Who: Raistlin & Regina What: Discussions of magic and dark curses When: Before the HG Plot Where: Regina's Crypt Rating/Warnings: Low Status: Complete!
Bit of a moot point to drink coffee in the evenings when her normal schedule brought her to bed in a mere couple hours, but tonight Regina wasn’t prepared to hit the pillows and be engulfed into the clusterfuck of Storybrooke just yet. She’d done enough of that, sometimes it was all a miss - but nothing she dreamt so far gave her much of a clue what happened in Camelot that caused Emma to react the way she did. Go full-blown Dark One, eradicate their memories of the past six weeks. Having the token savior turn villain and having this villain turn savior was…
Not something she expected, or ever prepared for. The evil queen had (for the most part) retired her sinister ways, made an effort to create her own happiness with those surrounding her - the son she raised, the pinecone scented thief (who was the father of her sister’s baby, fucking christ) and his dimple-faced little boy. Now the entire fairytale town was looking to her for some kind of guidance when she barely had a clue of what the hell to do, but she supposed she’d figure it out - eventually.
Sitting on one of the large, antique chests down below the crypt, she had a mug of freshly brewed toffee-nut coffee in her hands and a heavy book on her lap. “You haven’t broken anything in here yet,” she spoke up, flipping through the next page of the text. “It’s impressive.”
Basilisk blood was absolutely fascinating from both a scientific and a magic point of view. Raistlin had barely moved from his spot in front of the crypt’s elaborate chemistry set studying it’s properties like a man possessed. A book was propped open to the side, which he occasionally flipped through to read and compare his findings. A mug of coffee sat untouched nearby.
Basilisks did not exist on Krynn. Then again, dragons had also been considered to be a myth along with the old gods. That line of thinking had turned out to be a big mistake. One had captured Raistlin’s party. Or, more accurately, had captured him, had him laid out on an altar, ready to run him through with one of her massive claws if the others so much as breathed wrong.
Raistlin paused what he was doing, recalling the entire scene in his mind. What would they had done if Goldmoon had not stepped forward with her staff as sacrifice? What would he had done? The others certainly wouldn’t have attempted to rescue him. Even if they had let Caramon go rushing in the dragon would have sliced straight through Raistlin’s torso to spill his blood all over her hoard before Caramon had gone even two steps.
And then had come that voice and along with it a type of presence Raistlin really didn’t know how to describe. A chill ran up Raistlin’s spine as he recalled it. The presence had spoken to him directly in his head. It placated him, calmly telling him to wait, to watch, to see.
Regina’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. He looked over at where she was sitting with a thick tome. “You almost sound disappointed,” he answered her.
“Oh, I’m not, believe me,” she smirked, a tilt of peach-tinted lips - none of the trademark scarlet for tonight. She had dressed down after the working day was complete so she could be a bit more comfortable when engrossed in text for endless hours. “It’s a compliment, but I guess there’s always a chance for it in the future.”
Regina went through a couple precautions during the reconstruction. Enchantments, enchantments everywhere. To give all things breakable some kind of protection that wouldn’t cause it to break or crumble too easily. Who knew the next time some kind of essence of evil needed to be obliterated within this very crypt or something. She’d done it with some things, and now she did it with everything. Including the actual walls.
A sip of the coffee. “Anything you’d want to try out? I still have some of the basilisk remains.” That thing wasn’t small by any means, and Killian had an abundance of sea serpent ‘leftovers’ he donated to the study of magic. How sweet of him. “There’s still some skin left.”
Raistlin glanced at the blood in front of him. It was good for curses, hexes and, of course, poisons, and as much as he found those to be fascinating, attempting to do any didn’t seem like a good idea. People annoyed Raistlin, but he didn’t want to kill anyone.
His eyes moved towards the book. “I read that basilisk can be used in a type of protection spell,” he said. From what he’d read in the book, the spell allowed the target to be able to absorb - or soak - physical damage dealt to them. The amount of damage soaked depended on the power of the caster, of course. That was how most spells worked. It would be a good way to test just how powerful he was at this point, set a benchmark. And, considering recent events, having such a spell at the ready might not be a bad idea.
