A/N: Aaaand, at long last, the next chapter! Featuring madness, mayhem and recklessness, and more earthshattering revelations (and by now, I should probably be adding the trademark symbol behind that one just for the sake of comedy). Thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - your kind support does my corroded old heart a world of good!
Nami Swannn: yep, pitchcapping is a horrible thing - even moreso considering it was an actual method of torture used against suspected Irish Rebels. Just bringing a bit of historical horror there, please forgive my morbid attitudes. As always, Harker's own blasé attitude also adds to horrors on display within the story - especially given that he's grown so accustomed to nightmarish sights that he can actually some of the more disturbing (if nonlethal) sights he's witnessed over his decades of service. And one thing to keep in mind: the Wizard isn't dead... but at this point, he probably wishes he was. Also, a warning in advance, this is going to be another intense chapter - and another one that's pretty hard on Elphaba.
Caliax: OnlynowjustmanagingtospeakThe riddles will eventually make sense, I assure you - just keep an eye out for bolded words in the ANs! Alas, the cute Gelphie interaction will have to wait until next chapter, and without saying too much, I get the feeling Elphaba will desperately need it.
Redapple435: Yep, a portal! :)
So, without further ado, the latest chapter! Constructive criticism is always welcome, as are intriguing reviews and detailed predictions on the future course of the story!
Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked and all its characters, lyrics and locations are not my property and never will be.
3/8/15: Added a forgotten horizontal line and corrected some missing italics - please excuse my forgetfulness. Also corrected some embarrassing typos (damn you, autocorrect!)
The moment she'd heard the words "another dimensional portal" uttered, Elphaba's mind had gone blank save for one all-consuming line of thought. And yet, none of them involved the possibility of seeing her Oz again: even after almost a week lost in another world, homesickness eluded her entirely; not all that surprising, given that most of what she'd treasured best about her homeland had been a handful of open-minded people, most of whom were dead by now.
No, the thought that had sprung to mind was that of Glinda.
In truth, she'd been on Elphaba's mind for quite a while, now: her nightly radio conversations with Glinda had been the one bright spot during the long, monotonous days of waiting, and Elphaba had spent every hour after that missing her. And yet, she hadn't felt deeply concerned for her friend's safety, if only because the Mentor, Kiln, Harker, Captain Wolton, the captain of the palace guard and even Glinda herself had continuously reassured her that she'd be safe in Greenspectre, and that the two-pronged attack by the Empress and the Hellion wasn't likely to occur again; and she'd believed them, but only for the sake of her own sanity.
Somehow, the news of the portal had brought all the old fears rushing back, accompanied by a lurid vision of the attack on Greenspectre: a blazing scythe of energy cutting through the city, tearing down buildings and swatting airships from the sky, leave the once-mighty towers of the palace teetering on the brink of collapse – with Glinda helpless inside and Chistery fleeing from the storm overhead. Once again, Elphaba was certain that Glinda – or any of her other surviving friends for that matter – simply weren't safe in the Mentor's care… and this time, with no reassurances to get in the way, she knew for a fact that the only sane alternative to forcing her and the others to endure this madhouse reality was to send them home.
So, with almost a week's worth of repressed fears bubbling to the surface of her mind, Elphaba had took to her heels and sprinted towards the wall, closely followed by Harker and Dr Kiln. But by the time the three of them arrived, the battlements were crowded with soldiers from just about every single faction currently garrisoned at Loamlark, from the militia to the mercenaries, along with a sizeable mob of unarmed townsfolk – all of them united in mutual astonishment at the sight of the apparition hovering in the distance.
Needless to say, the portal's sudden appearance had been quite a shock to the defenders arriving at the wall, and given that most of them had been expecting an enemy attack, it hadn't taken long for confusion to set in once the soldiers got their first good look at what had materialized at the other end of the road. And once civilians got interested in the proceedings, things only got more confused; according to Kiln, the gathering of citizens might have ended in a riot if the militia hadn't reluctantly allowed a few of the local thrillseekers past the cordon. Not that it helped much, given that the militia's definition of "a few" could apparently encompass several hundred pyjama-clad rubberneckers, and they took up so much space that it was barely possible for any of the defenders to move, let alone try and force the mob back down the staircases.
And then of course, Branderstove had showed up, still in his dressing gown, demanding to know why he'd been summoned "at this ungodly hour of the night". Because the Leviathan was simply too massive to climb the narrow staircase to the top of the wall, and because the commanding officers who'd wanted to speak to him were trapped up on the battlements by the crowds, the situation had quickly degenerated into a shouting match between the two parties, every sentence invariably ending with a bellow of "WHAT?" from one of the disputants. And as if that wasn't bad enough, several members of the crowd attempted to help by repeating the misheard messages, usually overlapping each other and only adding to the confusion in the process.
Of course, once Elphaba arrived at the scene, it didn't take long to realize that every single staircase was blocked by the crowds; in the end, the only way she could get a glimpse of what was happening on the other side of the wall was to clamber onto her broomstick and fly to the edge of the nearest parapet with Harker in tow (Kiln scurrying up the wall behind them like an anthropomorphic cockroach).
And then, as she settled down onto the edge of the fortifications, she finally saw the portal.
At the far end of the road from Loamlark, just a few hundred yards from the point where the mountain path dissolved into forest, a colossal expanse of light cast a haunting glow upon the cratered road; this swirling tear in reality was almost identical to the one that had appeared in Kiamo Ko, except this one was perhaps eight hundred feet from end to end, and yet had finally stopped growing without ripping any of the nearby trees out of the ground. And around its hazy border, random currents of magic flowed and crackled like lightning, racing along the rim of the portal and occasionally discharging themselves into the forest below.
And for all I know, this could be our way home, Elphaba thought. This could be my best chance at getting Glinda to safety.
"When did this appear?" she asked aloud, as Kiln scurried into position beside her.
"About fifteen minutes ago," he answered. "We haven't had a chance to properly examine it just yet – especially since we haven't had a chance to set up the proper instrumentation – but as far as surface appearances go, it's visually identical to the dimensional portals Lintel used to conjure… but this one's definitely not a laboratory-creation: it's a wild-born, spontaneously-sparked fissure in reality – a wildfire portal, as Lintel called them."
