Chapter 26 - The Palace of the Lost

Trading one disguise for another at the post barracks where he and Raw had entered Central City, Ahamo bade farewell to the finery of an RS captain and donned the more appropriate garb of a man on the run with information for sale: khakis with knee-high boots, a dark linen shirt with a vest just shy of midnight with tarnished silver buttons, and a weather-worn leather jacket. He would miss the longer, more concealing duster, but where the unlikely trio now headed, Ahamo wouldn't want to advertise any sort of highborn (or married to highborn) status.

Raw's garments had little additional ornamentation or difference from his usual furs, but he had opted to add leather bracers over his gloves — new ones, with steel caps hidden in the knuckles as opposed to his usual claw-like spikes — and a wide brown belt across his waist. His beard he left loose, but trimmed much shorter, and he added several thin braids to his mane of hair tied off with thin strips of colored leather.

Kern stepped out from a closet looking extremely uncomfortable, adjusting the brim of a bowler hat over his head with one hand while the other tugged at a high, tall collar around his neck. With some prompting from Ahamo, he'd returned to the clothing worn by the pre-War alchemists: a full double-breasted and buttoned coat in hunter green (in heavy batted wool, not the ridiculous plastic-like synthetics Raynz had preferred), with grey working slacks over calf boots.

After a quick appraisal, the Consort nodded before handing Kern a gun belt with a fully-loaded pistol. "I trust you know how to use that?"

Kern swallowed, but grunted an affirmative. "I grew up far away from cities and splendor, my Lord. Guns and I are no strangers, though I rarely had to use them."

"Consider yourselves best friends, then, because you may need to rely on it where we're going."

A day's car ride later, the three travelers stopped several spans from a way station, where they would continue on horseback to Ahamo's old hideaway during his time in exile. Few words were spoken during that time, each consumed with his own thoughts and mulling over the unfolding of their tentative plan.

Nights proved harder than the days, for Ahamo could see that all three struggled with demons impossible to chase away completely in the dark. Raw seemed best able to cope, however, dropping into a meditative trance after dinner to clear his mind and keep watch for danger. Kern fussed with a set of books he'd brought along for the ride, insisting that he needed to start researching what little knowledge existed on the Waters of Oblivion; he didn't sleep much.

On the other hand, the Consort found himself reaching into the pocket of his vest for a small empty volume he'd purchased on the way out of Central City, bound closed with twine and a stylus trapped between the pages. The vendor had gushed over the pen as "self-inking" thanks to a magical charm gifted by a royal Gale princess, only ten platinums, sir!

Equal parts astonished and amused by the man's bravado, Ahamo hadn't blinked before handing over the money and tucking book and stylus away for later. Now, he opened it to a blank page and began to doodle, and then to deepen a few favorites into more detailed sketches, humming an Otherside tune to himself as he worked. He much preferred paints and pastels to ink, but anything would do, really, to keep himself grounded.

The features of his eldest daughter rose on the page, and he stopped halfway into finishing them, flipping the page and trying again. He had to distance himself from his true self, re-adopt the guise of the Seeker. Originally, he'd thought it a simple task after so many years in that skin, but too much of it had sloughed away like so much garbage once reunited with his loved ones.

A sapphire-winged beetle crawled over his crossed boots, and so he recreated its lively image until he could add no more detail, and lifted his head to glance about, taking in the greys of false dawn with some surprise. Looking back through the little book, he'd filled several pages with inked specimens, some of which retained only skeletal form, while others nearly jumped from the page with a magic of their own. Kern snored somewhere off to the side, most likely with his face plastered to a book, and Raw shook himself from his trance with a low rumble.

It was time to go.

As if falling into a weird in-between-realm hadn't proven surprise enough, DG received a second, much more unsettling discovery as they started to follow Jeb through the thick underbrush beyond the circle of elms.

Her magic didn't work.

At all.

All it took was an attempt to warm herself against the cold, something she had only recently started to do without thinking about it, minus those pesky situations when hordes of Longcoats chased her and Cain and she had to focus on maintaining a bullet-repelling shield. Aside from those.

She felt as though someone had hit an "off" switch on her Light and booted her into a closet where she couldn't get to it; she couldn't even sense the smallest spark, and to make matters even more interesting, the Emerald now sat as a useless little gem encircling her finger, about as useful as a Philips head screwdriver when she needed a wrench. Telling Cain about it hadn't helped, for now he paced visibly on edge, and it only fed her own insecurities.

