It was less a plan and more a hastily thrown together string of ideas. Find the prophesied power, use it, save Oz. Every time Glinda spoke of it, every time she would look at him with that certainty in her eyes, Victor would find himself unable to question the validity of such a plan. It wasn't just the fact that they had no idea where this power source was or what they would do with it when they did find it. It was the people of Oz as well. They were losing hope that their land could be saved. More and more were leaving every day.
"Are you sure they are leaving? Perhaps they are just in other parts of the realm."
"No. I sense it. Every day they lose their way and suddenly, their essence is gone."
"Perhaps the sickness has returned and they..." It was far more likely that these people were dead than that they had traveled to another realm. In all of his excursions, Victor had only ever seen Jefferson able to travel between the realms at will. There were rumors of other ways, magic beans and the like, but those were supposed to be unstable and unreliable means of transport. For there to be mass movements between realms would require a type of power that Victor was unfamiliar with.
"No, I would be able to feel their deaths...transportation is the only thing that makes sense." Glinda didn't sound entirely convinced. Victor got the sense that she had to believe they had left the realm. The idea that something else, something more sinister, had occurred was more than she could allow herself to think on. She had to stay focused on the matter at hand. She handed him another book. They had spent days in the great library. Victor was itching to look at some of their anatomy books, but Glinda kept handing him more and more history books. More tales of Oz's past, it's lost relics, its hidden treasures. He should have told her no, that this was not why he originally came to Oz. But each time she handed him another book, he said nothing.
"What do you think about this one?"
Victor scanned the sentence she was pointing at.
"A stone within the hidden rooms of the everlasting palace?"
"Yes."
"Have you found any other references to this stone?"
"No, that is what makes me believe that it is what we are searching for. It must be so powerful that even the great mages of the past feared to speak of it. See here? It looks like someone tried to burn the information out of the page."
The book was charred in several places. Many other words were marred beyond recognition. But this sentence was clear, it almost appeared as thought it had been written yesterday. Not several centuries ago.
"I don't suppose you know where this hidden palace is?"
"I think I might. Another book once referred to the caverns that stretch beneath the great mountains to the east as rooms. The author said that it appeared as though each cave led to another room, more grand and spacious than the last. Each room was fit for a king. I believe those are the hidden palace. The caverns would far outlast any palace ever built by man."
"How large are these caverns?"
"It is rumored that they stretch for hundreds of miles, that you could walk underneath all of Oz."
Fabulous. He could spend the rest of his life lost in the darkness underneath Oz. No hope of escape or finding a way out. Eventually they would both die of starvation or dehydration. Glinda put her hand on his arm. She smiled at him, her eyes full of excitement. He supposed there were worse ways to die.
"All right. How do we find the entrance to these caves?"
"I believe there is an entrance at the base of a mountain, far past even the most outer of villages of our realm."
"You believe? You've never been in these caves before?"
"No. But I know we will find the way." She stood abruptly, he moved to stand as well. He put his hands on her shoulders. This plan was foolish. He noticed how close they were standing. Victor temporarily forgot why he had moved to stop her. She laughed. His spine tingled in the most peculiar way.
"I'm excited too Victor. But this is hardly the time. But since we are standing like this anyway..."
She smirked. The moment to stop this, to set out a real plan, to develop a strategy, disappeared as quickly as they did. He was never going to get used to the teleportation that Glinda was capable of. She was still smiling at him. She knew exactly what she did to him. He smiled back.
"Tease."
She playfully pushed him away. He saw the mountain above them. It towered higher than any building Victor had ever seen, higher than any human could ever hope to match. Palace indeed. There was an inscription written near a crack in the wall that was meant to serve as the entrance to the tunnels. He moved closer, hoping that Glinda could...
"What..."
Victor turned away from the inscription. Glinda's voice had sounded so...lost. Whatever she had seen had removed any excitement from her. Her body was rigid. Victor looked past her. He regretted not trying to stop this foolish exercise now more than ever.
"Are those...are those the people that live out here?"
Glinda was moving towards them. Victor, at first glance, had thought it to be some sort of cemetery. The stone statues that lined every corner of the field, they stretched far beyond his sight. They were scattered on the ground like stars in the sky. Each one visible, but too many to truly fathom. Such statues were not uncommon on his world. People wanted to be remembered long after death and would go to great pains to have a convincing likeness carved in marble. But these statues were not standing somberly in rows, they did not have serene expressions on their faces. These statues appeared to have been frozen in mid-step. Some running, some kneeling as if in prayer, others bent over the forms of their children. These statues did not display a stoic presence, did not display a grand confidence. These statues screamed of fear.
