The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 30
“Let’s go!” I shouted back to Chelle and Rose. The Queen’s Road led through the forest and into the Emerald City itself.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
“Let’s go!” I shouted back to Chelle and Rose.
The Queen’s Road led through the forest and into the Emerald City itself. We had been traveling on it for less than an hour and already they were lagging behind. I worried that we would be caught by the Wicked Witch’s guards, but it was still the quickest way to Ozma. We were through the worst of the forest, but its trees still lined the way for another five miles. It would take all day to move through this, if Rose and Chelle didn’t hurry.
“I’m trying,” Rose replied. “I just didn’t think it would be this much walking. I mean, this is a dream. Can’t we just teleport there?”
I sighed. “That’s not how it works here.”
Rose didn’t seem that interesting or important to me, except that she was the first person to make it through the barrier in a century. If it wasn’t for that, she would be completely ordinary.
And yet, I watched how she interacted with her gorgon girlfriend, Chelle. There was nothing like that when I was alive. Monsters and humans lived completely separately and at odds with each other. Even when there were alliances, they were shaky at best and often disbanded in bloodshed.
Rose didn’t have any of that contempt for monsters. She held hands with Chelle freely and openly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Perhaps things had changed on Earth in the last hundred years, because even those that made it here before the disappearance of Hypnos did not treat monsters well. Still, I was happy she agreed to wear the amulet which covered her gorgon appearance.
“Can’t we just take a wagon,” Rose said. “Like that one.”
I looked back on the road in a panic. There shouldn’t be a wagon on the road. Not yet. The road through the forest was too treacherous for any but the queen’s soldiers to traverse, and I had tracked the schedule of the Queen’s Guard before I left for Critterton. No envoy was supposed to be on the road for a week.
But Rose was right. A wooden carriage pulled by a pair of oxen came into view from around the tree line.
“Get down!” I shouted, rushing toward a ditch at the side of the road. I jumped inside. In a moment Chelle and Rose joined me.
“What are we hiding from?” Chelle asked, inching closer to me.
I peeked my head out of the ditch. I feared the wagon was from Oz. Sure enough, emerald banners hung from its roof. There must have been an emergency that caused the queen to move up her next shipment of dreams.
Dreams were mined from the center of Urgu, and every year we were forced to mine closer and closer to the core, and our supply of dreams grew scarce. It was dangerous work, and only the dwarves could handle that kind of heat in that kind of depth. Once they were mined, the queen controlled the supply, distributing them on her whim. Ozma distributed the dreams equally and fairly, but Nimue…she used dreams to reward her sycophants.
“It’s the royal dream changer. There will be a half dozen royal guards not far behind.”
The ground thundered beneath me. From the distance, a cadre of knights on horseback, replete with emerald plate armor and carrying the banners of the Witched Witch, came around the corner.
“Stay quiet,” I said, slouching down against the ground.
Dreams did more than simply power Urgu. They were its currency as well. Dreams could be exchanged for anything, and the more powerful the dream, the more it was worth. Since there had been no new dreams in a hundred years, they were a precious commodity, and worth killing over.
The thunderous vibrations quickened and grew more intense, until the shadow of the carriage and the knights fell over us, and then passed by. They had not seen us. Good.
The dream changer oversaw the distribution of dreams throughout the kingdom and was thus the second most powerful human in all of Urgu, after the queen. As such, she had the most elite knights in all of Urgu, as she kept the currency for the kingdom, and was an easy target for thieves.
I poked my head up one more time to watch them clomp away. Then, something unexpected happened. A hail of arrows launched into the air from the far tree line and arched onto the road. The arrows embedded into several of the knights and forced the horses to buck. One knight fell to the ground near me and evaporated from view; his ashes could be seen on the wind.
“Attack!” A loud yell came from the trees, and a group of poorly dressed men and women, most with flaming red hair, flooded onto the road from either side and engaged the knights in hand to hand combat. They carried swords, clubs, and mallets.
Even with arrows riddling the knights’ armor, there was little hope for the attackers. I turned back to Chelle and gestured to Rose. “Stay here and protect her!”
I pulled myself onto the road and charged. Close combat was not my strength, but I couldn’t let the attackers be killed. Any enemy of the Wicked Witch was a friend to me.
I leapt onto the back of one of the horses and stuck a knight in the neck as she readied for attack. I kicked her to the ground and lunged at another. This one I tackled to the ground. As the horse bucked into the air, I rolled away and the full weight of the horse came crashing down onto the knight, evaporating him instantly.
I pushed myself back to my feet to attack again, but the rest of the group had slain the other knights, and one of them with dirty brown clothes and flaming red hair walked toward the carriage of the dream changer.
I snuck closer to hear what their leader said.
“It’s not a very good day for you, is it, Cordelia?”
A bald woman with fat cheeks and a tall green hat poked her head out of the carriage. “Nimue will not be happy.”
“She’s never happy,” the woman said. “Now, pay up.”
The fat woman smiled. “I think not. You see, you’re very predictable, Diedre. I think very much that you will be the one paying up today.”
“What do you mean?”
The shriek echoed through the tree moments before I saw the wings of the demon dragon known as Bastonel, clad in bright silver armor like a knight, and blowing a thick barrage of fire into the air.
“Oh, no.” I took off running. “It’s the great dragon, Bastonel. Let’s go!”
I leapt down into the ditch and headed for the tree line, pulling Rose along with me. The forest was a slower route than the Queen’s Road, but they would get us there in shadow. I stupidly traded speed for stealth, and it might have gotten us killed.
“What about those people?” Rose asked as we ran.
“They’re all going to die,” I replied. “It’s the price we all pay when we go against the queen, sooner or later.”
“No!” Rose said. “Chelle, you can’t let them die. Please, Chelle.”
“They’re not my concern,” Chelle said. “You’re my only concern.”
“If what Red told us is true, then we all have to help fight the queen. All of us. Even them, and even you.”
“Grrrr!” Chelle screamed. “You are so annoying. Go. I will catch up.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Chelle nodded. “You hurt her, and I will end you.”
“There’s a town up ahead. Meet us at Happy Dragon Inn in K’dech.”
Chelle nodded. “I’ll see you there.”
I couldn’t wait another second. The dragon was about to attack, and I had to get Rose to safety. I turned away and disappeared into the brush with the dreamer.
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.