Chapter Text
Hiding is one of the first skills you must
master before you plan to become a villain
mastermind, or even a common criminal.
Nothing is more important than the art of
escape and deception.
There was a reason why Sherlock chose to do this cloaked by the shade of night, while the realm slept the time away and dreamed of imageries dull enough to make even their boring little lives seem interesting in comparison. Although, if he were being honest —which had never been his brand— coming here alone without plan of escape or knowledge of what he would be facing did seem quite foolish in hindsight.
The sky above him was clear tonight, —just as it was every single day on the ever-prospering United Kingdom of Auradon; the cool breeze swept by and brushed frozen fingers over his skin. The leather coat on his shoulders did nothing to keep the sensation at bay, which made no real amount of sense considering what was immediately in front of him.
The profound silence permeated even the green of the trees around him, as if something had completely suck up all the noise, as if the world itself were as curious of the situation, just still in anticipation. The sound of a solitary leaf crunching under the sole of his heavy boot as he took a hesitant step back the only respite permitted out of the chasm. He took a step back from the fire at the centre of a clearing. From the very glowing, very blue fire to be precise.
The violet haired boy had only seen its like once before, too many cycles ago to remember it properly. And more alarming perhaps than its rumoured power was its impossibility to be there, of all places. Magic of that sort impossible to be bled out from anyone this side of the dome. The electric cyan flames lapped the air in their proximity with vigour, but not expanding or claiming territory; just shooting upwards with a worrying growth. Sherlock, against better judgement —for which he wasn’t famed in the first place— approached once more and crouched down, frowning as he took in the mesmerising nature of the spell before him.
This was nothing like the blue sprites often roaming this part of the Enchanted Forest, who sparked prettily around you and added ambience more than threat of destruction. No, this was something else. Something possibly lethal, and all Sherlock really desired to do was reach out and grab it.
His arm extended towards it, stopping just shy of coming into contact, but close enough to feel the tingling of the magic on the tip of his fingers. Not an ounce of hesitation shown even if he was certain were he to plunge his hand inside, he would come off with more than just burnt fingers. The danger shot up his veins like pleasure at the thought, as his kaleidoscope eyes studied and analysed the deep indigo undertones in the flames.
John Watson was probably sleeping soundly at the other end of the kingdom at the moment, completely ignorant of what his boyfriend had gotten himself into. Sherlock imagined John would love the respite of not being included for once, the rebel often doubling as the bane of his life on even the least trying days. But perhaps he would be able to enjoy it more were he awake and aware of said developments —which the purple haired boy had decided would not happen. The king was never to know Sherlock often left him there in the middle of the night and sneaked out to do this; he would never stop worrying, and the rebel had a more pressing matter plaguing his mind at the moment, not to mention the king already had too much on his plate aside from the strange dreams he was having.
The self-appointed task was not something he discussed in detail with the blonde, —in this case ‘in detail’ meaning ‘at all’—. He knew John suspected something was up, of course he did, he was no Auradonian simpleton; but that was the way their trust seemed to work; the king extended never-ending barrels of it, only for Sherlock to arguably abuse it when the situation required and let him in at the worst possible moment; specially when it involved the whole kingdom.
But this had nothing to do with trust or patriotic duty, the rebel had no deep interest in either when it didn’t involve a head of shaggy blonde hair. This quest was entirely founded in personal old desires and remorse, of a game he was not even sure how he had won. And more than defeat, he despised uncertainty.
He had found, almost by accident, an ancient passage in the new book of spells he was engulfing more than the dinner John forced him to have while he was studying on exclusive curses, —Lady Hudson had no idea he had graduated from the one Moriarty had given him and had been borrowing tomes from her personal library— a small paragraph detailing strange magical spikes in the deepest part of the Enchanted Forest for a long time, things that had happened several cycles prior to the War of the Light, and were told to have left imprints of information in their wake. Sherlock was thirsty for any sort of explanation or answer he could find, so out he went.
However, now looking at the flames he could not say he felt more enlightened. There was certainly more than symbols and old hieroglyphs there, but the oxygen exhausted from the burning left behind more questions than answers. His growing experience with incantations allowed him to know the spell had been casted way before the barrier went up; yet it surely must require ‘new magic’ to feed from, and a great amount of it judging by the intensity. No mere Auradon citizen was capable enough to power such a thing for long, so where was all the magic coming from? Sherlock’s calculating brain endeavoured to come up with a plausible explanation. Criminals like him were supposed to be locked away under a dome, left to rot in their own magic-less word with the key lost to the world. This sort of misbehaviour was impossible to find outside of The Isle when it didn’t involve the three citizens who were raised on it, which made a dark suspicion grow within him as he realised this could potentially prove correct his theory about his other problem.
At this pondering, it was then he got startled out of the trance. Jostled awake from a sleep-walking reality. He found both his hands and upper body were bent forward, so close to the fire he was sure he would have stumbled inside had he stayed entranced for much longer. There was something in the chasm that compelled him along, a hidden power pulsing, attempting to draw him in.
He stood back in surprise and smirked. Finally, something fun.
The violet-haired boy paced around the bonfire, his features bright under the blue haze as he regarded the surprising danger in front of him. There was an unexpected gravity that seemed to echo inside his head as if his name were being called out from the blaze, ready to possess him if his attention was divided for just a moment. He stopped, and rubbed his cold hands together preparing for some experimentation on what was becoming a very promising night.
The first spell was direct, a simple attempt to snuff out the flames. He extended his arms and light rushed out from his fingers twinkling under the moonlight, but as soon as it got close, it dissipated into thin air as if it had never existed. The fire left completely unaffected by his attack.
