Mal was back.
That was the only thing that had been swirling in Drac's head like his mother's curse for the forest of thorns.
After thirty minutes Drac found he was too restless to keep still so he pushed himself off the worn purple sofa in his cavern and grabbed his leather jacket. He wondered if Mal wore her old Isle garb on her trip home or if he'd see her in Auradon preppy attire.
Desperate for a distraction, Drac headed down into the tunnels. He didn't go for his dad's cavern though, he knew he was too wired for any kind of chat. Instead, he wove through and looked for where other exits let out.
For a while he wandered aimlessly, his mind drifting deep into his thoughts. Wondering if Mal would enjoy the underground as much as he did or if she'd loathe it. Or maybe the grim beauty he saw to the underground came from his father's affiliation to the underworld, maybe it ran in his blood.
When he saw first light he stepped out behind a dumpster. Circling it he saw the sign for the Curl up and Dye. Hmm, interesting. Ducking back in he continued on his way, eventually following music that reached his ears. It wasn't like the normal music of the Isle, and it certainly wasn't Auradon music either. The end of the tunnel was blocked by stacks of boxes of supplies. Without knocking anything over Drac was able to move through the haphazard storage closet and popped out under a raspberry curtain.
"Are ya ready!" he heard a gleeful shout and turned to see a girl with poofy berry colored hair dancing on a table.
Are ya ready?
"Are ya ready!" she shouted again as she turned soaking up the applause of the audience around her. "You're in our world now, not your world."
A man dramatically stepped out from behind her makeshift stage. "And I've got friends on the other side."
As Dr. Facilier took over the crowd his daughter stepped down from the table. Her father gave her a kiss on the cheek before she rounded the crowd asking Facilier to read their future. Drac leaned back on one of the Voodoo Arcade's games and crossed his arms impressed with the showmanship.
"Drac!" Celia exclaimed and rushed over to give him a hug.
"You look good up there." He complimented her, as another sibling of an older VK Celia and Drac had the same understanding as he and CJ did. Though with Celia being a handful of years younger he had nowhere near the bond with her that he had with CJ.
"When Freddie is away Celia will play."
That reminded him. He never got around to going to that meeting with Freddie and Diego. He'd gotten distracted when Ginny Gothel had shown up with the news about Mal. He turned to the nearest clock and looked at the time. 9:30pm. He still had time.
"Drac!" a new voice cried and he turned to see a red head at the entrance with a worried look.
"I gotta –"
"Go." Celia smirked, "Go. Go. Do your boss man thing."
He smiled and fist bumped her goodbye before rushing out with Wynona Sanderson. Outside Martha and Sandra were waiting.
"What is it?" he asked with urgency in his tone.
"Double bubble we've got trouble."
"Uma?"
She shook her head, making a red curl fall from the hair piled on her head. "Not Uma. We had split up to cover more ground when Sandra came running over to me. She's just been out with her friends and –"
"Mad Maddy is up to no good." Sandra shouted before her sister turned and whacked her upside the head, making her blonde hair tangle.
"Simpleton. No one is ever up to any good on the Isle." She turned back to Drac, "But this is worse than the usual bad."
He nodded at her encouraging the witch to continue.
"Maddy is plotting against your kin."
Drac looked to the ground and let that sink in. Should he care? He didn't know. Did he care? He couldn't tell. Emotions had been swirling in him since the coronation, as a remedy he'd just ignored it. But now with Mal's return he couldn't any longer. But regardless of how he felt, information was still power.
He looked back up to her, his blue eyes now hard and serious, "Tell me everything."
- - LONG LIVE EVIL - -
Evie and Carlos went to the goblin run café to meet up with the others after they had found their homes empty. Even though Evie's was supposed to be the meeting place for this Anti-Heroes group she still hadn't seen anyone. Only a crinkled piece of paper attached to the basement hatch that said it was where they were meeting. Evie had never been in that part of the castle before and she wasn't about to go explore it without her crew so she'd left and headed to Hell Hall to see if Carlos had any luck.
