Chapter One – Farewell Knight

"Dear boy, dear boy, dear boy… so confused."

My heart jolted, the point of impact of an invisible blow. With a gasp, I clawed at my chest as pain cracked through my torso. Albus's blood continued to fall from where it had been splashed onto the ceiling, a steady drip-drip-drip onto my head and shoulders. My knight… now a mild drizzle. I faintly wondered if I should become a drizzle, too. Whatever the answer was I wasn't going to get it from Cheshire and Alice. They seemed content in continuing their dance, the blood-slickened floor no bother to them. What… what is happening?

"Silly boy! He doesn't know, does he?"

"My… my incuse?" I hadn't the slightest idea who was speaking to me—Cheshire and Alice still too caught up in their crimson frolic to pay me any mind and Albus was, well, spread across the room. I tore back my cloak and shirt and frantically studied the completed tattoo inked across my albino skin. It was exactly how I remembered it before the fall into the Abyss: completed. Why does it hurt? It only hurt… it only felt like this when it moved… that's what Albus said—

"Albus said, Albus said, Albus said. Albus is DEAD! What he said is DEAD as well!"

I whipped my head around toward the voice. I couldn't help but flinch back when I saw the shelf of dolls—no, these are chains—that Alice had addressed earlier. "What is it if it's not my contract?"

One of the dolls tumbled from the uppermost shelf. Her brown hair tumbled into her face in a knotted veil as she rolled to my feet, her glass eyes addressing me when she rocked to a halt. "The Abyss is strongest here, don't you know?"

"I suppose." I croaked, another painful pang echoing through me.

"And what comes with great strength? Great power?"

"Great… responsibility?"

"Nonsense, nonsense!" The doll chortled. "Great change! With great power comes great change. Power warps, power bends. Power cuts you down and builds you into something equally as great."

I stared blankly at the doll. "What?"

She shot up off the ground and into the air as if hoisted up by a wire, hovering inches away from my nose. "The pain you feel is power. The power is change. The abyss is changing you, daft boy!"

The pain had begun to blossom in my head as well, grinding headache joining the splintering heartburn. I attempted to form another sentence, but could only parrot what the chain had just said. "Power is… change?"

Alyss broke away from Cheshire, the visceral rain having settled. She swatted the doll away as she circled around me, bemused smile stretched across her lips. "Oh yes," she giggled. "Soon you'll be a wonderful chain, like the rest of us. My doll."

Fear shot through me, temporarily breaking the haze of my headache. "A chain? That's—that's—no, no…" I tried shaking my head but a stiff neck made it impossible. Instead I stepped backward, and soon I was frantically backpedaling away from Alyss. "Impossible."

She laughed. "Aw, how cute. Dear boy's trying to run away." The dolls snickered in agreement as I crashed into the wall, cornered. Her glacial eyes locked onto mine. "There's nowhere to run, silly. Can't see why you'd want to; you should consider it an honor." She briskly closed the space between us and grabbed the collar of my open shirt. "Any other human would have been thrown to the trump cards. You are my special exception."

I could practically feel the frost spread across my lips from her icy breath. They went numb, further preventing me from forming a coherent sentence. "No… I have… I have to…"

"Have to what? Speak up, Kevin, I'm afraid I can't hear you." Her smile transmuted in a frigidly cruel sneer. "Not with all the souls clung to your coattails—you must understand, of course. That lesser duke and his wife are especially noisy. I'll have to devour them first. For the sake of peace."

Her words took like poison. I felt as if I had lapsed through a miniature death, her relentless grip the only thing keeping me on my own two feet. Their death is on my shoulders. I failed them. Her eyes. My god, her eyes. Don't look at me with those wet eyes— my muscles went rigid as if going into rigor mortis. Visions of returning to the house came flooding back. The aftermath of the slaughter. The corpses. The wreckage. The little dutchess-to-be clung to my coat and while she wailed as her mama and papa were scraped off the dining room floor. Her future was shattered and I was her only inheritance. Bring them back! Bring them back!

It'd be a sin not to indulge her.

"And damnation to follow through." Alyss crooned as she threaded her fingers through my ascot. Alarm swelled my already taxed heart. You can hear—? "Of course I can. Can't reconstruct what I can't hear. And don't act so shocked—you are such a good knight. You've got devotion to rival Cheshire's. It'd be a bleeding shame not to see you go to waste."

"Devotion…?" I squinted past her at the feline, and out of good humor or the onset of madness I managed a laugh. "As loyal as a cat. That. That is a new one."

She frowned. "You. You just reminded me."

"…of what?" I sighed, sobering up from my brief flight of whimsy.

She pulled back. She was a full head shorter than me but somehow managed to look twice as composed, tapping a finger to her lips as if pondering some deep and dreadful nothing. Her gaze locked on mine and her hand fell back to her side. "Before I forget—or, before you turn for that matter…"

In a flash her hand was back and uncomfortably close. Her thumb grazed my cheek before her arm snapped back clutching a dripping—

That was when the pain hit.

Her laugh rang louder than my scream. My knees hit the freezing tile hard as I clawed frantically at the bleeding socket where my eye had been moments before. Time didn't freeze in my shock but it sure felt like it did—nothing existed past the heat dripping off my cheeks and the taste of salted iron overtaking my tongue. Agony radiated from my wound, each wave of pain temporarily whiting out any thought or observation I tried to form. Not that I had the best means to come to any more conclusions as my remaining eye had clouded over in an oppressive red smog. Now why my eye was fogging over was beyond me; Alyss hadn't touched it as far as I knew. Great power. Great change. There's a great change brewing in you, boy.

