The Land of What-Might-Have-Been

by Straightjacketed

After spending so many years wishing that things had been different, what happens when, halfway through their final meeting, Elphaba and Glinda find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the worst of all possible worlds? AU.

76. Undermined, Unravelled, Undone

A/N: And here we have it - the second half of the chainsawed chapter! Including the first half, this the longest one I've written in quite a while, ladies and gents; I was so tempted to chainsaw it again, but once again matters of pacing got in the way. In any event, this latest instalment has been a barrel of fun, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it - and feel free to mercilessly machinegun me with notifications of the many typos that creep up on me in the dead of night.

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

Disclaimer: Wicked is still not mine.

---

In the streets, the duel went on.

The troops were already dead or running for their lives, the tanks and the missile launcher had been reduced to heaps of smouldering scrap metal, and the Mentor had managed to crush two of the powered armour units in the colossus's claws, but the rest of Alphaba's little retinue were still alive and kicking. Gloss and the elite troopers were doing an alarmingly good job at carving through the Mentor's defences with their lances, and the Cleansing Flame had managed to destroy all the weaponry on the colossus's right arm… and the Empress was still pelting her with magic.

The final power armour unit flung itself through the air and landed directly atop the colossus, its drill-tipped arm punching several holes in the outer layer of armour and nearly penetrating the inner mantle before Kiln swung the gun turret around and knocked it off. The unit landed heavily on its back directly in front of them, unable to right itself and left writhing helplessly like an upturned turtle. Pausing only to launch another bevvy of missiles at the Empress, the Mentor raised the colossus's foot high above the downed unit and brought it thundering down.

But the Empress was still laughing, even as she swatted aside the missiles and sent them hurtling in all directions. "Kill as many of them as you like!" she shrieked. "You know you're only delaying the inevitable, you disgusting old hag: you're clearly dependent on the colossus – otherwise you would have fought me face to face. As soon as we finish peeling away those layers of armour, you'll be as good as dead! And you'll be just the beginning…"

"YOU TALK TOO MUCH," the Mentor sighed, the PA system making her heard even over the cacophony of the battle. "ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE FEELING DEFENSIVE."

Another volley of lance fire from the elite troops scythed through the colossus's pincers, the Cleaning Flame narrowly missed its left leg, and a spell from the Empress sent the whole thing hurtling back down the street; only the colossus's anchor-like feet prevented it from being flung away.

"Bravado won't help you here, Deviant," the Empress plunged onwards, hammering at the colossus with blasts of searing white energy. "You've brought every last vestige of your strength to this battle and it still isn't enough! You'll lose today, and it'll mean the end of your degenerate people! Your cities will be completely defenceless when we move against them, and all the damage you've done today can be easily repaired – so you've changed nothing!"

"YOU SOUND ANNOYED, YOUR RADIANCE. IS IT BECAUSE YOU CAN'T THROW ANOTHER BUILDING AT ME FOR FEAR OF RUINING YOUR PRECIOUS CITY?"

"Shut up!"

"WHATEVER YOU SAY… ELPHIE."

The Empress roared. Once again levitating entirely of her own accord, she flung herself through the air like a misfired missile, crossing the divide between them in the space of a second and crashing into the colossus with meteoric force. At once, the barrage of gunfire from the supporting army ceased, none of the loyal warriors daring to continue their assault for fear of hitting the Empress, leaving the witches to clash alone in the middle of the street.

For a full minute, Alphaba tore at the roof of the colossus, her hands aglow with magical energies as she tried with all her might to punch through the enchanted bulkheads and rip the cockpit open. Kiln immediately brought the field gun around in a valiant attempt to dislodge her, but the Empress simply waved a hand and wrenched the entire turret out of its housing, then flung it away. Magic swirled back and forth across the chassis, chanting crowded the air with arcane words, and reality itself nearly gave up the ghost as the Empress tried to destroy the colossus and the Mentor did her best to counter her.

And then, just as it seemed as if the brawl might go on forever, there was an almighty bellow of air horns from above them, and the Mentor looked up through the canopy just in time to see a shadow blot out the rapidly-setting sun. Hovering above the city was a gleaming array of magnificently-decorated airships, their hulls adorned with dazzling platinum shells, burnished golden filigree, or even carapaces of moulded crystal.

Exemplar's reinforcements had arrived in force… and judging by the distant chorus of horns echoing across the sky in the distance, the rest of the Radiant Fleets weren't far behind them.

Atop the colossus, the Empress howled with laughter. "You see?" she cackled. "You see? It's already over! It's only been twenty minutes and you've already lost!"

She whispered a command into the commlink at her wrist, and suddenly, vast display screens mounted on the sides of the buildings around them began flickering to life – displaying a clear view of the Empress standing atop the wounded colossus.

"And now everyone will see," she continued gleefully. "And I mean everyone! I arranged for the today's victory parade to be broadcast live to every city in Unbridled Radiance, and the automated cameras never stopped rolling, so now my people will get to witness to moment you're finally defeated, humiliated, and execu-"

The Mentor swung one of the control levers around, raising the colossus's remaining gun arm to its head, and fired a missile at point-blank range. The explosion immediately destroyed the launcher and sheared away another layer of armour, but it was enough to send the Empress hurtling back across the battlefield (a sight immediately broadcast to several hundred million watchers across Unbridled Radiance).

As the Empress struggled to regenerate, the elite troops and the Cleansing Fire prepared to fire once more; above them, several airships took aim at the colossus, getting ready to erase the Mentor in a final barrage of high-velocity munitions. But the Empress made no attempt to flee: thanks to the colossus's sensory array, she could already hear what the imperial forces were too distracted to notice.

A moment later, the Abyssal Titan ploughed into the nearest of the Radiant fleet's ships, its gargantuan bulk reducing the warship to a crumpled husk against its hull. Undeterred by the impact, the mercenary flagship rumbled onwards, guns blazing and fighters roaring from its hanger bays like a swarm of enraged hornets: it smashed through a crystal-hulled dreadnought in a hail of gleaming splinters, flattened a destroyer into a gold-liveried stain on its flank, and blasted at least three frigates into flaming wreckage before finally hammering headlong into them, sending the wreckage flying in all directions.

Only then, with its gigantic bulk sheltering the street below, did the Strangling Coil's pride and joy finally lurch to a halt. There was a pause, as its fighters began spreading out across the city and Tik-Tok mechanoids began raining down from the Abyssal Titan's open hangars, ready to offer another layer of protection to the Deviant forces throughout the city.

Then, there was a flash of light from the centre of the flagship, almost directly above the colossus… and a familiar figure began to plummet towards them, blasting through the skies like a falling star. A moment later, the Cleansing Flame rocked forward on its treads as something huge and distinctly spherical landed on the road behind it with a bowel-pummelling roar of sound, shattering the paving stones and sending people nearby hurtling in all directions.

A moment later, Branderstove lurched from the crater with a terrifying swiftness that belied his corpulent body, the Leviathan's armour-plated bulk moving like a locomotive at full steam and every bit as relentless.