"But if you haven't examined it yet, how can you tell it's actually leading to my world and not some other reality altogether?"
"Just a minute…" Kiln reached into his coat and checked his pocket watch; for perhaps fifteen seconds, he stood there, absently tapping his thumb on the edge of the watch. Finally, he looked up and muttered, "Three… two… one… and there!"
He pointed, and Elphaba saw that the distant portal had changed: the swirling chaos at its centre had briefly resolved into a photo-perfect imagine of a very distinctive cityscape: there, laid out across the eight hundred-foot span of the rift in all its vivid green splendour, was none other than the Emerald City itself, every spire and turret glittering in the midday sun of another world. A few seconds later, the image flickered and vanished, suddenly replaced by a vision of the Yellow Brick Road winding across the lush meadows of Oz. Another flicker, and Elphaba found herself staring up at Shiz University, its oft-sung hallowed halls and vine-draped walls still bustling with students. With every flicker of the portal's fabric, the image changed to another location within Oz's borders: a stretch of Munchkinland countryside; the first lethal dunes of the Deadly Desert; the Thousand-Year Grassland, swaying and rippling in the wind; even the mountains of the Vinkus, among which Kiamo Ko had once been nestled; villages, marshlands, townships, forests, cities, railroads, mountains, lakes – dozens upon dozens of scenes from all over Oz flashing before her eyes in a space of a few seconds. But in the end, the flickering overtook the last image, and the landscapes dissolved back into shapeless energies.
"We got that from time to time back in the Pottery," Kiln remarked. "For all intents and purposes, they're echoes of the world the portal connects to – a good indication that we've found a close match for your world."
"No offence, but 'close' doesn't mean all that much in this context. I mean, according to the theory, there's supposed to be an infinite number of potential worlds out there. For all we know, this portal could lead to a world ruled by Morrible, or back to Empress Elphaba's first day in office – the only difference being the breakfast menu."
"True, but it's at least a step in the right direction. More importantly, we've got ways of finding out where it leads: the Mentor's had some of her best engineers studying Lintel's old journals over the last couple of days, and they've picked out a few designs that we can implement at short notice. A little blood magic and a little patience, and we'll know for sure – and if it's not, then we let it loose and see how tricky it would be to restart Lintel's old pet project. But all that's academic at the moment: we've got to get that portal out of the road and anchored stably in our reality… and according to our engineers, we have all the materials necessary to implement that method here and now: with a few modifications to one of our anti-incursion arrays, we should be able to reposition the portal somewhere safe and workable – once we get the array mounted on one of these towers, of course."
"And that's assuming the engineers can get it through the crowd," Elphaba remarked, eyeing the horde now blocking the staircases.
Kiln winced. "I sincerely hope they can, otherwise we're stuck with using the mercenaries as gofers again."
"Is that what the argument's been about?"
Somewhere to their left, one of the officers hollered, "WHAT?"
Two hundred feet below them, Branderstove sighed with the force of a hurricane, and in a voice that could have probably been heard in Greenspectre, bellowed, "FOR THE EIGHT HUNDREDTH TIME, I SAID NO! N – O! NO! NON! NEIN! NYET! NI! NEGATORY! THIS WILL NOT FLY, AND NEITHER WILL MY AIRSHIPS! DO YOU SAVVY, SIR?"
"… WHAT?!"
Kiln gently prised his hands away from his ears, and took a deep breath. "Long story short," he said, slightly louder than necessary, "we were attempting to get the Right Honourable Leviathan to loan us a suitable airship – if only to save us the trouble of repurposing our hospital ships to reel in the portal – but as you can hear, the negotiations are still going in circles."
"Let me guess, he doesn't want to risk his expensive fleet on anything that doesn't involve gunfire and bloodshed?"
"Actually, most of them aren't even here."
"What?"
"I know, I was surprised, too. But apparently, the Strangling Coils spotted some U.R. ships attempting to cross the Jagged Hills a few miles to the west of here; as far as I know, the fleet's still out there, pillaging everything they can from the blazing wreckage. So as long as they're away, we're stuck using old-fashioned tower-mounted jerry-rigged sensor dishes."
And that leaves us sitting on our hands and hoping that the portal doesn't disappear before we get the array past this gang of thrillseeking halfwits, Elphaba grumbled silently. Leaving me stuck here, watching Glinda's only ticket home slowly vanishing into the ether.
She gazed up at the portal, wondering just how long it would remain active before disappearing, where it might reappear – or if it would reappear at all. More importantly, even if someone managed to convince the mob to disperse, even if the technicians were able to set up the array and modify it in time, even if they could do all of this and successfully displace, re-anchor, and stabilize the portal before it vanished… well, what the hell were they going to do if it didn't lead back to the Oz she knew? Unless Lintel had also developed a way of redirecting wildfire portals to-
Come to think of it, what had happened to Lintel? Obviously, he wasn't spending his twilight years in the Deviant Nations, because the existence of other worlds had been an unproven theory until Elphaba had arrived and even know the engineers were having to dig through the old crackpot's diaries for the answers they needed. But if he was working for Unbridled Radiance, why hadn't the Empress been able to recognize Elphaba as a traveller from another world? If his work on dimensional travel was still a fringe science, then what had his portal magic been used for the last forty-odd years?
"Brighten up, Elphaba," Kiln remarked. "The portal's not vanishing anytime soon; it's perfectly stable from what we've seen so far."
"How can you tell?"
"The simple fact that we've still got a forest out there. Unstable portals have an intense gravitational pull."
"As Glinda and I found out the hard way." Elphaba thought for a moment. "Speaking of which, how soon can we get Glinda, Chistery and Dorothy on an airship out here?" she asked, tentatively.
"A matter of hours, if need be." Kiln gave her a suspicious look. "Making travel plans already?"
"You saw what happened to Greenspectre on the night we arrived here: it's not safe for any of those three in this world, not even in the Deviant Nations. The sooner they're back in Oz, the better."
