Alice and the Best Beast

It was soon clear what manner of place this was; it was a temple, a stable, the abode of the Duchess, yes, but one title above all which described it best. As the best beast was unleashed upon her, as it roared and reared up high amongst the hanging rotted carcasses, as its eyes sparked into a fever of madness and mindlessness and yellow light, as across the dim and putrid place Big Betty Duchess watched with fixed and flickering eyes—flickering with a command for each twitch and slash of the beast—Alisabeth knew what it truly was: a slaughterhouse. She knew it as it drove at her, its intent to kill gritted upon something more wild even than whatever drove the underwocks to murder and devour. She knew it as it came with reckless abandon—a reckless abandon through which Alice, somehow, saw how to pierce. She knew it when the blade of her shovel gutted its chest, and it fell in a silent, unfeeling burst of horrible spores and rancid splatter upon the hilt and her person, her hands and face. The place was the most total slaughter: not of the body—the bodies of these Underlanders, beast or not, could never die clearly—but of the freeness of mind, of any kind of self. There was nothing behind those yellow eyes: it had been killed and appropriated for the Duchess fungi. Anything or anyone else was not just gone, but destroyed. Complete, total slaughter. And she had been made part of it.

Alisabeth looked up, past the fallen mound of muscle and fur and fungus that was twitching still, ever so slightly. She looked into the gloam to where tusks glinted in the light—grinning. “There she is: our queen, filth and all!” the High Templar boomed.

Taxis shook beside her, wobbling under the weight of her hand, which clamped her small shoulder. She whimpered, “Yes, I see.” But her wide, dead eyes met Alice. They were embarrassed, but they were earnest; they whispered to him, thank you. It almost made the detritus all over him worth it.

“Oh, so you see. Taxis, my friend?”

“Yes?”

The Duchess’ face twisted further into gruesome, morbid joy. “You and I both know now  what’s got to happen: you simply must take him to the cathedral. You must take our bonny boy to the Tasseographer.”