Before her there was a small, open armoury. Dozens of Bishops' staffs were propped up against the stone walls, which were old but strong. Several long, narrow slits peered at her, too narrow for a bishop to shoot through. Their purpose utterly confused her.
Opposite, there was a large, elaborate gate with "Knight Challenge" written in elegant script, and an engraving of a knight's piece below that. There was no mechanism to raise it, and she began to have her doubts that they hadn't simply created the Challenge to kill any strangers who tried to pass through.
Above her, several rooks paced along the battlements, glaring suspiciously at anything that moved. Faith was the recipient of several glares as she hesitated before the gate, not feeling right. She sighed uncomfortably. If there was another way through, she wished that she had discovered it. But there was no point in wishing then; she was there, and couldn't - wouldn't - go back.
She started to slide through, but then became Faith again. Problem was, she wasn't through other the gate yet, and more than likely would be decapitated somehow on her way across. She ran.
Immediately a heavy disc shot out from a slit ahead of her and flew at her neck. She dived under it and continued running. Another flew at her from the side, and she ducked and somersaulted, leaping forwards as she rose to her feet. There was the gate, with the engraving of a knight's piece. "Let me IN!" she screamed.
The gate was rising slowly. She ran faster. A disc came from behind. She lunged at the opening. The disc went after her, faster still. She made it under! It stopped abruptly and clanged to the ground. She had become a knight.
"Cripes, not again," she muttered.
This Challenge was somewhat more difficult. Before she even took one step, she had to figure out how she moved. It wasn't the simple sliding motion of a bishop; when she tried she got nowhere. "Cat!" she called, but it came out as little more than a neigh. She groaned in exasperation.
"Having fun?"
"Cat!" (Neigh!)
He chuckled, rather mockingly.
"Oh, shut up." (Snort.)
He definitely seemed about to laugh. "What predicament is there now?"
"I... can't walk." (Bluster and a nicker.)
"Ah. What did your dear friend the first bishop tell you?"
"That it's governed by will, but when I try, I can't go." (This came out as a random assortment of nickering, neighs and snorts). If she weren't a chess piece, she would be blushing.
"Maybe you should try something other than sliding. Knights and pawns alike are very similar in their movements, beside that fact that one of the two is rather more potent."
She sighed. (A very loud, prolonged snort.) Cat's ribs were heaving in an effort to keep in his laughter.
"It's nice to have some entertainment nowadays," he said introspectively.
"Oh, shut up." (Yet another snort.)
"Oh I will, but do keep talking. It's so very amusing."
"CAT!!" (NEIGH!!!)
He started laughing, hard. So hard that various parts of him kept disappearing and reappearing again, and tears rolled from his eyes, which were clenched shut. She was rather relieved when he stopped.
"You wouldn't believe how much I appreciated that." (A bitter assortment of nickering.)
He nodded. "Quite a bit, I'd imagine. Laughter is rare here in Wonderland." She had nothing to say to that, and started on another tangent.
"Cat? While nobody's here, I want to ask you something."
He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Back in the caves, the Ice King told me that I shouldn't be so trusting in you. Why would he tell me that? You're my greatest help, besides Rabbit."
He sighed. "I had hoped you wouldn't ask that. But I cannot answer now. We are never truly alone in Looking-Glass Land."
"Is that what this place is really called?"
"Yes, although many have forgotten that. It is referred to now as Chessland or the Pale Realm."
She nodded. "Well, I look forward to your explanation."
He nodded back. "And you shall have it - but later."
She stared at the board, absolutely muddled. The pawn had moved by jumping - was that what she needed to do as well? How?
A knight passed her, and she noted that it seemed to have planned its moves ahead; it jumped all three squares at once. She hoped that she wouldn't need to do that. Then a spike rammed down through the other knight. Her eyes went wide. Oh no. Wasn't he a white piece? Apparently not, as the banner of the Red Queen suddenly showed through on the saddle. She glared at it and started forward. One square up, two squares left - away from it. Two squares up, one square left. Safe so far.