Okay, panic starting to set in — how are we going to get back? Is this temporary or permanent, and when did they confiscate my only real weapon without my consent? I wanna talk to the supervisor!

No answer came, and she didn't guess that asking either of her companions for help would bring her any closer to a solution. Even when Alenna had tried to stifle her magic during the dreamwalk she could sense her power, but here she felt as if she'd never had any magic at all. At any other time, DG would find that comforting, for magic held a set of responsibilities, rules and matters of etiquette so very like the 'princess lessons' she'd endured ad nauseum back at the Northern Island. Now that she truly needed it, however, she missed it like a lost limb.

Oh, the ridiculous irony. But stamping her feet and announcing her displeasure to the world like a spoiled princess wouldn't do them any good, so she banked the coals of her fiery stubbornness and let that drive her forward for a spell... no pun intended.

And so, leaving Cain to brood enough for the both of them behind her, DG caught up to Jeb in order to find out more about the dream he'd mentioned. Unfortunately, he couldn't — or wouldn't, she suspected — say much aside from describing a vision of a woman in white with a silver wand who bade him bring "the Princess and her guardian" to her. Yet another VIP of the Zone who didn't like dishing out details, it seemed. DG half-wondered whether this Glinda would randomly pop out of the forest Gandalf-style and start making demands, but the notion borne out of her classic chafing sarcasm came from the more exasperated part of her brain and not the logical one, which told that other half to please shut up.

The crunching of leaves beside her stopped abruptly, and so she too came to a halt, raising an eyebrow at Jeb.

"What is it?" she whispered, and then pondered over why she kept her voice down; they hadn't come across so much as a chipmunk on the way here. In answer, he flicked his chin out towards a break in the trees, and DG followed the motion only to gasp in shock.

There, nestled along the curve of a hill, sprawled a palace that shone nearly bone-white like that of a full moon, reaching for the starless beyond with snakelike walls that rose and fell with the semblance of ocean waves. Arcing above them a pair of towering spires speared the skies, one a good third higher than the other at the crest of the hill and both with golden, pointed caps, tarnished and dull but glimmering nonetheless. Glints of red sparkled here and there along the walls if DG turned her head just so, but disappeared when she tried to look at them directly. Like so many things in the O.Z. — if indeed they still walked within the kingdom — DG suspected that a long and colorful history lay hidden beneath the surface.

The more she stared, the more transfixed she became with the vista, and when she listened hard enough she could hear a voice calling her, beckoning her to come inside, pleading with her to hurry. She took several steps forward to squint and make out more details, to pinpoint where the cries began, but Jeb's hand fell on her shoulder to pull her back.

"Wait," he cautioned sharply. "We don't know what's in there. I don't see any lights."

"At least it's not some creepy cave with a carved face in it," DG quipped, impatient, but shook her head when he made a questioning face at her. No time for that section of memory lane, and she didn't feel like reliving it a third time, anyway.

Cain emerged from a section of thornless brambles behind them, stopping close enough to the princess that with the slightest lean she'd be against his chest, and the temptation to do so (if only to warm herself against the chill) overwhelmed her for a moment. She broke her staring contest with the palace to look up at him, and in meeting his eyes recognized a hint of a smirk, but it vanished long before either could make a move.

"Now that's somethin' you don't see every day," the Tin Man breathed in appreciation of the sight that had so ensnared her. "By Ozma, it's everything and nothing like the texts once said."

Jeb snorted. "Looks a bit run down to me," he countered, running a hand through his blond curls. "But hey, this isn't my adventure. What's the plan, Princess?"

DG answered without hesitation. "We go in, of course. That's what your dream said, right? I know better than to question that."

"Hang on a minute there, Deege," Cain cut in with a growl. "You've got no idea what we're gonna find in that place, Glinda or not."

"Cain, I hear something."

"Hear what?"

Opening her mouth to speak, DG found that she had to stop and actually put the feelings into words, and found that the words themselves came up pretty short. "A… a call."

Ice-blue eyes narrowed in near-instant understanding, reminding the princess just how razor-sharp the steel trap of her Tin Man's mind actually was. "Like the Witch?"

