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Chapter Text

A slight breeze was blowing in her right ear, sunlight pouring on her resting face. She felt something soft and ticklish beneath her, carressing her arms and legs - that is when she woke up to the sounds of chirping birds up above. Raven Queen opened her eyes and blinked into the clear blue sky. The clouds seemed to be in a rush, chasing through the sky, and now and then dappled light shone through the gaps. Not a single sign of danger or anything out of the ordinary, and yet Raven suddenly felt a shiver go down her spine. Oddly enough, she felt like she was being watched. Was it an animal in the woods around the clearing, hiding between the trees and lurking in the shadows? She squinted her eyes against the sunlight and glanced into the forest. She couldn't see anything, which should've been obvious to her at the start - if a wolf was lurking in the shadows, her simple eyes wouldn't have seen it. She would have been oblivious and a nice meal for a bad wolf.

Raven decided she needed to return to Ever After High immediately - wondering about how she had gotten here in the first place is something she could do in the safety of her and Apple White's room. She got up and was just about to set off, when she heard a faint, distant voice.

"Raven ..."

Did it not sound just like Apple's voice?

"Raven ..."

But no, it sounded like her mother's voice!

Her face darkened, as she turned around to face her mother, who at that moment should have been trapped in her mirror instead of ominously wandering around the Enchanted Forest. But there was no mother she could face, only a naked, seemingly dead tree. She raised an eyebrow at this.

"How weird," she whispered to herself. "This tree doesn't fit into the Enchanted Forest at all."

And it truly didn't: unlike the rest of its kind, it was of a dark, grayish bark, had not a single leaf even though it was only july, but had an eery aura to it. The immediate proximity of it looked strangely much more shadier and murky, and the trees around it had seemingly grown bent in order to avoid getting too close to it. The treetop's thick, twisted branches looked like arms reaching out to anything that gets near. Raven backed off a little, feeling as though the branches were also reaching out to her. On top of it all, there was a huge, gaping hole in the middle of its body. Like a black hole, hungry for anything full of life.

Or like a mouth. Raven heard a voice again, and this time she knew she wasn't imagining things. "Raven ... !" it called again, the voice that now sounded like Briar Beauty's. It sounded like it was coming from inside the hole, a warped, uncanny echo.

"The forest's playing tricks on me," Raven mumbled disgruntled and turned her back to the tree. She would no longer give it any more attention - she had to get back to Ever After High.

After what seemed like hours of stumbling through the woods, she somehow managed to find back to Ever After High. The magical trees seemed to lead the way, as their branches looked like arms pointing towards the school. When she finally emerged out of the Enchanted Forest, she found herself on a hill full of blooming colorful flowers; Ever After High stood proud in the distance, the light of the noon sun hit the castle tower-like school in a way that made it shine and shimmer, the blue sky and the chirping birds and warmth on Raven's skin made her almost forget about what had happened.

Though she kept cool and stayed grounded. By the end of her walk back to Ever After High, she was fully exhausted and her feet hurt like hell. And that did anything but help her when she opened the school door and stepped inside the hall. Suddenly, all eyes were on her. Some only threw covert, prying looks at her before turning around and whispering stuff that Raven could already imagine herself. Some decisively and instantly entered the next best room in order to avoid her. Some just stared at her like an attraction. She wrinkled her nose annoyed and frowned at this. She was used to being stared at, she was used to being disliked and mistrusted by many. But that didn't make it any easier for her.

"Raven! Raven!" Although of course there were one or more students that didn't back away as soon as she came a little close. "Raven!" None other than Apple White, her roommate and ... complicated friend made herself a way through the crowded hall. She waved at her in nearly a frenzy, and most students stepped out of her way, but out of other reasons that for Raven - out of respect. Apple White, daughter of Snow White, was loved and appreciated by everyone. And yet, even though Raven Queen and Apple White were polar opposites of each other, Raven had found a friend in Apple White, in spite of their many differences.

Raven walked down the steps to Apple, hearing someone faintly whisper "It's the Evil Queen's daughter!", but determinately chose to ignore them.

"Where have you been?" Apple asked Raven. Her worry was evident to all. "I woke up this morning and you weren't in bed, so I thought you had made the decision to be an early bird for a change, but I didn't see you all day! After the first break, I decided to ask around if anyone had seen you. But not one Royal nor one Rebel knew what you were up to."

"I would also love to know what I was up to this morning," Raven thought to herself. For a second she looked into Apple's blue eyes and thought about telling her about the tree in the Enchanted Forest and how she woke up in the clearing without any memory of how she had gotten there. "No," she decided, "Apple would totally freak out if I told her."

Just then, the school bell rang as the halls started getting less and less crowded, the students flooding their classes instead. Raven felt relief sweep her body - she could finally focus on something other than this strange morning.

"Come on now, you've already missed so many classes today!" Apple exclaimed as she linked arms with Raven. "And I have, oh, Kingdom Management! My favorite subject!" Apple White beamed at Raven. "And you have ..."

"General Villainy," Raven concluded Apple's sentence. Apple shivered at that.

"I just cannot wrap my mind around how you could enjoy such a subject!" she said incredulously, freeing her arm from Raven's again and crossing her arms before her chest.

"I don't -"

"But oh well, like mother like daughter," Apple figured and smiled at her. Raven could only sigh. Her favourite subject was Muse-ic, and in fact she disliked anything malicious, unlike her mother, but she decided not to oppose Apple's opinion - she did not want to argue with Apple White about her family and, even more so, her apparent "destiny". All she really wanted was to lock herself in her room and sleep, as she was exhausted and wouldn't have to think about that tree.

... That weird, strange tree ...

Thinking a class about something she hated but was accused of often times in her life would pen in her thoughts about what had happened was a grave and foolish mistake. Raven couldn't force herself to listen to Mr. Badwolf's instructions and explanations a single second throughout the whole period.

The cauldron in front of her was bubbling a gooey green liquid she couldn't for the life of her identify, and Mr. Badwolf's instructions were only a muted noise in the background, a film playing in the other room. Raven stared out the window in nearly a trance - was there a storm brewing in the distance? The clouds seemed so, so gloomy and dense, like they were about to burst open and release a rainfall this whole summer hadn't seen yet.

Raven narrowed her eyes as she looked into the distance and scooted a little away from her cauldron. Did she hear that right? Hadn't she heard her name again? But whose voice was it? She couldn't quite recognize it, even though it sounded unbelievably familiar. Suddenly, she felt the urge to go after the voice.

It had something important to tell her, she just knew it. Something that would ...

"Raven Queen!" There it was again, calling out for her.

Raven abruptly stood up, still staring out the window, an urgent look came over her face. Her trembling breathing was fast, alarmed; she clenched her fists so hard her knuckles appeared white and bloodless.

"Raven Queen! Will you snap out of it?!"

Fully caught off-guard, Raven turned to Mr. Badwolf, who stared her down angrily.

"I'm aware that my class is not in your top ten, but that does not give you the right to completely disregard my class!" he yelled at her. "Watch your cauldron, for goodness sake!"

Only when Mr. Badwolf mentioned Raven's cauldron and deliberateley pointed at it, was when she finally took notive of it again. It was bubbling over the edge and eating acid holes into Raven's table - the students next to her had moved away from her and her cauldron as far as possible, concerned faces stared at her. Raven's face darkened when she noticed that specifically two students were all but concerned: Faybelle Thorn, a few rows behind her, looked more than amoused, her ellbows on the table and her head comfortably planted on her intertwined fingers. Next to Faybelle, Raven noticed a wide, toothy grin emerging out of thin air. In a matter of seconds the mischievous grin gained a face and body - Kitty Cheshire, daughter of the Cheshire Cat.

Raven turned around to her overflowing cauldron, from which the liquid was slowly but surely seeping its way to Raven. Her right hand got enshrouded in a mystical purple fog, before she instructed the magical goo to quickly back off and get back in its cauldron with just a short turn of the hand. Mr. Badwolf grunted relieved and turned back around to the board, which was filled with writings Raven hadn't taken notive of the entire class. Her classmates on the other hand decided not to get closer to Raven again. Raven heard high-pitched snickering coming from behind her, and glancing over her shoulder she saw Faybelle and Kitty giggling with eachother.

Sighing, Raven tried to ignore them and looked out the window once more. Her brows furrowed - she realized that what she had been watching in the distance the entire time, over which the sky had darkened and the ashen clouds were strangely spiraling, was the Enchanted Forest ...

After General Villainy, she would have had her favourite: Muse-ic class, and usually she couldn't wait to show up at Professor Pied Piper's class in order to play her favourite instruments and express her love for music, but that day was a different day. A strange, puzzling day. She knew she wouldn't last a second in that class without having to think about that tree, the voices calling out to her and their ... importance.

Raven figured that whatever this mytserious tree and its voices were about, it was more important than one day of school, so after somehow making it through the rest of class, she booked it back to her and Apple's room, and she was relieved to see that Apple wasn't there. She tied her long ravenblack and purple hair into a ponytail, put on some more comfortable clothes worth a longer walk over a hill and through a forest, and even took her little purple bag with her.

No way in all of Fairytale World would she tell her friends about the tree! Strangely enough, she felt as though she simply shouldn't; a dark and grueling feeling overcame her when she stopped at the door and looked back at Apple's bright and royal-looking side of the room.

"Apple just wouldn't understand it," she thought to herself, "This tree ... it could possibly alter my destiny. Apple can't know about this. Ever."

And with that final thought, she clenched her fist around the strap of her bag and turned around to leave Ever After High, and return to the Enchanted Forest.

To Raven's presumable misfortune, she snuck out the entrance hall while everyone was at class - everyone but Apple White.

Apple White stood by the lockers, hiding around the corner in the shadows. "What's she doing now?" Apple murmured to herself as she watched Raven sneak out and close the great door behind her. She had seen Raven storm out of General Villainy. "Daring, tell Mrs. Her Majesty I'll be late to Princessology," she had told Prince Daring and followed Raven to her and Raven's room. Even after Raven had changed clothes and sneaked down into the hall Apple had followed her. Now she wacthed her leave the school ever so suspiciously.

Without another thought, Apple also left Ever After High, in order to find out what Raven was being strange about the whole day. She was hiding something, Apple knew, something dangerous, and she had to stop her friend from indulging in it!

When Raven finally entered the Enchanted Forest again where she had left it, the noon sun had set into the afternoon sun - soon it would be evening, the sky draped in orange and golden cloths. But where she was at, the sky was far from beauty like that. Above her, the clouds looked heavy with rain, still in a haste like during the morning she had woken up in the clearing. A sharp and eerie wind blew about her ears and hair and through the thick of the woods, making the leafs rattle, singing an ominous, melancholic song.

The forest seemed to guide her again; somehow she just knew which turn to take and which tree she knew from her first time on this way, and the branches that had previously shown her the way out now showed her the way in.

Meanwhile, Apple was freezing. If only she had also changed clothes - these high heels and those short puffy sleeves were more fit for a princess than a hiker - but of course she had had no time for that then. Thank the fairies, Raven didn't notice Apple following her through the forest. She hid behind a thick tree every few steps, wrapped in the shadows and bushes, and tried her very best to both be stealthy and not loose Raven. The Enchanted Forest felt like a dark and sinister labyrinth that day - completely foreign to Apple White, as she had ever and always perceived the Enchanted Forest as a place of whimsical goodness, not one which leads evil daughters of evil queens to questionable and wicked places.