Most of the Challenge continued in this way. Once she was almost a hop away from a pit, but she forced herself to stop (and subsequently fall) in midair, landing on her side. It took several minutes to get back up... rather painful minutes, as she was finally forced to use her nose to shove herself up, which was the equivalent of pushing herself back up using her forehead.
There was another scare soon after. She landed on one space, and it started crumbling as she jumped off. As the pieces fell, she thought she saw a marking on the square, but wasn't entirely sure. A few minutes later, she was confronted by a black square with a small blue dot in the corner. She bent down as far as she could to examine it, and poked it with her sword. When she poked it hard enough, it crumbled as well.
Another white knight passed by. This one was tired and dripping blood. She wrinkled her nose and followed the blood trail, but when the knight finished a move, a huge spike shot out of the square, crumbling the marble and impaling the knight through the base. "Ulgh!" she yelled, moving as far away as she could on that turn. A chunk of marble landed nearby, with a red dot on the corner that she thought was blood. But on closer examination, it proved to be another marker. Red was big spikes. Blue was pits. She really hoped that there were no other colours. One would think that flashes of red or blue would be easy to see, but Faith almost killed herself twice on them.
She reached the gate, and this time it rose on its own accord. Two burly knights appeared. "Password?" one snorted.
"Or are you not a knight?"
"I'm not a knight," she nickered. "I'm Faith."
She waited, playing with her sword while they deliberated. It was a funny-looking little thing. It wasn't much good for slashing at all. Maybe they used it more as a poker. The knights were grunting and blustering amongst themselves, with the occasional high-pitched whinny.
Finally they turned to her.
"So you are taking the Challenge, then?"
It shouldn't take a genius to figure that out, let alone a genius with a companion. "Yes," she replied.
Another debate, longer than the first.
"Then you are not really a chess piece?"
For the love of peace! "No, I'm human," she said, though it came out as more of a strangled whinny than she would have liked. Maybe this was the real Challenge - getting past the knights with all remaining sanity still intact.
"Human..." one of them contemplated. He made thinking look like difficult work. The other knight, a female, turned to her.
"So, human. What business do you have taking the Challenge?"
"I need to speak to the White King."
"About what?"
"That's between the King and myself."
The knight stared at her, confused. "Do you know the King?"
"Not yet," Faith replied. The female knight stopped to think about that.
"So he doesn't know you now?"
"Most excellent question," the male agreed. The female nickered proudly.
"As I said before; no, he does not know me yet. However, I come to give him aid, and will make myself known to him."
"Could you say that a little slower?" The male asked.
"Does he know me: not yet. Got that?"
They nodded.
"I'm here to help win this war. Got that?"
"Where is your army?" the female asked suspiciously. The male peered behind Faith, looking for others.
She pointed at herself. "Right here," she said.
The female laughed. "Foolish," she said haughtily.
"Perhaps it is bigger when it is not a knight," the male suggested. He tinkered with a small panel, and she found herself back in her normal form. The knights stared.
"YOU are the army?" the female asked incredulously. "Not only is that unfeasible but highly... preposterous!" They started laughing, hard.
"It is not," Faith returned irritably.
"It is," the male knight countered, pausing his laughter for a moment.
"How? I've made it this far, through Wonderland Woods at three inches, through the Village of the Damned and that fortress, through every bloody Challenge this side of Wonderland!" She tried not to yell, but being ridiculed after all she had been through was nothing short of insulting.
"Sorry, but we simply find it rather fantastical that someone your size and general appearance could have possibly-"
Faith whipped out her knife and held it up so that the surface caught the light, revealing the bloodstains and bug guts that still lingered. "Does this convince you? This is card guard, Boojum, ants, ladybugs, and wasp, and that's naming only a few things."
"You use a knife to kill bugs?" the female asked blankly.
"At three inches, not much is better," Faith responded bluntly. "Let me see the King!"
"You must discard your weapons," the female said, once again the figure of authority.
"No."
They gaped at her.
