Western Isles,” Frederick replied curtly.  He crossed to his desk and pulled out a map.  “The fire beasts are coming down from the Fingerlings with such an alarming rate that we’ve been debating asking Fa Mulan to return his company to us.  Ènell could use a few good riders right now.”  He sighed, unrolling the map and picking up his pen.  Dipping it into ink made from plants that grew far to the south, he made a notation on the portion of the map covered in the black swirls of the Enchanted Forest.  “What is this evil of which you speak?”

Regina stepped forward to inspect his map upside down, her expression closed off and guarded.  Her fingers tangled around Emma’s and slowly pulled her hand away from the hilt of the sword.  “There is no reason to fear,” she whispered.  In a louder voice, she continued, “I dare not speak its name, if it is all the same to you, highness.”  She lowered her gaze to the map.  “Names have a certain power, even in today’s world.”

In the ancient stories, there was a trickster god who created the world as a way to poke fun at his fellow immortal beings.  Emma knew the story well, and her blood went cold, thinking about the implications of the mere suggestion of the power of names.  Everyone knew the tale of that trickster god who had set a riddle to a girl and had stolen her first born child and would only give the child back to her if she could guess his name.  His own arrogance had been his undoing then, idly singing his name into a song. 

“You cannot mean--” Emma started, but Regina silenced her with a look that stole the breath from her throat.  It was the look of a queen, the muting gesture was at once awe-inspiring and terrifying and Emma snapped her mouth shut.  She could not speak the name, it would only draw his attention and they did not want that.  Sucked in a deep breath and tried once more, this time in a calm, collected voice.  “Imps like that do not come and go from the sands of time easily, King Frederick,” Emma said evenly.  Her mind was made up; if that creature were to be behind this, then it would be the murder of a god that they sang about, long after her death.  “And causing trouble is what they do.”

He nodded grimly, looking from Emma to Regina and then to Henry.  “We can do little but give you a place to stay for the evening and make sure that Henry is kept safe, no matter the cost.  We will see him returned to Snowden in the spring.”

Emma grasped the king’s hand. “Thank you,” she said fiercely, “For caring for him even though he is not your kin,” and meaning every word of it.

“You are as good as my kin,” King Frederick replied, touching Emma’s cheek.  “As is your son.”

They left the Golden Hall with Abigail trailing like a ghost behind them.  Emma was intent on seeing to Xiao and Regina’s horse, but something made her pause, watching Regina stand before Henry, her hands clasped before him as he stood several steps up from her.  As much as Emma had never truly felt that she was the boy’s mother, Regina had taken on the mothering role almost effortlessly, and Emma was grateful for it.  It made her feel less like she was a failure at the one duty she knew she should never shirk in favor of running off to war.  She was torn though, because she was his mother, even if she’d never truly felt like it.  She’d birthed him, watched him grow from afar.  In the deepest reaches of her heart, where she hid such emotions, Emma sometimes found herself not liking that Henry and Regina got on so well, and that Regina was so good at what Emma felt the gods had not granted her at all.  She had none of that easy mothering instinct. 

“She is good for him,” Abigail commented as Emma toed the scuffed earth with her boot and tried to not look as though the scene was hurting her to watch.  It did hurt her, though. She hated how easily Regina settled into that role for Henry, and how everything that was such a struggle for her came so effortlessly to Regina.  “I do not understand it.”

“I do not either,” Emma replied.  She was exhausted, tired from the journey and desperately wanting to sleep in a warm bed for at least one night before venturing out into the wilderness once more.  “She has a gift with children, it’s clear as day.”

“It is a shame,” Abigail sniffed and wrapped her shawl more tightly around herself.  “That one who is so obviously pure of heart committed such sins against this land.  It does not fit, her magic seems pure.”

“You are alm blanc,” Emma replied, her lips quirking upwards into a wry smile.  “What do you know of magic, my queen?”

Abigail laughed, throwing her blonde head back and letting the sound be unleashed to the swirling smoke in the growing night sky.  “I know enough, Emma.  But you are right.  My gift lies not in the magic of my people, but in the governance of someone else’s.”  She smiles, not quite meeting Emma’s gaze.  “I am happy that you have found someone who can value the power that lurks within you.  She loves your son as Neal could never do, and she will not send you away like Snow and David did.”

Emma watched Regina stand before her son and pull him into a tight hug.  He would be spending the night in Frederick’s hall – to get situated before they left in the morning. The Fiery Mountain glowed orange behind them and Emma was terrified of the journey that awaited them.  She knew that she had to do all that she could to be prepared.  The journey would be hard, and the end would not be easy. 

“I am not sure that I can give her what she wants of me,” Emma replied.  She wrapped her arms around herself and turned to meet the queen’s curious gaze.  “I’m not a knight that will sacrifice myself for her just so that she can fulfill her prophecy – the prophecy that spelled doom for my family, I might add.”

“Are they really your family?”  Abigail asked mildly.  “They have stolen much from you, and now they have designs on your son as well.”  She looked away, her expression pensive.  “There are times I wished – when you were a child especially – that you had not been born in the Snowlands.  Had you been born here, or even in the Western Isles, your gift would not be shunned.  You would be allowed to practice your craft without fear of death and all that comes with such power.”

Emma hung her head.  “I know that it is not a perfect world.”

“Perhaps,” Abigail said, tilting her head to one side, “you and the Black Witch of the North can remake it?”

Chapter Text

“You be good for the king and queen, Henry,” Emma said stiffly. She was on her knees before the little boy, holding him close to her chest and not wanting to let him go.  “You are a man of Ènell, you must behave with honor.”  He was the crown prince of Snowden as well, but Emma did not want to say it.  To say it would mean that it was true, and it was one of the things that she hated, more than anything else about how everything about her life had changed now that she had had a child.  Henry could never belong just to her – he was his own person, his own man.  And the claws of the nobility of this realm had sunk into Henry before he was old enough to pick his allegiances on his own. 

He smiled wryly, lips quirking up into a bemused smile.  “You’re the one who should probably be good,” he points out.  “You’re about to go do something really stupid.”

