Chapter 137: The Stonesmith’s Tale

{A Maddened Wonderland | 25th, March 2019 | Act 5 | Scene 1 | Take 3}

Alistair’s eyes snapped open, his form prone as he lay backwards, his gaze catching the small, scratched, musty, four-cornered walls of the room he was in.

"A dungeon..." the young hatter rose to his feet.

"Great." he muttered in resigned acceptance, dusting off his coat and adjusting his hat briefly.

Staring down at his hands for a brief moment, watching them tremble, Alistair clenched his fist and proceeded to flick out a card a moment after.

It was a variant of the very same card he’d kept in Alice’s hair, one that immediately had his expression morphing in relief.

Glad to see that his Chaos Magic was in fact still functional, Alistair was almost about to dismiss the little thing when it suddenly expanded of its own accord, prompting him to stagger back.

Soon enough, it expanded enough for him to pass through, an astral projection of an unmoving clock at noon making up its center.

"That’s new..." he confusedly muttered, a clear concern to his tone as he studied it awhile.

Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped right through, every inch of his frame seemingly moving through a gelatinous film that almost seemed to fracture temporally.

No sooner had his feet landed on the other side, the room shook, trembling at its very base.

Then an amorphous voice, reminiscent of a thousand clocks striking midnight simultaneously boomed;

"Welcome, tenthprisoner! Your trial will now commence!"

Instantly, the only door in the room flung open, revealing the longest set of narrow stairs that led upwards and into a rather dim opening.

"Time..." Alistair whispered, a palpable hint of fear on his features.

Covering his face with both palms briefly, his fear now masked behind an easy smile, the young hatter flexed his coat and took his first step out of the room.

Like clockwork, the door slammed shut behind him in the same motion that his feet landed on the first stair and he was suddenly at the very top of said narrow set of stairs in a trippy surge forwards.

By the time he took his next step, he found himself within a massive chamber of resplendent gold, clocks of different variants, shapes and sizes littering its walls and arrhythmically ticking.

Creepily enough, nine different skulls haphazardly littered the ground, complete with broken fragments of skeleton and powdered white sand.

Hovering at the very center of the chamber though, was a humanoid entity that seemed to have been constructed from an amalgamation of hourglasses, clocks and perhaps... fragments of golden, miniature stars.

Each of them, swirled within one another in the trippiest way imaginable, a clear psychedelic, almost dream-like element to it.

Yet, it was equally downright terrifying just by its sheer size, enough that Alistair quite looked like an ant before it.

Slowly, the entity looked down at him, and in sync, all the clocks in the room stopped moving!

Then, its amorphous voice suddenly screeched;

"HERESY!!"

In the same motion, the Time raised one gigantic hand and the temporal space around Alistair accelerated so fast he began aging at a rapid pace that turned him middle-aged in real-time!

Unsure of what was happening, yet unwilling to die so easily, he extended a palm as all his playing cards surged to life, all of them forming a massive dome around him!

Then he demanded in furious disbelief;

"Weren’t you supposed to put me on trial first?!"

That was about as much as Alistair managed before his dome cracked and Time made short work of him, his body fading away to dust in an instant and leaving nothing but a few bones...

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{A Maddened Wonderland | 26th, March 2019 | Act 5 | Scene 2 | Take 5}

...only for his eyes to suddenly snap open again as he rose to his feet.

"A dungeon..."

"Great." he muttered in resignation, briefly dusting off his coat and adjusting his hat.

Going through the motions once more, he soon flicked the familiar card variant and his expression morphed in clear relief.

Glad to see that his Chaos Magic was in fact still functional, Alistair staggered back when it suddenly expanded of its own accord.

"That’s new..." he muttered in clear befuddlement, his head tilted slightly as he briefly studied it.

Stepping through its temporally-fractured frame, his boot landed on the other side to be met with the room trembling and an amorphously grating voice of a thousand clocks striking midnight;

"Welcome, eleventhprisoner! Your trial will now commence!"

As the door flung open, revealing yet again the longest set of narrow stairs that led upwards, Alistair’s befuddlement became even more apparent as he repeated;

"Eleventh...?"

This time, instead of being terrified of what was to come, he was more curious than anything else as he stepped out.

Upon reaching the chamber, his gaze less focused on the effulgence of its resplendently clock-decorated walls, and Time’s theatricality, Alistair’s gaze soon caught sight of ten skulls littering the ground.

Staring at it intently, his eyes suddenly widened a moment after and he promptly jetted backwards, just as Time screeched once more;

"HERESY!!"

"Oh, don’t you start, you selfish cretin!" Alistair pointed at the entity as cards flicked out to protect him, encompassing him in a dome that blocked the temporal acceleration.

"HERESY!!"

"It’s not my fault the card I placed on her conditioned me to return every time!" Chaos surged in his palms as he added, his cards holding longer this time until they eventually cracked!

Yet again, he watched himself age in real-time, his frame withering to dust and leaving nothing but his hardest bones lingering about...

