Slowly the room rose, and she realised that it was a lift. She felt something like apprehension, and realised that if there were guards waiting for her, she would be a sitting duck, since there was absolutely no cover inside.
The doors opened and she was met with two diamonds and a club guard, and she dived headfirst into the club, knocking him off-balance. Then she turned and hit him with the mallet, which blew the top half of him straight off. Then she twisted and used the knife to kill another guard and spun around to face the last one. He started firing at her, but she sidestepped left and right several times as she waited for her knife or the mallet to materialise. The knife did and she immediately threw it at the guard.
Once that was over with, she felt weary, so she was rather unhappy when a diamond bullet raked across her jaw line. Infuriated, she turned around and sent two croquet balls flying toward the guard on a platform. He screamed, but that did him no good, especially when they collided with him. She nursed her cut as she went upstairs, muttering about how much she hated the guards and how she couldn't wait to get away from them.
For a moment, she paused and looked around the room. It was rather pretty, but resembled the family room in her home a little much for her taste. There was a bookcase on the wall farthest from her, just beside the lift. The walls were red and the bug-ridden carpet was a deep mauve colour. The stairs she was on were wooden, as was the platform. There was nothing to do in this room, either.
"Oh, please!" she muttered exasperatedly. "Cat! How do I get OUT of here?!"
Cat didn't even speak. Instead, Jeremy did. "Kitty's a little busy right now, Faith," he told her. "Check out the window."
She glanced at it. Jeremy, knowing her tendency towards immediate gratification, laughed. "A bit harder, sis."
There was that dark corridor that she had met Ray and what's-his-name in, reflected in the glass. She turned, and seeing nothing, looked back. It was still there.
"That's where you need to go- get back in the lift."
She did, and it started an agonisingly slow journey upwards. Tired, she leaned back, relieved that at least SOMEONE had told her where to go. She nearly retched when she remembered that it was Jeremy. Now that she wasn't drugged with whatever had come out of the spider's syringe, common sense told her that this situation was very wrong. Jeremy was dead. Jeremy was gone. He had been buried for seven years. The thought made her start crying again, and it took some effort to stop.
The lift continued its journey up until she reached the maze again. There was a funny twinge in her stomach when it reoccurred to her that Jeremy had told her the right course of action... again. It was still fairly light, and she started off the way she'd gone with Rabbit. Remembering where she had lost sight of him, she tried to retrace her own steps. It was difficult, considering that she had randomly picked directions without much thought. Fortunately, Rabbit was waiting fairly close to the beginning, and he tugged her through the maze to the last door. "Go through."
She went and was immediately jolted by a rush of wind and unsteady surface. She was in a void again, standing on a chunk of stone, and the portal lay about thirty feet below.
Mara looked up, knowing what would have to happen, but trying to get some divine assurances that she was wrong. "Here is your chance to grow minuscule, Faith," Cat's voice purred. "Take it."
She groaned inwardly and took out the potion. It still smelled disgusting, she noticed, and pinched her nose as she drank it. Then she jumped down into the portal, just as the potion took effect.
Mara landed on her posterior with a decisive thud that completely knocked the wind out of her. She sat in the dirt for a moment, then stood up, slowly, fearing that everything below her waist was broken. Thankfully, this was not the case.
A short distance away, she came upon a very peculiar object. It was white, and tall - very tall, the size of a tree. Only, from what she could see, there didn't seem to be anything remotely tree-like about it. Its trunk was soft and almost spongy to touch, and instead of leaves, it seemed to form something of an umbrella at the very top. Before she could muse on it any further, there was a very, very loud humming coming from somewhere very close. Slowly, she turned, and came face-to-face with a giant wasp. Its eyes, black and evil, leered at her, while its body quivered in excitement. Its wings looked like gossamer that had been liberally infused with armour. Armour with a red heart on it.
Slowly she backed away, trying not to scream, though not succeeding too well. She slowly backed up, seeing a niche that she could easily squeeze into, while the wasp's wings would prevent it from getting inside. Terrified, she ran the three feet to the hole - at three inches, it was quite a feat - the adrenaline from her fear propelling her to an unprecedented speed. She dived inside, and the wasp gave up and flew away. After sitting inside for a moment, she shivered, and irritably swatted at something prickly that constantly brushed up her back. Finally, she turned to face it and met the eight eyes of a shiny black spider that was trying to bite her. She shrieked and jumped out of the hole immediately, with the spider following her.