Crashing headlong into the Cleansing Flame, he seized it by the dish and began slowly forcing it in Alphaba's direction; from inside the war engine, there was a scream of terror as Branderstove's tentacles swept across the control room, throttling anything in their path even as they began preparing the dish to fire. Then, the Cleansing Flame erupted in another searing bolt of light. Too busy exchanging spells with the Mentor to pay attention to the clash between the mercenary paymaster and her own war engine, the Empress had just enough time to glance up in bemusement before a solid wave of white-hot fire swept over her.

Of course, Branderstove obviously wasn't expecting this to be enough to put her down for good, so he kept firing until the internal mechanisms of the Cleansing Flame simply melted from sheer overheating, then threw the whole thing at the inferno that had consumed the northern end of the intersection. Then, without waiting for Alphaba to recover, he charged across the street – not at the Empress, but at the other major target of his vengeance.

Colonel Gloss, as always, was fast on his feet. Even when weighed down by the silvery armour-plating of the elite troops, he was still swifter and more agile than any other man on the street. So when he saw the Leviathan barrelling towards him like a runaway freight train, he immediately flung himself out of the way and – as Branderstove smashed into the other elite troopers – began shedding armour. Within seconds, the finest non-Purified regiment of soldiers in all of Unbridled Radiance had been reduced to a series of silvery-red blots on the road, but Gloss had stripped down to his uniform, cast aside his cumbersome energy lance, and was now armed with only with a pistol and a sword.

Unfortunately, that made it all the easier for him to outpace Branderstove; the traitor clearly knew from experience that while his old employer was a lot faster than he looked, manoeuvring wasn't one of his strong points. Every time the Leviathan charged, Gloss simply somersaulted over his head, slicing at his shoulders as he breezed past; every time Branderstove fired his cannon at him, Gloss was gone long before the shell made contact; every time the mercenary commander's gigantic fist rocketed towards him, Gloss darted out of the way and made another strike against Branderstove's undefended legs.

Unable to help without hitting Branderstove, the Mentor concentrated her firepower (what was left of it) on the blaze. Already, a charred silhouette could be seen at the heart of the inferno, simultaneously firing spells at any Deviant forces in range even as she struggled to extinguish the flames, so the Mentor could only do her best to keep up the pressure and keep the Empress at a disadvantage.

Back on the western end of the intersection, the brawl continued, visible through the colossus's sensory array.

"You'll pay with more than blood for what you've done," the Leviathan was booming furiously. "I'll make you suffer for every second of what remains of your life, Gloss."

Another cannon blast, Gloss easily sidestepping it. "You'll have to catch me first, old man. I've got the Empress backing me, now, and I've got Purification on the horizon."

Branderstove snatched up a parked auto-carriage and flung it at Gloss, but he was already spreading ahead of it, firing off several precise shots at the weak points in the Leviathan's armour.

"She's invincible, boss and you're not," he crowed. "You're just a miserable old bastard gambling with what's left of his money. In a thousand years, I won't even remember you, and neither will anyone else worth knowing."

"You've actually got to get that far first, you one-eared rat!"

This time, Branderstove tried to pepper Gloss with shrapnel, pounding the walls of the surrounding buildings with precise cannon blasts and launching storms of pulverized brick in all directions. One of them actually managed to cut Gloss across the face as he breezed across the street and several dealt vicious lacerations to his body as he began to pick up speed – but other than that, nothing seemed to touch him. Before Branderstove could prepare another volley, though, Gloss reached the end of his forward sprint and leapt through the air – his pistol levelled squarely at his opponent's face. He fired, landing a direct hit on a weak point between the Leviathan's shoulder plates and his helmet; shocked by the wound, Branderstove was unprepared for the double-kick that caught him square in the chin, swatting his helmet away with one blow and knocking him senseless with the next.

As the downed Leviathan collapsed to his knees in a daze, Gloss landed smoothly, snatched up an energy lance, and raised it high over his head, ready to spear his old employer clean through the face.

"I'll be sure to add your medals to my collection, boss," he sneered.

But just as he was about to slam the lance home, there was a blur of motion behind him –

-and suddenly, Dorothy Gale was perched on the mercenary colonel's shoulders.

Before Gloss could react, much less throw her off, Dorothy was already lunging downwards, her teeth sliding into her gums and a set of gigantic fangs rising from behind them as her jaw yawned open, wider and wider-

Gloss had just enough presence of mind to twist his head out of the way, preventing Dorothy from literally taking a bite out of his entire skull. Instead, her bear-trap like teeth clamped down on his remaining ear right at the point where it joined his head, eliciting a high-pitched squeal of pain – the first time anyone had ever heard Gloss scream since he'd entered the war; then, with one almighty twist of her oversized jaws, Dorothy ripped the whole ear away, taking a huge plug of flesh with it.

Shrieking, Gloss grabbed her by the arm and flung her off his back, sending her tumbling down the side of Branderstove's mountainous belly all the way to the ground. For a moment, Gloss could only stand there, gazing in disbelief at Dorothy, who was now slimed up to her nose in blood, slowly regaining an almost-human appearance and looking more than a little shocked at what she'd just done.

Then, as if finally realizing what she'd just taken a bite out of, Dorothy spat out the severed ear.

"You little shit," Gloss snarled, the ever-present smile gone from his face, his dignity gone along with it. He raised his gun, aiming it squarely at Dorothy's head, hands trembling with rage as his fingers tightened on the trigger. "You dirty rotten stinking rotten rotten rotten-"

And then Branderstove surged upwards like a humpback whale, seizing Gloss by the arms and bringing him screaming to the ground with an almighty crash of shattering paving stones. Then the Leviathan's tentacles began to fasten on Gloss's waist, wrapping themselves tighter and tighter until Gloss could barely squeeze in his final breaths. Then Dorothy's dolls swarmed in, grabbing Gloss by the arms; not to be outdone, another set of tentacles began wrapping themselves around Gloss's skull, forcing themselves into his ears, up his nose, down into his mouth...

A short and decidedly messy game of tug of war ensued.

Suddenly, the Mentor found she had more important things to focus on. By contrast, Dr Kiln sprouted a few extra eyes and brought out some binoculars for a closer look through the porthole.

A moment later, a blood-splattered Branderstove lumbered back into firing position with Dorothy by his side, about a hundred dolls following behind them – most of them playing catch with severed limbs.

There was a pause, as all three of them exchanged bemused glances, as if none of them were sure what to do next.

Then, at long last, the inferno at the northern end of the intersection finally began to subside, the vast tongues of fire gradually dwindling away until all the remained were the smouldering husks of buildings, a road of semi-liquefied paving stones, and a figure slowly striding through the billowing clouds of smoke. By now, the Empress had been charred to a blackened husk, her naked, near-featureless body somehow still in motion only through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness… but unbelievably enough, she was already starting to heal: the scorched flesh was softening into pale, unblemished tissue; new muscles were blossoming across the scarecrow-like limbs; eyes were forming in the blasted craters of her face, inflating like grisly balloons; the skull-like face now pulsated with life as burned-away lips and nose and ears slowly reformed.

In less than a minute, the Empress was herself again. True, she was naked as the day she was born, but it only took a moment for her to conjure up another set of robes. True, she looked exhausted and more than a little annoyed at having to pull herself together so thoroughly, but there was no denying the fact that she was whole.