Emma laughed and tweaked his ear.  “Don’t I know it, kid,” she chuckled.  “I want you to read as much as you can, Henry.  Take a look through the libraries here; they are of the best in all the realm.  They will help you find the knowledge you need to be a good king.  I swear to you.” 

Regarding her with solemn eyes, Regina stood off to one side of the exchange.  There was something about the way that she was lingering, as though she had something that she wanted to say to Henry, but that she could not find the words to do so.  Emma knew that feeling well, and as she drew Henry into a tight embrace, whispering the words for parting in the four languages she knew, she swore to him that she would not die on that mountain.

There was no way of knowing that she would not die save a feeling of impossible smallness when she let her eyes slide upwards to see the Fiery Mountain glowing orange and ominous in the sky above them.  Emma swallowed, her voice lost in her throat, and hugged Henry more tightly to her.  “Promise me that you will not come looking for me, should we fail,” she said to him fiercely.  “You will find a way – someone who will teach you magic – and you will stop this if we cannot.”

His eyes were shining when Emma stepped away. He clenched his hand into a fist and raised it to rest on his chest, a promise in words that could not be spoken.  It was all that Emma could do to keep the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes at bay, and she turned to Regina with a wry smile on her face.  “Are you ready?” she asked.

Abigail and Frederick had come to see them off.  They stood beside Regina, having taken the time to give the Black Witch a few words of advice about how the land in the high plateaus above Ènell had changed since she had last traveled there, a hundred years ago.

“Do you think you could love her?” Abigail had asked Emma the night before, as they sat together in the King’s Great Hall and watched as the witch spoke at length with the men of the guard and King Frederick.  “I mean, beyond the companionship that is bred of traveling together.”

Emma hadn’t had an answer for the queen.  When she’d thought about it, the words had not come.  No, they felt as though they were trapped, circling around each other, content with simple gestures.  “She is not the sort of woman who can take a grand gesture of love, my queen,” Emma had explained.  “She is far more the sort who needs to be reminded, over and over again, that she is deserving of it.  I promised that I would keep her safe, and so safe she shall be.” 

“And your own heart?”  The queen had asked.

There had been no answer.

They left as the sun bloomed over the edge of the high walls that surrounded the city.  Emma sat upon Xiao, and Regina on her dapple gray.  The whole of the city seemed to have turned out to catch a glimpse of the Black Witch of the North, regarding her in silence, solemn eyes following her and Emma’s every move as they made their way slowly from the hall on the hill and down through the city.  The Fingerling road that cut through the high plateau was long and winding; it would take them some time to reach their destination. 

For the most part, without Henry present, they rode in silence.  Emma led the way, as she had taken this road before. Eventually it would cut over to the already snowed-in southern pass and through there they could circle back to Fork-on-River if they were so inclined.  Emma didn’t think that they would be.  The Fiery Mountain was to the west of the pass and soon they would be off of the road entirely.

After two hours, Regina drew level with Emma and reached out, placing a hand on Emma’s elbow to attract her attention.  “Do you know the three orphans?” she asked, her eyes trained on the orange glow in the sky and the mountain ahead. 

“I do,” Emma replied.  It was an old song, that sang of the three mountains that had, the old stories said, once been men.  “Did you erm… want to sing it?”  She glanced over to see Regina smiling serenely at her, her expression all but unreadable.  There had been singing on this journey, Emma knew that, but it was not exactly her strongest suit. 

“No,” Regina answered, maneuvering her horse away from Emma’s once more.  “It is just that sometimes we should do well to remember that everything, every being,  in this world was at one point made, and much of it by magic.  The trickster who made this world was looking for something very important when he created this place, and I do not believe that he ever found it.  Beings like the three orphans, set out on their journey to see their dead mother, who were trapped in stone by the trickster’s deceit - they were the beings who paid the price of the magic he’d used to make this world.”  She looked down at her horse, his ears sweeping back as if he, too, was listening.  “I do not wish to become like the trickster, Emma.” 

“You are nothing like that being,” Emma said fiercely.  She kicked Xiao into action and moved him to walk as close to Regina’s horse as she dared.  “He was fueled by a want of revenge against all those who did not see him as much of a god as you did...” Emma knew of a great many men who did not revere the trickster in the same way that Regina did, for they did not possess or believe in magic.  No, they were men who followed different gods, new gods, not the oldest of them all.  The trickster, in the past, he’d hated that.  He’d struck out against the people who did not revere him, taking everything from them without a care in the world.  He was the god of lost chances, of missed opportunities, and of the silver tongue.  It was only in respecting such a god that one could be lucky in this world.

“And am I not?”  Regina demanded.  “Revenge is all that drives me Emma.  Revenge on your family, the very family that I thought would protect me through the marriage I never wanted.”  She looked down at her hands, clenched tightly around the reigns and pulling the horse’s head back.  “All I wanted was protect and instead I received the rape of a marriage bed, no children; save the one I did not birth and a miserable existence.  The magic was what saved me, Emma.  And now I do not want any of it.”

What had changed?  Emma bit her lip and surveyed the horizon, her mind casting about desperately for a way to ask the question without actually coming out and asking it.  She was afraid of what it might do to the careful peace between them if she were to dare voice what she desperately wanted to know.  She let Xiao walk on, falling away from Regina as the two of them picked their way along the highland’s road. 

It was Regina who started first, the song arching up into the sky, a silent homage to the three dead orphans, trapped inside the Fingerling Mountains, their peaks rising like desperately searching fingers above the horizon. 

Elindul a három árva,
Elindul a három árva,
Mind a három földi gyászba’,
Mind a három földi gyászba’.

The three orphans started out on their journey, dark and full of sorrow, Emma remembered the tale well.  They, too, were weighed down by the burden of magic.  It bloodied their bodies and stained their clothes.  They had made a deal with the trickster who had made this world, their lives for their magic and their pain.  He had taken their magic and had used it to create their tombs – three mountains with fingers pointing straight to the heavens in defiance of what evil he had done. 

