A/N: Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to my latest chapter! I know a lot of you are anxious to see Elphaba re-united with Glinda, but I beg your indulgence for just a few chapters more: it'll be here soon- it's just that we have the earth-shattering revelations and outrageous temptations to get out of the way first. So, for this chapter, earth-shattering revelations! I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that the twists and turns are both surprising and decently foreshadowed. Without further ado, read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked doesn't belong to me. Neither does Return to Oz, or the rest of the Oz series for that matter.

PS: Yay! 25th chapter!

Basalt had not expected this, to say the least.

He could only stand in near-astonished silence as his borrowed spy finished recounting the details of Elphaba's meeting: the Wizard, hated and despised by almost every Nome capable of emotions, had been imprisoned in the dungeons of the palace for over a year without the Council or any other Nome authority hearing of it. Not only did this add unlawful imprisonment and torture to the King's growing list of crimes, but it also raised a number of troubling questions: how had the King prevented anyone from learning of the Wizard's arrival? How had he managed to keep the dimensionally-disconnected cell from the watchful eyes of Council surveyors?

More to the point- if all the evidence and the Wizard's testimony was to be believed- just how much power had the King attained, and from where?

Of course, if Basalt did know the answer to the any of these questions, there would be no guarantee that he would be able to do anything about it; after all, the Council was nowhere in sight, all other Nome authorities were powerless to deal with the King, Elphaba's rebellion had failed, and the spies were still keeping a close eye on him, so he wouldn't be able to take any action before being arrested and summarily executed.

From what his own spy had told him, Elphaba was now moving upstairs to the Nome King's office, presumably to discuss the work he intended her to perform and bargain with her to that end. So, starved of any useful ideas, Basalt sent the spy back out into the palace corridors to eavesdrop on the conversation: if nothing else, there was still an opportunity to learn a few remaining details of the King's plan - specifically the ones that Basalt had averted his ears from during Glinda's first conference.

As the spy hurried away, Basalt settled himself against the wall of the cell, and began habitually surveying the area for any visible threats. Finding none except for the spies at the opposite end of the room, he was halfway through his ranged check of Glinda's breathing and heartbeat when he realised that the spy had mentioned something very important in his report:

Somehow, even after Elphaba had left, the King had forgotten to remove the Wizard's cell from the palace.

By the time she'd arrived at the top of the stairs, Elphaba's brief surge of confidence had faded into the ether: she'd had the chance to think about the Nomes' one existing weakness, and assuming it hadn't been fabricated to confuse their enemies, there' be absolutely no chance of finding an egg anywhere inside the palace. More to the point, with the shackles around her powers still in existence, there wouldn't be any way of reaching one. So, that left her facing down the so-called "business proposition" that was no doubt waiting in the room that the attendants had directed her to.

She hadn't had the time to look carefully at the papers on Glinda's desk, so she hadn't the slightest idea what the Nome King intended her or Elphaba to do- or what he was prepared to offer in the latter case. Elphaba wasn't looking forward to it; mostly because it would probably be half a stultifying hour of infuriating offers that probably wouldn't even vaguely compensate for what she'd have to do in return; partly because...

She hastily deleted the sentence from her mind before it could complete itself. She had questions to ask, and it wouldn't do to have her brain cluttered up with how badly this interview could go.

As the door gently closed behind her, Elphaba found herself standing in what looked to be a study or office of some kind: though all of it was rendered in the customary bare rock of Nome architecture, there was no disguising the colossal desk in the centre of the room, or the comfortable chair directly opposite it. Carved into the walls around it were shelves, dozens upon dozens of them, each one filled with books; from what little Elphaba could see, a lot of them were spellbooks or scholarly discourses on magical power. Occasionally, though, titles of much humbler books would seemingly leap out at her, some of which she recognized: epics like The Death of Centuries, or Built Upon The Fallen; books on Ozian culture (written prior to the Wizard's arrival, Elphaba noted); stories of travelling into uncharted lands, fictional or otherwise; there was even a fairly recent-looking one entitled No One Mourns The Wicked: An Authorized Biography of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Nome King, who was seated behind his desk, noticed her wandering gaze and laughed quietly. "Don't worry, it wasn't all looted from Oz; I've been collecting mortal literature for many centuries now, and I've built up quite a private library. Tell me, Elphaba, what do you think?"

