#bdrpagtask

Jim led them deeper and deeper into the forest, following paths Pleiades had walked a hundred times, until they could see the burning river ahead. The blue flames cast them both in an eerie light, but Jim wasn’t focused too much on the river. He was focusing on the massive pit that sat where the burning river ended, a set of stairs clinging to the side as they sunk into the darkness.

“I don’t see any guards,” he whispered to Ariel, crouched behind a tree as he surveyed the banks of the river and the field around the Gates. He turned back to the young woman, watching her reaction carefully. This was Ariel’s show, after all; Jim was just the navigator. It was up to her whether or not they took that step out into the open and down into the Underworld. He wouldn’t stop her if she did, and wouldn’t judge her if she decided she wanted to go back home. “We should be able to make it to the Gates without any problem,” Jim told her.

Ariel clutched her Trident tight in both hands. The journey here had been easy, but something deep down in the pit of her stomach told Ariel that it wasn’t going to be like that for much longer. Staring down at the pit that had somehow formed in the earth since the last time the redhead had traveled into the woods, that feeling that there was worse to come only grew.

She took a deep breath as Jim looked back at her though, and hardened her face, determined. She was not scared. She would not allow herself to be scared. There were people who needed help, and Ariel couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. She would go into the Underworld and Jim would have her back, and whatever they faced, it would only make them stronger.

Right?

“What are we waiting for?” she asked, standing up and moving forward with determination. Her legs had begun to shake. Staying still for another moment might have made it noticeable, and then there would be no denying that Ariel was very, very nervous.

But as it was, she now stood on top of the staircase with fire in her eyes and a giant Trident in her hands. Looking into the pit made her feel sick, and she watched as a figure suddenly appeared from the darkness.

She only had time to gasp, her voice not reaching her throat for a scream, before she realized she could see through the man drifting up the stairs. A ghost. It was a ghost, a spirit, just like the many others they had seen the closer they’d gotten to the river. Laughing awkwardly at herself, Ariel cleared her throat as the spirit passed, giving it a wave before she reached back for one of Jim’s hands to pull him along.

“Come on.” She moved down the stairs with gusto, pulling Jim along and telling herself her hand only clutched his so tightly so that they wouldn’t lose one another. Soon, the darkness began to give way to tree-tops, and eventually, it seemed that the staircase had led into… another forest?

That couldn’t be right.

And yet, here they were, surrounded by trees again, different paths clearly paved in between laid out in front of them. Ariel looked between them all before she turned back to Jim, her face a question mark. “Well? Um… You’re the human GPS. Where do we go from here?”

Even if Jim hadn’t noticed the way her legs were shaking, it was impossible to miss her tight grip on his hand and the way she had reacted to the spirit. Her gasp had his hand on the hilt of the sword Annette had given him before he could properly process what had happened, and before he could ask Ariel definitively if she was still sure of their plan, she was off. And Jim could do nothing but follow her down, fingers moving between hers and thumb rubbing against her thin wrist comfortingly.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, the earthen walls lost in the darkness and the spiral straightening out until they seemed to just be heading down into nowhere. It was hard to even make out Ariel, and she was barely three steps in front of him. He couldn’t tell where they were going, and not for the first time since Flint had confronted them in that alley, Jim tried to feel out his magic. Unlike Swynlake or Enchantra, he didn’t even have his false memories to guide him down here, and it was with a growing sense of dread that he realized he couldn’t tell if his magic was working or not. There wasn’t like a glowing arrow that he could follow, or a distinct tug leading him on. No visions of the right way to go. He thought he had known what he was doing, thought that he had identified what that tug of magic felt like once Flint had told him the truth. But he didn’t know for sure, and that fact alone was terrifying.

Jim almost tugged Ariel to a stop, almost confessed that he wasn’t sure how this whole Pathfinding thing worked, almost begged her to turn back around and wait until they didn’t have to trust their lives to a magic he didn’t know how to use. But then the void above them started to lighten like the sun was starting to rise. Except there was no sun. Jim couldn’t even make out a horizon; just an endless forest that came slowly into focus the further down they went. Jim sped up a bit, now at Ariel’s side as they went down the last sets of stairs and reached the bottom. The different paths varied in style, each branching off and heading off so deep into the forest that Jim couldn’t see where they ended. One path looked almost like a shallow river, another like one of the dried salt fields from back home. There was a glass path, one made out of wildflowers, a broken brick path, and more.

Jim didn’t feel a tug towards any of them.

He looked over at Ariel’s question, and the confusion in her expression matched the confusion and doubt sitting like a rock in his stomach. Jim, however, had always found it easier to push his own fears from his mind when there was someone depending on him. It had been true with his family back home, it was true in this alternate reality with Annette and her family, and it was true with Ariel. He nodded at the younger woman, giving her a reassuring smile and a quick squeeze of their joined hands before he looked back at the paths. He took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out slow through his lips before he looked at the paths with a determined set to his jaw.

Jim didn’t have an answer. In fact, Jim said absolutely nothing, just staring at her like he wasn’t quite so sure himself. Sure, he nodded, and squeezed her hand, and looked at the paths with a sense of concentration.

But that was it.

Ariel waited, but only for the briefest of moments, before she blew out air through her lips and tugged Jim forward. “Okay, we’ll just take one. See where it goes. If it feels wrong, we’ll… go back,” she said, trying to come up with the answers herself. She chose the path of wildflowers because it felt serene. It felt calm. She thought that maybe it would be the peaceful journey.

The scent of flowers was overwhelming. It was nice, but Ariel also kind of wanted to cover her nose and mouth. Eventually, though, the woods opened up into someplace… beautiful.

The redhead looked around, taking in the meadows that crawled with flowers. Small houses dotted the landscape, every so often bordered by a tree or two that bore fruit, and a river flowed throughout the small village, off into the distance. More ghosts dwelt here, spirits flitting around from one place to the other, some even having their own conversations.

Ariel smiled, and felt herself overcome with a wave of peace. She kept walking with Jim’s hand in her own until, eventually, she dropped his grasp and held her Trident tight in both hands, sticking it up to grab some apples off a tree. As she pierced a large red fruit, she brought the weapon down and took it off, the juices dripping between her fingers.

She looked down at it, happy… but confused. Her head was growing cloudy and her brows pulled together as she looked back up at Jim.

“This… is good, right?” Ariel held the fruit out to him, hesitating with the movement at first, and tilted her head to the side. “Is this… is this what you wanted? Food?” But she had food in her bag, didn’t she? Didn’t he have food in his own? Why had she gotten down the apple, then?

She turned her head, red curls whipping as she looked around. Nothing… nothing looked familiar. Where were they? When had they gotten here?

Panic set in her chest. “Jim, where are we?” she asked, dropping the apple, hand drifting up to her mouth as she spun around once again. She had this overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, like she shouldn’t be where she was. “What are we doing here? How did we… How did we get here?”

Jim had still been staring down the different paths, trying to feel… well, anything, when Ariel had suddenly chosen for them. He stumbled after her, a little stunned from being pulled so suddenly from his almost trance. “Ariel, wait-” he urged, tugging on her hand, but she just kept going. They walked through the woods, Jim growing more and more uneasy as the smell of the crushed wildflowers under their sandals overwhelmed his senses.

And then they walked into the meadow, and Jim’s fear disappeared, washed away by a wave of contentment and ease. He caught up with Ariel, strolling easily at her side like they had done so many times back in his memories. Their fingers were tangled together, palms pressed together, and Jim’s smile grew at the thought that in a few weeks time, there’d be a ring on Ariel’s finger; cool and smooth as it would press against his fingers.

He was waving at some of the spirits they were passing when Ariel let go of his hand, and panic crashed back into him like a truck. It actually stole his breath a bit, the sudden urge to find Ariel’s hand again and run (back the way they had come, down the path made of white sand too perfect for the desert yet too cool for the beach, between the shallow river and the glass path). He spun around, his friend’s name choking him as he tried to yell out for her. He couldn’t scream, not here, but he saw Ariel a moment later, smiling happily as she pulled down the red fruit skewered on her trident and wow, wasn’t that some unintentionally and uncomfortably gory imagery? Jim was at her side in a moment, hand going to her elbow as she turned her brilliant smile on him.

