by Rhys Ford
The rush of armored feet on marble caught my attention, and I turned to see another phalanx of pawns break through curious members of the court who hovered at the far end of the hall. There were shouts for the queen’s subjects to fall back, to go farther into the palace for their own safety, but even the insane loved to watch a spectacle. Whoever hid behind the columns and torn-down drapery would have a story to tell—either of the Red Queen’s fall or the Ace of Spades’ death.
Someone could dine out on that tale for years… providing they lived to tell it.
“Someone grab the girl,” one of the pawns shouted and motioned toward Naomi. His livery had gold buttons and tassels along the shoulders, visually elevating him from the other guards. “I will deal with the Ace.”
“No, leave him for me,” the queen ordered. “Take the girl! I will deal with the Ace after I kill the prince.”
Oh, that was going to be fun.
On the throne’s platform the guards fell, and their slack bodies tumbled down the stairs. I worked through the ones coming at me and dispatched them as neatly as I could while I kept my eyes from their faces. The queen’s shrieks escalated and grew feverish in pitch.
Then I heard Naomi scream.
And Blue yelped.
The lead marionette in the queen’s detail kicked at my dog’s head, his hand tight around Naomi’s upper arm. He dragged her away from the column and pulled her down the stairs, trying to leave room for the guards who were rushing to defend the queen. A glance back at Jean Michel gave me little reassurance he could take them on. Swords were heavy, and fighting for any length of time wore a man down, even Jean Michel. The incoming guards would take a toll on him, and he would have to turn around to fight them, which would give the Red Queen his back.
I was torn. Jean Michel would need my help with the guards, but despite Blue’s best efforts, the guard was pulling Naomi toward the inner halls of the palace. Blue had his teeth sunk into the man’s tunic, but his nails scraped along the floor, unable to get purchase on the slick marble. So Blue jerked his head back and nearly knocked the guard off of his feet.
Someone had gotten through Jean Michel’s guard and sliced a deep line into his right cheek. His knuckles were barked, raw and bleeding. I’d been on the other end of his right hook while sparring, so focused on my sword I forgot his penchant for punching if he saw the chance. His clothes were damp with sweat and sodden with blood, and his left sleeve was torn along his forearm, exposing the skin beneath. His jaw sported a darkening bruise, and it looked like he’d bitten through his lower lip.
Despite it all, he was still a glorious, masculine beacon of royalty with more than a little dash of arrogance. Flashing me a cheeky grin, he nodded toward Naomi and said, “Get her safe. I’ll take care of the queen.”
I didn’t have a chance to wish him luck, because a second later, he was blocked by a ring of pawns and the space around him bristled with weapons. So I turned my gaze onto the guard who held Naomi and launched myself at him.
Or at least I tried to. There was a dead wyvern between us, its body too spread out to maneuver around easily. I felt every ounce of my armor weighing down on my frame, pressing its seams into my flesh, and even though I wouldn’t tire carrying it, its presence was constant and oppressive. Once I was free of the looking glass, I would be free of the Ace, stripped of its armor, and released back into the world I knew.
Or would I?
Naomi looked like a little girl. The soles of her sneakers lit up as her feet touched the floor, and her expression held a wariness I’d only seen in the mirror. Her eyes were enormous and filled with tears, but she still fought and kicked at the man who tried to drag her along. She wasn’t like any child I remembered from my time back home. She had an eerie worldliness, a maturity I certainly didn’t have when I was her age. She just seemed different in a way that made me wonder how much the world had changed since I was gone.
Would I even recognize it? Would I be able to live there again?
I carved my way through the shank of the dead wyvern and got to the steps in a few leaps, but they were still a good eight feet away. Naomi and the guard hadn’t gone far. Blue had seen to that, and as I ran toward them, Naomi lashed out with her foot and caught the guard on the back of the knee.
