Oz
The ground shook and shuddered. It was just like what had happened at the school, only a lot more broken and rough. The shaking paused for a moment…and then started up again. Rinse and repeat. "What's going on?" I demanded, the vibrations traveling through my skin.
Alice scowled. "It looks like my sister has found us."
"Found us?" I nearly tumbled over as a ripple of a huge ground wave unbalanced me. "What do you mean?"
"When you latched onto me and came to the Abyss with me, it must have created a disruption in my sister's teleportation. So instead of being sent to where she wanted us, we wound up some random place, and she would have to search for us to know where we were. It looks like we've been located."
The mist cleared, revealing nothing but more dark walls. Well, that, and a giant…a giant baby-spider morph that I assumed to be an example of a Chain. It was basically a huge baby's head, the kind you see on dolls, with these glassy, cracked blue eyes. Spider's legs sprouted from holes on the sides of the head. That was what had been causing the shaking: the mere steps that the Chain took would cause a mini-earthquake.
"That's your sister?" I said, incredulous. "I thought you said she wasn't a Chain."
Alice slapped the back of my head, and it hurt surprisingly much. I guess I had been more of an idiot than usual. "That's not my sister!" she snapped. "That's one of her Chain minions!"
"That's right," the voice suddenly said. "I can't show my face to a lowlife such as you, contractor."
Lowlife? Lowlife? How dare she call me a lowlife when she went around dragging innocent bunny-rabbits/teenage girls into a monster-infested prison? "He's not my contractor," Alice said.
"Oh, really? No wonder you weren't able to stay on Earth, then, Alice." The voice giggled, and I tensed at the sound of it. "It's a good thing I found you so quickly. Now you can come back to me!"
"Fat chance," Alice muttered. "This stupid Chain is one of the lowest of the low."
"But still strong enough to defeat a powerless you!"
On that mark, the Chain charged forward, or rather, simply lifted one of its hairy legs and stabbed it down at us. I barely dodged it, landing on the floor and having debris rain down on me, before I was completely impaled. This thing was serious! It wanted to kill us!
"You going to change your mind about that blood-drinking thing?" Alice asked as she nimbly leapt away each time the Chain tried to stab her. This must be A Day in the Life of Alice.
Huh? Oh. She was referring to the fact that I refused to form a contract by refusing to drink her blood. "Why is that important?" I shouted as the spider missed Alice again, its leg getting lodged in the ground.
"Because right now, I don't have enough power to transform into B-Rabbit and kick this guy's arse, that's what!" she snapped. "I'll only get enough energy if you form a contract with me!"
I would feel stupid about it later, but I still didn't like the idea of drinking her blood. I was about to refuse when the Chain opened up its mouth, toothless, and from somewhere within that huge gap shot out a string of spider silk. Yep. This place was definitely extremely bizarre.
The thick strands of silk snapped like a whip and curled up around Alice, binding her arms tightly against her body. She became extremely outraged, kicking her legs uselessly. "You stupid little Chain!" she hollered, being lifted up into the air.
"Good job!" Alice's sister's disembodied voice laughed. "Now, Alice, who's the lowest of the low? Squeeze the life out of her."
The string visibly tightened. "What happened to – spending – more time together –?" She struggled to breathe through the constriction of that scary spider stuff.
"Not literally kill you. I don't hate my sister enough to do that. But enough so that you'll pass out and I can take care of your contractor!"
Whoa, whoa, whoa. This was not agreed to. I was going to die here? In an alternate dimension? No one would ever know what had happened to me!
"Oz, run!" Alice choked out. "Get as far away from here as you can!"
My heart pounded extremely loud within my ears. "What about you?"
She still managed to glare at me, even though that determined flash in her eyes was flickering. "What else? I'll obviously just – stay here."
Stay here? Honestly? "That's right, contractor, run," the voice said. "A little exercise would be good for my Chain here. Go ahead!"
Okay, well, that just ticked me off. I didn't care in what way this person was related to Alice, she was seriously pissing me off. What kind of authority did she believe that she had? And sure, she was the Will of the Abyss, and all, but she was toying with Alice and I like we were game pieces.
Every single teenage hormone in my body acted up. When you tell someone my age to do something in that kind of annoying voice, every single cell in my body will try and do the exact opposite. It is a proven scientific fact.
So of course when she told me to run, I stepped up and said, "Alice! I'll form a contract you!"
Which would have been all epic and everything, except Alice glared at me again and said, "You idiot! You can't – form a contract with another human! You have to – use my full Chain name!"
Oh. Well, if I had known that earlier, maybe we wouldn't be having this issue. "Stop that child's mouth before he can do it!" Alice's sister hollered.
But I hoped she realized that my mouth moved a lot faster than that awkward spider-doll did. Take two, I thought. "Let's form a contract, Bloody Black Rabbit!"
And just like that, the darkness around us vanished to pure white. The change created a glare in my eyes, and I had to squint against it. The Chain was gone, and all presence of that voice was gone, too. Alice rubbed her arms, irritated. "Made up your mind?" she asked, inhaling strongly. "You're not going to chicken out again, are you?"
"No," I said firmly, although I seriously felt that this whole contract thing held a lot more weight than it did before. "So, what are you going to do?"
She whipped out a dagger from behind her back. I leaped backward in alarm as I spotted it. It was a dagger with a shining silver blade that was curved along one side until it met the straight edge at a point. The hilt was a glimmering gold, embedded with crystal crumbs of diamond, sapphire, ruby, and emerald. "What the heck is that?" I demanded. "Where did that come from?"
"The Dagger of Contracts," Alice said simply. "It appears with the Chain whenever someone agrees to form a contract with it."
My heart slammed into my throat. "So you're going to cut yourself…with that?"
She nodded like it was no big deal. "And then you will catch my blood with your hands and drink it." Then she glared at me. "I swear, if a single drop of my blood is wasted because you weren't fast enough to catch it, I will beat you up when we get back to Earth. Got it?"
I quickly nodded in agreement. I found it pretty Alice-like that she would be picky about that kind of thing when both of our lives were at stake. She grabbed the dagger like she was preparing to stab someone and rolled up her sleeve. "Won't it hurt?" I asked.
She glanced at me coolly. "To a Chain, pain doesn't mean anything."
And then she drew the tip of the blade along her smooth skin, wincing. Even I flinched at the sight of the red blood welling to the surface of the cut. I held out a cupped hand and nearly ran off screaming when a few drops hit my skin. The slow dripping finally ceased, leaving only a tiny pool in my palm, thank goodness. "Hold your nose," she suggested, tossing away the dagger carelessly so that it clattered to the ground soundlessly. She covered up her cut with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. "I don't want you telling me that my blood tastes funny."
I was glad to oblige, holding my nose with my other hand and shutting my eyes while draining the blood into my mouth. It's artificially dyed water, I told myself. That's why you're holding your nose. You just don't want to taste the artificial stuff.
Only Chain blood must have 300% potency or something, because that steel taste of blood just seeped right through my attempts to block it. Instinctively, my body gagged, and that was when Alice took action.
"Don't you dare spit out my precious blood!" she snapped, rushing forward. She then proceeded to slam me so hard on the back with one arm that instead of spitting it out, I swallowed it.
And promptly fainted.
