A/N: Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, but bad weather and lost sleep have eaten away at my writing time. Suffice it to say that I'm very glad for noise-cancelling earbuds, because otherwise the sound of rain would have driven me up the wall.

Now, this chapter had to be chainsawed in half for pacing: at close to twenty thousand words, there was just too much going on at once, so I split it down the middle to give the two halves some space to breathe. On the upside, the second half will be properly finished and polished off soon; we're still on the home stretch, and we're edging closer and closer to a conclusive ending.

I just have to hope that I don't have to build an ark in the meantime.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked is still not mine.

The Deviant Nations had organized their fleets in record time.

As soon as the Mentor had given the order to prepare for battle, the governors of each city state had spread the word far and wide, rallying their armadas for the final push into Unbridled Radiance. Within the hour, fleets all over the country were heading skywards, abandoning their hangars for a prearranged rendezvous point – one for each city.

Then, when the defences around Exemplar finally fell, a signal was sent out across the Deviant Nations. A moment later, the shadows cast by the fleets upon the ground had stood up of their own accord and begun to stretch themselves into new and terrifying shapes, weaving themselves into a series of vast black gates hovering in mid-air high above the ground. A baroque sculpture of pure darkness bound by the Mistress of Mirrors' sorcery, each one was tall enough to blot out the setting sun and wide enough to encompass the cities that they had been built for – certainly large enough to accommodate the many hundreds of airships that would need to travel through it.

Outside Greenspectre, the lead fleet had been arranged with the greatest possible care: a perfect fusion of the capital's wounded airfleet, the surviving loyalists of the Strangling Coils, and the newly-replenished ranks of the Amorphous League, it was a glorious sight. Where else could anyone have hoped to see ornate revolutionary warships, gargantuan mercenary carriers, and the protean bulks of master shapeshifters united under one banner. And at the head of it hovered the Mentor's prototype flagship, The Unyielding Defiance, easily the biggest ship in the fleet after Branderstove's Abyssal Titan – for nothing else would have been able to carry the colossal machine that now housed the Mentor's ailing body, supported as it was by a set of portable life-support machines.

On the deck behind her, her retinue stood in readiness: Glinda, fresh from another dose of potion, stood to her right, flexing her limbs into all manner of shapes; at her right, Dr Kiln performed last minute checks on the Mentor's life-support equipment, absently double-checking his own anatomical weaponry as he did so. Behind them, the fully-buffed out Boq sharpened his axe one last time, Brr accepted a final dose of stimulant for his battered body, and Vara twirled her knives in gleeful anticipation.

And not too far behind them, the Mistress of Mirrors floated through the darkening skies aboard a tiny airship made entirely of gleaming mirror hulls, carefully shielded by the gigantic bulk of Leoverus in his draconic form.

The Great Mentor paused for only a moment to take in the sight of the gleaming darkness before them. For that brief, fleeting moment, all she could think of was her daughter, of the dim and distant hope of seeing her again once the war was finally over – and the desperate, all-consuming need to keep her ruined, failing body from death until then. But then the moment passed, and with a single command issued into the microphone in front of her, she gave the order that the myriad fleets had been waiting for.

"To war!"

Behind her, her retinue took up the cry, the order echoing out across all the hundreds of ships in the fleet. And as the order echoed out across the radio, airship fleets across the Deviant Nations took up the cry as their engine rooms flared to life, sending several hundred airships catapulting across the threshold and into the shadow gates.

For the next twenty seconds, the crews of the fleets knew only darkness and confusion as their mighty ships ploughed aimlessly through the darkness; their instruments told them how far they were from the other ships, so they were at least spared the indignity of crashing into each other, but other than that, there was no way of knowing how far they were from their destination. Then, without warning, light blossomed ahead of them as the shadow gates finally disgorged them back into the real world – but now on the other side of No-Man's Land.

Now, all of them were united. Here could be found the stately barques and mortuary-ships of Polyandrium, their hulls made of sculpted bone and reinforced with magic, their decks crowded with undead husks. Here could be found Ironmongery Peak's magnificent brass flotilla, its brazen chasses gleaming in the sunset, its banners a fiery red and orange, each ship carrying a small army of steam-powered automata and clockwork war engines. Here could be found the organic flesh-ships of Gortrald, each ship floating on swollen gasbags and carefully-employed magic, their hulls made not of metal but of bulletproof carapace, their traditional cannons and catapults replaced with bile-projecting ducts and acid-dripping pores. There could even be found a small but determined little fleet from Loamlark, and though it was populated largely by repurposed cargo ships and armed with cannons that were at least two decades out of date, the militia aboard was more than ready to make up the difference through sheer, unmitigated gall.

Ahead, surrounded on all sides by the lush, carefully-managed wilderness of Unbridled Radiance, stood the city of Exemplar, still resplendent in the sunset glow.

There was no need to give any order for this, for the preparations had already been made: the Mistress of Mirrors had organized each shadow gate to deposit them in a near-perfect semicircle around Exemplar, ensuring that they would arrive in safe formation and ready to attack… and the Mentor had already given the order to attack. There was no hesitation given, no apprehensive studying of the odds in their favour: the Mistress of Mirrors had told them everything they needed to know well in advance. Exemplar had the advantage of a defence fleet of nearly three thousand ships strong, bigger than any city of the Deviant Nations, and one that had been spared battle thanks to the Loamlark plan… but unfortunately for Exemplar, the fleets of the Deviant Nations as a whole outnumbered it. As it was, the attacking fleet numbered over nine thousand – and reinforcements from the other cities of Unbridled Radiance would not be arriving for another thirty minutes.