"But not you?"
"Well, I haven't exactly worked out a plan for what to do if I ever returned to Oz," Elphaba admitted. "And like you said, it's not as if I've got much to return to, anyway. So I might as well stay here and deal with the boatload of unfinished business I've acquired over the last week, and maybe plan out some kind of strategy if I ever find the time."
"You might find dealing with Oz a lot easier in the future," said Kiln, a wry smirk edging across his face. "Those enhancements to your powers are permanent, don't forget… and on top of that, you've still got several decades of natural growth to look forward to."
"You never stop promoting your own work, do you?"
There was a loud crash from below, and an anguished voice wailed, "The label! THE LABEL! Did nobody see the label? "Warning: fragile, glass components, liable to break if stupid inbred border-dwelling basket-cases push it out of my hands and…" what is WRONG with you people?! I told you to move out of the… the… the…" There was a muffled crunch of breaking glass, and then the speaker promptly burst into tears.
Kiln sighed. "Well," he said, raising his voice over the sobbing from below, "I think we're going to need another array. And possibly some therapy for our chief engineer."
"How long will it take to replace?"
"Forty-five minutes to bring it out of storage, plus another thirty to modify. Unless, of course, Branderstove's hiding a spare scoutship in his crevices, in which case we can re-anchor the portal in about half the time."
"How long will the portal remain stable and open?"
"… days, hours– I'm not sure, research on the subject has been deliberately limited ever since the Slamming Door. Just keep an eye on that forest; if the portal starts vacuuming up trees, we're in trouble."
Elphaba's mind raced. "Is it possible to re-anchor the portal by magic?"
"It's definitely possible. Any halfwit with a bit of experience with portals can temporarily stabilize and move a wildfire portal, even if they only knew how to a shift one of their own a doorways from one end of a room to the other"
"Then why are we screwing around with anti-incursion arrays, whatever the hell they are? Why haven't the magicians been brought out yet? I've seen quite a few practitioners of portal magic among the reinforcements – I mean, even I know a few things about portal magic!"
"I doubt it'd be easy for the mages to work with it at this range. See the corona of energies surrounding the portal? Unless you know how to handle the currents and eddies of interdimensional matter, then it's – how did he put it? – like trying to juggle bowling balls with your feet. Even Lintel had trouble keeping portals of that magnitude under control at long range, and he literally wrote the book on the subject."
"At long range?" Elphaba echoed. "You mean it'd be easier closer to the portal?"
"Well, as I recall, Lintel always found wildfire portals easier to work once he was within twenty feet of them, inside the corona in extreme cases. In fact, that's how most of the accidents happened back at the Pottery – he wandered outside effective range and lost control. But of course, that's purely incidentaaaaaa…"
Kiln very slowly trailed off, eyes widening as he finally noticed the expression on Elphaba's face. "Now wait just one clock tick," he began.
But Elphaba was already in motion: ducking under Kiln's arms and just out of Harker's thorny grasp, she practically leapt back on her broomstick, kicked off from the rooftop and rocketed into the night sky. People below her yelled in surprise as she soared overhead, and for the second time in as many minutes, the wall resounded with the desperate shouts of the commanders – all of them bellowing into radios furious clarion calls of "We have a code Jenkins, we have a code Jenkins! Miss Thropp is not responding to hails!"
As she began accelerating northwards, she caught a garbled scream from somewhere a few hundred feet below her, a megaphone-amplified roar of "Elphaba, wait! The forest is still…" But then she put on an extra burst of speed, and the voice was lost to the sound of the wind in her ears as the sudden acceleration sent her flying out of earshot and out of Loamlark altogether.
Maybe it had been Harker who'd called out to her, maybe it had been Kiln, maybe one of the many anonymous commanders at the wall – it was purely academic by now, as was whatever he'd been shouting about; Elphaba wasn't wearing a radio headset, so unless Branderstove really did have an airship he'd be willing to part with, she probably wouldn't hear another word from them until she got back to face the inevitable reprimand – another thing that didn't really matter here and now. At this point, all she cared about was getting the portal stabilized long enough for the engineers to re-anchor it somewhere safe; she could worry about specifics and condemnations later, ideally once Glinda, Chistery and Dorothy were back in Oz and as far out of harm's way as possible.
Or at least once the portal's been relocated on the right side of the mountain range, she mentally amended. Or even better, once I'm back in bed and enjoying a well-deserved sleep, ideally with the knowledge that after every horrible thing I've learned or witnessed this evening, something actually went right for a change.
As the road blurred beneath her and the portal grew ever-closer, Elphaba found herself quietly rehearsing the small library of portal spells and teleportation charms she'd acquired in her years of practicing magic. The art of conjuring ethereal gateways was complex and often exhausting, but at least it wasn't as unpredictable as the spells of the Grimmerie; then again, Elphaba had never tried to create a portal powerful enough to pierce the barrier between realities. In her brief "reign of terror" over Oz, she'd only used her knowledge of it for emergency escapes and journeys where flying was out of the question, and even then, the furthest she'd ever travelled by portal had been about fifty-three miles; along with a bevy of rules based on line of sight or memory of destination, many portal spells were hampered by their own complexity, and the most powerful among them required immense effort to cast and travel through. Even Dr Lintel's experiments into inter-dimensional portals had been mechanically assisted, and Elphaba's own attempt at cross-country gatewaying had left her sprawled unconscious in a ditch for the rest of that particular afternoon; needless to say, she'd decided not to push herself any further than her current limit until she'd had the time to the study the art in greater detail.
Hopefully, her current repertoire would be at least enough to move the portal to the other side of Loamlark; she'd had some experience with collapsing and shifting portals for later usage, but she'd never moved a portal of this magnitude. Hopefully, it wouldn't-
Something past the corona, sitting at the centre of the portal…
Elphaba blinked rapidly as the vision slowly faded from her sight, already feeling the first stirrings of dread creeping their way along her spine: even with so many other things on her mind, there was no mistaking another one of her precognitive episodes, and by now, she knew that they rarely meant anything good. After all, the last time she'd seen anything vaguely pleasant had been way back at the start of her time at Shiz, and that particular prophecy had never came true.
