Rotten Core Descending

Ben writhed in pain as his marks started to hurt like it is burning. He is inside his castle room, clenching his biceps where the marks are. He wonders if the others are feeling the same right now. He can also notice how it feels like the sloth mark is hurting in particular. He sat at his chair, across a full length mirror where he can see his own reflection, a handsome young man with lips curving up into a smirk. His eyes furrowed at the view, fully knowing what it was.

The reflection started to sneer and laugh at the struggling Ben. In his fury and mind clouded with pain, he sprung up and gestured to throw his crown to the mirror, but managed to stop himself just in time before doing so. He sat down again, trying to fight off the pain.

The reflection seemed annoyed at Ben's hesitance. It started to spiral into a ball of faint light and went out of the mirror, gaining a physical form. It dispersed through the room in a form of a smoke, slightly pinkish in color. This time, the mirror showed the reflection of the real Ben, the one writhing in pain.

"What a wuss." A voice echoed throughout the room, still without the trace of someone speaking except the smoke.

"Just shut up. It fucking hurts." Ben blurted with a bite.

"Uh oh..the king is mad. But it felt like this is the first time you swore.. you don't sound natural at all. It's a start though." The voice continued to sneer at him as the smoke gathered together and dissipated, revealing a handsome young lad dressed in fancy garments and holding a wand similar to but different from Fairy Godmother's.

Within mere seconds after Ben saw him, the lad started to transform into a beautiful young woman in a fancy robe, then into an old woman, a young boy, and finally into an exact copy of Ben, like a perfect clone. But there is one thing that remained the same all throughout the transformations, the wand, enchanting and held with the right hand.

"Who are you already? And your true form..it's never the same, you only stop transforming after settling down as my doppelgänger. I've done what you said, I never told anyone about you. Why did you do it to Dude?" Ben's pain is still there, but a bit tolerable now.

"Oh.. the poor mutt. I was just giving it a scare so it won't bother us, of course I'm disguised as you, in case someone see. But I didn't expect it to run wildly and stumble down a cliff. On a different note though, I decided to tell you my name, you should be glad." The figure just dismissed the matter nonchalantly, convinced that the dog hurt itself without anyone's fault.

"So you're saying you didn't deliberately hurt Dude?" Ben is surprised and confused. "Exactly as I said." The voice sounded nothing but true. "But the mutt almost died, thank God Carlos is there." Ben sighed in disbelief.

"Yeah, I saw it. Don't forget that I can live within the eyes of those who have the marks if they already manifested one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I'm practically in that room that time, watching Carlos and all. And actually..it seems that I'm having an additional host right now." Ben's doppelgänger approached him fast and grabbed his biceps, examining it closely as if looking for something. "Sloth...I see..I wonder who is this person that will join you Ben."

Ben shook off his doppelgänger and backed a little, putting some much needed space between them. "I get it. Fine, tell me your name now, just as you said." Ben glared.

"Oh fine. I thought you totally forgot. But fine then." The doppelgänger waved the wand and a word appear mid-air.

CHANTRE.

"Chanter.." Ben read it under his breath but Chantre definitely heard him.

"No. Not Chanter. It's pronounced two ways. But Chanter's definitely not one of them." Chantre sounds a bit irritated which made Ben chuckle a bit, completely forgetting the pain shooting through from his marks.

"Oh really. You think this is funny? I can easily break my side of our bargain and just give the marks to every single one of your subjects in Auradon if I wanted. Or do something worse so easily with my power that you just witnessed. I can even pose as you or your friends and do horrible things if I feel like it." Chantre sounded annoyed and the words brought Ben back to his senses. He know that he should deal with this person carefully.

He agreed not to tell anyone as long as Chantre doesn't do more damage. He knows what Chantre can do in just a snap, and the wand just complicates it more, it's as powerful (if not more than) as Fairy Godmother's own. He was actually surprised when Chantre agreed, although he is taking the agreement with a pinch of salt, since he doesn't really know anything about Chantre.

"I get it. Please forgive my rudeness. How is it pronounced then?" Ben is a bit taken aback but he tried to show no signs of it.

"It's pronounced like Chantrie (Chantry) or Chantor. I won't mention the name to your father though. It may elicit some bad memories. But remember that this is our goodwill" It confused Ben, he was expecting to get a hint about Chantre's true form from the name, but he can't even get a clue if Chantre is a boy or a girl, or what the person is talking about. The voice however sounded more calmed now, and as the words are heard, Chantre disappeared into thin air. Nowhere to be found.

Without Chantre distracting him, Ben started to notice the pain in his biceps once again. He immediately rushed outside his room to go and check on his friends even though it was almost 1am already. But, just outside the room, he is met by his father, Former King Adam.

"Son, where have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you." His father maintained his composure, but Ben can easily notice the panic under the facade.

"Father...I'm just in my r-"

"You're not even in your room when I checked. Anyway, just come with me." Ben's words were cut off. At first, it makes no sense. He was just in his room and his father claimed that he went there looking for him. However, Ben immediately realized. He felt a sudden twitch from his heart as he realized that it may be Chantre's doing. Maybe a concealing magic or something..it made him realize just what he is dealing with..Chantre seems to be really as powerful as he/she claims to be.

