When the Sky Meets the Sea

Chapter 3: Paige of a Book

Samantha woke up to the sound of muffled booming from afar. They didn't hurt her ears that much, but it was loud enough to scare her. Gaining adrenaline rush, she quickly rolled over and ran towards one of the doors in the room.

Opening it, there was a staircase. As she ran down as fast as she could, more booming sounds were heard here and there.

"Over here!"

"Huh?"

Samantha had almost no time to react. She couldn't even tell who in the world was calling her. All she knew was that this feminine voice had some accent that you could hear from Europe or Russia, but she couldn't tell which. Besides, did she had enough time to think about it anyway?

"This way!"

It was a female penguin in red, grabbing one of Samantha's hands in order to guide her to safety.

"Where are we going?"

"Just follow me!"

"Who are you!?"

"I'll tell you later! We need to get to safety!"

Samantha and the unknown penguin were rushing towards the corridors of the unfamiliar building as the booming sounds got louder and louder. Not to mention, the whole area was cold as heck. At least Samantha's light blue wizard robes were thick enough to warm her even a bit. But guess what, the cold never bothered her anyway.

The penguin in red went down some sort of hatch, the one that probably leads to a basement. She motioned Samantha to follow her suit and she did. Climbing down the ladder to the basement, Samantha made sure she'd close and lock up the hatch just above them.

The penguin sat down on the floor, panting and out of breath. Samantha looked at herand decided that that was probably the right time to introduce each other. "So, who are you?"

"Red Rosa."

"Nice to meet you." Samantha grinned. "I'm Samantha."

"Ah, I see." Red Rosa nodded with heavy breaths. What Samantha didn't notice that the female penguin was checking out her outfit, particularly just below her neck to where a name tag was hanging. "Mhm, so I see you are not Paige Shadowshard?"

"Paige Shadowshard?" Samantha raised an eyebrow.

"I was with her a while ago. We split up because of this large piece of wood that fell in the middle and we had no way to move around it." Red Rosa eyed Samantha from head to toe. From her shoulder length red hair, lightly tanned skin, blue eyes, and down to her clothes. "You... wearing her clothes... you certainly did not do THAT to her, did you?"

"What!? No way!" she retaliated. "Look Red Rover or whatever the hell you said your name was, the only thing I remembered from the past hour was that we were sucked into a book and then I woke up, there's a war."

"Impossible!" exclaimed the penguin. "You are disguising yourself as her with that red hair and blue getup. Stay back, I tell you."

Samantha could already feel her blood boil due to how frustrating the whole scenario was. "You watch your words, lady. Because you really don't know what happened to me in the past hour so if I may be so bold to make a suggestion for you, it will be that you keep your mouth shut or I'll have you marching outside and get you shot by whatever the fuck is happening out there-"

"Non! You tell me where she is right now!" Red Rosa marched to Samantha and aimed for the redhead's hair, thinking it was just a wig.

"Stop it!" Samantha shrieked loudly as she could feel her hair being harshly pulled by a penguin out of all people- er, animals.