The Infinite Deck

The throne room pulsed with the Deck’s heartbeat. Velvet curtains fluttered in an invisible wind, and the stained glass—roses, blades, a grinning cat—shifted and rearranged. Cards spun, whispering their secrets.

Something's wrong. 

I felt it: a tremor, a shift in the hum tethering Wonderland. The Deck’s pulse stuttered like a skipped beat. I rose from my throne, the movement as automatic as breathing, my crimson gown trailing behind me like spilled blood.

“Silence,” I whispered to the cards. They froze midair, their edges shimmering faintly. They obeyed because they were mine—part of the order I had built from chaos. 

I moved toward the heart of the room where the Deck floated—a towering, intricate web of interlocking cards suspended in space. It was more than a structure. It was Wonderland itself, a living organism. The hum faltered, the cards flickering like a dying lightbulb.

“Majesty.” A voice rasped from the shadows behind me. The Jabberwocky. It always came unbidden, like a bad memory that refuses to stay buried.

“Speak,” I commanded, without turning.

Its clawed feet scraped against the marble as it stepped into the light. The creature was a patchwork of nightmare—scaled wings, spiked tail, and molten eyes that seemed to see through flesh to the bone beneath. Its breath reeked of ash and rot. “The Deck quakes.”

“I noticed,” I snapped.

Its head tilted. “A contender rises.”

The words hit like a dagger to the spine.“Who?”

The Jabberwocky’s grin widened, jagged teeth glinting. “A girl. Alice.”

The Jabberwocky dissolved into smoke. ‘Kill her, Majesty, or she will unmake you.’ The thought gripped me: icy, unrelenting. Wonderland was mine. I wouldn’t let it fall.

I descended the grand staircase, my footsteps sharp against the marble. 

Outside the courtyard was still. The grass, usually shifting shades of emerald and sapphire, lay dull and flat. The sky churned above in deep, molten red, its clouds crawling across the horizon like spilled ink. Cards fluttered nervously at the edges of my vision, their whispers indistinct but insistent as I stepped onto the mosaic-tiled ground.

And there she was.

Alice stood at the courtyard’s center, her hair loose, sunlight catching its strands. In her hand, the Wild Card—the mark of a contender.The Deck’s whisper turned into a roar in my ears, its pulse erratic and angry. I closed my fists, nails pressing into my palms. She’s nothing. A child. A pretender.

“You don’t belong here,” I said, my voice slicing through the air like a blade.

Alice turned, slow and deliberate.

“Neither do you,” she said simply, her tone as casual as if we were discussing the weather. “But here we are.”

I stepped closer, letting the weight of my presence fill the space between us. The ground trembled beneath my heels, the tiles cracking in thin, spiderweb fractures. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re the Queen of Hearts,” she said, meeting my gaze without flinching. “Ruler of Wonderland. Keeper of the Deck. Mistress of rules, order, and control.” Her lips curved into a faint smirk. “You’re a legend.”

“Then you know what happens to legends when they’re challenged.”

“They lose,” she said.

My stomach twisted, but I didn’t let it show. The arrogance of her. “You think you’re special? You’re just the Deck’s latest toy.”

Her smirk widened. “But you’re the one it’s bored with.” She held up the Wild Card, the edges glowing faintly. “It called me here. Maybe you should ask yourself why.”

I clenched my jaw. “The Deck is mine.”

“Is it?” Alice stepped forward, and the Wild Card flared brighter. The courtyard responded, the ground rippling as though it were liquid. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like it’s starting to crack under your watch.”

A low growl rumbled from the distance. The Jabberwocky. Its arrival was a shadow that spilled over the courtyard. Alice didn’t flinch as the creature slithered into view, its molten eyes locking onto the Wild Card. “The Deck stirs,” it rasped, its voice a tremor in my bones. “The ritual begins.”

“The Deck is not ready,” the force of my fury making the courtyard quake.

The Jabberwocky tilted its head, its grin maddeningly wide. “The Deck disagrees, Majesty.”

Before I could retort, the ground beneath us bucked violently, tiles flying into the air like broken teeth. The world around us twisted, folding into itself, the sky shattering into a kaleidoscope of colors. The Deck’s power radiated from Alice. She looked around, startled but unafraid.

My focus snapped to the chaos erupting around us. The courtyard was dissolving into a freakish nightmare—bridges of cards formed and collapsed, grass turning into streams of liquid gold. My hand shot out, summoning the Deck’s power, forcing it back into balance. I felt it resist, an almost physical weight pressing against me. 

With a roar of effort, I stabilized the terrain, the shifting world grinding to a halt. “That,” I said, glaring at Alice, “is what happens when you play with forces you don’t understand.”

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Looks like Wonderland’s just waking up.”

The Jabberwocky loomed behind her, its presence oppressive. “The first trial starts now,” it hissed. “Prepare yourselves, contenders. The Deck has chosen the path.”

I stared at Alice, the Wild Card still glowing in her hand. The light from it spilled over her like an aura.

“This is a mistake,” I said to the Jabberwocky.

Its molten eyes locked onto mine, unblinking. “The Deck makes no mistakes.”

