ᴘᴇʀꜱᴇᴘʜᴏɴᴇ | once upon a time [ EDITING ]

- ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ ᴡʜᴏ'ᴅ ʙᴇᴇɴ ɢᴏɴᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏ ᴠᴇʀʏ ʟᴏɴɢ.

— ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ ᴡʜᴏ'ᴅ ʙᴇᴇɴ ɢᴏɴᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏ ᴠᴇʀʏ ʟᴏɴɢ.

Presley enters the Underworld version of the Sorcerer's mansion. She feels her heart grow heavy as she thinks of Merlin. His death was still a burden on her shoulders. She wipes her hands on her jeans as if she could still feel the ashes of his heart cling to her skin.

"Where do you think we can even find the storybook?" Presley turns her head to look over her shoulder at Emma, directing her question to her. "It must be somewhere in here, most likely stored away. We need to check every drawer, turn every stone."

Presley walks further into the mansion with the rest. They let Henry be the lookout and continue their journey deeper into the building. Regina and Emma both look for drawers, Hook was getting into the cabinets, Presley was on top of a ladder by the bookcases and Liam, Killian's brother, was one room ahead.

Liam alerted them that he has found the storybook, but when they all gather around they notice that the pages about Hades, the ones they had been out for, were gone. When Emma asked him he says he didn't know if anyone tampered with them, but that he refuses to give up hope and wants to search the house further in case they had just fallen out.

However, Presley felt a little uncertain about Hook's brother. He seemed a little.. too invested. "Am I the only one thinking he is a little off," she whispers to Regina and Emma. The two shake their heads and the Queen mutters that she understands what Emma meant with self-righteous before walking away. Presley follows after Regina, leaving Emma and Hook behind.

They decide on splitting up even further to cover more grounds in the gigantic house. Regina takes the bedrooms upstairs while Presley tells them she will look outside. Perhaps someone had taken the pages outside the mansion to hide them elsewhere.

She tries to use a locator spell, but it didn't seem to work. Presley sighs. Unfortunately, this had to be done the old way.

Presley marches deeper into the forest. The leaves above her head were clouding the red sky. It turned the forest very dark and Presley had to lighten up a fireball to find her way. She felt like she had been gone from the mansion for hours by then, but there was still no trail of the missing storybook pages. She couldn't help but feel like she wouldn't find them just lying around there.

If her father wanted to hide those pages so desperately he wouldn't be so careless to lose them on his way out.

Presley sighs and kicks against a pile of leaves. "This is such a waste of time," she grumbles and she turns on her heels to find her way back to the mansion.

But then, all of a sudden, she could hear a twig snap behind her.

Presley turns around and launches her fireball instinctively. She didn't hit anything except an innocent bush that was immediately lit on fire. All of her attention was now on the blazing bush and the confusion of not finding anyone behind it and it caused her to miss the person sneaking up behind her.