Something is sitting at the very heart of the rift, waiting…
By now, the portal's massive bulk towered over her, its incandescent glow now so bright that Elphaba could scarcely believe that it was still night-time. And yet, even with the rift in reality now entirely dominating the horizon ahead of her, awe was suddenly beyond her at this point: she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong – not just because of her premonition, but because of the energies now closing in around her. As brief as the encounter had been, Elphaba still remembered the sensation of being swept up by the portal back in Kiamo Ko: back then, she'd felt the electric tingle of magic across her skin, mingling with the ether from which the portal had formed. Here and now, even with the corona washing over her like waves on a beach, she felt… nothing.
Something waits past the blinding light, past the heart of the portal…
Ten feet into the corona, Elphaba hastily brought the broom to a halt and stared up at the heart of the portal, almost invisible amidst the light of the surrounding energies: this, according to what her other self had seen of Lintel's experiments, was the source of all the light and chaos, the point where matter was actually transmitted between realities. Tentatively, she reached out towards the portal heart with all the magical power she could muster, and, chanting the words of a spell, tried to move the portal.
It didn't budge.
For a split second, Elphaba hovered there in uncomprehending silence: the sudden dilemma had paralysed her. Half of her mind insisted on continuing with the plan and to hell with the consequences, even if it meant getting closer to the portal heart; after all, she had a responsibility to Glinda, to Chistery, even to Dorothy – she couldn't give up now, not when she had a chance to ensure their safety once and for all! But the other half of her mind (the one that was actually paying attention to the incoming omens) insisted that something was sure to go horribly wrong any minute now, and the safest thing to do would be to retreat and wait for backup.
At last, the first half won; with her rational mind screaming desperately for attention, she slowly floated perhaps five feet closer to the portal heart, and tried again.
Still nothing. Almost as if-
Elphaba's eyes widened. The portal heart wasn't there, she realized. More importantly, the portal wasn't there. The reason why she hadn't felt the familiar energies was because they weren't really around her at all: the whole thing was nothing more than an illusion. An illusion protecting…
Something hovering just up ahead, her premonitions revealed. Something squat and boxy, something filled with volatile alchemical mixtures, something…
Explosive.
Elphaba didn't even bother to turn around: even with panic slowly creeping across her brain, she knew she simply didn't have time to swivel around in mid-air and speed off; so instead, as the illusion dissolved and the bomb faded into view, she tilted her broomstick down and rocketed towards the ground as fast as the broom's enchantment could carry her, frantically hoping that the blast radius wouldn't extend too far downwards.
Half a second later, the light overhead flickered out as the illusory portal vanished altogether, and Elphaba angled the broom upwards slightly so that she wouldn't crash headlong into the ground-
-and then the bomb exploded fifteen feet above her.
Fortunately, the massive fireball didn't hit her, nor did the deadly hail of shrapnel.
Unfortunately, the shockwave did.
Rippling out from the detonating bomb in all directions, it slammed into her with devastating force, knocking her hat off, sweeping the broomstick out of her grasp and sending her on a death-dive towards the ground below.
Suddenly without her broom, she tumbled helplessly through the air for what felt like an eternity, wind rushing through her hair and stinging her face.
Then, she remembered herself – and what she'd achieved barely a few nights ago: drawing on all her enhanced magical strength, she poured every last drop of it she could summon into a single feat of self-levitation, focussing all her will on defying gravity for what might just be the last time in her entire life.
For two heartstopping seconds – each one seeming hours long to her fear-crazed senses – nothing happened. Her fall continued unabated, broken only by the vague sensation of leaves and twigs brushing her face, and the sudden darkness encompassing her as the moonlight vanished overhead, both details meaningless compared to the all-consuming chant of have to fly, have to fly, have to fly, have to fly endlessly repeating itself inside her head.
Then, with the ground looming towards her at an agonizing pace, Elphaba felt the magic coursing through her veins and flowing into the air around her – and in all her years, she'd never been happier to see that familiar green glow surrounding her. As her energy blossomed outwards, she felt her descent slow to a crawl before finally stopping altogether, leaving her hovering perhaps fifteen feet above the ground.
Except she wasn't on the mountain road anymore; even she hadn't looked up, she'd been able to tell by the lack of craters and fossilized tyre-tracks in the dirt. No, the soil here was almost invisible beneath a dense layer of weeds and moss, broken only by the dense roots cobwebbing the ground like veins. And above them stood the trees from which the roots had sprouted, their bark as craggy as weatherbeaten rock, their colossal trunks and boughs supporting a canopy dense enough to blot out the moon (probably even the sun, too). Yes, she'd landed in the forest, just a few yards away from where the tree-line met the road.
Gradually lowering herself all the way to the ground, she took a deep breath and took stock of her situation: she didn't appear to be hurt, apart from a few scratches on her face from where she'd fallen through the canopy; her broomstick was nowhere in sight; her hat had landed on the edge of a tree branch several feet away…
And just up ahead, between her and the road back to Loamlark, there was an airship slowly lowering itself into view; a sleek knife-shaped craft rendered in silver and black, it gleamed eerily in the moonlight as it edged towards. Faintly visible on the airship's undercarriage was a cage bolted to the chassis, large enough to carry perhaps four or five people at the very least; Elphaba had seen ships like this during previous attacks on Loamlark, but only at a distance, usually lurking at the very back of Unbridled Radiance's fleet – though it had taken a long, rambling war-story from Branderstove for her to recognize it as a Mancatcher-class hunting ship.
But even if she hadn't seen the ship before… well, despite the gloom of the forest, there was no mistaking the emblem of Unbridled of Radiance stamped on its hull.
Beneath his mask, the Champion quietly exalted: everything was proceeding as the Empress had planned; the trap had been sprung, the airborne mine had detonated, the creature known as Elphaba had survived the fall and was now ready for capture or elimination… and perhaps best of all, the song was clearer than ever before.