Once upon a time (quite literally), people did annoy Regina to the point of slaughter. Sometimes whole villages just because she could - and those irrational urges had carried over more than she’d like to admit, violence being the viable solution for everything in her mind. There was such a thrilling, darker side to magic she loved indulging it; the control, the power, getting what she wanted, the bittersweet taste of revenge.
None of it seemed like a good idea. She would have made an awful Dark One, as in it’d be all darkness and murder again.
“We could use more protection spells, I think - we’ve got enough destruction going around as it is,” she sighed, then eventually closed the book for now.
“Being proactive is always better than being reactive,” Raistlin said. “It’s only a matter of time before something else arrives.” The memory of the fog and the things he’d encountered while walking in it were still very fresh in his mind. Bleedover from the dreams was unavoidable and completely beyond their control. There was absolutely no telling what would come next and the lack of control was more than just a little unnerving. “Its best we be prepared for when it does.”
He tried shaking off that cold spinning feeling that came with not being in control as he reached for the book containing the protection spell. Wheeling through life like a feather on the breeze may have been alright for some people - Tas, for example, was perfect for that kind of thing, but not Raistlin. He had been subject to the whims of others more than he’d like to admit: his parents, his brother, their so-called friends, the mean spirited individuals who mistook Raistlin’s difference as a personal threat and chose to make his young life miserable at every opportunity.
He had hoped things would have been different in Orange County, but they really weren’t. Instead of being subjected to the whim of individuals, he was subjected to the whims of powers he couldn’t even begin to understand. However, unlike back home, Raistlin considered it a small price to pay for what he was learning now and the power that came with it.
Another shake of his head to return his focus to the matter at hand. He looked down at the book in his hands and was startled to find that instead of opening to the protection spell he’d bookmarked earlier, he was looking at a summoning spell. It was almost as if his hands had acted completely on their own. Raistlin frowned remembering again that voice he’d heard in his dreams, the feeling that something else was with him. It hadn’t come through here had it?
He quickly flipped the pages to the spell he wanted and handed the book to Regina to look over. “This is the one,” he told her quickly.
Hm, if Regina didn’t know any better he seemed troubled by something - there was a lag between responses, but she didn’t prod. Whatever was going on in his head was his business alone and if he wanted input, Raistlin seemed like the sort to bluntly ask.
Rising from the chest she took the book into her possession, passing her fingers down the list of instructions and spell components. Ingredients which she had, lucky enough - the main one being the basilisk remains that were preserved from Sister Pirate’s unfortunate almost-brush of death.
“Something we can work on,” she murmured thoughtfully, glancing up at him from the pages. “What’s your specialty, exactly? In your dreams. Are you overall well-rounded with magic or do you excel in one aspect more than the others? People usually do.”
There was a part of him that did want to tell Regina of that Other in his Dreams, of that voice that had spoken to him and the feeling that his body was harboring something other than his mortal soul, not to mention killing a monster that had taken on his own face when the fog had descended upon them all. But he held his tongue. He was an intensely private person. He was so by nature and the need to be that way had only been magnified by his twin’s own lack of a private nature. They had been made to share everything as children to the point there were times Raistlin had felt the only thing he had that was truly his were his own thoughts, so he guarded them intensely, perhaps even obsessively so.
There was also the possibility that if Raistlin mentioned the Other to Regina, that she would refuse to continue to teach him any further. Raistlin was learning from his Dreams. Every time he woke up from one he knew more spells, more magic, but it was a painfully slow process, particularly considering his sleep habits weren’t particularly constant - or really habits for that matter. Plus the type of magic he practised was different than the magic others practised and Raistlin didn’t want to be limited to just the magic of Krynn. If he could learn, even perform other types, then he wanted to. The scholar in him demanded it to satisfy an undying curiosity. The mage in him craved it like a drug. He could learn so much from Regina and he would do nothing to jeopardize the chance.
He shook his head. “The magic that’s performed on Krynn isn’t really discipline based,” he told her. “It’s more...alignment based, I suppose you could say. Being neutrally aligned, I have a broad skill set - or will, I guess - that dips into the other two sides. I tend to favor illusion, combat and physical and mental affect spells, but as far as having a speciality? No, I don’t really have one.” He glanced at the book in her hands. “I also tend to favor word based spells. Those that require components, like that one, tend to take longer to perform and time isn’t something we - my band and I - have a lot of on our...quest.”