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Alistair was on his twentieth try, clearly now aware that he was in a time loop.

And the reason why Time was so annoyed it was practically smiting him on the spot?

It couldn’t believe someone else had that much control over the hands of time like it did and wanted to erase him from existence.

Funnily enough, Alistair was unable to manipulate time in truest sense.

All he’d actually done, was place an emergency card on Alice, one he had been conditioning to have so much Chaos energy, it could protect Alice from a few mild to moderate attacks when he was faraway.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t protect her from a destructive attack like the one the Knave of Hearts had fired.

That said, there was another conditioning to the emergency card. One that practically worked like a myelinated node that put him on speed dial when he was nearby.

It was also why, he had been able to reach her faster than the Knave of Heart’s beam of energy could... one that had ultimately trapped him in Time’s Castle of Eternity.

There was just one, teensy, tiny problem.

Because he’d done that, Chaos had essentially triggered a temporal gate that was trying to return him to her as fast as it could by drawing on the energy in Time’s Castle to complement itself.

As Alice was literally on the other side of the gate he was trapped in, and time flowed infinitesimally slower in Time’s Castle, Alistair found himself in the perfect loop.

One he soon began to exploit properly by his one-hundredth try.

Because even if he couldn’t remember all the past tries, he was subconsciously retaining improved control over Chaos magic whilst Time was effectively finding itself the young Hatter’s prisoner.

To that effect...

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{A Maddened Wonderland | 27th, March 2019 | Act 5 | Scene 3 | Take 5}

"Welcome, one hundredthprisoner! Your trial will now commence!"

"Say, Time?" Alistair greeted upon arrival, a grin on his features.

"You ever heard of The Stonesmith’s Tale?" he said with a relaxed air as the entity screeched yet again;

"HERESY!!"

"Listen closely," Alistair flicked out a single card this time, a gelatinous film immediately enveloping him instead of the domes he’d been previously making, effectively protecting him from the temporal acceleration.

"You’re gonna love this one!" the young hatter launched himself forwards, several cards swirling around his arm in a vortex as he mimicked the Knave of Heart’s destructive beam!

"A curious apprentice once asked... or rather, demanded of his master; What in this universe is truly unbreakable?"

The fight lasted a second longer this time before Alistair vaporized. The next couple runs, he came back stronger, his tale continuing for yet another second.

"The stonesmith, hefting his hammer, struck a mighty chunk of the mineral and said; My ancestor once stumbled upon a meteor not of this world... a thing of impossible weight and impossible hardness."

Alistair died. Then he came back stronger, chipping away at Time’s frame on the two-hundred and twelfth run as he continued the story;

"And he, in all his stubborn, brilliant folly, struck it. Day after day. Year after year. A hundred years of relentless, rhythmic impact."

The young hatter turned into a pile of bones. Yet his tale continued as he slammed an astral fist of purple made solely of cards into Time’s faceless being by the two-hundred and eighty-sixth run;

"When he died? A single scratch was all he had managed!So, he passed it to his apprentice--and that poor, magnificent fool, took up the hammer. Another century! Another lifetime of persistence!"

Three-hundred and tenth run. Alistair flipped through the air, aging just a bit more as his defenses slipped.

"And on it went. Master to apprentice. Apprentice to master. A lineage of stubbornness. A dynasty of dedication!"

Three-hundred and fifty-fourth run. Alistair pushed back the temporal acceleration with gritted teeth, taking some part of Time’s frame with it!

"So, the apprentice impatiently asks;But isn’t that a hell of a long time to waste hitting something that won’t break?"

Three-hundred and ninetieth run. Alistair curb-stomped Time’s face to the ground of the chamber!

"The stonesmith, struck once again, replying with grit and intensity;Ahhh! Time? Time isn’t the point!"

Four-hundredth run. Time was beginning to lose the war of attrition.

"The point is the doing! The trying! The sheer, glorious audacity of standing before the unbreakable, the unbeatable and saying; No. You move."

Four-hundred and sixteenth run.

"Because nothing, nothing is unbreakable. Not really. Not if you’re willing to outlast it. To out-stubborn it."

Four-hundred and forty-fourth run.

"So, what’s unbreakable, you might ask? Only the will, to keep striking the blow."

By the four-hundred and sixty-third run, Alistair almost did the impossible but died of old age as he managed to wheeze out;

"And you might hear this and think it’s still a hell of a long time to have spent on an impossible meteor..."

But by the four-hundred and ninety-ninth run, Alistair did the impossible, punching at the entity with pure Chaos magic and knocking him out completely;

"...but personally!"

Then, he flexed his coat and completed his statement with a triumphant grin whilst looking at its scrambled pieces on the ground;

"Personally, I think that’s a hell of a generation of stonesmiths!"

No sooner had he said that, the resplendent hall vanished like it never existed, giving way to nothing but a very old castle and the gate he had been tossed through.

"Cut!"

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