Here and now, with the prow of the Mancatcher slicing through the trees and the gunners readying the cannons, there were subtle nuances to the music that he'd never heard before tonight, instruments that he'd heard played in the melody… and once again, he could almost hear the faint whisper of the lyrics. He knew that words to the song shouldn't have mattered to him, for the Empress had decreed that he should be focussed entirely on capturing Elphaba, and the Empress was never wrong. All the same, he found himself hoping that this Elphaba – fraud or anomaly or whatever the Empress decreed she was – could be captured alive.
Just so he could stand before her, and listen as the music completed itself inside his head.
Just so he could hear the words at last.
Elphaba was directly ahead of them now, her broomstick and hat missing. And without the brim of that ridiculous hat hiding her hair and face, the sense of familiarity surrounding her was almost overwhelming – but perhaps that was just the music, which was already reaching its first crescendo of the night. More importantly, without her broomstick, she couldn't escape.
The Champion turned to the Mancatcher's gunners and hissed an order. Without hesitation, the two crewmen exchanged the heavy repeating cannons for a pair of net-launchers: threaded with magic-neutralizing metals and soaked in tranquilizing contact-toxins, the nets would be more than enough to subdue the witch. The squad's magician, meanwhile, gathered a sphere of paralysing fog in his hands and took careful aim, whilst the lieutenant and the other eight members of the squad held their rifles in readiness, just in case the target wasn't so easily suppressed.
Soon, the Champion thought, soon. One direct hit with the net launcher, one breath of toxic air, one dart to the throat, one bullet to the head, and the Empress would have her prize – dead or alive.
He wasn't troubled by the possibility of reinforcements: after all, they'd approached on a stealth trajectory, ensuring they'd remain effectively invisible to the defenders on the battlements and completely invisible to anyone above the forest canopy. So, with the target dominating so much of his attention and the music blaring so loudly across his mind, the Champion didn't notice the whine of the incoming engine until it was too late.
Long before the first spotlight had illuminated the forest, Elphaba knew that the Champion would be at the wheel of the Mancatcher; the distinctive glint of the man's mask had given him away even in the gloom beneath the canopy. But when the spotlight swept across the trees towards her, she finally saw him standing at the controls of the airship, flanked by a squad of heavily-armed figures – two of them clearly Purified, if the glaze to their skin and the cut of their uniforms was any evidence.
For perhaps eight seconds, the two of them stood in impasse: Elphaba standing in the glare of the spotlights, readying the most destructive spells she could muster at short notice; the Champion and his men taking careful aim with everything from rifles to staves, from dart guns to the wide-barrelled cannons at the front of the ship.
And then, Elphaba heard the sound: a high-pitched whining buzz, vaguely reminiscent of an engine.
Then, two muffled gunshots echoed through the forest; a moment later, the gunners at the front of the Champion's ship slumped over their controls, skulls bursting open like dropped melons. Instantly, the crew of the Mancatcher swivelled towards the source of the gunshots – just in time for another airship to plough into them at high speed.
Hammering into the hunting ship's hull with bulkhead-crumpling force and sending the Champion's crew tumbling over the railings, the wedge-shaped craft roared onwards through the forest for another two hundred feet, barely encumbered by the mangled shape of the Mancatcher still wrapped around its prow – before finally crashing headlong into a tree.
There was a pause, as the echoes died away and the bedraggled hunters lucky enough to survive the collision slowly clambered to their feet, dazed and thoroughly bewildered: their magician was gone, their lieutenant was absent, and the Champion was nowhere to be found.
Then, Harker leapt from the wreckage. "Where the hell did you learn to drive?" he grumbled, as Kiln fell into step behind him.
Chaos broke out in a matter of seconds: the hunters immediately raised their weapons to fire; Elphaba sent both men and rifles tumbling away with a blast of kinetic magic; Harker opened fire with his own rifle; Kiln drew a pair of bone-sculpted throwing knives from his hips and charged into the fray, bladed arms sprouting from his shoulders. At some point, someone threw a smoke grenade into the mix, and the confusion only deepened from there.
Perhaps thirty seconds into the carnage, Kiln staggered up to Elphaba, his uniform soaked with blood, and gasped out, "Elphaba, you need to run, now!"
"Are you joking? Without their airship and commanders, we can deal with them easily!"
"For gods' sakes, this is no time to get suicidally overconfident – three times in a single night is-"
There was a loud metallic crash: something had wrenched the crashed airships away from the tree and flung them clean across the forest, leaving a foul-smelling trail of fuel spilled among the tree roots.
And from the ruins of the airship, the Purified commanders of the hunting squad emerged: the magician, uniform robes still immaculate, his staff aglitter with energies; the lieutenant, her smashed rifle exchanged for a long hunting knife, her smile even broader than the sorcerer's despite the length of shrapnel that had impaled her; and last but not least, the Champion, sword drawn and pose impassive.
The Lieutenant was the first to move: leaping a good twenty feet through the air, she pounced on Kiln and brought him crashing to the ground with meteoric force; the two of them tumbled aimlessly away, stabbing and punching with furious abandon. A hailstorm of energy from the magician sent Harker and Elphaba diving for cover, and the rest of the hunters instantly rallied, peppering the two of them with automatic gunfire. And at last, the Champion opened fire as well, keeping his new targets pinned down with deftly-aimed shots from his handgun.
Elphaba wasn't sure which of them ignited the fuel: maybe it was a misaimed phosphorous shot from the hunters; maybe the Champion had decided to use his grenades too soon; maybe it was a misfired bolt of lightning from the enemy magician, maybe it was a wild blast of magic of her own – it might have explained the spread of the fire. Whatever the case, the puddle of spilled airship fuel ignited with a dazzling flash of light and a wave of eyebrow-singing heat, setting the ancient boughs of the surrounding trees ablaze.
In a matter of seconds, the entire battlefield was on fire.