At long last Raven found the clearing. It suddenly looked nothing like when she had woken up, not in the slightest - the shadows between the trees around the clearing now felt like they were filled to the brim with dangers lurking; werewolves and vampires, tree monsters, shadow creatures and ghosts to top it all off. Raven looked up at the sky. Right above her were the clouds brewing together, truning in a circle around each other fastly - the eye of the imminent storm. Suddenly it was like thunder struck her mind - what in all of Fairytale World was she doing here?! If the clouds decided to break open now, possibly throwing thunder bolts as well, she'd be doomed.

But all those worries and thoughts dropped from her shoulders as soon as she saw the tree that she had woken up to just a few hours ago. Apple hid behind one of the trees around the clearing, spying on Raven, though she instantly paused when she saw the tree Raven was looking at. Apple stood there awestruck, her mouth agape and her eyes widened in shock. She backed off a few steps. That tree's aura was overwhelmingly negative. Its completely lightless hole seemed to want to suck Apple in, swallow her whole and enjoy every piece of her live body. The branches of the naked, greyish tree rattling in the vehement wind, its body seemed to shiver or ... quake.

Apple White wanted absolutely nothing to do with this ... thing ... but she realized Raven still stood there, in a trance-like state, just staring at it in awe, like it wasn't emitting the most off-putting, evil energy in all of Fairytale World.

Then they heard it - a sound as of something turning and cracking bones echoed through the clearing. And both knew it - it came from the tree. Apple and Raven both looked closer, when they realized that the tree was somehow turning itself.

"Raven!" she heard it call out for her again. Apple heard it too - stunned, she could only stare when Raven abruptly starting walking towards the tree.

Raven stepped closer to the tree, until she could softly put her fingers on its bark. No doubt, the tree was cold and dead. Gosh, but she just couldn't get herself to back away from it. It was talking to her in that voice again, that voice where she couldn't quite put her finger on where she had heard it before, let alone why it felt so familiar made her feel so warm inside. And it sighed her name, less urgent now, rather conspiratorial. It whispered promises promising answers to her deepest, darkest questions - promises that promised an escape from what is said about her in the Storybook of Legends - a refuge from what everyone believed was her destiny - to step into the shoes of her mother - to become the next Evil Queen, while Apple White would turn from a friend into her natural nemesis.

"Why must your promises be such tantalizing secrets?" Raven whispered to the tree.

"Secrets exist to be found out" the tree whispered back, an ever so warm and welcoming voice coming from the depths of the tree's hollow hole.

"Raven, no!" Apple White suddenly yelled, running up to Raven, who was just about to step foot into the tree's hole - Apple grabbed Raven by the arm, yelling at her to get away from the tree, but the tree unexpectedly had one more card up its sleeve: Thunder sounded from the sky up above, the clouds opening their gates and rain sweeping the Enchanted Forest - the wind began to pull and drag at Raven and Apple. Through a powerful gust of wind, Apple was shoved against Raven, who pushed her hands against the bark around the hole as to not tumble into it. Her face distortet with pain as the bark digged itself into her hands, when Raven's arms caved under the pressure of both Apple's body against hers and the vigorous wind.

The last thing Raven Queen and Apple White saw before vanishing was the black inside of the gloomy, out of place tree.

As if nothing at all had happened in the last few hours, the rain became less and less before eventually fading, the clouds above the Enchanted Forest moved on in a slow, almost careless manner, and the sun started shining and smiling bright again, while the wind turned into nothing but a pleasant summer breeze.

Chapter Text

Intertwined with eachother, a purple and black haired girl and a golden blonde one plunged from somewhere up above down the trunk of a tree, or the hole of it that spread way down into the ground. It devoured the two girls' screams and let them echo down and further down, flying with them through an impenetrable, endless darkness. The daughter of the Evil Queen and the daughter of Snow White turned and turned while falling, their hairs wildly mixing like black and white stripes and struggling to keep up with the tqo. Their hearts raced like certain death was near and drummed against their rib cages in just the same beat.

Then, after a while that felt like forever, somewhere else and somewhere unknown, a misty, colourful light emerged from a tree's hole in a dark and deep forest - only to spew out two teenage girls and then go out again after just a few seconds. Raven Queen and Apple White landed roughly in a thorny bush. Apple was the first to crawl out and exhaustedly fall with her back on the grassy ground. Raven didn't lose any time to get out of the bush either; she fell on Apple White face-first. When she propped herself up with her arms, Raven found two big blue eyes staring at her from beneath her. Others would have instantly gotten off of Apple, but Raven, for some reason unbeknownst to her, simply stared back at her. Apple's light blonde hair scattered around her on the ground, making it look like she was engulfed in a sea of gold. Raven's hair band had gone lost in the tree tunnel to fae-knows-where, her black and purple hair strands now spilling onto Apple's arms and framing her round face, which was still looking up at her in a kind of surprise.

Raven felt her head getting hot, though she immediately brushed it off as embarrassment.

"Raven?" Apple muttered after a while, a while that had seemed too long to be between friends. In any case, hearing Apple say her name acted as a wake up call for Raven - she shifted and sat on the ground next to her, skipping what had just happened. Her new surroundings looked too unfamiliar to not be the more important topic at the moment. Apple had noticed it too. "... Where are we?"

"If only I knew," Raven said and stood up. Again, they were in a forest - Raven was starting to get annoyed of that fact - but this one was not the Enchanted Forest. That was instantly for sure, since it had not a single attribute of the Enchanted Forest. The sky above it was a greyish blue, not as if rainy days were near, but as if that was just its ordniary state. They stood in another clearing, though the trees around it looked dark and crooked, not a gust of magic in the air. "But we are definitely not home."

"It feels ... unsettling," Apple said, before she shivered at the cold temperatures that had nothing of the summer in the Fairytale World.

Raven turned around to help Apple get up on her feet by lending her her hand, but when she did, Apple's hand went directly through Raven's. Both with incredulous faces, they stared at eachother for a second. Something was completely and utterly off.

Apple rushed to stand up on her own. "Raven, since when do you have ... feathers?"

"Feathers? Apple, you've always been white as snow, but this is a new extreme!"

And consequently, both looked down: Apple's eyes widened as she saw her own feet, which slightly levitated above the grass, through her own hands, which had the color and transparency akin to a misty snowstorm. Raven gasped for air when she spotted the few but not easy to overlook raven black feathers adorning her arms; at that instant, they shot back into her arms as if they had been caught being rebellious in front of their master, and all they left was a shook Raven and the goosebumps all over her skin.

Instinctively, they looked at eachother once more; Apple's eyes had turned into a light, slightly greyish but on all levels ghostly blue, Raven noticed. On the other hand, Raven's purple eyes had turned into a mystical darker purple than the lilac Apple was used to.

"Apple, you're a ghost," Raven exclaimed.

"I'm not a ghost, I'm the future Snow White!"

"And I usually don't have feathers sprouting from my arms but here we are."

Though Apple only crossed her arms and shoveled away the seed of the thought that Raven had just planted. Raven ran to the tree and stuck her head into its hole. The only thing she found was a quite caught off-guard owl, it hooed at her angrily before flying out of the tree and into the forest, not without using its wing to swat at Raven's face.

"There's nothing here. The portal is closed," Raven said. Apple started gasping for breath at that fact and felt herself getting dizzier by the moment, she wafted air at herself with her see-through hand, only for her face to distort from fright at the sight of the squirrel she saw through it. "A ghost," she thought to herself, "I'm a ghost!"

Meanwhile Raven was still examining the curious tree - it looked really nothing like the tree in the Enchanted Forest: just like the average trees in her own world, this one was bright and blooming and full of life, just like a tree in the summertime should. Which was ... completely unlike the rest of the dark and sinister looking trees around the clearing. She thought it looked liked two trees from two different worlds that had swapped places.

When Raven turned around to face Apple, she regretted calling her a ghost, as Apple nearly had a breakdown. She pressed her shaking hands against her chest and tried calming down by slowly breathing, muttering words of encouragement to herself that Raven could barely make out. Raven left the tree behind (it certainly wouldn't be difficult to find again) and started speaking to Apple in a soothing whispering tone. "We'll get back to Ever After High, it won't happen right this moment but hey, we've always conquered any challenge!" She wanted to put her hand on Apple's shoulder but it went right through. Apple looked up at her, a soft and grateful smile on her face. And there it was again, that warm tingling feeling like butterflies fluttering in Raven's tummy; she reciprocated Apple's smile, though with a rosy tint across her cheeks.

"Hey!" Apple and Raven jumped at the sudden male voice blaring from the shadows of the unfamiliar forest. Moving closer together, Raven and Apple stared at the trees from which the voice had come, however, they didn't answer it. A few unbearable seconds later, a tall athletic figure stepped out of the shade and onto the clearing - the boy looked to be around their age, perhaps a little older, his skin a warm brown and his eyes a golden yellow, nevertheless what drew Raven's and Apple's attention right away were the wolf-like ears on his head, then the black jacket that seemed to be a school's jacket. A younger looking girl with long redish-pink hair and the same wolf ears peeking out of her black beanie appeared behind him.

"Did you guys get lost?" the girl asked, there was absolutely nothing threatening or peculiar in her young voice. Though being much taller and stronger, the boy also didn't have even a lick of threat about him. In fact, he had something almost puppy-like in his eyes.

Apple and Raven gave eachother a quick uncertain glance, before Apple decided to speak. "Yes! We did get lost," she chirped, "thank the fae you guys found us." A slightly bewildered look came across Raven's face, and the wolf girl raised an eyebrow as well.

"Well ... you guys must be new here, right? We've never seen you here," the girl said and nonchalantly walked over to the two, now smiling at them. "I'm Howleen Wolf" - with her thumb she pointed at the boy behind her - "and that's Clawd, my brother. Nice to meet you two ghouls." Howleen held out her hand to Raven first, then to Apple, and they shook her hand accordingly. Clawd came closer too, waving at them.

"My name is Apple White, daughter of -" Apple couldn't finish her sentence, because Raven poked her elbow into Apple's side. "Apple White - and I'm Raven Queen," Raven completed it instead. The gears had started to shift in her mind, a premonition was forming in her jumble of thoughts when she examined Howleen and Clawd.

"Cool, your last name is really Queen? What kind of monsters are you?" Clawd asked.

Raven laughed it off, before realizing she had absolutely no idea what "monster" she even was. "I'm a ghost," Apple exclaimed, but only Raven noticed that that sentence alone was driving her insane - she glanced at Apple worrisome.

"Then you must be a werebird," Howleen said in a casual tone, looking at the black feathers that were slowly but surely spreading on Raven's arms and neck - right before vanishing back into her arms. Raven let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, grinning sheepishly. "And you guys must be werewolves," Raven replied. Apple stared at her quite astounded, but Clawd chimed in before she could say anything: "Of course we are. Come on now, let's bring you back to school!"

