Chapter 798: Dreams of Peaceful Days

In the dim, dank dungeon, Noomi leaned up against the wall beneath the room’s only window, inhaling the cool, fresh air and listening to the fading sounds of battle outside. At first, there had been loud bellows and trumpeting sounds unlike anything she’d ever heard, along with the sounds of heavy crashing and humans shouting orders.

Then, the sounds of humans shouting slowly faded away after an anguished roar unlike anything she’d ever heard shook the castle. Now, things seemed to be all but over and the only voices she heard shouting were speaking the old Eldritch tongue.

"Shhh, hush," she cooed as she gently rocked Saku in her arms. The blanket Samira had brought for him was the softest, warmest thing she’d been able to give her son since he was born and he’d begun to fuss and struggle to get free of the tight bundle she’d wrapped him in.

"Hush now, little Saku," she said softly. "It’s cold outside, even colder than in here and you’ll want all that cozy warm you have now when we go outside," she said as moisture collected in her dark eyes. Outside. For the first time in half a year, she would be able to go outside again.

"Just wait until mommy Samira comes for us," she whispered, trying to distract herself just as much as she was trying to comfort her little kit. "It may be hard to get there, but we’ll make it to the Vale of Mists soon, I promise you."

"In the Vale, we’ll find a lake to build our burrow by," she said. "The others from our village may have already found one, or built a dam to make one. You’ll see, there will be so much fresh, clean water that you’ll never run out of water to drink. You can even swim in it and catch fish to eat and we won’t ever... won’t ever run out of food again," she said as tears dripped onto Saku’s blanket.

Already, she worried that her son was smaller and weaker than he should be because she’d had so little to give him when he began to wean. The human guards only gave her enough food to feed a human child but they didn’t know how fast Eldritch children from the Heartwood Clan grew. Without Samira’s help, Saku would have been so underfed that he might have become a runt his entire life.

"You’ll see," Noomi said. "You’ll have others of our clan to play with soon. But you have to play with Samira’s little one too," she said as she gently stroked Saku’s tiny face with the back of one claw. "If it’s a boy, you can be rough with him and if it’s a girl then you have to grow up strong to protect your sister because she won’t have any claws of her own."

"You have to be nice to mommy Samira too," she said sternly. "She’ll be all alone in the Vale. There aren’t any humans there except the vampires, and they won’t care about her. And when you grow up big and strong, if anyone ever gets angry at your mommy Samira, you have to stand up for her, because without her, we might never have made it."

When Noomi imagined the life they were about to run away to, she hoped that her people would be willing to let Samira live with them. Whatever hatred they had for humans, the captive woman who had been tricked into impersonating one of the human’s great ladies had nothing to do with attacking their village.

Samira posed no threat to anyone and she liked to think that Old Nan would understand and would allow the human woman to live among them... but that was only if Old Nan was still alive and had survived to reach the Vale of Mists. If someone else was in charge, someone who had every reason in the world to hate the humans for what they had done, they might not welcome a human into their community.

But, if her clan couldn’t accept Samira living among them, then she would find another stream or pond or lake to build their burrow on. She refused to leave her friend behind when they reached the safety of the Vale. Samira had helped to protect her in this dangerous place of humans, so she would protect Samira in the Eldritch lands.

They had promised to raise their children together if they ever escaped this place. That they would let their children know each other as siblings, despite their differences. Because if she and Samira could become friends in a place like this, she was certain that their children would be even closer once they escaped this place.

But first, they had to escape. It had been more than half an hour since Samira left and now that the sounds of battle had all but stopped, Noomi began to worry that something had happened to her friend.

"I should have gone with her," she whispered as her tail drooped so low that it brushed against the ground. "If the humans found out she was going to free me... or if the Eldritch caught her and didn’t know she was my friend... If anything happened to her, it’s my fault for letting her go alone," she said anxiously.

"Saku," she said as she bounced him on her hip. "Just a little bit longer. We’ll wait here a little bit longer, but if she doesn’t come back soon, then, then we’ll have to go looking for your mommy Samira. Maybe, maybe she just fell on the stairs somewhere, or she found so much food for us that she can’t carry it all. We’ll see her again soon, I promise."

It wasn’t long after that when Noomi heard motion coming from the stairway leading to the dungeon. At first, her tail perked up and her whiskers twitched in excitement as she rushed toward the stairwell, but by the time she was halfway across the dungeon she realized that the footsteps she heard couldn’t possibly belong to Samira.

Not only were the footsteps far too quick for the heavily pregnant woman, they were accompanied by the faint -CHINK CHINK- sound of human armor and the crisp, sharp impact of a soldier’s boots on stone.

"No," she whispered as her entire body began to tremble in fright. She thought they’d won! She could still hear Eldritch voices outside the window so why, why was a human soldier coming for her? Was it some cruel survivor, rushing to kill her before someone could set her free? Or maybe to snatch Saku for Owain Lothian?

Was she going to die before she had a chance to be rescued?

"Hush now little Saku," Noomi whispered as she held him tight in one arm and flexed the claws of her free hand. "We’re getting out of here today, I promise you..."