Hello, all! Here's the next chapter of the story, and what may be the last chapter in Queensland. We have a chat with a certain monarch to uphold, after all. Here's hoping you enjoy it.
There's going to be a special character put in at the end of this chapter; those of you who know the 'Alice: Madness Returns' DLC will probably figure out who it is.
DISCLAIMER: 'Alice: Madness Returns' and the 'American McGee's Alice' series are owned by Spicy Horse and EA Games, including any beta content not used in the final game. The author owns their OC, and any custom elements they choose to introduce into the story.
Onward to the Chapter!
I feel a bit better as I step back into the flesh-filled chamber. Now that I know how Giant Alice fights, I know what she can do in that form. Who knows what else the Red Queen will use to stop us?
Alice and I split up to look around. I see a lot of flesh, teeth, blood, and organs, which is expected. Some of these objects wiggle or move when I look at them. I don't know how the Queen designs things, and I don't thing I want to know. But, if everything is 'upside-down' like what the Cheshire Cat previously said, then an exit should be in the last place we think to look.
That's logical for Wonderland, right?
"Kyle," Alice calls out a few moments later, as if to prove my mental point, "I've found something. Come take a look."
I follow Alice's voice to a smaller side chamber of flesh and bone. She points to the ceiling here, and I see a large, beating blue heart like the ones we've stomped to pieces. Its color is oddly bright compared to the flesh's dark shades, almost like it wants to be noticed. Alice answers that demand when she pulls out the Pepper Grinder.
A few quick shots of pepper at the heart shatters it with a spurt of blood. I almost instantly feel the flesh around us shift and stretch, and we race back into the main chamber to find out what happened. Alice spots the change first; a piece of flesh has slid back to reveal a passageway. We quickly go down it, and through a narrow space. I try to avoid touching the walls as they drip saliva down onto the floor.
The passageway doesn't last very long, and it leads to a small space above a lake of bubbling green liquid. There are other spaces on the far left and right, but I don't want to risk jumping across. I sniff the air once, and the sharp tang of bile makes my nostrils quiver. I had just gotten that smell out of my nose, and now it's come back.
"That stuff's going to melt our faces off," I comment as a large bubble from the lake pops open to release a wisp of green smoke. "How are we getting across?"
"There's always a way," Alice answers as she walks closer to the lake. "We just need to find it, and—ah, there we go!"
Alice's exclamation comes as two small platforms made of wiggling flesh rise up from the bile to our left. A few seconds later, the platforms fall back down into the liquid, and then rises back up in a repeating pattern.
'Timing is everything with this,' I muse as Alice hops onto the first platform as it rises up. She crosses over the platforms with a well-timed twirl, turns around, and beckons me across. I leap to the first platform when it's at its highest point, and only tap my feet against the second one in order to reach where Alice is. I land on my own, glad to still be alive.
We move into another side-chamber, and spot another blue heart above the hole we entered through. Alice shoots it apart with the Grinder, and a gurgling cry directs me toward the lake. Drifting Ruin, coated the same green as the bile, rise up from the muck with two more platforms. The platforms rise, and fall, on the far right. My shoulders sink as I realize things just got worse.
"Of course these things would be here," Alice mutters as she aims the Grinder at the closest Drifting. She then gives me a quick, "Stand back."
I take a few steps away from Alice as she slowly walks towards the lake, grinding pepper bullets with each step. The Drifting she hits doesn't stay airborne when its mask gets struck, and I shudder as it melts in the bile with a loud hiss.
The next Drifting opens its face up, and Alice teleports back to avoid its projectiles. She fires back just as I see a third Drifting Ruin approach. I summon the Ice Wand, and fire a bolt at the tar-like creature. My shot misses its target, but the Drifting does turn to me. I step out into full view as I fire another bolt, but the Drifting hides its face before it gets damaged. The bolt does slow it down, though.
Alice jumps onto the first of the floating flesh platforms, and fires into her Drifting's face at close range. It falls into the bile with a screech, and she quickly jumps to the next platform. Another Drifting rises up to confront her as I turn back to my own foe. It reveals its mask to me with a low grunt.
