“Y ou will kill us all!” I shout at the Chessmaster. “All you need is to find the rest of the chess pieces.”
“Calm down, Alice,” the Pillar says.
“I won’t calm down.” I am losing it, basically because of my stupidity. “He is going to kill us, and guess what? It’s me who led him to the chess pieces by unlocking the tomb in Marostica.”
“But he hasn’t found the rest of the pieces yet,” the Pillar reminds me. “And he doesn’t know where they are.”
“Yet,” I retort.
“He is just a dumb old man with an ancient handlebar mustache,” the Pillar argues. “He won’t find the rest of the pieces if we just stop searching.”
“Watch your mouth, Pillar.” The Chessmaster’s voice echoes. “I’m the greatest chess player in the history of mankind.”
“Oh, please,” the Pillar says. “Taking people’s lives with a game of chess. You’ve destroyed my perception of Death already. Where is the cool dude with the scythe and skeleton for a head? Now that’s what I call an awesome death. Chess game? Duh.”
“Don’t push me, Pillar, or I will tell Alice who you really are—and how we met before.”
“You keep saying that,” the Pillar says. “If you have something to tell her, do it now, you liar.”
“Not now,” the Chessmaster counters. “It’s too soon. I want my masterpiece to be unveiled slowly. What good will it do me if I’m not entertained by my plan?”
“What plan?” I ask.
“The plan that will force you to find the rest of the pieces, Carroll’s Knight included, for me.” The Chessmaster seems sure of himself.
“You can’t make me do it,” I say dismissively.
“Don’t ever threaten me, Alice of Wonderland.” The Chessmaster laughs. It’s a bitter laugh, tinted with sadness and outrageous anger. My curiosity about him increases by the minute. So he isn’t just a mad chess player who wants to end the world, and not only Death itself. Then who is he really? Why is he doing this?
“Listen, mustache man,” the Pillar says, checking his wristwatch. “Unless you have something really scary to show us, I’d like to leave and get myself some new clothes and a new haircut.”
“Not funny, Pillar,” says the Chessmaster. “Whatever you do, you will not be the ‘He Who Laughs Last.’”
He Who Laughs Last? The words remind me of the Pillar’s theory with the giant. I am beginning to think the Chessmaster was telling the truth about previously meeting the Pillar.
“As for you, little Alice,” the Chessmaster says, “I hope you are ready to play.”
“Play? You mean that last game of chess?”
“Indeed, but it’s not like anything you’ve prepared for,” the Chessmaster says.
His words are followed by another rattling and drone underneath the chessboard. This time, something else accompanies the sound. Not an earthquake, but an incredibly horrifying joke.
The tiles on the chessboard part and human-sized blocks of glass rise from under the earth. The whole thing is done with a most unimaginable technology. Slowly, I realize the chessboard is coming to life; each life-size piece of chess, black and white, is standing upon the chessboard, only they’re trapped in glass prisons.
“What is going on?” My mouth hangs open.
I squint at the glass blocks and see that inside the large chess pieces are real humans. They’re rapping on the glass from inside, panicked, just like me.
The glass blocks are foggy on the inside, so it’s hard to see their faces. Out of nowhere, a block of glass rises and imprisons me as well, in the blink of an eye.
I start rapping on the glass from inside, wanting out, demanding to know what is going on. But a fog fills the glass and it gets harder to see.
I keep wiping it with the back of my hand, realizing my screams are only echoed back in my head and are hardly audible outside.
But then, through a small oval shape I’ve managed to clear in the fogged glass, I see outside, and in that same instant, I glimpse at a few others who’ve managed to wipe clear a small opening through their glass blocks. It’s shocking, and incredibly terrifying, when I recognize a few faces behind the glass.
In no particular order, I recognize three of them: Fabiola, the Duchess, and the Queen of Hearts.