The Second Sword
by Nikki Little
Part One: "The Inferno"
Chapter 01: "The Cascade"
Chapter 02: "The Pool of Fire"
Chapter 03: "Descent"
Chapter 04: "The Vestibule of Hell" (The Opportunists)
Chapter 05: "Minos"
Chapter 06: "Cerberus" (First Circle: The Greedy)
Chapter 07: "Plutus" (Second Circle: The Hoarders and Wasters)
Chapter 08: "The Wrathful" (Third Circle)
Chapter 09: "The City of Dis" (The Opportunists)
Chapter 10: "The Haunted Forest"
Chapter 11: "Lights in Limbo"
Chapter 12: "The Ten Ditches" (Fourth Circle: The Fraudulent)
Chapter 13: "The Manipulators"
Chapter 14: "The Hypocrites"
Chapter 15: "The Grafters"
Chapter 16: "The Robber Barons"
Chapter 17: "The Slave Drivers"
Chapter 18: "The Hatemongers"
Chapter 19: "The Usurers"
Chapter 20: "The Jailers"
Chapter 21: "The Adulterators and Counterfeiters"
Chapter 22: "The False Witnesses"
Chapter 23: "The Cavern of Crystals" (The Torturers)
Chapter 24: "Mirror Image" (The Mirror of Souls)
Chapter 25: "The Cultists" (Fifth Circle: Leaders of Religious Cults)
Chapter 26: "The Plateau of the Unjustly Accused" (Innocent Souls in Hell)
Chapter 27: "Here Be Dragons"
Chapter 28: "Medusa" (Sixth Circle: The Violent)
Chapter 29: "The Empire Builders"
Chapter 30: "The Revelation of Rhadamanthus" (Seventh Circle: The Soulless)
Chapter 31: "The Pit" (The Late Repenters)
Chapter 32: "The Refuge" (The Wood of Suicides)
Part Two: "Limbo"
Chapter 33: "The Philosopher Kings"
Chapter 34: "An Evening with Mark Twain"
Part Three: "The Princess of Thieves"
Chapter 35: "Lost Horizon"
Chapter 36: "The Princess of Thieves"
Chapter 37: "Tea and Tears"
Chapter 38: "The Second Sword"
Part Four: "Appendix"
Chapter 39: Bibliography
Chapter 40: Dedication
Chapter 1: "The Cascade"
There's a theory - more a cliché, now - claiming that an event as insignificant as the flapping of a butterfly's wings on one continent could have catastrophic effects on another continent. Now I happen to think that this theory is overblown, but I had no chance of knowing that an event as minor as the collapse of a shelf could create a situation that almost changed history. Almost. It breaks my heart to think that all that has happened has accomplished so little. The event to which I am referring is the day - has it been two years? - when a shelf collapsed in Alice's weapons locker. Now normally this would not have been such a big deal, but Alice was in the weapons locker room when the collapse occurred, and the items on the shelf that collapsed were no less than at least a hundred vials of rage potion. Alice keeps bottles of her "period brandy" on the second shelf of her weapons locker, and one day in the summer of 2007 - was it July? - she went in to her weapons locker to get a bottle of that magical pain-killing elixir. She pulled the bottle off the second shelf, and my guess is that the top shelf with all the vials of rage potion was ready to collapse and was being held up by the top of the bottle of period brandy on the shelf below. When Alice pulled the bottle of period brandy out, the entire top shelf tilted and all those vials of rage potion came cascading down one right after the other. I didn't actually see the event happen. I was in a hallway nearby when I heard the vials come smashing down one-by-one. It sounded like the popping open of champagne bottles. I heard Alice scream, and then I saw the cloud of pinkish-red rage potion vapor and smelled the stench of fresh blood. I rushed into the room holding my breath and feeling for Alice, but the harm was already done. Alice, still marginally sensible, pushed me back out the door and around the corner. On the floor, I began to feel woozy. The world disappeared in a blaze of blinding white as I looked down at my hands and saw them turn into claws.
I awoke in Caterpillar's Oracle Cave. I looked down at my hands just in time to see my hands and nails return to normal. That stench of fresh blood that I mentioned earlier had followed me to the Oracle Cave, and I was mystified for a moment as to its source. The mystery was solved a moment later when Alice stepped into view. She was the source of the odor, and her appearance was just as horrific. Alice's skin had turned coal black and was flaking like the ash off a burning log. Her eyes burned like fireplace embers in a dark room. Her hair had turned into tens of thousands of threadlike snakes, each with a mind of its own. Her hands were claw-like, and razor-sharp. She reminded me of the mythological Medusa.
Caterpillar, who never seemed to leave his cave, was known for his fearlessness, but this time his courage failed him. Gazing upon Alice with an empty, blank expression, he said nothing. If I had had any common sense at the time, I would have wheeled around and run straight out the door of the cave. However, Alice has been my partner since I arrived in Wonderland, and running simply did not occur to me. I simply did not believe that she would ever hurt me even in the worst of circumstances. I turned out to be only partly right.
Alice walked to the back of the cave and filled all three of her "bongs" and about a dozen small metal boxes with Caterpillar's smoke portal powder. She put them into her velcro-flapped dress pockets and velcro-flapped apron pockets where she already had her cards weapon, the ice wand, and the jacks. Strapped to her hip, as always, was the Bowie knife. In one corner in a rack was a weapon that was never supposed to leave Wonderland: the Jabberwock Eyestaff. This weapon was nearly indestructible, but, if it were lost, there would be no replacing it. Alice took the Eyestaff - it was remarkably small - and put it into her right apron pocket. She took out her ice wand and blew a smoke portal. Without saying a word, Alice picked me up in her left arm like a sack of potatoes and carried me through.
End of Chapter 1
This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. Electronic Arts owns the copyrights. The original "Inferno" was written, of course, by Dante.
Version 4 of Chapter 1