The darkness was so thick around her that it felt like it was part of her. Perhaps it was now. What had possessed her to become what she had? To rip out a fairy’s heart, to create a curse that could rip a realm apart? Love, she reasoned, had been the main driving force. Her love for her son, her need to protect him, to save him from the fate of a Savior, from death. What kind of mother would she be if she just accepted what he would become without trying everything within her power to prevent it?
No. It was more than that. For her entire life, Fiona had felt powerless. Her mother had made most of her decisions in her childhood and then she had taken her wings and her magic, and banished her from the only home she had ever known without even hearing Fiona’s pleas against her judgement. She had met Malcolm then, become the doting wife but they lived such a simple life, and they had no real power. Still, she had loved that life, even if it had none of the luxuries of her childhood. When her son had come along, everything had felt so calm and peaceful, until those fairies flew through her open window. She had panicked at first, panicked that her mother had sent them to take away her child, and even hearing that one of them was his fairy godmother had not eased her trepidation. Fairy Godmothers came alone.
Hearing her son was to be a Savior gave her the most anxiety she had ever experienced. Listening to the fairies lie to her, tell her that it was all a good thing, that Saviors existed to save people, to be light in the darkness, Fiona grew resentful. Was this how they spun this burden to other mothers? Did they stand before the ones who knew nothing of lore and bleat their lies about how brilliant it was to be a Savior? Fiona knew better. She had been a bookworm in her youth, spending her days lying around her mother’s castle, a book in her hands. She had learned a lot of things, including the true fate of a Savior, and, fortunately for her, how to return her wings. Tricking Tigerlily into putting down her wand had been the easy part.
As time ticked on, the darkness remained. Her eyes adjusted, but pointlessly. There was nothing to see. The entire realm was barren and dark and then one day, after a long sleep where she had dreamed of feeling the heat of the sun on her skin, a sun appeared in the sky and she was left in darkness no longer. Night and Day came to the Dark Realm, the sun followed by a moon and a million twinkling stars. When she slept, Fiona dreamed of other things she wished existed in her realm, a trickling stream that turned into a river and eventually lead to a sea, a waterfall, and a full forest of trees, and when she woke, she found that the realm had delivered.
During the day, her thoughts turned to her memories. She frequently spent time thinking particularly of her youth as she tried to recount if she had read any spells that could help her in her current situation. If she closed her eyes, she could see it all so vividly it was as if she was still there. She could see the high white walls of the palace, built to best capture the light of the sun during the day, and the light of the moon during the night, and hear the sound of birds carrying through the high windows as they jumped from tree to tree outside, singing their little hearts out in the hope that they wouldn’t be alone much longer. She could smell the jasmine that carried through on the gentle breeze, so strong in odour that it seeped into the curtains that hung by the open window, making sure the scent lingered long after the breeze died away. She could envision the great feasts attended by so many that her mother had to extend the table time and time again, yet no matter how many people had seats, the food was always enough. An enchantment, perhaps. She had never known. Lost in her own thoughts, even the taste of the sugarplums, the sweetmeats and the pheasant that was her mother’s speciality filled her mind, and she could have been easily tricked into believing she was in the middle of devouring them. She had been filled with such joy in her childhood that she had never actually acknowledged the emotion.
Now Fiona found herself filled with things she had never felt before. Rage. Bitterness. Hate. She had never hated before, even following her banishment, and now she wanted nothing more than to crush the hearts of the ones who had put her here, separated her from her child, and cast her out yet again. Each day that passed, her bitterness grew. Where was her mother, the so-called Queen of the Fairies? How had she allowed her own child to be cast into darkness so heartlessly? Did she care so little for Fiona? And her father? Where was he? The King of the Gods had given her no thought since that day he had visited her when she was 8. Why was that? She was particularly surprised by her stepfather, the man who had raised her as his own, who she was so close to that he had cried when her mother had taken her wings. What was he doing now? Did he even know what had happened to her?
As her bitterness grew, so did her power. Each day in the Dark Realm, Fiona’s power intensified. The darkness invaded every one of her cells until it became her, and she became it. There was no longer a difference. The darkness changed, adapted to her and she embraced it. They were one, as it always was meant to be. She occasionally attempted to escape from her realm, finding that she couldn’t get through, but her darkness could. She was almost satisfied with that, plaguing other worlds with the darkness that lived within her, scattering it throughout the timelines as her realm existed outside of time. Infecting their perfect worlds with darkness that came from her.
As her power grew stronger, she no longer needed her dreams to shape the realm and began to manipulate it herself. She began to create creatures, starting with wolves and unicorns, the animals she had grown up taking care of, but the ones she created were not like those in Pixie Hollow. They held her darkness, their coats as black as the darkest night in tribute to their Queen. Following the wolves and unicorns came her beloved dragon, and then creatures of darkness, the kind that would haunt the nightmares of any reasonable person. A thousand years past, the Dark Realm came alive with wildlife, but the loneliness that Fiona felt began to take hold, squeezing the love and compassion she had once felt from her heart, darkening it. With the darkness, came the increasing thirst for revenge, on those who had banished her, and those who had left her to rot in what they thought was a dark wasteland. They had shown her no mercy, and she would return the favour. They had displayed only cruelty, and she would do the same.
The creature she created from her hatred had no true form, merely appearing as a cloud of darkness, black against the sunset, a storm-like mass of shadowy particles. It would be easier to let loose that way, and harder for its victims to see it coming. As she stood back and looked up at her creation, she could feel the hunger radiating from it, the desire to control, the need to dominate worlds, a reflection of her own emotions. She watched with curiosity as the mass began to expand, waiting to see what it could do. It wasn’t something she wanted to inflict upon her beloved creatures, but she needed to see what powers this new creature could possess. As the creature reached out to others, she couldn’t help but smirk as it began to infect their mind, turning them into its puppets, making them one with it. A hive mind. And not just that, but one she could control if needed. It came from her darkness after all.
The creature grew larger over time, almost too large for her to keep under complete control. It slowly began to possess more and more of the creatures of the forest, against Fiona’s desires, and she began to realise that it could not remain within her Realm. It needed somewhere to grow itself, somewhere it was free to create and expand and dominate until she unleashed it on unsuspecting realms. The need to create such a place intensified when the Darkling stepped into her Realm. Suddenly the feeling of loneliness, the cruelty she had wanted to inflict, all subdued, his presence all but banishing those feelings to the back of her mind. She had fallen in love with him rather quickly, perhaps because she had been alone so long, or perhaps because they were always meant to be one. She never questioned it, but she knew she could not allow the creature to remain in the Realm with someone she loved as much as she loved him.
It took her a few weeks to find the right spell and the tools needed to enact it, but eventually, she was ready. Her fingers twitched gently as she recanted the spell, the creature being bound by an invisible thread. It slowly began to fall in on itself, as a bright light surrounded it and then suddenly, that light formed a split in the sky, revealing a barren wasteland beyond. Fiona had barely any time to think, acting mostly on instinct as she cast the creature through the opened doorway, sending with it the creatures it had infected with its control. As the split in the sky began to heal, trapping the creature on the other side, Fiona watched as it expanded from its binds, stretching itself across the horizon of its new kingdom as the creatures controlled by the hive mind ran wild beneath the burnt orange sky.
