Once We are Descendants

Chapter 7: Long Live Evil

"It's hard to really think about other realms in general," Ben says. "Let alone ones where we have different parents."

He and Mal sit in his office a few days later, having a quiet, uninterrupted lunch. While it was still where he worked, the daughter of Maleficent cannot complain that she has Ben's undivided attention. Mal finally showed her boyfriend the book that she'd been reading but had yet to tell him about swiping the book from the restricted section. She really didn't want to think about how that fight would go. She knows that she broke the rules, but it was a part of who she was. She was never going to be a goody-two-shoes princess and while Ben accepted her Isle side, she knew he hated it when she broke the rules. She didn't want to fight about it, the pain was too much to handle again.

Mal points to another land that had peaked her interest.

"What is Oz?" he asks.

"It's another mythical land," she answers.

"It's certainly a weird name,"

"Well apparently there are roads made of yellow brick, talking trees and animals, witches, monkeys who can fly, poppies that can put people to sleep, and a city made of emeralds," she points to an illustration of said city in the book.

"It must be very beautiful to look at," Ben smiles. "But the witches' thing is a little unsettling."

"Apparently there are witches of the North, South, East, and West," Mal says.

"And it's run by a man known as The Wizard. I'd like to ask him about how he runs his city so peacefully."

Mal rolls her eyes at her boyfriend talking about diplomacy. She knows he wants to run Auradon as best he can, but he's doing an okay job so far.

"It's better than places like the Underworld," she nods, turning to the next chapter. "It's where all lost souls with unfinished business go after they die."

"Sounds exceptionally scary," the king mutters.

"A lot worse than the Isle," Mal agrees.

The couple continue looking through at the different worlds, Ben making a list of all of them as they go. Mal keeps daydreaming about exploring the other realms that she was reading about. She wanted so badly to explore outside of the school and the Isle, see the world... or worlds, that is. The one that she keeps coming back to is The Land Without Magic, and more specifically the town that Ariel mentioned, Storybrooke. It sounds like a lot of fairy tale characters live there. She wonders if her alternate mother lived there. Would she be any better than the poor excuse for the one she had now? Her mind continues to wander until Ben brings her back to reality.

"This is truly amazing what you've discovered Mal," he says. She smiles at him and brushes some purple hair from her face. "If people could understand this better, I'd want you to teach the class."

"It would be better if I could visit these places to teach it better," she says quietly.

"I know," he nods. "I'd want to visit them too, but our place is here at Auradon."

Mal forces herself to smile. The bell rings in the school, which means she had to go to class. She gathers her things, including the book, and shoves them into her bag.

"I'll see you later," she says, kissing his cheek.

"I love you," he says.

"I love you too."

As she walks away from his office, she can't help but feel a little sad. Ben's words about their place being here at Auradon echoing in her mind. While she was half-Isle and half- Auradon now, she doesn't want to stay here forever. The whole reason she took the chance to come to school was to be free, but now she is feeling more confined to the school because of Ben being King and her basically being his queen.

As she walks through, she spots a large group of students standing outside Fairy Godmother's office. Several royal guards were going in and out and trying to keep the curious students out. Jane, Dizzy, Doug, and Evie are waiting outside with them.

"Hey," Mal says. "What's going on?"

"Someone broke into Fairy Godmother's vault last night," Doug explains. "They stole a bunch of stuff."

"They didn't get the wand, but they did get a few other things," Jane says, looking rather worried.

"Like what?" Mal asks.

"Restricted things, like cauldrons and old potion ingredients like gryphon claws, eyes of newts, hazel stones, and a lot of other ingredients that we aren't allowed to use," the daughter of Fairy Godmother says. The frantic girl is trying to take down a list of all the things that were stolen.

"But why would they steal old relic stuff?" Dizzy asks.

"Hey guys, we just heard," Carlos says as he and Jay join the group, both were sweaty and likely came from Tourney practice. "How bad is it?"

The son of Cruella goes to his girlfriend's side, trying to calm her down as she paces back and forth, still writing down the list of missing items.

"They've stolen a bunch of ingredients, they're likely going to make a potion or something," Evie deduces.

Fairy Godmother finally comes out of her office, looking just as frazzled and as worried as her daughter. She huffs when she sees all the curious students watching and whispering to one another, some of them are even taking pictures with their phones.

"Don't you have classes to go to?" the headmistress asks. "Go on... NOW!"

As the group is about to turn and leave they hear.

"Not you Isle children. You are staying here."

Mal, Evie, Jay, Dizzy, and Carlos freeze in their tracks and all swallow. The harsh tone of the woman's words are not pleasant and sound a lot like the other kids' disapproving tones when they'd first arrived here. Jane and Doug also stop, but with some distance from their friends, equally worried about what was just said.

They all turn to see the angry eyes of this fairy. They all look at each other nervously and then at the woman.

"Is something wrong Headmistress?" Carlos asks politely.

"Very wrong," she says rather angrily. "There's something I think you should all see." The angry fairy then points to her office, signalling for the VKs to go in. Jane and Doug want to come too, but Fairy Godmother stops them. "Jane, you and Doug go to class."

"But..." Jane begins, looking at Carlos.

"Now young lady," her mother orders.

With a look of sadness, both Jane and Doug turn away from their sweethearts and friends, walking in the opposite direction.

The group of VKs walk reluctantly into the Headmistress's office. They find the place trashed with papers ripped and scattered everywhere, the portrait of Cinderella that hung on one of her walls is heavily vandalized, anything breakable is smashed, her desk and chairs are turned over and books thrown from their shelves.

"Now, normally I would never assume that reformed students like you would do such a thing..."

"You think we did this?!" Mal asks in horror. She can feel her powers activating slightly with the anger starting to brew inside of her. She thought the teachers would treat them better, after all, they hadn't caused any kind of problems in months. They were good kids now, but apparently, the bias never goes away, which made Mal and her friends very angry.

"Usually I wouldn't assume anything of the sort, that is until I found this..." the angry fairy says.

The group turns from the mess of the office to where Fairy Godmother's vault was. Where Evie's mirror and Mal's spell book now stayed, the vault is almost completely empty. Whoever the thief was, they hit it hard with robbing it. But it's not what's inside the vault that makes the headmistress mad. She slowly pushes the door of the vault shut to reveal something spray painted on the door. All the VKs gasp, recognizing the words... words that were all too familiar in all of their lives.

Long Live Evil

Isle of the Lost

A/N: Please Follow and Review.