"I'm not going through Looking-Glass Land without being armed. If I have to fight my way through red pieces to get to your King, I'm not going to do it with my fists."
"There are no red pieces that can possibly get through our defences!"
"Then they must have other ways, and I wish I'd discovered them, since a pawn told me that there was fighting going on within the centre of the city."
"At the King's!" they cried in panic, and took off. Faith walked discreetly over to the control panel and pressed the button on the gate. There wasn't much that she could do to follow; she wasn't a knight anymore, and she would probably be beheaded should she trespass anywhere in Looking-Glass Land. Only one Challenge left, and that was the Castle.
As she stepped up to the gate, she felt herself growing heavy, particularly around the fists. She seemed to be a castle, now. "Oh, dear," she muttered. "This may take awhile," as she faced a maze. Because the squares went diagonally in some places, she had to turn back and find another way. Other times there were pits or fast-moving spikes, and there was nothing she could do but stop and try another way.
All in all, this was her longest Challenge, partly because it was so misleading, partly because the occasional trick square made things very scary for her. But in retrospect that was all right, because she became rather overconfident sometimes, and trick spaces kept things in perspective: that she was, in fact, in danger.
At the end of it, she found herself greatly hoping for someone relatively intelligent that would listen to her, because so far the only pieces that she had met had been at opposite ends of the spectrum... not much in the middle. Those that listened were idiots and didn't understand. Those that were intelligent thought that she wasn't worth listening to.
As it turned out, there were three castles that greeted her. One was intelligent and listened (she referred to him as One, for convenience's sake), one (which was known as Two) was neither, and the third (Three, naturally) was actually somewhat in the middle ground. He listened unless he had an opinion about something (which he did quite often). Seldom was his opinion right.
"H-hello," she said, a little nervous. Together, the three were quite imposing.
"You are not really a castle piece, are you?" Three asked.
"No, I'm a-"
"Kill her!" Two yelled.
"You will NOT!" she snapped.
"I do believe that she wants to say something," One said. "Let her speak."
"I'm a human," she finished.
"You don't say? They look rather like ants, I'm told," Three said.
"That can't possibly be right," One said.
"I don't care. It's a trespasser, whatever it is!"
"So... I presume that you have taken the challenges... so you are here to spy on us, I believe," Three said.
"No."
"No? But I'm always right."
"Again, no."
"Then you are selling something?"
"No."
"Then why ARE you here?" Two asked viciously, cutting off Three's line of questioning.
"I must see the Ki-"
"To KILL HIM?!" Two shouted.
"No, dear Two. I believe that she is-" One started.
"Here to help train the Pawn Infantry Brigade! The second battalion has been needing a trainer," Three crowed triumphantly.
"No, my friend. I believe she is here to help us fight the war. By fighting, not training," One said, calmly punching in the code to make her normal again.
"That's exactly what I mean to do," said Faith. She hesitated, and turned to One. "But the knights laughed at me when I told them." Then she was transformed to normal again.
Two instantly burst into laughter. Three joined him a moment later. One did not. Instead, he made his way over to her. "Do you think that you can help us? Honestly?"
"Yes. I know that I can." She tried to ignore the fact that Two was rolling on the ground, bucking his base wildly with the force of his laughter and Three was doubled over and in tears, clutching his side (he was laughing so hard).
"How is this?" he asked gently.
"I just... it's all a matter of trust."
"And faith," he smiled. She nodded.
"So how exactly do you intend to help us, with this great army of yours?" Three snickered, managing to draw breath.
"By fighting." She tried to resist the urge to put 'idiot' at the end. Didn't succeed, but managed to keep it under her breath.
One slid over to the gate. "Show no mercy," he advised. "The Red pieces will not extend you that same courtesy. Nor have - or will - they show any to us." She nodded, a little sadly. It hurt that he was so resigned to the idea of dying.
"Don't you have hope?" she asked.
"It abandoned Looking-Glass Land long ago, along with faith and trust. Long, long ago."
The gate rose, and One showed her through. As she entered the central square, she heard Two and Three both asking him why she had been let inside. He replied, "Because I trust her."
