Alice in Iron

White metal brushed cold against Alisabeth on all sides, fixed about her by three sets of paws: the tiny prickling ones of the Rook; the giant clawed ones of the Knight; and, in turns, the soft white ones of Taxis. The ceremonial armour was miraculous in its fit; it was as if it had been designed just for her. The pauldrons were heavy but well suited around her shoulders; each panel of the legs—the cuisses, the poleyn, the greaves, and the boots—measured to her height; the gorget fit precisely around her thin neck. Each crest glinted with raised lines, and each corner sharpened to whitened points, like pikes, like spires.

Alice stood or raised her arms or knelt as the three field creatures commanded, mute and obedient. It was all passing as if a dream—a nightmare. She hoped it was. She hoped she would finally wake up, after all this time, these days, this horror—and yet, she knew she wouldn’t. She was awake and alive. That, she could feel for certain: even now, her heartbeat pounded against her breastplate, beating within like a great hammer inside of a bell, knolling.

Someone was reaching something up towards his face: Taxis’ hands, with a visor much like the Rook and Knight’s. Alisabeth blinked, some consciousness of his body and wakefulness coming back to him with the proximity of the thing, but the slatted metal garment hesitated before his brow. Rather than being affixed straightway like all the rest, it fell back to Taxis’ grip. Revealed by its fallen position was the White Order rabbit herself, her face troubled, though not by terror of the underwocks or bewilderment at being saved or anxiety of that very Order she belonged to, but by worry—worry which stared up at Alice. “We probably won’t see each other again after this,” she murmured.

Alisabeth’s brow gathered, though his view of the world remained somewhat unreal. “So you think I’m going to die,” he said, “out there, against the Underwocky Queen? You think I can’t kill her after all?”

“No, no,” she sighed. “I know rightly now: you are truly the bonny boy in blue and white. You are truly our future queen. The High Templar has more than proved the uselessness in doubting the prophecy, and that the Tasseographer would even deign to see you, change you out of those filthy clothes, give you the armour—! Yes, it is certainly true. You will kill that dreadful Queen. But I…” Taxis fell silent for a moment. She had never been lost for words before, but it seemed she was now. After a moment she inhaled, whispering, “I have this… this awful sensation already in me when I think of it. Fear? I have never feared losing a fellow soldier before, and I know you won’t be lost—not in that way—and yet, now that I know I will never see you again, I… I cannot help but feel that something terrible will happen. It’s inescapably true: oh, dread is wracking my entire body!”

Alisabeth only wished she could reach out to her. She wished she could hold the small rabbit and lie to her. She wished she could hug the soft white and creamy brown velvet which always felt the warmest, which was now cold with death and yet which was just there—just there, and needing the reciprocation of the comfort it had once given to Alice herself, even if the comfort was hollow. But her arms were bound in white metal and black clawed paws. All she could do was gaze back and say, “Please don’t worry so. I feel you’re right—we probably won’t see each other again. But I’ll be fine. And… I suppose I’ll miss you.”

Taxis’ own gaze fell to the visor in her paws for a moment. She then reached up once more, affixing the visor over Alisabeth’s face. “I suppose I’ll miss you too.” 

With a flick of the visor down over Alice’s eyes, her rabbit was gone, shuttered out by darkness—blackness. Blackness that suddenly swam before her eyes, writhing into red and blue and yellow, into a twisted grin just inches from her face, it seemed. The breath flew from her mouth at once and wouldn’t come back in. She couldn’t breathe. No… no! 

The stolen breath coalesced behind the Moonman’s grin, slithered out from it in terrible words: “This armour has been the casket of many queens before you, boy… you should consider it merely a rental.”

Alisabeth could feel her arms; they were free now. She wrenched them from whatever darkness had surrounded her, shoved the visor up from her face. All the black colour disappeared as suddenly as it came on, replaced by the same white marble fitting room as before, though everyone—the Rook, the Knight, and Taxis—were gone now. All there was was herself and her shovel, newly polished and sharpened, against the wall. 

He stood from where he knelt, white metal clacking around him with each laden step. He hesitated before the keen steel thing, following the blade with his eyes—the blade which would soon again bathe in red, which would decapitate, which would kill: the underwocks, those things that seemed the only avenue to true death and rest; their Queen, statuesque and shadowed and living; and perhaps, in some way, himself. Taxis was right in more ways than just one: something terrible would happen. As he took up the shovel in his armoured and gloved hand, he sealed that fate.