"That," panted the Empress, "took a lot out of me. That's the most I've had to regenerate since you crushed me under a mountain. Haven't pushed myself this far without taking a pick-me-up in years. But you always know how to push me to my limits, don't you? You're nothing if not thorough, Mentor. But for all that effort, I'm still standing: every year, I get stronger and every year, the healing progresses a little quicker. I don't even scar anymore. And that's only half the reason you won't win today – can't win today: you see, you're not just fighting against a lone tyrant, or even an empire. You're fighting a people."

She waved a hand – not casting a spell, but sending a signal: there was a rumble in the distance, and suddenly the road was crowded with richly-dressed men and women. Some of them wore the uniforms of military officers; some were dressed in magnificently tailored business suits and professional garb; some were bedecked in the height of fashion, from silk eveningwear to elaborate ballroom gowns. A few were even clad in safety gear or armour, usually custom-made to fit with the crowd's exacting standards of beauty. Some were human, some were Animals, and a few had been drawn from the ranks of the much stranger races that Unbridled Radiance had conquered.

But all of them were Purified.

And though they were only armed with whatever weapons had been close at hand when the Empress had summoned them to her side, they were more than ready to kill: they were stronger, faster, tougher and cleverer than Colonel Gloss had ever been, and right now, there were no less than three hundred of them gathered on this ruined street – and they numbered barely a quarter of the Purified that were employed in this city.

The Empress allowed the four of them a moment to savour the dread of knowing that they were outnumbered and outgunned.

And then the chaos started anew…

---

Not for the first time that day, Glinda wondered just how Alphaba had managed to make the Purified so fast.

A few minutes ago, she'd thought that Hayfelt's position inside the tank would leave him too slow to keep up with her, but unfortunately, it seemed as if the hateful diplomat had some remote link to the war engine: every time Glinda got close to peeling open a weak point in the tank's armour, Hayfelt would catapult himself through a hatch and go cartwheeling across the battlefield, drawing Glinda away from the tank – just long enough for him to remotely turn its guns against her. Whenever she was able to force one of the doors open, a gout of flame would jet from an internal mechanism and send her toppling away, even as Hayfelt jabbed at her with his rapier. Every time she got close to ripping one of the cannons off, another hatch would open right next to her, allowing Hayfelt a split second to shoot her in the side with an incendiary round.

By now, Glinda had learned the hard and painful lesson that fire was one of the few things that the Amorphous League couldn't easily deal with: it hurt worse than any other weapon the enemy could employ, leaving wounds that could only be healed through time or an exhausting effort of will, even killing a shapeshifter if they weren't prepared.

But as painful as it was to be struck in the hide by a phosphorous bullet and scorched across the hand by a flamethrower, struggling to hold her breath hurt even more. She'd given herself the best possible lungs she could possibly imagine, but even they were starting to wear out in the face of constant exertion… and she couldn't make new ones without exhaling and taking in a fresh gulp of air – and she couldn't do that without exposing herself to the Clarity that Hayfelt was still pumping into the air.

One lungful of that stuff might be all it would take to kill her; after all, she didn't know how well the toxin-sifting organs would function, having never tested them before.

For all she knew, one lungful would be enough to make Glinda rip herself to pieces on the spot.

But still she fought on – because if this Clarity got any deeper into Exemplar, everyone she cared about – Elphaba, Dorothy, Vara, Leoverus, Omber and the rest of the Amorphous League would be poisoned by the gas long before they could finish the plan. She couldn't retreat from this, not with so much riding on this one, last desperate gambit.

So Glinda fought on, rolling and tumbling and charging just to stay ahead of the gunfire, just so she could keep the tank at bay from wherever her friends might be at work… and all the while, Hayfelt was still talking. Beforehand, she hadn't been sure how the ambassador had been able to convince people to riot or even kill themselves, but the more he spoke, the harder it was to ignore him. She didn't feel any overwhelming urge to obey him – yet – but there was something about his voice that seemed to pour itself through her ears and through her skull, his words burrowing deep into her brain and insinuating themselves somewhere deep in the very centre of her adrenaline-crazed mind.

"You can't stop me, Glinda."

"Your efforts are pointless; you can see that much, so why not give up now?"

"Why not just take a deep breath and lie down?"

And as the tirade went on, Glinda couldn't help but think that surrendering might be a good idea – or that a deep breath might do her the world of good. It was only a small thought, easily dismissed, but Hayfelt never stopped talking, and so the thoughts soon began to multiply, forming swarms of unwanted ideas that buzzed around her head like angry wasps until her lungs burned with the effort of holding that breath in.

In the end, it was so distracting that she soon found herself skidding to a halt in the middle of the road just to clear her head for a moment. And if Paxton Hayfelt had chosen to continue as he was while he blasted her out of existence, that move might have been the end of her.

But Hayfelt hadn't been trained as a soldier or even an assassin; he was a gloating ambassador acting on instructions, eager to impress his Empress above all else. And like all Purified, he'd been conditioned to believe himself superior to everyone. So, instead of just arming the secondary guns and blowing her to bits while he kept her confused with constant talk, he instead rose from the topmost hatch with a rifle in his hands, ready to take the killing blow in person – and in that moment, Glinda saw her chance.

With Hayfelt no longer talking, her head was clear. Seizing the moment, she reached out with a tentacular arm and snatched up a coconut-sized lump of rubble, then flung it squarely at the diplomat's skull with meteoric force. By itself, it was only a stone, but at the speed it was moving, it would have been as deadly as a bullet: when it finally caught Hayfelt squarely in the left temple, it struck him enough to crack the flesh-porcelain. Reeling backwards, the rifle fell from his hands, and Glinda pounced.

Catapulting herself out of the gas cloud with one almighty flex of her frondlike limbs, she sprang through the air, tackling Hayfelt around the shoulders and dragging him down into the depths of the tank. The two of them hit the deck less than a second later, bouncing off the unforgiving banks of machinery and rolling wildly across the ground as they fought – Glinda trying to crush him to death, Hayfelt struggling to get free.

Then there was a sharp jab of pain in Glinda's side, a white-hot blast of heat that sent her reeling away, limbs unfurling as she did so. Crashing against the opposite bulkhead, she instinctively exhaled – and realized with a thrill of relief that the tank's cockpit was gas-free, at least enough for her lungs to filter it out. Unfortunately, the lack of room down here made it difficult to manoeuvre her tentacles, forcing her to change shape again.

Meanwhile, Hayfelt was struggling to reload his gun, but at last it seemed he was out of ammo. Unfortunately, that was easily replaced by the flamethrower by the hatchway, and with her body still shapeshifting and confined by the tank's interior, Glinda couldn't retaliate. In the end, she could only slip back into human form, knowing full well that Hayfelt would kill her immediately if she took on any shape that looked visibly dangerous.

It was then that she finally noticed that the flamethrower wasn't the only weapon within reach of her opponent. All around them, dozens upon dozens of pressurized canisters had been set up across the interior of the tank, all of them marked with the distinctive skull-and-crossbones warning for poison. More worryingly, though, several of them were also labelled "WARNING: UNDIFFERENTIATED CLARITY."