Glinda put her hands on a pair of statues. Their arms wrapped around each other. Protecting each other. She was trying to do some sort of magic, trying to reach the people trapped inside. Trying to free them. Victor stood back and for the first time in his life, hoped that magic would prevail.
"It's no use, my magic cannot reach them...Maybe you can..." Tears. She was crying. Victor didn't know what to do. He wanted to be able to comfort her, to offer her a scientific way to save them. To give her the hope she so desperately needed. Maybe with time and proper facilities he could find a way to turn these people back. He held no illusions about the amount of time it would take though. Years. If it was even possible. He put a hand on her shoulder.
"We will find a way." He wasn't sure he used to lie this much. If you wanted to be a scientist, you had to be honest. Had to accept when a procedure wasn't working, had to change your plans, your methods. Science was the art of honesty. It often meant accepting that everything you believed to be true was false. You often had to find a new truth. This constant state of wanting to please her, to tell her what she wanted to hear, was new. Perhaps it wasn't really a lie. Maybe one day he could make the words true.
"We have to find the power Victor. Whatever is causing this, we will fight it back. We will restore these people. This must be a part of the prophecy as well. We are meant to save them." She turned and looked at the statues.
"I do no know if you can hear me, but if you can. We will save you. I swear it, we will find the power to restore you. Do not lose hope, people of Oz. Have faith in us."
It was a good speech. She spoke with such passion. Such determination. Such faith. He couldn't help but feel it was wasted on these stone sentinels. She turned away from the field and head back towards the cave. He could see it in her walk, in the glint of her eyes. Her resolve to find the power had only increased. His seemed to decrease by the day. Each new place, each bit of information they learned all pointed to the same conclusion. This land was dying. He tried to bury the thoughts whenever they crept into his mind. But his brain had always been difficult to silence. The thought persisted, it wormed its way in and planted itself firmly at the forefront of this thoughts. There was no other explanation.
The land itself was decaying. The sickness he had combated when he first arrived hadn't been the only problem the people of Oz had. They were all malnourished, their faces sunken in, their clothes too loose on their frames. He had thought it was just a side effect of the sickness. But every village he went to he saw the same, and they all said the same thing. They spoke of failed crops, of poor harvests. Their fields had been producing less and less. The soils that had once fed the entire land could barely support the villages surrounding the Emerald City. Most did not know how the outer lands were surviving. Years ago the outer villages would send messengers to the inner villages and to the capital itself. Asking for food, for men to help find new places to till and plant. For help. But each year these requests became less and less frequent. Eventually they stopped all together. Years passed and those who lived nearest to the Emerald City would tell themselves that the outer lands must have found new soil to farm. That the people out there were surviving on their own, that was why the pleas for help had stopped. They no longer needed to ask for food. It would appear that they had been partially right at least.
It was impossible to tell how long they had been frozen, how many untold thousands that lived in the outer lands had been converted. Victor assumed that everyone not living in the land near the Emerald City had also been turned to stone. Glinda had said that she could sense the people leaving, this must have been it. But if it was caused by magic...Victor followed Glinda into the cave. He had hoped to try and decipher the carvings on the side of the entrance before they entered but Glinda had pushed forward without a backward glance. She created a ball of light that floated in front of her, it illuminated the dark passage way. He didn't know how she knew where she was going. He simply walked in step behind her. Trusting that she knew the way through the splits and the twists. He tried not to think about the fact that Glinda had said she had never been to this cave before. Surely she had to know where she was going somehow.
His father had once told him that every empire falls, and it is rarely to battle. Of course the history books spoke of the great civilizations that were felled by enemies. Of the glorious battles and almost mythical figures who led the final stands. Who watched their people and lands torn apart by war and natural disaster. Those were the stories people wanted to hear. They wanted to believe that when it was time for their own empire to fall, they would at least have a final fight. A final chance to show the world how great they could still be. Even if they were destined to fail, at least they fought to the end. History was very forgiving of those who went out in a blaze of glory.
Rubbish. His father had called most history books sensational retellings of boring events. Great men rarely rose in the final hours. If they had been so great, his father said, they would have risen prior to the final hour and actually done something to save their people. Something real, like broker a treaty, or build up alliances with other countries. Things that could have actually saved their empires. For most there was no final battle, there was no great moment. Most civilizations fell not to the sword, but to rust. You can only over-till the land, over fish the sea, or overpopulate your city for so long before something gives. History was less forgiving to those that simply drifted away. Whose people left during famines to find other homes, whose temples fell to the weapons of weather and time. Those stories were often buried. Forgotten, as if they were something not worth knowing.