I swap to the Cup, and teleport back to avoid my foe's spiked… balls. I fire back, and manage to shatter its mask. It falls into the bile, and its body melts into black goop with another hiss. The bile swallows it up a moment later, and I cross the first two flesh platforms without any trouble.
Alice shoots down another Drifting just as I reach the place we first entered. She stands at the edge of the same space, and her arm has a long, bleeding slash. I don't ask where it came from, and she doesn't say a word as she jumps across the two other platforms. She now stands before a dark, narrow passageway. I follow her down it a few moments later.
Many eyes stare at us from inside this passage's fleshy walls. They have many colors, shapes, and shades. They all unnerve me, break my focus. They all have similar expressions of anger, or pain. I stick close to Alice as the eyes watch us from what seems like every possible angle.
A disturbing thought comes to me; how many of these eyes are the Queen's, and how many are ones taken from her prisoners? If the Queen ordered heads cut off, and bodies frozen in stone, then their eyes would probably be placed somewhere else…
The eye-filled passage ends with another blue heart above a closed mouth. Alice shoots the heart apart, and the mouth slowly opens up with a large amount of drool. A tongue lolls out to slide us into another dark abyss. I follow Alice down after we share a look, and this slide only lasts a few seconds.
We land in a pool of blood that reaches my ankles and a bit splashes on my chest when I land. Insidious Ruin, coated blood-red, rise up to challenge us. The blood on their bodies makes them a bit harder to see, but I recognize their cries and screeches.
"These Ruin gestate in every possible wound," Alice states as she summons the Vorpal Blade. "Let's fix that."
She teleports before I get a word in, and digs the Blade into the mask of the closest Insidious. The mask flies off after a good tug, and its former owner flails its arms into Alice's dress. I summon the Automaton Hammer and join in the carnage, eager to spill some blood that isn't my own.
The Insidious crumple before the Hammer like they always have, but the blood on their bodies gets in my eyes. I brush off as much as I can after a few good swings, and a foomph of fire comes from in front of me. Claws dig into my chest, and I hiss from new throbs of pain. The Hammer's throbs echo back as I thumb the power switch and give the Hammer a sideways slam that splatters its body over its nearby allies.
I turn to these Insidious with a spinning strike, and reduce all but one to blood-covered black tar. That one slashes into my open back when I stop my spin. The pain helps me whirl around with a wild swing, but my swing goes over its body entirely. It slams its blood-coated body into my side, pushing me back a few steps. I swing down, and it scuttles to one side to avoid me.
I grit my teeth as I teleport back twice in a row, and swap to the Incense Cup. Are these Ruin learning from our first encounters, since they've been around since the beginning of this adventure? It seems like they have learned how to better dodge. Fortunately, their bodies are just as frail and weak as before, which I prove as my incense bullets fill this maneuverable foe with holes.
I turn to face the Insidious, but they're all gone. Alice comes over to me covered in blood, her eyes alight in battle-fury. She brushes a hand through her soaked hair, and shoots me a smile far too happy for the killing we just did. I spurt out a chuckle as I try to imagine how people in London would react to this side of her. Then, I turn my eyes to our surroundings to find the next pathway.
I see another black scab of flesh; maybe a keyhole is behind here. I signal Alice to it, and she instantly shrinks down to go inside. I follow her through, and we find a Bumby memory on the other side. The not-so-good doctor seems on another speech when he says, "Everything has a season, Alice. A flower blooms and fades away. Memories, too, have a useful life. We should eliminate the ones that hurt."
I mentally disagree with Bumby's words; my memories show me a life I forgot I had, filled with good fortune and horrible suffering. I may not be 'sane' by London's standards, but I guess I never fit in with London to begin with. I'm sure now that my real home is here, in Wonderland.
Alice leads us through a small wall of flesh that parts open for us when we go near it. The room beyond it doesn't have any blood on the floor, but it does have several Ruin blotches. More Insidious Ruin, normal-colored ones this time, scuttle up from the blotches.
"I got this, Alice," I call out as I summon the Fire Whip to my hands. "It's time you saw my newest weapon in action."
