A Curse Upon Thee 2-18

“—elieve in magic in a young girl’s heart…”

Pale fingers snapped on the downbeat, the crisp pop of skin on skin echoing out the thick green forest. “How the music can free her…” Red armored boots marched over a sprawling knot of moss-slick roots, the rhythm guiding his steps as he walked.

“…whenever it staaaaarts?”

It was a good song. 

An absolute classic, honestly, and shame on anyone who ever said otherwise. No taste.

More importantly, it was pretty much all that was keeping him from losing his mind and deciding to go hunting for some smelly ogres just to kill this fucking boredom. 

And speaking of smelly… God, I’d let somebody stab me for a good shower.

He’d been feeling kinda ripe for a while now. Smelling as much as feeling too, if he was being completely honest. As shirtless as he was beneath the red leather of his cropped jacket, the heavy black fur of the collar was doing him a negative amount of favors in the aroma department.

Thankfully, the only person close enough to care was off in dreamland.

As she had been for the last couple days.

Finn adjusted his grip, hoisting the purple-haired girl a little higher on his back. He’d scooped her out of the mud at the massacred camp two days ago, and she hadn’t so much as twitched since. She weighed about as much as he expected a damp backpack would — all delicate bones and soft breaths — but hauling around dead weight for a good forty-eight hours solid was guaranteed to be a drag on his absolute best day.

It just happened to be that the last ten or so days were apparently his best-ever days, at least in the physicals department.

“And it’s magic, if the music is groovy…” Finn pushed a half-laugh out, head tilted back to take in the claustrophobic canopy of branches that never seemed to change. “It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie.”

“Finn.”

Emma’s voice cut through the damp with all the grace and care of a dull knife. The woman was exhausted and he knew that, but did she have to make his name sound like she was cursing everything about him. 

She marched a few paces ahead of him, her blonde hair tangled, the seat of her jeans caked in dry mud.

“Can we stop with the songs?” Emma didn’t look back, eyes fixed right on the flirty privateer not too far in front of her. “Please?”

“Well, I quite like it.” Finn blinked, shifting the girl on his back as he glanced over his right shoulder. Princess Aurora was making her way carefully around a slick, mossy rock, her silk skirts still nowhere near as ruined as Emma’s jeans. “He sings quite beautifully. Even if his songs are… a little odd.”

Finn tilted his head, well aware that Aurora had blinked a few times during ‘Basket Case.’ She’ll learn to love Green Day.

“I think he has a beautiful voice, Emma.” Mary Margaret offered a soft defense from the front of the pack as she turned back with a smile just as warm. “It breaks the silence and Aurora’s got a point. Finn sings like an angel.”

“Awwww.” He ducked his chin behind the black fur of his collar, batting his eyelashes as he faked a blush worthy of a certain one of the Seven Dwarves. “Stop it, MM. You’re gonna make me all red.”

“A sorcerer and a bard.”

The smooth baritone slid into the clearing, Irish lilt rolling effortlessly over the damp air as Hook sauntered casually behind Emma, leather coat swishing around him. “Truly, mate, your skill knows no limits. Is there a tune in that repertoire about finding a bloody compass, or are we strictly stuck on your merry mel-?”

The pirate choked on the last word, the tip of a glowing broadsword at his throat enough to silence his ribbing. 

Hook paused, the man’s eyes flicking from Emma’s hardened face down to the humming steel at his Adam’s apple. “As you wish, darling.” He raised his one good hand in a slow, theatrical surrender, the metal hook on his left wrist catching the dappled light. “I’ll keep my critiques to myself.”

Finn snorted, hiking the unconscious girl up his back again.

He had gifted Emma that sword back at the camp, the thing literally dropping out of the sky in a flash of light right at his feet. Finn was still entirely unsure what the sword did other than sword but it definitely liked to glow at least.

Granted, he didn’t care, as he was perfectly fine with his Slaughter Demon, the fur-handled meat cleaver hanging comfortably at his hip. 

Truthfully, the weirdest part was the fact that he knew exactly how to fight with the thing when he never remembered even using a knife before, even in Kyoto. Somehow, still, his muscles remembered the balance, even down to the specific reverse-grip required to gut an opponent before they could draw a longsword. 

“Do you believe she has been placed under a curse?”

Aurora spoke up, aristocratic voice breaking Finn’s train of thought. He blinked over at her to see the princess looking at the purple-haired girl slumped against Finn’s neck. “Her stillness… it is unnatural.”

“I don’t know, Sleeping Beauty,” Finn breathed out, hopping and skipping his way over a jagged root as carefully as he could to not jostle his passanger. “Far as I can tell, she’s breathing fine. Heartbeat’s steady. But yeah, she hasn’t blinked in two days. If she’s cursed, I guess…”

Finn opened his mouth to say that there was nothing he could do about it, only to realize…

Wait… He winced with a sigh. That’s literally my job. 

It was always a hassle to realize that you were suddenly important, and even more of one to realize that you were supposedly the authority. Damn it. 

“We must keep moving,” Mulan chopped a low-hanging branch out of the way with her scabbard. “The beanstalk should be near.”

They broke through the tree line an hour later, and Finn actually stopped walking.

“You have got to be shitting me.” His jaw dropped low as his eyes went high.