The spider followed, and soon after she was out, the wasp came back, and she screamed as she dived between its legs and dived into another hole, too small for the wasp and spider.
There was instant pandemonium as the ants' secret meeting was disrupted. Startled by the noise and unprepared for this... thing that was running all over, screaming, the ants panicked and swarmed out of the hall, fast as they could.
Thinking that it was an invasion of spiders and wasps on more mini-people like herself, she followed them, though she couldn't keep up. She lost the stragglers as they came to a stream and jumped over as one. She sat down underneath another of the strange trees, and finally realised that it wasn't a tree; it was a mushroom. She groaned, remembering her new height. Some distance off, Rabbit beckoned to her and dashed through a hole in a huge cliff; probably just a small ridge if she were taller. She got up to follow, but something dropped a boulder over the entrance when she was a only a little ways off.
Highly irritated, she stamped her foot and yelled insults at just about everything she saw, and threw out some particularly good ones that were directed specifically at the rabbit and whatever had just blocked her path to him. She stomped away, trying to find something that would help her follow "that bloody, blasted four-legged nuisance."
She passed a stream several times, and finally dived in, just to see if she would find anything useful... particularly a way under the ridge. As it turned out, she found a large deck of cards instead. When she began running out of air, she made full speed to the surface and hopped out. Cautiously, she took a single card out of the deck and ran her finger along the edge, but quickly pulled back her hand when it drew blood.
After a moment, she tried to find the best way to go, wondering if her chance of finding the right way was hopeless or not.Finally, she closed her eyes and picked a direction, walking aimlessly. "Cat..." she miserably called. She was cold, wet, scared, had no idea where she was going, and she was tired and hungry on top of that. Cat appeared behind her.
"The wrong way is often fascinating, but the right way is better yet."
"Yes, but boulders sometimes damage the right road."
Cat raised an eyebrow. "So you take the long way." And disappeared.
"CAT!!" she shouted, but he didn't come back. She hadn't gotten the chance to tell him that she was completely turned around, and didn't know where the cave was. She felt thoroughly ready to cry.
"Hi, Faith," said Jeremy. "What's the matter?"
She stared nervously at his spectre, unsure if it was merely her imagination or not. Nevertheless, she felt remarkably scruffy. Jeremy was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt. Both were clean, and appropriately rumpled for a seventeen-year-old boy. On the other hand, her sweater was almost shredded, and her dress was torn near the hemline. She felt quite decorated with cuts and bruises.
Jeremy noticed her mental comparison and laughed. "You look fine, sis," he teased. She arched an eyebrow. "Anyway," he continued, starting to walk. "C'mon. That Cat's not too good with directions, and Rabbit... well, there's a little something called 'Nyquil' that'll do wonders for him."
Mara chuckled and walked alongside him. She started to reach for his hand like in old times, then it hit her. He was dead. Shouldn't she be freaking out or something? No... it was Jeremy. But he was dead. Her dead brother... ogod. She sighed and her head drooped, trying not to look at him, trying to reconcile that maybe... maybe he could be there in Wonderland with her. He reached out and took her hand. His touch was cold, but reassuringly... or maybe disturbingly, solid. Neither spoke much, but soon he let go and began running. She glared enviously at him for just a moment. He ran effortlessly, and could pass through solid objects as though they were air. Meanwhile, she was constantly dodging sharp things that scratched her further and got a side cramp. Then she smacked the side of her head and reminded herself that he was dead, and then got mad for being relieved that at least she wasn't.
Jeremy stopped when they reached the stream in front of the boulder that had been dropped, and beckoned her across the narrowest part. She jumped as far as she could, but fell short of the opposite shore.
It was significantly colder than it had been the first time she was in, and she swam up for air fast as she could after the cold shock wore off. When she reached the opposite shore Jeremy was gone, but there was a path up the ridge. She followed that until she reached a crevice that she wouldn't have thought twice about at five feet, but was daunting at three inches. Carefully she walked along the side of it, searching for where it was narrowest. She found it to the left, against a very large rock. There were mushrooms growing out the side of it, and she decided to try to land on one of them.
