Death's Daughter: A Disney's Descendants Story

Dragon's Curse

    "So the bubbles made us see our worst fears?" Carlos asked Hesper. After they left the Underworld, the others had been curious as to what had happened, so Hesper was left to explain.
      Carlos had taken a sudden interest in the fear bubbles, and was going over them again with Hesper. "Carlos," Hesper sighed tiredly. "I didn't make the bubbles. All I know is that the bubbles feed of the fear of the victim until..." she trailed off.
     "Until what?" Jay questioned, his arms crossed over his chest.
     "Until your fear level is so high that you cease to exist," Hesper muttered. Evie's eyes bulged.
     "How did you stop it?" She asked.
      "That's not important," Hesper waved it off. She was still tender on the topic of her bracelet and didn't have any intention on discussing it so soon.
     "You kind of saved our lives. I don't about the others but, I'm curious as to how you—" Carlos began.
      "I SAID IT'S NOT IMPORTANT!" She snapped. Her temper was starting to show, and she hated when it got out of control like her father's did. Slowly, she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down.
      "Sorry," Carlos mumbled.
Hesper shook her head, "No, I should have tried harder to conceal my temper; you shouldn't have seen that side of me."
      "I didn't think it was possible for you to be angry. You're normally so calm and collected," Jay said.
     "Actually, just like my father, I'm a human dynamite. My temper was out of control as a kid, I would throw tantrums over the tiniest things. Eventually I learned it was better for everyone to conceal it. It only comes out when I have no control over my emotions," Hesper explained, now back to her normal self.
     The three nodded at her story, and now knew it was best not to pry anymore on what happened in the Underworld. They continued walking though the dark hallways, Mal walking in the front of the four of them, deep in her own thoughts.
      Finally she stopped at a pair of doors twice the height of a grown man.
     "This is it. It's here."
     She looked at Carlos, and he nodded, holding up the box. She saw that he had switched it off some time ago. "We didn't need it anymore," he said, looking right at Mal.
     Jay nodded at her. Hesper gently and quickly squeezed Mal's shoulder. Even Evie reached for her hand, squeezing it once before she let go.
     Mal took a breath. She felt a chill up her spine, and goose bumps all over her arm. "This was Maleficent's throne room. I'm sure of it now. I can feel it." She looked up at them. "Does that sound crazy?"
     They shook their heads no.
     She pushed open the doors, taking it all in.
     The darkness and the power. The shadow and the light. Ceilings as high as the sky and as black as smoke. Windows spanning whole walls, through which Maleficent could manipulate an entire world.
     "Oh," said Evie involuntarily.
      Carlos looked like he wanted to bolt, but he didn't.
     Jay's eyes flickered across the room as if were casing the joint.
     Hesper slowly moved her head from one side to the other, her face emotionless.
     But Mal felt like she was all alone with the ghosts.
     One ghost, in particular.
     This was where her mother used to rage and command, where she had shot out of the ceiling as a green ball of fire to curse an entire kingdom. This was her seat of Darkness.
     They pushed farther inside, Mal at the front. Carlos, Hesper, Jay and Evie fell like a phalanx of soldiers behind her, almost in formation.
     The black stones beneath their feet were shiny and slick, and the entire room was haunted be an aura of deep malevolence. Mal could feel it; they all could.
     There was an empty place in the middle of the room where he mother's throne used to be. It had sat upon a great dais, flanked by two curving sets of stairs. The room was round and ringed with columns.
     A great arc was cradled in the place where the throne had once sat, guarding an empty spot. The tattered remains of purple tapestries moldered on the walls.
     "There's nothing left," Mal said, kneeling on the one dark spot that no longer held a throne. "It's all gone."
     "You all right?" asked Hesper from behind her.
      She nodded. "It's..." she faltered, unable to find the words to describe what she was feeling.   She had listened to all her mother's stories, but she didn't think they were real.
      Not until now.
     "Yeah," she said. "I know." Mal realized that Hesper had probably felt the same way when they were in the Underworld. The Underworld had been her father's home for years, centuries really, but it was hard to imagine, hard to picture a world beyond what they knew of the Isle.
     It had been anyway.
     Now everything was different.
     Jay sighed. "It's all real, isn't it?"
     "I guess so," Mal nodded. "Every last page of every last story." Even the curse, she thought, for the first time in hours.
      The curse.
     Someone has to touch it.
     Evie has to touch it, and sleep for a thousand years.
     "So, where is it?" Carlos asked, looking around the stone room.
     "It has to be here somewhere," said Evie, turning to look behind her.
      "Maybe we should split up," Jay said, a glint in his eye.
      "Think," Mal said. "My mother was never without it. She held it even as she sat upon her throne." Mal moved back to the spot where the throne no longer stood. "Here"
     "So where would it be now?" Carlos frowned.
     "It wouldn't be where anyone else could touch it," Hesper said.
      "But she'd want to see it, of course. From her throne," Jay said.
     "Which would be—" Mal spun slowly around. She could picture her mother sitting here, clutching the staff, feeling powerful and evil and well, like herself as she reigned over the kingdom.
     "There. Look!" cried Evie, spotting a tall black staff with a dim green globe at its top against the far wall.
     It was raised by some sort of magical light a good twelve feet into the air. Far out of the hands of any interlopers—and yes, where it could not be touched.
     "It's right here!" Evie was closest to it and reached for it eagerly.
     She shot her hand up into the air, extending her fingers. The moment she did, the Dragon's Eye began to shake, as if something about Mal herself was prying it loose from the very light and air that bound it.
     Evie smiled. "I've got it—"
     Mal saw Evie's hand curl toward it, almost in slow motion. The scepter itself seemed to glow, as if it were beckoning Evie toward it.
     Everything around Mal seemed to blur until she could only see Evie's small, delicate fingers and the bewitched Dragon's Eye, just beyond her grasp.
     In a split second Mal had to make the decision; could she let Evie touch it and be cursed into a deep, death-like sleep for a thousand years?
     Or would she save her?
     Stop her?
    Do something...good?
    While betraying her own mother's wishes, and giving up on her own dream of becoming something more that a disappointment.
     Was she content to remain only a Mal her entire life?
      Never a Maleficent?
     She froze, unable to decide.
    "No!" cried Mal finally, running toward Evie. "Don't!"
     "What?" asked Evie, shocked, just as a familiar voice boomed from the Dragon's Eye.
      "WHOEVER AWAKENS THE DRAGON WILL BE CURSED TO SLEEP FOR A THOUSAND YEARS!" Maleficent's voice was coming from the staff even now, echoing and reverberating around the room.
     Evie's fingers brushed the air next to the staff.
     While Mal's hand closed upon it, and when it did...
    She fell to the floor, asleep.

    Mal's four companions huddled nervously around her. "Is she...gone?" Carlos asked.
    Hesper shook her head. She was Hades daughter, so she could make certain whether Mal was sill with them or not. "No, she's asleep." The four didn't say anything more, they all just stood around the purple haired girl.
     Suddenly Mal blinked open her eyes. Jay, Carlos, Hesper, and Evie were standing around her nervously. When she had fallen asleep she had been holding the Dragon's Eye scepter in her hand. But when she woke up, it was nowhere to be seen.