As Ariel’s expression slowly fell and her panic crept back, Jim unconsciously stepped closer; his broad hand slowly curling around her arm to anchor her down. The sand path was easily forgotten - for he had never really known it, just knew the feeling of wanting to run towards it - as he gently pulled her hand away from her mouth. Her fingers were sticky from the apple’s juice, trailing down to the curve of her elbow. “We-” he started to say, before his eyebrows furrowed. How had they gotten here? He couldn’t remember; the memory held just out of reach.

He glanced up at Ariel, and suddenly he was back in that frozen arcade, comforting the panicking redhead. Jim couldn’t remember much - like where the hell they were or why, but he could remember that. They really needed to stop ending up in these kind of situations.

“We can ask someone, yeah?” he said gently, with a small nod. “We’re not alone here, we’re going to be fine. Just… stay with me, okay Ariel? We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”

Once again, Jim seemed just as confused as she was.

Wait. Once again? When had they both been confused? She could remember them both being perplexed hearing they were meant to be engaged. Wait. That wasn’t right either. She could remember them both being confused on what to do while shut in an arcade, a frozen winter storming in July right outside. Wait. No, that wasn’t it either.

What was going on?

“Okay,” she replied softly. She looked at the Trident in her hand with unease. Why did she have this? Why did she have a canteen around her? Why did she have a little knapsack attached to her waist?

None of it made any sense. She had so many questions.

She walked forward with Pleiades - no, with Jim - and they approached a translucent girl where she sat eating an apple of her own. “Hi… I-I’m sorry. I’m Ariel. This is… Jim?” The redhead looked over at him, the name not feeling right no matter how many times she corrected herself. “We’re... lost. Do you- I mean, can you tell us where we are?”

Jim, once again, followed Ariel; ignoring the odd half-feeling of not going the right way even though he was the one to suggest asking for help. The girl they approached was about their age (or somewhere in between) and blinked up at them innocently.

“You’re in the Meadow,” she answered easily, smiling at the two in that soft, kinda confused way one did when approached by total strangers. Jim resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Um, yes,” he said. “But which meadow?”

“The Meadow.”

Jim gave her a deadpanned look, fighting to keep his patience as well as keeping his memories together. It was getting harder and harder, and Jim had to keep glancing at Ariel from the corner of his eyes to remind himself that he wasn’t here alone. “Okay, how about this: Did you see how we got here?” ‘If you say we walked here, I’m shoving the rest of that apple up your nose.’

Thankfully, the girl nodded, taking another bite as she pointed to the woods that bordered the meadow they were in. “You came from there.”

Ariel looked between the girl and the woods a few times before her gaze landed back on Jim. “Should we go back towards the woods?” she asked, unsure of what to do next. Everything felt off, and it sat wrong in her stomach. This girl wasn’t helping and they didn’t know where they were or how they got there and, sometimes, Ariel had trouble remembering what even was real and what wasn’t.

“I think we should maybe stay here. Just- Right here. Right? Don’t you think we should stay and wait and figure this out? I’m sure if we think hard enough it’ll all begin to make sense again. We’ll remember why we came here and what we were doing and then everything will be okay.” As she rambled, her grip tightened both on Jim’s hand as well as the Trident, as though they were going to keep her anchored down somehow.

It was a little bit hard to breathe, but she tried to ignore that.

“Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to get out of here and we’re going to get married…” That’s right. They were getting married. Had Attina and Alana finished working on her ceremonial robes? Were they the ones working on it? 

Why were they getting married again? They just met.

Right. That was in the other life. There was another life. This wasn’t the right one. 

Was it?

“That’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked him, but then quickly shook her head. “No. That’s- It’s right. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s right. This is right. We’re here for some reason so we shouldn’t leave. We’ll stay here until something jogs our memories.”

Watching Ariel talk herself out was almost therapeutic, really. At least in the sense that it was reassuring to know that at least she shared his worries. On the other hand it made his stomach twist in knots in shared anxiety. Her grip on his hand was starting to make his bones ache but he didn’t even consider letting go, because she was right, they were getting married soon. Just a few more weeks and she’d be wearing that ring that would press cool and sturdy against his skin. They’d say their vows and kiss and dance with their families and Ariel would look more beautiful than he could bear (she was getting prettier by the day, or he was starting to see it more clearly) and they’d move back to his quarters and everything would be fine.

They’d wait in the meadow and they’d be fine. She was right. This was right.

Except when she said it, Jim knew it wasn’t. He just couldn’t remember what was. “I think,” Jim started slowly, glancing at the young woman before looking at the woods. The urge to just walk in was getting stronger, like it was a path he had walked a dozen times before. Like he knew those woods. Which was particularly wild because he had never seen them before.

Meadow or woods. Stay or go.

The longer they stood in the meadow, the scent of blossoming flowers and woodsmoke from the houses flooding their lungs, the harder it was to remember. The less Jim knew.

Jim took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Set his jaw and turned to Ariel and said with a surety that was getting stronger by the moment, “I think we need to go. Back to the woods.”

Back to the woods?

Had he really just said that? No, Ariel thought, she must have just heard him wrong… But then, why did he seem so certain as he looked between the trees and the meadow? Ariel looked between them herself, not quite knowing which of them was right.

She wanted to stay. He wanted to go.

This did not bode well for their marriage.

“I don’t know…” Ariel bit down on her lip, gnawing at the skin there until it became chapped and chipped off into her mouth. A disgusting habit, really, but she couldn’t help it. The nerves, the uncertainty, the deep-setting confusion and the feeling that nothing was right… It all weighed on her heavy until the atmosphere combined with the mixture of emotions inside of her became too much. It became harder to breathe still. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything anymore and nothing sounds right but nothing sounds wrong and I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to get caught doing something I shouldn’t. I’ll be in so much trouble with the masters and with Daddy and we might not see each other again. Pleiades, what if we did something wrong? What if we’re somewhere we shouldn’t be?”

It was the first thing she’d said that felt right in the past few minutes, and that worried her more.

For the first time in what felt like ages, Jim knew what to do. At least when it came to Ariel.

His thumb found the soft skin under her lip and gently pulled her bottom lip from between her teeth; like he had done once before (like he’d done a hundred times). Jim pushed her bangs back from where they;d fallen in her eyes and his hand stayed near her temple. She’d always been more physical than him; standing close when their engagement was announced, leaning out of the window where he visited until he could feel her breath on his face, holding his hand through it all. It was a new language he had learned to speak for her since they had been engaged, since the shock and the anger wore off and he’d stopped seeing his unwanted bride and started seeing Ariel again, the girl he had known for most of his life.

(Memories. Planted falsely in his head. But here’s the thing. Plants have roots, and these had burrowed down deep. Jim would weed them out later, when they didn’t make him feel calm and strong and content. When Ariel didn’t need him to be sturdy. Later.)

“I said I’d protect you and I meant it,” he said softly, lowly. Like the meadow and the girl and the apples weren’t there and it was just the two of them alone. “We can’t fix anything standing here. We’re ready for whatever trouble we get into,” he grinned, “and between the two of us, we can make more trouble than our masters or families ever could. I know going into the woods is right, Ariel, I do. And we’ll keep moving and I’ll be right here with you, no matter what.”

Carefully, slowly, Jim leaned down (fuck, she was so small) until his forehead rested against hers, the tips of their noses a hair width apart. He didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t look away. He just cupped the side of her neck gently with the hand that wasn’t fused with hers and met her eyes steadily. “if you can’t trust anything else, trust me,” he implored quietly.

Ariel didn’t know what a panic attack was. She’d seen Ana have one - she suddenly recalled that night at prom, and the conversation with the older girl that had followed - but she’d never known how it felt. She’d thought it was breathing into a paper bag or cleaning a space until blisters formed on your fingers like what happened with her eldest sister, Attina.

Ariel had never known what a panic attack was until she found herself right on the edge of one, breath not coming quick enough and a feeling of weight crushing her from all sides. She wanted to lay down, to rock back and forth, anything.

But instead, Jim pulled her bottom lip from her teeth again (he was always doing that even though she felt like maybe he’d only ever done it once or twice before.) He made her stop doing the thing she did when she was worried, and he caressed her face, and looked into her eyes - blue meeting blue, ocean waves colliding - and suddenly the air started to come a bit easier.

