Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The plant hadn't looked like that when she last saw it, before her world went black. It had once been so beautiful—just a single little white flower, with a few leaves curling off of it. It had been small, pretty, delicate—nothing like this twisted, gnarled mass of vines and thorns and rot. But then Rapunzel had started singing. Then her world had gone black.

Then she hadn't been able to stop.

“So it seems to . . . make things grow uncontrollably?” Cass said, squinting at the pile of thorns and leaves and slime. Rapunzel jumped. She'd nearly forgotten that she wasn't alone—that other people had witnessed this . . . horrible thing she'd just done.

“It makes things grow wrong,” Rapunzel said softly, pressing a finger against one of the thorns. It drew blood, and she suppressed a wince.

"Crazy how powerful it was," Cass continued, bending down and picking up one of the vines with a gloved hand.

"Yeah, Sunshine, I don't remember your healing ever being quite so . . ." Eugene trailed off, unable to find a word for it. "Powerful" or "fast" was certainly the right word to describe what they had seen—a surge of magic and power that was so much more rapid and extreme than her healing had ever been. But it didn't capture how it had felt to Rapunzel—the lack of control, the complete loss of awareness, the way the power flowed hungry and angry through her scalp and blared in her head and twisted the life she held in her hands. It didn't describe—

"I couldn't stop," Rapunzel said, the words catching in her throat. She looked up at Eugene, seeking his warm eyes as a way to ground herself. "I—I couldn't stop—"

“Hey, hey, this is still progress,” Eugene cut in, reaching out to her. She didn't reach back—her heart was still too tangled in the vines. “We have the—I don’t know what to call it. Hurt? The other one is healing, so this is hurt? We have the hurt incantation. One step closer!”

Chapter Text

It was empty.

They’d come all this way, traveled that long road, persevered through all those troubles and trials—

And in the end, the chamber that was supposed to house the moonstone was empty.

Rapunzel could see it, on a platform in the middle of the dark, cavernous room, could see where it was supposed to be—could see the spherical shell webbed with odd-looking holes that was supposed to house it. She could tell it was the centerpiece of the cavern, the purpose of the chamber, because the entire room curved and bent around it, as if cradling it. It spun with a constant beat, whipping around as if revealing its precious contents to the world—

But it was empty.

“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning at the huge room. “Where is it?”

“It’s supposed to be here,” Cass agreed.

Eugene could see their spirits dipping. Hastily, he said, “Hey, we’ll track it down eventually, right? Something that powerful is pretty hard to hide.”

“Yeah, but that’s because something that powerful is always misused,” Cass said drily. “We were hoping to prevent that.”

“But—well hey, I mean, we have the hurt incantation,” Eugene said, still trying to put a positive spin on things.

“I still don’t think we should call it that,” Cass cut in, pulling her sword out and spinning it. “It didn’t hurt the plant. It was like an accelerated growth incantation or something. It makes more sense to describe it based on what it does than—”

“Yeah but Rapunzel’s incantation was called the healing incantation,” Eugene snapped, “it makes sense to name it the opposite of—anyway, the point is, we’re fine! There’s not much they can do without the incantation, right?”

“That’s true,” Rapunzel said, resting her hand on the scroll strung through the loop of her belt. Then she paused. “Well, no, no it's not. Because I was able to use the the hurt incantation, even though I don’t have the moonstone. So it stands to reason that someone with the moonstone would be able to use my healing incantation, right?”

It was a somber thought.

“But is that really a bad thing?” asked Eugene. “All it does is heal. Do we need to worry about—”

“I’m not comfortable with anyone having any kind of magic,” Rapunzel said firmly.

“Except you,” Cassandra muttered.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Raps, if you don’t want anyone to have the moonstone, even without the incantation, then we need to go back to Corona.”

”Why Corona?” asked Eugene.

“No, she’s right,” Rapunzel said, turning away from the empty chamber and marching back through the door. Her friends followed her as she made her way out. “First of all,” she explained, “Corona is where the most dangerous suspects are—the people who are most likely to have heard the healing incantation, and thus most able to use the moonstone.”

“Makes sense,” Eugene conceded.

“But beyond that,” Rapunzel continued, her face dark, “if we’re going to be hunting down and fighting someone who’s gotten their hands on something as powerful as the moonstone, we’re going to need as much on our side as possible.

“That means we need the whole kingdom.”