Once Upon A Dream
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Once Upon a Dream by Lana Del Rey
If anyone were to ask who her favorite Disney Princess is, Sarah would immediately reply with Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Then, she would get very annoyed when the questioner inevitably raises an eyebrow and almost sarcastically asks, "Really?" Sarah knows that Princess Aurora is by no means a very developed character or an ideal feminist role model. She also knows that Aurora cannot wield a sword, or magic, or has genius-level intellect. In a way, she's more similar to Snow White in the sense that she needs her own Prince Charming, Prince Philip, to save her who also needs the help of three bumbling fairies.
Despite Princess Aurora being not a particularly unique princess, she is still Sarah's favorite. It mostly stems from two factors. The first factor is nostalgia: Sleeping Beauty was the first Disney movie that she watched as a child. The second factor is vanity: Princess Aurora is the only Disney Princess that Sarah believes that she looks the most like. Her grandparents, who introduced her to Sleeping Beauty, always fed her compliments like that she looked exactly like Princess Aurora as a child.
So for Halloween, Sarah dresses up like her favorite Disney Princess. She is wearing the rose-pink ball gown with her shoulders showing and being guarded by white shoulder collars. The seams glitter like they were actually sewn with golden thread, while the collar and sleeves are tastefully decorated with lace. She is wearing a simple gold necklace with a gold-painted tiara on her head. Underneath her dress, she's wearing a pair of hot-pink sneakers that are well-hidden by the length of the dress. Her lips are red like a rose and she has a bit of pink blush on her cheeks. In her malachite-green eyes, she looks exactly like Princess Aurora.
Sarah did not make this dress herself; she's absolute garbage when it comes to sewing. Instead, she got one of her classmates, who takes fashion designing classes, to make her dress. She only had to pay about two-hundred bucks and do two essays for the guy; considering the quality of the dress, she considers the price quite cut-rate.
Of course, she wore the costume at school where she got a lot of compliments, selfies, and doors being held for her by guys who normally don't have any manners. Of course, she also wears it in Chaotic where she pretty much had all those things happen to her again. However, none of her three boys were there; apparently, they all went on separate scan quests.
And like her three boys, she decides to go on a scan quest, unguarded and without Prince Philip to come to her rescue.
Her scan quest has taken her to one of the most secretive and virtually unknown Locations in the Danian territory. She might have never even heard of the Location if it wasn't for her eavesdropping on a couple of Mandiblors. Apparently, the Location is a "closely-guarded" secret for the unlucky guards assigned to patrol the place; it is a Location located on the furthest reaches of the Danian territory, which, for the unlucky guards, takes a long time to get to the Location.
Now, Sarah has enough sense, and bribery for Wamma, to acquire and use a Torwegg to get to the Location. When she gets there, she realizes that the guards clearly forgot to mention one important thing about the Location. It's creepy as fuck.
It's like someone took Fear Valley and decided to make a castle from it. Yet, she can see touches of Maleficent's castle sprinkled about the Location like sea salt. The Location, or rather the rundown castle, is located atop of some jagged hills that is surrounded with islands of piercing crags. The castle is made up of crumbling watchtowers and a rickety-looking bridge, all of which look like a cross between Romanesque and Carpenter Gothic styles. And the crème-de-la-creepy is the ominous poison-purple mist haunting the Location like lost souls in purgatory.
Even though her commonsense tells her to port out right now, Sarah decides to take a quick scan of the place and heads inside. She wants to see if there's any cool Battlegear or, hopefully, some peaceful Creatures inhabiting the place for more scans. At worse, she'll have to port out with only this Location as her scan for this scan quest, but it would still be a pretty sweet scan considering the rarity.
The inside reminds Sarah exactly of Maleficent's throne room, even though the long-ass hallway suggests that this was just the receiving hall. Or rather, it used to be a receiving hall if the stained carpet and crumbling mortar was anything to go by. She walks down the receiving hall, feeling every bit like Princess Aurora finding the spinning wheel. She'll prick her finger and fall into a sleep like death.
But magic like that doesn't exist; granted Mugic is pretty close to magic, but it lacks the impossibility that magic has like resurrecting the dead or stealing someone's soul. Or enchanting a spinning wheel.
She walks about three minutes before she enters another room. This room has staircases that lead up to a small balcony that then leads to other rooms in the castle. However, Sarah can see literal holes in the stone steps of the staircase and decides to explore the rooms on the ground floor first.