"Yeah, class begins in a few minutes, we'll show you around a bit during lunch," Howleen said. Raven and Apple nodded, since they really had no idea what to say - and for sure they would still be clueless about everything and anything at the school that they apparantly were now enrolled in. The two girls made sure to stay a little behind Howleen and Clawd.

"Apple, I think I know where we are," Raven whispered to Apple, who was floating next to her.

"I may or may not know it, too," Apple muttered.

Raven and Apple looked at eachother. "We're at Monster High!" they called out simultaneously. A heavy stone on both their hearts was lifted at that matter - at least they finally knew where they were. The only problem now: getting back home ...

So at last the Monster High would surely be an unfamiliar place, but not all faces would be unfamiliar - because Raven and Apple had a friend at Monster High, one that they hadn't seen in a long, long time but that was certainly dear to them both. "We've got to find Astronova!" Apple said, and at that point all the stress and confusion had fallen off her and was replaced by a truly enthusiastic, optimistic look in her eyes. "Exacly," Raven agreed, "but first, we should try to blend in for the moment. We have a friend here but other than that we don't know anyone here. It could be dangerous - we don't know how people will react about us."

Apple sighed yet agreed with Raven.

"What are you two whispering about?" Howleen appeared next to Raven, Clawd next to Apple. "Just arrived and already keeping deep dark secrets?" The werewolves laughed; Raven and Apple shot their shot at a laugh as well, though they couldn't help but let it sound a little nervous.

"Don't worry girls, the Monster High accepts anyone and everyone! No ghoul gets left behind," Clawd beamed.

"It will be difficult at first, that's just part of arriving somewhere new," Howleen said, "but you'll have friends in no time. We're your first for sure."

Apple and Raven smiled at them, then Raven asked: "So what were you doing in the forest before school anyway?"

"We were playing hunt - it's fun, you should try it," Clawd boomed at the two.

"We'll see," Raven said. Howleen and Clawd went ahead again, leaving Raven and Apple by themselves.

"You can't just ask rebels in a forest what they were doing before school!" Apple whispered to Raven irritaded.

"They're definitely not rebels, Apple."

"Yes, they're monsters ... M-O-N-S-T-E-R-S, and playing hunt - this is all so nuts ...!"

"Come on now, they were just so nice to us - every ghoul is accepted, which means we are too."

"Yeah, every ghoul is accepted - emphasis on ghoul! We are not ghouls." Apple crossed her arms again.

Raven sighed. "I know you, or rather your mom was hunted by the queen's hunter, but this is in no way part of your destiny."

"This has nothing to do with that! And weren't you the one who just pointed out that we've got to be careful around here?"

"Well, yeah, we do, but -"

That's when the last trees were stood behind them and Howleen turned around, opening her arms wide as if to show off: "Welcome to Monster High!" Clawd and Howleen laughed. Raven and Apple just stood there, looking up in awe at the gigantic old, purple and dark colored school with its huge emblem above the entrance door. Its big windows were coffin-shaped, some details and aspects crooked and representing its old age and gothic get-up.

There were some odd-looking, certainly monstrous students hanging around in the front yard when the loud and screeching school bell chimed. Howleen and Clawd eagerly guided them inside, and the inside of the school was even more hectic than the students flowing from outside into the hallways. Raven could only gawk at the monsters passing by, talking and laughing. She witnessed a small, green guy with glasses open his locker, before a giant tentacle emerged from it, grasping the boy and sucking him into his locker. Raven shivered, it reminded her of the tree in the Enchanted Forest that had lured and sucked her in as well.

"Hey, staring's rude," Apple said after hitting Raven's shoulder with her own.

"Wasn't staring," Raven said jokingly, which made Apple smile. Raven's cheeks turned rosy once more, a few feathers appearing around them as if to frame her blushing.

Raven and Apple both silently decided to stay on the lookout for their friend Astronova, but instead a few hallways later Apple bumped into - or rather floated through - someone very short. "Oh, excuse me," Apple said, Raven stopped in her tracks while waiting for Apple. The girl turned around, a sweet smile on her rose-colored face, but the thing Apple noticed initially was not the tiny heart on her cheek or her purple eyes akin to Raven's formerly lilac ones; it was the fangs that showed when she smiled. "A vampire," Apple thought and the little color she still had in her face nearly completely left - which you would think would be impossible for a ghost, yet here Apple was, almost fully transparent.

"No worries!" the vampire girl said. "Are you new here? I'm Draculaura." Draculaura was quite petite and dainty, stroking a black hair with small pink streaks behind her ears. She had long straight hair tied into two pigtails and wore a cute pink, victorian-looking outfit.

"We just got here," Raven said as she came up to the two. "That's Apple White, I'm Raven Queen."

Howleen had noticed that Raven and Apple were not following them anymore, and she appeared next to Draculaura, laying an arm around her shoulder and pulling the vampire into a quick, friendly hug. "Clawd and I found them in the forest, they were totally lost."

"Oh ghoul! Fangtastic that you found them," Draculaura exclaimed and her romanian accent shone through, "the Monster High can be a little bit of a maze sometimes, but you'll manage after a while." She laughed sweetly.

After noticing how late it was getting and that most of the student body had left the hallways, Howleen, Raven, Apple and Draculaura parted ways and ran through the halls. Clawd had already found his own, leaving Howleen to show Raven and Apple theirs. When Howleen asked them what class they had, Raven and Apple fell blank at first.

"Uhh, we have - languages?" Raven said uncertain.

"Oh, you mean Dead Languages! This way," Howleen said and steered them around the corner. They stopped at a big wooden door, Howleen placed her hands on her hips. "Wow, your first ever class is with Mr. Rotter. Good luck!" And with that, she quickly left to find her own class.

Raven looked up at the clock on the wall, a spider lowered itself off of it. "Five minutes late," she stated.

She met Apple's gaze, the two girls were completely alone in the hallway, and for a moment it felt like they were the only ones left in this whole wide world.

Raven put her hand on the door, wanting to open it, when she turned around to Apple one last time, who was staring at the floor beneath her like it was the most distressing thing in the world. "What's wrong? You're speculating again."

Apple lastly sighed and quietly said: "I just hope the others have noticed we're gone ..." Faint tears gleamed in her glassy eyes.

Raven smiled and stroked her hand over Apple's ghost-cheek. "They're already looking for us," she whispered encouragingly, but when the words left her mouth, a shadow lay over her pounding heart...

Chapter Text

"They've been gone for quite a while now ..." Ashlynn Ella said and looked worriedly at the clock - their last class of the day, Creative Storytelling, was almost over; it was late afternoon.

"So, what's the deal?" Briar Beauty asked, secretely chewing her bubblegum without their teacher, Mr. Jack B. Nimble, noticing it. "Maybe Raven got Apple to ditch class, and perhaps that'll let her finally get a little loose."

"Briar!" Ashlynn exclaimed, pushing a strand of her honey blonde hair behind her ear. "Is that seriously how you see Raven? She would never ditch class, and even if - certainly not on purpose."

Briar leaned back in her chair. "Ugh! I know, sorry. Maybe I'll sound like a bad person now, but I'm somewhat glad Apple's been gone for a while. Finally no one is whispering in my ears that I should succumb to my destiny and sleep for a hundred years, loose all my friends and family ..."

Ashlynn sighed. In some way, Briar was right - she grimaced when she remembered how Apple had reacted to her and Hunter's relationship. According to her, their loving relationship was wrong simply because Ashlynn was a Royal and Hunter a Rebel, and it wasn't part of their stories. She would meet Hunter in the Enchanted Forest today, they would have a picknick and talk and kiss and cuddle, and the thought of that instantly swept all her worries away. Her cheeks turned red as she looked at the board but had none of what was written on it on her mind.

With a smirk on her face, Briar knew exacly what Ashlynn was thinking of. She was happy for the two lovebirds, and she knew that after class she would probably not see Ashlynn for the rest of the day. Then she looked back down at the paper in front of her. It was utterly blank, the only words written on it: the date in the corner and, like a big unfinished statement, "The" at the start. The prompt was to tell a story from the point of view of a personal narrator, but she had no idea where to even start. The creative juices just weren't flowing that day.

Not for Briar Beauty at least ... She heard lively murmuring coming from the seat next to her. With a raised eyebrow, she curiously looked over to Madeline Hatter, who was eagerly sat spilling all her thoughts on a long scroll of paper that was already flowing over the edge of the table. "Oh, yes, great idea...!" Briar heard her murmur, as if speaking to someone invisible to the meager mind. "No, not like that! Like this!" Maddie stopped after every other sentence to discuss writing ideas with whatever voices she was hearing, before throwing herself back into writing the story, which at that point was certainly long enough.

"Well, Maddie is unfairly privileged for this task," Briar thought and crossed her arms, staring back down on her blank sad paper, "doesn't she have narrators in her head who can easily tell her how a personal narrator would tell a story?"

"How many times do I have to say this - they are NOT in my head!" Maddie exclaimed, turning to Briar and holding up her index finger lecturing. "I may have lost my marbles but I'm not crazy!"

"Did the narrators tell you my thoughts?" Briar asked, more genuinely interested than offended of the blatant violation of her personal, private thoughts.

"Of course they did, am I right?" Maddie turned her head to face nothing, beaming into the air. For a few seconds, Briar Beauty and Cerise Hood, who was sitting behind the three, stared at Maddie incredulously. Then Maddie suddenly burst into laughter like whoever was talking to her had said the funniest thing since sliced bread, Briar and Cerise flinched at that. Ashlynn didn't notice any of it, drawing doodles of her and Hunter on her paper instead of working on her task. Mr. Nimble turned around, his face one big question mark, but before he could say anything, the saving school bell rang and everybody started packing up their stuff, intending to leave as quickly as possible. After all, it was a warm, beautiful summer day, not a single cloud anywhere in the sky, not even over the Enchanted Forest...

Before Briar could even react, Ashlynn had already waved goodbye and left class to meet up with Hunter. Cerise also started leaving, except her gaze shortly met Briar's. What was that face Cerise made just then? It looked rather alarmed ... or so Briar thought. She turned back to Maddie, who was wrapping up her long scroll and about to hand it to Mr. Nimble. "Hey Maddie, about the narrators ..."

"Yes?" Maddie smiled at her cooperatively.

"Do they happen to know what happened to Apple and Raven? Ashlynn's worries are honestly reasonable, and know that I'm thinking about it ... it is strange that the two have been absent. I mean, first Raven is missing half of the school day, and then Apple also vanishes ..."

"Well, of course they know what happened to Raven and Apple - that's their job after all! It's just that they don't like to spill all the beans," Maddie said accusingly and narrowed her eyes at the sky. Apparently not even Maddie knew where the narrators' voices were really coming from.

Briar looked at Maddie pleadingly. "Well ...?"

"They went into the Enchanted Forest," Maddie blurted out instantly.

"Is ... is that all they're willing to tell?" Briar asked, a spark of hope still glimmering in her eyes.

"Yup, one of them at least," Maddie answered plainspoken and smiling. "They're not very talkative to anyone who's not of their own kind! And sometimes, they speak in riddles ... but I welcome every good riddle!" Maddie giggled like it wasn't dawning on Briar that Apple and Raven might've been in actual trouble in that very moment.