As one, the fleet surged forward: the bombardiers, corvettes, and airsloops led the charge with guns blazing, closely followed by shapeshifters of every stripe, with the mage's platforms of the Colleges of Magic bringing up the rear and the capital ships lumbering after them. Already, Exemplar was struggling to organize its defences, but it had been caught completely off-guard: premature celebrations had left them dangerously unprepared, and the panic over Elphaba's presence in the city had left their attentions focussed entirely in the wrong direction.

At the Mentor's behest, Glinda leapt from the deck of the flagship and soared into formation alongside the master shapeshifters in the shape of an eagle; now a congress of raptors soaring across the skies in the shade of Leoverus's dragon form, they closed the gap between them and the city in a matter of seconds, shielded from incoming anti-aircraft fire by the vast wingspan of the First of the Shapeless; as soon as they were within reach of the ground, the League members changed shape, discarding their wings for armoured flanks and their streamlined bodies for colossally muscled forms. Feathers dissolved into leathery hide, metallic scales, gelatinous flesh; claws erupted outwards into blade-tipped limbs, battering-ram fists and bouquets of tentacles thicker than tree trunks; beaks gave way to fanged maws larger than any battlecruiser in the fleet, to diamond-tipped mandibles capable of chewing through armour-plated hulls, to long, fire-dripping proboscises that sent globs of explosive saliva oozing wherever it reached. Here and now, the best of the League was assembled in the biggest forms they had ever seen, the better to tear through the ground troops, the war machines that assisted them, and any airships that dared stray too close to street level. Glinda herself took on the form of a gigantic fleshy wheel covered in diamond-tipped spines, hoping against hope that she wouldn't embarrass herself among the master shapeshifters with a form she'd only just learned.

Above them, only Leoverus remained in his airborne form: as a dragon, he provided more-than-adequate cover for the others, strafing the defence towers with fireballs and clawing open the hulls of any airships that dared stray too close.

Then the Mistress of Mirrors swept in from the west, summoning up her armies of mirror golems from the reflections and shadows to clear a landing ground in the plaza just past the now-ruined walls, making room for the many thousands of troop carriers now erupting from the bellies of the freighters overhead. As she soared past, several patrol airships from Exemplar's defence fleet spotted her and gave chase – only to find themselves very suddenly losing entire dimensions, squished flat by their own gleaming chrome hulls as the Mistress of Mirrors worked her magic on them.

By then, several of Exemplar's capital ships were already in the air and preparing to open fire on the landing ground, but before they could close the final nine hundred yards between the two of them, the Abyssal Titan rumbled into position directly in front of them and began hammering the startled detachment with a hail of explosive-tipped harpoons.

For the next minute and a half, the battle was little more than a brutal exchange of every kind of firepower known to the two warring factions: small arms fire, artillery, battle magic, explosives, organic flamethrowers, even the shapeshifting power of the Amorphous League, all of it meeting in one almighty crucible of destruction on the front lines. Walls collapsed, buildings shattered like glass, airships exploded in mid-flight, war engines were reduced to molten slag, shapeshifters burned alive, mages lost control of their powers and vanished in spectacular multicoloured flares of light, and troops from both sides were shot, hexed, stabbed, crushed, burned, torn to pieces and reduced to so much mulch littering the ground.

And high above the carnage, Chistery soared well out of reach of the anti-aircraft guns, peppering the confused defenders with a startling array of gas canisters, explosives, and – one memorable case – a jar of live hornets.

And then, just when it seemed as if the chaos would continue unto infinity, a dazzling white light split the confusion of the battlefield in two. High above Exemplar, atop the highest tower of the Imperial Palace, a lone figure stood atop the very pinnacle of its outermost turret. Some of the admirals of the fleet readied telescopes and binoculars, but most of the onlookers could already tell who it was. Below, the defenders rallied – for even from their positions across the city, there was no mistaking the familiar figure of the Radiant Empress herself.

In the distance, the Empress waved a hand, and one of Gortrald's bioships went screaming to the ground in a haze of fire and bubbling flesh; light erupted from her body once again, scything through an undefended platoon of Irredeemables as it hurried through the streets below her; two cruisers strafing the defence fleet with missiles groaned in protest and abruptly slammed into each other with an almighty crash, their hulls instantly reduced to tumbling scrap metal. A squadron of air sloops rocketed across Exemplar's skyline, peppering the Empress with gunfire as they zeroed in on her, but another wave of her hand simply disassembled the entire squadron in mid-flight, sending their surprised crew plummeting to their messy deaths below.

"I believe that's our cue," said the Mentor grimly. "Captain, head straight for city central – and make sure that the Empress can see me. Stop for nothing. All hands, hang on tight; this is going to get rough…"

There was a split-second pause as the captain of the Unyielding Defiance began shouting orders to the crew, and then a rumbling as the engine room began turning on the ship's emergency booster turbines. Then, with a lurch that very nearly sent the Tin Man hurtling overboard, the flagship took off at an incredible speed, soaring over the crumbling outer wall of Exemplar and zooming over the residential district towards the distant shape of the palace.