Emma listened in a rapt silence as Regina sang the sad tale of their sorrow and their pain and she could not help but think of her own pain.  Henry was gone, left in Ènell to play a game of thrones and warring times that he was no more ready for than Emma had been, shoved into Frederick’s father’s court at age nine.  She’d learned to play the game relatively well, but it was not for her, and she shirked her birthright because it made her life easier and because they didn’t want her anyway.  She did not have to play if she was no longer an heir. 

She wondered, as Regina sang, if there was a similar story in her past.  She knew that Regina had not wanted to marry King Leopold.  Her grandfather was not a good man, it had been his might with the sword, rather than his skill with people that had won him the whole of the northlands.  He had taken her anyway, as he had had no son. 

Én Istenem, valahára,
Viselj gondot az árvára.
Hogy ne jusson bujdosásra,
Egyik ajtóról a másra.

So many, so many had died for this woman, by this woman’s hand.  “You told me once that you would have your revenge,” Emma said, staring straight ahead, not able to look at Regina as she spoke.  “What has changed?”

There was an ease about her as she leaned forward on her dapple gray’s shoulders and kicked him into a trot, her face blossoming into a smile.  “You,” she called over her shoulder.  “Henry.  You are both so different from your forebears that it seems unfair to lump you in with them.  I want Henry to be happy – he will be a good king one day.  He is fair.” It had only been a short time, a handful of weeks of travel, and already Regina was certain of this fact.

Emma wished it wasn’t true.  She wished, desperately, that she could save Henry from the throne.  She knew that it was not possible – and that all she could do was make sure he was prepared.

They raced across the flat of the plateau, and moved up the winding trail to the next of the great steppes with little fanfare after that.  They were climbing the stairs of the gods, and Emma’s hand had not moved from the hilt of her sword, when, some three great steppes later, they encountered another of the fiery beasts that were so plaguing Ènell. 

“Let me,” Regina said, as Emma drew her sword.  Emma swallowed, but said nothing, sitting back and watching as Regina rode forward.  She’d opened her water skin, the water contained within pooling in her palm and splashing outwards, coating her entire hand and remaining there, solid like a hand plunged into wax.  Emma stared openly, her sword loose in her fingers. 

Regina’s hand snapped out as the beast charged.  The water that had gathered on it appeared to solidify, and then it snapped out like a whip, wrapping around the beast’s neck.  It let out a high pitched yell that Emma knew well.  More would soon be coming, and they had to make haste.  They were into the foothills before the Fiery Mountain now, and everywhere the air was choked with fire and steam.

“We must flee!” Emma shouted, kicking Xiao into motion and streaking towards the beast and the Black Witch.  “We must get out of here, it’s called for more!”

Twisting her wrist viciously, Regina let the beast fall to the ground, its head separating from its shoulders and rolling to come to rest a few feet from its body.   “Are you certain?” Regina asked, her expression dubious.

“Of course I am!” Emma retorted, slapping Regina’s horse’s rump with the broad side of her sword.  “We must fly to the mountain itself; only there will be we able to find a place to hide for the night.”

Regina’s dapple grey did not like the feeling of Emma’s sword on its rump, and took off at a dead run, its feet sure on uneven terrain.  Xiao’s ears flew back and he took off after Regina, Emma was intent on getting into the front and leading.  The dapple was better at sprinting than Xiao was, however, and Emma trailed after Regina for several leagues before the horses had slowed to all but a walk and there was nary a fire beast in sight. 

They were in the shadow of the mountain now.  Down, to the west, Emma could see the thick greenery of Sherwood Forest, and she stared down at the twisted knot of trees that formed the boundary between the Western lands and the central part of the realm.  “Only a fool would venture down there,” she said quietly, sheathing her sword and moving to get off of Xiao.  A creek flowed beside them, fresh with cool, mountain water.  The horses drank greedily, as Emma stood and stretched, her breath fogging in the cold night air. 

“Quite,” Regina sniffed.  “It is an evil place, full of magic even I do not understand.”

“We make camp here tonight,” Emma announced, tasting snow in the air and the bitter cold of night approaching.  “Tomorrow, we will strike out for the mountain itself.” 

Chapter Text

The mountain rose like a great doom upon the land, jutting nearly straight up into the sky - its crags and ragged pinnacle were plagued by a plume of dust and ash and snow that snaked from the surface and out into the ether.  Emma stared up at the glowing orange mountain that night, her back pressed up against a straggly pine and her mind preoccupied with all the stories of old.  "How much truth is there, in every tale I have ever heard?"

As questions go, it was not that uncommon of one.  Magic and the study of it was banned in Snowden, and it was not commonly practiced in Ènell.  What Emma knew of the old tales were trapped in myth and legend.  "Are the three orphans truly real?"

Regina poked the fire with a stick, her eyes distant.  The two of them were keeping their distance from each other - gone was the easy companionship of the earlier legs of their journey.  Henry's departure from their company weighed heavily on both of their minds.

"There is much about this world that is not known," she said in a low voice, her eyes downcast.  "Far be it from me to try and bring you edification when your ability to understand is so utterly limited."  There was something about her tone that rankled Emma, and she rose to her feet, picking her way over frosty ground to plop down next to Regina.  She had a million questions and she was not always sure that she wanted to know the answered to them, but she wanted to be told, she had to be told.  Otherwise how was she to protect Regina?

"What does that mean?" she asked, trying desperately to keep the annoyance from her voice.

Brown eyes met Emma's and in the half-light of the fire, Emma could see the fear clearly written in Regina’s eyes.  "We are but two people, Emma.  I could not hope to spell you out the doom of the universe in the time we have this night."

Sighing, Emma leaned back on her elbows, her boots kicked out in front of her, the scuffed leather still shining in some places in the fire light.  "It was a simple question," Emma countered.  "You don't need to shut me down just because Henry isn't here to be entertained by your stories."

