“Let’s take this opportunity to hatch a proper game plan, shall we?” Seb suggested to the siblings.
The three moved to the corner of the room and began mulling over their options.
“Any bright ideas, Master Hatta?”
“You know how you get sleepy on a full stomach? So, what if we burn the White Rabbit alive then chuck him inside the dragon’s mouth?” Hatta put out there for good measure.
Haigha gave him a disapproving look. At this point, you had to wonder if the truth behind their supposed ‘relationship’ was ever going to see the light of day.
“I don’t see how that would get him even remotely close to a full stomach. What about you, Lady Haigha?”
“Who, me? Well, erm, we could have the White Rabbit go down into his stomach and attack from the inside, I guess?”
“It could work as a last resort, but I’d imagine he’d get processed by the dragon’s stomach juices before inflicting any meaningful damage.”
Both of their ideas involved the White Rabbit getting eaten, for whatever reason.
“And what about you, Seb? Got any bright ideas?” Hatta asked.
“Two, actually. Although let’s just say, they’re a tad hit-or-miss.”
“What’s the worst that could happen? Lay it on us.”
“If you insist. My first plan is to age the dragon out of existence. Haigha, keep him occupied with your magic barrier. Hatta, rush over to the White Rabbit and tell him what to do.”
And so, the plan was set in motion.
“I-I can’t do this anymore.” The White Rabbit fell to the ground, unable to run any longer. “Goodbye, cruel world.” But just as the dragon was about to sink his fangs into the White Rabbit, Haigha put up her magic barrier. “H-Haigha?! Yippee! I knew our love would win in the end!”
“You done yet? We gotta act fast,” Hatta snapped.
“Act fast?”
“Haigha’ll keep the dragon busy for as long as she can while you age ’im out of existence.”
“That’s…genius!” he exclaimed. “Watch that thing turn to ash when I age him a full fifty years in one go!” The White Rabbit pushed the button down on his pocket watch. Yet, nothing happened. “Huh, that’s weird. How about a hundred years?” He pushed the button down again and again; nothing happened. “I don’t get it.”
“It just dawned on me,” Hatta said, “that dragons live for thousands upon thousands of years. A hundred or so isn’t going to cut it. We need to jump straight into the thousands if we want to put that thing out of commission.”
“It’ll take quite some time. Time I’m assuming we don’t have?”
“Yup.”
“Knew it—”
The dragon broke through Haigha’s barrier, knocking the pair away.
“What do we do now?” Haigha asked.
“Time for Plan B, I suppose,” Seb said.
The two of them were, of course, a safe distance away from the action.
“First, I’ll need you to heal the White Rabbit.”
“Say no more.”
Haigha cast a healing spell.
“I feel…alive,” the White Rabbit said, springing to his feet. “No, no, no! Not this again!”
The wild goose—or rather, rabbit—chase began once more. Having successfully diverted the dragon’s attention, Seb gestured Cheshire over.
“Yeah?”
“I recall you mentioning that we’d have to either put the dragon to sleep or make him pass out to abolish his domain. But what would happen if he was to abandon the room?”
“I’ve never seen him do that. But I think it’d get abolished. Domains are inextricably tied to the user. Well, at least I think that’s how they work.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.” Seb hopped onto the dragon’s back, bringing Alice back in his arms. “I believe I’ve found a way out of this mess.”
“Took you long enough.”
“We’ll just need a little bit of help from our good friend Cheshire.”
“Who, me?”
When Cheshire heard Seb’s plan, he almost lost it.
“Instead of trying to escape the room, we simply remove the dragon from it. That’s…so simple, yet so genius. I’ll do it! Just…don’t tell the Demon Lord, okay?”
Cheshire lifted his hands high up in the air, forming a ball of dark billowy smoke. He then fired it at the dragon, sending him into a pocket dimension. Soon after, the doors reappeared.
“Remind me…never to do that again,” Cheshire panted.
“Thank you, Cheshire,” Seb said. “Haigha, heal Cheshire and Hatta, if you’d be so kind.”
“Will do.”
Alice just kind of stood there, tilting her head in confusion. She’d been so fixated on harvesting dragon scales, she hadn’t paid any attention to her surroundings.