When the Mentor had said "stop for nothing," the captain had obviously taken it quite literally: within the first thirty seconds of the charge, the Unyielding Defiance ploughed clean though an unsuspecting enemy frigate, sliced right down the middle of a half-collapsed tower, and hammered into an oncoming patrol craft so violently that the little airship gave an embarrassed-sounding groan and plunged groundwards without even getting a chance to fire its guns. Plenty of the defenders saw it, and many of them opened fire at the sight of the Mentor's flagship inching closer to the heart of the capital; airships, defence towers, magicians, even the Vigilant Eyes all took their turns at hammering the flank of the oncoming Defiance, but no matter how fiercely they attacked, no matter how many times they bombarded her gleaming emerald hull, nothing could stop her.

The prototype dreadnought had been built to withstand inhuman degrees of punishment, a necessity when carrying the Mentor's own prototype life-support mechanisms; so, in spite of all the firepower heaped upon it, the Defiance actually got within reach of the palace before the Empress finally noticed her slowing down at intersection just five blocks away.

There was a pause, as the lone figure atop the tower raved and screamed and swung her arms like windmills gone mad. Then, with a howl of rage, she flung herself into the void and rocketed towards the ground in a haze of levitating magic.

Fortunately, she landed a few streets short of the airship in a massive explosion of magic; some distance away, there was an ear-shredding roar of high-powered ordnance as several passing attack craft opened fire on her, followed by a howl of rage as the Empress began ripping them out of the sky one by one. Then, there was a low procession of booms and screams as the Empress began fighting her way through the city streets, drawing steadily closer with every explosion.

"Captain, we part ways here!" bellowed the Mentor. "Release my war-colossus!"

There was an obliging chorus of aye-ayes from the cockpit, and then the prow of the Unyielding Defiance underwent an astonishing transformation: the entire bow section unfolded outwards, revealing a complicated mass of harnesses and supports for the mechanism that the Mentor was connected to. As one, the supports began to disconnect, even as a series of robotic arms began ushering the Empress into the mechanism's pilot seat, with Dr Kiln hastily leaping onto the copilot's chair behind her.

Ten seconds later, the Mentor's newest steed landed at the southern end of the intersection with a deafening thud, its gigantic legs bending slightly to soak up the impact. Then it stood, collapsible joints extending themselves and finally allowing the compressed mechanical body to draw itself up to its full height, and as it rose steadily higher, the shellshocked defenders below found themselves looking up at the Mentor's war-colossus for the very first time.

Nearly ten stories of steel-and-titanium exoskeleton stood before them on two massive column-like legs. Within, a mixture of specially-made machinery, woven organic muscle and animating enchantments powered one of the biggest land vehicles ever conceived of in the history of warfare, propelling it onwards in the face of all the admittedly flexible laws of physics known throughout the land. Instead of arms, it had only a monstrous-looking assortment of field guns, missile launchers and flamethrowers crudely shaped into weapons, all of them surrounding a powerful set of mechanical pincers that could tear open a tank. It had no head, only another array of gun turrets pointed skywards, protecting the colossus from incoming aerial attacks. And where its heart should have been, there was a heavily-armoured canopy, through which the Mentor and Kiln could dimly be seen working the controls.

Pausing only to strafe the surrounding troops with gunfire, sending them scattering in all directions, the war-colossus turned towards the Unyielding Defiance – which now looked just a tiny bit on the dainty side by comparison.

"WITHDRAW AT WILL, CAPTAIN," the Mentor thundered, her voice amplified a thousandfold by the colossus's public address system. "I'LL COVER YOU. VARA, BOQ, BRR, YOU HAVE YOUR OWN ASSIGNED MISSIONS. IF YOU WANT TO GET OFF HERE, NOW WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT TIME TO DISEMBARK."

In near-perfect unison, the three remaining members of the Mentor's entourage vaulted over the side of the flagship's railing and slid down its sloping flank before finally dropping the remaining eight feet to the ground. Seconds later, a platoon of heavily-armed men and women clattered into position around them with Captain Wolton in the lead; an even mixture of ordinary soldiers and Irredeemables, they had spent the last few minutes clustered inside the Defiance, waiting for their moment to arrive – and now they were ready to fight.

As ordered, the Unyielding Defiance finally withdraw, soaring back across the horizon to join the rest of the fleet in bombarding Exemplar's defences – and now moving significantly faster now that it was no longer burdened with the weight of the colossus. Not far behind it, Boq, Brr and Vara began hurrying through their streets with the escort closely following; they had their orders (even if at least two of them weren't actually members of the Deviant Nations' military) and chief among them was not to be in the vicinity when the Mentor and the Empress finally started fighting.

Around them, darkness flickered wildly as the Mistress of Mirrors worked her magic upon them once again, transporting them as close to the nearest entrance to the Deep Sepulchre as they could get without causing any spacing difficulties (alas, getting them into the Sepulchre itself was impossible, thanks to the sheer intensity of the lights and Alphaba's recent purge of reflective surfaces). For a moment, the shadows of the platoon seemed to stretch out longer than ever; then, without warning, they were gone.

No sooner had they disappeared, there was another burst of stark white light, harsh enough to sear undefended eyes blind. Then, the Empress appeared at the opposite end of the street, her bloodied robes hanging in ragged shreds, her once-beautiful face now contorted into a frenzied snarl of maddened, unreasoning hate.

"How are you still alive?" she demanded through gritted teeth. "How? HOW?!"

"SHEER STUBBORNNESS, YOUR RADIANCE. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT MORE THAN WELL ENOUGH BY NOW. I WON'T REST UNTIL I SEE THE END OF YOUR REIGN. AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED, THAT MAKES ME EVERY BIT AS IMMORTAL AS YOU."

