The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 57
There was no way to get through the main gates of the Emerald City without somebody finding and capturing us.
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.
There was no way to get through the main gates of the Emerald City without somebody finding and capturing us. There was, however, a good chance that Nimue didn’t know about the tunnel that led from the catacombs into the city. Ozma’s spies had used it for years to learn the comings and goings of the Wicked Witch’s movement.
If Nimue had discovered every secret passageway of Oz, then we were doomed. It was a risk I had to take—there wasn’t any other choice. And this passageway would take us directly to the Cathedral of the six, right next door to the castle. It was our best chance to enter Nimue’s sanctuary unnoticed.
To reach the catacomb passageway, we’d have to go through the crypts, which meant taking out the half dozen guards stationed there. “Okay,” I said, ducking down next to Chelle and Balor behind one of the hills nearest the catacombs. “We should easily be able to take them out.”
“I only count six.”
“There are probably more in the tombs. Ozma had many secrets she kept hidden down there. Luckily, they’ll be confined and easy to take out.”
“You seem awfully confident about that,” Balor chimed in.
I wasn’t confident. I was terrified. For all I knew, there could be a hundred troops underground, waiting for us to pop our heads out before they attacked. However, that didn’t change one truth.
“It’s the best chance we have.”
As I stood up to attack, five of the guards walked back into the tomb leaving the entrance guarded by only one person, but who knew how long they would be downstairs before they returned.
“If you think this is the best course forward, lass,” Balor said, “then, I’m with you.”
“And you?” I asked, turning to Chelle.
“I don’t know this city well enough to have an opinion. I hate this plan, but if it’s our best shot to save Rose, then let’s do it.”
I nodded. “Good. Then let’s go.”
The guard turned his back toward me as I crested the hill. I rushed toward him and lunged into the air. It was the only chance I had to strike, and I took it, leaping onto his back and digging my knife into his neck until he dusted into nothingness.
“Come on,” I said to the others, gesturing for them to follow me.
I peered down into the cave. I only heard the low mumble of a few guards. I crept down the stairs silently, slowly, descending into the darkness. Two guards stood at the bottom of the stairs in the ashes of the fallen kings which Ozma had flung into the air in a desperate attempt to save me not long ago.
Ozma. She had to be all right. The false queen had hunted her for decades, and would relish her capture, savoring every moment and fighting the urge to kill her quickly. I needed to believe that. If Ozma was already dead, then all of Urgu was doomed.
I turned back to Balor and gave him a nod. Together, we ran forward and dusted the guards in the first room.
Their ashes fell to the ground and mixed in with those from the royal line of Oz.
Chelle rushed past us and into the other door. She muttered something under her breath. The ash beneath her feet molded into a stake and she flung it into a guard’s stomach, dusting him. We moved forward through the crypt, obliterating any guards that came in our way, until we reached a stone wall with the man in the moon and seal of Ozma’s house on it.
I placed my hand on the nose of the moon and twisted it counterclockwise. It resisted me at first, but with a quick jerk of my wrist the nose clicked and spun. Once it made a full rotation, it disappeared into the face of the moon and the wall parted to reveal a long tunnel.
I beckoned the others forward. “This way.”
“Duh,” Chelle said, following me.
The minute our rescue attempt was over, I was going to punch her in the face. For the time being, an uneasy ally was better than none, especially one with magical powers. I had to put up with her, even if she irritated me enough that I happily fantasized about her death.
The corridor went on for longer than I remembered from the last time I’d used it, a century ago. Usually, the path was lit with torches like the catacombs. I didn’t want to reveal our position in case anyone was in the darkness with us, so I did not light them. The path twisted and turned through the new city, and then into the mid-city, and finally into the Old City, where the castle was located.
A metal ladder, unused for years, sat against the wall and led to a trap door in the floor above. I had used it once to shuffle the rightful heir out of the castle and to safety, and now I used it to save her a second time.
“I don’t know what we will find when we get above ground,” I said to Chelle and Balor. “There might be a hundred guards waiting for us, or none. Be prepared for anything.”
I grabbed onto the ladder and pulled myself up. At the top I unlatched the trap door and slowly pushed it open. The tunnel led into the Cathedral of the Six, the largest church in the whole of Urgu. There were many more churches dedicated to the Six, and temples to worship the individual gods, but none were as grand as the cathedral.
The secret passageway led into one of the confessionals. Only the high priest knew of it, and Nimue had murdered him in a show of force in the first days of her reign.
I pulled myself up onto the pew and walked out into the cathedral. A rainbow of lights came through the stained-glass windows that rose a hundred feet into the air. They depicted the Six as the church saw them, venerated and perfect, instead of flawed as I had come to know them.
Chelle walked out from behind me, eyeing the cathedral. “It’s really something. I don’t go for this hero worship shit, but this is pretty nice.”
“It’s something, all right. From a time before Hypnos abandoned Urgu and left it in the hands of Hera.”
“They’ve reconstructed this old place five times,” Balor added. “Every time a new god was imprisoned here, they added to it. First, as the church of Hypnos, and then Hypnos and Hera, then—”
“We get it,” I grunted. “We’re not here for a history lesson. Come. There is a secret entrance into the castle not far ahead. One that I doubt even the Wicked Witch has found yet. It’s in a garden off the main street.”
Chelle raised an eyebrow. “You make a lot of assumptions, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “I follow my gut. It hasn’t led me astray yet.”
A gift from the Fates. My gut was never wrong, and it distrusted Chelle. I wasn’t sure why just yet. I felt no ill will toward her, aside from the overwhelming desire to punch her in the mouth.
“That is literally not true,” Chelle said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
I turned to her. “My only mistake was in trusting you. From the beginning, my gut has told me that you were trouble. I should have listened to it.”
“Ladies,” Balor said. “We can kill each other later, yes?”
I shot him a smile. “I look forward to that.”
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.