He sounded so sure. So steadfast. Ariel never liked to admit that she was ever scared of anything, but she had been so scared of not knowing anything until Jim - Pleiades - looked at her the way he was right now. And then he leaned down, and his forehead was pressed against hers, and even though he didn’t close his eyes Ariel did. Ariel closed her eyes and she breathed in his scent - freshly baked dough and burnt wood- allowing it to take over the overwhelming aroma of flowers and apples. She breathed it in over and over again, with deep breaths, until her head felt clear and and she knew one thing and one thing only: 

She trusted Pleiades - she trusted Jim - with her life.

“Okay,” she whispered finally, opening her eyes and pulling away to look back up at him, nodding. “Okay. Okay, I trust you. I do. We’ll go back through the woods.”

She squeezed his hand, relaxing her hold on it, and gently stroked his fingers with her thumb. Slowly, the confusion subsided. Certainty gave way to the block that had come over her memories, cloudiness dissipating. All at once, she knew what was what.

“You’re the GPS. I remember. You know the way. We’re- We’re here to stop all this, and that’s what we’re going to do. Together.”

Jim nodded, his smile growing until it was crooked and warm and it creased his cheeks. Hearing Ariel say she trusted him, seeing the panic leave her features, feeling the tension leave her shoulders, it made the world stop spinning. Everything made sense again, and the path was certain now. It was like he had walked it a million times; it was familiar and it was steady and it was electric and it zipped up his spine and sat in the soles of his feet and it was…

It was magic.

He was Magick.

The docks felt unsteady under Alice’s feet.

Then again, Alice felt unsteady herself. One would think that saying goodbye to her mother after all this time - that realizing they were just too different to ever survive in each other’s lives, but that didn’t mean her mother probably didn’t care - would leave Alice with a sense of peace. But instead, it had just stirred something deep within her, and whatever had been roused was now growling low inside her chest. Waiting. Alice didn’t know what else there could possibly be.

She looked over toward the small boat nearest herself, tied to a post. With a deep, trembling breath, she climbed in carefully, and grabbed hold of the oar. Making quick work of the rope that kept it attached to the pier, she tossed it into the water, and pushed off from the dock.

Everything in her body was telling her not to go. Alice had thought she’d fought past her fears, yet terror still gripped her tight as she rowed through the swamp. The water was dark, and there were no other boats that she could see at the moment. She tried to believe that for the time being, she was okay. That she would continue to be okay. That maybe she was safe, now. That there was nothing to be afraid of.

Her gaze drifted down to the water, and the sparkle of something gold caught her eye. She stopped rowing in order to squint down through the dark waves, and gasped when she saw bones - a skeleton, clinging to a large chalice that spilled over with jewels. Dipping her oar back into the murky depths, she rowed faster now, shaking her head.

“Just keep going, Alice,” she told herself quietly. Her voice echoed in the emptiness of the Underworld.

“She’s all alone.” The voices came back, and sent a shiver down Alice’s spine. “What does she think she’s doing?” “She can’t make it on her own!” “No, she can, she just has to keep going-” “She has to reach the prison.” “She has to help those people.” “Does she even know where the prison is?” “No. She’s going to get lost.”

“I won’t,” Alice interrupted them, voice filled with determination as she rowed harder, arms already beginning to ache. She ignored the voices. She blocked them out. She ignored the glowing from beneath the darkness of the water; the decayed corpses that hung around various treasures that seemed to be trying to call to her. She ignored it all.

She couldn’t, however, ignore the sight of another ship that came into view after a while. Slowly, as she grew closer, she could hear the shouting. “Curious,” Alice breathed, and went about her way with caution. However, as she grew nearer, she realized she recognized the voice. She recognized the person, too.

In fact, now she could make out the fact that there were two boats, and two separate people arguing.

“It’s mine!” “No, it’s mine! I saw it first!”

“Kiara? Miss Grimhelde?” No, but it couldn’t be. She’d left both of them behind to come here. Their voices, and their faces, even, seemed off, though Alice couldn’t figure out how. And yet, when they both turned to the blonde, who’d stopped her boat nearby by planting her oar in the muck deep bellow, there was no mistaking that it was indeed them.

They looked on at her for a moment, almost hardly visible through the darkness, and as their faces twisted more in anger, fear caused Alice to go stiff and cold once again.

“It’s mine! You can’t have it!” Eva’s distorted voice screamed, and she took a swing at Kiara with her oar, who ducked out of the way.

“No, it’s mine! And neither of you can have it!” Kiara swung her oar in Eva’s direction, and with worry, Alice steered her boat quickly towards them, driving between the middle and coming to a stop.

“No!” screeched Eva, and she took a swing at Alice’s canoe, causing it to rock unsteadily. “She’s trying to take it! She doesn’t even belong here!”

“Stop!” Alice cried out in earnest, dropping her oar at her feet in favor of holding onto the sides of her small boat to keep it from tipping. “Please! I’m not trying to take anything!”

“You took our world, and it doesn’t even belong to you! That treasure is mine!” Kiara took a swing at Alice’s boat as well, sending it swaying again. Water splashed at the blonde’s clothes, but she tried to keep herself steady.

“Please! I- I didn’t mean to take anything!”

“But you did.” “You took their world, didn’t you?” “Wanted it for yourself.” “Even though you don’t belong in it.” “But you don’t belong where you came from, either.” “What a terrible situation.” “No matter what, you’re the bad guy.”

Alice felt the fabric of her robes get tugged, and was pulled in Eva’s direction, her boat nearly toppling, but she managed to kick it back and keep it upright. The older woman sneered in her direction. “She thinks we believe all her lies,” she spat. “That she’s convincing enough.”

“She’s a liar!” Kiara shouted, and Alice looked over her shoulder just in time to see the girl she was supposed to love in this world take hold of the edge of Alice’s boat, and tip it. Still being held by Eva, Alice let out a shout as she was only dropped slightly, lower half dipping into the water as her eyes went wide. She kicked, splashing Kiara and Eva both, and clutched at Eva’s hands to keep from dropping into the swamp completely.

“Stop! Stop, please! I’m sorry! I never meant to lie! I just wanted to belong!”

“You’re trying to take things that don’t belong to you!” Eva growled, and tossed her into the waves.

For a moment, Alice was submerged in darkness, before she broke the surface and clutched at the edges of Kiara’s boat, gasping for air. “K-Kiara! Kiara, please! You know I never would do anything to hurt you!”

“You’re trying to take me, and I don’t belong to you! I belong to Callie!” Kiara swung her oar down hard on Alice’s fingers, and the blonde cried out in pain, but kept her hold on the wood. Tears pricked her eyes.

“She’s right.” “You’re a liar.” “No one knows who you really are.” “No one knows where you’re from.” “What you can do.” “You just came here with lies and tried to take everything.” “You tried to take everything for yourself.”

“No, no please. Listen, I’m not trying to take anything! I’ll let you go if you like. I’ll tell you everything! Please!” she begged, tears falling down her cheeks. She felt the sharp jab of an oar on her shoulder and cried out again, turning to see Eva.

“You won’t!” she shouted, and brought the oar down on Alice’s shoulder again. This time it was enough to cause Alice to lose her grip with one hand on Kiara’s boat, a sharp pain echoing from her shoulder to her back and neck. It hurt. It throbbed with pain. “You’ll keep all your secrets and lies! And you’ll try to take what isn’t yours!”

“I won’t!” A scream left Alice’s lips as again, Kiara brought her oar down onto her remaining fingers, still gripping tight at her boat. But it was no use.

“They’re not listening.” “They don’t believe you.” “They know you’re lying.” “It’s not as if you’re telling anyone the truth.” “Maybe if you told the truth.” “Maybe if you told the truth.” “Tell the truth.” “Tell them the truth.”

“I have magic!” Alice screeched, whimpering as she prepared for another of their oars to strike her. But it stopped, and Alice sobbed as she continued. It was scary to admit again, to anyone, but she continued nonetheless. “I have magic. I’m not from here. I’m from somewhere else. I can open portals, I can-”

“She’s lying!” Kiara yelled, and lifted her oar to swing again.

“No, I’m not! Please!” Alice squeezed her eyes shut tight. “I just wanted to escape! I just wanted to go somewhere better! Somewhere where I could start new! I didn’t mean to take anything. I didn’t mean to hide who I was. I didn’t mean to lie!”