Alice starts to object, but stops as I snap the Whip's rope at one of the Insidious. It cries out when struck, and runs around like a madman. I draw the Whip back with a tug of my wrist, and snap it at two Ruin next to each other. They barely scuttle away from the strike, and I run over to them. I spin on my toes, and spin the Whip in an arc. A wave of fire flies out, and both Insidious are bathed in flames.
The other Insidious charge at me as these first few burn away. I flick my eyes between them all. Then, I suck in a breath, dig my feet into the flesh. and spin around like when I use my Hammer. The Whip's flames make a vortex of fire that spreads out in all directions at once. The Ruin's cries fuse together into a single gurgle as heat fills the room for several moments.
When the heat fades, I pant to regain my strength. My muscles ache from the exertion, but no new Ruin come up to fight us. I dismiss the Whip, and turn to face Alice's judgement.
Her wide eyes and raised eyebrows don't promise good results. My own eyes widen as I see a scorch mark along the left edge of her dress; I didn't mean to damage her clothes!
"While I'm quite curious as to how you got such a weapon, and how it relates to you," Alice finally says, "we have bigger fish to fry, no pun intended."
I blink. That's not what I expected her to say. Wouldn't she be more upset about my using fire as a weapon? Fire did kill her parents, after all.
Wait, why am I thinking about that?
I nod to Alice, and accept her judgement. She moves to one end of the chamber, and I walk to the other. I soon find a blue heart hidden in a hard-to-see space, and I use the Incense Cup to break it apart. I hear the Pepper Grinder fire a moment later, and then feel the flesh beneath my feet move a bit. I look to either side, and just catch Alice enter a small corridor. I follow behind her, taking careful steps as the passage pulses with its own heartbeat.
The room we step into is a literal copy of the last room, except there are no enemies here to fight. We find two more blue hearts in the exact same places as the last two, and they break just as easily. Is the Queen getting desperate, she's using another copycat trick to waste our time?
When both hearts are shot, a wall of flesh opens up for us. The room beyond this wall splays out into a massive chamber of flesh, blood, and bone. Rays of sunlight break in every so often, but most of the chamber is too dark to make out.
Alice and I slowly walk forwards, our steps making small squish sounds. The air here feels thick, like there's something very large, and very powerful, here with us. I stick by Alice as she moves forward with a quicker step than me; I want to be ready in case anything tries to attack us.
Suddenly, we stop. In front of us is the person we've sought; the Red Queen, Queen of Hearts, ruler of the decaying Queensland.
The Queen sits on a throne of carefully-carved rotting flesh, shaped in the image of a heart. She fills the throne with her presence, and her lower body also splays out into the room through a huge array of tentacles where legs would be. Her hands are bony red, each finger ending in a sharpened tentacle that looks far stronger than the Card Guard's claws. They look like the hands in the portrait I saw in the foyer, when we first arrived here.
I get a shock when I see the Queen's face. It is human, very much like a human girl's. Her skin is a light grey, her eyes green and blue, her hair a dark black, her lips pink and red. She looks like a young version of Alice, maybe even Alice as a child. Could this girl really have been the one who manipulated me to her service?
The words of the Queen come back to me:"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I force my fear of this monarch down as I look her clothing over.
She wears a very fancy gown made of white, red, and black colors. A white frill stretches from her neck up to her head. A golden crown with red fabric, and shining jewels, floats above her head. Her right hand clutches a golden staff with a red heart as the centerpiece. All her clothing looks beautiful, but faded. Could this connect to Queensland's overall decay over the years? This place still has power, but it is less than what it used to be.
The Queen taps the tentacle-fingers of her left hand against her throne with a steady click-click-click. Her eyes gaze at us both without blinking, her tapping a slow rhythm that gets in my bones. I feel two inches tall before her. The only other sounds that fill the room are a dripping of blood, and whispers that slip into my ears like a passing breeze.
Alice finally cuts the silence by saying, "We were expecting someone else!"
"You don't know your own mind!" I jump as the Queen's human face speaks that monstrous voice I've heard in this land. The whispers cut into her words, like they want a turn to speak out against us.
"It's nearly a complete stranger," Alice agrees with her hands on her hips.
"What you claim to have forgotten is merely what you've denied," the Queen slowly explains, emphasizing her words. "You've recaptured your vagrant memories; what are you doing with them? You once rejected my attempts to control our lives, forcefully! But now you've allowed another to succeed in my role!"
