Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 222: Ch220. The coming of the gods

Chapter 222: Ch220. The coming of the gods

The ground squelched beneath Sarissa’s boots.

She had long stopped pretending it was soil. Whatever had once made Wonderland a place of whimsy and reflection was now gone.

What remained was a wet, stinking rot. A garden of festering things, crawling with soft-bellied nightmares. As far as the eye could see, the earth twisted with thick, segmented worms, each as long as her forearm and bloated with a dark translucency that let her see the pulsing of their black inner organs.

[Corroding Nightmare - Larva]

The System tag above each one flickered, letters jittered, corrupted. Occasionally, a tag would flash symbols instead of words, marks she didn’t recognize and wasn’t sure anyone could – or should.

Cheshire padded beside her, silent for once. His feline body shimmered faintly, gray stripes pulsing with restrained tension, his ears were flat, his tail high and puffed.

"What are these things?" Sarissa said quietly. "I suppose they weren’t here before...?"

Cheshire didn’t answer immediately. He merely stared at one of the Larvae writhing atop the roots of a dead tree.

The worm turned toward them for half a second, twitching as if aware of their presence, then buried itself back into the loam.

"Yes, my dear." Cheshire finally said. "They weren’t here before. Wonderland was simply decayed after the fall of Alice and the Mad Hatter, like you saw the first time I brought you here, but... Perhaps, your absence allowed it to find this place, and take root in it."

"The Crawling-"

"Don’t name it here." Cheshire’s voice turned sharp, brittle. "This is its nursery now. And it has ears."

Sarissa knelt down, careful not to touch the damp ground, and examined one of the smaller worms crawling near a cracked statue of a teacup.

The creature’s skin steamed faintly in the air, releasing tendrils of black mist. She could hear a faint, wet chittering from deeper inside the earth, something larger crawling underneath it.

The statue had once laughed.

She remembered from the tales. Wonderland had been whimsical once. A little terrifying, sure, but also warm, in its own alien way.

Now, every broken statue wept blood, every flower was a cluster of bone-white petals shaped like mouths.

It was already bad the first time she arrived, when she sort of accepted Cheshire’s guidance, before deciding to suppress him and treat him like a tool, a weapon. But now...

It was worse than a nightmare come to life.

"This was a place outside the full authority of the system." She stood, breathing slowly through her nose. "How?"

"It was." Cheshire agreed. "Until someone whispered the wrong name too loudly."

Sarissa didn’t need him to clarify. The Crawling Chaos, the name that had been leaking like blood into water. It felt like more and more players were witnessing its power, more and more monsters bore its twisted strength. And now Wonderland, one of the only places outside the system, had decayed into its newest nest.

"What do they want from here?" She asked.

"They don’t want." Cheshire’s tail lashed. "They undo. That’s all there is to them. Wonderland is a memory, a piece of a world long gone. And they are here to feed on it."

They walked in silence for some time. Her boots left no mark on the earth, but the worms parted as she passed, squirming away like they recognized her, or feared her.

She gripped the hilt of [Cheshire’s Gleam] at her side, it vibrated faintly, humming with anticipation, even though Sarissa chose not to attack for now.

"You’re awfully quiet." She murmured.

"I remember when I first met Miles. He was strangely perceptive and acceptive of the reality around him, where you question everything... I had been left in a cave, far away from here, trapped in this form, but he saved me, and I don’t know if I showed him gratitude enough."

Sarissa looked up. The sky wasn’t a sky at all. It was a reflection, clouded glass. And somewhere behind it, something stirred through the sickly green clouds.

"Then, let’s make sure to clean up this mess and return, so that you can thank him properly."

***

They came to the broken cathedral at the center of Wonderland, far from the ruins of the Queen of Heart’s castle.

Once a palace of riddles and tea, it now sagged under its own weight, warped and devoured by the rot. Its spires were hollowed out, and thick cables of worm-flesh had grown into its stone, pulsing slowly, and the great stained glass windows wept ichor.

Sarissa stepped inside.

The corruption was worse here for some reason. A dozen Larvae writhed in the pews. Others crawled across the walls, and an enormous one hung suspended from the ceiling like a desecrated chandelier.

At the altar, something like a worm, but not, waited.

It was a priest-shaped thing. A cluster of masks stacked over a shifting body made of larval segments, its arms were too long, its hands, stained with ink and scripture, ended in quills that dripped black ichor.

Atop its head – or what seemed to be the head – the glitched system name tag announced.

[Corroding Nightmare – Herald]

When it spoke, it did so without moving.

The sound came from the masks.

"Daughter of the Silver Line... you are late."

Sarissa didn’t hesitate, raising her blade. The air shivered, and the Larvae shrieked.

"I didn’t come here to listen." She said, pointing the blade at the creature. "I came to burn out the infection."

"You carry echoes of Judgment..." It rasped. "But Judgment is blind. And so, you will not see what is coming."

She stepped forward.

The moment before she struck, a crack echoed through the cathedral. But with light, rather than sound.

Blue lightning tore across the sky above, and for a heartbeat, Wonderland froze.

Even the Larvae ceased to move. The masks on the priest-thing twisted toward the heavens, as if in awe, or fear.

Then, Sarissa’s vision split.

She saw something, or someone, struggling against a storm of lightning in a room made of spinning rings and black stone.

She saw Mara shielding Miles, and then, she saw Miles, standing still, staring into the storm.

A figure in a cloak, their eyes like twin stars of pure thunder, and a voice.

"I finally meet the boy who ruined everything..."

Sarissa gasped, and the vision broke.

"He... He shouldn’t be there..." Cheshire’s voice echoed in Sarissa’s mind.

She turned to the priest-thing, but it was kneeling now, weeping.

"The Lightning awakes... The prison cracks... He finally sees..."

Sarissa felt her pulse slow.

The gods were coming...