"I get the sense that if Henry were here we wouldn't be having this conversation at all."  She tilts her head backwards and stares openly up at the sky.  The stars above were twinkling, winking down at them from the heavens.  In that moment, Emma felt impossibly small, and she closed her eyes against the rash urge that filled her, to lean against Regina and take comfort in her.

"The Queen asked me something, before we left," Emma bit her tongue to keep herself from saying anything that she did not intend, but the words were threatening to spill out anyway.

"Oh?"

Emma tilted her foot, letting it knock against Regina.  "She asked me if I could love you - the way that you deserved."

Regina drew in a sharp breath, her fingers scrabbling on the hard ground beneath them, gathering her cloak and pulling it more tightly around herself.  "No soul can love me in the way that I deserve.  True love doesn’t exist for people like me."

"True love is a myth," Emma retorted. She'd always believed that.  "Just as the fates are a myth.  You make your own destiny - your own love, that is how you get by in this world."

"Such a grand view," Regina said quietly, her expression completely unreadable in the darkness.  "I would love to see it to be true."

Emma tilted her head to one side.  "How do you mean?"

"You - me - this place.  Everything is preordained, Emma.  You finding me at the door-in-the-mountain was no mistake.  Why do you think that the southern, more accessible pass was closed, and yet the one to the north remained open?  We were being sent to meet each other, our minds and bodies spiraling closer and closer to complete this one task."  Regina let out a breath of air.  "The Queen asked you if you could ever love me. I don't think you can, because it would make you a slave to the very forces that you so shun."

Emma wanted to protest that she could love this icy woman, she could breathe a fire that would melt her frozen heart, but she knew that it was a lie.  She was no better than anyone else in this world, it seemed.  "You speak as though I cannot control myself."

Regina looked up at the Fiery Mountain above them, her expression darkening.  "To survive this place, you will need more than control."

The old tales never mentioned, exactly, what was up in the Fiery Mountain.  They tell of a blackness, and of the heart of one of the three orphans, forever burning in sorrow for its lost mother.  There was a font of magic, somewhere deep within its walls - and an evil lurked in the blackness.

"Do you think we could remake this world?" Emma asked drowsily.  The fire warmed her body and Regina was resolutely not looking at her right now.  She'd put her foot into her mouth, Emma knew that.  She should not have said anything about her exchange with Abigail, but the words that she'd wanted to say were lost, mutated by her very soul.

"I think that we can do anything, provided we're stubborn enough," Regina answered, her voice a quiet murmur.

Emma heard little of what she said after that, a quiet humming of The Three Orphans as she drifted off sent her down a rabbit hole and into a black void where up was down and nothing made any sense at all.

It was black there, and the world seemed to be twisting in on itself, pulling Emma in a million different directions and stripping her of any and all ability to understand what was happened.  She was just one person, as Regina was just one person.  How were they to stop this?  How were they to save the world?  Fear twisted into the dream then, morphing it from something anxious to something panicked, a dream within a dream and a deathly sense of doom that she could not shake. 

Her sleep was fitful and not restful. Emma woke, some indeterminate amount of time later, half trapped in the dream world even as her eyes flew open.

Regina stared down at her.  "The fiery beasts draw near - I do not know if we can take the horses with us."  She glanced over to where Xiao and the dapple grey were tied to a low hanging branch of another scraggly pine.  "They will not be able to climb once we reach the door."  There were moments that Emma forgot that Regina had been gone from this world for a considerable length of time, and that she did not know the world as Emma did now.  Emma had never ventured this close to the Fingerlings, or into the shadow of the Three Orphans before, Regina had come here when she was trying to hide away from the world. 

"The heart of the mountain is at its center, is it not?"  Emma asked, shaking from her the last cobwebs of sleep and staring up at the mountain side.  The way was long and treacherous looking, cutting through craggy loose rock and a few briar thickets that made Emma wince preemptively. She was going to tear something, going through them, if she wanted to save her sword’s edge for whatever was surely waiting inside the mountain for them.  She glanced down at her boots, scuffed and caked with the red clay of the plateaus below them.  "Why not go through the mountain?"

The Black Witch of the North looked down at Emma and slowly rose to her feet.  Her expression was that of one who had already made such a decision.  She brushed her hands off and smoothed her skirts flat behind her.  "The horses will not like the enclosed space, and we cannot guarantee their safety if we leave them behind."

Emma scrambled to her feet, shaking the dirt of the forest floor from her cloak and tilting her head backwards to inspect the sky.  The air smelled of snow, and dark clouds were moving in from the north – the Snowlands beyond the mountains.  Storms gathered over North Lake, and they pummeled these mountains with snows some ten feet deep in places.  Emma shivered as a breath of that cold, northern wind cut through her cloak as though it were nothing.  They would not have long before this storm came, and if they did not get up and down the mountain and complete whatever their task was during that time, they would be trapped.  The snows would make such a descent suicide.

There was tell, for those who dared venture this close to the Fingerling Mountains, of ways though the mountains, ways that harkened back to a time when the dwarves still mined the rock below this place.  There would be a way in, and hopefully it would be easy going.  Emma did not hold out hope for such a thing, however, she was no fool.

"The path to the town of Dell is though that gap," Emma pointed out the pass between the two peaks.  She drew her finger down, tracking the line from the corniced peak of the mountain that came up beside the Fiery Mountain and following it down to their position. "I bet that if we were to follow it, we would find a door."

Regina nodded once.  "The door is in between, it will be covered with snow by this time of year."  As if on cue, a blast of frighteningly cold air blasted through their campsite and left Emma breathless.  She drew her cloak around herself and closed her eyes, focusing her mind inward, on the tight circle of her magic.  She had learned how to do this a long time ago now, and anything was better than freezing while attempting such a trek.

"Do not use magic to warm yourself." Regina’s tone was sharp.  "The magic of this place will sap your strength and we have much to do before I'll have you passing out from exhaustion.  The cold will focus your mind."

Puffing out her cheeks, Emma scowled.  She did not want to be cold while she traversed such terrain and Regina was surely a sadist if she wanted Emma freezing and shaking.  Such was the nature of these things, and Emma knew that if she was too cold that she would not be able to grip her sword, or to fight of any beasts that they might encounter. "What would you recommend then, oh wise one?"