Bit by bit, the combatants found themselves cut off as the growing inferno slowly divided and segmented the battleground into a series of tiny arenas. Kiln and the Lieutenant, still engaged in their brawl at the outer edge of the forest, swiftly vanished behind a curtain of flame as the growing heat forced them back onto the mountain road. The surviving hunters barely managed to escape the fire as it carved up their positon, either diving into Kiln's arena or hastily clustering behind the Purified magician; even Elphaba and Harker were forced out of cover by the blaze.
Then, heedless of the danger, the Champion marched forward, his uniform seemingly impervious to the flames slowly creeping across the ground.
And, Elphaba realized with a jolt of horror, now that the two of them were out of cover he had an unhindered shot at them – as did the hunters and the magician. Suddenly, the odds were against them for the second time in as many minutes.
There was a pause, and then Harker sighed, "Oh well, I suppose we all have to pay our debts sooner or later." He offered a smile – almost apologetic. "Goodbye, Elphaba."
And then he put his head down and charged directly at the Champion, firing wildly: the Champion dodged the shots easily, ducking and weaving around the bullets with supernatural grace as he readied his counterattack. But despite his old age and gnarled frame, Harker was still fast on his feet, and he was ready for the riposte: ducking under his opponent's outstretched arm, he grabbed the Champion and tackled him backwards, behind the encroaching wall of fire – spindly limbs only narrowly escaping ignition as they soared above the flames.
The last Elphaba saw of the two before the curtain closed behind them was the Champion flinging Harker to the ground, and the old sniper leaping to his feet with impressive speed, rifle once again at the ready. Then the flames descended, and the two vanished behind a wall of blazing fuel.
The Champion regarded his opponent with interest.
The eyeless old man was clearly an abomination, a willing convert to the Mentor's legions of sculpted monstrosities, Irredeemable in the eyes of the Empress and forever denied the blessing of immortal beauty.
But once again, he found himself struck by a curious sensation of familiarity – as if he had once known this man in the irrelevant years before his Purification. Of course, the music was no louder in his presence, nor was it any clearer, so the sniper clearly wasn't too similar to Elphaba so he felt no overwhelming desire to capture this Irredeemable alive.
But even with all his instincts insisting that he eliminate the Distorted sniper so he could return to his mission (and hear the music once more), something stayed his hand and allowed this "Harker" to speak.
"Good to see you again, captain," said the sniper, his voice as dry and cracked as the trees that now burned around them. "It's been too long."
The Champion cocked his head to the side, uncomprehending.
"Do you remember me? Probably not. They said your memory was the first thing they lost on the operating table. It's funny; I once thought that might grant me absolution. After all, if nobody remembered my crime, who's to say it happened at all? But in the end, I couldn't lie to myself for ever: I'd remember even I scrubbed every last inch of my mind clean. I'd remember what I did to Elphaba, to Oz… to you."
He raised his rifle, and began quietly empting ammunition onto the ground. "So here I am," he continued. "Here to settle my debt for good."
Finally, one bullet remained in the rifle; drawing back the slide, he readied himself to fire – but did not take aim.
"Once last dance, then?" he asked, as if expecting the Champion to answer. "I was very nimble once, back when I was an officer. You were always quicker, though. I used to think it was because you were younger than me… but in the end, you were just the better man by far." He sighed. "Maybe if you'd been behind the crosshairs on the day of the ambush, you'd have had the courage to defy orders. Maybe Elphaba would have escaped us if you'd been in my position. But that's a matter for wiser men to think on, eh?"
The compulsion to spare the man was gone now; the Champion didn't understand half of what the man had said, but he knew for a fact that it was as irrelevant as life without perfection. The Empress had decreed it so, and the Empress was never wrong. So, he reloaded long-barrelled Justice, and took aim.
"One last dance, then," said 'Harker.' "No more sleepless nights, no more waking dreams, no more denials, no more grief, no more guilt… just one… last… dance." He raised his rifle and took aim. "Goodbye, sir."
He fired. The Champion instinctively ducked, but he needn't have bothered; the shot was misaimed by about ten feet to the left of him. Nonetheless, the riposte was instant and programmed: a shot from Justice ripped clean through Harker's right elbow and sent the rifle clattering to the ground; then, with the target disarmed, the Champion charged at top speed, exchanging Justice for his sword as he moved in for the kill.
The routine was familiar as ever: one strike to the stomach, one strike through the spine, one strike to the heart, concluding with a slash across the throat. Then, he stood back and let his opponent slump to his knees.
Nothing was unexpected.
Except, perhaps, for the smile on the dead man's face.
Elphaba leaned against one of the few tree-trunks that hadn't yet been touched by the fire, and tried to slow her thundering hearbeat.
The battle with the enemy magician had been brief, but exhausting: as a practitioner of magic, he'd been every bit as challenging as she'd expected, but where he'd truly tested her limits was in his sheer resilience. Every time she thought she'd dealt a fatal blow and started extinguishing the fire around them, he'd gotten back up and started pounding her with energy all over again. In the end, she'd lost her patience and just hurled him into the fire – and that had been the end of it.
So, now satisfied that nothing was going to interrupt her, she took a step back and prepared her next attempt at extinguishing the flames: raising her hands, she made a series of simple gestures and sent two dense streams of water pouring down over the nearest patch of fire.
The fire guttered obligingly and faded a little, but remained blazing; obviously, a fire hose-style water spell clearly wouldn't be enough to extinguish everything currently ablaze. So, she reached a little deeper into her mental library of spells and – with a more complicated series of gestures – began siphoning oxygen away from the burning trees and surrounding them with fire-smothering vapour. All around her, the blaze guttered, flickered, and finally died – until eventually, all the fires within a radius of about thirty feet had been extinguished.
Not much, considering that there were still several acres worth of forest currently going up in smoke, but at least it was a start. So, Elphaba turned to the still-receding curtain of fire that Harker and the Champion had vanished behind, and slowly extended her oxygen-starving spell towards it.
Slowly, as the groundfires died and the blazing treetops gave way to charred branches, the curtain drew back, allowing Elphaba into the still-burning clearing.
There, lying in the very centre of the scorched arena, was Harker – dead as Elphaba had dreaded.
The Champion was nowhere to be found.
