Quest (OLD: the new version MIGHT be posted shortly)

Chapter 9-Sage

“Sage,” I smiled, standing up as well.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I wanted you to see something,” she said, smiling coyly. My heart stuttered and I walked over to her.

“What is it?” I asked. She held out her hand and I took it, loving how it fit in mine. Then, however, she held on tightly and her face contorted in wrath. Her eyes grew darker, like they had been when she fought the werewolf, and her voice screeched at me.

“I wanted to show you where your father put me. I wanted to show you the Hole.” She dragged me along down the dark path, her nails cutting into my arm. We came to a large hole in the ground, only distinguishable by its darker shade than the floor around it.

“Sage, no,” I gasped, trying to tug my hand away. Her voice grew softer again, and her eyes faded to their normal spiced-coffee brown.

“Do you not want to see what men like your father do?”

“I don’t,” I replied.

“Not even with me? We could go down together, and then we’d be safe there. I can get us out again, and we would live together.”

I swallowed thickly. Sage was asking me to run away with her, and I was all for it. She looked at me with soft eyes. I nearly opened my mouth to agree, but a nagging thought stuck in my head.

Sage wouldn’t leave the questers, or give up the quest.

Then I realized that I had a long sword strapped to my waist. I pulled my hand away from Sage, who was now holding it lovingly, and gripped the hilt.

“Sage, you’re the quest leader,” I said. She turned and pouted at me like a little girl. Sage wouldn’t be caught dead with an expression like that. I unsheathed my sword.

“Oh, come on, Jae, you and I can be happy together. I know that you’ve thought it.”

I ignored the fake Sage and swung my sword at her. Before I could hit her, however, she had a sword of her own and the sound of metal clashing reverberated off the silent stone walls. Her eyes darkened again, turning a beautiful back again. She swung her sword high and I parried the blow. Her long, flowing down spun around her frame as she turned around me, putting me in between her and the Hole.

I lunged and my sword sunk deeply in her stomach, tearing the thing black fabric. She staggered forward and gave me a huge gash in my arm, missing my heart by half a foot, before going to the edge of the Hole.

“I always knew I’d die in the Hole,” she gagged. She walked over the edge and fell.

I woke up, for real this time, with a start in a cold sweat. As I sat up I felt something hot and sticky running down my left arm. There was a long gash where the dream-Sage had cut me. I clutched the wound and tried to wake Argus up so he could heal it, but he wouldn’t stir. He just rolled over and muttered about his dad. I looked around and saw that everyone was in as deep a sleep. I even tried to wake Sage up, but she responded by striking out and curling back up to sleep.

Then I realized that she had a giant spider in her hair, which was casting a long yellow-glowing web around her head. I batted around my head and felt a spider there too. I swatted it off, breaking my own yellow web. I stomped down on the spider and went to take off the others’ brain bugs, but something stopped me.

The spiders looked simple, with green and red specks in the black body, but something about them made me worry that the thread was too volatile to move. I clutched at my wound and sat down, watching Sage’s face as the spider worked on her.

Perhaps the spiders used a bit of my own dream to hurt me, because at that moment I wouldn’t mind her waking up and running away with me. She looked worried, scared, and hurt by whatever she was dreaming. As I watched she winced and clutched her neck, and I prayed that she woke up soon.