“Neutral alignment,” she repeated, intrigued. Sometimes Henry talked about the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, there was always some kind of morality alignment that went with characters? Regina tried to pay attention anyway, but it was what she was reminded of. Her twelve year old son and his vast imagination, and his varying interests to all things fantastical. “Is that some kind of good and evil sort of thing?”
Well, hers didn’t operate too far from that concept. There was magic drawn from the deepest, angriest crevices of her inner self - originally she had tried teaching Emma magic by pulling it from her source of rage in the dreams, yet she was glad she didn’t listen to that instruction. Light magic had proven more beneficial there, and it was something that the evil queen herself had managed to (miraculously) harness.
“Good and Evil isn’t truly accurate,” he answered her. “Mages who wear the black robes aren’t called Evil Mages-” the term actually sounded comical to him when said aloud “-and those who wear the white robes aren’t called Good Mages.” And that sounded even funnier, almost as if he were describing the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West. “It’s more of a balance between light and dark arts with those of us wearing the red robes walking the line in the middle.” Those who actually were allowed to wear the robes, that is. But it was too early to complicate matters with talk of the Tower of High Sorcery and the Test, especially since Raistlin had a very ill feeling about what he’d endured at the Tower during his own Test. Whatever it was that had shattered his health, turned his skin golden and hair white and had utterly and completely altered the way he saw the world was still an unknown factor to him.
Regina had not asked about that and Raistlin did not see the point in telling her. Eventually he would. Eventually he would have to talk about it with someone and Regina seemed as though she would understand better than most, perhaps even be able to help should he wake up one morning and his eyes only seeing the people around him as they died and decayed.
He cleared his throat. “There is something evil lurking around Krynn, though,” he said. “The Old Gods are returning and the current ones...I can’t say they are displeased because I do not think they actually exist. Their followers certainly aren’t happy. People are being imprisoned, or disappearing,” he shrugged as if the fates of these individuals were of little consequence to him directly. “There is a kind of pall all around and whispers of something dark on the horizon. Not too unlike what it’s like here on occasion.” He motioned to the book Regina was holding, “which is why I’d like to know more about these sorts of protection spells. To better prepare.”
It did sound comical when he put it that way, but it must be nice to dream of a system that didn’t cater completely to vapid fairytale cliches. Regina listened, nursing her caffeine, and perched herself atop of the black mirror table. “Old gods and existing gods,” she mused. “How complicated. Either that they actually exist or the belief in them.”
That wasn’t a heavy theme in hers despite the existence of magic, the concept of deities. Their issues were plentiful when it came to regular humans wanting more power - a thirst she was manipulated towards. “Preparing for what’s to come is the best thing you can do for yourself. But even if you know it’s coming, there’s just...some things you can’t always prepare for.”
It was a reality she struggled with, because while she should follow her own damn advice she also refused to believe there wasn’t a way to prepare for certain events looming in the horizon. It’s what happened when you were so invested in who it’d effect.
Raistlin frowned at Regina and he made no the effort to conceal that he did not like the idea of things that could not be prepared for. Like Regina, it was a reality he struggled with as well, even all out refused to accept. “I understand that in this place something is always going to happen and that sometimes those things will be dark and confusing,” a visible shudder ran down his spine as he again thought of the monster with his face. “I’ve accepted that we may never know the cause or the reason, but I don’t like it. I will never like it. If all I will be able to do is react, then I will make sure that I am in a position to react the best way possible.”
He was a scholar and a mage, with an insatiable curiosity and a desire for knowledge about the world around him, especially this new world of magic and technology and supernatural happenings. A desire that drove him. However there was also fear lurking just below the surface of his usual cool demeanor. A fear Raistlin was aware of, but did not understand and he hated it. It was that fear that made the muscles in his body tighten and his eyes narrow. “Do you know something?” He asked her next, his voice still low and even, but with a tinge of that fear he tried so desperately to hide. “Do you know that something is coming now?”
