Relic-Verse: Champions of Hope

Chapter 23

-- Part 1 --

Samuel's eyes shot open, widening in surprise as he looked out into a vast void of darkness. He frantically spun around, looking for any sign of his living room and friends, but ultimately finding nothing. He opened his mouth to yell out for Evan and Arica, only to not feel or hear his voice. His worry skyrocketed, and shortly after he felt himself go from calmly floating, to being flung through the void.

He did his best to look for anything, and eventually spotted a small glowing spider web in the distance. He frowned and attempted to reach out for it, only to realize that it wasn't small- it was just far away. He seemed to speed up, and hitched his breath as the spiderweb grew in size, quickly becoming so large that he could barely comprehend it all at once.

Before he could realize what happened, he flew right between a gap in the web, and kept going. As soon as he passed through, the black void burst to life, changing from an endless darkness into a swirling storm of light blue and dark green, with more webs seeming to hold the odd energy together in some kind of shape that Samuel was unable to discern due to being unable to see the other sides.

His mind began to get cloudy, and despite him feeling fairly certain he was asleep, a wave of drowsiness had washed over him. The further he flew, the more his eyelids started to fall, until eventually he could barely keep himself awake. After an unknown amount of time, he felt himself slow down and eventually hit something solid, but even after that he was unable to open his eyes. He felt something turn him onto his back, and through his closed eyelids he could see a faint light blue and dark green outline of two figures standing over him.

"It appears as if someone found their way here..." A soothing voice spoke, causing Samuel's body to feel even weaker than it already was, and seeming to come from the light blue outline.

"That's never happened before. What do we do?" A distorted, almost demonic sounding voice came from the dark green outline, and caused Samuel's muscles to involuntarily tense.

"I think we do nothing, and just let him wake up." An aura of calming energy surrounded Samuel, before being roughly broken apart by the looming power of fear.

"Should we notify the boss?"

"That's probably a good idea." The calming feeling clashed with the immense terror Samuel was feeling, him awkwardly laying there, doing his best to try and open his eyes.

After a few moments of struggling, he finally managed to lift his eyelids enough to catch a glimpse of the world around him, but the second he did, the outlines vanished.

The storm of blue and green was gone, with the blue having been replaced with a darkness similar to the void he saw previously, and the green becoming a more sickly shade. Rather than the two figures standing over him, their energies clashing, there was now a single creature being strung up in the air by thick webbing. The feelings that were just a moment before fighting over him, vanished, and were replaced with a paralyzing fear. The only bit of the creature he could properly see, was a twisted head of tentacles, and upon noticing him, they twisted around and turned into a mirror of his face. The creature grinned and struggled against the webs containing it.

"Thanks for the save, Champion. It's nice to be able to finally say, see you later." The creature winked, and before Sam knew it, the world around him faded away.

Samuel shot upright immediately, knocking Arica off the mattress and throwing Evan back. His wide eyes darted around the room as he heard the annoyed groans coming from the girl. On the couch, Catherine's face was a mixture of tired and worried, and next to her sat Avery, who had her wings stretched out as she glanced between the two boys and her sister, who was starting to stand up.