(AN: Well, between preparing for finals and getting ignored by these damn hipsters [what, is kindness too mainstream for you?], I've got just enough time to start working on these chapters and setting everything up for the conclusion of [my part in] the Ozian Adventures.)

(Aside from the original stuff that will appear, I'm also going to be researching The Marvelous Land of Oz again [hint to what may happen in the end], as well as incorporating some events from the cartoon Return to Oz [not the movie, because that is an amalgam of The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz], as well as Out of Oz, while keeping in mind that some details need to be rewritten for a musical-setting [so no child sex or bestiality].)

Freedom and Justice

A pair of dark cloaks approached the Emerald City, hoods thrown down to conceal their faces. But even from where they stood, they saw that something was wrong. The tall structures of the City of Emeralds shone and glimmered no more, the green light had gone out. Even as they approached the southern gate, pejoratively called the Munchkin Mouse-hole, they saw that all was not well within the City. The gate had been thrown down and beyond they could see the city beyond, seemingly dead. The town was strangely dull and they saw also that many of the emeralds were gone, torn out of their fixtures and thrown upon the ground or missing all together.

But as they passed through the gates of the City, a roar was heard, louder than the roar of a dragon, like a sea of a thousand lapping tongues. They ducked quickly into a dark alley and watched as a sea of angry people passed by, shouting and chanting angrily. They bore torches, pitchforks, hoes, hammers and crowbars and other such tools as weapons. They seemed to be going somewhere and, in curiosity, they joined the fray at the end of the mob and followed them about as they walked down the streets. As they went, they saw that more and more people were joining the mob and, ever and anon, they would stop, break down a door, rush into the building, and drag out people kicking and screaming. Most were old or middle-aged, but some were young, some even very young, the age of childhood. They were well-dressed, it seemed, more so than the people of the mob, but they seemed fear-stricken and terrified.

At last, street by street, house-raid by house-raid, the mob made their way slowly towards the gates of the Emerald Palace. The doors had been thrown down and Omby Amby, the guard with the bright orange whiskers, was nowhere to be found. Instead, the black-clad Freedom squad guarded the door like an impenetrable wall of metal and spears. The mob shouted and chanted, and then there was a violet light flashing behind the ranks of the Freedom squad. They parted and out walked Galinda, dressed in black, with a sneer on her face as she came before the mob.

"What do you bring before me today?" she said.

"This one!" one of the crowd shouted, throwing forward a tall, thin and lanky woman with a bony face and dark hair.

"What is her crime?" Galinda asked.

"She's rich, she is!" shouted another. "There were a good many precious things in her house."

"Those were in my family for generations!" exclaimed the tall woman. "Please, I don't mean any harm! I'm a loyal subject of Oz, all of the Minkos clan have been!"

"You're rich," Galinda said. "That makes you guilty." She then turned to the crowds. "Kill her."

There was a sudden gunshot and the Minkos woman fell to the floor, dead. As if that were not enough, several in the crowd grabbed their clubs and started beating her dead body. Others shouted that she should be hung up by the gate of the City for a terror to all the rich, but there was some debate over what should be done and a fight broke out among the mob. Meanwhile, the poor woman's body was being torn to pieces by the arguing mob.

"If that is all you have..." Galinda said over the mob.

"No, there's more!" one added. Two people, a Ferret and an old woman, were then unceremoniously thrown to the lowest step of the palace, at Galinda's feet.

"Wait," Galinda held up her hand, then approached the old woman. "Tell me, crone, what have you done?"

"Why, nothing, your Ladyship!"

"She's wealthy!" one of the mob shouted. "She deserves to die."

"What, is that a crime now?" the old woman asked perplexedly.

"Of course it is," Galinda returned. "All the rich are thieves and murderers, enemies of freedom."

"I'm not a murderer!" the old woman protested. "Why, yes, I'm rich, but that's because my husband was an Emerald prospector in the Glikkus, Lurline rest his soul."

"And a pagan at that!" shouted Galinda. "Your life is already forfeit."

"No, please, spare me!" the old woman begged. "I gave charity, I even ran an orphanage for the youngsters in Tenniken."

"Irrelevant!" Galinda said. She raised her hand, shimmering with violet light, and smote the old woman to the ground. She did not rise.

"And what do you say?" she asked the mob, gesturing to the Ferret.

"Kill him! He's not one of us!"

"He's a freak! His kind stole our water during the Drought!"

"Death to what goes on four legs!"

"You heard them, ferret," Galinda said to the poor, shivering Animal.

"Please, spare me, my lady!" the Ferret begged. "I'm a poor Ferret, trying to make a living for my children!"

"Silence!" growled Galinda. She then turned to her Freedom squad and nodded vigorously at the Ferret. They descended upon him in a fury, beating him with their spears and shouting insults at him while they did. Some also kicked him and stomped his face in with their heavy boots.

"Animals should be seen and not heard," Galinda said to the crowd. "They are part of the old ways, the enemies of free thought and free will. Freedom prevails! No Ozma, no Lurline, no Wizard, no witches, no gods: we are free!"

"We are free!" chanted the mob.