"No it doesn't, you obstinate cow! It just makes you another sad, self-important ugly old hag that hasn't had the decency to die and spare her relatives further shame! You're not immortal; you're just some undeservedly lucky harridan with a pet mage-surgeon, and you will have the decency to stay dead once I find that…" Here words briefly failed her, and for a moment she could only snarl incoherently. "…treasonous, ungrateful, ugly little maggot, whatever he calls himself!" she concluded. "Without him, you're just… OLD! OLD AND UGLY!"

"DEAR ME, YOU WEREN'T QUITE THIS UPSET WHEN WE LAST MET ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE. HAS OUR FAVOURITE WITCH FINALLY MANAGED TO GET UNDER YOUR SKIN?"

The Empress said nothing, but only seethed in silent, trembling rage.

"IT WOULD MAKE SENSE. AFTER ALL, YOU ARE THE SAME PERSON… ELPHABA."

For a moment, the Radiant Empress could only quiver in disbelief and fury. "You admit it," she whispered, "after all this time?"

"WHY NOT?" said the Mentor. "NEITHER OF US WILL BE LEAVING THIS BATTLE AS WE ONCE WERE. PERHAPS IT'S TIME TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES AT LONG LAST. I KNOW – AS I ALWAYS HAVE – THAT THERE WAS NEVER ANY PARASITE AT WORK INSIDE YOUR MIND; IT WAS JUST MY WAY OF COPING WITH HOW FAR YOU FELL, MY WAY OF PROTECTING YOUR LEGACY FROM THE MONSTER YOU BECAME. BUT NOW PERHAPS IT'S TIME YOU CONSIDERED YOUR OWN DELUSIONS, ELPHIE."

This time, there was no pause for thought; the Empress simply flung herself through the air with a howl of rage, propelling herself across the gulf between them like a bolt of lightning – every bit as swift and every bit as blindingly bright. With all her terrible power, she blasted the colossus, thundering away at its enchantment-studded body until its bulkheads glowed cherry red and it couldn't help but shed a few of its outermost armour-plates.

Then the war-colossus retaliated: inside the canopy, the Mentor was chanting a series of arcane incantations, turning the pavement beneath the Empress into a broiling, tarry sludge that quickly shaped itself into dozens of clawed arms. As the arms reached up to tear at Alphaba's undefended legs, to anchor her to the ground, the colossus's guns let fly, pelting her with a solid stream of white-hot led and perforating her unprepared body in several thousand places at once. Cloying green fire erupted from the flamethrower nozzles at each elbow and bathed her in a storm of broiling heat that could have melted a mountain range; missiles erupted from the shoulder launchers and rained down on her; prototype beam weapons carved her up so thoroughly that even her regenerative powers struggled to keep up.

But within seconds, the Empress was already recovering: bursting free of the flames, she hovered in mid-air perhaps thirty feet above the colossus, stark naked, badly-wounded, and still on fire in places. But with an effort of herculean willpower, she was able to force her body to heal even quicker than usual, extinguishing her smouldering back with a wave of her hand. Pausing only to summon up a fresh robe for the sake of her dignity, she charged back into the fray, wrenching the roof off a neighbouring building with a flex of magic and bringing the whole thing crashing down on the colossus.

The field gun punched clean through it, but Alphaba was already preparing another assault.

And yet, the Mentor knew that none of it mattered. The point of this battle wasn't to kill the Empress or even to outlast her in a battle of magic and brutality, but to buy time. As long as the Empress was distracted, she wasn't wiping out their fleet or slaughtering their ground troops… and more importantly, she wouldn't be aware of Elphaba's activities.

Almost all the captains and specialists of the army had been given dart guns loaded with the Amorphous League's transformative serum: right here and now, the Mentor had a small supply of darts hidden away in the colossus's emergency ammunition reserve… but until the time was right, she couldn't use them.

As long as the Purified were still in action and Paragon was still helping the Empress, the Deviant Nations would be as good as dead no matter what happened to the Empress. After all, both the aristocracy as the thinking engine had been programmed to abide by every single law, mission and ambition upheld by Unbrided Radiance, and they would continue furthering these aims even if Alphaba could be disposed of as publicly and gruesomely as possible. So, Elphaba needed to get to Paragon and enact the plan to disarm the Purified, ideally before reinforcements began arriving over Exemplar – and until then, the assassination couldn't proceed.

Of course, even with most of Exemplar's garrison dispersing towards the city walls, it didn't take long for several of Alphaba's soldiers to notice the duel now playing out not far from the palace. Trained to be loyal to their Empress above all else, they swerved away from their assigned routes and began lining up around her, rifles at the ready. Then the company of soldiers were joined by a sizeable platoon of elite troops clattering in from the western end of the intersection, their armour gleaming bright in sunset. Worse of all, Colonel Gloss had survived the chaos throughout the city, and was now dressed in the heavy plating of an elite trooper – no doubt here solely to prove to the Empress that he was worthy of a handsome reward.

And then, just as the Mentor thought the already difficult situation couldn't get any worse, a small parade of war engines appeared from around the corner and trundled to a stop at the eastern end of the intersection. Two heavy tanks, a blizzard-class missile launcher, a trio of ten-foot-tall powered armour units armed with welding claws, and a Cleansing Flame – the first the Mentor had seen in nearly ten years; it looked like nothing more than a gleaming silver dish on wheels, and the fact that the whole thing was only six feet across (including the control cabin) made it look silly compared to the other war engines, even cute… but having seen the death toll that could ensue from just one of these being fired along a crowded city street, the Mentor knew better than to laugh.

