SALLYQUEST

                         PART 1: PROLOGUE

                       by Daniel J. Drazen



PAUSE FOR BOURGEOIS LEGALITIES: This story is copyright (c) 1997
by the author.  The characters in this story are copyright by the
following: DiC Productions: Princess Sally, Dulcy; Sega
Corporation: Knuckles; Archie Comics: The Ancient Walkers;
Archimedes.  You are encouraged to freely distribute this story
unless you: a) claim credit for it as your own; b) alter the text
in any way without permission of the author; or c) try to make a
buck off of it.  Anyone with any ideas toward the latter please
contact me at drazen@andrews.edu and we'll discuss my cut.  All
applicable provisions of Title 17 of the U. S. Code pertaining to
copyrighted materials apply.

SETTING: This is essentially a commissioned story by Lane Kramer
(lkramer@bellatlantic.net), written in several parts to be
integrated into a larger work to be called "Project: Chaos." 
Aside from the basic premise, he has said that I had a totally
free hand in determining the plot and scope of the stories.  So
if you don't like it, blame me.

This immediate story takes place a short time after the events in
the "Endgame" story arc (Sonic comics #47-50).


=================================================================

     "Great night, huh Sally?" Dulcy called out to the passenger
on her back as she flapped through the evening sky.  It was a
moonless night, and yet the stars shone so brilliantly that there
was almost no need for a moon.
     Sally said nothing.
     It was the latest in Dulcy's attempts to get Princess Sally
to engage in conversation.  So far, nothing was working.  She
flew on.
     It had been several days since, amid confusion and treachery
and great pain, Mobius seemed to have seen the end of Doctor
Robotnik.  Results of scouting missions into Robotropolis had
been tentative but hopeful; there was a feeling in the air that
matters were still unsettled, as if a storm front were moving
across the land and nobody was quite sure whether a rainstorm
would stop or intensify.  Nobody was yet quite ready to hope that
things would soon be made right again.
     Princess Sally's mood was just as difficult to gauge.  She
had suffered a tremendous fall, and word around Knothole was that
she had very nearly died.  It was a prospect nobody wanted to
dwell upon, for they couldn't imagine Knothole without her.  They
couldn't even imagine Mobius, let alone life, without her.  She
wasn't simply a faceless leader of a faceless army of rebels
moving against Robotnik's tyranny.  Each in the small band living
in Knothole regarded her as something more than a guerrilla
leader or even as heir to the Mobian throne.  To Bunnie Rabbot
she was a childhood companion and best friend; to Tails she was a
surrogate mother; to Antoine de Coollette she was the epitome of
beauty and the ideal which had brought chivalry into being; to
Sonic the Hedgehog she was the object of an intense love which he
could never quite bring himself to express.
     Yet despite the fact that she seemed to have physically
recovered from her ordeal, she lived as if in a shadow. 
Frequently she would interrupt whatever she was doing and leave
abruptly, only to return minutes later taciturn and with eyes red
from crying.  No matter how hard she was pressed by her friends
and comrades, she would not unburden herself to them.
     Not that it was difficult for many of them to guess the
problem.  Her father, the King, whom everyone had thought to have
managed a recovery from the process that was turning his body
into crystal, was in fact no better than before.  His "recovery"
had been a trick, a diversion.  His physical state was no better
and, at times, seemed to have gotten worse.  It was painfully
obvious, and nobody dared speak of it to the Princess.  There was
no need to; she was only too aware of it.  It showed in the small
ways she was reacting to things: her air of distraction, her
breaking off of conversations, her spending long periods of time
alone on the bridge that spanned the river which ran by Knothole. 
     To Dulcy it had seemed like yet another one of these
manifestations when Sally had awoken her in the middle of the
night, saddled her up, and told her to fly to the Floating
Island.  Dulcy asked for an explanation and Sally gave none.  But
Dulcy complied.
     Now the Floating Island was coming into view.  "Hang on!"
she called out to Sally, who didn't answer.  Dulcy's landing was
only slightly unsteady.  Sally said nothing as she dismounted.
     "Why'd we come up here at THIS time of night?" Dulcy asked. 
Sally walked close to the edge of the Island, a few steps away
from falling off.
     "Dulcy," she said quietly as she continued looking out over
the edge, "go home."
     "Huh?"
     "I said go home."
     "You mean...back to Knothole?"
     "Go back to Knothole, go back to live with the other
dragons, it doesn't...just leave me."
     "But how you gonna get down?"  Dulcy thought she knew the
answer as soon as she had spoken the question.  The thought of it
was as if someone had plunged an ice dagger into her heart.
     "You don't have to worry about me.  Just go."
     "But Sally...."
     "Dulcy," Sally said sharply as she turned to look at the
dragon, "do I have to order you to leave?"
     Dulcy was too shocked to say anything.  Even Sally seemed
surprised by her own forcefulness, and not pleasantly surprised.
     "I'm sorry, Dulcy, I...please just leave."
     "Are you OK, Sally?"
     Once more Sally turned her back on Dulcy as if she didn't
want to have to look her in the eyes.  "I will be," was all she
said.
     Confused and not a little frightened, Dulcy lumbered past
Sally and stepped off the edge of the island.  She fell off and
was momentarily lost from sight until with wings spread she
glided up and toward the distance.  In a few seconds the darkness
had swallowed her whole.
     Sally watched Dulcy disappear into the night.  She had
wanted to say good-bye to Dulcy but the words had stuck in her
throat.  She looked down toward the ground.  Two steps would take
her to the edge of the Island; the third step would take her