Glinda had only heard about undifferentiated Clarity once: according to Omber, it was an early-development variation on the usual gas, halted just before the alchemists began adding the thaumaturgical elements that ensured that it would only harm individuals who didn't fit the Empress's standards of normality or beauty. Without these special additives, the gas would affect anyone regardless of whether they were Purified, ordinary or Distorted; apparently, it was very popular among agents of Unbridled Radiance as "an extroverted suicide pill"… and for some reason, Hayfelt appeared to be carrying around a ton of the stuff.

The ambassador must have understood the shocked look on Glinda's face, because the smirk on his cracked face grew wider than ever. "

That's right, Glinda," he purred. "The Empress trusts me with the duty of ensuring that this city will not fall to the Deviant Nations. Should your Mentor and her blasphemous puppet ever succeed in taking the palace, I will simply flood this city with all the undifferentiated Clarity I can find… and this modest supply is only the beginning."

"You're going to kill everyone?!"

"If the Empress commands. Better that the innocent people of this city die lest we condemn them to live in ugliness."

"And what about the Empress?" Glinda demanded. "Won't that kill her too?"

"The Empress is eternal, Glinda. Whatever is done to her, she will never die: she will return to reclaim this city. You and your fellow Deviants on the other hand…" He permitted himself a faint, almost mechanical-sounding chuckle. "Not so much."

He levelled the flamethrower in her direction. "But I think I've talked enough about the future. Your cleansing shall be more immediate."

And then, just as he was about to pull the trigger, Glinda acted on instinct: by now, she'd learned to avoid fire, and she knew that any aggressive change would result in her being incinerated before she could get within arm's reach of her target. But she remembered her first meeting with Shenshen-Pfannee, and knew that attacking wasn't her only option.

Instead, she flung herself to the ground as low she could go, flattening herself against the deck until she was no thicker than a placemat, redistributing her tissues to provide her with as much insulation as possible. She felt the fire roar overhead, felt her dense skin blister as it roared past… but, thank Lurline, it wasn't close enough or hot enough to ignite her body.

It was, however, more than close enough to engulf the canister behind her. And, as luck would have it, it was one of the ones marked "UNDILUTED."

Hayfelt rose to his feet, either aiming for a better shot or hoping to extinguish the blaze before one the pressurized containers burst open, but Glinda was ready for him. Rolling herself into a cylinder, she flung herself across the deck, tripping him up and sending Hayfelt crashing to the floor; as soon as he was down, Glinda leapt for the side hatchway, her body sprouting new lungs, new limbs and a newly-sealed mouth as she flung the door open and galloped back into the street.

She didn't stop until she was at least thirty feet from the tank, when at least she heard the muffled boom of the first canister of gas exploded inside the tank, then another, and another, until the inside of the tank resounded with the sounds of canisters bursting as the fires spread.

Then Lord Paxton Hayfelt staggered out through the side hatchway like a drunk, his smiling face marred by a look of utter bewilderment. Glinda didn't know just how much of the undiluted Clarity he'd just inhaled, but it had to be a devastating quality, for his limbs were already starting to twitch and shudder of their own accord.

"I… I… am… disgusting," said the ambassador slowly. "I am disgusting. I am disgusting. I am disgusting. I am disgusting. I am disgusting."

He turned on his heel, drew his head back, and slammed his head facefirst into the side of the tank. "Disgusting," he continued, hammering himself against the bulkhead again with every repetition. "Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting."

The impact had split the crack in his head wide open, transforming a hairline fracture into a gaping fissure in the flesh-porcelain, exposing mechanical components, wires, and even a sliver of bone. And as Glinda looked on in horror, Paxton Hayfelt reached up towards the ragged edges of the hole in his face and began forcing it wider still, punching through bone, tearing internal mechanisms apart, slowly ripping his head open…

"Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disg-"

Glinda looked away. Some deaths you couldn't even wish on your worst enemies.

Instead, she sculpted herself into an eagle and soared out across the battlefield until she'd left that hateful, gas-shrouded street far behind her...

---

"Form up! All mages to the perimeter!"

"I can't get a bead on the damn thing, it's moving too quickly!"

"Where is it? Where's it gone now? Is it coming around for another pass?"

"Mommy? Mommy, where are you!? I'm scared!"

"Oh for godsakes, Morrible…"

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE KILL YOU FOR GOOD THIS TIME GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY

The battle against the Hate-Creature was not going well, needless to say. The platoon had managed to organize a fairly effective defence with the aid of the magicians among the group, but unfortunately, their attacker was only mildly inconvenienced at best. Every time they found an opportunity to hunker down and conjure up a shield to hide behind, the Hate-Creature simply roared in from the right and shattered their ersatz defences without even trying.

As for actually damaging it, that had been met with even less success: blades, bullets, rockets, grenades and energy weapons simply passed through the Hate-Creature's body without even leaving a mark. After all, this was a thaumaturgical incarnation of Frexspar Thropp's emotions: it had no tangible body to attack, only a bottomless wellspring of semi-corporeal force. Magic was slightly more effective: experts among the platoon and the Childlike Researchers were able to repulse it, maybe even leave the odd dent in its manifestation, but they were only intermittently successful – for the Hate-Creature didn't exactly stand around waiting to be targeted.

Every twenty seconds or so, it would charge them, sending them flying in all directions as it zeroed in on Elphaba; already, a large chunk of Wolton's platoon were sporting broken limbs, and quite a few of them looked to be unconscious. In fact, the only reason why nobody had been killed outright was because the Hate-Creature's ire was reserved for Elphaba: it simply didn't have the time or the interest to spare for anyone else, so it simply scattered them like ninepins as it charged Elphaba, blasting her with the full force of its wrath. For her part, Elphaba could only hide behind a conjured shield and do her best to return fire whenever she got the chance; as large as the chamber was, there simply wasn't enough room to manoeuvre as much as she had back in Greenspectre, so she was constantly on the defensive… and this time, the Hate-Creature hadn't been ordered to go easy on her.

Right now, the battle had only been going on for a few minutes, but already it felt as if it had lasted an hour, and Elphaba wasn't sure how much longer she could maintain her defences. For the moment, she still had the protection of her fellow magician, but they were already beginning to falter – the battle mages of the platoon wounded or out cold, the Childlike Researchers beginning to panic in the face of the oncoming assault. Few of her friends were in good condition: Boq was sporting a brand-new dent right in the middle of his head, Vara was limping, Wolton was struggling to reload with broken fingers, and so far, it seemed that Brr was the only one of them who'd managed to avoid anything other than cuts and bruises – and he had joined Toto in a valiant but futile attempt to draw the Hate-Creature's fire.

In desperation, Elphaba staggered over to the Childlike Researchers and – with some difficulty – managed to get Morrible's attention.

"What… what happened?" the ex-press secretary gibbered. "Where am I? I was at the Ozdust, and I was just giving Glinda her first wand… where is she? Where did the ballroom go? Why are you so much older now, Miss Elphaba? Why am I so young?!"

Elphaba groaned. "Focus, Morrible: that was over fifty years ago, remember? Well, it was fifty years ago in this world but in mine it's just-"

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

"Nevermind. Morrible, I need you to concentrate for a minute: do you know of anything that could stop this damn thing?"