Oz's time had come. It's people had great technology and magic, but it was all from earlier generations. They had sat back on their laurels and believed that they no longer needed to find any new innovations. They had believed themselves to have reached the peak of their civilization, and they rejoiced. They should have been afraid. Once your empire peaks, once it reaches it's full potential, there is only one way left for it to go. It was a natural progression. Everything had to end eventually.
"Are you sure this is the way?" They had just gone through the third tunnel to the left in a five way split. Glinda hadn't even hesitated, hadn't taken even a moment to consider another path.
"Yes."
"How? You said that there could be hundreds of different ways through the mountains. That the tunnels might even stretch out underneath all of the land of Oz. How can you be sure that..."
"I don't know Victor. I...I can hear something. Something calling me, telling me which way to turn. It is our destiny to find it, I know that now more than ever."
"Glinda. Have you ever...have you ever seen anything like that before? With the people above I mean."
"No..."
"But?"
"There were old stories of a mountain that hated the people of Oz. This mountain would turn people into stone, as payment for all the minerals that the people had taken from the earth."
"Is that true?"
"Of course not. Even with magic, a mountain is just rocks. It is not capable of thought."
"You told me that Oz is a land created by magic. That the ground itself is..."
"What is your point Victor?"
What was his point? He wasn't sure. There was something his mind was trying to tell him. Something about those statues that he should have noticed. Something if he could only grasp would help him understand, would help him explain it to Glinda. It was so close...he could feel the answer struggling to break through.
"I..."
"Victor." His name was little more than an excited exclamation of air. She had whispered it, as though they had to be quiet. As though they were in the presence of a deity. Perhaps they were. The stone was embedded in the wall of the cave in front of them. There was no pedestal, no light shining upon it. It needed no such presentation. Just being in the same room as the stone was enough to make your heart rate speed up. To make you question every thought you had ever had. It was power. It was everything.
Victor felt it in his mind. With that stone he could unlock the secrets to immortality, he could bring his brother back. He could save Oz. All he had to do was reach out and...
"no." Victor tried to get his breathing under control. The stone was attempting to control him. They should not have done this. There was a reason that such power was buried so far in the ground. The people outside...they had come seeking the power. In their desperation they had flocked to the pull of the stone. They had ignored the graveyard that had been created by the forms of their brethren. They had run, clawed, and prayed for the stone to save them. But for some reason it had stopped them, it had turned them into stone for coming to this place. For attempting to take from the earth, something that did not belong to them.
But it hadn't stopped him and Glinda from walking in. It wanted them there. Glinda was right, it wanted them to find it. She was only a few steps away from the stone. Her hand outstretched.
"Glinda wait."
He grabbed her wrist. Her eyes jumped to his face.
"Victor can you feel..."
"Yes. Glinda wait, please. We have to think this through. What if this thing is..."
"I can control it Victor. I know I can. Once I have control of it, everything will be put right. The people above, the land, the Emerald City."
"Glinda I..."
"Your brother, Victor. I know, with this power I can help you finish your work. You will have Gerhardt back again. We will both have the things we lost returned to us. Don't you see Victor? You know I'm right. You can feel the power in you, it is unlike anything I have ever seen. But it was meant for me. I was born to possess this stone. To be the master of it's power. To do great things with it."
Victor held on to her wrist. He looked at his fingers, encasing her small hand. He had never noticed how small her hands were compared to his. He wanted to tell her no. Tell her that they couldn't trust the power in front of them. That every instinct in his body was screaming at him to pull her out of there. To leave this place, to leave Oz. They could find a new land, take the survivors somewhere new. Start over.
His heart was screaming at him. Just this once, it was saying, listen to me. Ignore the thoughts in your mind and listen to your heart. You can feel how wrong this all is. She is not strong enough. It will destroy her. You are not smart enough. It is too much. It is too powerful.
Gerhardt had always been Victor's moral compass. He had been the one who would pull Victor back from his darker thoughts. The one who would tell Victor right from wrong. Gerhardt had been Victor's heart.
Victor released Glinda's wrist.
Gerhardt was dead. Victor couldn't trust his heart, it had always been his weakest organ. His mind was what he had always depended on. His mind was telling him this was the rational course of action. Such a power would be necessary for his work to continue. It was the reason he had come to this realm in the first place. Glinda could handle the power. Victor needed Gerhardt back, this was the only way.
He nodded to Glinda.
"Do it."
She reached for the stone. It had begun to pulse. A dark, violent red. Victor saw Glinda's fingers brush the stone. The red light grew brighter. It circled Glinda. She turned and looked at him. She smiled, so bright. The joy in her eyes. The hope.
Then she began to scream.
