Red Queen Reborn: The Timekeeper

In the Past

A sudden gust of wind swept through the room, whipping his long cape around his thin knees and wrapping itself up in his flowing free locks. Smoothing down pointed ears, his voice rang through the grand room, erupting in his majestical presence, carrying out the tremorous speech well into the early stages of the morning. His smile pierced the dark, but before he could say anything more, there was a short bark of laughter from the back of the room.

Spinning on his heel, the tall being loomed over the scattered heads of half humans and demons alike, searching put the inappropriate member.

"Who?" He hissed, shoving his long finger into the eye of the nearest yokai. The harsh blue monster recoiled and shrieked, digging at their glossy orb, prying the filthy fingernail out of it. White gloop dropped to the floor and was immediately stomped on under the shiny black boots hiding stumpy ends.

Out of the dark rose a still, pale arm, steady and unwavering, high above the crowd. His attention diverted from the cowering demon and he sprung up to latch onto the ceiling of the large meeting house, eyeing the defiant little girl.

"And you are?" He tried to come off as kind and undemanding, but the uniting levels of hatred towards her kind slide out from under the mask and he had to hurriedly swallow before she replied, with a monotone sort of voice that racked the room with invisible earthquakes, "I am going to kill you, and I am going to replace you."

He laughed at her, showering the assemble below him with deep red saliva, throaty and rasped. "You? The anthropomorphic of the Beast, you're going to defeat me?"

Her chin lifted in the air and her cold, dead eyes locked with his.

"Yes."

He lept down at her, tongue flicking and hands reaching for her to throat, feet pushing off of stock still bones connected to frigid demons to reach her. She blinked twice and when he arrived a split second later, she was gone; only to be rising high above him, dangling limbs shaking and glowing beams descending from her temple and burrowing inside his arched back. He screamed and she laughed, thrusting ice daggers through the jagged scars riddling his empty face.

Throwing her off of him, he lunged forward, catching a spidery forefinger on a carefully disguised spike in the middle of a mob member's ridged back. Swinging back, the girl's laser shot past him, disintegrating a small green drakon in its wake.

And then, her hooked finger was too, far too close, and as he twisted in vain to evade her grasp, the golden chain bounced off his heaving chest and straight over her waiting middle finger. Tug, tug, she tugged and it broke, snapping audibly, covering the sharp crack that issued through his torn mind.

His existence began to melt away until, in some act of ironic cruelty, she picked him up, cradling the writhering goo in her manicured hands and sliced open a fluffy bunny's stomach, shoving him inside.

After sewing the poor creature together, she shook her head chuckling. "You'll never learn, Mr. Rabbit. You'll never see.

"Alice will rule Wonderland, and she will keep Time forever."

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