She took a running leap and hit one on the farthest side, and was immediately propelled much farther forward than she had ever intended to go. She thudded to the ground with a loud "Oomph!!" She stared darkly up at the mushroom for a moment but stood, rubbing her posterior, which was starting to feel alarmingly numb. Grumbling, she climbed up onto the rock again, and hopped down onto another mushroom. Once again, she was propelled forwards, as though someone had thrown her hard as they could. Just barely, she caught onto a boulder and stood on it, and what greeted her was astounding. A waterfall, roaring and menacing as a thunderstorm; yet whispering and gentle as a summer sprinkling. And very tall. In front of it was a shelf of rock that she needed to get to. Feeling more than a little afraid, she jumped at it.
From the path above her, a few ants pushed a rock over the edge. It missed, but Mara was shaken nonetheless. She glowered up at the ants, and shook her head. They laughed at her and darted up.
She groaned and jumped over to the next shelf, which was almost behind the waterfall. The ants pushed another rock, and she had nowhere to go. It headed straight for her, and she dashed behind the waterfall to avoid it. The ants seemed to think that she had been hit by the boulder and fallen, and she heard them laughing and congratulating each other.
There was relative safety to be found behind the waterfall, though it was cold. Hesitantly, she headed to the back, where it was warmest (which really wasn't saying much), and sat down with every intention of going to sleep. After all, she was in safety... safety. That meant she could get some rest.
She was awakened immediately by a set of very sharp claws being jabbed into her arm and leapt up with a cry. Her knife flashed, and Cat's head rolled, landing at her feet, grinning.
She screamed and jumped up. Cat was speaking, disapproving. "Asleep, Faith?" They started speaking at once, each not really listening to the other.
"...I dreamed I killed you..."
"...Rabbit would not approve..."
"...When you woke me..."
"...Queen would love this..."
"...Your head..."
"...need to find the..."
"...didn't know it was you..."
"...eye scythe is only thing..."
"...only wanted to sleep..."
"....can't afford to sleep..."
They stopped speaking. That was all; no words, no sound from either. Only his infuriating grin. Slowly he stood and she almost broke their eye contact, but something inside of her met his challenge, and matched it. She started to remember eyes that were remarkably like his, only instead of his golden eyes they were golden brown, but every bit as piercing. But before she could speak he jumped and pushed her down, and she hit her head on a rock.
"What was that for?" she snapped, rubbing her head. He raised an eyebrow.
"If you'll remember..?"
"Oh, that."
She shook her head and stood up. "What do I do now?"
He merely twisted, arching his back so that he was looking at her upside-down, and purred, as though the pose were relaxing. She winced just from the sight of him.
"Perhaps I wasn't being clear enough - who do I find, and how am I to find them?"
"What junk have you?"
She blinked a few times in confusion. "What?"
He raised an eyebrow and gestured with a paw to her overstuffed sleeve. "In there. What have you pilfered from the bodies?"
She hesitated and pulled out the rags, the liquor, the maps, and the letters. From her other sleeve she pulled out the lighter.
He examined them and sniffed the bottles a few times and swatted most of them away. "Why do you bog yourself down with such luggage? Take only what you need to survive."
"I don't know what I need. Everything's so confusing here."
"Confusing? How so, pet?" He asked incredulously.
"I just -"
"Come off it, Faith! Hurry!"
"Rabbit! But you were - how did y-"
"Never mind that! Now come! We must hurry!" His beady eyes darted back and forth anxiously.
"Cat! What's going on?"
He merely snickered and vanished. Impatiently she stormed to the entrance, completely ignoring Rabbit. The way up the path was clear, and she spent the remainder of the time venting her frustration on whatever ant she was fortunate enough to find. She considered herself lucky that there were a few at the top, and she destroyed them with ease. In those few moments, she felt darkness; fury, and she shuddered. Darkness... she thought back to when she had arrived and had seen the caravan. That thing inside was darkness itself. And she realised that there was every chance that when she felt like that, she was only fuelling its power. That was terrifying.
