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Full Summary: This starts right before the Queen's demise. It is her final thoughts as she lays dying, and yet, is shown a vision by a recurring fairy godmother of what is to come next in her daughter's life, and what evils she has unleased due to her decisions, etc. It's also a prequel to The House Forgotten
Note: I have seen some grammatical errors in it, so I corrected them. It's also posted at the 10th kingdom Yahoo group… So, read and Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own 10k, etc, and save the few original characters that I have created... all the rest of the characters are owned by their respected owners.
The Path Undetermined
"You've drawn blood," the Evil Queen spoke, as she walked but a few feet before she could feel the poison's effect.
The Queen laid there as she heard her daugher lament in agony as she realized what she had inflicted. She could see the pain that her daughter was feeling, and a part of her was wanting to "take away her pain". She also could feel the internal pain that she was experiencing at the moment, as she came to the realization that Virginia had struck blood with the poisoned comb...
Damn the Pain... It had been a long time since she had felt this feeling. She had felt little of it ever since she had come here, and forgotten her former life. She had immersed herself in this life she had come to know. She was for a time a powerful adversary, and would have almost gained everything, if it hadn't been for the discovery of Prince Wendell being poisoned by those damned mice.
Only then did she feel the pain of not being able to complete her lady's wishes at that moment. However, she was unable to give up hope. She still had other plans, others concerning her magical dog, among other things. She was once a ruler, and then almost a ruler then, until she realized that all her plans to rule the 9 kingdoms were lost...
Argghh... Bloody 'ell. She cried out in her mind.
It was at this very crucial moment that her memories flooded back, her love for her daughter, her love for her husband, her need for her former life, for the love, compassion, and approval of those around her... Everything was like a wave crashing on a stormy sea.
She could not understand why the few moments she had left, she was reverting back... She was the former Queen of the 4th kingdom... she had everything she could ever desire... She had the power, and the magical ability to do almost anything...
Except keep herself in the process. She stopped as she though of this... Now, she come to realize what Snow White had told her long ago in that dream... She had given up everything... her life, her home,
"My little girl..."
She spoke aloud, as she looked back on what little things she could recall. The joy of her daughter being born... her happiness caring for her... and her pain as she realized that at one moment, she also tried to harm her own little girl.
She could hear the screams and wails in the background growing fainter and fainter as she could feel her breath going slower and slower.
She remember the choices that she had make, some which she hoped to change if she could... The choice to become to become the Evil Queen... the choice to try and harm her own daughter... the choice to seperate both her twin sons to different areas of the kingdoms...
She especially looked at the choice of parting with her twin sons as her hardest choice she ever had to make. She made the choice to seperate them only a few years after they were born in this strange new place... The angrier of the two was magically encased within the Sleeping Kingdom, while the other she left by the prison where which she was later to be held...
She had did it for the sake of her empire (and for her sanity as well, for although her sons were alike, they were different in so many ways: one like the father, and one like herself), and so that even if all else failed her, she still had one plan in reserve to follow.
Her heart filled with regret. She could see as Snow White stood before her, as she knew she was in the last moments of her life, her breathing even more shallower... She could see Snow White's anger, and yet compassion towards her, as she knew her fate rested with those who were on the other side...
But why wouldn't she just take her away from all this already, damn it? She was so tired...
Snow White handed her a glowing ball of light, and as she could tell, her spiritual self reached out to catch it as it fell to her hand... Images surrounded by light floated past her like a movie reel, everything else enveloping into darkness. She could see her daughter's happiness, the realization that her daughter was to have a child, and many more images floated by before they paused. The images, however, suddenly turned to darkness, and one of her sons stepped out.
"Hello mother," He told her, as he stood back to view what had become of his mother. He shook his head in disgust as he started to walk back into the reel of film, and turning, his blue pupils dissolving, and his eyes turning crimson red...
"What are you?" She asked, all too well knowing what the answer would be...
"Aren't I what you made me, mother?" He replied, holding his arms out, his sinister smile growing more animal-like by the minute. "You made me what I am, my dearest mother. You gave me the hatred, the rage, and the determination to do what I have to. You showed me what I had to do to exceed in life, destroy my enemy, care for nothing and noone, and to leave nothing to chance..."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember what you told me long ago about a legend of the The Legendary Women who changed history would come about again?"
"I remember..." She recalled it as the only time she could communicate with her son and could communicate to him without the harse words spoken between them and their "like minds".
"I have found whom I have long searched for... All I need is to find those with the gifts of the legendary women, and go about the rest of my plan..."
"What do you speak of?"
"Mother, you alway told me that a person should have a plan for everything, and that I have gained from you. I will destroy the House of White using what knowledge I have gained from you and obtaining what power I need to do it. I will destroy my good-hearted siblings if they get it my way. And, Mother, I won't just stop there. I will destroy everyone, and everything in my path, until I have achieved the dream that you, I, and the evil queen before us dreamt, to dominate all the nine kingdoms in one totalitarian rule. And, unlike you mother, I have taken the job of being evil very seriously..."
And, with that, everything had dissapeared. It was as if nothing was there to begin with..
"I lost my soul.." She screamed in her spirit, her echo rasped within her own voice as she spoke the last words she was ever to utter.
She cried inside in lament of what pain she had endured. She had caused everyone so much pain as a result of giving up everything she ever knew and loved... She gave up her soul, her family, what she knew as her life, everything for a lie and eternal torment...
And, for what? She was none the better. She had caused unfathomable pain to everyone she came into contact with, lost herself within it all, destroyed countless innocents, and took many lives in the process...
In her final breath, her thoughts came to focus on what she had done...
She had become what she hated most, and in doing so, turned one of the people she most desperately loved into the thing she hated most of all..
Absolute darkness...
Finis