The slowly troops probably didn't stand a chance; the elite troopers might be able to do serious damage to the colossus's hull, but only if they survived long enough; the war engines could easily cripple her steed's propulsion and maybe even her primary weapons systems… but that was secondary next to what the Empress herself would be able to do while the Mentor was distracted.

Pausing a moment to savour the sense of a game tilted in her favour, the Empress charged, soaring high above the gunfire of her troops as she melted the Mentor's outermost layer of armour with a devastating stream of magic. Behind her, the soldiers, the elite troopers and the war engines opened fire as one, a hail of bullets, a storm of blazing energy lances, and a veritable cataclysm of artillery fire all raining down on the colossus. While Kiln briefly took control of the upper field gun turret to punch some holes in the war engines, the Mentor's brass arm swept the main cannons from left to right, sending the troops scattering for cover. Unknown to them, she was firing blindly and stood no chance of hitting them, for all her attention – and more importantly, all her magic – was focussed on the Empress.

Once again, the two witches clashed head-on, their magic dissolving the pavement around them and reducing unprepared troops to blackened silhouettes on the walls, and all the while, the Mentor could only hope that Elphaba could get this next task done in record time…

Stepping out of a shadow several blocks away, the infiltration team – such as it was – hurried onwards through the streets, with Vara and Wolton taking the lead, the Tin Man and the Lion bringing up the middle, and a host of Irredeemables and regulars at their back.

Fortunately, most of the enemy troops were being deployed at the city walls or close to the palace, so resistance was thin on the ground: they encountered almost nobody apart from the occasional terrified citizen, most of whom responded by screaming and running for their lives. With nobody to stop them, it wasn't long before all the major players began thinking, minds on other things despite the distant roar of bombardment.

Boq was wondering what he was supposed to do once this mission was over. Assuming they all got out alive and could arrange for a portal leading back to Oz, what was he going to do there? In the unlikely event that Elphaba somehow was able to transform him back into a living, organic being, what kind of life would he end up with? As a Munchkin, everyone hated him for being Nessa's favourite, and even if that little misunderstanding could be fixed up, he was still stuck with no work, no funds, no home and no friends. Come to think of it, did he even want to be a Munchkin again? After all, people seemed to like the Tin Man more than they'd ever liked Boq. Couldn't he just ask to be given a working stomach and taste buds?

Meanwhile, Brr was pondering courage again. Was he brave by doing this, by loping into battle on a mission that might kill him and every single one of his friends? He didn't feel it… though technically, he didn't feel much of anything, not physically at any rate: his body was awash with the drugs that the mage-surgeons were treating his nerve damage with. Thankfully it hadn't made his head too foggy, though it was odd to gallop so rapidly down the crumbling road without actually feeling the impact in his paws. But he still couldn't help wondering: would he ever have courage – or rather, would he ever have the kind of courage he could believe in? Would he ever feel worthy as a lion? He'd done things that people had called brave, courageous, noble and all kinds of other lovely words, but would he ever feel satisfied with his achievements? Would he ever be rid of his anxieties? Perhaps not. But perhaps he didn't need to be rid of them after all…

For once in her life, Vara wasn't thinking of her many charges among the Irredeemables, or of venting all her pent-up frustrations on some deserving enemy troops; she wasn't even thinking of finding Dorothy – after all, the little girl had long since proved that she was more than capable of standing on her own, and as sad as it was to see her grow up so soon, Vara knew that she would have had to let her go sooner or later. No, what was thinking of was her son, the little boy who'd been taken from her all those years ago; the Mistress of Mirrors, having already extended similar services to the Mentor, was now offering to help her find her child at long last. It had brought her immeasurable joy, but it had also brought a nerve-wracking dose of fear with it. What if she found that he'd been raised as a loyalist hardliner and wanted nothing to do with her? What if he'd been Purified – and what if there was no way of saving the Purified after all? What if he was already dead? What if they'd killed him right after snatching him out of her arms, as she'd feared, and her little boy was just another heap of ash at the bottom of a furnace? And worse still, for the first time since she'd stepped onto the battlefield with nothing but a pistol and a knife, Vara was afraid – truly and genuinely terrified – of dying. For decades on end, she'd imagined dying in some heroic last stand, finding herself almost cheerful at the prospect of giving her life in the service of the Deviant Nations – not because she was suicidal or purposeless without her family, but because it had been so easy to consider the war the most important thing in her life. But now that she knew that there was something else beyond the war… she couldn't die, yet, however heroically. She needed to live. She needed to live to learn the truth of what had happened to her son; she needed to make sure the Mentor lived long enough to see her daughter again; she needed to make sure that Dorothy saw home again, and that Glinda and Elphaba got back to Oz. So, today wasn't merely a final battle, and certainly not the much-fantasized day when she'd sacrifice herself for victory: it was a struggle for the lives of all that were precious to her.

Wolton, ever the professional, had his mind on the mission. After all, he'd read far too many cheap melodrama novels on that very subject: reflecting on old flames and new girlfriends, sharing wistful anecdotes of happier times, passing around photographs of wives and children – all of them resulted in the brave soldier being reduced to flying mince by an artillery strike before the end of the scene.