Elphaba strode over to the bodyguard's lifeless body, and knelt by it for a moment – not entirely sure if she meant to inspect the man's injuries or pay her respects; Harker's confession and the overall chaos of last few hours had left her emotionally reeling, uncertain if she should agree with the man's self-loathing or forgive him for what obviously couldn't be his fault. But as she looked into the old sniper's face, she couldn't help but think back on that last desperate confession, how his stoic muttering had given way to choked sobs, how over forty years of repressed grief and shame had seemed to finally escape him – almost as if he'd known he was going to die tonight and was taking his last opportunity to admit to his misdeeds.
There was something he'd said then: "I've heard arguments like this from just about everyone who's been willing to respectfully disagree with the Mentor and still capable of remembering what really happened that day." Had the Mentor blamed him for his part in transforming this world's Elphaba into Alphaba? Had she encouraged him to blame himself? Just how much time and help had it taken for Harnley to blame himself, to cast off his old identity and become Harker?
And how long had he tortured himself, believing it was all his fault?
She sighed, and wished she could think of something she could say in respect for the dead bodyguard. He'd saved her life more than once, and he'd confessed his crimes (real or imagined) to her when he'd had every reason to keep them secret; even if he had sparked the creation of Unbridled Radiance, even if he could be blamed for the actions of his other self, he still deserved a few words of respect at the very least.
Then, something landed behind her with an almost-inaudible thud.
Elphaba turned, already knowing who'd be standing there – and sure enough, the Champion was taking aim. But for once, Elphaba was simply too tired and angry to budge.
More specifically, she was angry at the Champion for killing Harker and for this trapping-and-ambush, angry at herself for being reckless enough to fall into the trap, angry at the sights she'd been forced to witness, angry at the knowledge of the Wizard's true identity, angry at being awake when dawn was only an hour or so away, and angry at every little thing that had happened over the course of this long, cold night.
So instead, she stood there…
And let her magic flare outwards.
Once again, a glowing nimbus of vivid green light surrounded her, shrouding her in a cocoon of raw energies drawn from her own intrinsic magic. But this time, the power flowed even easier than before – and as it rippled through her veins and sparked against her skin, Elphaba could tell at once that it was a thousand times more potent, too.
Somewhere beyond the reach of her blossoming power, the Champion fired.
Two feet from Elphaba's face, the bullet ricocheted off the billowing aura of magic and embedded itself in a tree-trunk twenty feet to her right. The Champion opened fire again, this time sparing no ammunition whatsoever; and this time, the bullets simply vaporized in mid-flight, instantly disintegrated by eye-searing currents of energy.
She was vaguely aware that she'd just surpassed most of her previous feats of combat magic, and that the crystals now burrowing out of her back were responsible for it, but at this point, these thoughts were little more than footnotes – easily forgotten in the wake of her anger, now reaching boiling point.
Then, just as the Champion was about to reload, Elphaba finally counterattacked; lashing out with a tendril of energies, she slapped the gun out of the Champion's hands, then struck him with a bolt of bone-splintering force that sent him flying across the battlefield. He landed heavily against the roots of a tree, recovering instantly and leaping to his feet with another burst of supernatural speed – only to be met by another blast of magic; flung back against the tree trunk with a sickening crunch, he ducked to avoid the next blast, dived away from the tree just as a fourth reduced the trunk to flying sawdust, somersaulted over a fifth, rolled nimbly under the sixth, and flung himself at Elphaba, sword drawn.
For perhaps thirty seconds, they found themselves locked in their familiar dance of attacking, parrying, and countering: Elphaba flung a lightningbolt, the Champion ducked away and retaliated with a throwing knife; Elphaba snatched it from the air and sent it rocketing back as a mass of molten steel; the Champion dodged it, and swung a fist that Elphaba elegantly breezed past, and so the dance went on.
But if anything, the Champion seemed to be moving slower than usual as the fight went continued, not out of exhaustion – for the man never seemed to tire; no, if anything, he seemed to be unwilling to land a killing blow. Was he waiting for something? Was he hesitating?
Or was he just toying with her?
"COME ON!" she roared, suddenly angrier than ever. "STOP HOLDING BACK! YOU DIDN'T HOLD BACK FOR HARKER, SO WHY SHOULD YOU HOLD BACK FOR ME? FIGHT ME, DAMN YOU!"
As if in response, the Champion cartwheeled away from her next spell, and on his final backflip across the scorched ground, plucked a grenade from his belt and flung it at her.
Elphaba saw the grenade in flight as soon as it left the Champion's hand, and another whiplash of magic obliterated it long before it reached her; but in the blinding flash of light that followed, the Champion left forward in a single eye-watering blur of motion and lashed out with a flying kick to Elphaba's midsection.
Winded, she tumbled away, clutching her middle and struggling desperately not to vomit; groaning, she rose to one knee, only keeping herself upright through an effort of willpower. Seeing his chance, the Champion instantly charged in for the kill; drawing his sword, he lunged at her – and it was only an instinctual flare of magical shielding that saved her from being impaled through the chest. It didn't last, though: the sword tore through the flimsy barrier as if it were nothing more than wet paper, leaving Elphaba vulnerable.
Elphaba looked up just in time to see the Champion drawing back his sword for another killing blow, this time taking aim at her throat. And as the blade went swishing through the air towards her, Elphaba – dazed and barely conscious – found herself reaching out with one last desperate lunge –
And grabbing the sword in mid-swing.
The first thing she noticed was the pain of the sword cutting into her hands, tearing deep into her undefended palms. But that alone was enough to wake her from the haze of exhaustion surrounding her: with a whispered incantation, she summoned the best shield spell she could conjure at short notice, weaving it around her wounded hands until they were as unyielding and impervious as diamond. Then, rallying despite the pain, she slowly grasped the sword and began forcing it away from her with every last atom of strength in her body.
Bit by bit, the Champion found his sword being forced away from his target's body and towards his face – forcing him to his knees as Elphaba clambered to her feet and began advancing on him. In sudden desperation, the masked warrior struggled to move, to kick out at the suddenly revitalized target, but Elphaba, once again surrounded by the nimbus of emerald light and galvanized with magic, reached out with another tendril of magic and sent it winding tighter and tighter around the Champion's body until even his magic-resistant uniform couldn't shake free of it.