Rabbit had left her again, although she knew that it was her own fault.
The doors opened and she was met with two diamonds and a club guard, and she dived headfirst into the club, knocking him off-balance. Then she turned and hit him with the mallet, which blew the top half of him straight off. Then she twisted and used the knife to kill another guard and spun around to face the last one. He started firing at her, but she sidestepped left and right several times as she waited for her knife or the mallet to materialise. The knife did and she immediately threw it at the guard.
Once that was over with, she felt weary, so she was rather unhappy when a diamond bullet raked across her jaw line. Infuriated, she turned around and sent two croquet balls flying toward the guard on a platform. He screamed, but that did him no good, especially when they collided with him. She nursed her cut as she went upstairs, muttering about how much she hated the guards and how she couldn't wait to get away from them.
For a moment, she paused and looked around the room. It was rather pretty, but resembled the family room in her home a little much for her taste. There was a bookcase on the wall farthest from her, just beside the lift. The walls were red and the bug-ridden carpet was a deep mauve colour. The stairs she was on were wooden, as was the platform. There was nothing to do in this room, either.
"Oh, please!" she muttered exasperatedly. "Cat! How do I get OUT of here?!"
Cat didn't even speak. Instead, Jeremy did. "Kitty's a little busy right now, Faith," he told her. "Check out the window."
She glanced at it. Jeremy, knowing her tendency towards immediate gratification, laughed. "A bit harder, sis."
There was that dark corridor that she had met Ray and what's-his-name in, reflected in the glass. She turned, and seeing nothing, looked back. It was still there.
"That's where you need to go- get back in the lift."
She did, and it started an agonisingly slow journey upwards. Tired, she leaned back, relieved that at least SOMEONE had told her where to go. She nearly retched when she remembered that it was Jeremy. Now that she wasn't drugged with whatever had come out of the spider's syringe, common sense told her that this situation was very wrong. Jeremy was dead. Jeremy was gone. He had been buried for seven years. The thought made her start crying again, and it took some effort to stop.
The lift continued its journey up until she reached the maze again. There was a funny twinge in her stomach when it reoccurred to her that Jeremy had told her the right course of action... again. It was still fairly light, and she started off the way she'd gone with Rabbit. Remembering where she had lost sight of him, she tried to retrace her own steps. It was difficult, considering that she had randomly picked directions without much thought. Fortunately, Rabbit was waiting fairly close to the beginning, and he tugged her through the maze to the last door. "Go through."
She went and was immediately jolted by a rush of wind and unsteady surface. She was in a void again, standing on a chunk of stone, and the portal lay about thirty feet below.
Mara looked up, knowing what would have to happen, but trying to get some divine assurances that she was wrong. "Here is your chance to grow minuscule, Faith," Cat's voice purred. "Take it."
She groaned inwardly and took out the potion. It still smelled disgusting, she noticed, and pinched her nose as she drank it. Then she jumped down into the portal, just as the potion took effect.
Mara landed on her posterior with a decisive thud that completely knocked the wind out of her. She sat in the dirt for a moment, then stood up, slowly, fearing that everything below her waist was broken. Thankfully, this was not the case.
A short distance away, she came upon a very peculiar object. It was white, and tall - very tall, the size of a tree. Only, from what she could see, there didn't seem to be anything remotely tree-like about it. Its trunk was soft and almost spongy to touch, and instead of leaves, it seemed to form something of an umbrella at the very top. Before she could muse on it any further, there was a very, very loud humming coming from somewhere very close. Slowly, she turned, and came face-to-face with a giant wasp. Its eyes, black and evil, leered at her, while its body quivered in excitement. Its wings looked like gossamer that had been liberally infused with armour. Armour with a red heart on it.
Slowly she backed away, trying not to scream, though not succeeding too well. She slowly backed up, seeing a niche that she could easily squeeze into, while the wasp's wings would prevent it from getting inside. Terrified, she ran the three feet to the hole - at three inches, it was quite a feat - the adrenaline from her fear propelling her to an unprecedented speed. She dived inside, and the wasp gave up and flew away. After sitting inside for a moment, she shivered, and irritably swatted at something prickly that constantly brushed up her back. Finally, she turned to face it and met the eight eyes of a shiny black spider that was trying to bite her. She shrieked and jumped out of the hole immediately, with the spider following her.