He seemed relieved when he hadn't found his mother home though it kept the same question running through their minds. If they weren't home, then where were they?
When they walked into the Slop Shop they found Mal with a girl Evie didn't recognize. The two were splitting a stale bread pudding topped with rotten fruit syrup – a classic on the Isle since there were so few sources of sugar here.
"Who's that girl?" Evie asked Carlos.
"Oh that's Mad Maddy. She and Mal used to be tight."
Must have been back when Evie was still an outcast, she thought.
"Hey guys, come join us." Mal called when she spotted them and waved them over to her table. Apparently they had walked in on Mal and Maddy reminiscing down memory lane about old pranks they'd pulled as kids including dumping buckets of dead spiders on people and Evie realized it wasn't the Auradon Mal she was looking at but the Dragon Hall Mal. She cleared her throat knowing they were here for something much more important than catching up with old frienemies.
"So Maddy, do you guys have any idea where my mom is? Or Carlos'? We just went home and they were nowhere to be found."
Maddy crumpled her napkin and pushed her bowl away and asked coyly, "You really don't know?"
"No we really don't." Evie snapped already having had it with this girl's attitude. Mal seemed to pick up on it and turned to Maddy with a quirked purple brow.
"Do you know anything?" she asked but Maddy only shrugged.
"No one knows anything about anything." She said before getting up and leaving just as a goblin was coming over to scold them about no lingering at the tables after eating.
- - LONG LIVE EVIL - -
Evie didn't trust Maddy and she made that quite clear as they left the Slop Shop and ran into Jay who had been heading to meet them. He agreed with Evie reminding the others that this was the Isle and not Auradon and they had to assume everyone they met was a liar.
"Well from how Maddy was acting it sounds like Jafar, Cruella and Evil Queen are definitely a part of this Anti-Heroes thing." Mal said trying to change the subject.
"Looked to me like Maddy was a part of it too." Evie added still not feeling right about that girl.
"Oh definitely." Carlos agreed.
"Shhh! Someone's coming." Jay said and they all ducked into the shadows as they saw groups start to approach the Castle Across the Way and head into the basement. Mal tried to see if Drac showed up but it was too dark to tell what figure was who. They waited for a beat after the last people had gone inside then the four of them headed into the cellar.
The castle dungeons were cold and damp and as they made their way deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle winding through musty hallways it became darker and colder still. They barely made out the last silhouettes of villain kids as they entered a room on the left that looked just as pitch black as the hallways. They snuck inside behind the last people when the door slammed shut behind them and suddenly dozens of candles were lit. They were all frozen in shock when they saw a banner that read 'Welcome Back, Heroes!' and noticed some people were clapping while others were excitedly whispering, "They're here! They're here! It's really them!"
"Are we at the wrong meeting?" Mal questioned over her shoulder at the others just before the crowd in front of them parted and a familiar face walked through.
"Professor!" Carlos called with a grin. It was none other than their former Magic of Science teacher Yen Sid. He was one of Dragon Hall's most respected teachers even if it was rumored he wasn't any kind of villain at all but had voluntarily relocated to the Isle of the Lost to help educate the villain's children.
"Welcome." He said with a smile at all of them before turning to the others, "Give them space, give them space, don't crowd around them so much."
"Um Professor." Evie began, "Can we ask what this meeting is about?"
"Oh certainly, we have much to discuss after all. Tell me, how were you able to return to the island?" he asked leading them to some tables that had been set up in the room as the other villain kids took seats as well, some in chairs, some on the floor, Diego De Vil sat on a table kicking his feet up on a chair in his usual cool confident aura.
"We stole the royal limousine." Jay answered, "It has the clicker that unlocks the dome and makes the bridge appear."
"Clever." Yen Sid replied with a chuckle, "I'm sure your talents at thievery were helpful in that area."