Then, she channelled her power into the very metal of the sword, pouring incandescent flames across its surface and into its core until the blade itself glowed cherry-red. Then, with the sword almost molten, she sent frost crawling down its edge, cooling it instantly… and then shattering it like glass with a single burst of concussive magic, sending a hail of razor-sharp shards tearing into the Champion's gut.
Suddenly unarmed and bleeding from a cluster of puncture wounds to his stomach, the Champion staggered back, scrambling for another weapon concealed in his belt. But Elphaba beat him to the punch: once again, she swatted him away with a blast of kinetic force, catapulting him headlong into the blazing trunk of another tree.
Then, with another flex of her magic, Elphaba grabbed the tree by the roots, and brought it crashing down on the Champion's defenceless body, crushing him beneath several tonnes of charred wood and burning branches.
It took the very dregs of the Champion's strength to tear himself free.
Even without carrying out a diagnostic scan, he could already tell that he was badly wounded: his left leg had been crushed under the weight of the tree; his left arm was burned almost beyond functioning; from his attempts to escape the fire; he was still bleeding from the wounds in his stomach; worst of all, his uniform had been badly scorched, and the magic-resistant runes were now virtually useless, leaving him vulnerable to Elphaba's next spell.
Staggering to his feet, he looked up just in time to see Elphaba launch one last blast of magic towards him, a hurricane of energies that tore through his defenceless body, overloading his organo-synthetic circuitry and shattering countless internal mechanisms: wiring melted, blood vessels burst, diodes exploded, glands ruptured, blood boiled and coolant evaporated, organic and synthetic organs alike broke down in a cascade of system failures, and alloy-plated bones – many of them already terminally damaged over the course of the battle – either cracked or just snapped cleanly in half. He struggled to regulate the flow of energy, initiate self-repair mechanisms, to return fire, to strike back in some way, but his limbs refused to respond.
Across his brain, planned countermeasures fought valiantly to save his malfunctioning body: emergency programs sparked to life, then failed as the systems that were supposed to perform them broke; a few pre-programmed orders managed to trickle into his mind, automatically shielding his memory core for later collection and preparing a final dose of enemy deterrent for release.
As the maelstrom of energy consumed his spine, one last program belatedly informed the Champion that he was about to die.
The Champion didn't even notice it.
He was listening to the music now rippling across his psyche, drowning out even the loudest of the alarms.
And in spite of himself, he silently exalted: for the first time since he'd first heard its faint strains echoing on the breeze, he could finally hear it in perfect detail.
The words!
He finally knew the words-
Elphaba didn't see the Champion fall.
All she saw was the vortex of magic sweeping over him, imprisoning him in its depths as the energies permeated his body; for perhaps twelve seconds, she could just about discern his silhouette hovering at the heart of the maelstrom, writhing in air as her last spell tore through him. Then, another wave of energy swept over his prison, and he was gone from her sight.
At last, she released her grip on the maelstrom and let it slowly fade back into the air. For a few moments, she could only stand there, struggling to catch her breath and slow her heartbeat. Then, almost on instinct, she peered down at the tree she'd used to crush the Champion (now lying on its side a few feet away) and at last saw the figure that had collapsed in front of it.
The Champion sat slumped against the charred tree-trunk, legs stretched out, head hung low; if not for the battle she'd just endured, Elphaba might have thought the man had just sat down to rest for a while and dozed off. But of course, close examination would have ruined this impression very quickly: from collar to boots, his uniform was scorched, torn, pierced and soaked with blood; his left leg was a crumpled mess; his left arm scorched almost to the bone.
Even his distinctive silver mask hadn't escaped unharmed: its beautifully sculpted features were now covered with dozens of tiny scratches, and the right side of its face was marred by a long, diagonal scar torn in the precious metal. The rest of the Champion's skull remained untouched, however: obviously, the mask was tougher than it looked.
But who was he?
Suddenly gripped by curiosity, Elphaba knelt down beside the corpse, and reached out towards the edge of the mask –
The Champion's right arm shot out and clamped down on Elphaba's outstretched hand.
As she struggled to free herself from the vicelike grip around her wrist, his other arm, little more than charred meat and scorched bones by now, snaked clumsily out. Elphaba was halfway through casting a spell when she realized that the Champion wasn't reaching for another of the weapons at his belt; he was reaching under his tattered collar for a compartment set into his neck, and ripping out handfuls of wires and internal components.
At last, he wrenched the last length of cable free of his neck with a shower of sparks and flung it away. Then, he released his grip and slowly slumped back against the tree, his breath now emerging in laboured, desperate gasps. Then, his head very slowly turned in Elphaba's direction, a strange, almost musical sound hissing from beneath his mask.
He was struggling to say something, Elphaba realized, his breath too weak to raise his voice above a whisper. And even with every logical instinct telling her to back off, she found herself leaning forward to hear the Champion's last words.
"Nothing… matters…" he whispered, "But knowing nothing matters… it's just life… so keep dancing thr…"
His breath caught in his throat, and he fell silent, head gently slumping forwards.
In that moment, Elphaba's heart almost stopped.
Oh no. No, no, no, no, please no, not again…
Trembling, Elphaba reached out for the mask once again, this time easily drawing it away from the dead Champion's face – all the while praying that she'd misheard, that the man couldn't possibly be-
But as the mask fell away from his face, the all-too familiar features slid into view: the luxuriant blonde hair, the strong jaw, the aristocratic cheekbones, the sparking eyes – open wide in death and still glowing faintly. He'd been Purified, yes: his skin was as smooth and flawless as porcelain, and every tiny imperfection in his face had been carved away, but there was still no mistaking this face.
Oh gods, I've killed him again, I could have saved him and I didn't. I've killed him again…
Slumped lifelessly before her, just as she'd feared from the moment she'd heard those half-sung half-whispered words, was the bloodstreaked face of Fiyero Tiggular.