And higher.

And higher, as he looked up at a beanstalk.

A literal actual Jack-and-the-magic-bullshit beanstalk built of braided green vines each one as thick as a whole suspension bridge with the entire mass spiraling almost infinitely upward into the low-hanging cloud cover.

“The giants up there possessed magic beans,” Hook’s voice was as smooth as ever, the pirate stepping up beside Emma to stare into the clouds. “Beans that could create portals to other realms. Like your Storybrooke, for instance.”

“Wait. Possessed?” Finn zeroed in on the past tense, something in those words making his paranoia flare. “What happened to the giants, Captain Eyeliner?”

“Genocide, mate.” Said captain shot Finn a look, dark amusement clear on his face. “We humans, you know, we like what we like and we decided we didn’t care all that much for any magic me couldn’t claim as ours. So, we slaughtered them all. Well… save for one, so the legend goes.”

“Slaughtered an entire race of giants.” Finn pulled a face. “How exactly?”

“Who knows? Poison? Trickery? More of the usual grim business.” Hook shrugged his leather-clad shoulders. “But we aren’t here for beans. We are here for the magical compass the giant hoards. That will point us back to your land.”

Emma stared at the towering stalk, jaw tight. “So we climb.”

“Ah. A complication, love,” Hook purred, pulling back the sleeve of his coat to reveal a thick metal cuff locked around his wrist. “The beanstalk is enchanted. You cannot climb it with mere mortal strength. The magic will repel you. You need a cuff.” 

He reached into a leather pouch at his belt and produced a second cuff, same as the first. “And as luck would have it, I only possess the two.”

“How convenient.” Emma’s sarcasm could have stripped paint, the woman snatching the cuff out of Hook’s palm before the pirate could offer it. “Good for you that I’m going with.”

“Emma, that’s too dangerous.” Mary Margaret stepped forward, worry clear on her face.

Emma scoffed. “What about this last week or so hasn’t been a danger?”

“B-but…” Mary Margaret fought for words before finally landing on another argument. “You don’t know him.”

“Which is exactly why I’m not letting him go up there alone to grab our only ticket home,” Emma snapped the cuff around her own wrist before anyone else could argue, the metal flaring bright with a brief light before she looked at Hook. “Let’s go.”

But before Emma approached the massive roots, she grabbed Mulan by the forearm and pulled the armored warrior several dozen feet away from the group as a whole.

Finn narrowed his eyes, watching as Emma whispered into Mulan’s listening ear. Why that far? From the way Emma’s eyes slid over to him for a second, he figured he knew the reason but that didn’t make Finn feel any better about it. Mulan simply kept listening, her own gaze flicking briefly over to the redhead as well before she gave Emma a quick clipped nod.

I don’t like that, Finn shifted the sleeping girl’s weight. Don’t like that at all.

As much as he didn’t like it, Emma and Hook began their climb, both of them vanishing into the thick green foliage and fog within twenty minutes.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Hours passed.

The sun finally dipped behind the suffocating tree line, the base of the beanstalk plunged into a heavy twilight. Finn sat bare-chested and cross-legged on a patch of dry moss, uncovered back resting against a root as he stared down at the purple-haired girl he had laid down, his jacket bunched up under her head as a pillow.

Mulan knelt in the dirt near the small fire they had managed to build, the woman carving a circle in the ground with a simple blade and intersecting it with sharp lines.

“The sun has fallen.” The warrior rose to her feet, knife sheathed back at her side with a crisp clack. “This dial will mark the hour by the shadow of the moon. I propose we keep watch in turns. Understood?”

“I think I’ll take the first watch.” The queen among them volunteered her efforts, Snow Margaret pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders before she reached for her bow. “You two should sleep. You’ve been leading us for days.”

Aurora nodded, the princess already curled up near the fire and clearly too drained to argue even if she had it in her. Mulan sat cross-legged nearby, eyes already closed even as her posture stayed perfectly straight; both hands on the sword in her lap. 

Finn didn’t sleep.

Not yet, at least.

He sat in the dark, cool night air biting at his bare chest as he kept one eye on the girl he had to take care of. His other hand unscrewed the cap of a leather canteen, and Finn leaned forward with it. A few drops of water made their way past her pale parted lips, the girl swallowing on reflex even as those gold-flecked eyes stayed stubbornly shut. 

How long can we keep this up? He couldn’t fight the frown on his face, one hand dragging itself through his over-knotted hair. Water and a few drops of broth from Mary Margaret’s supplies were keeping her alive, but — curse or not — that wasn’t gonna last long.

She needed a hospital. She needed a doctor.

Or, at the very least, a goddamn IV drip.

He leaned his head back against the massive beanstalk root, the rough bark scraping against his skin as the silence of the forest pressed in on him.

“…god, I hate this fucking forest.”

 o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Fee-Fi-Fo-Found It – 200 GP
Make your way to THE legendary beanstalk.

ROLL: Rank Up! (400) [Fairy Fencer F] {Lore}:

Not all Fairies are created equal and that’s a fact. Because of this they’ve been divided into specific Ranks. Higher Ranked Fairies are capable of more than lower Ranked. It’s just that simple. With this Perk you find it easier to advance in Ranks faster. 

Grimoire Points: 500