"I'm surprised you're not asking me why I spared the Wizard's life," she said flatly.

"You already made your answer to that perfectly clear; I do listen to these things. I don't blame you for spiting me, but it will make Pinhead's death just a tad less satisfying. So, in the meantime, let's get down to business: you obviously want to know why you were captured and what I want from you, so by all means, ask me whatever you wish."

"What's your story?"

"Beg pardon?"

"What's your story, Your Highness?" said Elphaba pointedly."Why are you doing this? I know how the Wizard conned you into giving up the Emeralds, but that doesn't explain why you'd go to such lengths just to take revenge on him. I can understand imprisoning him; I might understand you torturing him- if you'd finished by executing him instead of trapping him in his own private nightmare; I can even understand your attack on the Emerald City, if only because you wanted the Emeralds back. What I don't understand is why you destroyed the rest of the country after that; how could anything the Wizard did to you justify doing that?"

"Believe me, Elphaba, you wouldn't want to know: it's a long and boring tale of politics and bureaucratic nonsense, nothing that you and I should concern ourselves with. Besides, I did notice your interest in Glinda's attempts to translate the Grimmerie; no doubt you still want to know what I spell I requested from her-"

"-and what spell you'll request from me," Elphaba finished. "Yes, I am curious. But I do want to know why I'm here first, and that means that you have to explain just why you took revenge on all of Oz as well as the Wizard."

"Even if it bores you to tears?"

"Especially if it bores me to tears; I think I deserve an answer, Your Highness."

"You do," the King admitted, his smile beginning to fade. "But as I said, it's not exactly relevant to our conversation now. Suffice to say, the Wizard stole a national treasure ; once it was determined that he was a fraud, I launched an attack on Oz to regain the Emeralds, and laid waste to settlements around the country to ensure that there would be no military reprisals. End of story."

"If it was, you'd have left it at that: you'd have executed the Wizard a long time before you'd have even dreamed of attacking Oz, and you wouldn't have bothered reforesting the country either. There's much more to the story than you're telling me, and I'd like to know."

The smile on the King's face was gone, replaced by a tight-lipped frown of annoyance. "It really is inconsequential, Elphaba; I don't know why you should care in the slightest. I mean, isn't "I don't like having national treasures stolen by jumped-up ex-confidence tricksters" enough explanation?"

"You weren't listening to every last minute of my talk with the Wizard: he told me that you said that if there was any justice in the world, you'd have been exiled for losing the Emeralds. That means that you had the final say over what happened; so, if it was your fault, then why weren't you exiled? More to the point- and I hate to sound insensitive- they were just national treasures, weren't they? Why would you have gone through so much trouble over them?"

"You're doing a lot to complicate an issue that should be over in a matter of minutes; why in all the echoing caverns of the earth would you care in the slightest?"

"How am I not supposed to care? Why wouldn't I want to know more?"

"I've given you all the explanation you could possibly need!" the King snapped, his veneer of affability cracking loudly. "I hardly think the rest of it is any of your business!"

"Isn't it? So Oz hasn't been invaded and destroyed, Fiyero and Glinda aren't being held captive in this palace, the Wizard hasn't been tortured for crimes that would- at best- warrant life in prison, and I'm not standing here trying to figure out what your real motivations are. It's nice to know you're keeping up your reputation for honesty and openness… oh, wait! You don't have a reputation for anything except bulldozing my homeland to the ground. Call me old-fashioned, but if I was trying to hire a witch for whatever sordid work I had in mind, I'd give her a good reason to trust me, and the very least explain why I'd torn her country apart over a few crates of emeralds-"

The King rose to his feet with a rumble of shifting stone, and for a moment, Elphaba thought he was going to lose his temper again: his expression hadn't worsened from the disgruntled frown it had been wearing for the last few seconds, but it was easy to tell that he was furious by his clenched fists and twitching shoulders- and by the fact that some of the papers on his desk had caught fire. Then, the King took a deep, shuddering breath, and seemed to calm. "You have a point," he admitted, sitting back down again.