"We did run into Ben and he let us take the car anyway." Mal said not wanting the villain kids to get the wrong idea.
"Yes, Ben was always a progressive thinker. And you are all well I take it? Enjoying life in Auradon?"
"Yes sir, very much so." Carlos answered.
The professor stroked his long grey beard, "Excellent, excellent. Do give Fairy Godmother my regards when you see her next."
Evie promised they would, "By the way Professor, does my mother know you're here in our basement? Is she part of this?"
Yen Sid chuckled, "Oh no, no dear."
"So, what is this whole Anti-Heroes thing about?" Mal asked.
"Well certainly I can explain. After all, I founded it."
"How did you know we would be here?"
"Well once you received our messages of course we began to prepare for your arrival."
"That was you!" Carlos exclaimed.
"Of course. We couldn't sign them without giving ourselves away – too many bad eggs around – one can never be too careful. But we hoped you would figure it out and you did. I'm very proud of you."
"Wait, so you guys aren't angry at us?" Mal asked.
The room practically roared, "No!" "Not at all." "We love you guys." "What is she talking about?" "She's been gone remember? She doesn't know things have changed." "We want to be you, we want to learn how to do what you did." "We want to learn how to be good too." "We choose to be good."
"Can I ask why you're called anti-heroes?" Carlos asked.
"What most people don't know is that anti-hero is another word for villain." Yen Sid explained, "An anti-hero is the villain you root for in the story. They aren't perfect. They don't ride up on a white horse, and as flawed as an anti-hero is they're still trying to do the right thing."
"So, if Jafar, Evil Queen and Cruella aren't part of the Anti-Heroes club, then where are they?" Jay asked.
"It's very good that you bring that up and very fortunate that you understood our messages to return to the island. We are in desperate need of your help in locating and outwitting your parents in their latest evil scheme."
"If you guys don't know where they are does that mean they're not on the Isle of the Lost?" Mal asked in horror.
"Not exactly on the island, but not off it either." Yen Sid said, "It appears they vanished from the Isle soon after Maleficent broke the dome open."
"How?" Evie asked.
"Allow me to backtrack, have you been experiencing a series of earthquakes on the mainland?"
"Yeah we have." Jay nodded knowing how much it had been throwing off tourney practice. Thankfully they hadn't had one during the big game.
"What does the weather have to do with the missing villains?" Carlos asked.
"Well you see when the villains were imprisoned here and the barrier was put in place to keep out the magic, all that power had to go somewhere. Keeping the magic off the surface created tremendous pressure and the magic was pushed underground, deep underground. And in the past twenty years it has grown wild and flourished where it created a system of tunnels, what we call the Endless Catacombs of Doom. Some say the tunnels include an escape route out of the Isle and straight into Auradon itself."
"Wild." Jay said in awe.
"When the earthquakes started I sent a letter to King Beast – excuse me, former King Beast. But I fear your parents may have intercepted it. I believe the crack in the dome sparked something underneath the Isle causing the unusual natural phenomena."
"So our parents left to try and find the escape route?" Carlos clarified.
"The Magic Mirror!" Evie exclaimed, "That's why it couldn't show them, the wild magic down there must be cloaking them."
"So they're lost in the Catacombs." Mal concluded.
Yen Sid shook his head, "Not lost I'm afraid. They went down there to search for more than a way out. Like I said when Maleficent escaped a great release of energy also affected the surrounding area all the way to Auradon. I believe the blast that cracked the dome also awoke four of the evil talismans that the wild magic has been feeding off of. The Fruit of Venom, The Golden Cobra, The Ring of Envy and a new Dragon's Egg."
"A new Dragon's Egg? What does that mean?" Carlos asked.
"When I turned mom into a lizard her scepter also lost all its power." Mal began, "The new egg is meant to replace the old in the scepter."
"The talisman's desire to be found and they have already seduced their master's into looking for them. You must find them first and bring them to Auradon where they can be destroyed. Because if used together these talismans can overcome the power of good once and for all."