The rebel sighed, turned up his collar and tried again; this time a more sophisticated endeavour to transfigure the spell, to turn it on its head; but once more, his attempts were met with immobile stubbornness. This time Sherlock did snarl in frustration, and casted a quick succession of incantations, but nothing seemed to be working. The cyan fire burned exactly the same as when he had found it. Appearing unable to be moved by any natural magical means.
He berated himself for his own blindness when the answer appeared before him as if he were reading deductions in bold letters around a person. He took a deep, focusing breath, and the palms of his hands came up to rest under his chin. He set on chasing away the white noise from his head and leave a rushing sparkling intention behind, with eyes shut, he reached for it, —allowing the sensation to grow enough to control it— and when he blinked them opened again their colour had gone from metallic silver to lime green.
The change the black magic provoked in him was instantaneous, feeling as if the energy trapped inside him was now just anxious to burst out, instead of concealed and dormant as was usual. Sherlock smothered down the pull of The Dragon inside his mind, asking too to be let out into the world, and focused. He smiled as he set free his chasm, confident now that it surely would make a difference; and the second the spell made contact with its objective the violet-haired found out just how.
The fire gripped the magic like a lifeline, absorbing and swallowing as if it were digesting it. Sherlock frowned as he attempted to detract his hands, but his arms seemed locked in place, the fire pulling at him strongly as his vision started going blurry. While he hadn’t mastered fully how to tame the Dragon’s Spell yet, he was certain that wasn’t normal. He put all his power and intention behind setting free, struggling to keep the energy inside as the flames grew and lapped wildly; only managing it when he made The Dragon recede back into the caves of his mind to hide once more.
The fire consumed what it could and then returned to serenity, appearing almost smaller in its calm rest; and Sherlock was left standing there, panting in bewilderment as the green pools in his eyes swirled back to a stormy grey. The rebel stared at his smoking hands, confusion invading him as he wondered about the reason why it had grabbed onto him in such a way, almost physically; and what that meant for his abilities.
His gaze searched the scene around, as if he were expecting someone else to have witnessed what had just happened. The sprites were gone, frightened away from the clearing as the trees remained still and silent, not even a squirrel in sight. He was completely alone, with not a soul knowing where he had gone; just him and the strange fire. As if only them remained in the whole world.
The voice inside his head grew louder in the dead of the night, overwhelming the usual inner displaying of the information his brain was constantly firing at him. Filling the halls of his Mind Palace with its insidious calling. Sherlock was not about to be drawn in again of course, knowing now what it wanted from him; but the experience was very far from pleasant. Still he held his ground, he hadn’t faced scarier things only to cower away at the sight of blue fire. That is not to say that he had never lost a round, but this is what he did on an almost daily basis, and frankly, his heart pounding adrenaline through his veins was reason enough to engage.
Blowing away the purple curls from his eyes he got closer and put his hands forward. He made an attempt to stop it somehow, but not being able to use his most powerful spells in fear they would get ingested again, his hands were very much tied in that department. He tried a basic approach, but his troubles were met with an undesired outcome; the flames grew bigger under the attention, like they had been awaken and were now ready to take a more offensive stance.
He took a moment to stare at it in question, wondering how such a thing could be real. No matter how many hypotheses he twisted in his head, the facts didn’t add up; not with what he knew of wizardry neither with every fundamental natural law of the universe. It was basically impossible, and he was on his way to getting fed up with being at the tail-end of things going beyond the realm of possibility. His life made no amount of sense. Not this, nor his freedom or The Dragon, and certainly not Moriarty.
The conclusion was he couldn’t manipulate the flames in any way without aiding in their quest to devour his magic, or who knows what other ability they would show now they had sampled a taste of what they could win. The only thing he could do was work with its surroundings. He circled his hands and resorted to enchanting the ground and air around it, making it so the fire couldn’t advance. If eradicating it wasn’t possible, —as would be ideal— then at least he could confine it to a place where it wouldn’t escape or inflict its destruction over the kingdom. The rebel chose to ignore the irony he found in this. He really had no time for it.
He set to work quickly, satisfied when he saw his tentative plan had worked and the fire appeared contained for the time being. He lowered his hands as his breathing slowed down to normal. The forest around him was unchanged and painted blue by the light coming from the flames, and that was a potential for a problem he didn’t need at the moment. The rebel crouched down and snapped off long branches from the nearby trees to shield its glow. Once the fire was completely hidden, his mind wondering whether it had been truly necessary to keep humans from trying to interact with it, he realised he had been thinking small.
The scope of his vision tunnelled by the mesmeric nature of what he had experienced. No amount of skill will get rid of the chasm, and it was unlikely anyone but him could do anything with or to it, but the real importance rested with whom lied the responsibility of keeping it alive. The one who was powering it. Sherlock knew only of one person who fitted the profile, —since he hadn’t done it and Moriarty thankfully remained captured inside the cobwebs of his own mind.
And that just left one person. Someone of whom he had lost track; not certain they were actually sent back to The Isle, but not sure if they were in the kingdom either. Someone who had an entire ocean in which to hide, and Sherlock thought it was long past time to see that threat extinguished. The spider had said —more like warned— to him that something or someone was coming; coming to find him and destroy his world once they did. And, as dramatic as he was, he was still rarely wrong.
‘Well,’ He thought. ‘Not if I come for them first.’
On a whim, he turned around and ran. He rushed trough the woods and over the white sand of the beach with one objective in mind, as he ignored the sound his heavy boots made when they slapped the planks of wood on the dock. He ran until there was no surface left and with one deep breath plunged himself into the vast black ocean tides.