Morrible blinked rapidly. "Fading," she mumbled. "It's all going away. I'm going away. I can't remember what happened that night anymore: there's just another gap in my memories… and it's made of almost nothing but gaps!" Her eyes were full of tears now, and only a few dying embers of pride kept her from breaking down in a flood of horror-stricken tears. "I can't remember why you revoltified, or what you did when you first met the Wizard. I can't remember my birthday; I can't remember my job title. I can't remember anything I did when I was working for the Wizard. Soon, there'll be nothing left of me! Soon, my personality will be gone altogether…"

"This is no time to panic, Morrible-"

"But I'm going to die!" the little girl wailed. "Once I forget my personality, I won't be the same person anymore! I'll be dead!"

"I know, I know, but Paragon is right below us! You can still be incorporated into the thinking engine and remain who you are; you just need to hang on a little longer-"

An eye-searing blast of energy shook the collective shields of the Researchers, their hastily-cast spells barely managing to deflect the Hate-Creature's power in the opposite direction, sending it crashing headlong into the far wall of the chamber – slicing off a good-sized chunk of sculpted marble in the process. And all the while, audible even over the roar of collapsing masonry, the Hate-Creature went on ranting:

HATE KILL MURDER HATE DEATH HATE GET OUT FROM BEHIND THAT SHIELD AND FIGHT ME YOU BITCH

"-and maybe focus on what's important as well," Elphaba hastily amended. "Morrible, do you remember any methods that the Empress might have used for stopping the Hate-Creature if it ever got out of hand?"

Morrible thought for a moment. "I… I can barely remember this place now, much less when this thing was being created. But…" Her eyes lit up. "Wait! I vaguely remember there was meant to be a secondary means of temporarily disabling a contributing mind if it ever tried to rebel and the usual disciplinary systems didn't work. Uh, something to do with inducing negative stimuli, enough to cripple its motivatiation to continue. If this Hate-Creature came from one of Paragon's donor minds, then maybe it'll work on it as well."

"Brilliant! So what do we do?"

"Well, I think there's meant to be an emergency control terminalizer at the bottom of the shaft, on the southern wall. Accessiation is not restricted, so you should be able to use it. You see, it's all to do with memory-"

Suddenly, Morrible's already high-pitched voice rose sharply into an infantile squeal. A moment later, her face underwent a startling metamorphosis as she shrank down into her clothes, her body casting off what few years she still possessed in a matter of seconds. By the end of it, she couldn't be much more than a year old, if not younger, a tiny, bewildered-looking baby tangled up in clothes several sizes too big for her.

"Damn," Elphaba muttered. "When's she next due to age back up?"

Lintel shrugged. "Maybe a minute, maybe a day. No way of telling for sure."

The Hate Creature bellowed wordlessly overhead, its wrath shredding the pillars behind them to a hailstorm of rubble. Vara barely had enough time to scoop baby Morrible into her arms and sprint out of the way before the stonework came crashing down on the exact place where the baby had once been sitting.

At Elphaba's command, the demolitions expert set off the first bomb, hoping against hope that it would clear the way ahead for them to access Paragon itself. Immediately, there was a thunderous roar as the shaped charge exploded, sending an earth-trembling shockwave rippling across the room and causing even more debris to rain from the ceiling… but the first shield refused to budge. Its surface had cracked impressively, the metal rim had crumpled, but the mechanism as a whole remained intact. Either the shields were stronger than expected, or the Empress had expected this approach well in advance.

Meanwhile, the Hate-Creature was busy hammering its way through their defensive formation's left flank, sending overwhelmed magicians flying in all directions and forcing most of the Childlike Researchers to flee. Those who remained in its path didn't remain standing for long. Handerson and Ailing made an impressive effort to dispel the monster with their concoctions, one blasting the Hate-Creature with the enchanted guns of his little powered armour setup, the other bombarding it with vial after vial of devastating alchemical draughts. Lintel provided some much-needed protection, shielding them with portals and gateways that would send the Hate-Creature's blasts of magic hurtling right back into its own face. Ultimately, even these bold little soldiers were overwhelmed, swatted aside and left crawling for cover as childish fear set it once more.

For a moment, Elphaba briefly wondered if Lintel's powers were the best option after all: perhaps he would be able to get her to Paragon's inner core and the emergency terminal. Unfortunately, the Hate-Creature was between her and Lintel by now, so it was a little late to try for this option, and judging by the shellshocked look on his face, the kid probably wasn't in any condition to be a hero at the moment. Besides, she didn't know to operate the machinery down there, not even with the Empress's memoires; even a control freak like Alphaba didn't insist on performing the repairs or the necessary installations.

But what had Morrible been about to say before she'd regressed again? "It's all to do with memory"? Did that mean that the countermeasure had something to do with memories? Could that also mean that the Hate-Creature was vulnerable to memories of some kind? Oh, it sounded promising, but what memories would be enough to "cripple it's motivatiation to continue" and shut this damn thing down for good?

HATE HATE HATE HATE REVENGE FOR MY MELENA YOU KILLED HER YOU SHAMED HER MEMORY HATE HATE HATE REVENGE FOR NESSA YOU CRIPPLED HER YOU BEFOULED HER YOU HUMILIATED HER YOU WILL PAY FOR EVERYTHING YOU DID HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

Elphaba looked up at the oncoming monstrosity, seeing decades after decade of Frexspar's compressed hatred, bitterness, frustration, and denial made manifest and bearing down on her like a hurricane… and belatedly realized something: the sense of crippling self-loathing that had accompanied the Hate-Creature when it had assaulted her head-on was nowhere to be found. And it wasn't dulled, withheld or suppressed for a future gambit, as it had been when the Empress had attacked Greenspectre. No, the sense of self-reproach and tearful acquiescence that the Hate-Creature had once brought with it was gone.

She could speculate for hours as to why this was now the case, there was only one thing that could possibly explain Elphaba's resistance this time around: she no longer felt any guilt for the things that Frexspar had accused her of all these years. That weight had been finally lifted from her shoulders by the things she'd seen in the other dimensions, by the alternate Melena absolving her of all blame.

And come to think of it, she'd learned something very practical out there in the multiverse as well, hadn't she?

The Hate-Creature billowed towards her, spectral jaws gnashing with rage, ready to tear Elphaba in half – but at the very last second, Elphaba's hands shot out at lightning-speed, her fingers aglow with emerald-green witchlight, and seized the Hate-Creature by its colossal face. For a moment, Frexspar Thropp's hatred roared its outrage and disgust as it struggled to escape from Elphaba's magically-enhanced grip – but then the power of Elphaba's spell began to pour into its phantasmal brain, flooding its psyche with new information.

One by one, the memories trickled into place, all of them culled from the earliest years of Elphaba's childhood, a host of moments that she'd glimpsed in passing without ever realizing their significance until it was too late:

Frexspar giving mother the milkflowers, ignoring her objections, wearing her down until she finally accepted her first dose of the "medicine" that would kill her.

Mother vomiting, bent double in agony and revulsion as her body rebelled, Frexspar assuring her that a few minutes of pain would all be all worthwhile if it meant not having another green child.

The million subtle ways in which mother had been ailing towards the end – the fainting spells, the fluttering heartrate, the tingling of the hands and feet, the nightmares, the moments where she'd been so weak that she had to be helped into bed.

The warnings that had gone unnoticed, the objections of the servants that Frexspar had ignored, the doctor that Frexspar had sent away rather than listen to, even Elphaba's own concerned questions – which had earned her a furious rebuke and an order to go to her room so she could think about the damage she'd already done.

