The Gift of Good and Evil One Shots: Volume 1

The Castle's Guardian

You peered around the wall of the castle, the rain beating down on the hood of your cloak. Raindrops tickled your eyelashes and you quickly had to blink them away so as to not miss your chance.

Tonight, the King and Queen of Ulstead were hosting a ball to celebrate their daughter, Dahlia's third birthday; and you planned to use that as a guise for entrance, so you could search for what you desired.

Deep within the library of Ulstead Castle was a book of ancient maps; that was your goal.

You'd spent the last several years in search of any knowledge you could find about the shrines of the Lost Prince. And through a traveling merchant, you had learned that there was a book within this library that had mapped out every corner of what was once King Midas's kingdom; including all known shrine locations.

You could have simply asked to view the book...you were fairly certain that Aurora and Phillip would have no objections to it, if you disguised yourself as a researcher or a scholar from a distant kingdom. But they were not the ones you were trying to avoid. It was their newly appointed guardian, one who could smell the use of magic you were hoping to slip past.

Maleficent.

Her story had quickly swept through the realms. You had heard many versions of it upon your travels as you'd searched for knowledge of your heritage. Some said Maleficent had a change of heart and had broken the sleeping curse herself. Some claimed that Maleficent and the dragon were two separate beings; so when Phillip killed the dragon, Maleficent remained unharmed. And some were convinced that Phillip had only killed the dragon part of Maleficent; and that the woman part of her had survived, so she was technically only living half a life.

But you found those people naive.

Princes always disgusted you with their tendency to over exaggerate their feats of strength. You had no doubt Phillip himself had somehow started that rumor of killing the dragon. But you knew better...the dragon was Maleficent herself; so if Phillip had truly killed it, she would no longer be alive. And yet she was; alive and well, working for the King and Queen. Though you had your suspicions that she was not doing it of her own free will.

Regardless of what parts of the information were rumors versus truth, no one had seen Maleficent turn into a dragon since Aurora had been woken from the sleeping curse; and for that you were thankful. It would make it easier to slip in and out of the castle unnoticed without the threat of having a dragon looming around.

You readied yourself as a carriage approached the gate. Only invited guests were allowed inside the castle walls, of which you most certainly were not.

So you had to improvise. And unfortunately you had to do it all without magic...as one wrong move could alert Maleficent of your presence; and you'd like to avoid that for various reasons.

She was always one to hold a grudge.

As the gate opened and the carriage horses trotted in, you dove; barely making it under the carriage in time to grab hold of the bottom rig before it had passed over you. You hoisted yourself up underneath the carriage, holding tightly with every muscle you could. When the carriage stopped in front of the castle entrance a few minutes later, you lowered yourself slowly, looking around for something you could hide in until the guards had retreated back into the castle when the ball officially began.

To your left there was a large row of rose bushes; they were thorny, but they would have to do. Besides, it's not like you wouldn't heal from any pricks or snags you received from their thorns. Quickly, before the carriage occupants had fully exited, you crawled toward the rose bushes and carefully hid yourself within them.