Go West – It's peaceful… never mind.

Everyone met in a long and a bit dark room inside the castle. The carpet was dark brown just as the wood of the elongated oval table and the suiting chairs, a bit of light was provided by two chandeliers hanging from the low ceiling. This room was very different from the rest of the castle and it was only used by the Queen and her most trustworthy subjects.

Among the heads of the White Knights was the newly appointed General Faux Boldpunch, a tall, middle aged man with blonde hair that showed first white streaks and ice blue eyes, suiting to his white armor. So there actually were older people in this country, Alice realized when she stepped in. The Hatter was already there and leaned over a map Faux had opened, Mallymkun sat on it for a part, wearing new clothing. In the face of coming adventures, when they had returned to the castle from the visit of the Hatters house, Alice had decided to change in something more comfortable. Comfortable as it could get with Victorian clothing, a somewhat light and not too elaborated dress. She still felt not appropriate and wondered how other women on the world could ever live with corsets – or even bound feet like she witnessed in China.

"Now that we are complete," Faux started with a dark voice, "I'll show you what we found out in the last year."

Alice came nearer and the Hatter stepped a bit aside to let her get a better view.

The map showed a draft of Marmoreal and the surrounding counties, specializing in the western provinces and the land beneath. Wonderland was vaster than she had imagined and Alice asked herself if the parts outside of this kingdom were as crazy as this or if they were different. The ink was dark red and the paper was yellowish, it looked quite old, this couldn't possibly be a recent map, but why using an old one? Surely there had been moves of the margins over time.

"As you see, these are the traditional borders of Marmoreal," the General began his explanation. "Right here in the middle, we see the old main border of our country. In the north and the south here and there, those were the old kingdoms of Godia and Meltean, the extensions you see here were brought under our control during the last 120 years, the northern one by marriage, the southern one due military excursion, yet to this day the former territory of Meltean is almost autonomous…"

"Why are you telling us this?" Mallymkun asked, "I enjoy a good history lesson, but how should us help this find out the enemy we are going to face? This map is older than my great-grandmother!" This, however, was not much of a telling as dormice tended to breed fast, through Mallymkun wasn't the most typical example of a dormouse.

General Boldpunch drew in a sharp breath, he didn't like to work with what he saw as non-professionals and there was a good reason the Hatter and Mallymkun used to work alone and leaving the army to do what they had to do. However the White Queen had ordered him personally to work at this to the utmost satisfaction, she wouldn't tolerate communication problems between the two parties she trusted most.

"As you can see between the two extensions of former states, there is a gap from the far west directly, between those extensions, directly bordering onto Marmoreal." He redrew the lines with his fingers, "This gap lies today in the middle of the Western Red Woods. We found that most of the sightings of these… shadow creatures and the subterraneans happened to be around that gap and the borders former borders to the area behind it, and now…"

He drew a circle around the area which was slightly greened in color "This area was former dead land, for some reason, people naturally avoided it, there are no usable minerals we know of, no magic crystals and no important plants or animals living there. For generations nobody surely knew what happened around there, because nobody went there out of some unknown reason and nobody dared to make sure. However it didn't stay that way and roughly 120 years ago, when this map was drawn, there developed a solitary kingdom out there. Kingdom maybe wasn't the right name as one single entity called the Witch With Red Eyes had somehow taken control of the territory alongside with so called shadowy creatures, as legends say – and as we all know legends tend to be true in large parts."

At least that was the case here in Underland. "It is said that the Witch With Red Eyes reigned for some time and spread terror and fear far beyond the borders of her realm. She became more and more a danger to the old Marmoreal until she was defeated and vanished forever."

He looked up, directly at his guests "Or so we thought."

"You want to say that you believe this old … witch has somehow reappeared and is now attacking everyone here?" asked Alice skeptically.

"Just look at them!" replied the General disgruntled "I dare to say there is some very powerful magic involved. If it is a copycat, a heir or the ancient Witch With Red Eyes herself, who knows. We will find out," he looked very serious "it is very important this information doesn't drop out of here. It is a matter solely to our knowledge, if anyone of our citizens even hears the faint whisper of the Witch With Red Eyes, pandemonium would break out and in the crowded state of this very castle, it would be a catastrophe, understood?"

Everyone nodded their heads, understanding the responsibility lying on their shoulders.

"Beside the possible connection to this old legend, did you find out anything more?" the Hatter asked with sharp eyes, concluding: "You haven't told us everything yet."

His eyes met with the Generals, who had to acknowledge Hightopps mindfulness, very thoughtful of a mad man to recognize it.