Faith took it to heart that at least one person in this godforsaken place still did.
Opposite, there was a large, elaborate gate with "Knight Challenge" written in elegant script, and an engraving of a knight's piece below that. There was no mechanism to raise it, and she began to have her doubts that they hadn't simply created the Challenge to kill any strangers who tried to pass through.
Above her, several rooks paced along the battlements, glaring suspiciously at anything that moved. Faith was the recipient of several glares as she hesitated before the gate, not feeling right. She sighed uncomfortably. If there was another way through, she wished that she had discovered it. But there was no point in wishing then; she was there, and couldn't - wouldn't - go back.
She started to slide through, but then became Faith again. Problem was, she wasn't through other the gate yet, and more than likely would be decapitated somehow on her way across. She ran.
Immediately a heavy disc shot out from a slit ahead of her and flew at her neck. She dived under it and continued running. Another flew at her from the side, and she ducked and somersaulted, leaping forwards as she rose to her feet. There was the gate, with the engraving of a knight's piece. "Let me IN!" she screamed.
The gate was rising slowly. She ran faster. A disc came from behind. She lunged at the opening. The disc went after her, faster still. She made it under! It stopped abruptly and clanged to the ground. She had become a knight.
"Cripes, not again," she muttered.
This Challenge was somewhat more difficult. Before she even took one step, she had to figure out how she moved. It wasn't the simple sliding motion of a bishop; when she tried she got nowhere. "Cat!" she called, but it came out as little more than a neigh. She groaned in exasperation.
"Having fun?"
"Cat!" (Neigh!)
He chuckled, rather mockingly.
"Oh, shut up." (Snort.)
He definitely seemed about to laugh. "What predicament is there now?"
"I... can't walk." (Bluster and a nicker.)
"Ah. What did your dear friend the first bishop tell you?"
"That it's governed by will, but when I try, I can't go." (This came out as a random assortment of nickering, neighs and snorts). If she weren't a chess piece, she would be blushing.
"Maybe you should try something other than sliding. Knights and pawns alike are very similar in their movements, beside that fact that one of the two is rather more potent."
She sighed. (A very loud, prolonged snort.) Cat's ribs were heaving in an effort to keep in his laughter.
"It's nice to have some entertainment nowadays," he said introspectively.
"Oh, shut up." (Yet another snort.)
"Oh I will, but do keep talking. It's so very amusing."
"CAT!!" (NEIGH!!!)
He started laughing, hard. So hard that various parts of him kept disappearing and reappearing again, and tears rolled from his eyes, which were clenched shut. She was rather relieved when he stopped.
"You wouldn't believe how much I appreciated that." (A bitter assortment of nickering.)
He nodded. "Quite a bit, I'd imagine. Laughter is rare here in Wonderland." She had nothing to say to that, and started on another tangent.
"Cat? While nobody's here, I want to ask you something."
He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Back in the caves, the Ice King told me that I shouldn't be so trusting in you. Why would he tell me that? You're my greatest help, besides Rabbit."
He sighed. "I had hoped you wouldn't ask that. But I cannot answer now. We are never truly alone in Looking-Glass Land."
"Is that what this place is really called?"
"Yes, although many have forgotten that. It is referred to now as Chessland or the Pale Realm."
She nodded. "Well, I look forward to your explanation."
He nodded back. "And you shall have it - but later."
She stared at the board, absolutely muddled. The pawn had moved by jumping - was that what she needed to do as well? How?
A knight passed her, and she noted that it seemed to have planned its moves ahead; it jumped all three squares at once. She hoped that she wouldn't need to do that. Then a spike rammed down through the other knight. Her eyes went wide. Oh no. Wasn't he a white piece? Apparently not, as the banner of the Red Queen suddenly showed through on the saddle. She glared at it and started forward. One square up, two squares left - away from it. Two squares up, one square left. Safe so far.
