A/N: If anyone has any questions, be sure to ask them soon, since the next chapter is the last before the epilogue and I'm going to try to clear everything up then.
They reached Salazen Grum around midday, at which point Alice was quite ready to collapse.
"This armor is killing me," she complained to Chess.
"Do you even have a plan?" he asked, ignoring her complaints.
"Actually, yes. Do you think you could lead me to the dungeons from the outside?" she asked.
"You can't possibly hope to infiltrate the castle clunking around like that," Chess laughed.
"No," she agreed, ducking behind a bush. She quickly took off the armor and sword and hid them in the bushes. She then pulled an old handkerchief out of her dress, along with the vials of pishsalver and upelkuchen.
"Turn around," she demanded of the curious cat. He laughed, seeing what she meant to do, and disappeared for a moment. She slipped out of her dress and tipped half of one of the vials down her throat.
As she shrunk, she clutched her handkerchief tightly until she was all of three inches tall. Then she wrapped it around her, tying knots in all the appropriate places until it resembled a rather terribly-tailored white dress.
"I told Mirana and the others you were on your way," Chess said, reappearing suddenly.
"Good," Alice said, leaving her dress, armor, sword, and upelkuchen in the bushes. She kept the rest of the pishalver in one hand, and used the other to grab Chess's tail and haul herself up.
"Take me as close to the dungeons as you can," she told him, and other than looking mildly affronted at being used as a pack animal, he complied. They floated slowly close to the castle, carefully keeping out of sight of the guards. Chess carried her over the moat by the very same crack in the wall she had used to enter the castle years ago.
"Go through," he said, letting her down. "I'll meet you on the other side."
She slipped through the crack, and sure enough, Chess was waiting for her on the other side.
"This is when it gets dangerous," he whispered. "Luckily, we have lots of allies inside the castle. We should be able to avoid the queen and the knave; they very rarely stray outside their tower."
Alice nodded, and they floated low to the ground through the gates and inside. Chess usually appeared straight into the dungeons, but because he had spent so much time looking for Tarrant and Mallymkun, he had a basic idea of the layout of the castle.
Soon they were able to find the door that leads downstairs to the dungeons, but had to hide behind a curtain and wait until the room cleared out before they could open it.
"Go, go!" Alice whispered urgently when the last guard marched out, and Chess floated to right underneath the handle. Alice jumped off of him and grabbed it, hanging off the edge dangerously. But her slight weight was enough to bring the handle down, and thankfully, it wasn't locked. The quiet click it made when the door swung open made the partners in crime look around nervously, but no one had heard them. Alice jumped down to the Cheshire Cat's back, and the two snuck down the stairs quietly.
The stairs were endless, and Alice was very glad that they were floating down instead of walking. When they finally made it down to the hall of cells, it was almost pitch-black, despite being so bright outside.
"Your majesty?" Alice whispered.
"Alice!" Mirana cried gratefully. "You're here at last!"
"I'm going to help you escape, your majesty," Alice said, and Chessur left her at the foot of the cell. Three-inch Alice slipped through the bars, pishalver in hand, and began to climb up Mirana's tattered white gown. When she reached her shoulder, she uncorked the vial and held it out.
"Drink this," she said, and pressed it to the queen's lips.
Mirana drank gratefully, not only because it was the first thing she'd had to drink in days. But she quickly shrank, and when she was about a foot high, Alice jumped off her shoulder. Then they were both three inches tall, and could walk right out. But Mirana had trouble walking. She stumbled, and leaned heavily on Alice.
"Chess!" Alice called for help, and the cat shook his head.
"I won't be able to get through the bars. Get over here, and then I can carry her out," he said. They struggled over to the front of the cell, and Alice gently laid the queen down on Chess's back.
"Where are the others?" she asked.
"Over here!"
"Down this way!"
"Don't forget about me!"
Was the entire White Court chained in the dungeons? She desperately hoped she had enough pishalver, and slowly began making her way down the hall. After every three people or so, Chess would sneak back out of the castle, drop them by the bush with her armor and upelkuchen, and then come back in to bring the others out.
Most of them weren't as bad off as Mirana, although some had clearly been tortured and were actually much worse. So she had help freeing the rest of the prisoners, and they began to tell her a bit about the Red Queen's new reign.
