Think, think, think. Never give up. Not ever. But there was nothing left. Torment had already demonstrated how easily he could deal with Spike, and there was no tree here to batter him with. She could split into the Swarm and try to hide amidst the detritus, but that would only delay the inevitable, and he could get his jaws on some of the swarmers before she could get them to cover. She had the devilfish, but neither a greenish glow nor a transformation into a gasping, flopping sea creature seemed like they would provide any advantages. That only leaves—

Her mental grip tightened on the black thread. The one she’d never been able to move. The Dragon.

As usual, it didn’t respond when she tugged on it. This time, she bore down, tightening her mental grip, and pulled harder. Then harder still, as hard as she had ever exerted herself in the strange world of magic, and then harder still.

If she’d been pulling with her hands, they would have been scraped raw, or sliced to the bone by the taut, humming thread. But she was pulling with her self, all her energy and spirit, and the feeling was much worse than that. She felt as though the thread had gone into her chest and tied itself around her breastbone, with a boulder at the other end. Every tug produced sparks of pain, shooting from her fingers to her toes, like electric shocks running over her body. It felt as though she was on the verge of tearing herself to pieces, turning herself inside out, that whatever was doing the pulling would tear free from the fragile prison of her flesh like a rotten tooth ripped out of its socket.

Stop. The Dragon’s voice echoed down the thread. You must stop.

I can’t.

You will die.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll die anyway.

You don’t understand.

I don’t have time to understand. Distantly, in the real world, she could feel Torment’s breath on her face. Her body was falling away, a numb and distant shadow. This is all I have left.

I— There was a hint of something in the Dragon’s voice, an emotion she’d never heard before. Alice—

I won’t give up. Alice gathered her strength for one last pull. I won’t.

She felt something give way. All the air rushed out of her lungs in a gasp, and darkness crashed down on her.

She never lost consciousness, exactly. It was as though she really had torn herself away from her body, and now she floated alone in an endless black void.

Am I dead? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure what it felt like to be dead.

Then she heard something. Just a distant buzz at first, like a fly tapping at a window, but it strengthened and resolved into words.

“—you.” Torment’s voice.