"Maddie! Will you help me find them?" she asked. "The narrators being ever-so aloof may not be very helpful, but it's better than nothing at all," she said in a sober, resolute manner. When Maddie squealed of joy and agreed, pleased that she could take on such a mysterious, enigmatic quest of finding Apple White and Raven Queen, Briar noticed Cerise still standing on the other side of the room by the door. Cerise quickly hid her face in her red hood, leaving the room and closing the door behind her. Only now were Maddie und Briar alone in the classroom that even Mr. Nimble had already left. "Alright then. Come on!"

As they left the classroom, Maddie was still silently arguing with the narrators and Briar took note of two very mischievous students of Ever After High. Faybelle Thorn and Kitty Cheshire - the two had noticeably been hanging out more lately - were having a chat by the lockers, Faybelle leaning on one which was certainly not her's and Kitty's tail wrapping around her own legs in amusement. That's when both also took note of Briar eyeing them. She looked away at once, but Faybelle and Kitty had alredy taken interest. Maddie and Briar paused because suddenly, an impish grin manifested in front of Maddie and Briar, before the rest of it appeared in the blink of an eye. The cat-like rebel stood in front of them, crossing her arms behind her back and looking up at them in a giddy manner. Faybelle fluttered over to the three.

"Looking for your friends?" Faybelle smirked gleefully.

In an instant, all of Briar's mistrust towards Faybelle and Kitty came back with full force. She narrowed her eyes at them, soaring up into a no-bullshit pose. "Why are you asking? Have you seen them?"

Faybelle and Kitty exchanged amused glances. "Only Raven in General Villainy," Kitty said.

Briar reacted a lot less tame than Kitty and Faybelle had imagined, she stepped close to Kitty and whispered in her ear in a threatening voice: "You've got your filthy paws in this, don't you?" Kitty, her tail wiggling nervously, clearly had not expected that, and Maddie looked at Briar surprised, too.

"Come on, Briar, let's not make assumptions," Maddie said, laying her hand on Briar's shoulder. Briar didn't shake her hand off, though she did let go of Kitty and Faybelle in that instant, but her dark eyes stayed fixated on the two for a few seconds, until they were too far behind them to keep looking. "What was all that about?" Maddie was truly astonished at Briar's sudden outburst.

Briar crossed her arms in front of her chest, quietly hugging herself as her tone of voice became hushful. "Those two ... they're not excaly known for their peaceful and sensible nature, you know?"

"Why yes, Faybelle and Kitty are natural troublemakers, that's something no riddle could turn upside-down!"

"Exacly. So it's reasonable to question their innocence in this, right?"

"Yes, absolutely, but it is best to question your enemies in silence. That way they won't see it coming," Maddie said, giggling subsequently. For just a moment, Briar puzzled over Maddie's innocence, before bursting out laughing with her.

Soon after that, they reached the Enchanted Forest, which was blooming in such bright, warm colors that no one would ever suspect two friends going missing in it, let alone it bearing a mysterious hidden portal to another world... Maddie and Briar entered the forest having no idea where to even begin their search - the forest was huge! And so, they decided to stick to calling out for them for a start.

"Raven! Apple!" their voices echoed through bushes and trees, waking up napping birds that fluttered away instantly and surely scaring off other animals that were roaming nearby. "Turn over every stone," Briar commanded, and the Hatter's daughter really did turn over every stone. She told her to not take every word so austere, but Maddie only countered: "If you don't want people to follow your commands, don't give any!"

Defeatedly, Briar sighed, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

None of the two felt the need to mention it, though both secretely sensed the path they had to take to find Apple White and Raven Queen. Both worked their way in the same direction to the supposed winning post - and while Briar opened a bush to have a look inside, then peeked around a few trees, calling out her friends' names, she suddenly heard a yell of amazement and puzzlement. Briar took off straight away, finding Maddie standing in a clearing and staring at something she hadn't noticed yet, for the reason that at first Briar was too busy handling her own sudden disorientation. A pounding attacked her head, she pressed her fingers on her temples, squinting her eyes and swaying from one side to the other, groaning in pain. As soon as she opened her eyes, she knew exacly what was causing her this immediate hurt: the unbelievably dark and brooding energy whirring in the air of the clearing. Briar looked up and found the sky without warning turning grey and stormy. "What in the world ...?" she thought to herself, totally stumped.

Only a few moments earlier, a loving young couple held hands on a picknick blanket. Ashlynn, daughter of Cinderella, looked her boyfriend, Hunter, son of the Huntsman, deep into his bark brown eyes with her grass green ones, intertwined with eachother like the roots of a tree with the grass and the earth underneath it. Just seconds ago, they joked about somehting only they knew about and understood, at the moment still smiling and giggling because of it. The sunlight shone through the leaves, breaking on Ashlynn's golden earrings - to Hunter, Ashlynn looked like a goddess just then. His eyes light up and he already opened his mouth - which is when Ashlynn heard it. "Raven! Apple!"

"Briar? Maddie? What are they doing here?" Ashlynn stood up, she was alarmed at once. She felt that whatever Maddie and Briar were up to, it was much more important than the date Hunter and Ashlynn could resume any time.

"Ashlynn, where are you heading to?" Hunter asked and stood up as well, but his minimal efforts were in vain - "I'll check on them briefly, just wait for me!" Ashlynn shouted at Hunter over her shoulder when she dashed off into the woods. Hunter's confused gaze followed Ashlynn until she disappeared from his sight.

"Mindboggling!" Ashlynn heard Maddie cry out. When she reached the clearing, she saw Maddie excitedly clapping her hands and jumping up and down. "It's a tree from another dimension! How in all of Wonderland did it get here?"

"Maddie, Briar?" Ashlynn said, pushing away some leaves to enter the clearing.

"Ashlynn?" Briar exclaimed when she spotted her. However, Ashlynn's attention was instantly drawn to the strange dark forces of the creepy tree in the clearing that looked like it could drain the life essence out of anything that got too close to it. And Maddie was just ecstatic about it.

Another voice replied from across the clearing. "Raven and Apple are in there, aren't they?" Ashlynn and Briar watched a dark-haired girl with a red hood covering her head walk out of the shadows into the light. Cerise Hood looked up, a concerned, almost pained look on her face.

"You eavesdropped on us in Creative Storytelling!" Briar called out, though she wasn't nearly as offended by it than her remark made Cerise believe.

Cerise hid her face in her hood again. "I'm sorry," she muttered regretfully.

"Who cares about eavesdropping when there's a literal portal to another dimension in our Enchanted Forest!" Maddie bellowed, walking closer to the tree.

"Maddie, don't!" Briar yelled, running up to Maddie before the Hatter's daughter could do anything ill-considered. Ashlynn and Cerise ran up to them as well, and now the four girls were all gathered around the tree. Briar stepped back again. "Did those branches just move? No, it must've been the wind," she thought to herself.

Maddie turned to Cerise. "Well observed, Ms. Hood - all the clues lead to this very tree. And it's a portal, ones like this one are very common!"

"Right, and we don't know where this one leads to!" Briar cried.

"But if Apple and Raven are in there, the only way for them to get out is for us to go in!" Maddie argued, a bright and careless smile on her face like this situation was the most usual thing all week. "And after all, it wouldn't be our first time going down a portal to another world."

"I hate to admit this," Ashlynn intervened and sighed, "but Briar, we might actually have to go down there. We're the only ones who know about this and who knows what Apple and Raven are going through right now. We might not have much time ..."

Briar backed off, wrapping her arms around her upper body. "But ... but what if this is ... certain death?" she mumbled. Briar Beauty and surely everyone in the Fairytale World knew of her destiny - which was death for one hundred years. Well, not death, but sleep; death's little brother. She swore to herself that she would indeed live every moment to the fullest before eventually poking her finger on that fatal tip of that horrible spindle she was destined for. But it really wasn't her own loss of time and life that had become her worst nightmare - it was everything that would happen in the hundred years she took a nap during. She looked from one face to the next one, and she knew that one day, she would wake up in a world in which Cerise, Maddie and Ashlynn were long gone ... as well as all her other friends. Should she really risk it all and loose the fleeting time she still had?

Then the realization hit her. Maddie, Ashlynn and Cerise would take on this journey without her, and maybe - just maybe -, she would loose her friends earlier that way, earlier than it needed to happen. And perhaps Apple and Raven were on the verge of perishing as they spoke. Hell-bent on finding her friends, Briar clenched her fists.

"Alright. Let's go save them!"

Chapter Text

Raven opened the door and went into their new, at Ever After High unheard of class - Dead Languages - and multiple dozen eyes in the auditorium shot to her and Apple at once, some curious and some confused at the sight of the two new monstrous students, some didn't look at all and some already lost interest again. Mr. Rotter stood by the board, stopped writing and turned around to the two, revealing his strange pale blue skin. Apple and Raven gave eachother a quick, uncertain glance.

   "Well, well," Mr. Rotter's voice echoed in the auditorium, "just because you ghouls are new here doesn't mean you have the permission to haunt the hallways during your classes! Now take a seat and be quiet." He continued writing on the big board, and everyone resumed to doing whatever they were doing before. 

   Luckily, Apple spotted the vampire girl with pink skin a few seats below, quite near Mr. Rotter, waving at her and Raven with a big, welcoming smile. "Look," she whispered to Raven, scared of disturbing the class, "that's Draculaura over there!" 

   Relieved to have an ally in their class, both Apple and Raven quickly and shyly went down the steps to Draculaura, who scooched over two seats to make room for them. Draculaura, who sat next to Apple, started whispering to her and giggling, but all both Apple and Raven really perceived at that moment were the monsters sitting in their row - a girl with long, pin-straight dark brown hair with golden streaks, who was akin to egyptian royalty in the way she acted and looked, sat on Draculaura's right side; next to her an athletic guy with green snakes on his head and dark glasses hiding his eyes. He was quite obviously very disinterested in Mr. Rotter's class, as he wouldn't stop yawning. When Apple spotted him, the snakes noticed her too and started snapping in her direction, hissing, until he snapped his fingers and the snakes fell quiet.

   Raven was experiencing the same wonder and curiousity as Apple; on her left side sat a girl who resembled Howleen in more ways than her wolf ears and golden eyes. The werewolf was minding her business entirely, holding her Dead Languages school book upright and reading in it like Mr. Rotter's class was her favourite - until Raven sneakily peeked in the school book and found she was actually reading a fashion magazine. Fashionable, skimpily dressed monster girls in chic, trendy clothes (at least Raven assumed so, because fashion seemed to be a lot more different and edgier than it was in her own world). She eyed the werewolf girl up and down - she was dressed similarly to the girls she was looking at, however not copied, she had put her own wicked, furtastic spin on vogue. Lastly, next to the werewolf a girl with skin similar to Mr. Rotter's sat, except it was stitched up like she consisted of multiple people - her hair was long, straight and black and white.

   Mr. Rotter began his class, lecturing the students about an old yeti tribe's language, which they had started discussing last lesson. Both Raven and Apple were more than clueless about what Mr. Rotter was teaching, and neither could really stay focussed on the learning material. A yeti girl with a thick himalayan accent that was sitting on the left side of the class nearly taught Mr. Rotter more about said language than Mr. Rotter could teach the class. She corrected him here and there, until he had it up to here with her. 