beyond.  She closed her eyes and inhaled, hoping to finish
before...
     "Sally?"
     Too late.  She turned around to see the Island's Guardian,
Knuckles, emerge from the foliage nearby.
     "Why aren't you asleep?" she asked.
     "I never could sleep well with strangers prowling around the
place."
     Sally sat down where she was and Knuckles sat down a few
feet away from her.  "I'm...glad to see you're all right," he
said, fumbling for something to say.
     "I wish I felt all right."
     "Well, at least you didn't...I mean, what I heard was...."
     "You were going to say that you'd heard that I'd died."
     "I'm glad the reports were wrong."
     "No, they weren't.  I WAS dead."
     She said it in neither triumph nor in anger.  Instead, she
said it as if the words, flat and toneless, were a pall being
placed over a casket.  Knuckles said nothing.
     "When the rope snapped and I was falling toward the street,
I suddenly realized that I had dreamed the same thing three
nights in a row before...before I went through it for real.  I
think I even had a sense of what was going to happen earlier that
day; it was so strong I almost passed out.  As I fell the only
thought to cross my mind was:  This is it; this is my time to
die.'
     "I hit the ground and felt the impact but only for a moment. 
The next thing I knew I felt as if I were lying face-down in a
field.  I could feel blades of grass against my face, I could
feel the sun warming my back, and I heard a breeze I hadn't heard
in Robotropolis.  I opened my eyes.
     "I WAS lying in a field, in some kind of meadow.  I sat up. 
I saw wildflowers growing around me, impossibly beautiful flowers
I'd never seen before.  And the air wasn't simply clear, it was
SWEET!
     "Then I saw them coming toward me: three small lambs, just
children.  Their wool was the most brilliant white I'd ever seen,
but it didn't hurt my eyes to look at them.  It seemed as if I
had no choice but to look; their faces were so dear I couldn't
take my eyes off them.
     "Two of them silently removed my boots and vest, and the
third gave me a garment of some kind.  It was long, like a robe,
but of a material I'd never seen before.  It, too, was blindingly
white.  I put it on and it was as if it became a part of me, my
skin, my fur.  I looked up.  The lambs were gone.
     "I began walking.  I didn't know where I was walking to, I
just started walking.  With every step this place I was in became
more and more beautiful, constantly surpassing itself.
     "I soon came to a great palace, like the one my father used
to live in before Robotnik took over.  There were two large blood
beasts pacing back and forth in front of the stairs leading up to
the door.  I wasn't afraid of them in the least.  They then saw
me and stepped aside, lowering their heads as if they were bowing
to me.  I walked up the stairs.  As I walked, I thought I heard
voices on the other side of the doors in front of me.  I merely
touched them and they swung open.
     "If I were ten poets I could never describe what I saw
inside.  It was as if I was looking into a room that managed to
contain eternity itself.  No flooring, no walls, just...forever! 
And lights all around like stars; the voices I heard seemed to be
coming from the lights.
     "Then one light moved toward me.  Soon I could see that it
was a Mobian: a doe with the kindest eyes I'd ever seen.  She put
her arms around me."  Sally had been looking toward the ground
all this time; now she turned to look at Knuckles.  Even in the
starlight he could see the tears flowing down her face.  "In that
moment, I knew who it was: Amalthea."
     Knuckles gasped.  Even he had heard of Amalthea, whose deeds
of charity and kindness had become legendary on Mobius and had
endured long after her life had ended over two hundred years ago.
     "Then..." Knuckles began.
     "Yes.  She told me I was in Lavona, the home of the blessed
of Mobius.  She never SPOKE to me, of course, but...but even
without words I could read her heart as easily as she could read
mine.  When she put her arms around me, I never felt so at peace
in all my life.
     "But almost immediately I felt like I was being pulled from
her embrace.  It was like...well, you've poured water from one
glass to another, haven't you?"
     "Yes."
     "Imagine yourself to be the water."
     Knuckles let out a low whistle.
     "The next thing I knew I was in some...chamber of some sort,
laid out like I was dead.  And Sonic was standing over me."
     "Weren't you glad to see him?"
     "Of course I was, but...."
     Sally got to her feet and Knuckles did the same.
     "I don't know what's wrong," she said.  "Robotnik appears to
be gone and I SHOULD be happy but...."
     "But what?"
     "It's my father.  He's shown no sign of improvement.  I'm so
afraid...."  She gripped her arms as if standing in an icy wind.
     "The Sword hasn't helped?"
     "I don't know what to do with it, or how to use it to get to
this Hall of Limbo -- whatever THAT is! -- to seek the Crown of
the Acorn Kings.  It's all getting to be too much!   I...."
     "Sally, I know how painful this must be for you...."
     "No, you don't!  Your father was there one second and gone
the next.  You didn't have to watch him dying inch by inch, day
after day!"
     "Sally, you think I don't know what you have in mind? 
That's not going to help him or anyone else."
     "I can't help him now," she said in a painfully calm voice
that chilled Knuckles to the core.  "I only want my own pain to
stop.  I WANT to help him more than anything, but...."  She
turned back to face the island's edge.
     Knuckles was about to say something when a small but
brilliant puff of smoke appeared between him and Sally.  It
slowly dissipated and revealed Archimedes the fire ant standing
there.
     "THERE you are!" he began.  "I'm really getting tired of your
always...."
     Sally was within three steps of the edge of the island. 
Unnoticed, she closed her eyes and took a step.
     "Archy, do you MIND!?  I'm in the middle of..."
     Step.
     "Sally, NO!!!"
     Step.