It grew quiet, the sound of the waves rocking the boats and Alice’s sobs the only thing to be heard. “I didn’t mean to lie,” she repeated in a whimper, softly, once more.

She expected another blow from the oars. She expected another shout. Another swarm of the voices. But when she looked up, there was only one boat among the waters - the one that was supposed to have belonged to Kiara, clutched tight in her grasp - though she and Eva were both gone.

It was as if they’d never been here to begin with.

Confused and in pain, Alice sobbed and groaned with the effort of pulling herself into the canoe. The oar lay on the wooden floor, ready to be picked up, but for a long while Alice just sat there, crying. It wasn’t out of fear, however, though remnants of it still remained in the way she was trembling. It was out of relief for having unleashed and faced all of what she’d kept bottled up inside her head for so, so long.

She felt insane. She felt crazy. But she also felt... empty. Like there was nothing left to fear or worry over.

Finally, after an eternity, she steadied her breathing. She wondered what else there was to come. She had already faced so much of her own inner darkness. What other horrors could awake her the further she went into the Underworld?

With trembling breath, Alice turned and looked over her shoulder. She could do it. She could turn the boat around, and head back. No one would judge her. No one would even have to know.

There was a long pause as the boat rocked, stagnant in the water.

No. She would not turn back. She couldn’t.

Alice should have known that journeying into the Underworld would have consequences. The sort that would feast on her fears and dredge up things Alice wanted to keep buried.

She should have, but she hadn’t been thinking of herself when she ran off to find the gates. She had only been thinking of Kiara, and it had been enough to get her this far. After all, Kiara had been nothing but a driving light since the moment Alice met her. Darkness had followed Alice around quite a lot throughout her life, and Swynlake had always been a beacon of hope shining through glimmers, tears in the universe only Alice could see. Oftentimes, Alice saw that same light shine in Kiara’s smile.

Maybe she was being too poetic. Too serious. Maybe she had been foolish to run from the light that Kiara gave off, and head straight into the darkness. But she hadn’t been scared then. She hadn’t thought of fear or bravery or anything until now. If she had, she might have wondered if she was brave enough to travel through the Underworld alone.

She was scared, now. Trapped in a familiar white room, Alice thought of bravery and the voices boomed around her.

“Stupid.” “You were stupid to come here.” “Do you see what you’ve down now?” “You’re trapped here again and you’ll never get out.” “Stupid, stupid-” “You’re going to die here.”

Alice brought her hands up to her head and let out a scream, tears rolling down her cheeks. If she thought about it long and hard, Alice could trace the voices all the way back to her childhood. They came in times of doubt and fear. They were strongest in the mental institutions. In the little room where they kept her for experiments - the room she was in now - they were deafening.

“Please don’t scream.” The voice from the intercom calmly chastised Alice and she looked towards the large rectangular mirror next to the door, crying softly. She had always known it was a two-way mirror. It was too thick and unbreakable to be meant just for her own use. “Are you ready to begin the day, Alice?”

“I don’t belong in here!” Her voice echoed with all the times she’d screamed just that in the past, though now it was more true than ever. “I escaped! I made it to another world - one that’s better than this one! One where I’m free!”

The voices laughed.

“She thinks she escaped.” “Stupid.” “She thinks that world is real.” “Swynlake? It is real.” “No it’s not.” “It was just an illusion. It’s all in her head.” “But what about Kiara?” “Kiara is real! Kiara is real!” “Is she?” “No, she isn’t. Kiara is nothing but a fantasy, stupid girl.”

Alice shook her head as she cried, spinning around like she might be able to find the source of the voices this time. They were all so familiar and yet they’d never been this loud before. It was as if they were outside of her head whispering through the walls, rather than inside where they belonged.

“Alice, please. It’s time for breakfast. You already skipped dinner last night. Do you want to go hungry again?” the man from the intercom pressed, sighing.

“Can you hear them?” Alice stepped up closer to the mirror. She laid a hand on it and searched desperately, even knowing she would see nothing but her own reflection, staring back at her with wide, terrified eyes.

“Whatever you’re hearing, it’s all just a part of your delusions. Just like Swynlake. There’s nothing that indicates otherwise.”

He had never said that before. They didn’t know the name Swynlake. They had always just told Alice that she was crazy while at the same time trying to gather information about whether this world was real or not, and how they could access it if it were. But what if the voices were right? What if Swynlake had all been an illusion? Is that why they were so loud, now? Why she remembered them even more vividly?

“It was an illusion.” “No, it was real. We’re real, too.” “Are we?” “She can pretend that we’re not, but we’re still talking.” “We’re still talking, we must be real.” “But Swynlake isn’t. No, it isn’t...” “Swynlake is an illusion.” “And Kiara too?”

If Kiara had been nothing but an illusion - if Swynlake, and this curse of Ancient Greece, and the Underworld - if it had all been in her head, every single second, every moment...

“How long have I been here?” asked Alice, voice trembling.

“If you refuse to eat your breakfast, we’ll go ahead and get started with the first task of the day.”

She heard the door to her right unlatch and spun, expecting to see the usual orderlies. That would have been frightening enough. They were always frightening, in their pristine white clothes and their tools for subduing and sedating. 

But instead of orderlies, black shadows with sharp teeth poured in and Alice’s eyes went wide with horror. She hardly even had time to take a step back before she was overcome by the strange forces, pinning her down. She fought against them, but it seemed worthless, and in the span of a blink, the room had changed.

A fluorescent light shone down directly into her gaze, and Alice flinched away, blinking rapidly. The shadows were gone, but when she tried to move, Alice found herself restrained to the same medical table she’d been forced on so many times before.

“No. No, please,” she pleaded, but they came for her anyways. The shadows reappeared and it was like being in that hell all over again. They shocked her brain with electric waves that made Alice and the voices both cry out in pain. They cut her open, pushed fluids through needles into her skin, opened her mouth to force-feed her medications. All the while, Alice cried and screamed and the shadows stared back with nothing but their cruel smiles.

I’m still in the Underworld, she tried to tell herself.

“This is all in your head.” “Then why is she bleeding?” “It’s real. She’s been here the whole time.” “No, that’s not true.” “You have to fight it, Alice!” “You can’t fight what you can’t make sense of.” “It doesn’t make any sense.” “Nothing makes any sense to her. She’s crazy.”

“I’m not crazy.” The words came in a hoarse whisper, barely audible, broken as she felt. Her body felt used up, abused and bruised. “The whole world wants to either tell me that I’m crazy, or dissect me like a science project.” More tears burned in her eyes, flowing down worn cheeks. “I’m not crazy. I’m not a freak. I’m normal. In Swynlake, I’m normal...”

“Swynlake isn’t real Alice!”

Darkness overcame her as her mother’s voice echoed, and though she was suddenly in the white room again, sprawled on the floor like a doll that had been carelessly tossed aside, she could see glimmers of something else through the walls. Something darker. Something more ominous. “It is,” she tried to protest through the ache of her throat, softly, as another tear rolled sideways down her face. But she didn’t get up or try to move. She stayed there, distraught, as her mother appeared and stepped over to her.

“This is all just a fantasy you made up to escape this place. Because you couldn’t handle knowing you were different. That there was something wrong with you.”

Alice turned, shutting her eyes tight as her lips quivered, and buried her face into the ground, paying no mind to the fact that it felt soft and she sunk into it as though it were made of dirt. Her soft sobs were muffled, and for the first time in a while, Alice felt utterly hopeless.

“She really is crazy...” “It was all in her head.” “That’s right. Just give up, Alice.” “Give up! Give up!” “You were never meant to have anything normal.” “Stupid girl.”

And it was true, wasn’t it? What her mother said, what the voices said... There was something wrong with her. She was crazy. Delusional.

“Are you ready to start the day, Alice?”

The intercom voice had come back. Her mother was gone. And after a long moment of silence, the shadows seeped in, coming for her again.

It felt like ages that those shadows - the darkness - had a hold of her. Torturing her in the name of science and curing her in the name of healing while the voices taunted her and laughed. Alice begun to let her mind wander back to Swynlake, to her beautiful little fantasy, where there was a town full of people just like her and a lovely, radiant girl who’d held her hand and kissed her like Alice was the most perfectly normal thing.