   "Miss Bominable, it almost seems like you would like to continue teaching," he scoffed grimly.

   "I just don't understand how a teacher could be teaching something he is so uninformed about," Miss Bominable, whose first name turned out to be Abbey, said and crossed her arms. "And I totally do not understand why it could be deemed rude to correct the teacher if he makes mistakes. In Himalaya the teachers and students work together side by side to enhance class and endeavour optimal results!"

   Mr. Rotter pinched his nose bridge, sighing annoyed, but Raven did not care to pay any more attention to their banter - because just then, a thought crossed her mind that made her break out of her slumpy pose and sit up straight: It's not a secret that mutliple worlds coexist, so maybe the teachers of Monster High teach about those too? Her eyes shot to Apple, who was staring at the book she was sharing with Draculaura; her face told Raven that she struggled just as much as Raven with all this new information, she stared at the pages like it was the most obscure and puzzling thing she had ever seen. 

   So I'm alone on this right now, Raven thought to herself. She felt the feathers reappearing on her arms and pressed her hand on them in an attempt to hide the feathers that were actually nothing strange to the monsters of Monster High. She needed to focus, word her question in a way that wouldn't let everyone instantly know the truth or develop a hunch. She raised her hand, which was covered in feathers. 

   Abbey was about to launch her next argument, her mouth already gaping open, when Mr. Rotter noticed Raven's raised hand and gladly took it as the end of Abbey's and his fight about Monster High's education system. "New ghoul," he said, "I'm hoping for a question about the ACTUAL topic of today's lesson."

   Her hand shot back down, she smiled hesitantly, feeling Apple's big curious eyes fixated on her. "Uhm, not exacly ... but I do think it's an important addition to the general knowledge of all ghouls." 

   Mr. Rotter raised an eyebrow. "As long as it doesn't add fuel to Miss Bominable's fire, go on."

   "So, Mr. Rotter, it is a well known fact that there are multiple worlds in the universe, right? Worlds beyond ours and so many that we can't even count them all, right?"

   Silence for a moment, now some of the other ghouls started paying attention as well. Except for Cleo De Nile, the mummy next to Draculaura, who was too busy with filing her wine red nails. "I really do not know how the topic of worlds fits into our schedule, Miss Queen." 

   "It doesn't, I guess," Raven laughed nervously, "but I've been wondering how it's possible for ghouls and other creatures to cross those worlds and travel through them - I know of some that have done so." (Shortly, she was reminded of her own adventures in different worlds.)

   "Well yes, it's absolutely possible, however: tripping through worlds is oftentimes a time inducing, elaborate process which includes certain tools and such, and nearly always the use of magic, not to mention the fact that the process is different for most worlds. The most common kind to cross is through a portal, though it's often not as easy as just blindly tripping into a portal and falling out the other side - and believe me little ghoul, portals are much more dangerous and cryptic than one could think ..."

   A part of Raven found this statement hard to believe, since she had 'blindly tripped into a portal and fell out the other side' more than once in her life, the other thankfully more dominant part of her took this information in and stored it in her brain for later. 

   "May I ask, Miss Queen, was there a specific world you were thinking of?" Mr. Rotter's eyebrow was now seemingly frozen in its high place; he stuck his nose in the air sceptically. At this point, Apple looked at Raven worrisome.

   Raven struggled to decide on her answer, but at last she decided to put her foot down. "Yes," she said, a little more timid than how she wanted to sound, "... the Fairytale World. Have you heard of it?" 

   Now even Cleo put her file down and smirked at Raven amused. The class fell silent. 

   "If I've heard of it ..." Mr. Rotter mumbled and turned around to the board, as if he ruled their dialogue finished. "You should really dismiss that thought, Miss Queen, especially if it involves traveling there."

   Raven was at a loss for words. Why in all of Fairytale World - or rather Monster World - was this such a fussy matter? What wasn't Raven aware of, and why did Mr. Rotter not want to elaborate on that? Apple on the other hand suddenly gained some courage back. This time it was her turn to ask a question, though she didn't even raise her hand to inquire it. "Mr. Rotter, why should Raven not travel to the Fairytale World?"

   Mr. Rotter scoffed. "Well for instance, perhaps the fact that it is an incredibly dangerous thing to do - and that no underaged ghoul should just partake in, especially without an adult or legal permission! Now hold the discussion!"

   "Legal permission?"

   He simply brushed over Raven's interference. "Other than that, ghouls do not belong in the Fairytale World, and so do those fairies and princesses not belong in our world!"

   "Hey! Neither the Royals nor the Rebels ever hurt you!" Apple boomed and prompty shot up a few inches into the air, floating above her table.

   "Apple ...!" Raven grabbed at Apple's skirt, yet her hand just swept through the ghostly fabric, not grasping anything. In an instant, loud stimulated murmuring took over the lecture hall, and Mr. Rotter blinked at Apple White in absolute disbelief, like he couldn't trust his own ears just then. Their newfound ghoul friends stood up as well, excusing the girls' behaviour - "Apple doesn't know what she's talking about," the boy with snakes on his head, Deuce, said. "Yeah, they're new here! They're just misinformed and uninformed ..." Frankie, the girl next to the werewolf, added, ending in a small apologetical smile. 

   There was no sign the students would recover from Apple's outburst any time soon, and even Raven's and Apple's new friends looked more than shocked at Apple, scrambling to excuse the girls. At once, Apple's head got hot and the thick feeling of embarassment started pressing down on her like a weighted blanket - slowly, she floated down again onto her seat, her hands neatly tucked in her lap. Raven tried catching her gaze; she felt all of Apple's emotions like she herself was Apple in that moment. Eventhough Apple's eyes were blankly fixed on the desk in front of her, Raven could tell they were full of tears. 

   "If that's truly what you believe, Miss White," Mr. Rotter shouted over the loud uproar of the class, "then I advise you to open a history book for once - and for you and everyone taking part in this discussion: Detention!" 

   The girls and Deuce looked shocked - Raven's and Apple's problem had suddenly also become their problem. 

   Mr. Rotter only started to repremand the class for its sudden and instant unintelligable babbling, completely ignoring the ghost girl who was close to tears and the wereraven who tried her best to comfort her. Raven shortly perceived a quick streak of white and purple on her right, but turned a blind eye on it. A little bit of the weight shifted from Apple and Raven when the saving bell rang to dismiss class, and everyone got up to leave as fast as possible. 

   "We'll meet you guys in the creepateria, yeah? And detention, later ..." Draculaura said as she stood up and tried a smile, though with clear unsureness in her face that both Raven and Apple couldn't overlook. Some of her other friends already walked off, but the fashionable wolf girl stood by her side a few more seconds, wrapping her arms around Draculaura's waist and pulling her closer. "Hey," she turned to Apple and Raven, "it's just your first day and you're probably not very informed about things yet, it's totally fine to make mistakes. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!" 

   "Clawdeen is right; I fully support your curiosity and activism," Abbey chimed in, who also suffered the curse of detention. They hadn't even noticed Abbey walking up to them, but now that they were aware of her, Raven and Apple felt the slight cold the yeti girl was emitting. "An ancient conflict that no one completely remembers and they're still holding grudges! Times have changed and so have monsters and surely fairytale creatures as well ... This whole thing is obselete but no one wants to bite the bullet. Yuck!" Abbey winked at them, and before the girls could thank them or even dare to ask any questions, Draculaura, Clawdeen and Abbey strolled out the door as well, disappearing into the hallway to go on with their day. 

   Maybe it was better not to ask too many questions now; maybe they should also try to go on with their day, calm down and figure other things out that have been on their minds. For example: finding Astranova.

   Apple and Raven left the lecture hall as well; however, not without feeling Mr. Rotter's furtive, probing eyes on them. "You know," Apple broke the silence between them after a while of wandering around, looking for the so-called creepateria, "your unexpected question came totally out of the blue and was really risky! But it got me to thinking."

   "Thinking of what?"

   "Of Cupid!" Apple unveiled with a spark of hope in her sweet voice.

   The realisation showered Raven like a warm summer rain and the same spark of hope abruptly set off in her as well. Her face lit up as she put her hand on Apple's shoulder - or rather there were it should be -, beaming: "Apple, you're a genius! How have I not thought of her yet?" The second she said this, a million reasons as to why her brain had been too foggy to remember Cupid and her potential to bring them back to Ever After High flooded her mind, but Raven rummaged those negative unwanted thoughts away.

   The sudden, certainly sincerely meant compliment made Apple blush. "Well, I wouldn't call myself that," she giggled.

   "We've been so focussed on finding Astranova (who we've still not crossed paths with) that we completely forgot about Cupid, who was formerly a student at Monster High! She passed into our world through a portal too, so she might know a thing or two!"

   "Now the question to be answered is just how we can contact her ..." Apple's remark dampened Raven's mood in an instant, but even if she had wanted to she could not have went deeper into solving that question - just then, her and Apple flinched as a cold whiff brushed past them and the pale white face of a girl appeared before them. All of a sudden a quick bright, blinding light flashed, the girls blinked irritatedly until they could finally make out whoever had just whielded a camera in their faces. It was a girl whose monstrous looks were akin to Apple's new one; she was rid of colour like the dead, her eyes piercing, her clothes ripped in some places and put in chains, which wrapped around her legs and ended in heavy steel balls beneath her shoes, and her hair was long and purple. She was a ghost floating in front of the two with an expecting, excited smile on her spectral face.

   "Shocking and never before heard of: New ghoul in school picks up historic, critical debate about Monsters and Fairytales - protects the latter!" she shouted like a news reporter or a paper boy, making some students turn their heads. 

   "What?!" Apple shrieked. 

   Raven put her hands on her hips. "People usually start by introducing themselves."

   "Spectra Vondergeist! Reporter of Monster High and editor of the famous Gory Gazette blog!" Her camera flashed again, and once more Raven and Apple blinked distraught.

   "More like infamous," Raven muttured. "Do you always do that? Get into random people's business however you please?" 

   "I'm so sorry if I upset you, but this is huge! Every ghoul is already talking about it, and just imagine how your story will spread like wildfire when it's published," Spectra exclaimed, as if that made it more attractive in any way whatsoever.

   Then Raven went right through Spectra like she was nothing but cold air; Apple followed like she was attached to Raven by a cord. But the self-proclaimed reporter wouldn't let loose so easily: she flew after them, flashing her camera over and over again and continuing to talk, because she knew that there was really nothing Raven could do about it.

   "Do you have anything to say for yourself regarding the detention? Since you seem to be so sure of the fairytale creatures' political correctness in this conflict, you must have witnessed it roll out?" Spectra flew over to Apple's side, taking a picture of her distraught face. That ghost girl was really living in her very own world, Apple realised with a frown. "You must have been at the scene of the crime - so for how long have you been dead?" 

   Apple stopped following Raven. She slowly turned around to Spectra with a face like she had been in the trenches of the Mountains of Madness. "D-Dead...?" Her voice was suddenly nothing more than a quiver. Raven started talking to her, or to Spectra - it didn't matter to Apple because she didn't listen anyway. For a few seconds she stared into nothingness. It hit her like train.