"Yes. No. Kind of," she hesitated, biting her lip and cocking her head towards the palace. "The Witch begged for help and tried to sound all innocent, like a child. This… is ancient, Cain, like if the O.Z. itself had a voice and could talk to me, it would sound like this."

He looked neither comforted nor convinced, but to her shock didn't argue the point. "We're going in, then," he nodded, looking to Jeb for confirmation. The younger Cain glanced between the two of them with eyebrows raised to his hairline, all but disappeared beneath his roguishly long bangs. "If I didn't already know you two, I'd say you were nuts. Then again, I'm the one telling you to move on a dream and a prayer, so I ain't much better off."

"Lead on, Kiddo," Cain directed, and DG didn't need any further persuasion than that.

They passed down through grasses and over what DG might have called 'babbling brooks,' except that they didn't so much babble as whisper and hiss over fallen pebbles and between little runnels of sand. This phantom world had no sun or moon to light their way that she could see, but instead seemed caught in eternal twilight that gave everything a silvery cast, enough for them to see by and also to send eerie shadows fluttering about with jerky, marionette-like bobs. DG kept a hand on the rapier at her hip, glad to at least have that if her magic had in fact been stolen from her. Cain noted her uneasiness, but grunted in approval when he saw her readiness to draw the blade if needed.

Soon, the dirt path resolved into one similar to the brick route, but these paving stones were worn away and washed-out, but Jeb noticed that they seemed more red than yellow if you looked at them just right. Red — the signature color for Glinda, he had mused aloud. In response, DG had seized the moment to ask them for stories about the ancient witch, but neither seemed willing to provide any helpful information, much to her chagrin. Still, she didn't press them too hard about it, betting that both men practically shook in their boots at the thought of Glinda actually showing up and bopping them on the head with her wand for telling the tales all wrong.

Or maybe not. Still, the image provided her with several minutes of quality amusement to pass the time.

The silhouettes of buildings resolved in the distance, but deserted and ramshackle, ready to fall apart at the slightest touch, though the winds had picked up considerably outside the protection of the trees. DG zipped her jacket closed and wrapped both arms around herself for warmth, wishing once more that she could use her magic to help out, and then laughed at herself for acting so bratty. Cain gave her a confused sideways glance, but she waved him off and continued onward, letting her attention wander in search of answers among the abandoned homes.

Even more curious than the first ghost town, DG tripped over a fallen stretch of picket fence with a faded sign, and stopped her companions long enough to wander inside its original borders, perhaps three square meters. Tiny wooden cottages the size of dollhouses, most not even the height of her knees, sat in ordered rows along parallel lanes, with a more majestic building at the end of the streets with a darling little clock tower. At least, it must have looked that way in the past, for now it all sat beneath a layer of dust and grime, the face of the clock cracked beyond repair and several of the little houses caved in from fallen stones or, perhaps, a stray foot. She picked around the edges of the tiny town in search of inhabitants, but could find no evidence of who might have lived there, or if, recalling an old comedy skit back home, this merely served as a model or plan for a new village elsewhere.

Jeb joined her inside the fence, but didn't inspect the homes or give the clock tower more than a cursory stare. "I wonder…" he murmured, but said no more. Unsatisfied with finding nothing of value but not wanting to waste more time, DG stepped carefully back onto the road. A crackling beneath her shoe caught her attention, causing her to look down. Deft fingers found paper stuck among the mud and twigs she'd picked up along her hike, and closer inspection revealed that the paper, when uncrumpled and flattened out in her hand, looked a little bit like a cutout of a person. Too much dirt and wear obscured any details, and water had ripped away more convincing edges to the form, but for some reason DG felt a wave of sadness roll through her, nearly mourning for the little thing.

Someone lived here, once, I think, but they don't anymore. What happened to those poor souls? She shivered to think of it, knowing without understanding that something terrible had happened here… that these places had once thrived, but now left only shadows and the tattered bones of civilization behind in their wake. Careful not to mar the little paper person in her hand, DG stooped to the ground and dug out a tiny hole in the dirt with her cupped fingers, laying the paper in it and covering it back up again. Something told it her it was the right thing to do, even if she didn't know why.

"Princess?" A presence beside her jostled DG from the encroaching melancholy, a familiar hand covering the one she lay over her makeshift grave for the torn and mangled paper person. Her head heavy, her eyes alone lifted to meet Cain's, who hissed in a breath of startled concern.