"A little tenacity, Emma of Ènell, nothing more," Regina replied icily.  Her expression was nothing like the guarded, hesitant expression of the night before and Emma bit her lip, wondering what had changed.

That was what had changed.  The reality of what they were facing was evident now in every harsh gust of wind and every impossible step forward.  They were going now, doomed to climb up the mountain and into blackness beyond.

"Xiao knows the way home," Emma said.  "We could tell them to wait for us.  Use your speech."

"We will climb as high as we dare first."

And climb they did.  The horses scrambled up the steep path, Regina in the lead.  With every step the air grew thinner and the temperature dropped.  Emma was of the Snowlands, yes, but she was unused to conditions such as these. Her childhood had been spent in Ènell; her journeys had taken her to the Southern Sea.  Warmth was in her blood, not this bitter cold that threatened to consume every aspect of her being.

It was with a heavy heart, some three hours later, that they stopped and took their gear in packs and sent the horses back the way that they'd come.  Regina spent a long time, her hands cupping Xiao's nose, simply talking to him and telling him of a great many things that Emma did not understand.

"I have other ways to get us home," Regina said when Emma asked her if they would be walking back to Ènell.

The words, “provided we survive,” went unspoken.  They both knew that they were probably walking into their doom.

Emma watched Xiao leave, tail flicking, and turned towards the mountain face once more.  They had no rope, and no magic that would allow them to abseil down, should they need to.  This was a one way-journey.

"What are we going to find in there?" Emma asked, her feet digging into snow and gravel.  Every step felt like a herculean labor and she did not know how much longer she could keep up this pace.

"Gods and monsters, Emma," Regina replied, her fingers digging into the rock.  "Gods and monsters."

It was some time later when they finally reached a cliff face that jutted out from the mountain face.  Emma leaned with her back firmly against the wall and sucked in deep breaths of rapidly cooling and thinning air.  She was not going to spend the night on this mountain.

"How do we get in?" she asked.

Regina smiled, stepping away from the wall herself on careful feet.  "Dwarves like their doors, but they sometimes tended to mislay them."  She twisted her wrist and Emma could see the magic pour off of her, sweaty and exhausted from the climb though they both were.  The wall behind them split and into blackness revealed an orange glow.  The heart of the mountain. 

Chapter Text

The air inside the mountain was hot and thick with something that Emma could not name.  The air around the felt like it was suffocating them.  Emma could feel the sweat drip down the back of her armor and pool at the small of her back, leaving a sick, wet feeling in its wake that sent chills up Emma spine once it started to cool once more.  She was free of gear, so she was able to pull at her tunic away from her back to try and create a cool breeze underneath her heavily padded breastplate.  They had left their packs with all save their water skins hidden underneath their discarded cloaks at the door that Regina had forced out of the mountainside. 

The door had come out of the stone like an omen and Emma had made the sign against evil then, for this was an evil place that they were venturing into.  The very air felt heavy with anticipation, with the collective doom of the world.  No sooner had they stepped inside, when Emma had drawn her sword.  Her expression was grim as she brushed her hair from her eyes, gloves sticking uncomfortably to her sweaty palms.

"This place feels like death," she said in an undertone to Regina.  Their very footsteps were echoing through the halls of this place, and Emma did not her voice to carry, to alert anyone or anything that might be lurking deep in the earth and in the shadows to their presence.

The Black Witch of the North said nothing at all, her face screwed up in concentration. She held one hand aloft, her fingers lit with merry flames that danced like it was a midsummer night and they were gathered around a river dance, rather than venturing into one of the most evil places Emma could think of in all the world.  Ariadne's thread trailed behind them as they moved through the honeycomb maze of the inside of the mountain.

What had once stood as one of the greatest dwarven mines in the world was gone, overrun by fire and by death.  All that remained with the empty skeleton of what had once been one of the most prosperous mines in the entire land; a dust filled remnant of the great civilization that had once called these hallowed halls home. Emma took in their murals, reading their history as best she could where the pictures were not covered in scorch marks.

Regina's hand shot out as Emma stepped forward, and Emma stumbled, her free hand grabbing for Regina's as the ground crumbled away beneath her feet.  The witch let out a grunt, throwing her weight behind her and pulling Emma back onto solid ground.  They stood there, panting for a minute, their arms pressed between their bodies and Emma couldn't help but smile at her annoyed expression.  She leaned forward, throwing caution to the wind, and pressed her lips to Regina's cheek.

"Thanks," she said breathlessly, it would have been foolish to die so easily.

Nose wrinkling, Regina said nothing for a long time before she turned away, her fingers trailing over the wall as if she was trying to feel for something.  "I would not have you thinking that you would be able to love me, after you see what I must do in this place."

Doubtful, Emma shook her head and looked down at the sword in her hand.  "Hey--" she said, looking up and meeting Regina's curious gaze.  "I am not going anywhere.  It is not like it was back then.  You are not alone."

"I will always be alone," Regina answered stubbornly.  Her chin jutted out and Emma wanted to laugh at her, because they were not just one person in this place; no, they were two.  And they would take care of this together.  She stuck her chin out with a determined look on her face and refused to back down from Regina’s stubborn glare.  Two could play that game, and she’d sworn to herself that she would never let Regina be alone again.

"If you say so," Emma answered quietly, doubt coloring every word.  She knew she could not tell Regina that she would be there for her. It had to come through actions to carry any meaning at all for Regina.  For so long, all anyone had ever given Regina was disappointment and ill-will.  Emma wanted to change all of that.  She had to, Regina was what she wanted most in all the world right now.

Their fingers slipped apart, and Emma swung her sword downward authoritatively, stepping away from the crumbling edge of the path.  “We should keep moving.”

The mines seemed to be closing around them, and Ariadne's thread had already crossed over itself several times, following their winding path.  Emma could hear voices in the darkness - the sounds of the dead, she knew.  The old tales were full of mentions of them and how they walked through the darkness of such places.  The temperature continued to rise as the inside of the mountain glowed orange with their malcontent.