The Queen releases her scepter, and looks at her right hand in dismay, as she says that last sentence. She looks like she's about to cry. Even so, I suspect she's not being completely honest with us. It sounds to me like she wants her old power back, and Alice is to blame for her losing it.
"I certainly won't miss your tentacles," Alice states, apparently echoing my thoughts about the Queen's exaggeration. The Queen lowers her hand at those words, and stares Alice down with a dark glare.
"You'd prefer the hot, stinking breath," she affixes 'breath' by pounding her right fist on that side's armrest that shakes the whole chamber, "and unyielding attention of a potent, unreasoning, unfeeling hellraiser? I don't think so!"
"Can you give us more than a warning?" Alice's tone grows angrier at the Queen's words. "Caterpillar said you might help!"
"I'd need a better reason to respond than what's currently on offer!" The Queen pounds her fist down again, and this time leans forward towards us.
"If you don't, we're all doomed," Alice states as she suddenly points a finger at me, "including every servant you've ever bribed into doing your proper share."
"Alice," I hiss as the Queen's gaze shifts to me, "don't get me involved in this! I'm not important compared to Wonderland!"
"Oh, but you seemed important," the Queen speaks directly to me, "at least, I thought you were when you first arrived. If I showed you as the falsehood against Alice's success, then she wouldn't be missing what's important. She would have rebelled against you, and your 'friendship', trusting only herself for guidance. It seems I was wrong in my assumptions; you never had any strength to manipulate!"
"I may not be strong," I respond with a burst of determination as I take a step towards the flesh-controlling monarch, "but I do have an idea as to what's driven you so far as to consider me a good option. Your plight similar to mine, which you manipulated to make me trust you."
"You place your intelligence equal to mine?" The Queen clutches her throne's armrests as she sits up straight in her seat. "Speak out, then! Let us hear this 'idea' you claim is so correct, before I tell you exactly why it is so wrong!"
"It's simple, Your Majesty," I say with a deep breath. "You are absolutely afraid of losing what you consider the most important thing in your life."
The Queen blinks, and I hear Alice's feet shuffle on the flesh we stand on. Neither woman tells me to shut up, so I continue.
"Ever since I can remember," I say to the near-silent chamber, "I've had the desire to find Alice, and protect her. She has called me 'barbarian' because of how reckless I act to keep her alive, when she can obviously take care of herself."
I keep my eyes on the Queen's reaction to these words. She doesn't flinch.
"From what I've heard, and learned," I continue, "you have a similar connection to your reign, which you still claim to hold over this land. You were once a powerful ruler, and you lost that power by… improper circumstances."
I try to phrase those last words carefully, but the Queen still frowns at me. I see I messed up, but I need to keep going.
"However," I resume, "if you had killed me, Alice would probably be more upset than she is now. You told me Alice would have been better off without me, but I have fought with Alice through many challenges. We've won against each one. Maybe, if it were just her, she would have been easier to manipulate to your side."
"I grow weary of your words, peasant," the Queen warns me as she slouches down with a clack of her claws. "What is your point?"
"My point," I say with a gesture to the flesh all around me, "is that you will do anything to keep your reign, your kingdom, alive. You've wrapped flesh around the stone, reanimated your Guards, and made mockeries of the White chess army, all to keep people afraid of you and what you represent. You are driven by fear, Red Queen; your fear of losing the respect you once earned!"
"You think I am afraid?!" The Queen clutches her scepter in her right hand as her voice grows louder. "I fear nothing that challenges my kingdom!"
"This isn't about your kingdom," I shout back at her. "It's about you. I don't want to lose to the Ruin that corrupts Wonderland, while you don't want to see everything you've done be a footnote in Wonderland's history. But, Queensland is becoming history right now; you're just not accepting it! You're dooming yourself by living in a fantasy of absolute power!"
"Kyle!" Alice's shout stops me mid-breath. "That's enough! Can't you see what you're doing to her?"
I stare back at Alice in confusion, and then look again at the Queen. A very human look of anger is on her face. Her right hand grips the scepter so hard I think it'll break in half. I don't want her to collapse the entire chamber on our heads, or worse, so I step back to Alice's side without another word.