It was then that the tears decided to fall down her cheeks, a matching pair of them for a little doll with neither face nor name, buried at the foot of a tiny town in a twilight world.

The palace inexorably grew in size the more they walked, but instead of feeling exhausted by how far they'd already come, DG felt nervous energy rise within her to finish her next task and leave this place as the winds rose to haunting howls around them. In sharp contrast to this, a core of stillness remained lodged in her heart from her discovery of the tiny paper doll, though her tears had long since faded.

Sensing that the princess had retreated within herself, Jeb had taken over to lead them to a spindly bridge spanning a nearly empty moat, dark water lapping at muddy, mossy walls far beneath it. She didn't even try to estimate how far the fall might be if she tumbled, but her protectors apparently had, and silently nodded to one another.

Cain took several heavy thumps along the questionable wooden planks to test their steadiness, gripping the simple iron hand rail white-knuckled and paying no heed to the delicate adornments which rose a good foot above his head on either side of the bridge, delicate twists and curlicues that formed the letters "O" and "Z" within a circular border of metal leaves and flowers. When she'd held her breath long enough to make her see spots, Cain finished convincing himself of the bridge's solidity despite its deceptive frailty, deciding it was solid enough to cross. Swallowing her nervousness, she grasped his extended hand — the second time he'd touched her in the last twenty minutes — with icy fingers and let him guide her to the other side. Halfway over the moat a sharp gust whistled around them and triggered a rising quake through the supports of the aging bridge. DG froze, her vicelike grip on Cain yanking him back and her teeth chattered and her eyes went wide and a deeply-seated memory overtook her before she could stop it or even cry out for help.

"Where do you suppose we are?" DG asked as she skipped through a field of wildflowers, daffodils and daisies and sunflowers and dozens of others she didn't recognize. At her side Azkadellia laughed softly in delight, holding her sister's hand tightly and reveling in the magic that kept them safe, so long as they stayed together.

"Well, Ambrose said that somewhere in the maze was supposed to be a magical fountain where wishes come true, but we had to activate the spell… who would have thought that our old nursery rhyme would send us here?"

"It's so cool!" DG gushed, breaking the handhold to gather several blossoms to her nose, giggling once she sneezed out a breath full of pollen. "We opened a portal all by ourselves, Az! Do you think we'll see witches and fairies, like Ambrose said?"

"I dunno," Az shrugged, dusting off her white dress and looking around with watchful eyes, ever the practical child despite her own desires for adventure. "But we shouldn't stay here long — Mom said we had to be back in time for tea."

"Oh, tea's ages away!" the younger chided, straightening up and leaping into a graceful twirl. "I'm just glad we gave that nasty maid the slip!"

"Don't be so harsh on her, DG," Az shot back. "You just don't like her because she made you wear ribbons in your hair to dinner."

"They were green, Az! I hate green."

"You didn't complain when Daddy gave you a doll in a green gown for your birthday."

DG galloped on ahead, heedless as usual of the hem of her dress dragging in the dirt and catching in the grass, nearly out of sight before Az took notice and hurried after her. "Only because it looked like you," she singsonged, "and it's your favorite color."

Together they ran until they stumbled over a road that looked like the brick route, but the sunshine made it sparkle red instead of yellow. The two sisters shared a look of wonder, then locked hands and continued on their journey.

Not more than three steps along the road did a small town rise into view, with smiling people waving in welcome as they approached. Azkadellia slowed them, tugging on DG to hold her back, slightly wary though she sensed no immediate danger.

"Wait," she hissed, digging her fingers into DG's palm, and her sister turned back to glare at her, but did as she was bid and stopped, narrowing her blue eyes while the crowd of seemingly friendly people waved them forward.

"Welcome, children," a voice rose as though from the wind itself, and the girls whirled in unison to face the way they had come. A gust rose amongst the grasses, carrying with it delicate, bouncing dandelion seeds that sparkled against the the sunlight, whirling and spiraling and bursting into iridescent bubbles.

From the shower of bubbles the shape of a woman solidified and phased into view, resplendent and breathtaking in her beauty. Clad in a gown whiter than the first snowfall, but with ringlets of burnished copper and perfect cupid's bow lips to match, she waved a delicate wand of silver by way of greeting, her smile benevolent and disarming all at once.

DG, instantly charmed and never knowing anyone for a stranger, gasped in wonder. "Who are you?!" she cried out, tugging on Azkadellia to let her move closer.