The spider followed, and soon after she was out, the wasp came back, and she screamed as she dived between its legs and dived into another hole, too small for the wasp and spider.
There was instant pandemonium as the ants' secret meeting was disrupted. Startled by the noise and unprepared for this... thing that was running all over, screaming, the ants panicked and swarmed out of the hall, fast as they could.
Thinking that it was an invasion of spiders and wasps on more mini-people like herself, she followed them, though she couldn't keep up. She lost the stragglers as they came to a stream and jumped over as one. She sat down underneath another of the strange trees, and finally realised that it wasn't a tree; it was a mushroom. She groaned, remembering her new height. Some distance off, Rabbit beckoned to her and dashed through a hole in a huge cliff; probably just a small ridge if she were taller. She got up to follow, but something dropped a boulder over the entrance when she was a only a little ways off.
Highly irritated, she stamped her foot and yelled insults at just about everything she saw, and threw out some particularly good ones that were directed specifically at the rabbit and whatever had just blocked her path to him. She stomped away, trying to find something that would help her follow "that bloody, blasted four-legged nuisance."
She passed a stream several times, and finally dived in, just to see if she would find anything useful... particularly a way under the ridge. As it turned out, she found a large deck of cards instead. When she began running out of air, she made full speed to the surface and hopped out. Cautiously, she took a single card out of the deck and ran her finger along the edge, but quickly pulled back her hand when it drew blood.
After a moment, she tried to find the best way to go, wondering if her chance of finding the right way was hopeless or not.Finally, she closed her eyes and picked a direction, walking aimlessly. "Cat..." she miserably called. She was cold, wet, scared, had no idea where she was going, and she was tired and hungry on top of that. Cat appeared behind her.
"The wrong way is often fascinating, but the right way is better yet."
"Yes, but boulders sometimes damage the right road."
Cat raised an eyebrow. "So you take the long way." And disappeared.
"CAT!!" she shouted, but he didn't come back. She hadn't gotten the chance to tell him that she was completely turned around, and didn't know where the cave was. She felt thoroughly ready to cry.
"Hi, Faith," said Jeremy. "What's the matter?"
She stared nervously at his spectre, unsure if it was merely her imagination or not. Nevertheless, she felt remarkably scruffy. Jeremy was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt. Both were clean, and appropriately rumpled for a seventeen-year-old boy. On the other hand, her sweater was almost shredded, and her dress was torn near the hemline. She felt quite decorated with cuts and bruises.
Jeremy noticed her mental comparison and laughed. "You look fine, sis," he teased. She arched an eyebrow. "Anyway," he continued, starting to walk. "C'mon. That Cat's not too good with directions, and Rabbit... well, there's a little something called 'Nyquil' that'll do wonders for him."
Mara chuckled and walked alongside him. She started to reach for his hand like in old times, then it hit her. He was dead. Shouldn't she be freaking out or something? No... it was Jeremy. But he was dead. Her dead brother... ogod. She sighed and her head drooped, trying not to look at him, trying to reconcile that maybe... maybe he could be there in Wonderland with her. He reached out and took her hand. His touch was cold, but reassuringly... or maybe disturbingly, solid. Neither spoke much, but soon he let go and began running. She glared enviously at him for just a moment. He ran effortlessly, and could pass through solid objects as though they were air. Meanwhile, she was constantly dodging sharp things that scratched her further and got a side cramp. Then she smacked the side of her head and reminded herself that he was dead, and then got mad for being relieved that at least she wasn't.
Jeremy stopped when they reached the stream in front of the boulder that had been dropped, and beckoned her across the narrowest part. She jumped as far as she could, but fell short of the opposite shore.
It was significantly colder than it had been the first time she was in, and she swam up for air fast as she could after the cold shock wore off. When she reached the opposite shore Jeremy was gone, but there was a path up the ridge. She followed that until she reached a crevice that she wouldn't have thought twice about at five feet, but was daunting at three inches. Carefully she walked along the side of it, searching for where it was narrowest. She found it to the left, against a very large rock. There were mushrooms growing out the side of it, and she decided to try to land on one of them.