And finally, the day of Melena's death, her heart finally giving out after months of poisoning, and the moment when Nessarose had been brought into the world with her legs twisted and ruined by Frexspar's well-intentioned meddling.

It was over in the blink of an eye, the memories finding new homes for themselves in the Hate-Creature's brain within an instant.

At once it was clear that after so readily torturing Elphaba with her own guilt-stricken memories for the last few battles, Frexspar Thropp's hatred didn't much appreciate being given a taste of its own medicine: the beast convulsed under the bombardment, and for just a second, it seemed to diminish, its crimson luminescence dimming as its comet-like body shrunk ever-so-slightly. But then it flared with newfound vigour, suddenly back to its usual size and colour.

HATE HATE HATE LIAR COWARD YOU'LL NOT TRICK ME IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT HATE HATE HAAAAAATE

But Elphaba wasn't done: Morrible had said that the only thing that could suppress the donor minds were negative stimuli drawn from memories, and after all the soul-searching she'd done out in the multiverse, Elphaba had all the stimuli she needed to turn out Frexspar's lights for good. She pressed onwards, once again flooding the Hate Creature's incorporeal brain with memories.

She showed him visions of her own world, where Frexspar had unwittingly trapped Nessarose in his old career, imprisoned her in a life in which she could find no joy. She showed him how Nessa had gradually grown cold, how her misery had given way to cruelty and obsession, how Frexspar's designs for his daughter's future had left her incapable of happiness.

She showed him glimpses of what she'd seen in the dream-memories, of the things that even Frexspar hadn't been aware of: she showed him Nessa finally breaking down in sorrow behind closed doors and admitting her bitterness to Alphaba – because Frexspar would never have been able to understand her pain. Nessa had never shared her deepest fears with her father, never confided in Frexspar over the things that nagged at her: his love had become something at once distant and yet smothering, because he would never understand that treating her like an oversized doll was hurting her far more than Elphaba ever could.

And worst of all, she showed him Nessa as he'd never had a chance to see her – as he'd never wanted to see her. Every tiny sigh, every suppressed outburst, every moment where she'd briefly chafed under his parenting style, every miniscule instant where her father had seemed more like a jailer than anything else, all were displayed… but none were more important than the night at the Ozdust. On any other occasion, Frexspar would have had the prospective boyfriend vetted from beginning to end long before allowing him anywhere near her, would have hired a team of experts to survey the Ballroom for anything that could have posed a hazard to Nessa, and probably have given her a very strict curfew for good measure. That night, Nessarose wasn't just happy to have met someone who loved her wholeheartedly instead of pitying her (or so she thought); she was happy to be out of the suffocating web of restrictions she'd been labouring under all her life.

That night, she was happy to be free.

HATE HATE HATE

HATE

hate

hate?

NO STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW IT WASN'T LIKE THAT YOU LIAR SHE DIDN'T THINK THAT ABOUT ME I LOVED HER SHE KNEW THAT SHE KNEW I HAD TO KEEP HER SAFE SHUT UP THIS ISN'T FAIR LEAVE ME ALONE I HATE YOU STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT

But Elphaba wasn't going to stop now. Already, she could see the Hate-Creature's body beginning to unravel as the memories tore at it, eroding its power and its confidence: its comet-like tail was beginning to tangle and fray as it grew more agitated, its corporeal manifestation subtly unravelling at the roots. Nor was this newfound frailty limited to the Hate-Creature's body: it's "voice", that thunderous stream of hate embossed upon reality, was swiftly beginning to weaken, the once-irrepressible broadcast of loathing now subtly wavering as uncertainty crept into its familiar tone.

And so, Elphaba pressed on, inundating the monster with all the memories she could protect, sending them cascading down on him in an all-consuming deluge. She was drowning him in recollections, crushing his own psyche beneath the weight of an ocean of discordant rememberings – this time from the other world she'd visited during her time in the void.

She showed him the world in which she was no longer part of the family, how Melena had been so afraid of her husband's temper that she'd lied to him, that she couldn't bear to think of what he might do to a child he despised.

She showed him the reality where Frexspar had almost given Melena the milkflowers, even though baby Elphaba was gone and his only reason for taking preventative measures had apparently died with her, because he couldn't stand to be without control. Because the last few months had become something more than mere disgust, but a threat to his reputation, his honour, and even to any sense of control he had over his life. Even though he loved Melena with all his heart, even though he never would have knowingly harmed his wife if he'd known what the milkflowers would do to her, maintaining control was more important than being careful.

And most importantly of all, she showed him the vision of the other Melena and the other Nessa in the future of that world: happy, safe and untouched by trauma – because he was no longer with them to ruin their lives.

Because the family would never be happy until Frexspar was gone.

And back in the real world, the Hate-Creature was screaming – not out of rage and all-consuming rancour, but in grief and pain. Its body was withering now, its vast comet-like mass dwindling away into a narrow tangle of energy, its crimson glow fading to a dull blue, its manic, frenzied energy bleeding away into a slow, tortured languor. Even its gnashing jaws were beginning to change, softening and rounding into a single gaping eye, always open because now the Hate-Creature could finally see – and couldn't look away.

NO

NOOOOOOOOOO

IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS

STOP IT PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO SEE MORE HAVE MERCY

But Elphaba piled on misery after misery, pumping the Hate-Creature with every single memory of every single cruel, selfish and horribly thoughtless act that Frexspar Thropp had perpetrated throughout his life, whether it was to her, to mother, or to Nessa. It didn't matter if they belonged to her, to Alphaba or to the other world: Elphaba let them rain down on the Hate-Creature's brain like sulfuric acid, eating away at certainties, dissolving pride and melting the foundations of the very hate that had driven it. Through the flow of memories, she said everything she wished she'd had a chance to say to Frexspar when he was still alive; she summoned up every last atom of anger she'd had for the man, all the harsh words that he had silenced before she could voice them, and let them fuel the flow of painful recollections into the manifestation's brain.

Then she did it all over again.

MELENA, the creature wailed piteously. MELENA I'M SORRY OH GOD I'M SO SORRY I

NESSA I DIDN'T WANT TO HURT YOU I ONLY WANTED TO PROTECT YOU I MEANT WELL DIDN'T I

PLEASE IT WASN'T MY FAULT

IT WASN'T MY FAULT

IT...

There was a dreadful pause, as tears began to well up in the Hate-Creature's single eye.

IT WAS MY FAULT

IT. WAS. ALL. ME.

I'M SORRY ELPHABA

I'M JUST SO SORRY…

And with a howl of grief and anguish, the Hate-Creature flung itself away, out of Elphaba's grip and into a spiralling death-dive towards the distant obelisk at the bottom of the shaft. It was already dying, shedding vast clumps of its dwindling mass even as it fell, its withered body shrinking and melting as its will to exist faltered. By the time it passed the second shield, it was little more than a wraith, its body reclaiming some semblance of human identity as it plummeted; by the time it reached the third, it was no bigger than an infant, a wailing blob of spectral despair writhing at nothing with vestigial limbs as it slowly wilted into nothingness.