Most of the Challenge continued in this way. Once she was almost a hop away from a pit, but she forced herself to stop (and subsequently fall) in midair, landing on her side. It took several minutes to get back up... rather painful minutes, as she was finally forced to use her nose to shove herself up, which was the equivalent of pushing herself back up using her forehead.
There was another scare soon after. She landed on one space, and it started crumbling as she jumped off. As the pieces fell, she thought she saw a marking on the square, but wasn't entirely sure. A few minutes later, she was confronted by a black square with a small blue dot in the corner. She bent down as far as she could to examine it, and poked it with her sword. When she poked it hard enough, it crumbled as well.
Another white knight passed by. This one was tired and dripping blood. She wrinkled her nose and followed the blood trail, but when the knight finished a move, a huge spike shot out of the square, crumbling the marble and impaling the knight through the base. "Ulgh!" she yelled, moving as far away as she could on that turn. A chunk of marble landed nearby, with a red dot on the corner that she thought was blood. But on closer examination, it proved to be another marker. Red was big spikes. Blue was pits. She really hoped that there were no other colours. One would think that flashes of red or blue would be easy to see, but Faith almost killed herself twice on them.
She reached the gate, and this time it rose on its own accord. Two burly knights appeared. "Password?" one snorted.
"Or are you not a knight?"
"I'm not a knight," she nickered. "I'm Faith."
She waited, playing with her sword while they deliberated. It was a funny-looking little thing. It wasn't much good for slashing at all. Maybe they used it more as a poker. The knights were grunting and blustering amongst themselves, with the occasional high-pitched whinny.
Finally they turned to her.
"So you are taking the Challenge, then?"
It shouldn't take a genius to figure that out, let alone a genius with a companion. "Yes," she replied.
Another debate, longer than the first.
"Then you are not really a chess piece?"
For the love of peace! "No, I'm human," she said, though it came out as more of a strangled whinny than she would have liked. Maybe this was the real Challenge - getting past the knights with all remaining sanity still intact.
"Human..." one of them contemplated. He made thinking look like difficult work. The other knight, a female, turned to her.
"So, human. What business do you have taking the Challenge?"
"I need to speak to the White King."
"About what?"
"That's between the King and myself."
The knight stared at her, confused. "Do you know the King?"
"Not yet," Faith replied. The female knight stopped to think about that.
"So he doesn't know you now?"
"Most excellent question," the male agreed. The female nickered proudly.
"As I said before; no, he does not know me yet. However, I come to give him aid, and will make myself known to him."
"Could you say that a little slower?" The male asked.
"Does he know me: not yet. Got that?"
They nodded.
"I'm here to help win this war. Got that?"
"Where is your army?" the female asked suspiciously. The male peered behind Faith, looking for others.
She pointed at herself. "Right here," she said.
The female laughed. "Foolish," she said haughtily.
"Perhaps it is bigger when it is not a knight," the male suggested. He tinkered with a small panel, and she found herself back in her normal form. The knights stared.
"YOU are the army?" the female asked incredulously. "Not only is that unfeasible but highly... preposterous!" They started laughing, hard.
"It is not," Faith returned irritably.
"It is," the male knight countered, pausing his laughter for a moment.
"How? I've made it this far, through Wonderland Woods at three inches, through the Village of the Damned and that fortress, through every bloody Challenge this side of Wonderland!" She tried not to yell, but being ridiculed after all she had been through was nothing short of insulting.
"Sorry, but we simply find it rather fantastical that someone your size and general appearance could have possibly-"
Faith whipped out her knife and held it up so that the surface caught the light, revealing the bloodstains and bug guts that still lingered. "Does this convince you? This is card guard, Boojum, ants, ladybugs, and wasp, and that's naming only a few things."
"You use a knife to kill bugs?" the female asked blankly.
"At three inches, not much is better," Faith responded bluntly. "Let me see the King!"
"You must discard your weapons," the female said, once again the figure of authority.
"No."
They gaped at her.
"I'm not going through Looking-Glass Land without being armed. If I have to fight my way through red pieces to get to your King, I'm not going to do it with my fists."
