Chapter 11: Unseelie Knight
Later that night, they all had sex again and then fell into a deep slumber. But Sam found himself in a very weird dream...
He was standing in an underground cave somewhere, confused by how he got there. He heard a distant rumbling that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
"What’s that!?" he exclaimed, panic in his voice. An instant later, the rumble seemed to close the distance as the entire cave began to shake violently.
"IT’S A QUAKE!!!!! AAAAHHH!!!!" He screamed as he turned and ran, frantically looking for a way out.
Before he could get very far, however, he heard an enormous cracking sound, and an instant later, the ground ripped apart below him. His screams rang out as he fell into a pitch black abyss, silenced a few moments later as he plunged into an ice cold underground river. The current was strong, whisking him away through a series of tunnels.
He fought to keep his head above the water in the limited air space, unable to utter much else beyond panicked screams and gasps anytime he popped back up from having been pulled under. He was racing along swiftly, and panic gave way to utter despair as the current sucked him though a smaller opening into another tunnel with no air pocket whatsoever. It was at that moment he was fairly certain he was about to drown.
But then the tunnel emptied into a waterfall, and he was tossed out into an underground lake, where he frantically gasped for air as he floated on the surface.
"Oh my god. OH MY GOD!" he choked out. "I thought I was gonna die!"
Once he had taken a moment to catch his breath, he looked around the chamber he was in and noticed the quaking had stopped. He also spotted strange, bioluminescent vines running along the ceiling and walls, converging upon a giant plant-like structure that sat upon a ledge the size of a small parking lot. The lights gave the place an eerie bluish-purplish glow, and like moths to a flame, Sam found himself drawn to it, the compulsion to approach irresistible.
As he swam over and pulled himself up onto the ledge, he noticed the plant looked like a black rose the size of a carriage, with glowing multi-colored veins covering every petal. It began to respond to his presence, twisting and twirling as the center of the flower tilted towards him and grew into an upright circular opening, creating some sort of clear, dimensional pathway to a completely different world. Through the portal, he could see a dark, dead forest, cloaked in a dense fog while distorted screams echoed out.
"What the..." was all he could mutter as he heard a woman from within laughing wickedly.
"Finally we meet, dear Samreon!" said an elderly woman as she stepped out from the shadows within the other world, smiling widely. She walked up to the portal opening, her frail body wrapped in loose, torn black robes and clutching a wooden staff with a small dark globe at the end. Her hair was long, wild, and silver, her irises reddish-yellow with cat-like slits for pupils. Her canine teeth resembled fangs as her mouth opened wide in her manic cackling, and her skin was dry, wrinkled, and ghostly white with dark rings around her eyes. She looked gauntly, malnourished, and fragile, yet the sense of utter despair she instilled in Sam was nightmare-inducing.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "What is all this?"
"You are destined to become my dark minion and do my bidding!" she said with a cackle.
"Don’t count on it," Sam said defiantly. "I don’t know what is going on here, but there is one thing I am certain of - You are bad news, lady, and I’m not going to be a part of whatever wicked schemes you have cooking."
"Hahaha, you don’t yet realize your very presence here already implicates you in my grand plan!" the old woman explained with a grandiose expression of her hands. "Everything that has happened to you - your mother being outed as an Unseelie, Lazula being sent to Luminary’s Landing, you unlocking your Dragon Warlock Class - it has all been orchestrated so that you would one day stand before my prison realm and set me free! This may be a dream, but this place is real, and you’ll come here, eventually."
"Me?" Sam asked, confused. His eyes then narrowed and his voice grew stern. "What do you mean? What does this have to do with me? Are you the one that hired Grimrar, then?"
The evil woman grinned and nodded. "Aww, you were really hoping it was your mother."
"You know where she is, don’t you?" Sam accused.
She nodded again. "And I will reunite you with her, if you accept your destiny. You see, Samreon, I have known for quite some time that you would be a prime candidate to become my champion! My Unseelie Knight!"
"Who... Who are you?!" Sam demanded.
"You know who I am," she insisted. "You’ve heard about me in old stories."
"I don’t know..." Sam said slowly. "I really don’t kno-"
"Say my name!" she cut him off. "SAY MY NAME!"
After thinking about it for a moment, he remembered the stories telling of an ancient archfey villainess who caused much chaos in the world centuries ago. "Queen Maeve..." he finally uttered.
She began laughing hysterically, and then suddenly morphed into a giant red and black dragon, roaring fiercely. Then she shot a blast of fire breath right at Sam.
A moment later, Sam woke up screaming in the bed at the Honeydew Inn. Lazula and Calista jumped awake too.
"What?" the elf girl asked.
"What is it?" the blonde added.
Sam was trying to shake the sleep away, but he heard Queen Maeve’s voice ring out in his mind one last time.
"Train hard under Koga Miyazoko, and when I have need of you in the future, answer the call! That is the only way you’ll ever see your mother again! Muahahahaha!!!!!"
"Fuck..." Sam said quietly. He then explained everything from the dream to Lazula and Calista.
"So Queen Maeve is real..." the blonde said. She had read the old stories too.
"Yeah..." Sam went to splash some water on his face, trying to wash away the sleep that still hung over him...