"I?" the woman laughed, the sound a set of breathy wind chimes rising and falling in marvelous chords. "Oh, my dears, my darlings, I am no one but a paltry wizardess in the service of our world, and friend to the esteemed House of Gale.

"Princesses, I greet you and again bid you welcome to my land. What is it you wish of Glinda the Good?"

"DG. Princess. Come on, snap out of it, darlin'."

With a jerk, she tried to sit up, and winced as the motion made her stomach execute some talented Olympic-style flips. "Ooohhh… that wasn't good… what happened?"

"Nearly fell into the moat's what happened," Jeb supplied, smirking. "Thought princesses were supposed to be graceful?"

"Have you met me?" she shot back, but the sting was half-hearted, using her last bit of energy to screw her eyes shut in a feeble attempt to stop vertigo from taking over. "Y'know, I welcome a day when my memories stop trying to send me careening over random ledges. I mean seriously, I know I was a horrible kid, but haven't I suffered enough bad karma for two lifetimes?"

"You've gone through more than enough," Cain assured her, squeezing her arm and holding her steady, his light smile betraying his relief. "Now, can you walk? We managed to carry you inside the palace doors, but we're not quite sure where to go from here."

Closer inspection of their surroundings revealed a darkened entrance hall reminiscent of the one in the Ice Palace, except the floors had been carved from mottled red marble and the pillars of gold inlaid with scarlet crystal. Her head tilted up, up, up to the vaulted ceilings, where the hints of painted frescoes teased her vision through the darkness, but she couldn't make any sense of them from where she sat.

Thankfully, the cold had checked itself at the door, or maybe it was Cain's coat, which she now realized had piled into her lap as she sat up. The man himself continued to watch her to ensure her stability — such as it was — and she sent him an encouraging smile.

"I'm still in one piece," she promised, and he snorted, breaking his gaze to take in the room for himself. Jeb had already risen and circled their position, a caged tiger where his father resembled more a figure of stone, willing to wait and endure the elements until the right time to strike. Idly, she wondered if Cain had always been that way, or if he'd started out just like Jeb, young and full of energy. Then she remembered that she and Jeb had only a few months between them in terms of age, and she flushed at how that memory shifted a rather uncomfortable filter over the… thing… developing between her and the Tin Man.

Deliberately avoiding following that train of thought too far, she clasped the duster to her chest as she pushed herself to her feet. Taking a breath presumably to clear her head, but actually letting herself inhale Cain's scent: leather and woodsmoke and gun oil, all so very him when put together in one place, some of her calm returned. Not ready to relinquish the coat after that, DG pulled it over her shoulders, adjusted her sword, and started walking towards the staircase at the end of the hall — because of course, why wouldn't you go up the staircases when in a mysterious palace?

"I don't get it."

Up the stairs and down the halls, the three had inspected each room and found different curios and assortments in each. One had been filled with nothing but dinnerware of every size, shape and color imaginable, ranging from the everyday to fancy sets fit for a king, but scattered across tables, chairs and countless other pieces of furniture. Piles and piles of platinum, silver and gold with no rhyme or reason to it lay strewn on the floors and even hung on the walls; it proved a perplexing sight. The next chamber held row upon row of china dolls, delicate faces painted with the finest inks that smiled, frowned, laughed and cried while staring at the intruders with blank eyes: families of dolls in dresses, trousers, bonnets and bald heads. They'd closed that door a little more quickly than the first, moving on before they could think too hard about those empty stares.

Jeb raised held the torch he'd found in the entrance to light yet another sconce surrounded by red crystal. The flames cast flickering shadows along the walls and among the cobwebs; DG had the sneaking suspicion that someone watched their progress, but couldn't find the source of it. Chalking it up to either paranoia or a result of the voice that called to her incessantly, she pushed it out of her mind.

A good half-hour later they'd reached the end of a third hall, which opened into a wide, square atrium lined with double rows of empty suits of armor. However, unlike the knights DG had read about from countless stories, instead of swords these figures held giant hammers in double-gauntleted fists. To say the sight was bizarre only hit the tip of the iceberg, particularly considering that the heads of the hammers had cruel, mocking faces etched onto them.

"I'm not sure myself," Jeb admitted as he ran a finger down the shoulder of one armor set. It came away covered in thick dust. He turned to his father. "Any hints, Dad?"