“We have to help them.”

Kiara’s voice rang clear as a bell in her head. Alice’s eyes blinked open and she saw Kiara, sitting on the beach with a sad yet hopeful expression. “I’ll get them back,” Alice repeated a reply that wasn’t supposed to be real. It all felt disjointed, like the scenery didn’t match the script. “I promise. I won’t stop until they’re free.”

“I love you.”

Alice closed her eyes and it felt like the warmth of the sun beating down on her. Alice closed her eyes and felt something rising up in her chest like fire. Alice closed her eyes, and she knew in her heart of hearts it was true.

Swynlake was real, and so was Kiara. And she was going to make it back to them. They could try to break Alice all they wanted, but they would not break her promise.

With the cry of a warrior, Alice used brute force and determination to push herself up and break free of the restraints that had been holding her once again. The shadows came for her, and though she had no weapon, Alice ripped through them wildly with fervor with nothing but her bare hands. Her body was tired, so tired from all of the endless torture, but she just pushed on, using tactics the Alice from Ancient Greece had learned to protect her princess, Kiara.

“She’s going to win!” “Behind you!” “Watch out!” “She’s going to get herself killed!” “No, she’s going to get out!”

The voices swayed with each turn of the battle against the shadowy figures until finally, finally, they all dissipated in a sudden blinding light. Panting from exhaustion, Alice shielded her eyes until it dimmed, and when she blinked to look around this time, her mother stood a few feet away in the darkness of the Underworld Alice remembered well, now. Her robes and sandals were back along with the mud; the docks once again visible just behind her mother who stood there, watching. Shadows seemed to seep from behind her mother’s smile, and Alice sneered as she looked at her.

“She’s the one that did this to you.” “She’s the reason you went through so much pain and misery.” “She never understood.” “She tried to change you.” “She tried to have you fixed.”

“It’s your fault!” Alice spat the words like they were acidic. “It’s your fault! All of it! All the pain and the sorrow, you’re the reason for all of it! You sold father’s company! You unloaded your daughter on anyone who claimed they could cure me! You kept me inside all those years, you let them take me away to treat like a lab rat! It was you! You!”

She ran at her mother full-force, barreling down on her and growling like some sort of vicious animal. Her mother simply gave a laugh before disappearing just as Alice grew near, and when she turned quick on her heel, the voices all belonged to the woman who was supposed to keep her safe, overlapping and mismatching with hardly moving lips.

“You’re a liar.           Stupid girl.                   You’ve never been normal.              You’re insane.             Why can’t you just be normal?                            There’s something wrong with you You’re broken.                                                  Broken. Broken. Broken!”

“I am not!” Alice screamed again. Her tears had dried by now, and her face was red with anger. She struggled to breathe deeply enough, fists clenched at her sides.

“She thinks she’s normal, but she hears voices.” “Well, not all the time.” “Some of the time.” “We’re always here.” “Sometimes, we just… go away.” “I don’t like that.” “She does.” “But she thinks she’s normal.”

“I am normal!” Alice screeched, and her mother laughed, walking towards her.

“No, you’re not. You’re crazy. Over-emotional. Hot-tempered. Delusional... You never make any sense. You’re as crazy as they come.” Her mother laughed again, and Alice shook her head.

“No. No, I’m not.” She blinked her eyes and the white room flashed around her again for just a second, causing her to jump. “I’m not…”

She had fought her way out of the room. She had proved to herself that Swynlake was real, because after all, here she was again, in the Underworld.

“What if it’s just an illusion again?” “Things aren’t always what they appear to be-”

“No.” Alice cut the voices off early this time, and she stepped up to her mother, who’s smile begun to fall as she looked at her daughter quizzically instead. “I was never lying. Swynlake is real. Kiara is real. Eva is real. You? You’re not real at all. Just the Underworld trying to keep me from going any farther.”

It was meant for this image of her mother as much as it was for the voices. They were not real. They would not keep her from her promise even if they followed her all the while as she journeyed through the Underworld.

“You’re just not normal.”

This time, her mother’s voice was quiet. Even the image of her, standing in front of Alice, changed. The shadows were gone and her expression just read confusion.

Alice had never wanted to be boring. Sometimes normal meant just that - boring. But she’d never wanted to be crazy, either.

“I don’t understand why you won’t just let people help you.”

“She doesn’t need help.” “There’s nothing wrong with her.” “She’s perfectly fine.”

...But was she?

Alice thought about everything she had gone through; what she had suffered and what she had set into motion herself. She thought about all the odd things about her and how she’d always thought they were bad; how she’d always feared she was exactly what everyone said from the start. “I don’t need any help,” she replied to her mother quietly, calming down.

“But you’re crazy, dear.”

Alice looked up at her mother, at the desperate gaze she could remember being turned on her in every psychiatrist’s office in town. Was she crazy? Alice no longer knew if she could say.

“Maybe,” she whispered. “But I am who I am. I can’t change that. And… I don’t think I want to.”

Changing what made Alice into Alice would take away Swynlake... and Kiara.

“I’m sorry,” Alice choked out, suddenly overcome. This wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t real. But still, it felt more like she was choosing a foreign world and strangers over the last piece of family she had, horrible as her mother was, than it did when she’d come through the portal to Swynlake the first time. Back then, it hadn’t taken any thought, she’d simply acted. But now, she was forced to walk away from her mother’s sad eyes. “I belong here. In Swynlake. Maybe even in the Underworld, I don’t… I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t keep standing here being afraid that you were right. That everyone was right. I have to… I have to go. I have to… I have to try and help people.”

Her mother stayed silent, simply standing there as if frozen in time. Alice took in a deep, shaky breath before she started to step back towards the docks she had seen before. Eventually, she turned away completely, eyes filling with what she hoped were the last of her tears, which she tried to blink back.

The Doors of Judgement had closed on Alice and suddenly there was nothing.

It was the suffocating kind of darkness. It surrounded her and blinded her completely. Not even the door she’d come through could be scene in this vast amount of endless pitch black. She was unnerved enough after the whole Judgement Door and Scale of Worth scenario, and with good reason, but now it was terror at having lost access to her vision that clutched a hold of Alice’s chest tightly, making it harder to breathe.

There’s a reason why I’ve always loved light so much, Alice thought: Because what lies in the dark is unknown.

She knew that more than anything. It was why she loved neon lights and strings of Christmas bulbs and the salt lamp in her room that was always aglow from within - they reminded you that there was light, even in the darkness.

However, there was no light here. There was nothing but the sound of Alice’s breathing and the stepping of her feet as she cautiously ventured forward, arms stretched out in front of her.

The ground still felt like the woods and the meadows, dirt and earth beneath her feet. Though Alice had never personally connected with nature in particular, she did like her flowers and would definitely do whatever she could to help the planet. Right now, however, the earth was all she had, and so she found herself depending on every other sense, including her sandals on the ground.

She hoped her eyes would adjust. Alice always hoped for the optimistic answer while waiting for or struggling through the realistic situations. In this case in particular, she was just a blind girl walking through…. really, who knows where? How could a place be so dark that you can’t even see your feet?

You’re going to die in here.

The voice was clear as day in her head. It was her own voice talking back to her, like it liked to do when Alice was scared or alone. You’re going to die in here, with nothing, knowing nothing, and having saved no one.

She shook the darkness off. She could feel it, physical, like somehow there were black hands tugging at her shoulders, trying to pull her down. It had never felt so tangible before. But now it was so heavy that Alice picked up her pace as she struggled to take her mind elsewhere.

She instantly thought of the doors. The doors she had just come through; the ones that had weighed out all of her decisions for her to see. 

To see if her ugliness outweighed her light. 

She thought of the doors as she felt like the earth was inclining, and getting harder to walk through. Her shoes sunk into the dirt much easier here, and suddenly the ground felt as though it was engulfing her entire foot and pulling her down, a wetness covering her skin.

It became slippery, and Alice was thrown enough to reflexively brace herself against the ascending ground with her hands. They sunk deep into the dirt, too, and the blonde girl realized she was slipping in mud.

Her hands felt dirty. So did her feet.

So did her mind.

