It was a good question. Alyss
looked to Bibwit. He shrugged. His ears swiveled sideways, as if
abashed.
“Learned albino that I am, I hate to admit ignorance, but in this instance it’s all I have.” Alyss closed her eyes and cast the gaze of her imagination around Wonderland’s borders, glimpsing one military outpost after another…
In a shady jungle of Outerwilderbeastia, a Seven Card was battling a couple of Glass Eyes with his crystal shooter, getting the better of them until an orb generator exploded against the cache of munitions he was guarding and he lost his life.
In a quadrant of black rock in the Chessboard Desert, pair after pair of card soldiers stumbled choking out of a half-destroyed bunker, managing to escape death by fire or asphyxiation only to be skewered by waiting Glass Eyes.
And at one particularly distant outpost, situated between a scrubby edge of the Everlasting Forest and the lava geysers of the Volcanic Plains, Alyss saw the aftermath of a battle the Glass Eyes had clearly won; wherever she directed her imagination’s eye, card soldiers were splayed in various attitudes of death, among them a Two Card whose hand was on his still-holstered crystal shooter, and a Four Card who, if she was to judge by the bodies surrounding his, had taken out a respectable number of the enemy before giving up his life.
“It is the Glass Eyes,” she said finally. “But I don’t see Redd.” “She’s not going to show herself with the front line,” Dodge said, impatient. “She’ll wait for a better opportunity.”
General Doppelgänger nudged Bibwit and jutted his head forward, urging: Tell her. “Is there something else?” Alyss asked.
“Jack of Diamonds has escaped the mines,” said the tutor. Just what she needed: on top of everything, to worry about a renegade brat of high birth and large buttocks who believed that the world owed him…the world. “Are his escape and these attacks related?” “There’s no intelligence to prove it,” said the general, “nor rule it out.” She trained her imagination’s eye on an outpost in an icy quadrant of the Chessboard Desert, where an entire platoon of card soldiers was about to be annihilated by a cascade of AD52 razor-cards. In the Heart Crystal’s chamber, she swung her scepter. Dodge, Bibwit, and the general jumped, startled. But the motion of Alyss’ arm rippled across great distances and the razor-cards suddenly changed direction, as if bouncing off an invisible force field. The Glass Eyes responsible for the attack stood in momentary shock, but the card soldiers, finding themselves still alive, shot round after round of their own razor-cards at the enemy and ran for cover behind the charred remnants of a bunker, surviving for the moment. “Send as many reinforcement decks as you need,” Alyss told General Doppelgänger. “Ready the chessmen, if you haven’t already. Use every means necessary to keep the violence out of Wondertropolis. Bibwit, issue a warning to citizens: There is scattered fighting on the distant edges of the land, with little threat of harm to any of them. But to be safe, they should remain indoors whenever possible.”
She would again test the limits of her imagination, use her powers to aid each and every outpost. Too bad she couldn’t kill the Glass Eyes simply by imagining them dead, but such a thing wasn’t possible. Glass Eyes were, in their limited way, willful. Imagination by itself, no matter how powerful, could not kill
“Learned albino that I am, I hate to admit ignorance, but in this instance it’s all I have.” Alyss closed her eyes and cast the gaze of her imagination around Wonderland’s borders, glimpsing one military outpost after another…
In a shady jungle of Outerwilderbeastia, a Seven Card was battling a couple of Glass Eyes with his crystal shooter, getting the better of them until an orb generator exploded against the cache of munitions he was guarding and he lost his life.
In a quadrant of black rock in the Chessboard Desert, pair after pair of card soldiers stumbled choking out of a half-destroyed bunker, managing to escape death by fire or asphyxiation only to be skewered by waiting Glass Eyes.
And at one particularly distant outpost, situated between a scrubby edge of the Everlasting Forest and the lava geysers of the Volcanic Plains, Alyss saw the aftermath of a battle the Glass Eyes had clearly won; wherever she directed her imagination’s eye, card soldiers were splayed in various attitudes of death, among them a Two Card whose hand was on his still-holstered crystal shooter, and a Four Card who, if she was to judge by the bodies surrounding his, had taken out a respectable number of the enemy before giving up his life.
“It is the Glass Eyes,” she said finally. “But I don’t see Redd.” “She’s not going to show herself with the front line,” Dodge said, impatient. “She’ll wait for a better opportunity.”
General Doppelgänger nudged Bibwit and jutted his head forward, urging: Tell her. “Is there something else?” Alyss asked.
“Jack of Diamonds has escaped the mines,” said the tutor. Just what she needed: on top of everything, to worry about a renegade brat of high birth and large buttocks who believed that the world owed him…the world. “Are his escape and these attacks related?” “There’s no intelligence to prove it,” said the general, “nor rule it out.” She trained her imagination’s eye on an outpost in an icy quadrant of the Chessboard Desert, where an entire platoon of card soldiers was about to be annihilated by a cascade of AD52 razor-cards. In the Heart Crystal’s chamber, she swung her scepter. Dodge, Bibwit, and the general jumped, startled. But the motion of Alyss’ arm rippled across great distances and the razor-cards suddenly changed direction, as if bouncing off an invisible force field. The Glass Eyes responsible for the attack stood in momentary shock, but the card soldiers, finding themselves still alive, shot round after round of their own razor-cards at the enemy and ran for cover behind the charred remnants of a bunker, surviving for the moment. “Send as many reinforcement decks as you need,” Alyss told General Doppelgänger. “Ready the chessmen, if you haven’t already. Use every means necessary to keep the violence out of Wondertropolis. Bibwit, issue a warning to citizens: There is scattered fighting on the distant edges of the land, with little threat of harm to any of them. But to be safe, they should remain indoors whenever possible.”
She would again test the limits of her imagination, use her powers to aid each and every outpost. Too bad she couldn’t kill the Glass Eyes simply by imagining them dead, but such a thing wasn’t possible. Glass Eyes were, in their limited way, willful. Imagination by itself, no matter how powerful, could not kill