Ever After High The Unfairest Of Them All

A Very Evil Prologue

If The Evil Queen Had One Word To Describe her living conditions, it would be cramped. If she had more than one word, she would add intolerable, wretched, and several others that well- trained Narrators choose to leave out of their tales.
Her cramped black glass cell was the inside of a magical mirror designed to hold only the greatest of terrors. Her eyes burned with violet flames at the memory of Milton Grimm and his petty magician pals ganging up to remove her from power. To be fair, she was the Greatest Evil Ever After Has Ever Known. And not just for the poisoning- Snow - White bit, but also for the general rampaging that culminated in her invasion of Wonderland. But that Grimm couldn't be bothered to muster enough magical strength to form a cage worthy of her royal station still rankles. She swiped at the webs that grew from the cells corners faster than she could destroy them, though she had never seen any spiders.
For what felt like the seventy - two thousandth time, she pressed her hand against the dirty - gray wall.
"Expand," she whispered.
"Enlarge," she spoke.
"Advance!" She shouted, and was immediately knocked onto her back by a wave of pain. She stood up shakily, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. The headache would last a few hours, and then she would try again. The cell still wasn't any larger than before, but eventually she would find a weakness in the spell repellent - enough to expand her living space, if not too escape entirely.
Suddenly a burst of purple lightning ripped through the cell. She lifted her hands to cast an attack spell, but the lightning was already gone. She sniffed. Something had changed. She wiggled her fingers in the air, feeling slightly less of a buzz than normal.
The Evil Queen held her hands in front of her, fingers forming a rectangle. She chanted:
A view, a sight, a clear crevasse
A pass through glass of distance vast
Become to find
Form to show
Whence did shine
That lightning blow!

Sweat beaded up on the Evil Queen's brow as pain lanced first through her head, her stomach, and then her left big toe. A rectangle of light traced itself into the wall in front of her. The light dimmed, leaving a two- foot-square wooden frame hanging on the wall.
"Ha -ha!" She shouted
The spell repellent, though not gone, had lessened, enough to allow a little magic.
She began to hum. Silky fog snaked along the dark floor, up the wall. With a cracking sound that could only be described as the opposite of the noise s breaking window makes, the frame filled with silver glass. A real mirror at last ! She inspected her face, noticing some of her black hairs had turned gray. She frowned and remembered that even her frown was beautiful.
With as few words and a flick of her hands ( and a stabbing headache,) the mirror's view deepened, and now she was spying through it onto the terrace court yard of Ever After High. This was where the purple surge had come from?
A crowd on the terrace was in a panic. Children an teachers, mouths open in shock and terror. The Queen couldn't help but smile. This was the sort of scene she found insanely funny. She spotted her daughter, Raven, standing high on the pedestal. The Evil Queen touched the glass.
"Rewind, design, reverse," she chanted. The view froze, and then events began to ho backward, until she whispered, "Stop , stay , play," Now the mirror replayed the events of moments before. Raven was approaching a large book posted on the podium.
"Ah," the Queen said. "It must be Legacy Day."
She rolled her eyes. It was a rite of passage for all the children of famous fairytales to sign the Story- book of legends and bind themselves to repeating their parent's stories. Of course she wanted her daughter to become evil an follow in her own glorious footsteps. But true evil was doing what you
Wanted, for your own benefit, and this charade of Grimm's only served to reinforce his control.
But then, instead of signing her name. Raven tore her page out of the Storybook of Legends.
The queen's clever eyes picked up a faint trace of purple magical energy blasting from the book. That answered one question. The magic that had been expelled when Raven tore her page rippled out , sending a shock wave even as far away as mirror prison.
The Queen paused the image and leaned in. Everyone in the crowd seemed afraid. Apple White, that daughter of her enemy, was about to burst into tears. But Raven stood tall on the pedestal, looking unrepentant. Powerful So like her mother.
The queen's arms ached to hold the baby who had once fit there and the teenage daughter who was growing capable of shaking Ever After as much as her notorious mother did.
She smiled slowly, and then she began to laugh.