The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 54
Livid was an apt word to describe how I felt. Ozma let Rose and Chelle go without even putting up a fight.
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.
Livid was an apt word to describe how I felt. Ozma let Rose and Chelle go without even putting up a fight. I had worked for a hundred years to find a person capable of fulfilling the prophesy, and Ozma just let them walk right out.
I had been stewing about it and pacing furiously. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stormed into Ozma’s chamber, where she was sitting cross-legged in calm silence, candles flickering. “Why did you do it?” I barked.
“Do what?” Ozma said, not even flinching. She lit a stick of incense.
“Why did you let them go?”
Ozma looked up at me. “Because we are not monsters, Gabrielle. We can’t force people to fight with us if they don’t want to.”
“But Rose wanted to stay. You could have convinced her.”
“Perhaps. She chose to go, no matter her reasons. If she is the chosen one, she will return.”
I wanted to yell but something caught my eye. Ozma had surrounded herself in a circle of ash and with exactly six candles equidistant around her.
“You’re praying to the old gods.”
“I am. One of them, at least.”
“So, you do believe that he is still out there, somewhere?”
“I believe that I would not have my powers if Hypnos was gone from this plane of existence. However, where he is, I still cannot discern. Not even after all this time.” She sighed.
The temple shook and quaked underneath us. I heard rocks shifting in front of the temple and a thin shaft of light came from above the stairs. Something was coming to us. Perhaps it was Rose coming back, having thought better of herself. I rushed to the front with eager anticipation, only to be met by the clanking armor of the Wicked Witch’s soldiers.
“You will pay for this trespass,” I snarled.
I pulled out my daggers and sliced at the soldiers sprinting toward me. Their armor was only susceptible to attack in three places, but after a thousand encounters, I knew those places well. I placed my strikes on the left side of the abdomen and under the arm.
The first two soldiers I dusted without trouble, but there were more coming down. Dozens more. I feared I couldn’t hold them back.
“Ozma!” I screamed and a moment later she appeared.
She clapped her hands together and pushed them apart, extending her arms toward the soldiers. A burst of fire came from her hands. She closed her eyes and used her mind to fling the clay pots from the shelf. They shattered, dispelling their ashes into the air, the last remnants of their existence.
“Go!” Ozma screamed.
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Yes, you are!” She placed her hands on me and whispered to herself. “Find me in the dungeon.” She snapped her fingers and I was gone into the wind. The last thing I saw was a half dozen soldiers descend on her as she collapsed to the ground.
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.