Kevin Moore and Rumplestiltskin know that power is (inthename) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-12 02:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: tales, rumpelstiltskin, witch |
WHO Rumpelstiltskin & Vaughn
WHAT Bringing nature back to life
WHEN Recently-ish; Long ago enough that the Homelands are starting to flourish again at present
WHERE Homelands
WARNINGS None!
Reversing the effects of a spell varied in difficulty depending on the circumstance. A simple spell, for instance, requires a simple spell to reverse it. The more complex or ancient the spell, the harder it was to reverse. The darkness disappearing had been fortuitous and Rumpelstiltskin had used it to his advantage as well as he could before an anonymous person challenged him. Undoing whatever magic left nature desolate across the whole land - well, most of it - would require much more magic than he’d wielded in a long time. Storybrooke had, quite possibly, made him weak and Rumpelstiltskin had spent a vast number of years refusing to be weak or cowardly. He simply needed to pool his resources and make it work. He wasn’t called the Dark One for no reason. He had power coursing through his veins and appearing as he had before crossing to Storybrooke, he felt it more so than when he was in the appearance of Mr Gold. Trading looks for power had never been something he had issue with. It felt too damn good. He’d given Rose Red a scroll of ancient spell work that would only revive the greenery within a mile radius of her. A similar spell wouldn’t work when it came to the entirety of the homelands but he could hopefully jump start things and get them on the path to growing again. He just needed a little special something from his collection. After he’d destroyed everything following his fight with Belle, Rumple had taken some time before he began to rebuild. There were some things he kept so hidden that no one would ever be able to find it unless they assumed the role of Dark One. Those things he wouldn’t need. What he did need, however, was a leaf. It was unassuming to most, but he knew it’s true power. The leaf was from a faerie tree, imbued with magical properties by a nature faerie. He had trinkets from various fae, all imbued with different properties to help him with different things, and he wouldn’t use them just for any old thing. This was a power play though and he needed to ensure a strong footing in this world. After collecting the leaf and a few other magical agents, Rumpelstiltskin made his way deep into the forests until he came to a wide clearing. He went to the center of the field and got to his knees, his cloak helping him to blend in with the field so that the only attention he’d be drawing would be that of other magical beings. Most of them would know to steer clear but he’d make an impression on others. Hopefully. With his goals set, Rumpelstiltskin went to work, the magic stirring around him already. Within ten minutes, everyone worth their salt in magic would know he was working on something big. Big, indeed. The trees were whispering about it. Gossip carried from the roots at his feet, up through the sticky evergreen sap, down the branches, and into every prickly pine needle that extended like desperate, spindled fingers into the crisp winter air. When the magic reached her, it was like a cold slap in the face. Surprising only because of how curiously familiar it was. Despite the winter chill, she was seated in her herb garden while unearthing sassafras and ginger when the magic came across her. Like ice down her spine, it put her hair on end with its familiarity. Her reunion with Rumpelstiltskin had been short lived during the magical chaos of Christmas scenery, a brief hello broken by the disintegration of whatever magic had brought them there. The opportunity to continue their conversation seemed to be destined. In a curl of smoke and a flock of crows she traveled, coasting along the wind that tasted like soursweet magic. It was like chasing a fishing line back to it's pole, rushing across quiksilver until her boots hit the mossy Earth with a firecracker's snap. Her dress materialized out of crow feathers and spidersilk, sprouting sequined blooms from her naval that mapped out an inkblot over her ribs and torso. She emerged from around the trunk of a thick oak tree, twigs crunching from beneath her soles. "It's not going to work," she said with the confidence and familiarity of somebody who knew what they were talking about. He could feel her traveling more surely the closer she got and he wasn’t the least bit surprised by the time her feet touched the ground. He didn’t so much as blink as the twigs crunched and her voice reached his ears. “You say that, and yet...” Rumpelstiltskin could never hide the smile in his voice. Everything was a game on the surface, but at the heart of it, every move was calculated. The end result was always the same - to get to the world without magic to find his son. That goal was moot at this point, in this world. He was able to cross freely between Storybrooke and the Homelands so his son could be anywhere or nowhere at all. Considering the absences of the major players in his world, he was operating under the assumption that nothing he had previously thought was true. This place was wrong, and he did not have a place here. Rumpelstiltskin knew this was his one chance to make something of himself so that those people, those stupid, weak people, feared him as they should. He did not take kindly to being mocked by anyone and Vaughn seemed to be the only person who understood that. Rumple turned to face her, getting to his feet once more. “...it certainly will. Particularly if you lend your exquisite hand,” he finished with a bit of a twisted chuckle. It was all so very calculated, right down to the complement and little bow he offered her. He was all smiles as he stepped toward her, eyes only on hers, intent and full of mischief. It was his default, in truth, to be mischievous, but this place made him take it to a completely different level. One far higher than he ever would have gotten in Storybrooke or the Homelands he knew. It was a dangerous road to travel, a dangerous