It was an old trick for anyone who’d grown up with a brother or sister, and she executed it perfectly. The guard tumbled as his knee gave out and gravity pulled him down the stairs. Unfortunately he took Naomi with him. Blue let go of his tunic but snapped and bit whatever he could reach while the guard tried to get back on his feet. The ground was too heavy with snow, and large swatches melted over immense cooling pools of blood. He flailed about and yanked Naomi to the side, refusing to let her go. While Naomi lashed out at him, Blue latched on to his cheek, possibly even got his nose. I didn’t take the time to look. I was more intent on getting to Naomi’s side.
They were only a few feet away, well within my reach… until my sky filled with talons and wings.
Maybe death wasn’t as noisy as I thought.
I turned to face the winged lizard, thinking it was the final wyvern. It wasn’t.
There should have been a warning of her change, but there probably was never one for mine. Only a fool would have mistaken the slender red dragon for anything other than the Red Queen herself.
There was too much of the sorceress in her sleek, deadly form. Her eyes gleamed with a malevolent cunning, filled with intelligence and fury, and the twist of horns rising up along the perimeter of her skull mimicked the crown she wore on her head. She stood not much taller than I did, but she carried more weight. The marble floor buckled and broke beneath her clawed feet, and the snow flew up as her long frilled tail swished back and forth. Up close her scales were a chameleon blend of faint pink, bloodred, and deep crimson, the colors shifting under the bounce of light from the marble floor. Delicate wings sprouted from her shoulders and framed her ridged spine, and the jagged bony plates ran down her back and scraped together as she approached, giving off a low discordant chime.
I should’ve heard her, but I didn’t. I should’ve felt her shift. A lot of should’ve’s I missed when I was within Naomi’s reach.
The Red Queen was as beautiful as she was terrifying as she threw her head back to let loose a roar loud enough to rattle the eaves of the courtyard. Power rolled off of her draconian body, reminding anyone who could see her of her right to rule. Her subjects fell to their knees where they stood and cowered before her, their bodies pressed as flat as possible and quivering beneath her oppressive presence. They were enslaved to her charisma and suckled at the thin, bitter milk of her cruel personality. She’d drawn them to her with the promise to protect them from any harm yet casually tossed them to their deaths so she could walk across their corpses and not get her feet dirty.
I intended to get more than her feet dirty.
“Let go,” Naomi whimpered, tears pouring down her soft round cheeks. “I want to go home.”
Once again we were reminded why human children were so very fucking dangerous.
The shock wave of her fear and panic burst from her in nearly transparent ribbons of undulating perspective that visibly changed the air and environment around her. They flowed out like tentacles and pierced through everything in their path. Being closest to her, the guard was affected first, and I would hear his howling screams until the day I died.
It wasn’t a surprise to discover the Red Queen’s pawns weren’t real, or rather that she’d pulled them together from bits and pieces of the dead, infused them with life, and encased their bodies in her livery. The inanimate were easier to control. Each queen had their own way of ensuring the loyalty of their people, mostly by terrorizing them into submission.
I was a perfect example of the Queen of Hearts’ rule, and I’d been only one of the tools in her torture chambers.
When Naomi’s forced reality wrapped around the Red Queen’s guard, it broke his very existence. Distress bulged out the m
an’s eyes, and they began to swell. His limbs puffed out, and his uniform strained to contain his bloated flesh. It tightened around his joints, but the leather seams refused to give way and sliced through the rapidly decaying skin pressing into it. His hands fell away first, turned gelatinous, and then sloughed off his bones.
Naomi pulled her arm up, shook off the guard’s remains, and reached for my dog. I braced myself to watch Blue die. He’d been my companion since I’d been set free, and for all of my complaining about hair, spit, and the occasional headless squirrel he left at my shoes, I loved him more than I loved myself.
She sat down and collapsed into a sobbing pile. She touched his fur, and I refused to look away, even with the Red Queen breathing down my neck. Naomi flung her arms around Blue’s neck and embraced him tightly to her. I wasn’t going to let him leave the world without knowing someone loved him. I waited for the spark to leave his eyes and held my breath as though somehow that would make the heartbreak of losing him hurt less.