The chamber is silent for several long, tense moments. Then, the Queen straightens her shoulders and releases her scepter.
"We won't be doomed," she says directly to Alice, "we'll be forgotten. Well, I may survive in here, but you two are certainly finished!" She waves her right hand in a wide arc, and then clenches her fist on the word 'finished'. The emphasis makes me fear, for just a moment, that she'll be the one to finish us off.
"You see the pattern of destruction," she continues with further gestures of her arms and hands. "I know you do! The Train is trying to destroy all evidence of your past, and especially the fire! Now, who would want that? Who benefits from your madness?"
Something moves in the chamber's darkness. I catch a glimpse of shifting flesh. I glance at Alice, but she seems more focused on the Queen's words.
"The destruction of Wonderland," she slowly asks herself as she looks down to the floor, "is the destruction of me?"
"Indeed! And vice-versa!" I turn to face the Queen, and just catch something shift out of sight by her throne. Is the chamber coming alive all around us, or is this more of the Queen's manipulative tricks?
"I've set it in motion," Alice notes out loud as I hear several things move at once, "I can derail it. This is good for me. I'm not insane, I didn't kill my family. I am fine. I'm not mad, I'm innocent. I-I mean not guilty!"
At that moment, several tentacles burst into view from the darkness above, below, and around us. Alice claps her hands around her mouth as they squeeze around her waist. Other tentacles lock my arms to my sides, and gag my mouth before I can scream. The tentacles lift me, and Alice, off the ground, dangling towards the Queen. She still sits on her throne, like she hasn't done a thing. She looks at us both with an expression I can't make out.
"What's happening?" Alice shouts from behind her hands. "What are you doing?!"
"The Train must be stopped," the Queen ominously states. "But, there's more to do. Both of your views conceal tragedies. The whole truth you both claim to see eludes you because you won't look at what's around you!"
The Queen suddenly opens her mouth, and I stare in horror as her lower jaw dislocates to an extreme state. Her mouth opens wide enough for me to see down her throat, and I now notice her razor-sharp teeth. The tentacles draw us towards the Queen's mouth, no matter how much we struggle.
My heart hammers in my chest as I realize the Queen intends to swallow us whole. I don't want to go back into that flesh, not again!
Alice screams out as we are plunged into warm, sticky darkness…
"There is no method in this madness!"
The Queen's voice shouts this out from within a red haze, the only thing that stands out from the darkness. A blurred image of her throne comes into view, but it fades away before I can properly see it.
The darkness brightens to reveal a fat, middle-aged man in a stained doctor's coat. Round-rimmed glasses are delicately perched on his nose, and his face carries a disappointed scowl.
"In my professional opinion," the man states with the voice of Dr. Wilson, "madness is often a treatable disease, though perhaps not in this case."
The man fades away before I can ask him what 'case' he is talking about. Is it Alice, or some other 'mad' patient?
"Authority must be obeyed," the Queen dictates as the same red haze appears again. Then, her frowning image comes sharply into focus as she concludes, "or it must be overthrown!"
Again, the Queen vanishes before I can say a word. Her image changes into Nurse Witless in a uniform I guess is fit for 'nurses' of London.
"Cruel to be kind," she states in a sing-song voice, "that's my technique, as they say. But she's as mad as a hatter, poor dearie!"
I'm sure she's taking about Alice, since I don't know any other women who are as mad as hatters. Personally, I think the Mad Hatter is at his own level of madness, but I can't get a word in before the image vanishes.
"The worst is over… and over… and over," Dr. Bumby's voice repeats as the key he used to hypnotize me waves back and forth. The man then appears with key in hand as he urgently states, "Forget it, Alice! Forget it!"
The darkness consumes the image, only to replace it with a sickly-sweet smell. Something keeps my mouth from opening, and something else locks my arms around my chest. I breathe through my nose as a bright light forces me to close my eyes. When I open them again, I'm no longer in that darkness. But, I'm still trapped.
Four black, padded walls surround me. The bright light comes from a single bulb that hangs from a high ceiling, and shines on the padded floor I lie on. A thick, metal door blocks me from the outside world. A small square window in the door is shielded by bars of metal. This feels similar to the gaol cell, but far worse.