Alice watched me, silent but steady, the Wild Card spinning between her fingers like it had always belonged there.

The world dissolved into darkness, and I fell.

It wasn’t a sensation I was used to—the weightlessness, the disorientation. Wonderland always obeyed me. Its laws bent to my will. Now, those laws were gone, replaced by a cold, infinite nothingness. The fall ended abruptly, and I landed on something solid. But even that felt wrong, like the ground wasn’t ground at all but the idea of it. My heels clicked against the surface, the sound hollow and distant.

The void around me hummed with energy, and then light bloomed, revealing an endless expanse of floating chessboards. They hovered in layers, each one massive, stretching into infinity. The boards were rotating and shifting, pieces moving as though alive. Black and white squares glimmered like polished obsidian and moonstone. A rook the size of a house shuddered past, dragging its marble base across the edge of a board, leaving sparks in its wake.

Alice stood a few feet away on a separate board. She didn’t look afraid, and that infuriated me.

“This is the trial?” she called out, her voice steady. “A chess match?”

I stepped forward, summoning authority. “This isn’t a game. It’s survival.”

Her smirk returned, infuriatingly casual. “I like my chances.”

The Deck rumbled, a low vibration that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The chessboards shifted, aligning into a single massive playing field. Pieces materialized around us, pawns and knights, bishops and queens. They weren’t mere stone or wood—they breathed, their surfaces pulsing with veins of light.

One pawn turned to me, its face blank but its intent clear: allegiance.

I extended my hand, and the entire black side of the board snapped into attention. The pieces moved with precision, as though my thoughts were their commands. It felt natural, instinctive. I didn’t just control the pieces; I am the pieces.

Alice raised her hand, and the white pieces turned to her. But instead of mirroring my fluid control, they hesitated, jittering as if unsure. Then Alice did something I didn’t expect—she laughed.

“Alright,” she said, stepping onto a square. “Let’s see how this works.”

The pawns surged forward, but not in neat rows like mine. They scattered, some climbing onto other pieces, others leaping into the air. One burst apart, its shards reforming into a jagged knight. Alice wasn’t commanding them—not in the way I was—but the board was responding to her anyway, like chaos itself had a voice.

The first clash came hard and fast. My rook smashed into her knight, the impact sending shockwaves through the arena. The board tilted, and I had to steady myself. Around us, pieces began to morph—pawns growing fangs, bishops shedding their human shapes to become spectral, twisting figures.

This isn’t right. The rules—

But there were no rules, not anymore. The Deck was unraveling. My moves became harder to calculate as her side refused to play by logic. One of her pawns launched itself at me, its form elongating into a spindly creature with sharp, grasping hands. I crushed it with a thought, the black queen sweeping across the board to eliminate the threat.

Alice didn’t flinch. “You’re good at breaking things,” she said, dodging as one of her knights exploded behind her.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped, forcing my remaining pawns into a tight phalanx. “You think you’re clever, but you’re out of your depth.”

She pointed to the edges of the battlefield, where the chessboards were beginning to crumble into the void. “Am I? Look around, Your Majesty. Wonderland’s falling apart, and you’re just pushing it along.”

My focus faltered for a fraction of a second, and that was enough. A rook from Alice’s side slammed into mine, shattering it. The shock rattled through me as though I’d taken the hit myself. I dropped to one knee, gasping. The arena shifted again, the pieces moving faster now, their shapes growing less distinct.

Alice stood over me, the Wild Card glowing in her hand. She looked calm. “You can’t keep it together, can you?”

“You have no idea what I’ve kept together,” I hissed. “Without me, Wonderland collapses.”

She tilted her head, studying me. “Looks like it’s collapsing anyway.”

Another fissure ripped through the board, and this time, I couldn’t stop it. My side of the arena buckled, pieces tumbling into the void.

I reached out, trying to stabilize the field, but the effort was immense. The Deck resisted, its hum now a roar of discordant energy. I felt it slipping through my fingers, the balance I’d worked so hard to maintain unraveling with every move.

Finally, I forced the battlefield to a standstill. The surviving pieces froze in place, the void around us quieting. I was breathing hard, my hands shaking, but I refused to show weakness. 

Alice stepped forward, her expression unreadable. “You won this round. Barely. But look around.” She gestured to the crumbling edges of the board, the fractures spreading like spiderwebs. “Every move you make breaks it a little more. How long do you think you can keep it together?”

I didn’t answer. The truth was there, stark and unyielding, reflected in the jagged edges of the arena. I had won the trial, but the cost was clear. Wonderland was breaking because of me.

******

The halls of the palace groaned as I staggered through them, my breath hitching with each step. The once-pristine checkerboard floor warped beneath my feet, the black and white squares bleeding into each other like ink spilled on water. Even the air had turned against me, thick and heavy with static, clinging to my lungs like cobwebs.

I slammed the door to my chambers behind me. The room—the one place I’d thought immutable—was unrecognizable. My throne, carved from living stone, sagged like melted wax. The drapes billowed, though there was no wind. And the mirror—

The mirror dominated the far wall, its surface cracked into a web of fractures that refracted my reflection into a hundred versions of myself. I stepped toward it, every nerve in my body screaming to stop, but I couldn’t look away. I had to see. I reached for it…

The glass pulsed beneath my fingertips, and memories flooded in.