"Nice to know you're not completely insane."

The King laughed mirthlessly. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm even that. But then again, you might say that it's the source of the problem itself."

"What do you mean?"

He hesitated. "Please understand that this will not be an easy confession."

"Why? Is it because you'll have to explain your masterplan to me?"

"Far from it: my plan- or at the very least, half of it- requires me to explain the details of it to you; true, it's not without risk, but at least it's calculated risk. No, the reason why I balk at explaining my motives to you is much simpler: it's an unpleasant issue and I just don't like talking about it."

Elphaba snorted. "Given that you've spent the last few days doing your very best to eradicate Oz and its people, I really have to wonder just what you'd consider unpleasant."

"Do you?" asked the King, snidely. "Picture, if you will, a scene that never happened: the castle of Kiamo Ko, just a few scant hours before your death; Dorothy Gale cowers before you, terrified, helpless, and without the slightest chance of escaping your wrath. But, in perhaps her first moment of defiance, she asks- no, demands to know why any of this had to happen: why you've hunted her across the country, why the Ruby Slippers are so important, why you even started your reign of terror in the first place. Would you answer? Would you welcome the chance to air your frustrations? Would you worry that she wouldn't believe you?"

"I don't know. And in all likelihood, I'll never get the chance to find out, so it doesn't matter."

Was it her imagination, or did the King's smile seem even more mischievous than usual? His face changed too quickly for Elphaba to be certain of what she'd seen, but even as the last dregs of the smile faded, she couldn't help but wonder what the King was up to this time. Hastily shoving these details out of her mind, she sat down in the chair provided, and waited for the story to proceed.

"Before you parted ways," The King began, "Madame Morrible told you a little of my people, as I recall. She didn't tell you about our lifespans, though."

"I think I can guess, though: I've already seen that you can reform your body after it's been damaged, so it's not too big a leap to imagine that you're immortal as well."

"In the sense that I cannot die of old age, yes; we are all immortal, all incapable of dying except through misadventure… but we certainly can't be called unaging: as our lives carry on, our minds mature just as any sentient creatures' do, developing in ways that even our promotions cannot influence. We grow as individuals: some grow wiser, others grow childish; some become selfish to the point of cannibalism, others give up everything in the service of others- the permutations are infinite. But in the end… well, it only appears in the oldest and most accomplished of us, usually Kings; after two millennia of study, we still don't know if it's a disease or simply the natural conclusion of our life-cycle.

"It starts so very innocently- with a loss of focus; slowly, our wits and instincts dull to the point that almost anything can catch us off guard. Of course, that doesn't matter so much when the next symptoms appear, and our attention drifts to the point that we barely even notice anything within a three-foot radius. Memories become distant, eventually only reachable in sleep. Eventually, the fantasies and daydreams we have attained over the years become more vivid than ever, slowly eclipsing all real concerns… and finally, our minds abandon reality altogether." A sad grin arced across his face. "The condition always ends in catatonia, and it's always irreversible."

Elphaba remembered Dr Dillamond, and shuddered, recalling how she'd witnessed the apparently "innocent" beginnings of his collapse into insentience. She hastily swept the unpleasant memory away, and asked, "What happens to the affected Nomes?"

"In all honesty, little can be done for them: the process is almost totally irreversible. So we allow the afflicted to retire in peace; Kings stay just long enough to witness the coronation of their successors before leaving the Nome Dominions forever."

"But where do they go?"

"Anywhere, really; in the end, they generally find a secluded place to rest, and stay there for the rest of eternity, dreaming. I think you might have seen a few of them yourself."