Nothing happened.
My dog continued to glow. The streams of her influence flowed and curved around the courtyard, eviscerating everything they touched or forcing them to conform to the reality Naomi held in her mind. But Blue panted at me and stood strong in a protective stance across Naomi’s legs. A second later, he spotted me looking at him, and his dark lips curled up into a smile that bared his teeth before it let his tongue flop out of his open mouth.
Then he wagged his tail.
“Just stay with me, Blue,” I muttered at him, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “I’m going to get all of you out of here.”
“You are going nowhere,” the Red Queen hissed, her words garbled by her reptilian tongue. “I will bind you after I remake you. You should have been mine from the very beginning. And I will possess you even if I have to kill you first.”
“I’m really going to enjoy drinking my morning coffee out of your skull,” I promised, “even if I have to come back and get it.”
We struck at the same time in a clash of swords and fangs. She was old, but her body was invigorated by her rage, and her attacks were fierce lightning strikes in between my swings. My side burned for a moment when her talons cut through my armor and I felt winter’s kiss touch my skin. Arcane syllables flowed from her open mouth, and the snow began to whip around my body. The ice found the wound with a vampiric chill that chewed through the heat of my spilled blood and aching flesh. I forced myself forward, hoping I could break free of the spell she threw at me.
“Using magic. Not fair,” I ground out as I slashed at her neck. I took out a small chunk of meat near her collarbone, but she easily evaded my next swing.
“Nothing is fair, little man,” the Red Queen shot back, her eyes alight with an inner fire. “It doesn’t matter how one wins, so long as they win.”
Her horns left shadow stains on the floor where the faint sunlight came through their tangled filigree. They sparkled, even when dragged through darkness, and the crown of spires glistened with a faceted gleam. I raised my sword for a thrust when the ice bit back and dug through my muscles to find my ribs and clamped needlelike prongs through my bones.
She was trying to get to my marrow, the innermost essence of my body, where the Queen of Hearts had laid her enchantment. I couldn’t risk the Red Queen getting hold of me, nor could I put down my swords. The tendrils working inside of me were insistent, an invasive force she directed with her mind. I had to break the spell so my armor could heal over the deep gash, and I hoped I could get free of Naomi’s spreading reality.
I spun about, balanced on the balls of my feet, and planted myself on the marble floor and braced for what I needed to do. I lifted my arms, crossed my swords above me, lunged, and buried my blades into her shoulder deeply enough to hit bone.
The red dragon screamed in pain with a thin, wavering howl sharp enough to hurt my ears and reassure me I’d gotten a good hit. She retaliated by digging at me with her back claw to get me loose, but I held on and took the strike with a grunt. Her claw caught me again, and she yanked hard and pulled me off of her body at the same time and at the right angle to dislodge the enchanted armor over my ribs.
The ice shattered in midair as the core of the spell fell away from my body and ripped its tendrils out of my flesh. They came away bloody, undulating furiously for a brief moment, and then, denied of my life essence, stiffened into icicle shards in midair. The spiky chunks hit the ground hard and scattered pieces everywhere, but I dodged away from the area and rolled away from the Red Queen before she could attack again.
“Stop hurting him,” Naomi yelled toward us. “Stop!”
“Shut up,” the Red Queen roared, wings pressed back against her sides as a violent anger surged through her and tightened every muscle along her sleek form. “I will have you for lunch with turnips once I am done with him. Then I will eat the dog and destroy everyone in my way. You are all blights on this land. I don’t know why I waited so long to erase you from existence, but it is time for your day of reckoning to come.”
Madness rode the Red Queen. Every person and thing in Wonderland City carried at least a small thread of it. In order for the realm to exist, the impossible had to be possible. But sometimes the insanity took hold, and spread its roots deep, and festered and fed off of a person’s darkest thoughts and obsessions. It was that way with the Hatter. It had taken over him, a parasitical presence in control of his body and mind, just like it was manifesting now in the Red Queen.