“Seb, what just happened?”
“It’s nothing too crazy, my lady. The dragon’s domain is only active so long as he is physically present inside the room, so we simply made sure he wasn’t.”
“Makes sense.”
“While we couldn’t remove the dragon from the room, we could remove the area around the dragon, effectively yielding the same result. My only real worry was whether or not Cheshire could create a pocket dimension large enough to entrap the beast. But he pulled through in the end, as expected.”
Cheshire seemed to appreciate the compliment, smiling an unbefittingly cute smile for a monster.
“Creating a large pocket dimension in and of itself isn’t hard,” he said. “I mean, the first time we met, I’d turned an entire grass field into one, after all. Fine-tuning one to perfectly fit around a certain target, however, is a lot more exhausting than just blasting the entire room.”
Had they enveloped the entire room, the dragon would’ve still been in it. Hence why they’d had to segment him into a pocket dimension.
“I know!” Alice clapped her hands together. “You’d make a great idol duo with Haigha. You did such a good job today after all.”
“Haha, yeah. Wait…what?”
Alice was already scheming up ways to profit off of Cheshire’s and Haigha’s idol careers.
“Either way, you guys really need to go now,” Cheshire warned. “The dragon’s not trapped in the pocket dimension; he’s just obscured by it. So, if you don’t hurry, he might come out any second.”
“Good call. Hatta, can you move?”
“A little dizzy, but I’ll be fine.”
“Off we go then.”
And so, they set off for the throne room.
“Hey! You forgot someone!” Cheshire shouted after them, noticing the White Rabbit had been left behind yet again. “I’m the one who brought him in, so I should do the responsible thing and dump him outside the castle, the poor thing,” the boy monster said to himself, dragging the White Rabbit’s unconscious body.
✦ ✦ ✦
❤❤❤
MEANWHILE…
“Who’s that cutie? Oh wait, that’s me!” Jean gazed at his dress-clad self in the mirror, unaware of Alice’s encroaching arrival. “‘Cutie?’ Jean, get a grip, man! Keep this up, and next thing you know, you’re married to the Demon Lord. You need to take off, and you need to do it now while he’s still changing.”
Jean appeared to have regained his composure, and it told him that if he didn’t do something fast, he would fall head-over-heels for the Demon Lord.
“Here goes nothing!” Jean burst out of his room and made a break for it.
Thirty minutes later…
“How is this even possible?!”
He was back where he started. Was the layout of the castle that convoluted? Well, no. Jean just had no sense of direction whatsoever.
“Look at her go,” one of the Demon Lord’s minions said, watching from a distance.
“I’m not giving up that easy!” he cried and took flight once more. Only this time, he bumped into someone around the corner and fell butt-first to the ground.
“Are you hurt?”
“D-Demon Lord?!”
“Hold still. There’s something on your foot.” He took out his handkerchief, gently wrapping it around the affected area.
What little composure Jean still had left was on the verge of collapse.
“I…I—”
“Let’s go back to our room.”
If you go with him, you’re never coming back, Jean thought, panicking. The point of no return will be crossed, and you’re already teetering dangerously close to the edge. Make him despise— No, tell him the truth!
“Don’t worry about the dress. I’ll get a new one ready for—”
“Look at my chest! Do you see anything? No! Want to know why? Because I’m not the princess!”
“What truly matters to me is that it’s your chest, Jean. Size be damned,” the Demon Lord responded cryptically.
I don’t want to do this, Jean thought. I really don’t want to do this! But if that’s what it takes to convince him, then so be it. Jean quickly reached for his skirt, only for the Demon Lord to catch his hands mid-flight.
“Now, now. That wouldn’t be very ladylike, now would it?”
“Let go of me!”
“I’ll never let go…never,” he promised, looking Jean straight in the eye and hugging him.
“But…but…i-it hurts…” Jean sputtered, averting his gaze, his cheeks flushed red.
Something snapped inside the Demon Lord that very moment.
“Wh-What’re you—” he spluttered as the Demon Lord whisked him to a room inside the throne room—his royal bedchambers, to be exact.