Alice never claimed to be perfect. She’d just wanted to be herself and for that to be normal. But instead she was herself and that made her crazy, a word she very much hated. And as she grunted and began to climb the only thing she could actually feel in this abyss of nothingness, she wondered why that always was.

Was she a worse person than she thought?

Everything she’d done, she’d either done for the freedom to be herself or to survive. She talked about her magic and the place she’d spied through the small fractures in the universe ever since she was little. “They’re shiny,” she’d told her friends on the playground at school. “I can see a whole other world in them, Mum,” she’d told her mother in earnest as she grew older. The problem was that the special world through Alice’s special portals had been perceived as a fantasy, and Alice eventually got too old to be insisting such a thing was real while expecting to be believed. 

“It was like hearing you argue that Santa was real after I’d spent years wrapping all of your presents,” her mother had tried to explain one day. “I knew it was just a story. I didn’t know why you still believed it was real.”

But it was real.

“Was it really, though?” 

The sudden voice behind her made Alice freeze, hands still gripping chunks of mud and knees now firmly buried in the dirt as well. Whatever hill she was climbing, it wasn’t easy to get over, and not having her sight available was making it extremely difficult to concentrate when every few minutes a voice was popping out at her, doubting her.

And now the voice was real. Isn’t that great?

But Alice knew the voice, at least. It was a familiar one, even if not friendly. It belonged to her mother. She’d heard it before many places where her mother was nowhere to be found, just as real as she’d heard it now. This was nothing new. She would just tune her out.

She kept climbing through the mud, and eventually felt a slight descent that momentarily got up her hopes for a plateau before the ground began slanting upward again.

It was real - that world, the one she’d always spoken of to her peers and to her family - it was real as ever and it existed. Alice was currently living in it. 

That should make her feel validated; make her feel confident and like she could kick them all in the face with it. But the thing was, she had tried that before - had tried to show people that a world she called Wonderland was real - and it hadn’t ended like she’d wanted it to.

She’d wanted it to end with understanding. With validation all on it’s own; with knowing she was right and they were all wrong. That she wasn’t crazy. That she didn’t need medication. Just love.

Instead, she’d wound up snatched up by some corporation to be experimented on. Was it a government of some form? It seemed official enough, if you ignored the inhumanity. Alice never did find that out.

But she did find out she was right.

So why was it that, when she thought of that pile of rocks almost outweighing the bad, she thought about the decision to be so stubborn in insistence that she was right in the first place? Had that been a bad choice? Was that bad enough to count? Technically, she didn’t do anything evil or harmful to anyone else. But she hadn’t known when to shut up, and it had landed her in a place of nightmares.

Was never shutting up about Swynlake one of the bad decisions, maybe? One she’d come to regret because it risked someone from her world being able to find her, here, somehow in the future? 

Or would it had to have been something she’d done to cause harm directly to others?

“You forced yourself on her.” The voice came again, clear as day, but her own this time, - no longer just in her head. It startled Alice so much that she slipped a ways down another mass of ground thick with mud. Taking deep breaths in order to steady herself, she froze once more as she head the sound of wailing far off in the distance. It howled and came closer and closer until it blew towards Alice as a gust of wind, pushing her hair back from her face. It lasted only for a minute or so, but still, a shiver went down her spine as the blonde gathered the nerve to continue her way through the darkness.

“Death isn’t so bad,” she told herself, and kept telling herself, again trying to think of anything but the voices. But as the wailing increased, so did the whispers of multiple people, sometimes louder and sometimes farther away.

“You forced yourself on that girl.” “She said it herself.” “And you were already dating Ronald.” “You are such a slut.”

Alice shut her eyes tight as she tried not to remember that night. But again, she thought of the rocks weighing out everything bad she’d ever done, and wondered if that entire time-frame of shit had to do with a majority of them. Alice could care less whether or not a religion declared premarital sex was some grave sin, but perhaps it was already a handful of Not Good when she had started sleeping with a boy she’d only ever seen at parties. It was just a bit of fun, and Alice had really liked him so much. He’d told her she was pretty and kissed her like it, too. The sex hadn’t been phenomenal, but they’d both been young - just teenagers.

The thing was, Elizabeth was very lovely. They had found almost a mutual comfort in one another feeling awkward at parties. Apparently, Liz had already graduated school, and so never really knew anyone there very well...

Besides Alice.

She and Alice had sat on bathroom floors and smoked from papers while they talked about nothing at all, and it was lovely. As lovely as Elizabeth, who had also told Alice that she was more beautiful than she thought she was.

Alice had thought that was a sign. She had thought, when she leaned in, Elizabeth would kiss her and maybe smile and it would spark something. She hadn’t even been thinking about Ronald at the time.

Was that enough for a few stones, maybe? Hurting Ronald?

“Oh fuck, get away from me!” She could hear Liz now, far away but still audible and echoing in the darkness. “I’m not a lesbo, you fucking freak!”

The words dug deep into Alice’s soul, and the fact that it was punctuated with another howl of wind carrying an eerie moan only added to the feeling of dread that settled heavy in her stomach even though her heart beat wildly.

Had being gay been wrong?

It was a quiet voice, purely in Alice’s mind, that whispered this time. It was unsure and hurt, and sounded like Alice as a child. The blonde just swallowed deeply and kept moving, though her chest now felt ripped apart with all those possibilities that would almost certainly never be answered.

“You’re nothing but a liar. A liar. There’s something wrong with you.” She heard her mother’s voice again, clear as day and getting closer. Alice tried desperately to shake it off. But shaking off her mother was harder than trying to sweep off fear of the unknown; more difficult to brush past than her own insecurities.

After all, Alice’s mother was the root of those very things.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” her mother’s voice echoed among the wailing, and Alice squeezed her eyes shut even more tightly. She couldn’t see, anyhow, and she thought maybe if she concentrated hard enough, she could tune the voices out. She’d done it before.

“You’re such a disappointment.”

Alice’s foot slipped as she began to descend another muddy bank, and Alice kept on sliding until she came to a stop, and breathed heavily, eyes wide open. It was with shock as she sat there for a moment that she realized she could see the spots on her beige robes that weren’t splattered with dirt. It was the first thing she’d been able to vaguely focus on in so long. Quickly, Alice scrambled to her feet and began climbing, marveling as more and more light began to break through the darkness, and she could see the wet ground beneath her and her limbs as they came into focus.

“It’s not real! It’s all in your head, Alice! You can’t do anything!”

Her mother’s voice was loud as Alice slowed, breath ragged with the extent of her energy. Another chill raced down her spine as a distant and faded howl of wind wailed past her and blew her hair in a frenzy, but now she wondered what she was about to walk into next.

You can’t do anything. The phrase repeated as a thought in Alice’s head, sad, as she hesitantly continued forward, squinting as the light grew stronger. You’re in over your head. 

What if that were true, and she couldn’t save Callie and Simba and other people Kiara cared about?

What if the voices were right?

What if her mother was right?

Alice stopped to rub at her eyes as they finally adjusted once more to the lighting. It was still dark, but just in the distance she could make out the outline of a person among dimly lit docks that extended into what looked like deep, murky water. That didn’t seem so bad, she thought, and maybe this person was even someone that could help.

It wasn’t until she got closer and the features on the person became more pronounced that she realized it was a woman. It gripped Alice with another sharp clench of uneasiness, a sense of dread so powerful that the young woman began to slow in her steps Suddenly, she stopped, somehow knowing she should not take another step.

“Didn’t you miss me?”

In the short time it took Alice to inhale, her mother was suddenly in front of her, as though having teleported to close the still rather large gap that had been between them. Unable to find her breath, Alice did not scream as she stared into her mother’s tired and angry eyes, but simply stood, shocked and terrified.

She was real as day, in that Alice could count all the lines on her face and the makeup that caked and creased just under her eyes. Her mother was wearing that black dress, the one she always wore when she was upset. But her smile was what chilled Alice to the core, so lifeless that it almost felt painted on with her lipstick.

“You’re not real,” Alice finally choked out in a whisper. The water knocked the boats into the docks gently with each wave.

“You’re going to die in here,” she laughed, and it was with a blinding light that Alice let out a small shout, turning about until she found herself in a pale, white room. She blinked in search of something more than that and her eyes zeroed in on a door that was next to a large, rectangular mirror.

Her blood ran cold.

