A Glass Eye leaped out from behind a parked smail-transport, blocked their way. “Did you drop something?” Dodge asked the assassin. “’Cause I think I see your…” he unsheathed his sword and swung, decapitating the Glass Eye in one blow, “…head over there.”

Hand in hand, Dodge and Alyss ran, their feet a blur on the pavement, explosions all around them, and then-

Relative quiet. They were in Wondronia Grounds, stood catching their breath with the chessmen and generals in the enormous promenade.

“Spooky,” the rook said.

It was: to see a place dedicated to entertaining thousands of Wonderlanders at any given time empty of the usual families, strolling couples, retirees, and cliques of teenagers. All vacationers had been evacuated, all amusements abandoned; unfinished meals sat on restaurant tables; the massaging cloaks and hairstyle helmets of the salons buzzed and clicked as if clients were still relaxing beneath them. Nothing but water coursed down the quartz water slides at the far end of the lobby while, closer to Alyss, carnival rides such as the Whipsnake Coaster and the Spinning T-Cups were completely still.

Chkkchchkkchchchrshshshkkkk!

A dozen Glass Eyes burst through Wondronia’s locked front doors. The knight, rook, four Doppels, and four Gangers surged forward to engage them. Dodge grabbed Alyss’ hand and pulled her into the closest shelter-the Total ImmEx unit, where, as Hatter Madigan, visitors could do battle against various enemies. By the time a trio of Glass Eyes chased after them, the Total ImmEx unit was in operation-Dodge, with Hatter’s coat and weaponry superimposed on him, twisting and leaping in his fight against the Glass Eyes it manufactured, the real Glass Eyes momentarily confused by the sight of

their false selves until-

Simultaneously, they turned their heads, quick and jerky as tuttle-birds sensing prey, and sighted Alyss Heart on their right flank. But she was on their left flank too. There were three Alysses in total. Only one of them could be Wonderland’s real queen. The Glass Eyes would do away with them all.

“Hagh!”

Dodge somersaulted over two of them-sword in one hand, Hand of Tyman in the other-and sent them to the nothingness of their afterlife. The remaining assassin, ducking and swiveling to avoid the crystal shot of its unreal brethren, was about to spray the place with its AD52 when Dodge snatched a circular blade from his Millinery backpack and threw it. The Glass Eye, not knowing that weapons produced by Total ImmEx couldn’t cause harm, moved to knock it away with the muzzle of the AD52. The opening was all Dodge needed. He lurched forward, his sword extended out in front him, and he thrust it into the assassin

as far as its hilt.

Dodge and Alyss-the real Alyss, the decoys she’d imagined gone now-found each other, safe amid the scything and eager trigger-pulls of the Total ImmEx Glass Eyes.

“All right?” Alyss was breathless. “No problem.”

They ran out to the lobby, where the white knight and generals were surrounded by an ever-growing number of Glass Eyes. And the rook, where was…? There, on the Spinning T-Cup ride, in a replica single-seater fighter craft shaped like a capital T, its guns parallel to the cockpit and located at the end of each wing. The rook was slashing at the assassins trying to climb up and put an end to him.

With blades swinging, Dodge offered what support he could to the generals and knight, but Alyss remained where she was, a pillar of calm amid the turmoil of battle as she employed the weapon of her imagination. The Spinning T-Cups kicked into operation. The ride’s fighter craft began to rotate, increasing in speed until the Glass Eyes climbing up to challenge the rook blade to blade were flung off like so many-

Crack!

The rook’s fighter craft was free of the ride altogether, independent, flying under the distant ceiling of

Wondronia’s lobby.

“Yeeeeah!” the chessman shouted, piloting in low over Dodge, the knight and generals, and firing his craft’s guns into the Glass Eyes, annihilating half of them. A second flyby finished off the enemy and, with no small skill, he landed the fighter so that it blockaded Wondronia’s exposed front door.

“If you imagine every entrance and exit blocked, we’ll have time to defeat whatever Glass Eyes are still inside,” the four General Gangers said to Alyss.

“No. I want as many of them as possible to come in.” “You want what?!”

She didn’t need Bibwit to tell her that, being unable to imagine herself at every skirmish simultaneously, she couldn’t annihilate every Glass Eye in the city with a single strike of her imagination. She knew her limits all too well.

I have to kill off as many as can be brought together in one place. “What’s the largest room here?” she asked.

“Penniken Fields on the second floor.” “Take us there.” Clicketclacketclacketyclick!

Scorpspitters, released by the Glass Eyes outside, skittered through small gaps not blocked by the

rook’s fighter. Out the forked ends of their curled tails shot bullets of black liquid. Dodge, the chessmen, and generals tried to shield themselves with their weapons, but-

Splat! Sploink! Splish!

The liquid bullets imploded in midair, hung in their splattered state as against the windshield of a smail-transport. Alyss had, by the power of her imagination, cocooned herself and the others in a protective NRG shield and the bullets had smacked against it. A good thing too, because the few that had zipped past them hit the trunk of a guppy tree planted in the lobby, the poison causing its fish-faced leaves to audibly suffocate and its bark to fall off in colorless strips.

“Penniken Fields,” Alyss said again.

They stayed close together, the better to remain within the protection of the NRG shield. The Glass Eyes were now entering Wondronia by the smail-loads, having gotten the better of the rook’s T-Cup, and they fired orb generators, crystal shot, and razor-cards at the Alyssians while the scorpspitters let fly with round after round of their poison bullets. The bullets splatted against the NRG shield; the crystal shot and razor-cards bounced off of it, visiting damage upon the lobby’s restaurants and theaters and shops.

“Couldn’t we at least run?” the rook asked. “No,” said Alyss.

Penniken Fields: the largest indoor park in Wonderland; a masterpiece of landscape architecture that might have made Nature jealous if it hadn’t paid such beautiful homage to Her with its arrangements of flower beds and shade trees, meandering paths, picturesque ponds, streams, and gently sloping vistas. At the Fields, the architect had managed to hide the ceiling behind the deep blue of an artificially produced atmosphere complete with clouds. With Glass Eyes and scorpspitters trailing them, Alyss led the others

to a meadow bordered on one side by a hedge three Wonderlanders tall. “Now we wait until there are more of them,” she said. “Keep me informed.” “Keep you-?”

Mentally, she was already deep within herself. She had to focus, to concentrate on imagining a weapon that could explode with ten times the force of an orb generator. She thought of the munitions factory in the flatlands between Outerwilderbeastia and the suburbs of Wondertropolis that she’d once toured.