"Uh… I don't think so; I'd probably remember seeing something like that."

"Kiamo Ko had a magnificent view of one from the western tower, if memory serves."

Elphaba thought for a moment. "Are you saying that retired Nome Kings become mountains?" she demanded incredulously.

"Not all of them; it's a matter of personal preference, really: as I recall, the King that settled down in that area always did enjoy a lofty vantage point. But even if the old King is too detached from reality to move under his own power or choose a place of his own, his attendants will still carry him out to a place where he can relax and contemplate infinity… and in all the eons Nomes have existed, there has been only one exception to this rule: me."

"Around the time when the Wizard vaulted himself into power, I started experiencing the first symptoms. I'd been King for over a millennium, alive for Gods only know how much longer- I lost count at somewhere around fourteen thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven year. I'd had a long and prosperous reign, my successor was ready, and my legacy was assured. I was even beginning to come to terms with the fact that I'd never see any of my old friends and allies again except in dreams, when someone brought up the situation in Oz: there was a new ruler in place, and our experts felt that it would be best if we made a good first impression by sending in an ambassador… and like an idiot, I volunteered. Everyone objected, of course, from my closest advisors to the War Council, but after a lengthy debate, I managed to convince them that I was still lucid enough to handle the negotiations." The King sighed deeply. "To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking: maybe I was trying to prove that I still had all my wits about me, maybe I honestly thought that I could still function as a diplomat… It couldn't have been on a mad whim, though; I'm certain of that, at least. But in any event, I was sent into Oz- with a retinue of advisors and assistants, of course.

"At the time, the Wizard's capital was still unfinished: from what I could discern, he had been planning to make it exclusively from white marble, a metropolis of gleaming spires and towers. Then, of course, I arrived with offerings of trade and alliance; I played the role of diplomat to the letter, I minded my manners, I kept myself more-or-less human sized, I told the representatives of everything we could give Oz in return for their favour, right down to our mineral wealth. Two days later, I was summoned to the Wizard's throne room… and unfortunately, the meeting didn't go anything like yours."

"In other words, he conducted the whole thing from behind the giant face. I'm not entirely surprised; when I met him, he only showed himself because he wanted to start our relationship off on a friendly note. I think he'd be a bit too scared to try and speak to you in person."

For a moment, the King looked as though he might laugh. "If only that was the beginning and end of it: you see, at the time, I believed him."

"What?"

"I know: it should have been easy to see that he was a false magician even with all the mechanical trickery on display, but by that time my wits were so dulled that I accepted his lies with all the naiveté of a child." The shame in the King's voice was audible now. "I accepted every single daft conjuring gimmick as the truth, I promised to give him everything he'd requested, and returned home, praising him as a magician and an ally with every step. Before an audience of only my most powerful followers, I recommended allowing the Wizard's miners into the country and taking the Blessed Emeralds as a token of our newfound friendship. True, some protested, but those naysayers were outvoted by the War Council, the commanders of our military; you see, they'd read the reports my attendants had filed, and they could tell the Wizard was a fraud that I'd been too befuddled to see through. The Council should have done everything in their power to stop me: they should have cancelled the bargain, declared me unfit to rule, and sent me into retirement before I could do anymore damage- or exile me to a place too inhospitable for me to ever acclimatise to, if they thought my blunder was especially heinous. Instead, they gave my decision all the weight it didn't deserve and allowed the Ozian miners to take what they wanted."

"But why? What did they have to gain by handing over the Emeralds?"

"Nothing. They couldn't have cared less about the Emeralds, and they couldn't have cared less about Oz; by and large, the incident would have been ignored by them under normal circumstances- we'd been at peace for so long that the generals had nothing to do but jockey for power amongst themselves. But I'd shown them just how feeble-minded I really was, and they jumped at a chance to seize all the power they could possibly want. This way, they didn't have to go to the trouble of removing me from power altogether and building a new government from scratch; all they had to do was keep me around, and ask my permission for whatever mad reformation they desired.