He knew what he had to focus on: Elphaba needed to be located as quickly as possible, and she needed to be delivered to Paragon's main access point with a fresh coat of greasepaint. Once she was interfaced with the thinking engine, the Purified could be induced to leave the battle, the Radiant forces would be left disorganized, reinforcements would be crippled, and more comprehensive efforts to stop the Empress could begin. Only then could Wolton focus on his collection of commemorative plates and the cute girl behind the counter at NO! Don't think about it, you'll get blown up!

Unfortunately, after a little over ten minutes of uninterrupted travel, the group found a slight hitch in the plan: thanks to a bit of blood magic on the Mentor's part, they now had a means of homing in on Elphaba, and for the moment it seemed that she was headed back into the vicinity of the Deep Sepulchre… but the nearest entrance appeared to be taking the group dangerously close to an armoured column making its way through the streets en route to the front lines. For several minutes, the four ringleaders quietly debated on whether they should take the stealthier route – and risk Elphaba getting hurt or killed while they were sneaking around – or charge in guns blazing, potentially getting several of them killed but getting them to the nearest Sepulchre entrance a lot faster. Some of them considered calling the Mistress of Mirrors for help, but others argued that she'd be too busy defending the beachhead and guarding the fleet to spare the time.

And it was at this moment that a gigantic shadow fell across them.

"Need a ride?" said Dr Coil, cheerily.

Deep beneath the increasingly-battered city of Exemplar, a small laboratory chamber was now the focal point for the technicians of the Deep Sepulchre – more specifically every surviving technician not at work in Paragon's chambers or on duty arming the war engines now being deployed throughout the city.

Had this been any other battle, they would have considered this a rather petty job, something meant for the Childlike Researchers and nobody else. But with the enemy on their doorstep and the Childlike Researchers in full revolt, this was now the single most important duty that the Empress could possibly have given them. This might very well be all that stood between Unbridled Radiance and total annihilation.

The Champion was awake.

By now, the body of the Scarecrow had been incinerated and his soul channelled into the vacant physical form of the Champion, and the new cybernetic implants were no doubt already at work preventing the body's higher brain functions from being corrupted by Deviant impulses. It had taken longer than initially projected for the process to reach completion, but at long last, the Champion was slowly rising from his slab.

The technicians gathered around, surveying his body with scanning tools, checking to make sure his sensory apparatus were functioning perfectly and ensuring that his outer skin hadn't sustained any damage during the implantation process. For his part, the Champion did not protest the examination, though some of the more curious technicians wondered if his mind might be on other things; those of them who'd had the honour of attending to the imperial bodyguard's person during repair sessions knew that his features rarely strayed from their neutral expression, and to see him look so interested in what they were doing – even for a moment – left them a little suspicious. And yet, as their instruments indicated no Deviant thought processes at work in the augmentations that now dominated his brain, they had to assume that he was as loyal as ever.

So, they stood back and watched as the mechanical assemblers dressed the Champion in his repaired ensemble: the fireproof undergarment, the skintight black trousers and tunic, the buckled-on black gloves and boots, and most importantly, the gleaming silver mask. Finally, his weapons were fastened to his belt: the slender-bladed sword of Devotion, long-barrelled justice, a collection of incendiary grenades, and a small array of miscellaneous tools.

Then, in short order, he was briefed on his mission: "The Empress calls for aid," the head technician explained to him. "The Deviant Nations are on our doorstep, and the mother of our mighty empire is now under threat; the Empress herself has been challenged at the foot of the palace, and you are the only one who might turn the tide in our favour. Signify your understanding."

The Champion nodded slowly, but once again, the more radical technicians were wondering if his eyes were straying in the direction of the door long before he'd been told what to do.

"Then go and do your duty in the name of our Empress."

Once again, the Champion nodded and took off at an impressive speed, gusting through the door, turning the corner as little more than a blur of motion, and vanishing down the corridor.

It wasn't until a few minutes later, when small traces of the Champion's control system began appearing in the furnace outlet, that the more inquisitive technicians began to wonder if something had just gone horribly wrong…

Halfway across the city, Glinda had finally hit the first roadblock.

Up until now, everything had been relatively simple despite the chaos and confusion on the battlefield: her orders had been to aid her fellow members of the Amorphous League in whittling away at the most heavily-defended regions of the city, eliminating the city's garrison before they could try tackling the Deviant Nation's beachhead in the north-eastern quadrant. As a younger shapeshifter with a penchant for smaller shapes, Glinda would be invaluable in eliminating targets that the elders of her kind might miss, but more importantly, in leading some of the more experienced youngsters on a sidelong charge through the enemy ranks.

Once that was done with, she was meant to rendezvous with the infiltration team, trusting that they would have found Elphaba by then (and that the other young shapeshifters would be able to handle themselves without a babysitter); true, she wasn't an absolute necessity in this part of the plan, but Glinda would be much happier knowing that Elphaba was alive and under her protection. Plus, Glinda was carrying a reserve dose of potion, which would hopefully come in handy if they ran out of juice in their dart guns.

With all this preparation in mind, Glinda had been cruising merrily through the war-torn streets of Exemplar, still in her wheel-form, weaving around crowds of fleeing civilians and feeling pretty good about herself. After all, the last time she'd been here, she'd been a fugitive – terrified of everything and believing that she'd literally died and gone to hell, and only Omber's reassuring presence had kept her from collapsing into hysterics. Now she was back, and the orderly, silent streets that had nearly driven her to madness were now in shambles: the roads were heaped with rubble, the statuary was either crumbling or streaked with dust, the Purified elite were nowhere to be seen, and the audio system was either malfunctioning or under new management. The speakers that had once played only eerily-soothing melodies and triumphal marches were now blaring the most rebellious anthems that Unbridled Radiance had ever heard, an angry roar of amplified brass and drums thundering along at a pace too fast and too chaotic to ever be accepted by the Empress.