I spluttered out a few curses as the shock wore off, conjuring up the best glare I could manage out of my compromised eye. Alyss paid me no mind. She had long since scampered off and was now positioned in front of Cheshire wearing the exact same grin she had flashed before robbing me. She held her fist out before him, still clutching my eye and letting bits of blood and gore drop onto him as he knelt before her. He was peeling back his bandages, muttering fevered praises and thanks before she took his chin between two fingers and tilted his head up to face her. His entire body went rigid when she slid the bloody thing in one of his vacant sockets, air hissing between his clenched teeth. But, by god, that grin he wore was as crooked as the logic behind the phrase "as loyal as a cat."

He folded over himself when she pulled away, near hysterics with glee as he pawed at his face. "Now, now," Alyss tutted, and with a wave of a hand his claws were yanked from his face as if by invisible strings. "No scratching. You have a lot to healing to do, and you don't want to break your new toys as soon as you've gotten them, do you?"

A series of apologies poured from his lips but she had already turned on her heel and stepped away. She finally met my glare. "So sorry." She purred, not a lick of sincerity in her. "Cheshire's been so good, and those rubies you call eyes were the perfect fit for him. I truly had no other choice."

With a few short steps she was back in front of me, however this time it was she who was looking down at me. She sighed and took hold of my coat sleeve, coaxing me up. At first I struggled against her burning touch but… it was strange, what came over me. Perhaps it was the blood I lost from the eye. Maybe it was the change the dolls spoke of. Whatever the cause, I was exhausted. Putting up a fight suddenly sounded like a horrible waste of energy. And why would I deny her? She was being perfectly patient with the little temper tantrum I was throwing, sans eye-plucking. That's why God gave you two eyes, isn't it? In case one gets plucked? Besides, its not as if you'd need sight in the Abyss…

I got to my feet. She giggled and dragged me into a far corner of the room before dumping me into a bed of cushions and throw pillows piled high alongside the bookshelves. The pain that had been radiating through my body before had shifted into weariness that tempted me to close my eyes—wait, no, eye—indefinitely.

Still, I managed to shoot her another dirty look when she rolled me onto my back. There was hardly any fire in it because I simply no longer had the energy for displeasure. Only sleep. She took the glare with as much grace as she took the first one, frigid fingers tracing the curve of my jaw. "You despise me. You're not alone. Nearly everyone despises me. Everyone save a few…" She trailed off, eyes briefly distant. "But you'll learn to love me. You'll realize how thankful you are that I spared you. That I gave you a second chance." Her voice was as far off as her eyes, as if recounting a long-forgotten dream instead of threatening me.

The last thing I saw were those broken bottle blue eyes.

I could hardly feel it the second time around, pain numbed by fatigue. My ears perked up to the light padding of her bare feet as she walked away followed by another hiss and Cheshire's thank-yous. Admittedly, I found myself straining to hear her steps as she returned, heart skipping a beat when I felt the pillows shift when she settled down beside me.

I leaned into her hand when she rested it against my cheek, the energy from her touch now a necessity, like air the demanded breathing. "You're plenty cooperative blind. I'm glad." She mused. Brief sparks of pain echoed through my skull as her fingers traced over the hollow where my eyes used to be. It didn't last long. With the gesture I was pulled deeper into the haze.

She sighed. "What's you name?"

"K-kevin." My throat was sore, it felt like I hadn't spoken in ages. "Kevin Legnard."

Those same fingers brushed over my lips. "Are you certain?"

I opened my mouth—my lips tasted of blood where she touched them—but faltered. "I… I don't know."

"Good." She purred, her smile a curve in the word. "Now. Who do you serve?"

"House Sinclair."

Her hand wandered down to my chest, resting over the incuse. "Pardon?"

"House…" The word caught in my throat, dissolving from my mind before it had a chance to escape. "I… I can't recall."

"Excellent." Both hands now rested over the seal. "Anything else you cannot recall?"

"No—I mean, yes." I stumbled over my words as it had become extremely difficult to breathe. "Yes. Everything. I can't recall... anything."

"Again. Cooperative. It's lovely." She giggled. "Do you know what you are, at least?"

I shook my head.

Suddenly I felt her hair brush across my skin and her frigid breath against my ear. "Do you want me to tell you? What your name is? Who you serve? What you are?"

I nodded.

"Very well." Alyss snickered, nails biting into the back of my neck. "You're my Hatter, the maddest of the bunch. Since you are mine, you will serve me and only me as Cheshire does. As my shadow, my knight, my doll."

She pulled back and when she left so did the world. The room, the shelves, the cushions and even the wet heat of my own blood vanished in favor of the suffocating black that consumed me. My ears were plugged. My throat and mouth stiff and dry as if they were stuffed with cotton. Here in this nowhere space I felt no pain except for the cut of her shattered glass gaze and the chill that followed it. Here I was alone with only her words to accompany me as they slowly ingrained themselves in my mind.

Her shadow.

Her knight.

Her doll.

My Alyss.

A great change, indeed.

A/N: Yo. LaFTA here. Look at that, I finally posted this goddamn thing. Upcoming chapters are waiting in the wings, and should be coming sometime around [REDACTED]. However, probably not in the upcoming few weeks as I have comic con/moving/university shenanigans to attend/take care of. But hopefully that'll result in a build-up of chapters and I can start posting these things on a more regular basis rather than this pray-and-wait thing I've got going right now.

Also: If any of y'all are returning readers (as in you've read the first version of this and now you're here checking out this version) I'd LOVE to hear from you guys. Is this an improvement? Do you like this style better or do you like the more sparse method used in the old one? Should I introduce Emily as a tap-dancing velociraptor instead of a puppet in this version? All your thoughts will be read and considered because y'all are awesome.