"As my mind drifted further and further away from reality, the Council took on the responsibilities I was too detached to deal with: they unofficially supplanted me as King, forced my successor into the role of an advisor, and bit by bit, they removed every single one of my old supporters from office and replaced them with loyal dupes. They even began stealing tiny morsels of magical power from me, draining my strength bit by bit and never allowing it the time to heal, until even the most basic movements through the earth were challenging to me. And two years after that, they began looking for political might: across the Dominion which had once been mine, qualified Nomes were ousted from their jobs and replaced with the duly-sworn lackeys of the council. Those who attempted to resist were harshly punished, some of them by being imprisoned within their bodies and made into bricks… quite a few of which ended up finding their way onto Ozian construction sites.

"But do you know what the most damning thing of all was? I didn't notice any of it. In all the years that the Council spent twisting Nome society out of shape, I was cloistered away in this very office, lost in my reading or in own dreams… enjoying myself. Gods forgive me, enjoying myself while my Kingdom was reduced to a playground for a mob of overpowered generals!"

In spite of everything the Nome King had done in the past few days, Elphaba found herself saying, "But you said yourself that you were near-catatonic at the time! You can't blame yourself for succumbing to an illness-"

"That is not the problem, Elphaba: had I succumbed to my illness prior to my mission to Oz, nothing would have happened. I would have been retired, my successor would have replaced me, a more reliable ambassador would have been assigned to handle things, and that would have been the end of it. But because I tried to prove that I was still competent, because I allowed myself to be distracted by the Wizard's trickery and because I allowed the earliest symptoms of this disorder to get the better of me at a pivotal moment, I gave complete autocratic control of my kingdom to a military dictatorship and undid everything that I and my forebears had worked for. In short, I can blame myself for what happened, because, regardless of my condition, I am to blame."

There was a long silence before the King continued. "I told you that there was no cure for the disease; well, I found a rather unexpected way of purging myself of all symptoms- an explosion large enough to tear my body into inert rubble. By that stage, I'd been divorced from reality for so long that an explosion was about the only thing that could have surprised me; I transmitted my spirit into the nearest available body, consuming its previous inhabitant to heal the damage I'd sustained in the blast… and accidentally cured myself in the process. I was still weak, still lacking much of my old magical power, but I was once again lucid. Lucid, and extremely angry, of course, but I couldn't take any kind of action against the council until I was fully restored, so I played dumb. As luck would have it, the body I'd claimed was declared King by the unsuspecting War Council, and I was once again pushed into the background, where I could work in peace and occasionally thumb my nose at authority by having a palace built against all the conventions of Nome law.

"Eventually, I found that lot of the spies had been left untouched by the attempted purges- if only because most of them were judged too simple to be disloyal; so, given that I didn't have much else to do apart from appear at parades and look official, I had the spies comb the surrounding lands for anything that could grant me an edge over the Council. For months on end, the search was fruitless except for a few scattered rumours of the Grimmerie, which was kept well beyond my reach; so, while I expanded my search, I had a few of my spies examine the relationship between Oz and my people, to see how the Nomes had been received following the bargain."

"I didn't think they were received at all," Elphaba remarked. "I mean, it would have been mentioned in the newspapers and periodicals if Nomes had ever made any public appearances in the Emerald City- or anywhere else, for that matter."

"Exactly: all negotiations between Ozian and Nomish ambassadors were conducted in privately-owned basements outside of the Emerald City; the records of our very existence were kept from the public; the miners who'd been sent into Nome territory had been sworn to silence; even my first appearance in Oz had been covered up through bribery and threats." The King's expression darkened, brow furrowing with pent-up anger. "And as far as the populace was concerned, the Emeralds belonged to Oz. The miners- those parasitic coprolites who'd marched past throngs of Nomes begging them not to take the Blessed Emeralds- they were lionized as pioneers in underground exploration, as "Exemplars of Ozian Pluck and Determination!" And as for us, we'd been forgotten- no, worse…"

On a nearby shelf, a book began to shake violently, and then abruptly flung itself into the air; it landed with thunderous crash on the desk in front of Elphaba, and she barely had time to discern the title- Monsters of Myth and Legend: A Comprehensive Bestiary of Mythological Creatures- before the book almost exploded open, its pages fluttering wildly to the left in a gale of motion. Eventually, the breeze subsided, leaving Elphaba staring down at page 356: there, taking up the entire right-hand page, was a massive illustration of a Nome warrior, its hands reaching out towards the reader, its cavernous mouth open in a silent roar of anger.