"A few suspicions," Cain grunted, tipping his hat back so he could see the atrium in its entirety. "Some of the old Dorothy stories mention characters like these, but who knows how the truth got twisted over time. Mystic Man once talked about how the O.Z. had dozens of non-human races long ago, but no one knows what happened to them."

"I bet he used to say that the animals could talk, too," DG muttered, but Cain chuckled.

"Matter of fact, he did."

Fighting an eye roll, DG took a step down the carpets lining the floors between each row of knights, but missed the telltale click as her foot sank into the plush pile and pressed her weight into the ground.

"DG!"

A hard weight slammed into her, whirled her around and shoved her back towards the entrance. The princess landed hard on her shoulder just as an ear-shattering crack thundered and echoed around them, threatening to tear her head apart.

Two hands hurried her to her feet while her own clutched at her face. "What happened?" she whimpered. "What hit me?"

A heartbeat. "Dad did."

Cain? DG's breath caught in her chest.

"I'm all right!" the Tin Man called, causing DG to flush - she hadn't meant to yell his name aloud. That was before she saw the remains of the floor where she'd stood, where now a huge crater cracked the marble around the fallen hammer head.

What is this, Indiana Jones? Her mind grasped at the closest pop culture reference she could find, and a nervous giggle threatened to send her an adrenaline-fueled fit of hysteria. However, to her supreme relief, Cain stepped around the oversized weapon still firmly clutched in the hands of a not-so-innocent knight, looking none the worse for wear but fighting to catch his breath. DG sent a silent thank-you skyward for her Tin Man's uncanny reflexes, knowing that had he moved a second later she'd not have survived the strike.

Especially without magic.

"What now?" Jeb asked once his father had finished surveying the damage and started to inspect the armor itself.

"Looks like the floor's rigged to drop these things on intruders. DG must have triggered one of the bad tiles."

"So how do we know which ones are traps?" she crossed her arms with disgust. "There's hundreds of marble tiles here, and we can't exactly go around the room, and have I mentioned I don't have any sparkly mojo to help out at the moment?"

It's a puzzle.

"Huh?" the voice had risen unbidden in her mind, gentle yet unfamiliar. The call that had initially drawn her here still beat at her in regular intervals, the rise and fall of a painful tide she couldn't control, but this had a different signature altogether. In fact, DG felt like she should know the voice, despite a certainty that she'd never heard it before.

Ask Wyatt and Jeb about the stories. Both know them well.

"Stories? What stories?" she asked under her breath, flinching as the words drove shards of ice into her brain. Too many people wanted to dig around in her head, and at her first opportunity DG planned on cornering Tutor to teach her to mind shield a-la-Professor X.

When she stumbled, Jeb hastened to steady her. "Hey, easy there. What did you say?"

"Stories," she repeated. "Something about stories has the answer to the puzzle… I think."

Jeb fell silent, brows furrowed. His head tilted to one side, fingers tightening their grip on her elbow before he let go, scrutinizing the nearest suit of armor as though for the first time.

"Not that…" he mumbled, shifting his attention to the knight's weapon. "Hammers. Hammers. Little Dorothy found a fearsome enemy in the land of the Hammer Heads…"

"...where she called upon the winged monkeys to carry her over the plain," Cain finished without skipping a beat. "Used to be the mobats were good, of sorts," he added wryly. "What're you thinkin', Jeb?"

The young man straightened. "Well, if we can't trust the floors, why not follow Dorothy's example and fly over the problem?"

Cain stared at him with a blank expression. "Son, how in the name of Ozma're you expectin' us to do that? I don't see any mobats around, and our Princess here's outta magical ammunition."

"Thanks," she grumbled, but the men ignored her, and her gaze fell to the floors, took in how the massive hammers had completely obliterated a perfect square of red marble.

In fact, the executed trap had strategically moved the armor so that it had only destroyed the single space DG had occupied, for no cracks had formed in any of the surrounding tiles.

"Okay, that's weird."

"What's weird?" the Tin Man echoed, halting his argument with Jeb. "On top of everything else, I mean."

But DG didn't answer him immediately, instead plopping to the floor to yank on the concealing rug. The piece closest to her ripped away from the damage caused by the hammer, uncovering several rows of tiles - and not all the same as she'd assumed.

