I do not own The Looking Glass Wars or any of its characters.
Too Late
Ace flung his arm up as the first Glass Eye emerged from the trees, jagged blades extended from the backs of its hands. His fan of cards raced outward, slicing through the Glass Eye easily, but as Ace and Dodge dragged Alyss away from the destroyed Alyssian camp, more Glass Eyes appeared. Ace hurled another fan, slicing off one's head. Unlike the last fan, which had immediately returned to its pouch, this fan formed a circle behind him as he summoned his sword from its card, Dodge drawing his own. The Glass Eyes swarmed forward, and Ace swung his left arm, sending the cards spinning away in a circle like a buzz saw, then deflected another Glass Eye's blades with his sword, allowing it to impale itself on the sword. However, the wound wasn't fatal, and Ace was forced to release the sword to avoid the blades a second time. The cards returned, finishing the Glass Eye and bringing the sword back to Ace, who resealed it. Just as he did, Alyss hurled a whipsnake grenade, one of Redd's newest inventions, at the Glass Eye overpowering Dodge, who leapt away.
The grenade burst into dozens of electrified coils, and Ace grabbed Alyss and fled as the coils began to strike the Glass Eyes, short-circuiting them. More Glass Eyes began to pursue them, but before they could arrive, Ace's Jabberwock card shot out of its holster, attaching itself to a tree. A moment later, Generals Doppel and Gänger rode out of the trees on Spirit Danes. Ace and Alyss leapt onto one, Dodge onto the other, none of them hesitating.
"Go, now!" Ace shouted. "Last resort!"
The generals swore, spurring their mounts away.
"What's the last resort?" Alyss asked. "Was it that card?"
"Yeah," Ace nodded. "It was my Jabberwock card."
Just then, there was a terrible, screaming roar. A moment later, a jabberwock appeared, standing above the trees. It shrieked again, one of its arms swiping, scattering Glass Eyes into the air. The jabberwock was a massive, mostly reptilian creature with two clawed, digitigrade legs, two long arms tipped with four clawed fingers, a pair of massive, leathery wings, a long, scaly tail, and an equally long neck ending in a gaping mouth with a pair of tentacles dangling from the sides of its mouth. A row of spines ran down its back. With each swipe of its arms, Glass Eyes scattered into the air in pieces. Its head jabbed downward, and returned with a mouthful of Glass Eyes.
"That should hold them!" General Doppel shouted from in front of Ace, then tugged the reins, slowing to a stop as they found the white night, the rook, and a platoon of pawns.
Doppel jumped down and ran over to Gänger, merging with him before the combined general ordered the retreat. Within minutes, they had reached the emergency portal to the Crystal Continuum where Hatter was just pulling his head from the looking glass.
"Clear!" Hatter said urgently. "Were you followed?"
"Assume we were!" Ace said.
"I'll go first," Dodge said, and without another word, he jumped into the looking glass.
"I hear Glass Eyes!" Bibwit warned.
"I'll bring Alyss!" Ace said. "All of you go!"
Everyone complied, save for Hatter. He waited until Ace had pulled Alyss into the Crystal Continuum before following. For a moment, Alyss travelled herself perfectly. Then, she lost focus and drifted up and backward. Ace smoothly swung her to hia back, and she grabbed on tightly.
"Think heavy thoughts, Alyss!" Ace said.
"What are heavy thoughts?" Alyss asked.
"Glass Eyes incoming!" General Doppelgänger warned.
"Remember Redd's first attack!" Ace said, spinning and sending a hand of cards streaking backward like arrows as Hatter hurled his hat.
Only a handful of Glass Eyes had found them, some bearing the marks of having only narrowly escaped the jabberwock, but others had obviously been patroling the Continuum and were unblemished. At least, until the two Alyssians struck. Hatter's bladed hat sliced through one Glass Eye after another, ricocheting from one to the next before returning. Ace's cards punched clean through other Glass Eyes, killing some and knocking others out of the Continuum. The cards then spun like buzz saws and returned to Ace along paths that passed through other Glass Eyes, taking even more out of the chase. Ace sent an Explosion Card out, blasting the remains of the group just as General Doppelgänger warned of more ahead of them. Dodge steered himself out of the General's way, and the General fired a cannonball spider. The cannonball cracked open halfway there, and the enormous spider inside latched onto the Glass Eyes inside, beginning to kill them all, only for them to be reflected out of the Continuum. The Cannonball Spider came careening back toward them.
Dodge threw himself at it to prevent it from targeting Alyss. The spider held Dodge's arms and legs, and though it wasn't designed to live long, it had time enough to end Dodge's life. Its pincers opened and moved in toward Dodge's stomach. Concentrate, think, imagine. A muzzle formed out of nowhere, a rust-colored contraption that covered the spider's pincers, rounding their pointed ends.
"Ha!" Alyss shouted, ecstatic.
Frenzied, the spider tried to shake the foreign object from its mouth. Dodge managed to free an arm and, with a single wide, circular swipe of his sword, chopped off the spider's legs, then plunged the weapon into its vitals.
"Did you see that?" Alyss cried, holding on to her tutor's back. "I imagined that!"
"I saw it," Bibwit said. "Very impressive."
Ace narrowed his eyes. Glass Eyes were again coming at them, simultaneously closing in on them from in front and behind, and General Doppelgänger was out of cannonball spiders.
"Hatter, the rear!" Ace shouted, suddenly rocketting past the others with Alyss, moving at a speed he alone had mastered, dodging and spinning past the three ahead of him to get to the front.
Just as he dealt his storage cards that each were loaded with a full deck, Hatter stopped on a dime, every blade he had whirling, stabbing, and slicing, clearing half of the group behind them a second before their missing chess pieces, minus half of the pawns, caught up and slaughtered the rest of the Glass Eyes from behind, losing only two further pawns. Ace's decks exploded from their storage cards, slaughtering the entire group ahead of them, then returned to their cards and then the deck they'd been dealt from. However, at that exact moment, a void appesred both before them and behind them. Ace's gut dropped. The looking glasses, every looking glass in the queendom, was gone.
Dodge took a pocket looking glass from Bibwit and held it at an angle. The Continuum before them was restored, allowing them to continue racing forward, but behind them it continued to vanish. Ace narrowed his eyes. Their chess pieces had caught up to them, but there was barely a few feet of space behind them, and barely as much ahead. And they had no way out. There was nothing for their pocket of Continuum to connect to. They were trapped. Then, barely a minute later, they saw it. A light. At least one looking glass in the queendom must have still been intact. Ahead of them in the void, a short distance off, was a crystal byway, a dead end. Where it had once connected with the Continuum's main thoroughfare, it now simply stopped, connected to nothing.
"Dodge!" Bibwit shouted.
"I see it!" Dodge ahouted back.
With subtle shifts of angle in the way he held the looking glass, Dodge steered them over and they linked up with it. The additional light and increased play of translucent colors were like the dance of life itself. A second later, as they emerged, they discovered themselves in a landscape resembling the open belly of a volcano, with clouds of sulphurous smoke drifting lazily into the upper reaches of the sky, and jets of flame spouting from the rocky ground between streams of bubbling lava.
"The Volcanic Plains," Ace snarled.
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