They were in the middle of a large antechamber with high arching ceilings when Emma heard the voice for the first time, cackling on the hot air that blew a stiff breeze through the place.

"See? The little witch comes back, dearie, yes she does."

Emma took a step forward, not feeling at all brave as she tried to swallow her fear.  Her heart hammering in her chest made it hard, and she adjusted her grip on her sword before calling out, "Show yourself!"

"Emma no--" Regina started, but it was too late.  The room shifted, mutating and changing under their feet.  Emma reached out, grabbing hold of Regina by the upper arm and pulling her to the wall where the floor seemed more solid.

"What in the seven hells..." Emma breathed, watching as the floor bounced like rolling waves off the ocean.

"The trickster who made this world," Regina breathed, her fingers lacing in Emma's.  Emma could feel the magic flow between their bodies, oozing slowly like she was wading through mud.  Regina's grip tightened as Emma tried to withstand the pressure of the magic that she had no skill to manipulate.  She knew it was pouring out of her, an untapped reservoir.  Regina had told her once that she glowed - and now it was Regina who was glowing.  Her entire body shone with white magical energy that resonated like a beacon along her form.

Somewhere beyond the shadow along the wall, a beast roared.  The cry was deafening, and Emma could hear nothing but the ringing in her ears for several minutes as Regina seemed to mentally steel herself.  "Give me your sword," she said.

"What are you doing to do?" Emma demanded, not wanting to be unarmed.

"A great dragon awakens - the true doom of the mountain.  It was never magic, magic just gave it form, Emma, please," Regina said urgently.  Their hands were still joined, and Emma felt her stomach plummet to somewhere around her knees.  She could not kill a dragon.  There were few alive who could.

Emma could not help herself.  "I would not have you die to save me," she said firmly.  She did not feel brave, but the magic was mostly gone from her body.  She felt level-headed and even.  She could make sure that Regina survived to give Henry the news of her parting.  "Get out of here Regina.  I will stall the beast long enough for you to escape.  This cannot be the final obstacle."

"I won't leave you alone with that beast - that malevolent force."  Regina shook her head and wrapped two fingers around Emma’s wrist, her eyes pleading.  "You do not deserve such a fate, Emma of Ènell."

"Then how do we kill it?"  Emma demanded.

The room filled with flame and ash as she spoke - and the ground shook from the great weight of the dragon as it alighted on the floor of the cavernous room.

"I know a spell," Regina said and reached for Emma's sword again.  "Give me your sword. I promise you will see it again."

The white crackle of magic that arched around Regina settled then, in the briefest of instances, and Emma was able to see her spell’s words into the sword's blade.  "Thou sword of truth fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure," Regina said in echo of another old tale that Emma could scarce recall as her head pounded from the weight of the dragon's steps.  Sweat was pouring off of both of them now - and Emma understood, as if for the first time.

"When you stopped the Fiery Mountain one hundred years ago you trapped that thing in here," She turned wide eyes to Regina.  "Why didn't you tell Henry that part?"

Regina looked up from Emma's sword, her lips quirking up into a wry smile.  "A girl must have secrets, Emma.  Henry is too young to know that the dragons of old still live."  She handed Emma back the sword, her expression grim.  "When I give you the signal, I want you to run across to the other side.  When you're in the middle throw the sword, it will fly true."

"You recited a nursery rhyme," Emma pointed out, skeptical.

"Words have power you could not know, Emma of Ènell, for you were denied the ability to learn them.  I know them - and the sword will fly true."  She closed her hands over Emma's on the sword's hilt.  "I swear to you."

Emma leaned over and kissed Regina, for luck and for the foolhardy want to impress to her that she was important, that Emma could love her as she deserved.

"This is hardly the time, Swan princess," Regina said, pushing Emma away, a smile playing at her lips.

"We might make our own luck, but there's nothing wrong with tradition," Emma pointed out.

The dragon roared and Emma felt the easy exchange vanish into a desperate sense of business-like determination.  She could do this, she was sure of it.

Regina stepped out of the shadows and the beast caught sight of her and let out a roar that made Emma's ears ring.

"Your maker is probably wondering how this has come to pass," Regina called, rocking back on her feet.  The dragon's breath hissed a plume of smoke in response and Emma felt herself go flat against the wall, preparing for the blast that never came.

Or rather, it did come.  Regina held her hand up in the air and the dragon’s fire that was foretold to burn all in its path gathered itself into a perfectly round ball of merrily cracking flames above her head.

If a dragon could look alarmed and confused, the beast surely would have.  Emma gripped her sword tightly and leaned forward, watching with wide eyes as Regina snapped her fingers and the flames winked out, plunging the room back into semi-darkness.

"I have thought long about your maker," Regina continued, twisting her wrist and summoning the fire back.  She glanced over towards Emma, and then focused on the dragon once more.  The fireball floated in her palm and she turned to look almost coyly at the dragon.  "You are a beast of burden, Maleficent, nothing more."

The dragon let out a roar, rising up on its hind legs and Emma knew that that was her signal without Regina's frantically hissed, "Now."

She sprinted across the room, pausing before Regina and nodded once.  She hurled her sword, willing it to fly true as Regina promised it would.  Her hands were shaking as she did so; the dragon was close, too close.

With the sword flew the dragon’s fire, and Emma slammed up against the fall wall of the room.  Regina followed on her heels and was shouting for Emma to take her hand.  Emma lunged, grabbing her and a warm blue light surrounded them as the room was filled by fire and light so bright that it hurt Emma's eyes even though they were squeezed shut tight.

For a long time, silence reigned.  Emma drew shaky breaths in the crook of Regina's neck, her arms wrapped protectively around her.  There was magic protecting them from being burned alive, and as Regina held the shielding spell - for that was all that it could possibly be - Emma felt her own strength start to fade.

The fire died and the spell relaxed, leaving them in a room full of glowing embers and ash.  In the very middle of the room there was a single rock that looked like it could have been a heart, once upon a time.  Out of it protruded the blackened hilt of Emma's sword.