***

     Nothing.
     She felt no sensation of wind against her body, she felt no
tug of gravity at her.  She felt nothing.  She opened her eyes.
     She was surrounded by a singular darkness, one she had never
experienced before.  She seemed to be in a large chamber, one
that stretched out on all sides with no end.  Unlike what she was
able to remember of the Great Hall of Lavona where everything and
everyone seemed to be made of pure light, this place appeared to
admit no light.  Yet she herself was not in darkness, and seemed
to be able to see herself quite clearly despite the fact she
could see and hear nothing else.
     She knelt to touch the floor beneath her.  It was at once
hard as bone and yielding as the flesh of a newborn.  It felt
both as warm as life and as cold as death.  It felt like highly-
polished obsidian yet offered no reflection at all.  Sally rose.
     "Where am I?" she whispered to herself.
     "WHERE YOU WANTED TO BE."
     Startled, she turned around.  The voice seemed to have come
from one of three masks hovering above her in the darkness, masks
worn by nobody.  The faces were crudely drawn and primitive.  In
any other context Sally might have found them to be interesting,
or even comic.  Now, as the three masks floated above her and
around each other, she was filled not with dread, but with awe.
     "Is this...the Hall of Limbo?"
     In reply, a doorway appeared out of nowhere some distance
away and to her left.  It was brightly illuminated though no
light shone upon it.  She walked toward it, her boots making no
sound at all.  
     By the time she was halfway there she saw the doors begin to
silently open inward.  She started increasing her pace.  And then
she saw, just beyond the doors, a short pillar upon which rested
a gold crown: the Crown of the Acorn Kings.  
     Sally now began to run toward the doors, which never seemed
to get any closer.  Then the doors suddenly banged shut and were
swallowed by the darkness.  She stopped.
     "What IS this!?" she shouted.
     "WHAT DO YOU FEAR?"
     "What kind of a question is THAT?"
     "WHAT DO YOU FEAR?"
     "I...I'm afraid for my father...I'm afraid he's going to die
if I don't...."
     "WHAT DO YOU FEAR?"
     Sally paused.  The masks continued to hover silently.
     "You're right," she said quietly.  Her head was bowed and
her eyes stung from the tears.  "I'm afraid for myself...afraid
of what will happen when...IF...WHEN...he dies!  I've been so
busy fighting against Robotnik I haven't allowed myself to think
about it, but...but I don't know if I'm ready to lead a whole
world, a people....  I'm so afraid," she whispered.
     The three masks hovered about her, orbiting her like planets
around a sun.  They made no sound as Sally continued to look at
the darkness at her feet.
     "SHE HAS MUCH TO LEARN."
     "MUCH."
     "WE ARE IN AGREEMENT, THEN."
     There was a long pause.  Sally looked up.
     "Wait a minute!   Agreement'...agreement about what?"
     "SO LET IT BE DONE!"