I stand up… or try to, and fail. I look down at my legs to figure out what's wrong. My eyes widen at the thin, white robe over my naked flesh. Belts are wrapped tightly around my arms; their grip doesn't loosen when I struggle. I try breathing through my mouth again, but it remains clamped shut. I angle my eyes down at my nose and barely see a large metal device strapped over most of my face.
I don't know where this place is, but I don't like it. The air here is too sweet, too cold, to feel comfortable. I should get out.
I shuffle along the floor until I reach a corner of the room. I then shimmy up the corner until I am properly standing up. I take a step forward, and then another.
My legs buckle beneath me, like they've just been hurt. I snort through my nose, and drool spills out between my shut lips. Nevertheless, I walk to the center of the room, and stand there. Why do my legs hurt like this, anyway? I don't recall breaking them, just my arm from that fall in Queensland.
A loud clack turns my attention to the metal door. It slowly swings inward, and to the side, as some twisted version of Alice steps into the room. It isn't the Red Queen's youthful look, but it matches that woman's level of 'different'.
For starters, this Alice has the long ears of a rabbit sticking out from beneath a black top hat. Her hands are covered in fingerless black gloves, and long claws replace her fingers. Her feet are now large white rabbit paws. Her hair is now a blackish-grey, her eyes a bright purple instead of their usual green.
Her clothing is something else to take note of. She has something in red that my mind calls a cravat around her neck, tied with a clip with the 'Omega' symbol. Her white dress is underneath a dark-red jacket, which is then underneath golden waistcoat with three triangular buttons. White spats, so my mind calls them, stretch down to her ankles.
This Rabbit-Alice takes out a golden pocket watch from inside her coat, and flips open the lid. She frowns at what she sees, closes the watch, and looks up at me while she puts the device back.
"Well?" she snaps at me in the White Rabbit's voice. "Aren't you coming?"
I just stand there, absolutely confused as to how all this is happening.
"For heaven's sake," Rabbit-Alice exclaims as she delicately pinches the bridge of her nose, "this isn't a hard choice to make. Either you come with me, or I leave you here. What's taking you so long to choose?" She then checks her watch again, and shakes her head at what she sees before putting it back.
This Alice's attitude rubs me the wrong way; she reminds me of the White Rabbit, and not just in the look. However, if she knows a way out of this place, then she knows more than I do. I'm not sure who else is here, and she looks like she'll only give me one chance.
I stumble over to her. She nods her head at me before checking her watch a third time. Up close, I can see the watch has thirteen numbers etched along the outer ring, and the two hands constantly tick with each second.
"We're already terribly late as is," she says before she pockets the watch yet again. "We can't afford to put any bets on being lucky." She locks eyes with me as she then says, "You had better keep up; I'm not in the mood for slowpokes."
I try to say, "I'll do my best," but all that comes out is gibberish, and a bit of drool. Rabbit-Alice rolls her eyes at this, and leads me out of the doorway. As I look at her back, I see the 'Hollow Yves' skull Alice usually wore on her dresses is replaced with an actual rabbit's tail. A rabbit's foot pokes out on either side of the tail, and the ribbon that holds them together is a light-pink shade.
The Rabbit-Alice leads me out into a hallway that warps before my eyes. One second has me seeing dreary, old, moldy gray stone with rusted metal doors; the next, I stand inside blindingly-bright white walls with trails of blood that streak over polished metal doors. Voices scream, moan, cry, and shout every few seconds, but I can't see anyone else around us in the hallway.
"Come on," Rabbit-Alice urges me as she tugs against my robe's thin fabric, "we need to go! This asylum isn't safe for slow thinkers!"
Asylum. So, this is the kind of place that Alice was in for ten years. I can certainly see why she didn't like it here. Escaping is a good idea.
I follow closely behind Rabbit-Alice as she guides me down the hallway to an unknown destination…
Alright, that's all for now. We've gone from the Red Queen to an asylum, and see a different version of Alice is helping Kyle out. What will happen in this place? Who else will Kyle see here? Stay tuned to find out!
As usual, any reviews, comments, constructive criticism, and feedback are appreciated.
Draconos is taking off!