height to achieve, particularly without a safety net, but Rumpelstiltskin didn’t care. This place was wrong and he would do whatever it took to give things some semblance of the reality he knew. “What do you say, dearie? Lend an old friend a hand?” Her smile was light and slow in coming, the vibrating thrum of Cupid's leprosy pale bow that drew back into a contemplative gnash of fangs. Rather than answer him immediately, she surveyed the setup of his spell. The clearing was thick with magic, although she could not immediately tell what he was trying to accomplish. The only thing obvious to Vaughn was that the man's magic was stretched paperthin, and the fact that he asked for her assistance was curious. Not because he actually needed her, which wasn't surprising as Vaughn didn't classify any magician in league with herself, but rather because he actually asked for her help. A brow twitched, and she marked his extended hand with a heavy lidded squint before ultimately reaching out to take it. Her own fingers were crowned with rings that bounced loosely around the knobs of death's knucklebones. Chokechained in sterling, bedazzled in carved bone and horn, shining with polished onyx. The rings clanged together like plague bells, finding the necessary room to move and chime thanks to the witch's bird-boned hand. Those fingers extended toward his own offered hand in commitment, even before she asked, "What mischief are you up to?" Rumpelstiltskin was a creature who thrived on power. He had a great deal of magic at his disposal but magic was like a muscle. It needed to be exercised, stretched, and well cared for. The time he’d spent in Storybrooke had been without magic, making that particular skill flabbity, fat, and lazy as that stupid Disney song went. He knew that and he was asking his magic to run a marathon after sitting on the couch for twenty-six years. It was more than he could truly handle and he needed Vaughn to carry the baton so to speak. He didn’t have the time to flex his magic muscles, to get them back into shape. He needed the timing to be perfect and every moment that passed was a wasted one as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t afford too many wasted moments. She offered her hand and he gave those slim, ring coated fingers a slight squeeze before leading her toward the center of the clearing, where his setup was. “Why, I’m bringing Nature back to life,” Rumpelstiltskin replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It wasn’t quite insulting though. No, Rumple was far too skilled at crafting his tone so that he wasn’t ever overtly insulting unless he meant it. With Vaughn, he did his best to not be insulting period. His response somehow wasn't what she expected. Who cared about nature of all things? From the Machiavellian standpoint at the top of her witch's tower, Vaughn didn't see the purpose in wasting perfectly good magic for perfectly useless deeds(which tended to almost exclusively be good deeds).. Acts of kindness just didn't have a high enough pay off when everything was weighed and measured at the end of the day. Leave that kind of worthless endeavoring to the fae.. From where Vaughn stood, one simply didn't do good out of the kindness of their own heart. That kind of weakness only brought trouble, and usually more than adequate measures of pain and suffering. It went against the laws of humanity to do something so generous for the mere sake of itself, and Rumpelstiltskin had never struck her as a particularly good natured person. Not unless the long term profits were stacked in his column. He certainly had a knack for that sort of thing, viewing the future possibilities of greatness from the smallest of actions. It was one talent that she envied. For while her true power was great, she rarely thought through the true consequences of many of her curses. Ah, the capriciousness of a gravelly heart. "Whatever for?" She made no effort to kind her leering suspicion. Her hand was so cold in his. Skin thin as deadly ice, churning cool blood through frostbitten valves. It was not that she was completely against the rejuvenation of the forest, but Vaughn did appreciate the haunted cemetery vibe from a purely aesthetic point of view. If he intended to change things around, she hoped it was at least due to some perfectly awful reasoning.. but somehow she doubted it. Rumpelstiltskin was all about reinvention. He’d reinvented himself into Mr Gold in Storybrooke and he could reinvent himself here as well, in this strange land when there were just as many people who didn’t know him than those who did. In fact, he’d wager there were more of the former and that could all be played to his advantage. He was chaos, mischief and disorder. He had a price in everything he did, but who didn’t in their line of work? There were causes and effects to everything and he enjoyed his unique talent of being able to see things a bit more clearly than most. Of course, when he got right down to it, this place was his home too and he wanted it to be hospitable. It would play into his favor to be the one behind the rehabilitation of the area, even if he didn’t intend to gloat about his magic. Their magic, if she did help him. “Why ever not?” he countered, not the least bit bothered by the coldness of her skin. “It does have a certain aesthetic to it, but we both know this isn’t the way of things,” Rumpelstiltskin continued easily. “I do like a wee bit of green you see, and whoever cast this spell was quite the powerful little lady.” He knew it wasn’t either of them and the magical signature was clearly a woman, one he wasn’t familiar with. Her only response was a faint wrinkling in expression, a scrunching of the nose and knotting of the brow. Although everyone's magic was different, she did not like that he could sense the sex of the spell-caster and she could not. No, that kind of silver medal just wouldn't do. She observed him with heavy eyes, lids gone dark with stale blood beneath thin skin. The eyes of a primordial huntress emerging from the cave dwelling ooze of time, her atavistic self. "Who might have cast it?" Rumpelstiltskin had a much keener grasp on the varied talents of the practicing, and