She goes to the room underneath the balcony; the door is brown and rounded like doors from the medieval era and has to be pulled open. It takes her about five good, strong tugs before she finally opens the door. She expects to find a cobweb-covered and rat-infested room. Instead, she finds a Creature.
"Well, hello there! And you are?" The Creature has a slender, red exoskeleton with some green stripes, almost like poisonous slashes, decorating her four humanoid arms and waist. She has four pincers attached to her back like boney angel wings. She has about three sets of horns and three sets of antennas growing from the back of her head; the antennas and the horns combine look like she's wearing an impressive crown. She has light-green hair, almost the color of the Aurora Borealis, cascading down to her breasts; there's some red horizontal stripes across her hair that seems like an inverse in colors to her exoskeleton. She has yellow eyes with some reddish spots like ant eyes. Her mouth is like the little mouth of Alien but with green mandibles. She is the most humanoid-looking Danian that Sarah has ever laid eyes on. And she's also the second female Danian that she has ever met; the first being Queen Illexia.
"I'm Sarah. And you are?" She almost stutters because she was expecting this Creature, especially one's whose castle is being trespassed on by a human, to be far more aggressive. Like using one of her pincer-wings to cut off her head.
"I'm Aszil." Aszil drinks from a golden cup that reminds Sarah of her parents' stemless wine glasses. Even though she's seated, Aszil looks at least three feet taller than Sarah. On the well-worn, wooden table is a clay jug decorated with red and green stripes and a golden candelabra. Considering the obvious wealth on display, Sarah wonders what Aszil is doing in a rundown dump like this.
"Would you like to join me for a drink?" Now, Sarah knows that probably refusing this "woman" would not be the best idea. After all, she knows nothing about Aszil other than her name and gender. Aszil could poison her for the Hell of it because what sane Creature would hide out here.
"Aren't you going to demand that I leave or something along those lines? I mean I am trespassing." Sarah figures getting thrown out would be better than getting poisoned. But then again, she could just port out right now before Aszil has time to attack her.
"Oh, I've been alone for months now. The guards on patrol aren't allowed to associate with me on orders of Queen Illexia unless I'm under attack. I welcome any company." Aszil grips the jug and pours purple liquid into her cup. She takes a deep draught from it and holds out her cup to Sarah.
"See? It's not poison if we drink from the same cup." Sarah slightly blushes in shame for Aszil figuring out her fear. Sarah takes the cup from her, briefly brushing Aszil's fingers. Her fingers prick against her like rose thorns.
"Hold on, I need to get you chair. It wouldn't be fair to you if I'm the only one who gets to sit." She gets up, and Sarah quickly realizes that she's almost as tall as Chaor. If only Kaz was here, I would finally be able to rub it in his face that Danians can be just as tall as UnderWorlders! Sarah's childish part of her mind crows. Aszil goes to a dark corner where there's a storage closet and rummages through. Sarah notices that has a red "train" growing from her lower back; the train reminds Sarah of the back half of one of those Marie Antoinette dresses. Her feet are like jagged stilettos which make a nice "clapping" sound against the stone floor.
"Ah, I think this chair will suffice. A bit plain, but adequate for a princess." Momentarily, Sarah almost corrects her, but, then again, she is a princess. At least, until Halloween is over. Her chair is not a clam-shaped wicker like Aszil's, rather it's like a French-style chair with a lot of cushion. And the chair is appropriately pink.
"Thanks." She takes her seat from across Aszil. She feels a bit bad for Aszil getting the uncomfortable-looking chair, but if she wanted the comfortable one she would've picked it.
"Drink?" Aszil once again offers her cup. Sarah takes it like a gracious guest and takes a sip. It's like vanilla cocoa with a soupçon of Mandarin oranges. She hands the cup back to Aszil.
"Thanks again, so what are you doing in a place like this?" Aszil takes a sip from the cup and then hands it back to Sarah. She takes another sip from it; she likes the peculiar taste of it.
"To be alone." Sarah then has an expression on her face that says, "Are-you-kidding-me-you-just-said-you-wanted-company?" Aszil takes the cup back and fills it up again with the jug.
"Yeah, I don't think even UnderWorlders would come here." Sarah has an inkling that Aszil might be the next Queen of the Danians; Wamma somewhat revealed to her that Queen Illexia was planning on abdicating her throne. Aszil is the only other female Danian that Sarah has ever met, and going by the Danian hierarchy, females rule. Although, I do wonder if she's able to give birth to a lot of Danian eggs; her metasoma isn't as huge as Illexia's. Sarah thinks quite cattily.