Quite the loaded question, wasn’t it? Regina chuckled mirthlessly and stuck a pen in the book to mark the page before closing it. “I do. I’ve the unfortunate mantle of dreaming ahead out of the group I share these memories with,” she began, her smile bittersweet. “When there’s something to come I do my best to let them know. There’s a darkness headed our way, and I wish I knew more about how to stop it.”
They had the best minds when it came to the Dark Curse. Killian, who hunted the Dark One for centuries. Neal, the son of one. Regina had been trained by the very one the aforementioned two had dealt with. But how could one prepare for the dark curse to inhabit a pregnant woman? It had chosen her, the darkness - it should have been her.
Yet Emma’s heroics interfered and caused her to do something ridiculously sacrificial, per the usual. She had saved Regina, and Regina would save her. In both worlds. She was no ‘savior,’ but the two women were friends, and had a son in common. Henry would not lose his mother.
“It’s a very delicate situation at hand, but we’re working on it. And we hope time is on our side. There’s a chance it couldn’t happen, but it doesn’t seem too likely.”
Raistlin glanced at the book in her hand. The spells within would have to wait another few moments. Icy blue eyes moved back up to meet Regina’s. “A darkness,” he repeated with a mixture of interest and apprehension. Darkness was such an ambiguous and uncomfortable term. It could mean anything, any force or presence, that could do harm, change the world, or even end it. There was a “darkness” threatening Krynn with the oncoming Winter and now there was a “darkness” threatening in Orange County. Raistlin narrowed his eyes.
He was no hero, either. Neither version of him was. However, the Raistlin of Orange County was a little less self-serving than his dream counterpart - not something he readily admitted, he did have a reputation to maintain, after all - and the idea of an oncoming threat unnerved him greatly.
He pressed Regina for more information. “What kind of darkness? From where? How are you ‘working on it’?”
“It’s not a kind of thing that envelops an entire area, just...one person,” clarified her majesty, tucking that shoulder-length hair behind her ears. “It’s something for our dreams. Only one person at a time can be cursed with an empowering darkness, and it often tends to drive them off to the dark side of decision making.” Christ, she was beginning to sound like one of those Star Wars characters her son often went on and on about. “It grants them very, very powerful magic, but like all things, it comes at a price.”
Regina wasn’t willing to say much else of it, or who was in danger of being afflicted. Emma’s pregnancy predicted possible complications with how to handle this - she was treading very, very carefully, and considering the personal nature of it she wasn’t going to delve into too much detail. “But we’ve people who have handled this sort of thing, it won’t be the first time that curse has come to this area, so we’re gifted with experience.”
The fact that the approaching darkness - whatever it was - affected a single individual and not an entire area as the fog had was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that it could be easier contained if it was a single individual. A curse in that if the individual afflicted with this darkness was already a powerful wielder of magic, it could be disastrous for those around him or her.
Regina’s description of what the darkness could do, empower and drive the one cursed with it to do unsavory acts, seemed very familiar to Raistlin. Disturbingly familiar, as if he himself had experienced exactly what Regina was describing. Memories of memories not yet gained taunted the back of his mind. He looked at Regina and for a moment he almost blurted out the secret he had been keeping. At the last moment he held his tongue, deciding that it would do Regina no good to know about the other presence that lurked in Raistlin’s Dreams. He needed to know more about it himself first. He dreamed of a completely different realm than she did and for all he knew what he was experiencing was completely benign, maybe even normal for his dream world. It would be cruel to tell her about it and potentially add to her mounting concerns.
He realized she was being cagey with her answers, purposefully holding back, but he was not insulted. He appreciated the need for privacy and discretion. He was not a part of Regina’s inner circle and she had no real reason to trust him with such information. She had said that “they” had people who had handled the darkness before.
He quirked a brow slightly. “It’s come here before?” He asked. Well, that certainly shed a new light (no pun intended) to the situation. His brows furrowed together tightly. “The first time I came here, you said that you had rebuilt this crypt after it had been destroyed. Is that what happened? Was it this ‘darkness’ that destroyed it?” He knew he was prying and stepping way out of line by doing so, but curiosity had gotten the better of him.