Vaughn momentarily lamented the fact that she'd never taken much of an interest in such things. It might have come in handy now, to know about the powerful ones that frequented these areas.. but being in the dark wasn't too worrying, not yet. Then again, Vaughn had never been much of a worrier when it came to conflicting magic. The deep-rooted chaos of gold medal divinity. Her line of sight deviated from him in order to survey the crippled horizon, and the grim ironwork of her mouth said clearly that she knew this desolation wasn't natural, and she didn't care for it. “Oooh, someone with that kind of magic? Far too emotional, I’d say. Haven’t felt her since, and I’ve gone looking. I’d say she’s nothing to worry about now, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin replied, not quite reassuring even if that was what his tone and demeanor suggested. Rumple was very rarely reassuring, not to anyone but Bay and he was gone, as he had been for the past few decades. He thought, briefly, of searching for his son and for Belle, but there was another girl here locked away with a beast. If whatever magic brought him into this situation had any sort of logic, there would be no duplicates. He wanted to be mad, furious at the turn of events, but he could not change it and fighting would only ensure his destruction. Rumple watched her as she surveyed the forests in front of her and waited until that look came across her face. She was exactly where he wanted her to be. Taking water from a mermaid’s cove, he poured it over the fae leaf in the dirtcaked bowl, made from the very earth he sought to heal. Standing, he held the bowl out for Vaughn. “Fingers in, dearie,” he instructed, lighthearted and just a touch excited. He did so love magic. “I’ll take care of the rest.” When she put her fingers in, he began to cast, ancient words and complex constructions, most she’d know and maybe a few she didn’t. The earthen bowl soaked up the water slowly, as it imbued itself with the magic of the spell. It took only a few minutes for the dirt to change color, a more healthy, moist brown, and for grass seedlings to sprout. One glance at their feet showed the same reaction and Rumple was positively delighted, but he didn’t stop casting until the entire bowl was alive with nature again. So too was their home. "Emotions can be messy when not applied properly." Her tone was flippant enough that she couldn't have been speaking from experience. No, not her. She was worse than any ice queen out of a wardrobe, Vaughn was the heiress of decay. Whatever part of her that had once been vibrant and emotional was long gone. It wasn't a matter of simply thawing her humanity out, as that side of her was - to her own estimation - quite dead. Although she'd asked of the spellcaster out of her own curiosity, it did eventually occur to Vaughn that they should keep a watchful eye open for any unwelcome intrusion. Witches did not take kindly to the reversal of their spells, and if this particular witch was in the area, it would likely mean trouble. She wasn't keen on getting cursed, not when she'd only just arrived on this new plane with it's talking books. "If she is something to worry about, she will not like what you are up to.." It was a fair warning and one that said she was not particularly worried for her own safety if they were to be discovered. Not that she could feasibly be concerned with his safety, when Vaughn acted out of kindness or assistance(quite was rare and worthy of noting on astrological charts, but it did happen) it was mostly due to some ulterior motive or monetary profit. In this case, it might have been difficult to tell what she was expecting to gain from helping Rumpelstiltskin, but surely he knew better than anyone that it never hurt to be owed a favor. Unlike him, Vaughn did not worry about binding paperwork or blood signatures. She had her own ways of collecting what was due to her. She carefully dipped her fingers into the bowl. When the dry leaves started to birl on a gentle wind, Vaughn closed her eyes. She listened to the eurythmic sound of Rumpelstiltskin's words, concentrating on the environment beyond. But nature did not really make many sounds. The wildlife would eventually return, but for now the forest was greatly uninhabited. She could feel the flora sprouting from beneath her fingertips, impossibly fast and rising to the call of Rumpelstiltskin's voice. It was only when he stopped casting that she opened her eyes. The area wasn’t nearly as well grown as the bowl, which crumbled once he finished casting, a grassy beacon of hope for what the world around them would soon become. It would take time, it always did, but it would be well worth it. Give it time, nature would return to the fullest. Grass would grow, trees would bloom, and the animals would eventually return. Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t worried about the original spell caster. He hadn’t felt anything of her magics since the darkness faded, nor had he seen any familiar names about on the journals. It was difficult for him to believe that a witch that powerful would keep to herself. Vaughn perhaps, but not all witches were like her. For that, he was eternally grateful. He wasn’t so sure any world could handle more than one Vaughn. “Thank you, dearie,” he said, giving her a smile. He held out his arm for her. “Fancy a stroll?” Their last conversation had been cut short, but there was no reason they couldn’t enjoy the deadened wood while they caught up. Vaughn turned the grey slate of her gorgon eyes onto the crippled woods beyond them, watching the spindles of green as they rose from what had previously been nature's mass grave. She could feel the difference. The air was thick with moisture and the scent of fresh sap. The breeze carried with it the feel of coming rain. She sucked some of the fresh dirt from the caled pad of her thumb while walking forward. She found his offered arm with an aimless smile of clean, even teeth. "Absolutely." Hoisting the lacebound hem of her dress with a free hand, Vaughn allowed him to lead them forward for this pleasant descent into evening. "We can talk about just what you're going to owe me.." |