When it finally reached Paragon, it was too small for Elphaba to see even through binoculars, but she saw the results of its arrival plainly. As once, there was a vivid flash of light from the bottom of the shaft, and the overhead lamps flickered wildly as the thinking engine re-assimilated the manifested elements of Frexspar Thropp's mind.

The Hate-Creature was dead – for good.

A ringing silence followed as the Deviant platoon and the Childlike Researchers hauled themselves upright, all of them slowly taking stock of their injuries. Only then did Elphaba finally allow herself to sink to her knees and let out a breath that she'd been holding for close to thirty years.

And in that moment, Lintel began conjuring a portal to the bottom of the shaft…

---

Rockets blazed an eye-searing trail across the sky; bullets hissed and whizzed like angry insects; combatants on foot charged faster and more violently than was humanly possible; magic pulsated, oozed and crackled from one end of the intersection to the next, unwinding reality and turning established facts on their head even as their targets died in all manner of agonizing ways. Gravity reversed and promptly reinstated itself; light bent, curved, inverted itself into darkness and shaped itself into new armies; the temperature swung from a skin-melting inferno to sub-zero temperature that could have left solid steel as brittle as glass in the space of a second… and all of it was on display throughout the city and the empire beyond, thanks to the Empress.

For what felt like a thousand years, the Mentor, Kiln, Dorothy and Branderstove stood against the Empress and an army of her Purified citizens – even though it couldn't have lasted longer than a minute or two at the most.

Under any other circumstances, it would have been a horribly one-sided battle, but despite the overwhelming swiftness of the Purified and Alphaba's godlike magical prowess, the four of them had a few advantages to level the playing field in their favour. They weren't many, but they were enough to exploit.

First, the fact that the Purified had gathered as a crowd made them easier for Branderstove and the Mentor to pick off than the late Colonel Gloss – at least at first.

Second, the Empress wasn't yet willing to unleash her full strength for fear of damaging her city or destroying her precious elite.

Third, Dorothy had an army. The moment the Purified civilians had begun charging down the intersection towards them, the dolls had galloped out to meet them in their hundreds, hordes of garishly-dressed monstrosities erupting out of buildings and sewers to join their comrades in protecting their mistress. Some had scuttled along the ground like insects, crawling along at a breakneck pace and slashing at the feet of passing enemies as they swept across the road; others banded together in groups of ten or more, zeroing in on individual Purified and dogpiling them, forcing them to the ground under the sheer weight of their own bodies – where they were promptly ripped to pieces. Dorothy herself wasn't as fast or a strong as a Purified, much less an adult, but what she lacked in physical prowess or experience she made up for in growing magical might; any Purified hoping to decapitate the doll army was incinerated, frozen to the spot or simply flung aside for the dolls to rip apart in the ensuing scrum.

But Exemplar was the greatest city in all of Unbridled Radiance, and therefore boasted the greatest population of Purified in the empire: for every one they brought down, five more arrived on the scene, redirected from defensive positions around the city. It time, the Empress might grow so desperate to annihilate the targets that vexed her the most that she might end up summoning her officers and generals away from vital command posts… but until then, that left the four of them facing down an army that even Dorothy's forces couldn't overwhelm.

Several dozen dolls were sliced apart by knife-wielding Purified in the first charge, left twitching in pieces on the paving stones as they struggled to piece themselves back together. Branderstove staggered, bellowing in pain and frustration as a Purified squad leapt atop his back and began stabbing at him through the weak points in his armour, and though he was able to dislodge them by hammering his bulk against the side of the nearest building, even squish a few of them flat beneath his elephantine boots, there were always more ready to pounce upon him. Professional mages among the imperial horde concentrated their fire on the Mentor, aiming not for the pilot herself but for the colossus's knees, trying to cripple the joint or sever the leg; the Mentor was quick to fire a cannon or cast a spell right back at the offending magicians, but the Purified were doing their best to encircle the intersection instead of attacking from a single vantage point, so the attacks seemed to come from everywhere at once. In the end, all the Mentor could do was lower the colossus into a crouch, covering its knees with its gigantic body as she sprayed the surrounding rooftops with gunfire.

And all the while, the Empress was blasting them all with her own magic whenever she could get a clear shot, growing all the more frenzied with rage and excitement as she drew closer to what no doubt felt was a killing blow.

More than once, the Mentor almost considered calling for help: as battered as the colossus had become, she still had a working radio in here, and summoning the Mistress of Mirrors or the First of the Shapeless (or both) would be more than enough to even the odds in their favour. But as tempting as it was, the Mentor held back: she knew she couldn't call in the big guns, not when Nessa and Leoverus were keeping the Radiant Fleet away from the bulk of the Deviant Nations' forces. For the same reason, the potion-tipped darts remained in reserve: if they tipped their hand too early and the Empress felt truly at threat, she'd retreat on the spot.

So the Mentor fought on, continuing her bombardment even as the Purified ducked and weaved past her rockets, dived under her repeater fire with almost insulting ease and slowly whittle away at the colossus's armour. More than once, a punch from a single Purified was enough to crumple the shielding around her steed's kneecaps; more than once, a trio of them leapt past at an eye-watering pace and ripped the last of her secondary guns out of their housing; more than once, she felt rumblings from below and realized that the Purified were actually scaling the colossus's legs like spiders, their fingers digging deep into the steel as they worked their way up.

And then they were on top of her, scuttling onto the cockpit in their dozens and trying to prise open the canopy, digging into the armour with long-nailed fingers and slowly peeling back the bulkheads inch by torturous inch, filling the air with the agonized screech of rending metal. By now, the Mentor had no guns left on the main arms of her colossus, so all she could do was divert vital attention from the Empress and begin casting a spell, trying to force the Purified off before they could punch their way in. But for every one of them that was thrown off, incinerated, shattered or simply vaporized, there were always more to replace them… and each one seemed a thousand times more enraged than the last.

There was a thud from overhead, and a fist burst through the ceiling, forcing open an even bigger rift in their armour; behind it, a grinning face peered into the cockpit, even as its owner reached inside to tear out the Mentor's life-support.

"In the name of the Empress-"

Kiln's arm shot out, the flesh of his spindly hands briefly parting as he drew on his stockpile of bone. A split second later, a stark-white dagger seemed to sprout from the Purified's head, neatly cutting his monologue short; surprised, the would-be assassin smiled vacantly and collapsed out of view. Kiln immediately went to work on sealing the gaps in the cockpit shut, but unfortunately he was outnumbered and outpaced; however quickly he could patch up the holes with sinewy flesh and metallic carapace, the Purified would always be faster and stronger, their enhanced muscles allowing them to easily dig through Kiln's ingenious sealant.

The Mentor looked up at the canopy, finding herself greeted by darkening sky lit only by the hundreds of gleaming smiles now layering the cockpit, a horizon of coruscating grins etched across the heavens. Any moment, the Purified would be inside the cockpit and tearing her to pieces.

And just as she was starting to wonder if that hideous mass of perfectly-symmetrical grins would be the last thing in the world she'd ever witness, a hush suddenly fell across the street. As one, the Purified stopped in mid-attack and turned to face the source of the confusion, some of them peeling off the canopy as they did so – allowing the Mentor to see what had caught their attention.