"She has the smallest court you'd ever imagine."
"She trusts no one."
"She relies entirely upon her magic."
"No one is executed, just hidden away here."
"The guards are all under her spell."
"The Knave has actually fallen in love with her, for real! Not even faking it this time!"
"No one knows what happened."
"The Jabberwocky is here, not even hidden on the Battlefield!"
Eventually Alice gleaned enough information about the Red Queen's new reign to wonder about the terrible things that happened to her in the Outlands. But Iracebeth's state of mental health wasn't really her concern, and once they had evacuated every prisoner, Alice was left with a choice.
Mally and Tarrant were still missing, and by now it was sundown. The escapees had made a make-shift camp behind the tree-line after taking some of the upelkuchen she had left there, so she really didn't have to worry about them. There were some healers among them, and Chess told her that they assured him everyone would be perfectly fit for battle in the morning.
The intelligent thing to do would be to rest up, and find her two friends post-Jabberwocky slaying. But she couldn't leave them, despite Chess' protestations.
"I'm quite done being a pack animal, thank you very much," he said when she told him they needed to find the others. "I've searched all over. What makes you think we'll find them now?"
Alice frowned, and crossed her arms. "Because I refuse to let them sit here in captivity while we're free outside. If you're not going to help me, then I'll just walk around by myself!"
"Oh, no you don't!" Chess exclaimed, picking her up by biting the edge of her dress with his teeth.
"Chess!" Alice shrieked. "Put me down! Put me down this instant! We're going to find Tarrant and Mally; I don't care what you say - "
"I'm right here, Alice!" shouted a squeaky voice from the corner.
"Mallymkun?" both Alice and Chess gasped in surprised, Chess promptly dropping Alice to the floor.
"Ow," she said indignantly, but was too distracted by the sudden arrival of Mally to care. "How did you get away?"
"They took me out of the dungeons to make sure my tail didn't get infected," Mally said angrily. "They cut it off to torture me, but didn't want me to die of infection. How caring."
Alice was privately grateful that was the worst they had done, but didn't say so to her friend.
"They thought I was too sick to escape, but as soon as I could walk, I slipped away. I'm too small to find, you see, but I've been looking for the Hatter for days. I can't find him anywhere in the castle!"
"We better get out of here now," Chess said. "We'll find Tarrant after the Jabberwocky is slain."
"I'm not leaving him!" Alice cried.
"There's nothing you can do," Mally said sadly. "I can stay and keep looking, but you're our Champion. You need to be ready for tomorrow."
She knew they were right. She felt the exhaustion in her very bones. She would be in absolutely no state to fight a monster if she didn't get any sleep tonight. But somehow she felt that she wouldn't be able to do it if she didn't have the Hatter at her back. It was strange because she wasn't really worried at all this time around; she was completely confident in her slaying ability. Not having Tarrant there, though, somehow just felt…wrong.
So it was with great reluctance that she and Mally hopped onto Chess's back, snuck out of the castle, and made their way to the makeshift camp. Alice was in no mood to make a rallying speech, and luckily, as Champion – not General or Queen – she didn't have to. So she took a bit of upelkuchen, changed back into her old dress, and fell asleep underneath a tree to the sounds of a company preparing for battle.
"Alice?"
"Tarrant! I'm so glad you're here; I was so nervous I'd have to face the Jabberwocky without you!"
"You're dreaming again."
"Oh."
She sighed, and felt tears welling up in her eyes, despairing of the battle without the hatter. But she knew that crying meant she would wake up, so she blinked them back and focused on the man in front of her.
"Don't cry," he said softly, reaching up to brush her cheek. She closed her eyes and tilted her head towards his hand, but was shocked at the noise of a chain by her ear.
"Hatter?" she asked, and opened her eyes to look at him fully.
If possible, he was worse off than Mirana and Mallymkun. Her poor, poor Hatter. Two black eyes, bruises all over his body, dried blood from dozens of cuts staining his shredded clothing and what looked like a broken leg.
Chains. Chains everywhere. One on each arm and each leg, attached to each other, attached to the wall. He was their most guarded prisoner; no wonder Chess couldn't find him.