The whir of a security camera drew Alice’s attention to the tiny piece of equipment hooked up to the ceiling behind her, just out of grasp. As she stared into the lense, she felt her whole body tremble and her lower lip quaked.

“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be true.”

But as she walked up to the nearby wall and placed a cautious palm to the solid surface,seeing nothing but clean skin and the sleeves of a hospital gown on part of her arm, Alice felt her eyes fill with tears that quickly started to spill.

She knew exactly where she was, and the fact that she didn’t know how she had suddenly come to be there again just made it all the more terrifying.

“Are you ready to begin the day, Alice?” A detached voice crackled from somewhere behind the walls. With a turn towards the door, Alice shook her head, reaching up to wipe away tears as she backed away.

Alice was, simply put, a mess in this world, and any other she found herself in. She’d been a mess back in the world she’d grown up in, she was a mess in Swynlake, and she was a mess in Ancient Greece. The only difference between Alice in all these worlds were the types of messes she became.

Back in the world she once called home, she’d been a rebellious mess. She’d always been too stubborn and prideful to let go of what she knew to be the truth, and it had caused her nothing but trouble. She’d run around, creating more messes than she had already, what with her magic and her fighting with peers who found her to be too odd. She’d made a mess of her life so badly that she’d had to be committed - unfairly so, but still - and then she’d had to find a way out of all the messes she had made.

In Swynlake, Alice was a quiet mess, slowly spinning out of control with no one to see but herself. She was a bundle of secrets carefully strewn together with lies. The problem was that she had convinced herself that her life was not a mess. Her life here was almost normal, even if she did constantly battle the instinctual need to rely on her magic, and lose. Even if she did feel the urge to peek back in on her childhood home every so often just to make sure nothing had changed there. She was a mess of conflicting impulses, wanting to be normal while at the same time feeling like she should embrace all of the things that made her different; wanting to be true to herself and yet, feeling the need to hide so much of who she was.

Here, in Ancient Greece, Alice was a mess of decisions. Never mind the fact that her family had messed up their own lives in this tale, Alice had continually made decisions that led to… well, a mess. After all, she’d been the one to decide running away was the best option for herself and Kiara, and look what had happened: They’d been caught and sold into slavery, separated for good.

And now, Alice was afraid she was landing herself in yet another mess she did not know how to handle as she found herself descending the staircase of a random, pitch black pit in the middle of the forest.

She had told herself she was doing it for Kiara. She had told herself she was doing it to help others. She had told herself that she had nothing to lose anyhow, because even if she died trying, Kiara still had other people to love and come to her aid, and Eva could always hire a replacement for her.

She had told herself death wasn’t all that scary, just the things leading up to it, usually.

And so, as she came to the bottom of a stairwell, she steeled herself with a deep breath meant to center her and give her strength. It didn’t really do much of either. Instead, uneasiness sat in Alice’s stomach as she looked around at the woods and found different paths stemming from the spot in which she stood.

It reminded her of a dream she’d had when she was little. She was in a very dark place with trees all around her, and talking animals that kept trying to get her more and more lost. It should have been scary, but to a girl like Alice who’d been forced to stay inside most of her life, the idea of getting lost felt quite enticing.

At the moment, however, Alice did not feel like getting lost. She knew she was standing in the Underworld - or, at least, close to it - and that did not seem like the sort of place one would do well to get lost in.

She looked around at the paths, and was also reminded of a poem. I looked at all the trees and didn’t know what to do. The quote echoed in her head. Alice, most certainly did not know what to do.

And so, she did the only thing she could think of: She stood at the beginning of each path, staring off into the distance of every single one, until she finally stood on a brick path that felt… right. There was a pull, somehow, as if someone had reached into Alice’s chest, grabbed a hold of her stomach, and was gently pulling her forward. She allowed herself to follow the tug, and eventually, came face to face with a mountain.

She blew air up towards her blonde locks in frustration. No one had said anything about climbing a literal mountain. But, she was here, and there was no stopping it now. And so she followed that tug, occasionally tripping over twigs and getting her robes caught in branches that reached out to her as if trying to stop her.

Aice would not stop. Alice climbed and climbed until she reached the very top, at which point she took a moment to breathe as she looked out among the fields below.

It was a sight to behold. There was… well, just about anything you could think of, from towering mansions to fields of flowers. The descent into the valleys came with an ease that climbing the mountain did not posses, and soon Alice was among spirits with a certain glow of happiness and peace to their expressions. It made Alice smile herself as she walked among them, and noted a small boy who’s empty hands suddenly now held a large ice cream cone that had not been there a moment before.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice whispered, and she moved among them all, watching as things appeared in dead spaces, hearing laughter and feeling like this was some strange sort of home to those long passed, one where they were happy and could have whatever they needed or desired.

How lovely it would be to live in such a place, even after death, she thought, but kept journeying onward. She could not stay here. She was not dead yet. She did not belong.

But then, did Alice ever really belong anywhere?

Eventually, she found herself descending a small hill and stumbling upon a rather large door. There was nothing on either side but darkness, though at the very top rested a scale, and Alice tilted her head, finding this rather peculiar. “What on earth could this be?” she wondered aloud, and suddenly, she saw the glimmer of a coin dropping from thin air onto one side of the large brass scale, weighing it down.

“Curious,” she breathed, and this time, she almost missed the dark, jagged form of a rock as it fell onto the other side of the scale, balancing things out. It fell with a harder thud, and Alice’s brows furrowed. “What could it possibly be weighing coins and rocks for?”

“Your life, of course.”

Alice nearly jumped at the voice, and turned to face a strange spirit she’d never seen before. It looked at her, head tilted and a furrow to it’s own brows. He was an old man, with wild hair and a pocket watch. He reminded Alice of someone her father might have grown old to look like, though he was never given the chance.

“I’m sorry- What did you say?” she asked, and she heard the clang of two gold coins falling onto the scale behind her. “It’s measuring my life? How do you figure that?”

The ghostly man gave a shrug, and smiled slightly. “It’s what the door does. It weighs out your life, the tips of each side of the scale. All the good versus all the bad.”

This made no sense to Alice. What right did a door have to weigh out her life? She turned back to it and shook her head as three stones fell onto the other side, tipping the scale in favor of what she could only assume to be the bad. “That’s bloody unfair! I shouldn’t have to stand here and watch as it judges me for the things I’ve done.” Red colored the blonde’s freckled cheeks, and she stormed up to the door, pulling and pushing on the large iron handles. It barely moved under her weight, and above her she heard more sounds of clanging and thudding on either side of the scale.

She whipped around to face the man again. “Why won’t it open?” she inquired of him with a stomp to her foot. It wasn’t his fault, but Alice felt an extreme frustration as the possibilities of what each stone represented flooded through her mind.

“It will open when it has finished, my dear,” the old man said. “You mustn’t be in such a hurry.”

“But I’m wasting time!” She had come here with a purpose: To free everyone from the trap of hell they’d found themselves in somewhere deep within the Underworld, in a prison Alice still had yet to find. She didn’t have time to wait for this door to go through her entire life, judging every action she’d ever made.

“There is no time wasted here,” the man said calmly, and chuckled a bit. “I do have to say - I knew when I saw yet another living soul enter this place, you all must be very determined to reach somewhere in particular. We don’t get many visitors that are here to sightsee. I’m glad I followed you.” He stepped - or rather, smoothly glided over - closer to Alice, then. “Tell me, where is it you’re in a hurry to get to?”

More clangs and thuds as stones and coins dropped above her head. Alice could hardly stand the sound, and all this man’s talking wasn’t helping. She tucked her hair behind her ears, which also felt heated and red at the tips, and then crossed her arms. “There’s a prison somewhere down here. I know it. I saw someone being dragged into the forest and then down into a pit after talking ill of our Queen,” she spat, and looked back up at the door when there was a momentary silence, slightly hopeful - only to watch as another stone came down hard on the ever growing pile of rocks. She tried not to count each one, and instead turned back to the man. “They’re trapped, and it’s not right. Someone’s got to try and help them, and that someone ought to be me.”

Another clang. “Why ought it be you?” the man asked quizzically.

“Because it just ought,” Alice replied. Another stone thudded into place.

“Yes, but why?” he pressed further, quirking a bushy white brow.