On and on the mob chanted, while the two hooded figures slowly made their departure. They walked on, seeing all around them the price of 'freedom.' Many buildings had broken windows and appeared to have been looted, with their things strewn about the streets, all the valuables stripped and seized. Other buildings had been burned all together, and there were black circles on the streets, filled with ashes and graying bones and half-burned pages. The figures dared not guess what had happened in those circles.

The two figures came at last to one sight that looked as though it was still kept in good repair. As they walked through the ashes of a Unionist church, they saw a tall tower that stood apart from the Emerald Palace. Though neither of them had ever been there personally, they wondered that it was separate from the palace proper. Nevertheless, they approached the iron gate which, to their surprise, they found unlocked and unguarded. Behind the iron gate, inlaid with the Z-within-the-O, the symbol of Oz, they saw a narrow stairwell that descended down into the dark and gloom.

At the sight of the gloom, one of the cloaked figures, who had remained hunched over this whole time, was shivering and shaking, averting their hood from the entrance of that place.

"We have to," the taller one said, speaking with a woman's voice, soft and friendly. "For her."

The other figure said nothing, but turned towards the entrance and slowly walked towards the gloom, keeping a gloved hand tightly wrapped in the fingers of the hooded and cloak's woman's gloved hand.

Thus came they to the Southstairs, the dreadful prison of the Emerald City. Here light died, here the soul was destroyed in the gloom: here was the worst place in all of Oz, even as Middle Earth had Mordor and the Other world had Sheol. Built over a great cave that had been found beneath Ozma Town in the days of the Ozmas, it was converted into a dungeon of the worst kind. Here there was eternal darkness, in day as well as in night. Here the darkness could be felt; those who were brought down here died of long, painful starvation, or, if they were not lucky enough, were brought back out into the world, blinking like troglodytes, broken in body and spirit and unable to live as they had once lived before.

Bad it enough it would be were this place alone and dark, but there were constantly the sighs, cries and moans of the dying, the skittering of the rats among the floor and the flapping of wings all about their heads. Disease was carried here easily, and one touch from the hand of a jailor could just as well mean a painful death as twenty years of starvation.

For any, a journey into this hell was the worst thing they could possibly imagine. But for the hooded one, who was afraid of the dark, it was worse. One cannot rightly describe how awful it felt unless they knew it themselves. It was like being trapped in a barrel at night that was then thrown into the depths of the sea. There was no escape, only death on all sides. The air hot and stuffy, the walls closing in all about you, no light of sun or moon. Even worse was the knowledge that you were not fully alone, that something else was out there that would bring you harm and death: a swift and painless death being the least likely.

The silence was then broken by a wretched sound, that was somewhere between a laugh and a hideous, retching cough.

"Hello, dearie!" a sickly-sweet voice said to the hooded figures from out of the gloom. The tallest one turned about, quaking in fear at the voice from the dark. "Oh, what's the matter? Did I scare the little witches?" The voice laughed, but then broke down into a hacking cough.

"You're still alive?" marveled the young woman.

"One year is not enough to kill Madam Morrible," the old voice replied. "But it's doing its best. Oh, to rot in this hell-hole! I had it all in my hands, all of Oz was at my command. But you, you little blond b*tch, you took it all from me!" She cackled. "At least the animals had their revenge on me. Yes, they did."

The young woman turned to the taller hooded figure, who was still shaking violently, unnerved by the wretched voice in the dark. With her arm around the other one's shoulder, they continued on into the darkness, until Madam Morrible's mocking laughter was nothing more than an echo, a hideous rumor on the walls of the dungeons.

On and on they went, until it seemed that they had left light and the outside world behind all together, or, perhaps, that light never existed to begin with, and that the world lay in eternal night. Thus they walked, further and further into the depths of the earth, until they were deeper than they had ever been in their entire history in Oz. The hot and stuffy dungeon halls now became cold and clammy, and there was even less light than there had been before. Here the cries were the most distant: near at hand, there were no cries for everyone in the cells had died. So many had died already that the cells had been swept clean and the bones were left to rot on the floor of the halls.

At last, they came to a cell where they heard someone breathing and sobbing quietly. A voice whispered "Incendo" and a tongue of fire appeared hovering in the hand of the hunched figure, hooded and cloaked in black, who was now standing taller than the young woman.

"Come back to torture me again?" a woman's voice said, speaking to whom she believed were the jailors.

"It's me, Glinda," the tall figure said, throwing back the hood so Glinda could see the face. Dimly lit in the light of the fire, it looked orange by its glow, but there were just enough features to make out, even for one starved of light, food, water and comfort for a whole, miserable week.

"Elphie?" Glinda asked.

(AN: When I read Son of a Witch, I imagined the Southstairs as the worst possible place one could go to in Oz. I mean, it was like the Bastille in Mordor, or Doubting Castle from Pilgrim's Progress, so I tried to get that out as much as possible.)

(And I couldn't resist having a cameo from Madam Morrible, since she is here in the Southstairs. I don't know who to envision as her, because almost all of the Madam Morrible actresses I've heard of are good [there is one exception, but I shan't name names]. Obviously, however, I wouldn't think of Carole Shelley, as she seems more like the regal, powerful Madam Morrible than the debased, insane one locked away in the Southstairs. But if you can imagine her as such, well, then, by all means.)

(Well, what do you know, Elphaba decided to rescue Glinda. Don't forget to review [please])