Free ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor

coop. You should be with the Heart Crystal, in case—”
    “My imagination returns in time to be of help?” Alyss raised an eyebrow in doubt. “That doesn’t strike me as likely, Bibwit. Nor should energy be expended on my behalf when as much effort as possible should go to defending the queendom from this foreign invasion. A clash of armies, without the support of imagination on either side, likely benefits Arch. Generals, chessmen, I must leave him to you for now. The Clubs’ rebellion must also be dealt with, which is why I’ll remain where I am. Dodge and I have a plan to bring down this insurgency. I will continue to test my imagination and contact you the moment I feel anything.”
    “What about Redd?” the rook asked.
    “If we’re lucky,” Dodge said, “Arch put an end to her.”
    “My queen.” Seeing that Alyss was about to sign off, Hatter had risen from his chair.
    “Yes, Hatter?”
    The Milliner bowed, then: “Earlier, as Homburg Molly and I were returning to Wondertropolis, the blue caterpillar made himself known to us.”
    Alyss and her advisers didn’t need to be told that such a visit from an oracle was unprecedented.
    “Did he speak?” Alyss asked.
    “He spelled a word in smoke. As a prediction, a warning, perhaps both. And it was directed not to me, but to Molly. The word was ‘you’—y, o, u.”
    Alyss sighed. “I’ve been thinking it strange that Blue showed me a vision of how to sabotage WILMA but hasn’t appeared to me since, when the Heart Crystal hardly seems less threatened. And now he presents himself to Molly?”
    “The oracles, whatever their value, are nothing if not strange,” Dodge said, putting an arm around her.
    Alyss nodded, but not in happy agreement. Why, just once, couldn’t the caterpillars be perfectly intelligible?
    “How is Molly?” she asked.
    Hatter hesitated, unsure how to answer.
    The queen seemed to understand his silence. “Please tell her, despite all that’s happened, despite all that’s currently happening, I look forward to seeing her. I can think of no one I’d rather have as a bodyguard.”
    “I will, my queen.”
    Hatter again bowed, knowing that momentous events, the stuff of a nation’s history, were sometimes dependent on individuals commonly thought the least likely to set them in motion. He prayed his daughter would not be one of them.

CHAPTER 13
    “ I S IT wise, my liege, to scheme against a caterpillar-oracle?” a minister asked.
    King Arch sat beneath the same canopy under which Redd had recently shaded herself during the sparring matches. The lights of Wondertropolis shone in the near distance. Shooting out of the surrounding country dark, where Doomsines were battling a deck of Heart soldiers, cries of enemy wounded vied with war whoops from tribesmen.
    “Is it wise to scheme against a caterpillar?” Arch repeated to himself as—
    Booooooooooaaaaashhhhhhhhhhhhhkk!
    An orb generator exploded over a stand of gobbygrape trees, momentarily turning night into day and revealing the king encamped in an untilled field, Ripkins and Blister standing behind his folding chair, one on each side, and his intel ministers gathered before him.
    “It probably is not wise,” Arch admitted, “but I’m not convinced I am scheming against a caterpillar. I’m inclined to think I’m scheming with one. And whoever among you wants to keep your position as ‘intel’ minister during my new reign, now is the time to remind me of your intelligence. How is it I could believe I’m scheming with the green caterpillar?”
    The ministers huddled together.
    “Because the oracle, who must know Redd is without imagination, didn’t tell her about WILMA,” said one.
    “Nor did he tell her that the loss of her imagination was, in part, your doing,” said another.
    “And he might have done this before you exposed her,” said yet another.
    “Seeing all time as an oracle can,” said a fourth, “the green caterpillar could have warned you that