And it was in that moment, when she'd been feeling at her most confident, that something huge and distinctly metallic lumbered right across her path. Unable to stop in time, Glinda ploughed right into it, gently rocking the war engine back and forth on its treads and leaving a spectacular dent in its chassis. Once she'd managed to extract herself from the crater, she returned to human form and took a step back to examine the machine in detail: as far as she could tell, it was some kind of tank… except where most tanks had guns attached to its turret, this thing had funnels and nozzles and ventilator probes, not to mention a strong smell of toxic gas.

Peering out from the tank's open hatchway was a figure that Glinda had hoped never to see again. He'd swapped his pristine white suit for an immaculate uniform greatcoat, and the fingers she'd blasted off had long since been replaced, but there was no mistaking the hatefully smug face of Lord Paxton Hayfelt.

"So good to see you again, Glinda," he purred.

"The feeling isn't mutual, believe me. Also, what the hell are you doing driving a tank?"

"Diplomacy is at an end, my dear. All Purified serve in whatever way is required of us, and what was required of me was…" The hateful smirk grew. "Clarity."

Glinda saw his hand straying for the controls, and she had just enough time to dart out of the way before the tank's main nozzle erupted, sending a blast of sweet-smelling gas rocketing across the street. By now, Glinda was used to altering her body on the fly, and Leoverus had taught her all about the fine art of resisting Unbridled Radiance's gas weapons: her lungs expanded dramatically to hold more air, her torso widening and broadening dramatically as they did so, sprouting new organs to sift out as many toxic particles as possible before they could harm her; her flesh thickened, sprouting an internal membrane to prevent the gas from being absorbed through her skin. And as organic wheels and millipede legs formed beneath her, a vast array of tentacles and claws began to sprout from her back.

Hayfelt shook his head in disgust and sent another plume of gas arcing across the street. "A shame to see you defile yourself so repulsively, Glinda. You've truly changed for the worse. But fear not: the Clarity will sweep away all ugliness – first in mind, then in body. Once I'm done with you, your friends will follow, and they too shall know the cleansing bliss of death."

But the days when Glinda might have been afraid of the Purified ambassador were long gone.

"Maybe it's time you learned just much I've changed, Hayfelt," she replied. And with that, she drew in one final breath of fresh air, sealed her mouth shut, raised her thorn-tipped tentacles, and charged.

With Dr Coil too big to fit through the Sepulchre corridors, the infiltration team left him on guard duty outside the street-level entrance. Fortunately, they hadn't needed to waste their supply of explosives on the door, which had already been weakened by the partial collapse of the Sepulchre's roof: Coil hadn't needed to do much more than hook his gigantic fangs into the upper half of the door, rear backwards, and the entire thing was wrenched clean out of its housing.

The team found Elphaba less than a few hundred yards from the entrance, followed by a small gaggle of bewildered-looking children and a ridiculously stoic dog. As it turned out, she'd originally been heading straight for the highest reaches of the palace, but once the Empress had decided to use the same place as her own personal artillery post, Elphaba had decided to turn back – acquiring even more of the Childlike Researchers along the way.

By now, it seemed like she had almost a quarter of the Creche's population following her: Lintel, Broil, Calenture, Ailing, Handerson, Mirage, Illivid, Mainspring, and even little Morrible were now following her through the Sepulchre alongside Elarose and Essella. As far as she could tell, they seemed to believe that she knew what to next – as good a reason as any to regard her as their newest substitute parent now that the Empress had disappointed them. None of them questioned being joined by a gang of Irredeemables, nor did they wonder about the two green girls that had also joined Elphaba's entourage. Mentally speaking, they were too immature to even care about little things like the Radiant Laws unless someone was around to enforce them.

Of course, there were still occasional difficulties.

"What are all these children doing in the labs?" Morrible shrieked, her imperious tone once again at odds with her increasingly youthful voice. "I am experimenting volatilitous materials! I was given personal assurifications from the Headmaster that my work would not be disturbed! And where did all these people come from? With your deformiations, you should be in the infirmary!"

"Morrible-"

"I have rights! As a student researcher of Shiz University, I have rights!"

Elphaba put a reassuring hand on the screaming child's shoulder. "…Morrible, you're not at Shiz anymore, remember? You haven't been anywhere near the university for fifty years and the last time you were there, you were the Headmistress, not a student."

Morrible looked around in confusion, then seemed to sag, and when she spoke again, it was in the voice of a child – bewildered, disoriented, and consumed with dread. "It's… slipping. I… I think it's in the final phase now. It won't be long before I'm gone forever. I… Lintel told me how it's supposed to go, right before the last of your memories die off: you keep catching split-second glimpses of the last few tattered memories you have, so vivid you can almost believe that you're still living them… and then they vanish forever." She blinked rapidly, trying vainly to hide her tears. "What was I living through? What was I saying? Did anyone recognize what I might have been talking about?"

"Something about the time you were at Shiz University as a student researcher."

Her face fell. "I don't remember any of that. There's just… emptiness. I recall being a student of a lesser school, being excited to graduate so I could attend Shiz, but… I don't ever remember being there except when I became headmistress. And there's not much left of that either." Morrible hesitated for a moment, and then exclaimed, "We need to get to Paragon as quickly as possible! Maybe, if you can incorporatify me into the thinking engine, my memories can still be restored given time."