   "Raven," she whispered, "when we fell down that tree hole, I think I died." 

   Raven froze at that, Apple's ghostly eyes piercing her. Oh.

   Spectra took one more foto.

   "Enough - let's book it!" Raven started running and so did Apple, nevertheless her disturbed state. Apple turned out to be much more swift than Raven when she was flying through the halls until they reached the girls' restroom. Raven slammed the door open and threw herself in the restroom, not minding the startled girls in front of the mirror. Apple floated through the wall. A faint "Wait! We haven't talked about your stance on ..." still reached them, echoing through the hallway, but before Spectra's sentence completely caught up with them, the door fell shut. 

   "Thank the fae we're out of there!" Raven exclaimed, panting, then sank against the wall. Apple didn't answer. 

   Raven glanced to Apple, who still had her head tilted down, her brows furrowed. Looking at her, Raven remembered the fall. The deep deep fall into another world - how her and Apple had thought death was upon them, the wind passing them by in a storm, throwing them around in the air like it was nothing. Raven had come out the other side a wereraven, Apple on the other hand a ghost. It was possible to die of shock - was this really what happened to her? Now that Raven thought of it, Spectra Vondergeist must have also died somehow, if that is the only way to become a ghost. She thought of the chains and steel balls around her legs that looked like they had to be pulling her down - had Spectra drowned, perhaps? But surely when Apple went back to the Fairytale World, she would turn into her old self again, with a physical body and everything else, right?

   One thought overpowered the other and so did her uncertainties. Her heart clenched itself at the possibility that Apple would stay a ghost forever - because death was the only thing eternal. 

   She shook her head, then forced a small smile on her lips and looked to Apple again. "Hey," she broke the silence; the girls in the restroom had left by now, leaving only Raven and Apple. "We're already here, so how about we freshen up?" She smiled at her softly, but Apple's face stayed carved in stone. Apple only nodded briefly, and so they walked up to the sinks and the big mirror. 

   Raven splashed some cool water on her face. When she looked up she was quite surprised: she liked what she saw, which she had not expected considering the circumstances. Her raven black and purple hair was put up in a long, thick ponytail, a few feathers in the hair tie. Her outftit was fierce and black, with a few purplish accents and raven-like aspects. The only thing she thought was jarring were her discoloured darkened eyes and the few feathers on her arms and chest wandering up her neck that had emerged due to the stress of the situation. Though all her satisfaction left her at once when she looked over to Apple, who looked at her mirror reflection like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Which Raven understood all too well - because she couldn't believe Apple's state either. It seemed too unreal, surreal; to think that just that same morning she had mysteriously woken up on the clearing in the Enchanted Forest and was now, a few hours later, in another world with her best friend Apple - dead. 

   Suddenly, she missed that old Apple - her best friend with whom she sometimes couldn't remember why they had become best friends in the first place, because she could be so very nagging, her only goal in life sometimes seeming to just be following her destiny, never minding Raven's destiny as a result of her own - and all her friends' terrifiying destinies. But oh, how she would take that Apple anytime over the Apple she was confronted with now. Apple looked to be only a shadow of her former self...

   She slowly moved her hand to Apple's face, wanting to brush the pale golden streak of hair that had fallen over her shoulder behind her ear - when an impish, conniving meow sounded behind them. The girls turned around and faced a short-haired orange werecat that had been in the stall and now leaned against its doorframe. Out of the stall next to hers, a vampire girl with short black hair emerged, laughing spitefully. "It's just your first day in Monster High and you're already outsiders? Pitiful," the vampire girl scoffed at Apple, who recoiled even more. 

   "Spectra is working overtime again - that ridiculous act of rebellion is already all over the Djinn-ternet and Critter!" The werecat pulled out her iCoffin and waved it around in Apple's face. "Yeah," the vampire added, "and someone recorded your little slip-up and put it up on FrightTube!" The werecat stroked her claw along the screen and it changed to FrighTube, showing Apple and Raven arguing with Mr. Rotter in full volume. The werecat and vampire burst into laughter. Raven was just glad they both couldn't see the video's view count ...

   Apple looked like she was about to tear up again, her face already reddening like a tomato, and Raven opened her mouth to shoot back at the mean ghouls, when the door swung open and Clawdeen and Frankie walked in. 

   "Is your life too boring again for you to be minding your own business?" Clawdeen crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised an eyebrow, eyeing the two ghouls up and down. The vampire's face darkened and the werecat only hissed, her tail twirling and her ears pushed back. "Cat got your tongue?" Clawdeen added and grinned.

   "Whatever," the werecat spat and decided to save her own ego by walking right past them out the door, not without ramming Clawdeen's shoulder, and the vampire followed quickly like she was her goon. 

   "Sorry about that," Clawdeen said to Apple and Raven, smiling apologetically, "those two mean ghouls were Toralei Stripe and Gory Fangtell."

   "Remember: Every ghoul is welcome at Monster High!" Frankie cued in. "But, well, some just don't swing like that ..."

   "Gory is honestly not much of an obstacle if you're just confident enough, but Toralei? Maybe keep eye on her, she's a rebellious little kitty and has some followers that are more than willing to go out of their way to be mean - Purrsephone and Meowlody."

   Raven smiled and even Apple gained a small spark of hope back. "Fangs for telling us, but I think we can handle that - we know a little kitty who's a troublemaker as well," Raven said, then looked at Apple. Apple giggled. 

   "Wow, then don't ever let those two meet!" Clawdeen exclaimed jokingly. 

   "Come on guys, the others are already waiting for us in the creepateria - you'll miss lunch!" Frankie said, and with that the four left the girls' restroom. Raven hated that strange dispute in the restroom, though she couldn't help but be glad that Clawdeen and Frankie showed up and were now distracting Apple from her negative thoughts - she watched gladly as Apple, Clawdeen and Frankie got tangled up in a lively conversation between friends. 

   But her eyes were briefly drawn to something else - she stopped in her tracks - had her eyes deceived her? Raven could swear she had just seen a monster disappear into thin air, leaving only a few vanishing sparkles. Shortly, that reminded her of someone. But no, it couldn't be...

   Right? 

Chapter Text

Raven's thoughts were still drawn to the seemingly disappearing girl she had just seen - she had a purple bob and cat ears, this Raven was sure of. Had she imagined it? Or did there really just happen to be a student who could magically disappear and coincidentally happened to be reminiscent of Kitty Cheshire? She didn't want to jump to conclusions, and she couldn't simply accuse the girl of being someone else entirely - unless she wanted to sound mad, that is. It would have blown their cover too, which was apparently even more of a no-go than Raven had ever assumed because of an old conflict between monsters and fairytales she and Apple had never heard of before. 

   "Get your head out of the clouds, Raven, there's barely any food left," Frankie said, poking Raven with her elbow, which made her snap out of it - she hadn't even realized that they had entered the creepateria. 

   Her eyes instantly searched for Apple's, who also quickly glanced to Raven before looking back at the table Draculaura and the others were sitting at. Inwardly, Raven sighed. She wanted to tell Apple about what she had seen at once but knew she had to wait until they were alone again, whenever that would happen. 

   Clawdeen sat down next to her girlfriend Draculaura, Apple and Raven sat with Frankie between Lagoona Blue, a salt water monster that had also been in their class earlier, and Cleo de Nile, the daughter of an egyptian pharao - across of both of them their boyfriends Gil and Deuce. Pretty quickly, Apple and Raven noticed that they were surrounded by loveydovey couples, and at some point Raven caught herself eyeing Clawdeen and Draculaura for a bit too long. 

   The conversations were wonderful, and Apple lit up more and more as the two previous disputes and Spectra's passionate hassle faded into the past, but the food was... questionable. Raven used her fork to fight the tentacles coming out of her gooey meat (and she wasn't sure if it even was meat), while Draculaura - a vegetarian vampire - illustrated the lack of ethics in consumption of meat. Until Clawdeen disclosed her rant while chewing down on her own 'tentacle mystery meat' as Raven had baptized it in her head. 

   After a while, Apple had an idea. "Do you guys know Astranova? She should still be a student here, her parents haven't picked her up from Earth yet," Apple asked the group, rasing her voice after being silent for most of the lunch break, smiling like an innocent angel while hiding her real intentions. 

   "Oh, we met her in Boo York!" Draculaura beamed. Neither Apple nor Raven had a clue what 'Boo York' was supposed to be, but both figured in shared silence it'd be an unintelligent choice to inquire about. "Her comet landed on the same building's rooftop we were on," Frankie chimed in. "Why do you ask?" 

   "Well, we happen to be old friends." Apple and Raven exchanged quick unnoticed glances. 

   "Isn't she somewhere with Robecca and Ghoulia?" Clawdeen asked, pausing her eating shortly. 

   "Robecca and Goulia?" Raven added. 

   "Robecca Steam is a legendary Skultimate Roller Maze player!" Frankie told them, "Not to mention she's the daughter of THE Hexiciah Steam." Raven and Apple reacted with pleasantly surprised faces, acting like they knew what the Skultimate Roller Maze or who Hexiciah Steam was. 

   "And Ghoulia is the most clever ghoul in school! And my best friend. She's lucky. They're working on something together and doing smart monsters stuff," Cleo bragged, a smug smile on her face that could even be heard in her voice, though she clearly didn't really know what exacly they were working on either.

   At that, Apple and Raven silently decided they would search for the three later ... after detention, that is. Apple had truly no reason to feel bad for being a 'troublemaker' and yet she did feel bad; a few following classes later, a lump formed in her throat as she, Raven and her new ghoul friends stood before the detention hall. 

"We're gonna be stuck in here forever after," Raven moaned. Her eye lids had begun to grow heavy, she struggled to keep them open and the safe and sound snoring sounds of Mr. Hackington didn't help.

   Apple buried her face in her hands. "I regret getting so loud and offended in front of Mr. Rotter..." 

   "No, don't be... You were hextastic!," Raven whispered to her seatmate, "You showed that you've got spirit and are proud of your fairytale heritage - nothing wrong with that! And we are gonna get to the bottom of this strange discord...!"

   The two girls flinched at Hackington clearing his throat during his nap, thinking he'll wake up. They sighed relieved because at once Mr. Hackington went back to snoring; a little spit ran down his mouth and chin. The Monster World was truly totally different from the Fairytale World, the difference was evident and palpable: things were much more ... ugly ... in this world, darker. Where there was golden embellishment in Ever After High, there were cobwebs and weird unidentified stains in Monster High - the darkness lurked in every spot and corner, and the strangest thing: it was normalized! Everyone in Monster High was odd and strange in their own way - and when Mr. Hackington threw his butcher knife at you because your whispering was too loud, you would flinch and gasp, and maybe survive, but no one would consider it an attempted murder. Hackington himself was akin to the evil murderous villains the Brothers Grimm would tell stories about. 