By far one of the most obscure of all the creatures detailed so far, the entry read, Nomes were a race of barbaric troglodytes rumoured to have been encountered by the brave miners who first discovered the now-legendary Emeralds. Though tales of monstrous, rock-skinned beings still persist in the smaller mining towns of Oz's north, Nomes have long since been debunked as boogeymen created to dissuade children from taking up mining as a career -

"THAT,"the King roared, "Is what the Wizard and the people of Oz reduced us to! Barbaric troglodytes! Boogeymen! Fairytales! It's bad enough that they stole from us, inadvertently ruined our society, almost made our society as vapid and power-hungry as theirs, they but worse still, they pretended that we never existed! " He took a deep breath; the pages of the book were beginning to smoulder.

As the air began to cool again, Elphaba finally spoke. "So this is all about revenge?" she asked quietly. "All of this was about taking revenge on the Wizard and Oz, and once I've given you all the power you want, it'll be about taking revenge on the War Council. Is that it?"

"In a word, no: our people have grown so used to emulating humans that we've gotten even worse than Oz under the Wizard; we've grown stagnant and motionless, we hunger for things we have no real need for. I mean, does it seem even vaguely reasonable to jockey for political power and social influence when magical power can restructure matter and control the mind? Even if I were to remove the War Council from power and undo the damage they've done to our society, the problem would remain in those who remain loyal to them, and even if I could convince them to give up their deviant views and rejoin functional society, there's still no guarantee that we wouldn't begin the slow plunge into depravity all over again. So, it's time we move on from this existence."

"How do you mean?"

"Countless millennia ago, we were little more than near-mindless spirits of the earth, devouring and developing the earth only as our meaningless appetites dictated. But through magic, we ascended: we became like the humans who dwelt above us. And now that we've become too much them, it's time to ascend again."

"But what are you supposed to ascend to? You're already earth elementals! You're immortal, you can create new bodies for yourselves at the slightest thought, you've got access to powers that most magicians can't even dream of! I've heard of thaumaturgical experiments where people have tried to become elementals! Where could you possibly go from here?"

"We're still too grounded- no pun intended; we can exist without having to take on physical forms, but our spirits can't leave the confines of the earth. And we're still tied to physical reality, to hierarchical societies. We need to evolve, to take on bodies of purest magic, to each exist alone and independent of one another. And you, Elphaba, might just be the key to our ascension."

In the hopeful pause that followed, Elphaba decided that the King was almost certainly insane by both human and Nome standards; his goals were delusional, his methods didn't stand the slightest chance of working, and the violent mood swings she'd witnessed in the past few hours were just icing on the cake. Putting aside the long list of reasons why the plan was impossible, she summarized it as concisely as she could: "Well, I'm sorry," she said, trying to sound reasonable, "but I don't think there are any spells in the Grimmerie that can grant the effects you're asking for, and I doubt I'll have the time or the will to cast them on an entire species anyway."

"The Grimmerie isn't going to be used for that."

"Ah. That's a relief, I suppose."

"It's going to be used to transform me into a human being."

Elphaba blinked. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I hear something about you wanting to be less human a few seconds ago?"

"You did."

"And now you're telling me you want to actually become a human being."

"This is true."

"You're completely mad," she said bluntly. "You know that, don't you? There really is no getting around the fact that you have lost your grip on reality."

"Perhaps I should clarify things to avoid any further confusion. Now, when I told you of my search for magical artefacts to augment my strength, I didn't actually tell you if I found anything apart from the Grimmerie."