She was furious. How dare they hurt her Hatter this way? She'd take the Vorpal Sword to the Red Queen and Knave's necks next! She'd kill them both, she'd kill them all, she'd hurt them the way they dared to harm her Hatter, she'd –
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Alice argued, sitting down next him and cupping his face in her hands. "You're hurt. I can't believe I let you get captured, Tarrant, I'm so sorry. I'll get you free of this place, I swear. I'm slaying the Jabberwocky as soon as I wake up, and then I'm going to search every corner of this castle until I find you."
She traced a cut on his cheek lightly with her thumb as she said this, and then placed two feather-light kisses on each of his bruised eyes.
"Don't you worry about me," he insisted, reaching up to grasp her hands, but being foiled by the chains that bound him. Alice quickly brought her hands down to meet his, and squeezed them tightly. "I'll find my own way out. You really should just focus on the Jabberwocky."
"I don't know how I can face him without you there with me," she confided, and Tarrant felt his heart ache. What if this was the last time he ever saw her?
"Thackery used to fight. He-he can help you, and as long as you have the Vorpal Sword…"
"It's not the same," she whispered, fighting the urge to cling to him and sob over the general unfairness of the entire world.
"Alice," he sighed, looking at her sadly. "I thought you had found your muchness."
"I did find it!" she said indignantly.
"Then you must have lost it. You didn't give it away to Chess, did you? He has a habit of stealing Things That Should Not Be Stolen."
"I have all my muchness!" Alice argued.
"Prove it," Tarrant said, hoping to chase away her fears of fighting the Jabberwocky, but instead earning himself a very surprising kiss.
Alice surprised herself with such a display of muchness, for she knew she was muchy, but not that muchy. Yet somehow her lips were pressed against the Hatter's firmly, and before she even realized what was happening, his tongue had slipped between those lips and found her own, desperate for anything, for everything, for something Alice couldn't quite understand. And she found herself desperate for the same thing, so while one hand remained ensconced in Tarrant's, the other slowly wrapped around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair.
He held Alice's hand so tightly she thought he'd crush it, and then he moved to hold her closer with his other arm. But the heavy chains prevented him, and he broke the kiss to swear loudly.
Alice couldn't even focus on what he was upset about, since she was so lightheaded from their contact. She moved back slowly, and started to take her hand away from around Tarrant. He caught it, though, and moved it firmly back to where it was before.
"I…I need to be close to you," he said quietly, as if confessing a mortal sin.
She smiled, and felt even giddier, if that was possible. "Of course," she replied, and scooted closer to settle against his chest, letting go of the hand that she still had intertwined with his to join her arm draped around his neck. He used the opportunity of two free hands to wrap his arms around her waist.
After several minutes of this relaxing position, Tarrant chuckled softly.
"What's so funny?" Alice asked, immediately becoming self-conscious.
"I was wrong," he admitted, kissing her forehead tenderly. "You do have your muchness after all."
But just then the door banged open and Stayne barged in angrily. Alice and Tarrant jumped, and Tarrant valiantly tried to place Alice behind him, but Stayne didn't seem to see her at all.
"Get up," he growled at the madman on the floor. "We killed all your friends. You're next."
"That's not true, Hatter; he's lying, everyone escaped. We're outside. We're marching on the castle in the morning," Alice told him, clutching at his shirt desperately as Stayne took the whip from his belt off and forced the Hatter to his feet.
"Wake-up," he whispered to Alice. "It's time."
"Time for what, you lunatic?" Stayne laughed, and began to vent his anger at losing all of his prisoners on the one he had left.
"Tarrant!" Alice shrieked as the whip cracked down on his already shredded back. She tried to beat Stayne off, but she wasn't solid to him. None of her punches affected the furious giant, and she seemed to only be real to the man begging her to leave.
"Wake-up, Alice!" he cried, and Stayne laughed again, thinking him to be a madman.
"No, no, no! Stop! Please, don't hurt him!" Alice cried, and her pleas became more desperate with every crack of the whip.
"Alice," Tarrant begged, horrified for her to witness this. "Get out of here."
"I can't…can't leave you," she wailed, and was saddened to find herself crying. Shrieks of protest became sobs, and soon that terrible vision faded from view.
She woke, crying, but ready for battle.