"I can..." Emma said shakily.  "I cannot draw a sword from stone."

"Any rightful king or queen can.  Especially if it's your own sword."  Regina replied, shaking herself off.  She looked exhausted.

Shrugging off Regina's comment and knowing that she would not be able to pull the sword from the rock, Emma crossed the room at almost a jog.  The dragon was gone, she was walking through the ashen remains of its bones - consumed by a sword and its own fire.

Her fingers closed around her sword almost reverently, and she leaned back and pulled with all her might, so sure that it was going to remain steadfastly stuck.

The blade fell out though, as though through butter or flesh.  An easy motion.

"The blade is remade," Emma said, seeing the writing that still lingered on it.  "It says your nursery rhyme."

"It is not a nursery rhyme," Regina rolled her eyes and pointed.  "We must find the maker, so that this can stop once and for all."

Emma nodded, her lips drawn into a thin, grim line.

Chapter Text

There was no maker.  Not really.  All that was left was a trickster who had accidentally made this world.  The old tales foretold of the death of the world in a thousand ways, each more bloody and gruesome than the last.  Emma had grown up, sitting in the court of Ènell beside Frederick and then with his bride as well, hearing the king of her childhood sing the stories out to the great golden hall.

Now, as she clutched her sword to her chest in one hand and Regina's hand in the other, she felt as though she was standing in the middle of one of those epic songs.  Her body felt almost numb, her legs sluggish as they picked their way through the ash and rubble that was all that remained of the dragon.

"You called that dragon by name," Emma said, stepping over a large crack in the floor and turning to help Regina over it.  The thought had struck her on a whim, and she'd voiced it without much consideration to what it could actually mean.  There were a great many things that she did not know about Regina, and Emma wanted to know them, but the words never seemed to come and the answers were lost in the great echo of the hall.

"I did," Regina said judiciously.  She flicked her wrist and another ball of fire appeared in her hand.  She cradled it, like a light, as they ventured further into the darkness.

With the dragon dead, at least, the Fiery Mountain would quiet on its own.  The hard part was done, or so Emma thought.

"Who was she?"

Regina was silent for a long time, taking measured steps, her boots hitting the stone ground of the cavern in brisk steps.  Emma hurried to keep up with her, her boots scrabbling on the ash-covered ground.

They were drawing level with a doorway that looked a lot more like a god had taken a fist and slammed into the rock, creating a crack that had been expanded by the dwarves, hundreds of years ago.  Emma leaned back, looking up at the scorched ceiling and the great space that had once been full of fire and death.

The blackness that she'd dreamt of had funneled out of the top of this mountain, and now it was gone, dead, in ashes on the ground among them.  She made a sign against evil on her chest and spat, not caring that Regina raised her eyebrow at the gesture.

They were fully into the cavern before Regina answered, her voice low and carefully pitched so as not to create an echo in the vast emptiness of the heart of the Fiery Mountain.

"She was a friend, a long time ago," Regina turned to look at Emma, her hand held aloft and the fire she'd conjured crackling merrily against her palm.  "And she made a bad deal and got stuck here, same as the three orphans, same as the trickster."

"Who is the trickster?"  Emma all but demanded.  She was sick of Regina being cryptic and evasive in her answers.  They were in this together.  They had to be.  The dragon was dead by Regina's spell and her sword. It was a shared victory if ever there was one.

They came upon a small alcove then, a room set aside and a single long stone table dominating the room.  Or rather, that was what it appeared to be, until Emma stepped inside and saw it for what it was: a tomb.

"The trickster is the god who made this world," Regina said, closing her fist and plunging them into darkness.  She raised her voice in the gloom. "And I would have a word."

For a long time, there was nothing but silence.  Emma stepped forward, sword held at the ready, to check that the room was indeed empty and that there were no baby dragons lurking in the darkness behind the great stone sarcophagus.

"I wouldn't go back there, if I were you, dearie."

Emma leapt backwards, recoiling with the way that the oily voice slipped and fell in around her, curling at the corners of her mind and lingering where no voice should.  She felt dirty, like she'd just rolled through mud, and she felt the urge to flee even though she could see no source for the voice to be afraid of.

"Who's there?" she demanded.  Regina still stood in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest.  She had an almost bored look on her face, and Emma couldn't quite figure out if she was disinterested or maybe used to the voice.

"The question is never who, but rather what," Regina drawled.  "That is Rumpelstiltskin.  It was his book that started this whole disaster."

"And it'll be my book that finishes it, will it not, Regina dearest?"  With that, a small imp of a man, glittering with golden skin that sparkled in the low light of the room seemed to appear out of nowhere, alighting onto the tomb and sitting, one leg crossed over the other.  Emma let out a quiet gasp, and averted her eyes.  She knew a god when she saw one and she knew better than to cross them..

Fear gripped her stomach.  This was not natural.

"I suppose that it could," Regina answered.  "I fulfilled my end of the bargain.  Maleficent is dead, your orphan will not wake.  I would like to go back to living, if you please."

He turned black eyes to Emma, "And what of child of your dearest enemy?"

"I have a feeling she does not wish for the title any more than I wished to be queen," Regina answered.  "She was my guide here, and I owe her a great debt."

The imp let out a quiet cackle, long fingered hands with nails as sharp as knives clapping together excitedly.  "Oh, you love her, don't you dearie!"  He danced on the balls of his toes over to stand before Emma, eying her and making Emma feel like she wanted to fall through the floor and into the fiery lake that surely lay below their feet.  "I've half a mind to take her from you, just because you care so."

"If it's all the same to you," Emma said testily.  "I'd rather that you didn’t."

"I'm sure you would," he said, looking her up and down.  "I taught her, you know - magic and all that remains in this world.  She's the most talented user I have ever seen. It takes a wronged heart, you see."

A trickster god, Emma knew, could be a force of good or for evil.  There was never any way of knowing, not truly, what they were up to and thinking at any particular moment.  That was what made them so dangerous, in the big scheme of things.  She swallowed and tried to keep her expression neutral under the scrutiny of the creature.