"We were planning on going there anyway," said Wolton, tetchily. "In point of fact, we were hoping to take Elphaba there before you started talking at us."

"Oh."

"Wolton, there's no need to be harsh with her."

"Put the maternal instincts away for a second, Vara, I'm just saying we could have been moving a lot sooner if we hadn't stopped for Madame Whatever-Her-Name-Is." He cleared his throat and turned to Elphaba, plastering on a decidedly exhausted-looking smile. "As I was about to say before small children interrupted me, we're here to get you to Paragon's central chamber. Good news is, we've got enough explosives to punch through the layers of protective shielding surrounding the core, and more than enough greasepaint to give you control of the thinking engine's systems. Best of all, those notes you've been keeping have given intel enough data to come up with a halfway decent map of the Sepulchre, so it shouldn't be too hard to get around. So, now that the impromptu mission briefing's out of the way, let's get moving!"

In spite of herself, Elphaba smiled: she'd missed the captain's world-weary exasperation.

"Is there anywhere for all these damn kids to go?"

"I was hoping you could tell me that," Elphaba admitted. "Now that the palace is filling up with snipers and mechanical turrets, I'm running out of safe places to take everyone. Can't you take them back to the fleet?"

"No time; we can't spare anyone to take them back, and anyway, the road back to the fleet would be even more dangerous. How many of these kids can use magic – competently?"

"Almost two thirds of them, I think, and the ones who can't have a ton of mechanical wonders up their sleeves. These are the Childlike Researchers, don't forget."

(She opted not to mention that the green girls tagging along with them were Alphaba's daughters; the last thing she needed was to confuse anyone more than usual – or to get anyone in the mood for a lynch mob. So far, they'd accepted the fact that the strange little girls were bright green, if only because there wasn't enough time to focus on anything else)

Wolton sighed deeply. "Screw it, we'll take them with us. Now, come on: to Paragon, quickly!"

And so they set off down the corridors at a brisk job, a bewildering parade of figures sprinting deeper and deeper into the bowels of Exemplar: twenty regulars, twenty Irredeemables, a ragged Lion, a badly-dented Tin Man, the most-wanted Witch in Unbridled Radiance, a gaggle of Childlike Researchers (encouraged along by Vara) and the Imperial Heirs all streaming through the corridors as fast as their varied feet could carry them. Elphaba almost found herself laughing as they hurried on, imagining what the Sepulchre's staff might have thought at the sight of this bewildering serpent of figures hurrying through the complex. Fortunately, they were spared any such awkward encounters, if only because most of the security personnel were being frantically diverted aboveground to deal with the invasion.

Several minutes later, the corridor suddenly opened into a vast circular chamber, and Elphaba felt her heart leap as she took in the sight of the rotunda around her, realizing that she recognized this place all too well: Glinda had described this place long ago, while recounting her journey through Exemplar alongside Omber Landless, and though it was now coated with dust and debris from the ceiling, there was no mistaking the huge glass shield in the centre of the room – or the mineshaft-like pit that lay beneath, stretching away into the depths of the earth.

And there, at the bottom of that vertiginous shaft, behind several layers of unbreakable glass shielding, sat the emerald obelisk that crowned the thinking engine's central processors.

Paragon was just a few hundred feet below them. From everything Elphaba had learned so far, security had been buffed up considerably, so the glass wouldn't retract for anyone without the Empress's voice, face and passwords… but, if the Mistress of Mirrors was correct, the obelisk itself needed no passwords – only Alphaba's face and voice… and Elphaba had both.

The Irredeemables and regulars quickly began moulding several wads of detonating clay into the edges of the first glass shield, their beetle-bodied explosives expert promising that it would be more than enough to crack the bulletproof pane like an egg. Despite Vara's best efforts, the Childlike Researchers quickly gathered around, eager to witness the fireworks, and it took a few stern words from Elphaba to corral them again. Unfortunately, Lintel insisted that he'd be able to transport everyone down there without needing to bother with explosives, and quickly got into a furious debate with some of the other magicians on the team over whether Paragon's defences might be able to keep him out or not.

But no sooner had they finished arguing, there was a thunderous roar from below, and as one, the platoon and the Researchers looked down at the bottom of the shaft – and finally noticed the technicians that had been at work down there, hiding behind the edges of the final shield. It was too distant to tell what they had been up to, but from the looks of things, it was almost complete, for the central obelisk had begun to glow a hellish shade of red.

And something was beginning to appear above it, slowly coalescing into a familiar form…

Elphaba barely had enough time to yell a warning to the others before the writhing crimson shape erupted upwards, soaring through the glass shields in its path as if they were no more substantial than air. By the time it had reached them, the pulsating ball of insanity had finally gathered itself into a semi-coherent shape, but Elphaba knew what this monster was long before that familiar face crept into view.

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

HATE

HATE

Unknown to all, Roquat the Red watched the scene unfold through Elphaba's eyes. He had his hands off the controls for now, for he knew full well that his current host could look after herself without him risking detection… but all the same, that didn't stop him from looking on with growing anxiousness as the battle played out before him.

He'd played his hand, having rigged the game as best as he could well in advance. Now, all he could do was hope that it paid off…

A/N: Up next... Hades only knows! Feel free to give me your predictions; the next chapter will be up very soon...