"There are no red pieces that can possibly get through our defences!"
"Then they must have other ways, and I wish I'd discovered them, since a pawn told me that there was fighting going on within the centre of the city."
"At the King's!" they cried in panic, and took off. Faith walked discreetly over to the control panel and pressed the button on the gate. There wasn't much that she could do to follow; she wasn't a knight anymore, and she would probably be beheaded should she trespass anywhere in Looking-Glass Land. Only one Challenge left, and that was the Castle.
As she stepped up to the gate, she felt herself growing heavy, particularly around the fists. She seemed to be a castle, now. "Oh, dear," she muttered. "This may take awhile," as she faced a maze. Because the squares went diagonally in some places, she had to turn back and find another way. Other times there were pits or fast-moving spikes, and there was nothing she could do but stop and try another way.
All in all, this was her longest Challenge, partly because it was so misleading, partly because the occasional trick square made things very scary for her. But in retrospect that was all right, because she became rather overconfident sometimes, and trick spaces kept things in perspective: that she was, in fact, in danger.
At the end of it, she found herself greatly hoping for someone relatively intelligent that would listen to her, because so far the only pieces that she had met had been at opposite ends of the spectrum... not much in the middle. Those that listened were idiots and didn't understand. Those that were intelligent thought that she wasn't worth listening to.
As it turned out, there were three castles that greeted her. One was intelligent and listened (she referred to him as One, for convenience's sake), one (which was known as Two) was neither, and the third (Three, naturally) was actually somewhat in the middle ground. He listened unless he had an opinion about something (which he did quite often). Seldom was his opinion right.
"H-hello," she said, a little nervous. Together, the three were quite imposing.
"You are not really a castle piece, are you?" Three asked.
"No, I'm a-"
"Kill her!" Two yelled.
"You will NOT!" she snapped.
"I do believe that she wants to say something," One said. "Let her speak."
"I'm a human," she finished.
"You don't say? They look rather like ants, I'm told," Three said.
"That can't possibly be right," One said.
"I don't care. It's a trespasser, whatever it is!"
"So... I presume that you have taken the challenges... so you are here to spy on us, I believe," Three said.
"No."
"No? But I'm always right."
"Again, no."
"Then you are selling something?"
"No."
"Then why ARE you here?" Two asked viciously, cutting off Three's line of questioning.
"I must see the Ki-"
"To KILL HIM?!" Two shouted.
"No, dear Two. I believe that she is-" One started.
"Here to help train the Pawn Infantry Brigade! The second battalion has been needing a trainer," Three crowed triumphantly.
"No, my friend. I believe she is here to help us fight the war. By fighting, not training," One said, calmly punching in the code to make her normal again.
"That's exactly what I mean to do," said Faith. She hesitated, and turned to One. "But the knights laughed at me when I told them." Then she was transformed to normal again.
Two instantly burst into laughter. Three joined him a moment later. One did not. Instead, he made his way over to her. "Do you think that you can help us? Honestly?"
"Yes. I know that I can." She tried to ignore the fact that Two was rolling on the ground, bucking his base wildly with the force of his laughter and Three was doubled over and in tears, clutching his side (he was laughing so hard).
"How is this?" he asked gently.
"I just... it's all a matter of trust."
"And faith," he smiled. She nodded.
"So how exactly do you intend to help us, with this great army of yours?" Three snickered, managing to draw breath.
"By fighting." She tried to resist the urge to put 'idiot' at the end. Didn't succeed, but managed to keep it under her breath.
One slid over to the gate. "Show no mercy," he advised. "The Red pieces will not extend you that same courtesy. Nor have - or will - they show any to us." She nodded, a little sadly. It hurt that he was so resigned to the idea of dying.
"Don't you have hope?" she asked.
"It abandoned Looking-Glass Land long ago, along with faith and trust. Long, long ago."
The gate rose, and One showed her through. As she entered the central square, she heard Two and Three both asking him why she had been let inside. He replied, "Because I trust her."
Faith took it to heart that at least one person in this godforsaken place still did.