"And if I could love her - fix that wrong?"  She questioned, her expression shifting thoughtfully, following his line of questions and the opening volley of his thoughts easily.  "I would have her."

"And she you," the god replied.  "Your fates have been intertwined for years now.  Why do you think she woke up when you walked by the door-in-the-mountain?"

Realization dawned on Emma all at once and she clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and disbelieving.  The force that had moved in the shadows was this creature - this god - he'd wanted them together in this place.  He'd wanted them...

"And King Leopold?"  Regina asked, stepping into the room to rest a cautioning hand on Emma's bracer.  "What was the purpose of his death?"

"To exorcise that demon for you, dearie," the imp turned on one foot and pranced off to rest glittery hands on the stone sarcophagus.  His expression grew pensive as he stood there, and Emma moved to speak, but Regina silenced her with a look.  "You have been wronged so many times, you know?  It seemed only fair to let you win, for once.”

"I'd thank you to not play games with my life," Regina retorted, her expression perfectly neutral, and yet her tone betraying how frightened she was

"’I'll thank you to not play games with my life,’" he mimicked, raising one hand and flapping it together.  "When will you learn, mortal?  All that I have to do is play games with your lives and this is the game that I want to play.  I'll play it to win it, and I will win.  I want you and the Swan Princess together with that little boy of hers.  He's going to be a great king, you know, and I want you happy because it suits me."

"Hey," Emma said, stepping forward. She did not believe in any of the things that he was saying, but she could not counteract the power with which he spoke them.  "We are not pawns in some great game to you."

He eyed her with a lethal look, and Emma took a step back, and then another one, cowed by the intensity of his gaze.  "You know so little of the world, Emma of Snowden and Ènell.  Why do you think that your life has been a tragedy up until this point?  Why do you think your parents, wonderful, loving people that they are, would reject you out of hand because of something that you could not control?"  He waved a hand in front of her face, and then clenched it into a fist.  "It is because that is what I will."

Emma swallowed, and nodded just once.

"Send us back to the horses," Regina asked, her tone mild, "and I will not complain.”

"What'll you give me for it?" he asked, holding out a palm.

Regina bent, and picked up the slightly burned and blackened end of Ariadne's string.  "I do not think that I will have need of this anymore." she said, and placed it in his hand.  “It is a worthy tribute, I think.”

He held it, and seemed to weigh it for a moment, before he tossed it into the air and snapped his fingers. 

The world went black.

Emma woke up lying flat on her back with the feeling of large, grass-smelling lips chewing at her hair.  Groaning, she slapped Xiao's head away from her and rolled away from the offending horse's mouth.

They were lying in a clearing, somewhere on the high plateau.  As she lay there, she could see that there was no smoke rising from the Fiery Mountain - the dragon's rage had been quelled.  Whooping, she got hurriedly to her feet and moved to find Regina, knowing that she'd be lurking somewhere, it was just a matter of finding where.

"Regina?"  She called, stumbling to the edge of the clearing.  "You here?

She caught sight of her, standing by the low creek bed, the dapple gray’s nose pressed against her chest.  In that moment, Emma was struck by Regina, by her beauty and by the tears that were slowly running down her cheeks, threatening to become a steady stream at any passing moment.  Emma wanted to go out to her, to reach for those tear-streaked cheeks and smooth them away to nothing but muddy smudges. 

She stood, rooted to the spot, as Regina tilted her head back to the heavens.

“Do you believe him, that we have no choice in this?” Regina asked.

There was a sick moment then, when Emma truly thought about the implications of the trickster’s words.  He had said that it was he, he was the one who had set events in motion, and while Emma understood why he might think himself the creator of the circumstances, the actions that had followed – there was no way he could have controlled them.

Shaking her head, she approached Regina and her horse, her fingers splaying out for the horse to sniff before she allowed her head to rest against the horse’s gray neck.  It felt cold now that they’d escaped the depths of the Fiery Mountain, and Emma could feel a chill in the air.  Their cloaks and packs were gone, and it was two days of hard riding back to Ènell – or even a settlement where they could find shelter for the night.  They were lucky, Emma knew, that it wasn’t fully winter yet, for with the winter they would have surely frozen to death.

“I do not believe so,” Emma replied.  She turned to look at Regina, blonde hair obscuring her eyes.  She didn’t think that she could meet Regina’s piercing gaze and say it so she said it mostly to the horse, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.  “He may have broken your enchantment – the fairy’s enchantment – early, and he may have made it snow in the southern pass…” she shook her head.  “I don’t think he could have made me climb up that mountainside to see who was standing before the Door-in-the-Mountain.  I don’t think he could have made you so taken with Henry and so adamant about taking him through to the White Keep.”  She sighed, running a hand through her hair.  “Regina, he may have made circumstances the way that they were, but what happened – what’s here, this is us.”

Regina nodded, her hand reaching out to close around the front of Emma’s tunic.  She pulled Emma into a hard kiss, her lips pressing so closely against Emma’s that it almost hurt, and Emma wanted more.  She reached up to cup those tear-streaked cheeks and she held on – because they were the ones who made this world, the quiet world between them where they ruled their own destiny.  No trickster or fire-spewing mountain could interfere with them here. 

And in that moment, it was perfect.

Post—

The bards sang of the fallen queen who had promised to end the world, only to end up saving it, and the great knight who had aided her in her quest.  They sang of the journey home, horses almost flying down the great plateaus of Ènell ahead of the winter snows.  They sang of families reunited and the birth of something truly great between the two women and the little boy who loved them both so dearly. 

And they sang of the great queen who took her place in that Northern Keep that had once belonged to her abuser.  They sang of how she erased the reputation of her previous life in a mere summer, and how she captured the imagination of all the Northlands.  She took in anyone who wanted to learn the god’s gift, and she taught them how to use it well and true.

The bards sang of the love between the queen and her champion, true love they said it was.  And true love it was indeed.