(AN: Welcome again, my Wicked-fans! After having read Out of Oz [and loving it], I found that The Great War of Oz became obsolete. It therefore needs to be returned to and fixed to merit these new revelations. This version will be much closer to the original draft of the story, featuring more of Damien, and some other things as well.)

(Those of you who...oh wait, nobody really paid attention to the first one. Well, now's your chance! Check this story out, cross-reference with The Great War of Oz [which I'm keeping up since I need it for...other things, as you will see in my other stories], and give me your ideas.)

Prologue

He had a mission to accomplish.

Damien did not believe in spirits or visions, or anything for that matter. Whatever he didn't see or whatever made man so weak and fearful that he bowed down as if in total defeat, he looked upon as if it were a fate worse than death.

So what brought such a fellow to the empty fields of Kansas, a land devoid of anything?

Five days ago, he had a dream where something appeared to him and ordered him to come here and find what was needed. There were several items, the voice did not say much about it. Damien had originally ignored it, but once the spasms happened, and the visitation...

He thought nothing of the dream, but then he started feeling pain throughout his entire body, every nerve, every fiber, every muscle, was burning with pain. Then the one who had spoken to him appeared in person. Damien was a man of no faith, so he could believe in a god that he could see.

For if he could see it, he thought, then it was under his power of scrutiny, and therefore not that omnipotent or infinite.

The vision had spoken of only one thing and one thing only. It seemed to repeat that word over and over, like a chant. The word was simple, and Damien laughed at how stupid this request could be. Wasn't there someone else stupid enough to believe in these things who would make a better servant?

But there was something else that drew Damien toward the being of great power. As he looked upon it, a strange darkness came over him. It did not matter that he did not believe in dreams or in God, that presence was there just the same. It spoke directly to him, it knew him better than a lover. It knew every vice he had committed, it knew how empty life was with doing nothing more than killing the stupid, blind people of the world.

It gave purpose, it gave a reason to live, a plan, something to shoot forward to. And, better yet, it offered exactly what Damien wanted, what drove him to this life of emptiness and hatred.

It offered him infinite power. He fancied that, once he had this power, he would be no one's servant, he would bow the knee to nothing, but make the gods and spirits of his world bow down to him, expose their necks to his hand, so he could strike all their heads off in one blow.

It made him smile.

So he walked the land, from city to city, killing whoever got in his way. He broke into a house in Omaha, ransacked it in his search for the item. It could not hide from him, nothing could hide from him.

Now that it was his, the master ordered him to this barren spit of land in the middle of nowhere-land Kansas. The word still chanted in his ears over and over, egging him onward, giving meaning to his life, purpose to his mission...and such a simple word, as well...

Oz.

(AN: A teaser of a prologue, just as I had originally planned it to be. More Oz-related stuff to be seen later. As this is book-verse, it won't be as happy-go-lucky as musical-verse.)

(Furthermore, if you have any ideas or suggestions about what may happen in The Great War of Oz Revisited, please let them be known. I will take suggestions, with a certain amount of seasoning, and am open to suggestions within reason.)

(PS - go read Out of Oz, it's out by now. And there will be some things [minor spoilers] that will appear later on in the story.)