   Oh, and not just that was different and new - this world seemed to follow an entirely different societal structure as well! Astranova had told them about what she was experiencing at this school over their MirrorPhones, or rather over her iCoffin, and Raven caught a glimpse of a feeling from deep down that she was all but proud of: envy. The creatures and critters of this world were not bound to any uncompromising destinies - meanwhile Raven was meant to pledge to her destiny of poisoning Apple White, the daughter of Snow White, and be doomed to a life in a dungeon, filled with despair and pain and loneliness; now, she realized she was sometimes watching the ghouls through green eyes, because they interacted with eachother in a way that was unheard of in Ever After High: none of them were seperated by the categories of Royal and Rebel.

   She never thought Apple would turn against her when she, to the shock of quite literally everyone, decided to not sign the Storybook of Legends on Legacy Day, which would have sealed her fate forever after - and even though Apple did still hold a grudge against Raven for not following her destiny, resulting in Apple's destiny also becoming redundant, she was still her friend. Her now ghostly friend sitting beside her, an ever after sad gaze on her pale face. Her now destiny-less friend, Apple White. 

   That thought grew on her - being destiny-less. Raven liked it, the more she thought about it. During detention, where everyone had to be quiet as a mouse and bore themselves to death, her mind started to wander, and so Raven involuntarily imagined her whole life as a wereraven in the Monster World, not as a daughter of an evil fairytale queen. She loved the thought of being destiny-less - yet her mind was instantly crowded with feelings of guilt and she pushed this made-up what-if-scenario away. 

   No, what am I thinking? We have to get back to Ever After High, she reminded herself. This isn't my world. 

   "But what if it were your world?"

   Raven snapped out of her soliloquy. She looked around confused. Who had said that? She knew that voice, she knew it, but she couldn't pinpoint where she had heard it. 

   "Raven? What's wrong?" Raven turned to face the ghost girl next to her, who looked at her with a concerned look that painted a rosy blush on Raven's cheeks. 

   Just then, she realized where she remembered hearing that voice for the first time - the portal! Her face darkened and her fists clenched. Apple hadn't heard the voice, and so had no one else in the room, considering their collecitve silence and their bored and sleepy faces. And of course they hadn't heard it: only Raven could hear the portal's voice, for the reason that it was only and alone in her head. 

   Get out of my head, Raven hissed at it in her mind.

   "..."

   She still hadn't answered Apple White, whose concerned look grew more distressed by the moment, and Raven's glowering face surely only added to that. Raven already opened her mouth, sucking in some air and preparing to give Apple a sadly not very honest but soothing answer. However, only an odd, choppy sound tumbled out of Raven's mouth because she suddenly caught glimpse of Frankie's detached hand creeping over the table behind them to one of the windows. 

   Apple turned around, her mouth also gaping at the sight of the bodyless hand that seemed to have a mind of its own - when Frankie's hand jumped up to one of the windows and consequently to the smiling face behind it: Maddie waved at the two like a madman, overjoyed at the sight of them. Frankie's hand started to fiddle about the window handle, though after a few seconds of failing to tinker with it and miserably trying to open the window, the hand defeatedly creeped back to Frankie and conjoined with her wrist - the window was locked shut. 

   Meanwhile, Raven and Apple failed to take it in smoothly - "Maddie?!" Apple gasped, and Raven briefly choked. 

   "Silence!!" Hackington jumped up and yelled, then immediately fell back into his squeaky chair and continued his napping session.

   Maddie's face brightened up once more; she held up one finger to signal them to wait, then she disappeared again. 

   "Maddie's here!" Apple whispered excitedly to Raven. "She's here to save us!" 

   She's here to save us, the words rewound in her mind, and the wide smile Raven put on was only forced, to her very own sursprise. 

   A few moments of restlessness and excitation passed, when a shrill screaming abruptly started blaring in the room - the ghouls startled, pressing their hands on their ears to at least dampen the screeching that was coming from a ringing bell, which was certainly not the school bell, and Mr. Hackington jerked out of his chair, screaming, asking who was causing this terrible noise and threatening the unknown troublemaker with his butcher knife. However, his tantrum was instantly silenced as the sprinkler system let water pour down on the ghouls and Hackington. "Fire alarm ..." he sighed, "everyone get in a line in a pair of two, only two -" he tried, but then Maddie threw open the door and yelled at them to get out, and the ghouls were at once rushing out the detention hall. 

   In fact, everyone was rushing out of classes and, well, a panicked student body was truly a force to be reckoned with. 

   "This way!" Maddie exclaimed and pointed to a wall with a singular candle holder. Raven and Apple didn't quite understand, but Maddie ran to the candle holder and turned it down with ease, the wall reacted at once and turned around slowly and quavering. Raven, Apple and the others struggled to not get swept away by the turbulent current of the student body, but managed to jump out the closing gap of the turning wall and onto the greyish green grass of the outside world. 

   "Maddie! What in all of Fairytale World are you doing here? How did you get here?" Raven asked, still catching her breath just like the others. 

   "Am I not hextacular?" Maddie beamed, her hands put confidently on her hips. Only then Apple and Raven realized what Madeline Hatter looked like - the two eyed her up and down in the same shocked manner they had looked at eachother when the portal spat them out. Maddie's skin was multiple different colours, ranging from light pink to light blue and green, all the pieces joined together through threads; she was quite akin to Frankie in that sense.

   "Maddie ..." Apple gasped, "you've been monsterfied too!"

   "Duh!" While Apple was clearly clutching her pearls, Maddie seemed to take the fact that she consisted of numerous dead people's body parts extremely lightly. 

   "How did you know the wall would shift?" Raven asked instead, whereupon Maddie asnwered in a chipper tone: "Every old and castle-kind of building has secret passages! And a single candle holder on a bare brick wall? Just as obvious as a bookshelf with fake books! How do you think I got from the window to the fire alarm so quickly?" 

   Clawdeen joined the trio, a wet dog growling at the water dripping down her brown mane and purple skirt. She clenched her fists and punished all three of them with a look that could kill. "Fairytale World? Monsterfied?"

   By now the others watched the three fairytale figures with a bunch of question marks above their heads as well, a little bit of wariness in their eyes. Raven scrambled to serve an explanation that wouldn't set fire to their new friendship and ignite the discord between fairytales and monsters once more.  "We ... might have come off the wrong slipper ..." she mumbled, playing with her own fingers. Feathers errupted out of her, but this time she didn't find the steadiness in herself to let them vanish under her skin again. 

   "Uhm, guys?" Frankie intervened, her voice was a bit nervous and sparks flew out of the screws on her neck, but that could have also resulted from her wet state - every one of them was drenched. "I think you can explain yourself later; first, we should get to the schoolyard before they count the students and we're missing!" 

When they arrived on the schoolyard, which was filled to the brim with students, Raven and Apple were hit with another surprise: Maddie was not the only one who also fell through the portal - right away they spotted Ashlynn Ella, Briar Beauty and Cerise Hood. Maddie led them and consequently the other detention-runaways to the spot on the side of the crowd where Ashlynn, Briar and Cerise stood waiting for them. 

   "Apple!" Ashlynn called out, who looked nearly as pale as her. "You're - you're a ghost!" 

   Apple shifted awkwardly, dropping her gaze. "And you're a vampire," Raven pointed out, staring at her sharp fangs. 

   "When we fell through the portal, everything went dark and I felt a painful sting on my neck..." Ashlynn explained, then revealed the two bites on her neck. "It was unbearable!" 

   Raven and Apple took in the sight of the other three friends turned ghouls - Rose vines with sharp thorns that seemed like they were simply part of Briar wrapped around her limbs and waist, culminating on her head as a rose flower crown, and her tan skin had a greenish hue and streaks of green hair were mixing with the pink ones. When Raven and Apple looked closer, they could see that her hands and legs were transitioning from skin to oak. She emitted a sort of light green glow.

   Cerise on the other hand was a werewolf through and through: like Howleen, Clawdeen and Clawd, she had wolf ears, claws and fur, though it was grey and white instead of brown and she had a long bushy tail. Somehow she was more wolf-like than the actual werewolves. 

   Ashlynn's skin was pale like something had sucked all the blood out of her body in the portal. Her honey blonde hair was darker and had lost its lively glow, her eyes had a red shimmer when the light hit it just right and like her ears her teeth were pointy and ready to bite. Raven lost some of her own colour when the thought crossed her mind that perhaps this means Ashlynn had also died in the portal - her death was just different from Apple's... 

   "How did you find us? Thank the fairies you did!" Apple cried out and wanted to throw herself into Ashlynn's arms - milliseconds before, she remembered that a ghost could not feel physical touch and so could a live being not feel an immaterial one. Her heart tensed at that, she fell silent and could only hear her rushing dead heartbeat. 

   Suddenly, a dominant sounding voice bellowed over their heads like a harbinger of punishment: "NO!"

   The girls and ghouls winced, then turned around. A tall woman with short black hair and a long purple coat stood behind them, glaring the six girls down through narrow eyes. 

   "Headless Headmistress Bloodgood!" Clawdeen cried. "Uh, this ... they -"

   "Thank you for your service, Clawdeen, but I believe an explanation is only required from these six 'new students' at the moment," Headmistress Bloodgood cut her off with a sharp tongue, crossing her arms in front of her chest. 

   Raven and Apple gulped and looked up at the tall woman in defeat. "Busted," Raven mumbled. 

   She couldn't even begin to picture what the Headmistress would do next, and she had this heavy, lingering feeling that the mysterious conflict between fairytales and monsters was about to ignite once more ...

Chapter Text

"Fairytales sneaking into Monster High disguised as students..."

   The Headless Headmistress Ms. Bloodgood sighed. "Are you trying to kindle the old conflict?"

   "But we never even meant to come here, we were tricked!" Raven cried in Ms. Bloodgood's office. She felt her cheeks getting hot, her rage rising, the feathers spreading, Apple's worried gaze on her... 

   Apple's gaze? She snapped out of it just then, noticing the ghostly touch of Apple's hand on her own. She glanced up to Apple's eyes, those pale, once upon a time alive eyes that were fixated on her like she had a sixth sense ringing in her head, telling her that something was up with Raven.

   Ms. Bloodgood said, "I do believe you." and Raven loosened up a little. Apple pulled her hand away, Raven felt the cold air give way to warm air and a small fragment of her mind wished it was still cold. "But first," Ms. Bloodgood continued, "I need you to tell me how you got here in the first place."

   "We came seperately," Briar chimed in, "as in, Raven and Apple came first and then we did."

   "Fine, girls, then I want Raven and Apple to tell me their story first. Do not let out anything."

   She felt that strange feeling dazing her mind again, which always befell her when her thoughts reverted back to that morning. She dreaded having to talk about it. She dreaded getting reminded of that voice that she knew so very well, yet sounded like a complete stranger. Something that pretends to be something else. 

   "... Raven?" She had zoned out, not noticed how many seconds of her silence had passed while everyone looked at her expectantly. 

   "Well ..." she started to speak, hesitantly. 

   "Well?" Ms. Bloodgood repeated, raising an eyebrow. 

   Another pause, more silence. The hands of her mind grabbed at words floating around in the mist of her jumbled brain, they got a hold of some but none seemed good enough - it would all sound like a lie. 

   Made to cover up her greedy nosiness. 