The Void had been cold. I remembered that first. Not a chill of air, but of something deeper, something alive and malevolent that clawed into my marrow. When I’d entered the Void to take the throne, the Deck had demanded its price.

Everything in Wonderland has a price.

I’d given it willingly. My humanity, my softness—those were luxuries I could not afford if I was to rule. In that endless space, I’d made the deal. The Deck’s power for my soul. The Void had smiled as it swallowed me whole, spitting me out as something stronger. Something monstrous.

I jerked my hands away from the mirror, gasping as if surfacing from deep water. My reflection snapped back into place, but the cracks remained.

The Deck made me what I am.

******

The Void wasn’t a place. It was a presence. A sensation. A weightless expanse of infinite potential that pressed against my skin and seeped into my bones. The ground was nothing but floating shards of cards—aces, queens, kings—all shimmering and folding into stairways and bridges that led nowhere.

Alice was already there, waiting. She stood on a jagged plateau of cards. The Wild Card hovered above her open palm, pulsing with a chaotic light. Around her, the Void flexed and warped, the space reacting to her presence as if Wonderland itself was holding its breath.

I willed a bridge into existence. The cards folded into a solid path beneath me, but even as I crossed, the edges began to fray and unravel.

“Ready to finish this?” Alice called, her voice clear and steady.

“I’ve been ready since the moment you stepped into my kingdom,” I snapped, stepping onto her platform. The Void around us rippled, the cards below us shifting like sand dunes. I raised a hand, and a column of cards erupted between us, spinning into a spear that hovered over my shoulder. “I’ve had enough of your arrogance.”

“Arrogance?” she said, laughing softly. “You’re the one who thinks you can hold Wonderland together by force. But look at it. It’s already breaking under you.”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I hurled the spear, the Void tearing open behind it as it sliced through the air. Alice dodged and the spear shattered against the edge of the platform, sending a shockwave through the Void. The ripple tore a hole in reality, but just as quickly the tear closed, and the Void reasserted itself.

“You fight like a queen,” Alice said. “Precise. Predictable.”

The Wild Card flared in her hand, and the platform beneath us erupted, shards of cards spinning upward. She leapt into the air, the shards swirling around her, and when she landed, they reformed into a jagged sword, its edges glowing with chaotic energy.

I summoned a blade of my own, a sleek, sharp construct of interlocked cards that shimmered like opal. “You’re about to learn the difference between chaos and control.”

Our swords collided in sprays of light, reshaping the Void. My blade built stairways and walls to push her back. Alice’s wild sword unraveled my creations. A swing tore fire; a block shattered bridges. She fought like the Void itself—fluid, chaotic, impossible to pin down. Every movement was unorthodox, breaking the patterns I’d spent years mastering. But I didn’t need unpredictability. I had precision.

She’s reckless. Sooner or later, she’ll make a mistake.

I forced her back with a calculated series of strikes, driving her toward the edge of the platform. She stumbled, her footing slipping as the ground beneath her twisted. I summoned a cage of cards, the bars snapping into place around her. The Wild Card flickered in her hand, its light dimming as her chaos stilled.

I stood over her, my blade raised. “This is the end.”

Her eyes met mine, steady and unafraid. “If you kill me, Wonderland dies with me.”

The words hit harder than they should have. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she said, her voice soft but certain. “The Deck doesn’t want control anymore. It wants balance.”

The Void trembled around us, responding to her words. I looked down at her, at the girl who had upended everything I’d built, and for a moment, I saw it. The truth. She wasn’t my enemy. She was my opposite, my reflection. Chaos to my order. Freedom to my control.

Killing her would stabilize Wonderland. But it would only be temporary. The cracks would return, worse than before, and this time, there would be no one to fix them.

My blade wavered.

“You can’t do it, can you?” Alice said, her voice soft. “Because you know I’m right.”

I lowered the blade slowly, the cage dissolving around her. The Void shifted, its edges blurring, and the Wild Card flared back to life in her hand.

“You think this makes you the hero?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“No,” she said, standing. “But it makes you something better than a villain.”

“I yield,” I said. 

Energy surged into Alice, wrapping around her like a cocoon. Her body began to glow, a chaotic swirl of light and shadow that pulsed with life. The weight of the crown lifted from me—slowly at first, then all at once. My legs buckled under the sudden absence of power, and I sank to my knees, trembling. I felt hollow, as though Wonderland itself had been carved out of me.

The ground beneath us steadied. The fractured tiles fused together, and the jagged edges of the Void smoothed into something soft and dreamlike. Wonderland was healing, but it was different now. The colors no longer snapped into order. They bled into one another, alive and wild, creating something I couldn’t predict. Balance. The Deck had wanted this all along—not control, not chaos, but something in between.

Alice stepped forward, the Wild Card now a part of her, her form shimmering with uncontainable energy. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment, I thought I saw gratitude there. But it didn’t matter anymore. This was her Wonderland now.

I turned toward the Void, its infinite possibilities opening like a door. My form flickered, dissolving into shadows and light.