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The first thing Emma noticed was just how big it was. The head looked just like a house cat’s, but much larger, and overall the creature was as big as a horse. The body was that of a huge furry spider, but at the end of its eight legs were cat’s paws. It was probably the most singly disturbing thing she had ever seen in her life.
“Wolf spider!” Regina shouted, fear in her voice as she drew herself up, gathering magic to defend them.
“Looks more like a cat spider,” Emma said. She knew she should be afraid. If Regina was showing fear, she should probably be terrified. But something about her protracted trip to the Enchanted Forest had overwhelmed her and she didn’t feel like she had any fear left to feel.
The spider opened it’s cat mouth and howled, the call exactly like a wolf, exact deeper and more menacing. Emma frowned. “Oh. Wolf spider. Gotcha.”
All around them more howls echoed, and through the trees more enormous shapes could be seen moving. When she realized that they are surrounded by dozens of the huge spider-like monsters Emma finally managed to conjure up the fear that had been lost somewhere along the way. “What do we do?!”
Regina held out a hand and fire gathered in it. The wolf spider pulled back warily, but then Regina threw it, and the creatures shrieked like a scalded cat as it failed to dodge completely, one side catching fire as Regina prepared to throw another blast. “We fight,” Regina snarled.
The beasts came from the trees in a single rush, coming at them from all directions. Regina threw fireball after fireball, and Emma raised her gun, emptying it in seconds before dropping it in favor of her father’s sword. Then they were upon her.
The battle was a confusing swirl of movement and sound, with the howling spiders bounding toward her with inhuman grace and speed, maws wide open to reveal too many dripping fangs. Regina’s fire caused bursts of hot air to sweep irregularly over the clearing, and the flashes of light half blinded Emma again and again. Fortunately the spider monsters liked it little better, and she was able to fend them off whenever they closed, hacking at their limbs and heads with her blade and wounding them again and again, even killing a few.
Just as she finished one off Emma noticed the clearing quieted, and looking up she saw that Regina had been very busy. All around the area were still burning husks of twitching spider monster, and nothing else was moving at all. Even Regina was statue still as she held a fireball still burning in her hand.
“Are you all right?” Regina finally asked as she let the fireball die down and hurried over to Emma. She examined the woman from head to two looking for any injuries. “Were you bitten?”
“Why, would I turn into a werewolf-spider?” Emma joked before suddenly panicking. “Is that a thing? Please tell me that’s not a thing!”
Regina gave Emma the look that made her feel like she was about two inches tall. “No. It’s not a thing. Wolf-spider venom is, however, a real thing, and one that can easily kill you.”
“Oh,” Emma said blushing. “Right. Because of course the kitten spiders would be poisonous.”
“Yes, well,” Regina starts, only to whip her head to the side. A moment later she dove on Emma, shoving her to the ground as a wolf spider, the very first one they had encountered, landed on the pair. Regina screamed in pain and flung out a hand, her magic throwing the creature across the clearing to slam into a tree with a sickening thump. With a flurry of twitching limbs the wounded beast staggered to its feet with a whimper before rushing into the trees on eight unsteady legs.
“Whoa,” Emma said. “How did something that big hide? Regina?”
Emma slowly turned, her heart in her throat at what she saw. Regina was white as a sheet, one hand clamped to her thigh where blood was slowly pooling. The most frightening thing of all, however, was the resignation on her face.
“Regina!” Emma shouted, rushing over to her.
“I can hear you just fine, Ms. Swan,” Regina muttered as she fell into Emma’s arms.
“What do I do?” Emma asked.
“Take care of Henry,” Regina said quietly. “You’re the only one he’ll have now.”
“No,” Emma said. “He’ll have you, too. Both his mothers. He needs both of us.”
“It’s a bit too late for that,” Regina said sadly. “There’s no way that you could find a cure in time.”
“Why the hell did you save me then?” Emma demanded. “Didn’t you just try to poison me with a turnover?”
“My body just... moved,” Regina said, sounding disgusted with herself. “And Henry... even Henry just sees me as the Evil Queen. Saving you... maybe he’ll remember me as Regina.”
“No,” Emma said. “You don’t get to do this. There’s a cure for this. There has to be.”
“I doubt that I could find it in a single night in this forest,” Regina said. “And I barely have that long. And if you leave me... most likely that wolf spider will be back to finish me off as soon as you do.”
“Fire,” Emma said. “Wolves hate fire right? If I make a fire will it keep it away?”
“Yes,” Regina said. “For a while.”
“Long enough,” Emma insisted. “Just tell me what the cure is? I’ll get it.”
Emma picked Regina up carefully and carried her to a hollowed out tree trunk that was still somehow standing. Placing the weakened woman inside she then gathered as much wood as she could without letting Regina out of her sight, piling it up and then staring dumbly at it. The entire journey Regina had always started the fires with her magic, and Emma realized that she had no way to do so now.
“Look for flint,” Regina said weakly. “Strike it on the flat of your blade. Find something really dry to use as tinder for the sparks.”
For half an hour Regina talked Emma through starting the fire, and Emma tried to squash the panic she felt as she worked. Regina was obviously growing steadily weaker, and she was too useless to even make a fire. Finally though the flames started and she almost cried from relief as they grew.
“Good,” Regina rasped. “Good.”
Emma moved to her side and pulled out her canteen, gently cradling Regina so that she could help her drink. The woman did so greedily for a moment, before pulling back with a gasp. She was now so pale she seemed almost translucent, and her eyes were a dull gray color. “Regina?” Emma whispered. “What do I do now?”
