𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕖𝕥 {𝕍𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕩 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣}

-Chapter Fifteen- Enemy

/tell you you're the greatest/ but once you turn, they hate us/ oh, the misery/ everybody wants to be my enemy/ spare the sympathy/ everybody wants to be my enemy/

-enemy, imagine dragons

Two days.

That was all the time Y/n and Varian's plan had taken to work.

And it had played out perfectly.

Y/n and Varian had hid themselves in the abandoned houses of Old Corona, since the guards hadn't left Varian's.

It was going to be Rapunzel's birthday soon- making this a perfect time for the kingdom to be distracted while this plan was put into motion.

Varian had written a letter to Rapunzel, telling her to find the graphtyc in his lab. Y/n had suggested that he add a nice, ominous "they are watching, and they will do anything to stop you" to the end of it- just for motivation.

The two of them had crept up to one of Rapunzel's statues scattered across the kingdom. They were still making an effort not to be noticed- who knew which guards were watching, and which ones were still wary of Varian?

Y/n had wanted to tear the statue down as soon as she saw it, but they had left it intact as they tied the key, and the letter, to a paper lantern with Corona's symbol. Oh, sweet irony.

Within less than a day, the lantern had been collected, and they had watched from the abandoned houses as Rapunzel, Eugene and Cassandra traveled to Old Corona entered the house, shocked by the rocks that had overtaken the town.

A short while later, the group had emerged, a horrified expression on each of their faces as they ran through the tunnels of black rocks that had grown from every surface in Old Corona. They've found out about Quirin.

After they had left, evading the Captain and his guards, the masked troops had exited Varian's house quickly following their absence. And that means they've gotten the graphtyc.

─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───

It was nearly time to set the next steps of their plan in motion.

Once the guards were gone, Varian and Y/n had returned to the house, preparing everything that they would need to get the Sundrop.

At the moment, they were both in the lab, working. Y/n was using one of Varian's alchemy sets to prepare a variety of chemicals that they could put in his satchel- smoke bombs, explosive mixtures, fluorescent compounds to light the dark. Of course, Varian still had his staff, but one could never be too careful.

Thankfully, Ruddiger was alright when they had returned to the house. The soldiers didn't seem to have bothered him, and he was now napping on the floor of their workspace.

Varian was on the other side of the lab, experimenting with the remains of the mood potion. Thankfully, there was just enough left to replicate and improve for their own purposes.

"How's it coming over there?" called Y/n as she finished pouring her last compound into a vial, stopping it with a cork as she turned around and set it next to the others she had prepared.

Varian exhaled softly, and removed his hands from a beaker of lavender liquid, raising them in the air and taking a few steps back from his desk. "Done." His tired expression turned to a joking smile as he raised his gaze to Y/n, laughing at the last word of his sentence. "How's it going, assistant?"

Y/n snorted and picked up Varian's satchel from her table, delicately inserting the vials and spheres into its many pockets, taking care to make sure that none of them broke. "I've finished over here as well."