“Because it ought to be someone who doesn’t belong here in the first place!” she yelled, uncrossing her arms. Another stone fell, shifting the pile of rocks a bit, and Alice turned on her heel and ran up to the door, pounding on it. “Open up! Let me through already! There are people who need help! People with loved ones who care about them and miss them terribly! People who need them! Open! The! Door!”

Alice pounded once more with her fists, stones and coins rapidly falling... and then there was silence. She took in ragged breaths, and quickly felt overcome with regret for her outburst, eyes filling with tears that she blinked back. Sniffling, she turned her blonde head up to look at the scale, and after a few moments of staring at the side of rocks that weighed heavy, five more golden coins fell to join the other side, and outweighed the balance in favor of good.

A breath of disbelief escaped Alice as a strange clanking sound was heard, and she stood back as the door begun to open, slowly creaking out into someplace new.

She turned around to face the strange man, who wore nothing but a smile, and gave her a nod. “It is finished,” he chuckled, and held up a finger. “The prison you seek is far from here. The journey will not be easy. I don’t think you will be as successful as you may hope, however, I do wish to be proven wrong. Good luck, dear.”

And with that, he turned to drift away, and Alice blinked as she watched him go.

Terrified, however, that the door may close on her and she’d have to wait again, Alice turned and ran through the two towering wooden planks, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found herself safe on the other side.

The Lions Roar - First Aid Kit

But don’t you come here and say I didn’t warn you about the way your world can alter. And oh, how you try to command it all, still, every single time it all shifts one way or the other. 

The first song on the playlist is really more about Alice before she decides to descend into hell. It’s about her backstory both in and out of this fake world of Ancient Greece, and how she always tries to take control of things in her life but ends up making them worse. (I.E. Trying to prove her magic is real and getting experimented on; trying to run away with Kiara only to get them both caught and sold as slaves.) Though it has an almost happy, folk-y tune - which is great for the misleading nature that can be found in the happiness of some of the new Swynlake’s residents - the lyrics delve into the fact that Alice can be a coward and a fool, hints at her coming journey and how she has no idea what’s in store for her, and even gives nods towards Kiara, who was the reason she decided to journey to the Underworld to begin with. 

Her Name is Alice - Shinedown

I invite you to a world where there is no such thing as time, and every creature lends themselves to change your state of mind. And the girl that chased the rabbit, drank the wine, and took the pill has locked herself in limbo to see how it truly feels.

The second song on the playlist is very clearly meant for Alice’s descent into the Underworld. The playlist starts it’s more sinister tone as Alice walks among the ghosts trapped in limbo and takes the staircase down into hell, where she must choose a path. I like this song because it is very much foreshadowing what lies in Hell, and the odd lyrics mimic the messing with her head that will begin happening very soon. As Alice goes through Asphodel Meadows, the strange mixture of hope she feels in such a seemingly peaceful place mixes oddly with the gut feeling that there is worse yet to come. The conflicting nature of the song also represents the weighing of Alice’s coins at The Judgement Door.

Haunted - Poe

I need to get my bearings. I’m lost, and the shadows keep on changing. And I’m haunted by the lies that I have loathed, and actions I have hated. I’m haunted by the lies that wove the web inside my haunted head.

As Alice begins her journey through the Stygian Marshes, the Underworld begins to mess with her mind. The creepy tone and nature of this song is very, very fitting, as are the lyrics. Alice finds herself doubting her abilities, and as she makes her way though the muddy slopes of Lust blindly, she thinks of all those coins measured at the Judgement Door and what they could mean. She thinks about her past back in her own world, and her mother, and everything she’s endured - all the thoughts that haunt her subconsciously. She wonders if she will be able to make it to the Prison and free Kiara’s loved ones, as well as everyone else. She hears her mother’s voice. Or at least, she thinks she hears it. It seems the further she ventures, the louder it gets... Until she sees her mother, plain as day, standing before the docks of Greed.

Under The Water - The Pretty Reckless

There’s not a time for being younger, and all my friends are enemies. And if I cried unto my mother, no she wasn’t there, she wasn’t there for me. Don’t let the water drag you down. Broken lines across my mirror show my face, all red and bruised. And though I screamed and I screamed, well no one came running. No I wasn’t saved, I wasn’t safe from you.

This song has a sad, gloomy sound to it’s beginning. Which perfectly captures Alice’s feelings as she sees her mother, who lures her in with soft crying and words of apology. Instinctively, Alice goes to her, before everything suddenly changes. Just like the music, a drastic wave suddenly washes over Alice’s mother, and it’s as though all of Alice’s fears have come to torture her. Memories from her past swarm her in the form of distorted figures coming from the water and trapping her down, trying to experiment on her or force her to swallow various medications that make her sick. It’s a hopeless feeling as Alice fights back, terrified the entire time that she has lost the freedom she finally found upon coming to Swynlake.

Strange - Tokio Hotel feat. Kerli

A freak of nature, stuck in reality. I don’t fit the picture. I’m not what you want me to be, sorry. Under the radar, out of the system, caught in the spotlight - that’s my existence. You want me to change, but all I feel is strange.

This song is very much about Alice fighting off her fears and finally facing the real big bad behind them all - her mother. Her mother has never accepted Alice for who she is, has never believed a word out of her mouth, and has done nothing but bring Alice unhappiness. She is literally the cause of every awful thing Alice has been through, save for her father dying. This song is about Alice letting go of her mother - of never feeling good enough, of always feeling unloved - and moving on from it.

The Poison - All American Rejects

Can’t you see the faces melting as the sun rains from their eyes? Who are you to keep your head with the hearts that you hang behind? Look at yourself, look in the mirror, don’t you see a lie that you tell yourself again a thousand times? And the truth that makes us laugh will make you cry. You wanna die? No?

This song pin-points Alice’s moving on from her mother as she boards a boat to sail upon the swamp in Gluttony. She sees her mother everywhere and feels strangely at peace knowing that they were just to different to ever be fixed and have a working relationship, as is reflected through the majority of the beginning of the song. The tune also has this incredible sudden turn as the last of Alice’s fears - that she’s a liar in this new town, a fraud pretending to be something she’s not - comes in the form of Eva and Kiara on boats in the swamp of Greed, trying to sink her boat. Eventually, she makes it past them, shaken still.

Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence + The Machine

I must become a lion-hearted girl, ready for a fight before I make the final sacrifice. We raise it up, this offering. We raise it up... This is a gift. It comes with a price. Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

As Alice makes it past all of her fears, she finds herself in the deepest part of the marshes. She is rattled by all she has seen, and doubt hangs heavier on her than ever. She starts to question why she has come here, and why she thought she could ever accomplish anything. Just as she is overcome with these insecurities, her boat is nearly tipped by the Lernaean Hydra. Alice finds herself wanting to flee, trying to turn back, believing she is not strong enough - but that is not an option. Instead, it is as she is capsized into the water and sees a literal glimmer that gives her hope in the form of a miraculous sword - the Vorpal blade - that she summons the strength she needs to get back up and fight. 

Hero - Skillet

Who’s gonna fight for what’s right? Who’s gonna help us survive? We’re in the fight of our lives, and we’re not ready to die. Who’s gonna fight for the weak? Who’s gonna make ‘em believe? I’ve got a hero living in me. 

This song is literally the perfect score for Alice’s battle with the Hydra. It is with her renewed sense of hope and strength that she takes on this beast, endlessly chopping heads off only for more to grow back. Every time she is afraid she must give up, she reminds herself of why she came here in the first place, and begins anew, until the Hydra is finally defeated.

Ordinary World - Red

And I don’t cry for yesterday. There’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive. Every world is my world. 

The last song on the playlist is as hopeful as Alice has become, having defeated the Hydra. It underscores her journey through the rest of the marshes until she lands on the shore and docks her boat. Face to face with The Wall, Alice is determined to make it to the other side somehow. She’s just defeated the Hydra - she knows there has to be a way. But it’s as she argues with a Fallen Angel that she finds herself dizzied. She falls unconscious before waking up by the Kohaku River, now also the river Lethe for a short period, and has to make a choice: Forget everything she’s just been through, seeing as the world has reverted itself and she failed in freeing the Prisoners of Dis? Or remember it all, every gory detail, and live with it, along with the renewed strength and hope it has given her?