“Why do you care?” Regina whispered. “All you have to do is let me die.”
“Then who would get us home,” Emma whispered. “And what would I ever tell Henry if I let you die? And besides all that I don’t want you to. You might’ve tried to kill me, but damn it, Regina... I don’t want you to die.”
Regina stared at her for a long moment before speaking again. “Find water. Follow it to a lake. There will be trees... in the water. They aren’t trees. They’re alive. Get their fruit and feed it to me. Dangerous. Very dangerous. Have until... sunup.”
“Thank you,” Emma whispered as she gently let Regina lean back against the tree again. “I’ll get it. I swear I will.”
Emma knew she needed to move quickly so she set everything down beside Regina and gave her one last look. The woman was taking on a faint gray sheen, and while Emma didn’t know what that meant she knew it had to be bad. Taking a deep breath Emma stood and moved back along the trail. She remembered hearing a stream shortly before the attack.
Emma easily found the stream and began to follow it, moving as fast as she could over the uneven terrain with a sword in her grip. Strange creatures stirred in the darkness, but Emma ignored the birds with the bodies of turtles and the fish that jumped out of the water only to fly away on bat wings. Nothing, not even the most ridiculous beasts imaginable was as important as finding the fruit in time.
When she reached the lake Emma was so focused that she almost fell into the water. She windmilled her arms for a moment, but the unfamiliar sword in one hand almost sent her falling into the stream instead before she finally gathered herself. Once she was recovered Emma looked up and saw what Regina was talking about.
A short distance out into the water were trees resembling mangroves, except their bark had a strange scaly texture. From their branches hung individual fruits that resembled neon yellow bananas with gray whorls on their skin. Emma looked around, and except for a cross between a deer and a squid drinking water at the far end of the lake nothing seemed to be around.
Emma bit her lip, Regina’s cryptic warning about the trees not being trees and being alive echoed in her head. Unfortunately she had no idea what that meant, so she could do nothing except grip her sword tighter and carefully wade out into the water toward one of the trees. She was close to it when she noticed that it seemed to be moving ever so slightly.
Instinct compelled Emma to jump back and while the move made her fall onto her butt in the water it also saved her life as an enormous crocodile missed biting her head off by inches. As she scrambled to her feet she realized that it wasn’t actually a crocodile. The strange scaly banana trees weren’t trees at all. They were growths from the back of crocodiles the size of of elephants.
Unfortunately for the banana crocodile Emma had recently killed a dragon, and however big and fierce, the creatures were more like normal animals than a fire breathing mythical creature ever could’ve been. She was slowed by being waist deep in water, but she still managed to dart in and out of the beast’s reach, slashing it across the face when it lunged for her, her father’s enchanted sword cleaving through scales with ease and opening up many bleeding cuts. When she finally caught it in one eye it howled and thrashed, half rolling over in the water as it scrambled to escape her, and with a move that was more luck than skill she managed to slice off a branch as it fled.
Emma started to grin triumphantly as she ripped one of the strange banana’s off of the severed branch before she noticed the other banana crocodiles closing in. She turned and fled, barely making it out of the water before the slowly moving beasts reached her, not even looking back as she ran along the creek, desperate to reach Regina before sunrise.
By the time Emma reached her the fire had burned down low, and the sky was slowly beginning to turn gray with the coming dawn. Emma didn’t even look up as she ran toward Regina, and that proved her undoing.
From the shadows sprang the last wolf spider, and Emma didn’t even see it as it slammed her to the ground. The beast was badly burned, half its body looking melted and raw from Regina’s first fireball, but the single remaining eye burned with an almost human hatred as it opened its slavering maw to bite her head off. Instinct drove Emma to react, and without even pausing she slammed an elbow into the side of its neck.
It howled, the powerful hit right into its fresh burns completely overwhelming the beast for a moment, and that moment was long enough as Emma raised her sword and thrust it deeply into the spider’s abdomen. Green goo poured over Emma like a tide, and with a terrible shriek the spider curled up and twitched along the ground, its anguished noise slowly fading as it stopped moving.
Emma took a moment to gather her breath before she stood, completely exhausted. She reached down to pick up the banana and froze. When the spider knocked her down the fruit fell beneath her, and now it was completely smashed, the orange colored interior mixed with the loam of the forest floor as blue fluids drained into the earth.
“No, no, no, no,” Emma muttered, gathering up as much as she could before rushing over to Regina’s side. The woman had turned completely gray, even her clothing, and when Emma touched her she was as hard and cold as solid stone. After concentrating for just a moment she realized she could still feel a faint heartbeat.
Emma carefully fed the mashed remains of the fruit to Regina, but her stomach plummeted further and further as the woman showed no signs of recovery. Tears began to slowly drip down Emma’s cheeks as she realized that she had failed. The remains of the fruit weren’t enough. Regina was going to die.
“No,” Emma cried, gathering the statue into her arms. “No. Please no. Don’t die Regina. Don’t leave me all alone. Don’t go, please. Don’t leave me. I need you. I need you. I... I love you. Please don’t go.”
Slowly a warmth began to build in Emma’s belly, and as she begged and pleaded for Regina not to die it grew stronger and stronger until it pouring down her arms in a wave of white light. Emma shut her eyes, blinding by the bright light, and when she blinked them clear her jaw dropped open at the sight before her. Regina, warm, healthy, vibrant Regina, was in her arms again.
“R-Regina?” Emma whispered.
“Emma,” Regina rasped. “You did it. You really did it...”
Emma could do nothing but hold her in her arms and cry with relief.