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The entire world was lighting up before Cassandra’s eyes.
Sparks of blues and yellows split the air. The floor beneath her feet rumbles and shifts at her command, sharpening and rushing out in front of her, only to be blasted into rubble. It’s like a fireworks show, colorful and violent. Up close and personal.
“LET HIM GO!”
Her lips curled.
It’s beautiful.
She was the fireworks show, perhaps the best one of all, and everyone’s eyes were firmly on her.
The opal lodged in her chest glowed brighter than she’d ever seen it before. So much power coursed through her body- all the power she’d been searching months to find. The black rocks were controlled by her, everything in this tower was hers to control. This was her destiny, and she couldn’t think of anything else.
Cassandra swung her arms and the throne room unleashed its teeth. Arcs of blue energy reached from her body to an unearthly maw that sped towards the princess she had grown to despise. But the blonde woman raised her arms, and the rocks Cassandra had believed unbreakable.... crumbled away.
She raised her arms again and more rocks reached out to her call. It didn’t matter, she decided, how many times Rapunzel wiped the floor clear of them. There would always be more. They would come to her, and they would seek out the princess.
More and more, as many as she could conjure. As many as it would take.
She would fill this room with her teeth if it meant finally taking a bite out of that princess’s spirit.
The room is a blur; she brought her hands together for another rush, just as her opponent did the same. Their powers combined in a vicious clash.
All of a sudden, her tower was filled with light, and wind, and noise. No way to tell what is where,
A sharp pain stabbed into her chest, just above her heart, but she couldn’t see it, or focus on it. She couldn’t think about anything but her anger.
She stepped back, her foot found only air, and the world tumbled out from under her. Her hands grasped at nothing. Wind whipped past her face, pushing her hair back and screaming in her ears.
It sounded like her voice.
She was falling.
Her heart had leapt up into her throat, eyes widened in fear. The tower was nowhere near close enough to grab from this angle. From up this high, she could see everything: the kingdom, still so far away, the forest between them, the night sky that hung overhead, the full moon mocking her from above.
And the ground, rapidly racing up to meet her.
The armor she wore was unbreakable, at least against even the sharpest blade. She wasn’t sure how it would fare against the ground at terminal velocity.
She didn’t want to test it.
Fear gripped her, and her heart reached out. Her tower answered, extending a ledge several meters below her, ready to catch her, like a friend’s grasping hand. Cassandra braced for the impact.
The landing isn’t soft. The armor takes the blunt of the blow, but she feels the force of landing squeeze the air from her lungs. She’s paralyzed, momentarily, her arms and legs suddenly ached with newfound pain. It would be a miracle if nothing was broken. But she was alive, nonetheless.
And tired. So very, very tired.
“Tired” was a very familiar word to Cassandra, she’d felt that way most of the journey home, constantly teetering on the edge, until her goals had been set. Right now, she could add “exhausted” to the list of things she was feeling. Whether out of a lack of energy, or shock, her arms and legs refused to move. They pushed her up into a crouched position, nothing more.
She turned her head upward.
Over her head, meters up, dust and rock still rained down on the forest below. Her tower was.... destroyed, violently so; the roof of her throne room had apparently been obliterated in the fight. Which explained why she had fallen. From down here, she could no longer see the vibrant glow of the Sundrop’s power anymore. Or anyone, for that matter. She doubted any of the people up there could see her from this ledge either.
The battle was over.
She turned away from the sight and pressed her forehead against the cool stone. Up this high, the air had a chill, but it wasn’t enough to soothe the pain in her body, or the throbbing in her head.
Months had passed while Cassandra wandered the wilderness, slowly trekking back to the kingdom she’d forsaken in search of answers. Endless nights spent trying to hone her powers, and focus her anger, to little avail. A week ago, she could barely harm a single flower. Now, she created all of this. Thanks to no one else but herself, she had tracked down the scroll, stolen it, and worked out a way to decipher it and gain the full power of the stone for herself.
She opened the tower, willingly let her enemy walk in to see her fight and be bested at long last.
And she lost, again.
Rapunzel had beaten her, again.
Was this it? A journey from maid, to lady-in-waiting, to protector, to holder of the Moonstone, one of the most powerful things on the planet... and she still couldn’t measure up? Was this the end result of all her work- the sacrifices and scorn she had raised -a literally fall from grace?
The irony of falling out of her tower was not lost on her.