"Well, I saw you in action when you captured me, so I assume you either found something, or you were lying through your teeth about losing your strength at all."

"It so happens that I did find something: a year or two into my search, one of my spies picked up a surge of magical energy, and followed it into the very depths of Munchkinland. I was expecting a spring of natural thaumaturgy, an old storehouse of artefacts being unearthed, perhaps even some ancient sorcerer dying. Imagine my surprise when the spy reported that the source of the surge had been a little girl crying by her mother's deathbed." That mischievous smile blossomed again. "Rather surprised by this turn of events, I had my operatives to watch the child while I followed the reports of her existence all the way back to her conception. The circumstances were curious to say the least, but there was no sign of any particular enchantment placed upon the girl or anything of that nature. I was starting to think that the incident had been a fluke when there was another surge: the girl had been bullied; names had been called, attention had been drawn to the girl's… rather unique skin colour; the altercation ended with the bully's hair spontaneously combusting, as I recall. So, intrigued, I doubled the watchers."

"You… you were spying on me?"

"No, I merely assigned a few of spies to keep an eye on you. Quite different."

"No it isn't!" Elphaba shouted. "You were watching me, and the fact that you were doing so through somebody else's eyes doesn't change a thing! And I can already tell that you kept it up, by the way- you don't need to tell me that you watched me all through my childhood."

"Oh, not constantly. I was mainly wondering just how you were generating so much magic, so I was always keeping one spy's eye out for another surge. After a few sightings, I could tell that you were immensely powerful. The trouble was, I had no idea how I could put that power to use. So, I once again played the waiting game. You grew up, you learned to suppress the involuntary surges of magic that came with every angry impulse, you devoted yourself to protecting your little sister. And then you went to Shiz, and everything changed: you learned how to truly control your powers; Madame Morrible wasn't the only one impressed at your displays in magic class. I was excited, to say the least… and so disappointed when you went to the Emerald City. First, I lost sight of you behind the walls of the city; then, after you declared war on the Wizard- at just the time I thought you might be ready to recruit- you proved so elusive! You were always flying just out of reach, always sleeping as far from major settlements as possible, always leaving just before my spies tracked you down. Eventually I started to wonder if you were too powerful to be contained, if my attempt to acquire you would only result in failure."

"Is that why you never sent any of your warriors to capture me in the last week or so?"

"Exactly. But- and this is the point I've been driving towards- not too long before you met your apparent death, I found something rather strange: around the time you held that last meeting with your dear sister, there was another massive surge in power… and then, all of sudden, the spies began reporting two magical signatures in the area: one from you, and one from Nessarose. But when the Wicked Witch of the East finally died, the signature didn't die with her- it was transferred to Dorothy Gale of Kansas. Over the course of those tumultuous last few days, I watched and waited as the drama unfolded, as you and Glinda shared that tearful farewell, as you faked your death and left the ungrateful Land of Oz behind. And then one day, Dorothy Gale left Oz as surely as you and the Wizard did. Unlike the Wizard, she didn't fall… but the source of the newfound power did- right into my outstretched hands!"

Laughing, he leaned back in his chair and propped both roughly-humanoid feet up on the desk; immediately, the room was bathed in an unsettling red glow that turned the deep red marble of the walls and furniture pitch-black. Magic swept across the room, sparking against metal decorations, rippling the air and setting Elphaba's teeth on edge; even as she felt the energies permeating her very bones, she realised that the power currently forming ice crystals on her skin was still dormant; this was the proverbial eye of the storm. It terrified her… but at the same time, it felt instantly familiar.

And, as she turned to look at what the Nome King was wearing on his feet, she realised that she had indeed encountered this power before.

After a year without knowing what had become of them, Elphaba was now staring at the Ruby Slippers.

Has the Nome King truly lost his mind? What power do the long lost Ruby Slippers hold? What could the King possibly offer Elphaba in return for her services? Find out next chapter!