   But was it not all my fault? I shouldn't have went near the tree, I may have woken up next to it, yet I had the choice not to go near, and yet I did -

   I didn't tell anyone either -

   All of us being here is my fault -

   "I ... I didn't mean to come here," she stammered, quite unimaginative. At this point, Bloodgood's raised eyebrow looked uncomfortably stuck and there was no sign of her lowering it any time soon. 

   "This morning," Raven went on, "I woke up in the Enchanted Forest in a clearing, and there the tree was: it spoke to me. I swear it did, it whispered my name in a voice so familiar and at the same time distorted and strange, it tried to lure me in."

   An alarmed look crossed Ms. Bloodgood's face.

   Only Cerise noticed it, due to her werewolf ears, but the ghouls were hiding behind the slighty ajar door and listened to the conversation, not able to resist their own curiosity.

   "I tried to resist it, I went back to Ever After High, tried going about my day as if nothing had happened but my mind kept spinning around the tree, the voice echoed in my head. As if in a trance, I finally went back to the Enchanted Forest. Apple ..." and her cold hand met her own at that, and in contrast, warmth flooded Raven's body, "... Apple saw me sneaking out of school. She followed me, she realized that something very strange and .. inexplicable was going on. Eventually, the portal sucked us up in an untamed current, transforming us into ghouls. We had no chance to stay in our own world."

   When Raven finished her explanation,  she heard Apple's voice, an evident smile in it, brush her ear in a whisper: "You did great ..." She listened to Apple's soft ghost chuckle. Raven turned her head to Apple, both surprised and with a sense of pride in her shaky chest.

   It was then that Raven noticed that Apple's voice had just been in her head. Apple looked at her with slight puzzlement, and no one else had taken notice of her praise. 

   Huh. Well, I really am going crazy, aren't I?

   Bloodgood's tone setting voice pulled her back into reality, "Do you have anything to add to Miss Queen's statement, Miss White?"

   "Not a word," Apple answered and smiled at Raven, who was more than happy to return it. 

Briar, Cerise, Ashlynn and Maddie then took turns to tell the Headless Headmistress Ms. Bloodgood their own story of how they had gotten to the Monster World - that they had gotten concerned about both Raven's and Apple's absence, went looking for the two friends and ended up engulfed by the tree portal as well.

   Meanwhile, the girls looked at Maddie biting their tongues trying not to intervene her storytelling - Ms. Bloodgood's sceptical, analysing eyebrow seemed to accuse Maddie of lying when she told her about the narrators' help. 

  'The voices in her head', as Briar scurried to call them to manoeuvre them out of that troublesome situation, were figures that Maddie vigorously defended when Ms. Bloodgood stated her scepticism of their existence, and therefore questioned the reliability of the girls' story. 

   "Assuming the narrators" - she drew quotation marks into the air - "are real, why would only you be able to hear them?" Ms. Bloodgood asked Maddie. 

   "But it's not just me who can hear them," Maddie beamed, "everyone who understands Riddlish can!"

   "Riddlish."

   "Indeed," Maddie replied, a satisfied smile on her dark red lips. 

   Ms. Bloodgood pinched her nose bridge and suppressed a sigh. "And you can hear them right now?"

   All of a sudden, Maddie fell silent. "Now that you mention it ... I haven't heard from them since we got here..."

   "Of course you haven't!" Raven chimed in, "The narrators are part of the Fairytale World, it's not like they fell down the tree hole with us." And she prayed that Maddie wouldn't suddenly and contradictingly hear them again; this excuse was their ticket out of Bloodgood's scepticism, she figured. 

   Ms. Bloodgood finally did sigh and pulled her head off of her shoulders, which startled everyone else in the room for a second. She wasn't the Headless Headmisstress without reason, after all.

   "Well, admittedly, we've lost an excessive amount of information about the Fairytale World in both general knowledge as well as documents and texts over the centuries, and the little things we do know present day are nothing in comparison to everything that fully makes up the Fairytale World. So I must admit that I don't know enough to tell if the narrators are Miss Hatter's wild imagination, a blatant lie or the truth."

   She paused briefly, collecting herself. "I want to help you, girls, and I will try everything in my power to bring you back to Ever After High."

   A mutual burden was lifted off the girls' shoulders.

   Briar beamed, "So, we won't get punished after all?" and looked forward to all her limited time not wasted by chores and boredom. 

   Ms. Bloodgood's face on her detached head grimaced sourly. "Not so fast, Miss Beauty. All of you have still broken our school's rules..."

After the talk in Bloodgood's office, the girls had left and instantly bumped into the ghouls, who had been curiously spying on their discussion by the door, stacked on top of eachother like a pyramid, which they had learned in Cheerleading.

   They had apologized profusely for eavesdropping, but the girls didn't mind it at all - in fact, they argued it was better that way. In the near future, the secret of their real heritage would have been exposed in one way or another anyways, and this simply took care of the burden of doing so themselves. 

   The ghouls didn't have prejudices against the girls, and all the arguing about it had already happened outside the office - mostly led by Clawdeen and Cleo, while Frankie and Draculaura played the conciliators.

   At some point, Draculaura's sweet and feeble voice chimed in. "Since you're far from home, you don't have anywhere to stay, do you?" she asked and blinked up at them with sympathy.

   The girls collectively just knew they wouldn't get home by the end of the day, which was slowly approaching, so Raven confirmed their current sort of homelessness.

   Clawdeen and Draculaura held hands and gave eachother a witty grin, before looking back to the girls. "Well, then you enchanted monsters should stay at my place!" Draculaura beamed. The ghouls were joyous about an apparent "ghouls-sleepoveeeer!" and Maddie couldn't help herself but be swept away by their laughter and joy in an instant. "A ghouls-sleepover!" she beamed excitedly.

   First, though, the fairytales turned ghouls were busy with another, much more gruelling topic, which absolutely no one was looking forward to. 

"Worst. Punishment. EVER AFTER!" Briar sneered and let go of the broom in her hand, letting it fall onto the dusty floor. 

   "It's not fangtastic, but it could be worse," Raven tried to lighten the mood.

   "Fangtastic?" Apple asked bewildered whilst primly cleaning the old dirty windows, "You must mean hextastic!" 

   Raven only gave her a faint smirk, as if to say Yes, I guess that's what I should've said, but I didn't say that.

   Though Apple was certainly feeling fableous, because before starting the chore, Bloodgood had told Spectra to teach her how to move and touch and hold objects; Apple was only able to move smaller, lighter objects at the time, but nonetheless it felt like the best thing all day. 

   Everyone was filled with discontent, though inwardly collectively figured that it would be no good to keep off from the chore anyways, and so the minutes that felt like hours passed slowly in that big, old and dusty attic.

   When the ghouls found out about the girls' punishment, Clawdeen had mentioned Howleen having to do the same a while ago - Raven's face turned into one big frown, Oh, someone has to tell her about our enchanted selves soon, too, and she suddenly felt horrid for straight-up lying to all her new friends. Though, was it really lying if she had just kept it a secret? She actually call her self a monster, did she now? She couldn't even remember it...

   She shook her head, weirded out by her own thoughts and forgetfulness, which truly seemed to spiral since she'd found the strange tree. (Or since the strange tree found her.)

   After a while, Ashlynn sat down on a box, taking off her high-heels. "My feet are killing me!" she said, and was met with bewildered looks. Why, why were her feet killing her? She stated that she did not feel like herself since the transformation and put her light blue, gothic-looking shoes back on. 

   Drained, Briar let herself flop down onto another box next to Ashlynn and rested her head on her hands covered in dust. 

   "This is gonna take us forever after," she sighed. Maddie, Apple, and Raven didn't quite catch how the conversation between Ashlynn, Briar and Cerise continued. All three had seperated and scattered around the attic, dedicatedly working on the cleaning chore. 

   Maddie swept the floor in front of her, retreating further into the deep of the attic betwixt huge and high shelves and old boxes stacked on top of eachother, towering and looming over her as if ready to collapse above her any minute and bury her under them. Finally, she could see some of the dark brown colour of the floor beneath the ancient layers of dust, and she let out a satisfied sound. 

   Her back bumped against something. When she turned around, her eyes grew big and round. 

   "Guys! Guys, look what I've found!" she yelled into the attic, not sure if anyone would even hear her at this point. 

   To her own suprise, it was a pink top-hat with a blue bow and white ribbon with dots covering both - a hat clearly made by none other than the Mad Hatter, her own father. No one had answered her yet, and she wasn't hearing anyone's footsteps nearing, but it did not bother her because a few seconds later, she took notice of the little bottle on the little short round table next to the hat. A strange coloured liquid filled it. Maddie inspected the attached card, reading "Drink Me". 

   "Now, how in all of Wonderland has this all ended up here?" she asked herself, and almost wanted to ask the narrators if they knew anything. She frowned when she remembered that the narrators were back home in the Fairytale World. 

   In the meantime, Apple went about dusting off all sorts of objects, sometimes grimacing when finding something extraordinarily weird and shady like skulls and black candles from which the melted dry wax was evidently dried blood. "Ever After High would never allow this ... Gods, what is this school?" she muttered and turned around to dust something else off, in this case a little glas dome. 

   "Ha, imagine if this contained Belle's rose," she thought and chuckled, since the concept of something from the Fairytale World being in the Monster World seemed like total bollocks to her. 

   It contained her mother's apple, as she realized when enough dust had come off to see it. First, she stared at it incredulously - no way was this Snow White's apple, she thought, except it showed its big bite without a hint of shame. Instantly, Apple knew it was the apple her mother had been poisoned with. 

   Raven had exchanged cleaning tools with Apple - she had been dusting off with a duster, Apple had been cleaning windows with cleaning spray and a cloth, but simply because Apple didn't like it, Raven had offered to swap tools. Now, she was wiping her damp cloth over a table truly in need of some wiping. 

   She looked up just then, pausing in her movement.

   She felt something looking at her. Was perhaps Apple watching her?

   But no, Apple wouldn't look upon her with such ... malice.

   Raven turned around to where she felt the piercing gaze coming from.

   There it stood, like it had always stood there, watching her with invisible eyes and an unnoticable but mischievous grin.

   "Of course. This is all your doing, isn't it?" Raven asked her reflection. She stared into her own eyes in the mirror that was built to trap her mother, almost hoping her eyes would turn into the Evil Queen's. No, she reminded herself and grit her teeth, mom's just a burning memory. Don't let her rule your mind.

   Just a burning memory...

   She couldn't help herself. She creeped towards the black, an evil aura emitting mirror and reached her hand out. Something pulled at her heart. "Why are you doing this, mother?" 

   Her finger touched the cold, broken glass. "Talk to me, mother." From the tip of her finger, quick little waves spreaded over the mirror glass - with a sharp yell, Raven backed away from the mirror; the dark purple of her eyes in her reflection had morphed into a poisonous green. Green as the stone above the mirror glass. Green as the stone of the black, spiky tiara on Raven's head.

   Next thing she knew, she heard her friends calling out for her from far away. "Raven, what happened? Why did you shriek?" she heard Apple's worried voice call out, but not even the thought of a worried Apple withheld Raven from being overpowered by the striking pain in her head. 

   The daze was back, and it pulled her down onto the ground like an unspeakable force of nature. 

   She didn't feel her body hitting the floor, though she took in the darkness robbing her of her sight, mind and conciousness.