She took a running leap and hit one on the farthest side, and was immediately propelled much farther forward than she had ever intended to go. She thudded to the ground with a loud "Oomph!!" She stared darkly up at the mushroom for a moment but stood, rubbing her posterior, which was starting to feel alarmingly numb. Grumbling, she climbed up onto the rock again, and hopped down onto another mushroom. Once again, she was propelled forwards, as though someone had thrown her hard as they could. Just barely, she caught onto a boulder and stood on it, and what greeted her was astounding. A waterfall, roaring and menacing as a thunderstorm; yet whispering and gentle as a summer sprinkling. And very tall. In front of it was a shelf of rock that she needed to get to. Feeling more than a little afraid, she jumped at it.
From the path above her, a few ants pushed a rock over the edge. It missed, but Mara was shaken nonetheless. She glowered up at the ants, and shook her head. They laughed at her and darted up.
She groaned and jumped over to the next shelf, which was almost behind the waterfall. The ants pushed another rock, and she had nowhere to go. It headed straight for her, and she dashed behind the waterfall to avoid it. The ants seemed to think that she had been hit by the boulder and fallen, and she heard them laughing and congratulating each other.
There was relative safety to be found behind the waterfall, though it was cold. Hesitantly, she headed to the back, where it was warmest (which really wasn't saying much), and sat down with every intention of going to sleep. After all, she was in safety... safety. That meant she could get some rest.
She was awakened immediately by a set of very sharp claws being jabbed into her arm and leapt up with a cry. Her knife flashed, and Cat's head rolled, landing at her feet, grinning.
She screamed and jumped up. Cat was speaking, disapproving. "Asleep, Faith?" They started speaking at once, each not really listening to the other.
"...I dreamed I killed you..."
"...Rabbit would not approve..."
"...When you woke me..."
"...Queen would love this..."
"...Your head..."
"...need to find the..."
"...didn't know it was you..."
"...eye scythe is only thing..."
"...only wanted to sleep..."
"....can't afford to sleep..."
They stopped speaking. That was all; no words, no sound from either. Only his infuriating grin. Slowly he stood and she almost broke their eye contact, but something inside of her met his challenge, and matched it. She started to remember eyes that were remarkably like his, only instead of his golden eyes they were golden brown, but every bit as piercing. But before she could speak he jumped and pushed her down, and she hit her head on a rock.
"What was that for?" she snapped, rubbing her head. He raised an eyebrow.
"If you'll remember..?"
"Oh, that."
She shook her head and stood up. "What do I do now?"
He merely twisted, arching his back so that he was looking at her upside-down, and purred, as though the pose were relaxing. She winced just from the sight of him.
"Perhaps I wasn't being clear enough - who do I find, and how am I to find them?"
"What junk have you?"
She blinked a few times in confusion. "What?"
He raised an eyebrow and gestured with a paw to her overstuffed sleeve. "In there. What have you pilfered from the bodies?"
She hesitated and pulled out the rags, the liquor, the maps, and the letters. From her other sleeve she pulled out the lighter.
He examined them and sniffed the bottles a few times and swatted most of them away. "Why do you bog yourself down with such luggage? Take only what you need to survive."
"I don't know what I need. Everything's so confusing here."
"Confusing? How so, pet?" He asked incredulously.
"I just -"
"Come off it, Faith! Hurry!"
"Rabbit! But you were - how did y-"
"Never mind that! Now come! We must hurry!" His beady eyes darted back and forth anxiously.
"Cat! What's going on?"
He merely snickered and vanished. Impatiently she stormed to the entrance, completely ignoring Rabbit. The way up the path was clear, and she spent the remainder of the time venting her frustration on whatever ant she was fortunate enough to find. She considered herself lucky that there were a few at the top, and she destroyed them with ease. In those few moments, she felt darkness; fury, and she shuddered. Darkness... she thought back to when she had arrived and had seen the caravan. That thing inside was darkness itself. And she realised that there was every chance that when she felt like that, she was only fuelling its power. That was terrifying.
Rabbit had left her again, although she knew that it was her own fault.