"We have found some foot steps that lead into nothing," he said, "yet all together they always led to the old border and the only sightings of shadow creatures we had outside of these borders were at night. However…" he said with a mournful face "these were the most disastrous, the citizens caught in their sleep were killed. They just lay there with white eyes, neither moved nor breathed. Whole families have been destroyed this way."

Alice felt very uncomfortable, when the Red Queen reigned, there had been many deaths but those were public and everyone knew where and how they were earned, most people could at least hide. This didn't sound like anyone could hide or flee; it was something coming for them in their sleep without any recognizable motive, at least the knights around here looked just as frightened and at a loss like her.

"We also found a couple of these," he said grabbing for a small sack sitting on a chair beside him "We think they are some kind of talismans. We don't think they have been left behind willingly, however some of the shadow creatures were described as not very intelligent, a rare few of them was trapped by brave citizens until the morning came and they vanished in the sun."

He emptied the sac and there were different kinds of magical utensils, like amulets with faces and animals on them, needles with feathers and pearls, multiple knotted bands and small, wild haired and very brown puppets*. The Hatters eyes widened for a moment and he gasped without a tone before controlling his posture again. However Alice had already noticed his reaction.

"Do you know these things?"

"No," he replied astonishingly confident.

"Are you sure?" she asked again.

"I said: No."

Now this was a very strong reaction in Alice eyes and while the others didn't seem to mind it, possibly as they also didn't know what to do with these talismans, Alice was sure that the Hatter was keeping something in the closet. She would have to ask him later as she was sure he recognized them, she was sure because the skin around his eyes and cheeks had a new pinkish shadow and his hair started to curl again.

"Can you show me where you found them?" Tarrant asked and the Faux pointed out the places were some of the talismans were found, the most were found in a small territory in the southwest of said gap to old Marmoreal. It was a wooded area which nowadays wasn't that near any villages. The only people going there were woodcutters and hermits maybe, or the one and other misguided herbalist looking for rare herbs on the scarce ground.

"This is interesting," the Hatter commented very seriously and not quite acting like himself, at least not quite as confused as Alice knew him most of the time, although she knew he had serious and dangerous sides – "What significance could this region ever have? It is remote; there are no villages and nothing of importance we know of… uhm… so why send the dark creatures there? And if there was something important, why send the most stupid creatures that always lose their talismans?" He tilted the head "Except this is a trap to lure us into the most remote region so that our bodies will never be found, this time for real."

Alice gasped – loudly- of this thought, the General almost did the same but changed it into a gnarl, damn it, that Mad Hatter was right! Why hadn't he seen it before? He really thought to have a good lead but now that it was spoken, it was obvious. Beware, by the glorious Queen Mirana, if they had went there, they would have died!

Due to his white armor, nobody could see that he had went quite pale, yet it was obvious some of the Knights felt very green.

Mallymkun stood up and walked enthusiastically over the border "If they want us to be in the south, they will expect us there, whoever it is," she drew her newly acquired sword, much better than the makeshift-sword of a hairpin she had used during Alice's last visit, "Then we should sneak in by the north and surprise them!"

"However," the Hatter added coldly "Sneaking in won't be easy with an army of white knights." His eyes focused on Faux Boldpunch.

The General returned the look and gnarled deep in his throat. The Hatter wouldn't come off this easy, he wouldn't be left behind and he would solve this mystery and destroy whatever menace waited for him. He would make sure the Mad Hatter wouldn't go rogue again, not while he had the command over this operation.

Alice watched the thick tension between the Faux and the Hatter, even a blind man could have seen it, and if not seen, taste it from the air. How should this obviously so dangerous mission ever go well if the two most important persons were snarling at each other like young dogs in the park?

With a sigh, she felt the responsibility lying on her shoulders become one or two pounds heavier, she really had to learn because she felt that again things would depend on her intervention.

TBC

* Some of you may not be aware of it, therefore this explanation: The reference is to a special kind of magic. If it reminds some of you of Voodoo, you are right and not. In the Voodoo religions, there is no voodoo-puppet like we see them used in Hollywood-movies. However what is depicted there is the Invultuatio "image sorcery" which was used in ancient Greece, Rome, Semitic regions but also by the Celts. Even in modern times there were people offering their services in this kind of sorcery in remote Scotland. That's what I'm referring to in that scene and it is only one of the reasons the Hatter recognizes them.

A/N: I hope you liked this chapter, I decided to introduce a new character, Faux Boldpunch, not only because I needed a Mr. Exposition – oh no *laugh* - I think with the coming menace our heroes will need whatever help they can get. It is always important to know a cavalierly in your back.

Also, I changed the summary a bit to make the story sound more interesting (what it hopefully is?), what do you think about it?

Please RnR, I love reviews!