Something had happened, perhaps slowly or maybe when Naomi tumbled through the looking glass, but her madness was now an all-consuming living thing, controlling her every thought and action. She’d always subscribed to the philosophy that sentient creatures were a burden on the lands, ungrateful ticks sucking their oblivious hosts dry, but she’d never once fallen prey to the desire to consume her enemies.
There was no mistaking her intent. She would play God with us. She would be the flood, the apocalypse, and the rapture for the entire realm. Then she would bathe in its ashes, smear the dead over her body, and revel in her madness.
Even if I could win the battle without killing her, she had to die. Her reign had to end, even if it left a gaping hole in Wonderland City’s power structure. The Red Queen was just too dangerous to let live.
My armor wasn’t healing. Naomi’s influence was too persistent, or maybe the Red Queen’s magic was too strong for the enchantment in my bones. The ace in my chest plate burned in fits and starts, its blue flames sputtering down to nearly nothing before flaring back up. Blood wept from my wound and flaked off in tiny sheets when it hit the edges of my severed armor plates.
I was growing tired.
I never got tired.
Raising my swords once again, I pulled together as much of my strength as I could muster and prepared to strike the Red Queen dead. Then I heard Naomi call out once again.
“You’re not even a real dragon!” Her words stunned the genuflecting crowd to silence. Our world once hung on an unraveling thread when similar words were spoken what seemed like lifetimes ago. No one dared even a whisper, and time hiccupped, caught on a balance between realities. And then Naomi unknowingly but firmly brought the hammer down upon us all. “You can’t eat me. And when I wake up, you won’t be here. Because you’re not real!”
Eight
“YOU’RE NOTHING but a pack of cards!”
Those words whispered in the darkest corner in every house and in every court. To hear them come from Naomi’s lips sent a shiver through the Red Queen’s lackeys. I hadn’t been there when Alice tore apart the Queen of Hearts’ elite force, but I’d heard the stories. Alice was the reason I existed. She was an unstoppable malevolent force whose wave of destruction brought about the Ace of Spades. I, like those who came before me, were to be the last line of defense against the warping of our world.
When I arrived, broken and mewling from my life on the other side of the looking glass, the queen decided the best thing to fight a threat
from Alice’s world was to turn someone from that world into her own personal executioner.
She hadn’t been wrong, but the humans I’d been forced to defend her from had been adults.
Children were something completely—and wildly—different.
That truth became glaringly apparent as Naomi’s fear-tinged fury broke over us.
The slender ribbons pouring out of her widened and snapped into sharp lines with edges keen enough to cut through a Wonderland City being. The courtiers who’d gathered around the edge of the courtyard fought to get clear of the swift-moving undulations, but one cannot outrun the wind.
A wave touched the dress hem of a beautiful, hauntingly featured woman. She’d stumbled over her own feet—a soft ballet flat spangled with jewels was her downfall. I caught bits and pieces of her death with the Red Queen weaving about in front of me, but what played out in the courtyard would fuel Wonderland City’s nightmares for centuries to come.
Naomi’s invoked perspective licked at the woman’s bare foot when her slipper slid off her heel. The hardening ribbon slowly grew less transparent as it moved away from Naomi, marbled with a frosted gleam. It barely glanced off the woman’s arch, but the tiniest touch was enough to disrupt her life. Leaving the slipper behind, her bared sole touched the floor, and as she tried to break into a run, the disintegrating marble seized hold of her skin and ripped it from her foot.
She left a bloodied print on the marble, and it seemed as if that was all the price she would pay for crossing Naomi’s path, but the world I’d come from would have its full pound of flesh.
The pawn’s undoing was swift, an unstitching of ensorcelled dead limbs and bones. What lay in store for the woman was far more horrifying, and despite the dragon snapping at my head, I couldn’t pull my attention away from the courtier being eaten alive by a little girl’s scream.