"Look at this!" she pointed to several that had gold inlays at one corner, easy to miss if you didn't look close among the natural veins in the marble. "Golden wings. I'm willing to bet that's our ticket through here."

Jeb stooped down beside her, running his fingers over the hand-sized pattern. "I'm willing to bet you're a certified genius, DG. Good eyes."

"Don't make her head any bigger."

"Hey!" DG protested, tossing a nickel-sized hunk of ruined marble at Cain's knees. "Look who's talking, big-bad-Tin-Man-Commish!" Then she sobered. "Can we get going now?"

With the atrium's code effectively cracked - and not their skulls - the three maneuvered along the charmed floors until they reached another set of imposing doors. Emblazoned with the same emblem of the letters "O" and "Z" as on the outside bridge, superimposed over a pair of golden wings to match the ones on the floors, Cain placed himself between them and DG before giving the left one an experimental shove. All too easily it creaked forward on huge hinges, giving way into not unexpected blackness.

"That's not intimidating at all," Jeb appraised, earning him a grin from the princess.

"You've been hanging out with me too long."

"Hanging out? Where?"

"It's an expression, Jeb."

"You and your Other Side nonsense…"

"If you two are done?" Cain groused, keeping his back turned to them as he peered inside the next room. "I'm gonna go in first, but stay close to me, and don't wander off."

"He says like we're five…"

"Jeb!"

The boy sullenly stuck his tongue out at his father's back, and DG chuckled behind her hand. Sighing with the gravity of a man sorely tested to his limits, Cain shook his head and stepped forward… and promptly vanished from sight.

"Cain?" DG blinked, but Jeb beat her to the punch and rushed ahead.

"Dad!" Hurtling headlong into the room, Jeb too disappeared from view, his voice cut off as the last of his foot dove out of sight. DG, now left alone, saw no other recourse than to go after them, because who else would drag them out of whatever trouble they'd just jumped into?

"Here goes…" She bounded forward.

"Jeb? DG?" He couldn't see, and he didn't hear either of the kids behind him, the blackness thicker than the bottom of a lake at midnight. Not even three steps into the room, Cain tried to go backwards and out again into the atrium, but he failed to find even a wall to press his hand against, let alone the entrance he'd just stepped through.

At least Jeb's with her, he tried to console his rapidly beating heart. Just gotta find my way back is all, navigate through a clearly enchanted room to find my son and the Princess…

"You'll return to them soon."

Cain jumped a good foot in the air before turning this way and that, but all in vain — his eyes may as well have been closed for all the good it did him. He hoped for an instant that this place didn't have any furniture, because a stubbed toe wouldn't help his rapidly souring mood.

"There's that temper, always comes out when you don't have any control."

"Who are you? Where are you?"

Somewhere up ahead a soft glow emerged out of nothingness, and the Tin Man picked his way over to it, and then watched it solidify into a petite figure that laughed — laughed — at him all the while.

"I've always been here, Wyatt, or did you think you were imagining it all?"

Cain's jaw slackened, fell open. Ice-blue eyes watered, and the hands that had fisted at his sides, ready to strike, opened and went limp. It couldn't be.

It couldn't be.

But she smiled at him, radiant as he always remembered it, and he thought maybe, maybe it could. Never one to take things at face value, always the man to keep it all at arm's length until suspicion died away, it took every ounce of strength he had not to gather her into his arms. Instead, over ten years of powerful grief and the emptiness of loss crammed into a pair of beloved syllables, cracking at the seams as he dared to speak them aloud.

Please let it be…

"A-adora?"

Tears flooded her eyes. "Hello, Wyatt."

Author's Note: DON'T KILL ME. I have had this scene in my head for MONTHS now and FINALLY have the chance to set it onto paper. I promise there's a rhyme and reason behind this little surprise, though I wonder if any of you had suspected it all along?

Not much from the Ahamo and Raw storyline this time around, but if you recall your OZian geography, they're heading south to the Realm of the Unwanted, hint hint. Their story will intertwine with the others' soon enough, and we'll finally meet Glinda… though we kind of did in DG's flashback… I'll be so happy to finally tie off a couple of plot yarns in the next chapter! I'm going out of town starting tomorrow though, so please be patient while I knock out the next part!

Hope you all are still enjoying this wild ride — I love hearing from you, so please don't be shy in telling me what you think or making theories about what will happen next!

~Mekanikora