His father brought him just outside the castle with a cab waiting. "The limo already took off with Fairy Godmother. Something is happening in the dorms, we hailed a cab for you. You should go. You all need to be together as much as possible. After this, we may arrange for you to live in the dorms as well, but let's just talk about it later. You need to go." Former King Adam almost shoved Ben into the cab and told the driver to hurry with a stack of cash, which maybe includes some hush money. They can't risk rumors going out and starting a panic.

He was clenching his marks throughout, trying to forget the pain. It was a short ride, but to Ben it felt like the longest and most nerve wracking ever. He immediately went straight to the three girls' room first. There he found his six friends with Fairy Godmother. The boys just went there after they started hurting while Fairy Godmother was called by the girls when they felt the pain and after Audrey was locked in the bathroom.

"Thank goodness King Ben. Where have you been? Your father almost flipped the castle upside down while looking for you." Fairy Godmother somehow forgot all her terms of endearment while attending to the sleeping Audrey.

"Yeah, sorry. What happened?" Ben immediately asked while clenching his arm, even though he somehow knew that it's about the simultaneous pain.

Everyone are hurting. Mal is clutching her thigh. Evie, her hip. Carlos, his abdomen. Jay, his hand. And Chad, his chest. Except Audrey who is not clutching his lower back and is sound asleep in her bed. She was found sleeping on the bathroom floor by Fairy Godmother.

Then, it hit Ben. So it's Audrey now...with sloth. After a while, their pain magically disappeared. They thought maybe Fairy Godmother have done something, but she actually still haven't. It seems like an introductory pain of some sort or a warning of the manifestation of a mark.

"I don't remember you kids telling anything about something like this with the night of wrath. Although, I can imagine why." Fairy Godmother remarked while still in deep thought. She knew how adrenaline can work and all of these kids were totally in a fight or flight mode that night of wrath, plus the pain from their broken bones which probably overwrote the pain from their marks that time.

Everyone started to move around with the pain gone, still except Audrey. They saw Fairy Godmother bring out a bit.. large injection.

"Wait. What's that?" Mal interrupted, looking suspiciously on the fluid inside.

"It's a stressor concoction. We are actually planning to tell you this, but we decided to withheld the information before sloth emerge. We discovered that all the seven deadly sins are some sort of aggression with a strong presence of love that already became twisted and perverted, all except sloth..which can be considered as listlessness with a strong absence of drive or love of anything and any form." Fairy Godmother explained as she injected the fluid to Audrey's arm, this time without any protest from anyone.

"We discovered that stressors can help mitigate sloth, and relaxants for pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony and wrath. However, we can't risk giving relaxants to the one affected with sloth or giving stressors to others, since it can worsen the situation as you can imagine. We are still discussing the matter when you called us. And it seems that an opportunity presented itself." She added while giving each of the remaining kids their relaxant injections, except Ben who is already done with wrath and won't be injected anymore.

"That's good news then." Jay received his shot without wincing that much and looking satisfied with the information, he still can't figure out how his knowledge of applied physics and athletics will help, while Carlos is also deep in thought, probably tinkering his ideas in Biology. "I can't believe I haven't thought of it." He blurted. He's not fazed by the injection at all, Cruella made him a bit pain tolerant, but not all the time.

"Yeah, it makes so much sense." Chad added while his face grimaced, he is actually an Athletics and Zoology prodigy, he is more than familiar with how human and animal bodies work. He actually likes animals and is especially curious as to how a mouse can turn into a horse scientifically (he just decided to let the pumpkin-turning-into-a-coach slide). However, he's not like Carlos who have that much knowledge for applied skills like operating on a dying mutt or real life experiences like witnessing someone expertly skin an animal.

"I see. Will it be enough though? I think we should maximize the dosage without triggering some strong side effects." Evie's Chemistry genius mind is on the works with her immense knowledge of Potions. She tensed a bit before receiving her shot but it went well. She is starting to think about chemicals and stuff as stressors and relaxants and how to maximize each one. Mal received her shot without any problems either. All of them simply feels brave and determined at the moment.

Then they started to think that maybe it's a good thing that the information was withheld because they felt like they will likely experiment with it immediately.

Ben is especially good at Political Science and Literature. He has his ways with books that can make him understand a thick book's core content in less than an hour, which is helpful in researches.

Mal is a genius in Linguistics and Spells. She can immediately understand the spells even in different languages and tinker semantics to make it work, even with a slight difference in words. It also made her able to read or translate books and researchers in different languages. She is also good in Math, and more in Calculus, claiming that it's just like a language but with numbers as letters in forming ideas and words. This can help with researching foreign archives and calculating dosages she thinks.

Jay is a rising prodigy in Physics and Athletics. He just seemed to understand it all, even though he mostly explain it with a whoosh, bam, thud, wham, swoosh, and other ambiguous words. But, he can certainly apply it in real life, knowing the right angle and force in every throws he intends to do after studying the shape, size and weight of an object. He is still thinking how it can help them though.

They were all practically prodigies and experts in their own fields. And their thought processes are simply triggered by the information they heard.

On the other hand, after getting their shots and while deep in thought, Audrey started to move and get up. Her eyes also started to show the same crimson glow Ben had. They were taken aback at first, remembering how the same glow drove Ben to break their bones and cover Jay with blood.

But they know that this is different, they don't have a clue as to how sloth can possibly be that dangerous to all of them. But they won't take any chances this time. They are determined not to let their guard down once again.