“It wasn’t the darkness, it was the woman who destroyed it that took down this entire place,” Regina clarified, motioning towards their surroundings - newly remodeled in an image to start fresh. Something a little more hers and not so much inherited by her sinister alter-ego. “It somewhat...afflicted a friend of mine a year ago, he literally died in the process of removal.” That’d been a bit tricky, because while Neal wasn’t technically The Dark One, he had a part of Rumple’s corruption in him. “We sealed the essence as we were unable to destroy it at that time. It broke out, cursed us with a spell of literal hatred to turn us against those we loved, and then comes in the savior in her heroic debut.”
Emma embraced her magic here - she didn’t fear it, didn’t reject it, and it helped. She’d gone down a path of doubt and uncertainty that did yield catastrophic in the dreams, and it’d been avoided. No one else probably stood a chance against it anyway.
A sigh came after the explanation, her shoulders sagging a little. “It’s just something that continues to stubborn worm its way into our lives, I suppose. But we’ll manage. We somehow always do.”
Raistlin was frowning again. The more he heard about this dark curse the less he liked it, not that he had liked it at all from the outset. It seemed to be the root of a lot of damage both physical and otherwise. It didn’t sound as though it had ever really left and had just simply been lying dormant and biding its time. Raistlin frowned a bit more. When he thought of it that way, it was almost as if this thing were alive.
He also wasn’t a fan of the way Regina spoke rueful words of optimism, but her body language showed a kind of weariness. She looked as though she were hefting a large weight on her shoulders and it was becoming burdensome. It reminded him a bit of how Tanis looked when he thought no one was watching him. Raistlin had often added to the weight and worry Tanis carried around with him. In fact there were times in which it seemed as though he did so purposefully, just to see the reaction and test how far he could push their leader before he cracked. It was one of the many things Raistlin of Orange County disliked about his counterpart.
Perhaps this was his opportunity to make up for the transgressions Raistlin of Krynn was responsible for against those who may have at one time considered him a friend.
“I realize our relationship is only that of teacher and student,” he told Regina. “And beyond that you have no reason to trust me. I have no experience with the darkness you’re talking about and am not a part of your circle, but,” he drew a breath. He was not used to offering himself quite so freely and without catch. It was an odd and somewhat unnerving feeling. “If there is something I can do to assist, I would offer to do so.”
So formal, wasn’t he? Her lips curled in amusement. But she could sense some kind of inner turmoil there, almost as if he were at war with himself - a kind of paradox she was familiar with herself. Raistlin didn’t seem like the type to appreciate someone prodding and prying into his privacy, though she thought of attempting to peel back those layers at some point. Sometimes it didn’t do anyone any good to simmer in their own mind.
“You don’t need to be so polite, Raistlin, and I appreciate your offer,” Regina expressed. “At the moment it’s very much a family matter, but I know if it comes down to it we’ll be reaching out to anyone capable of making a ball of fire to help.”
Now, talk of that goddamn curse aside, she motioned over to the potion-crafting station. “Did you want to give this a try, by the way?”
Formalities towards his betters was how Raistlin was raised and Regina’s presence somehow demanded such. At least it did as far as Raistlin was concerned, but he’d take her words under advisement and scale it back a little.
Her amused expression caused him to relax. He could appreciate wanting to handle family matters within the family, of course and decided not to press the matter further. He would have to take her at her word that if she required his help, she would ask for it. It was a matter of trust. If he expected her to trust him, he would have to afford her the same. “Alright,” he acquiesced with the start of a nod that he quickly stopped at the risk of being too polite again. “You know how to reach me if you need to.”
He glanced over at the crafting station then back at the book Regina still held in her lap. Oh, yes. During the course of their conversation of dark curses, he’d completely forgotten what had prompted it. There was a potion in there he’d wanted to try. He looked up at her and nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“If I do reach to you, that means things have escalated to an unfavorable manner,” Regina snorted, the thought it becoming beyond their control causing her muscles to tense. And she’d do her best to not let it get that far, but time would only tell.
But, yes, back to their original topic. A little experimenting, and she’d reached to get the ingredients for their little project.