"Yes, it is an ideal place to get away from the Hive and just think freely." Sarah almost wants to ask if Aszil knows Faash because he's the only Danian with individualistic tendencies in a conformist society.
"So this place is yours, right?" Sarah drinks more from the cup and then yawns.
"Yes, my little haven for now…." Aszil takes back the cup and sips like a hummingbird. Sarah rubs her eyes like she's chasing away her drowsiness. She doesn't understand why she's so sleepy!
"Do anything else besides drinking with strangers?" Sarah knows she sounds a bit snappish like when she wants to go to sleep but is prevented from doing so.
"Oh, I research the Elements and dabble into some side-projects." She again takes a sip from the cup, and so does Sarah.
"N-Neat." Sarah slurs like she's about to go into a deep sleep. She fights to keep her eyes open. She doesn't want to seem rude by falling asleep while Aszil is talking. Cothica, Aszil might take offense and throw her off a watchtower!
"I do have to apologize to you now. I had no idea that Dragon Juice would make you so sleepy! For Creatures, this gives us energy. Like for a long night of researching." Sarah feels a bit relieved that Aszil is so understanding! Creature food and drinks can have different effects for humans. Like the time ate some strawberry-looking watermelon growing near Lake Ken-i-po; he became so loopy that belly danced for three hours before finally passing out. Sarah still has blackmail footage from that incident.
"You just go to sleep. And dream to your heart's desire." Sarah folds her arms and rests her head on top of them like a pillow. Her eyes close like coffin lids. She feels herself being lifted and doesn't make a sound of protest. She hears the clapping of stone and thorns. Then, she feels herself being put on a bed of spider silk.
Thorns prick across her body like dragon fire. However, she refuses to get up. She refuses to open her eyes. She's in a sleep like death. Just like Princess Aurora.
Aszil looks upon Sarah on her bed of spider silk and wrapped by her experimental thorns. The thorny vines are sticking, like arrows in skulls, to the human's veins. Her veins are being pumped with the experimental mixture located in the hidden pools deep under the castle. If all goes well, Sarah will not age a day while she sleeps.
When Sarah found her, Aszil viewed it as a favorable sign from the Cothica. She had always wanted to test out her little side-project, but, unfortunately, Creature skin was far too tough for the vines to pierce. But then came a fair maiden waltzing around in her dark castle.
Now, the purpose of this long-term experiment is to see if youth can truly be maintained after many solons have passed. Granted, she would've preferred a Creature, but a human is just as complex as a Creature. And they are also quite fragile. They get hurt so often that they need their Scanners to get better again.
Aszil has Sarah's Danian-brown Scanner in her hands. She's not going to pull it apart to see how it works; she's not really interested in the technology. But she's not going to simply throw it away. Rather, she places the Scanner into Sarah's hands like a bouquet of flowers.
Aszil is reminded of a fairytale told to her by Queen Illexia when she was very young. The fairytale was about a princess who was cursed by a Muge to sleep for all eternity, but there was a chink in the curse where the princess's true love can awaken her with a kiss. Solons passed before the alleged true love came and kissed the princess; she did not wake up and her kingdom was destroyed by UnderWorld raiders. The moral of the story is not to rely on some male to come and save you, or something female-empowering as that.
However, she had always wished that the prince did awaken the princess and lived happily ever after. She would like to see some prince come here and try to awaken Sarah, but she wouldn't make it easy for the poor prince. And if the prince failed, well she always wanted to see how old humans can get physically. Perhaps, they'll dream together like true lovers. Aszil begins to hum the song that went along with the fairytale:
"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.
And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem,
But if I know you, I know what you'll do,
You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream."
Author's Comments- Like Samhain, this was meant to be uploaded on Halloween or a few days after, not almost a month later. Again, like Samhain, there will be two more sequels to this story; I just don't know when. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Aszil, I don't blame you. I didn't even know she existed until I got The Ultimate Guide To All Things Chaotic by Jake Black. Her card is also very hard to come by, even more so now. When I first looked at her, all I thought was like, "Man, it's like Maleficent was turned into a Danian." Ironically, she is pretty much the Maleficent to Sarah's Princess Aurora in this story. The book doesn't offer any insight to her personality and the card doesn't help much either; she also never got to appear on the show before it got cancelled, so I had free-range on her personality. Oddly enough, I was going to make her appear more sinister, but I realized that Sarah is not an idiot and would port out immediately if met with such a sinister character. Instead, she's chill like Marceline the Vampire Queen but with the experimentation side of Princess Bubblegum; probably, due to the fact that I was writing this story while watching the Stakes mini-series.