Feelings welled up in her chest; the rage she called upon so easily, now mixing with the bitter taste of defeat that rose into her throat like bile.
Did she just not matter in the face of destiny? Was she supposed to fall on her sword every time Rapunzel wanted something, so she could have it, and everything else she wanted in life?
Was her destiny just to be outshone by Rapunzel, forever?
Her teeth could no longer hold back the sickness in her chest. She opened her mouth and screamed into the howling wind all of her feelings, all of her rage and guilt. Her fist came down on the hard stone. She bit back tears she thought she no longer shed.
Her voice echoed into the dark. No one replied. Not a princess, or her boyfriend, or her lackeys. Not even an owl’s call pierced the air.
She hated them. She wanted to hate them. She wanted to think she could hate them.
She was completely alone.
No problem with that, she would be fine. All the times she had been pushed into the dirt in the past, only she had picked herself back up. Now wasn’t any different, she told herself.
Sluggish arms and legs screamed in protest of movement, her chest tightened with a sharp breath and a sharp stab in her midsection. Cassandra rose to her feet.
Of course she had to construct her tower to meet the height of the castle's tallest spire. Now, miles down from the top, she realized she'd created just another annoyance. Cassandra breathed in, willing several stepping stones to sprout from the tower, giving her purchase to start her climb. She chose not to think about simply opening the wall into one of the tower’s many stairways. That may run the risk of catching Rapunzel on her way down.
Not that Rapunzel would dare to face her again. Surely.
Several stones under her hands put on a bright red hue. She chose to ignore that too.
Climbing gave her time to think. Thinking helped turn her attention away from her tired limbs. There was enough time to focus on a way to rise above this, because there must be a way.
She didn’t come all the way back here to be denied again. She came for the scroll, and the power it contained, the power that made all of this. Of course, Rapunzel couldn’t just let her have it. They had to fight.
...But why.
Cassandra’s hand misjudged a crevice in the rock and found only smooth wall. She almost slipped. Several more rocks sprouted from the wall to support her.
Why... did she start that fight with Rapunzel?
It wasn’t a thought she chose to focus on, but it persisted, and settled in the center of her mind. A spot Rapunzel had often held in the weeks before all of this came to happen.
She could have sat back, laughing as Rapunzel and her little group flung themselves around the base of her tower. There had been no way in, there was no need for one when she could bend rock to her will.
The black rock, so malleable in her grasp; the Shadowblade, this castle, the very armor she wore- she could control it all now. The power came to her as easily as breath. Rapunzel wasn’t like that. In some ways, she was as unbreakable as the seventy feet of unbreakable hair she carried.
Unbreakable.
Ah, that’s right. Break her spirit, the little girl had said. And Cass agreed; managing to reach through that endless optimism, the nonstop hoping and pleading that felt more and more like a sick game, and show her at last that she was better off now than she ever was following Rapunzel as her dutiful servant. That's what she wanted.
Just look at how well that turned out, a bitter voice inside her head told her. It sounded like Rapunzel, or that little spirit girl, or her mother. Or all three. God, she just wanted her brain to shut up.
Eventually, even those intrusive thoughts abandoned her. She was left to finish her ascent in a droning silence, finally feeling her hand reach the edge of the top and hauling herself up onto stable ground.
What she faced left her altogether relieved and frustrated.
Her stronghold had been constructed not with an eye for beauty, but a will to impress and terrify;it stretched into the sky, taller than the mountains and towers and spires of Corona, a jagged knife stabbing the sky with the strength of her rage. But the blade had been snapped. She stood before a crumbled throne and not much else.
A simple wave of her hand would fix the tower, make it better than even before, or exactly the same again. Even if it wouldn’t remove the bruises she had, or the knowledge of what Rapunzel and Eugene did here.
But she would rebuild. This was... a setback. Yes. That’s all it was. Just another obstacle she would rise above, finding her destiny at long last.
Familiar energy flows through her once again, but there is a flash this time, and a spark. Not of her own doing. More sparks light up her chest. She glanced down. The source was obvious.
She could just barely make out the hairline fracture that now split the Moonstone halfway through. Her Moonstone.
Rapunzel did this.
But the shock doesn’t have a chance to set in, as the air before her suddenly crackled and split apart. A hole, swirling in a vortex of dust and magic, expanded over the steps of what remained of her throne.
And her only friend stepped out of it.