The Lost Realm (Once Upon a Time/Peter Pan)

Chapter 36

// hey it's me again. Again thank you all sooo much for reading, it means so much to me :) okay byeee

"What the hell happened?" Peter demands, bursting into the throne room, Hook, Sylvia, and I following behind.

"We went to check on her, and she was just gone," One of the lost boys responds.

"Was the door unlocked, did she just poof out. Is she still in the castle?"

This time it's Charming who answers Peter's interrogations, "We started searching the castle. So far no sign of her. The door to her cell was wide open, a key in the socket."

Peter yells with anger and beats his fists against the wall.

"The key, the bloody key how could I not have noticed it. I'm an idiot I'm an idiot."

"You weren't the only one there when locking her up," Snow tried to comfort him," All of us should've seen it."

"Especially my sisters and I," I interject, "We knew about it. We just didn't think. Besides it wasn't in the lock, which means one of her guards must've handed it to her."

"Yah you should have known that Pan maybe we wouldn't be in this mess," Papa Charming fires.

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is, all that matters is an evil sorceress is on the loose and we have no idea where she could be," Graham speaks up. "I've got the villagers under lockdown, they should be safe. After all, it's not them she's after."

"Does she have her guards?" Ana asks.

"No she can't possibly get to them," Peter answers,"I put them in a limbo. She'd have to find the exact one to get to them, which would take years."

"How do you know so much about limbos?" I ask, I'd forgotten to bring it up on the roof.

"Among my travels I've accidentally fallen into some, usually the same one. I befriended some of the Goliaks, so they let me come and go as I please; Or let me hold prisoners there. Whatever is needed at the time."

Suddenly an imaginary lightbulb illuminates above his head, and his eyes fill with a spark of revelation.
"Her lair. She would've raided it immediately after escaping. If we can figure out what she took we can figure out what she's planning, or find her all together."

We follow him through the bowels of the castle to a dark, wooden door. He opens it and what looks like a library/science lab appears in front of us.

We begin to look around for anything suspicious. All I manage to find is a half dead frog, a substance that reminds me a little too much of cow manure, and a thousand books of poems that I assume can cast spells powerful enough to kill me. Either that or weak enough to barely tie my shoes.

"This one fell!" Sam yells from one of the bookshelves. "I mean it might have fallen a while ago, but everything is so organized in here I doubt it."

We walk over to her and Peter takes the book and opens it. His eyes scan the pages, gaining a more and more anxious tint with each word.

"No," he whispers.

"What is it?" Snow asks.

"It's a book, about Djoiak portals. I've never seen it before, must be pretty old. It says the kind I cast only scatters it's victims, as we learned. But it states there's another kind, a Mortem portal. It does exactly what a Djoiak portal does, only instead of scattering, it consumes and kills."

An eerie silence spreads through the room.

"Can she actually cast it?" Ana asks.

"Unfortunately yes. When I casted the original one I brought two sets of the needed ingredients. By the looks of it, she has them."

He nods his head towards an open box on one of the counters.

"Well how can we stop her?" Sylvia questions.

"It takes at least a day for the portal to be cast. I can probably figure out how to cast that portal to Floristian in a couple of hours. Plus light magic portals open quicker than dark magic, so even with my research time we will outspell Regina."

"What can we do to help?" Papa Charming asks.

"Go into the village, gather the villagers, get them in a single file line starting in the Castle's grand hallway. It appears they will be joining us in Floristian."

"On it," Charming answers. He, Snow, Hook, Sylvia, and Graham head out, while me, Ana, and Sam stay.

"I need you three to help me find and gather ingredients for the spell. It shouldn't be too hard, well if all this stuff is labeled the way I think it is."

It isn't. Everything is in random places, a defense mechanism by Regina.

Looking for one lion heart turns into a thirty minute production, and gathering magic herbs extends our work time by even longer.

Finally, after what feels like forever (though was actually about five hours) we have the ingredients laid out on the table.

"Let's go," Peter says, "I'll cast it in the grand hall, so the villagers can enter."

Ana and Sam grabs few items and go. I hold Peter back before we can join them.

"Do you think this will work?" I ask.

"Honestly I have no idea, but damn do I hope so."

With that, we climb up the stairs, holding the ingredients to our happy ending in our hands.