I do not own The Looking Glass Wars or any of its characters.
Passage
Ace stared at the Red Caterpillar. "What did you just say to me?"
"How much would you pay to save the long lost princess?" the caterpillar repeated.
"Alyss is dead," Ace said.
"Not yet," the caterpillar said.
Ace stared at him, then the ground. It wasn't true. Couldn't be. She'd been killed. She was gone. But if he was wrong...
"Name your price," Ace said.
"The price for that which you want most is your dearest dream," the caterpillar said.
Ace stared at him for a long while before pulling out his blank-faced King and Queen of hearts. "My dearest dream, is it?"
The caterpillar opened the top of the hookah. "Into the hookah."
Ace hesitated, then dropped the cards into it, watching them fade into a sparkling, blue smoke. The caterpillar held out the nozzel of the hookah, and Ace accepted it.
"All of it," the caterpillar warned, "or you'll die an agonizing death."
Ace nodded and began to inhale. However, the smoke was slow. After nearly ten seconds, he was seeing spots, but there was more to go. His lungs screamed, fit to burst, but still he kept going. Finally, just as he inhaled the last of the smoke, his eyes rolled back, and he toppled backward, collapsing to the ground. For a few seconds, he didn't move, blink, or breathe. Then, he exhaled heavily, glittering red smoke leaving his mouth and fading in the air. He began to gasp for breath, dancing on the edge of consciousness for nearly thirty minutes before stirring.
"What did...you do...to me?" Ace panted.
"I awakened your latent abilities," the caterpillar said, clesring his throat. "Now, listen closely. The Pool of Tears is a gateway. Princess Alyss of Heart is on the other side."
"How do I find her?" Ace asked.
"First, you must prepare," the caterpillar said. "The moment you bring her back, the war will begin in earnest. You must be ready to defend her. You must master your new power."
"What power is that?" Ace asked.
The caterpillar cleared his throat, then delved into an explanation.
Ace stared at the cards guarding the gate. Another prison, but this one was better guarded. And the layout was different this time. Each cell block was larger on the inside than the outaide, allowing more guards inside of it than the outside would suggest. If not for the inside source, they'd have never known.
"Ace," General Doppelgänger began.
"Save it," Ace growled. "He's starting."
Inside the prison, their ally, a Card Soldier turned traitor against Redd, began to release prisoners, arming them and starting a riot. Some of the guards on the prison's outer wall swarmed inward to deal with it, but just as he did, the assault began. Ace made the first strike, hurling two massive fans of cards, each a quarter of a deck, into the air, the cards spinning away and spreading themselves around the outer wall. Except, the faces of all of those cards were pictures of decks of cards. Ace snapped his fingers, and an entire deck of cards exploded out of the now-blank cards, slaughtering the wall's guards. Then, Ace twirled his index finger and the cards all raced back to whichever blank card they'd come from, ainking into them and reforming the picture of the deck inside it. Ace threw his trench coat open, and the hovering cards streaked back to him, returning to their deck pouches, Ace now having fifty of them. All together, the cards weighed about nine pounds, but among his new, card-related abilities was the ability to store things inside of blank-faced cards without adding to its weight. In his four storage decks, two hundred eight storage cards, he had an extra fifty decks like the cards he'd just used, dozens of weapons, and supplies. Among his other decks were eight decks with cards bearing images of various exceedingly dangerous creatures, ranging from Ten Cards to Jabberwocks, random dangers such as explosions, lightning bolts, tornadoes, and things like that. These cards he could use only once before needing to replace it, leading him to have several duplicates of almost all of them. Each time he used one of these cards, it would turn to ash, then he'd have to have a new one made for him by the man who'd created all of his extra decks since they rescued him from Blaxik so long ago.
As the Alyssians charged the gate, Ace hurled a card toward it, the card curving up to hover with its face, an image of explosion, toward the gate. A second later, the gate was replaced by a massive, fiery blast, and the explosion card vanished. Instantly, Ace threw his coat open and a pair of fans of his normal cards flew out under the power of his last ability. Telekinetic card control, the same thing he'd been using to make the cards hover and rwturn to him. Redd's Card soldiers charged, and Ace met their charge as his airborne cards sliced through a handful of Card Soldiers. A soldier lept at Ace from the right, and Ace's right hand reached across in front of him to where a storage card bearing his sword flew up to meet it. He summoned the sword from inside the card and turned, deflecting the Card Soldier's sword with his own as he flicked his hand at another Card Soldier. A card shot along the underside of his arm in a blur before removing the Card Soldier's head. At the same time, Ace stepped forward, stabbing into the weak point just below the neck of the Card Soldier he'd used his sword to defend against. As that Card Soldier collapsed, Ace returned his sword to its storage card before holding his arms at his sides, bent outward at the elbows. His cards formed into an arch behind him before he went to work seriously. He swiped and swung his arms, sending cards streaking through the air and into Redd's soldiers as he himself headed for the main door.
Dodge slashed through several guards, then stopped on a dime as a vertical line of cards raced past him, driving themselves into an airborne Card Soldier and knocking it away before returning to Ace. Theh reached the door into the prison and Ace spun a card, sending it up the spade between the massive doors, severing the latch and the bar securing the doors, allowing Dodge to shove the doors open. Dodge ducked instantly, and Ace send his cards streaking into the first room in a massive, horizontal arc, each card finding and killing a target before returning. A Card Solder landed behind Ace, and he spun, his arcs following his left hand in an arc, slashing through the soldier before streaking outward at a door, slaughtering a group as they ran inside. Then, the rest of the Alyssians reached them and flooded into the prison, Dodge and Ace at their head.
Ace waited patiently in front of the looking glass, four cards hovering at his sides, spinning just off-center. Finally, Dodge appeared out of the looking glass, immediately stepping to the side. A half-second later, a pair of Glass Eyes appeared. They were Redd's second-best troops, behind the Cat. They looked like normal Wonderlanders, except for their shiny, reflective, crystal eyes. They had enhanced speed, strength, and durability. They patrolled the Crystal Continuum, killing anyone suspected of being an Alyssian, and had made it nearly impossible for anyone to deliver messages for the rebellion. Only Dodge and Ace had routine success at deliveries, and they had the two records for successful delivery runs and did the most important deliveries, often together.
"Hello Redd," Ace greeted the Glass Eyes as his cards sped forward, shredding the pair in under a second.
"I keep telling you, Redd's not seeing through every Glass Eye you kill," Dodge said.
"No, but if she ever is, my message will be delivered," Ace said. "Now, go."
Dodge nodded, returning to the Continuum, and Ace waited ten seconds before following. No further Glass Eyes interrupted them, and they soon had delivered their message, a warning about an impending attack. Then, they returned to the Continuum, going to the Whispering Wood this time, then walking to the Pool of Tears.
"Is it time?" Dodge asked.
"Yes," Ace nodded, carefully securing all of his cards. "Let Doppelgänger know I'm not going to be back until I've found her."
"Before you go, what was the price?" Dodge asked. "What did you powers cost you?"
"After all these years, you still want to know?" Ace asked.
"Yes, I do," Dodge said.
"It cost me everything," Ace said, then stepped off the cliff, dropping into the Pool.
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