Samantha Rose

Put to the Test

The sun was just starting to rise when Sam finally woke up. A quick look around revealed she had never left the workshop last night, much less gotten up from her spot on the floor. Her knees made cracking noises as she stood, earning a grimace from her face. Sam twisted and turned, stretching out the kink in her back. Cleaning up would have to wait. She took a step to leave, but her knee screamed in protest due to the position she had fallen asleep in.

"I'm three years old and I've already got an old person's body," she grumbled to herself. In an instant, she poofed herself into the bathroom next to the guest room in which she was staying. After a long, hot shower, Sam wandered into the kitchen, hoping to find Belle.

Belle was not found in the kitchen, or the library, or in her garden out front. Sam made her way to the base of the stairs inside and called up. She had never been in upstairs in Mr. Gold's house and it made her uncomfortable and she climbed the steps, calling out Belle's name every couple seconds. Rumplestiltskin stepped into the hallway from his bedroom, eyeing the young lady.

"Belle's not up here. She spent the night in the workshop, with you."

"No...no, she didn't. Belle left after maybe a half hour."

Rumple's eyes started to fill with worry. Yes, his wife was a grown woman who could take care of herself but something was very off about this. Sam saw this, quickly conjured one of Belle's books, and waved her hand over it.

"Locator spell?" Rumple inquired. Sam gave a quick mm-hmm before releasing the book. It hovered between them for a moment, then glided down the stairs and to the back door. Sam waved the door open as they followed. The book proceeded to the middle of the yard, but Sam and Gold made it no further than the patio. They watched as the book plopped down in the middle of a large burn left in the grass. Gold was the first to approach, tentatively inching his way towards it. But Sam didn't need to get any closer to noticed the blue glow fading around the edges.

"We need to move fast, Gold."

"What are you talking about? We have no idea where-"

"Look at it, Rumple," she snapped, pointing out the blue glow. She summoned an ember and held it before him. "Look at this and tell me you don't know. Tell me. This was Hades. He has her, Rumplestiltskin. He has your wife. Now, if we are going to do anything about this, we need to go and we need to do it now."

Rumple regained his composure and quickly grew stony, pushing aside emotion. Sam held up a finger and darted inside her workshop, emerging again moments later, but held nothing in her hands.

"You ready?" she asked. He simple nodded. Of course he was ready, he had been there before. "Just a couple things before we go. As you know, Hades has eyes and ears everywhere so just let me handle everything and don't discuss anything. Also, we don't know if your magic will work once we get there. In the event that it doesn't, we'll just have to rely on me. The Underworld is where my magic was cultivated, for lack of a better term, so there's no reason mine shouldn't work. Anything else, we'll just take it as it comes. Now, hold on. This isn't anything like riding with the Boatman."

Gold felt as if he was falling through ocean depths and also floating on air. The world swirled around him and yet he caught glimpses of other realms. And all at once, it stopped. But the Underworld before him was not the Underworld he had come to know. He turned to his daughter, and before he could ask for an explanation, he noticed that she had conjured a zip-up jacket to wear and had pulled the hood over her head.

"He's changed it. It wasn't like this when I left a couple weeks ago, Rumple. Some time between now and then, he's changed this place. But if I had to bet, I'd say it was within the past twelve hours. Hades did this for a reason. He knew at least one of us would come for Belle..." she determined. "Much like I could see what book Belle was reading when she was upstairs and we were outside, Hades can see my magic. The enchantment on this jacket should hide it from him, giving us at least a little element of surprise... Rumplestiltskin, I need you to hear me. This new Underworld was designed for one reason: to kill. To drive us crazy so that we can not do what we came here for. We aren't meant to find Belle, much less make it out of here. I need you to trust me."

"So, how do we go about this?"

"Well, this place is still laid out like a town, just not Storybrooke. And this does not look like a safe part of town. Don't test your magic until necessary; Hades will see it and will know you're here, if he doesn't already. We just need to walk through this part of town to what would be the equivalent of Main Street. Until then, keep walking, don't talk to anyone, and don't touch anything."

"Anything else I shouldn't do?" He was trying to lighten the mood a little bit, but Samantha was having none of that.

"Yeah. Don't look them in the eye." She offered no further explanation as she began to lead him through the streets. He kept his eyes down, but he couldn't help but notice figures begin to appear in windows and streets. It was as Rumplestiltskin followed Samantha that he noticed a small bulge in the back of her jacket. Whatever she had grabbed from the workshop was tucked into the back of her belt.

"Rumple? Rumplestiltskin, is that you?"

He turned to the voice that had called to him.

"Who are you?" He asked the image who confronted him.

"Rumplestiltskin, no!" Sam's voice cut through the otherwise silent street. But Rumple did not look away, his eyes locked on the stranger. Without hesitation, she directed a fireball in his direction, sending the creature screeching in a puff of green smoke. "I told you not to do that. You are damn lucky she didn't touch you."

"How do you know?"

"Because... six months ago I pushed that woman into the River of Souls. If you had touched her, you'd be trapped in that river too."

She scanned the area. Other creatures took notice of them and were beginning to approach.

"Nothing can hide my magic now that I've used it."

"So now what?"

"Run."

Sam grabbed Rumple's sleeve and hauled him away, thankful that he didn't have that limp Belle had told her about.