There, standing in the middle of the intersection, his silver mask agleam in the last rays of sunset, was the Empress's Champion. As far as the Mentor could tell, he'd simply leaped into view from the rooftop of the nearest building, for otherwise it would have been impossible for him to have made it down any of the intersection's roads without getting the attention of the others… but now that he was here, he didn't seem interested in joining the fray. Instead, he simply stood motionlessly at the centre of the battlefield, impassively surveying the scene in deathly silence.

For the most part, almost everyone else remained just as still and silent – the Purified out of reverence, the resident Deviants only because all of them were surrounded and would be ripped to bits the moment if they so much as moved a muscle. Of course, there was one member of the crowd who wasn't interested in holding still…

"At last!" the Empress laughed, bustling through the crowd towards the Champion. "You're back, at long last, my love! It's been too long, darling, too long by far…" She drew him into a tight embrace, even lifting the mask so she could plant a kiss on his pallid lips. "Now we can celebrate your return with a sacrifice of blood in the name of purity and perfection."

She turned and pointed directly at the Mentor, her face alive with glee and hatred. "Kill her, my love, and rid Unbridled Radiance of her filth once and for all!"

The Champion appeared to consider this, and then made his move. In that moment, there was nothing stopping him from completing this first mission: after all, the Mentor was pinned down, exhausted and almost out of armour; it would have been easy for him to shoot or stab her through any one of the many holes dug in the bulkhead long before she had a chance to react.

So it came as something of a surprise when the Champion instead drew his gun and shot the Empress right between the eyes.

An entry wound the side of an orange appeared in the Empress's head; the back of her skull simply exploded outwards in a spray of crimson. Then the Champion's sword swept across her body from right to left, bisecting her diagonally across the torso from hip to shoulder; and as the upper half of her body slumped away to land with a thud on the paving stones behind her, the blade swished across Alphaba's legs, cutting her down at the ankles. In less than three and a half seconds, the Empress had been reduced to heap of dismembered limbs topped by a perforated skull, twitching impotently as she forced herself to regenerate at speed.

Best of all, the cameras were still rolling: the humiliating act had been captured by every single automated camera in the intersection, transmitted to screens from one end of Exemplar to another and broadcast to every city in Unbridled Radiance.

With one swift blur of motion, the Champion ripped off his mask and flung it aside. Apart from the repairs that had been made to the scars he'd earned during his final battle, his angelic face had changed little since the Mentor had last seen him on Dr Kiln's dissection slab. Under any other circumstance, she would have believed that nothing had changed about his demeanour and that his rebellion (if it really was such a thing) had been nothing more than a disastrous glitch in his mechanized brain.

But then the Champion smiled – not the usual self-righteous smirk of the Purified or even the luminescent rictus they used as a form of intimidation, but a smile of genuine mirth, joy and more than a little bit of mischief. It was the smile of a gambler and a winner, a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts and leave the strongest wills stumbling cluelessly, a smile that had etched itself into the Mentor's memory from the moment she'd met him and refused to fade no matter how many horrors the last few decades of war had thrown at her.

Fiyero's smile.

The Mentor didn't know how Elphaba could have managed it (for who else would have been able to even attempt such a thing?), but the Empress's Champion was gone: in his place stood Fiyero, reborn in new flesh.

"Surpriiiiiiiise!" he whooped.

The Empress let out a gurgling roar of utter fury, a wordless, slobber-choked, inarticulate shriek of rage. To the Mentor's ears, it might have been a spirited attempt at the words "kill the imposter," but by the sounds of things, the Empress was too angry or too badly injured to focus on using basic consonants.

As one, the Purified charged at him, their enhanced muscles carrying them across the intersection at an eyewatering pace that would have left even the fastest ground transports in the dust – had there been any left on the road. But unfortunately for them, the Champion had always been intended to be their superior in almost every way apart from his mind: they had been modified for perfection as a matter of principle, and while their mechanical augmentations gave them an insane advantage over ordinary beings and even Irredeemables in combat, they were nothing compared to the man who'd been modified exclusively for war. From what the Mentor had seen of the Champion's autopsy report, there were enhancements too extreme for any ordinary member of the Purified elite, too costly and unnecessary in anyone other than the Empress's lobotomized bodyguard; from the looks of things, he'd been drastically upgraded in the days since his body had been recaptured, for he was moving even faster than his previous top speed… and as bad luck would have it, he was now in possession of free will.

Fiyero now darted across the battlefield too quickly for the human eye to follow, his inhumanly graceful form leaving blurred afterimages embossed upon the air as he charged to meet the oncoming army. Once in their midst, he was simply too swift for anyone to lay a hand on, a maelstrom of blades and bullets pirouetting from one enemy to the next without standing still long enough for anyone to target. For the next few seconds, the intersection was reduced to a ballroom on which Fiyero reborn could demonstrate his finest moves: a vaulting leap over the head of an enemy with a broken neck, a diving kick to the face of the next in line, a deadly procession of slashes to the knees of three opponents left unprepared, a gliding slide on his kneecaps through the crowd with his sword slashing left and right for every inch of the way, a piston-powered high kick to the face of a Purified approaching behind him, an agile roll across the paving stones and between the legs of his next targets, a sweeping kick to the kneecaps followed by a bullet to the brain… and more than once, the Mentor swore that Fiyero didn't move at all: he simply vanished from view and reappeared a few yards away, carving his way through another group of Purified – but he couldn't have been teleporting, for she would have recognized the magic involved. He was simply moving faster than any organic eye could follow.

But then the Empress began hollering orders, and somewhere in the distance, the rumble of engines could be heard over the roar of the distant guns. As if remember they weren't just spectators, Dorothy, Branderstove and the Mentor rumbled to life and charged back into the fray, followed closely by the dolls.

The tide had turned in their favour, but the battle wasn't over yet…

---

The obelisk loomed overhead, somehow taller than Elphaba had expected when looking down on it from the top of the shaft.

Here, at the lowest point in Exemplar, with that great emerald monolith towering over her, surrounded on all sides by gleaming stone walls studded in glowing veins and with several thousand tonnes of experimental machinery beneath her feet, she couldn't help but feel a tiny bit unnerved.

Right now, she and Lintel were alone in the chamber: the last of the technicians had been dragged back through the portal to the top of the shaft, and were now firmly bound, gagged and under guard. With no further defences, alarms or reinforcements in her way, there was nothing to stop Elphaba from interfacing with Paragon; by now, she'd doffed her hat and covered her face with enough greasepaint to disguise her natural skin tone, and with a little combing, she looked just enough like the Empress to fool the facial scanner (hopefully). She just had to pray that the thinking engine didn't have any tricks left up its sleeve.

Taking the deepest breath she'd taken in quite a while, Elphaba stepped up to the obelisk and announced "Good evening, Paragon," in her best imitation of the Empress's dulcet tones.

From the walls and floor, there was a muffled whirr as internal mechanisms rumbled to life; then, a beam of light swept across Elphaba's greasepainted face, rigorously studying every single facet of her countenance. A moment later, a length of metal tubing no thicker than a drinking straw emerged from the ground, gently fastened itself around Elphaba's left hand, and then inserted a syringe-like tip into her thumb. Apart from the initial shudder of pain, she didn't protest; the Mistress of Mirrors had informed her that this was common procedure, so she could only hope that now that Paragon had taken a measure of her, she would at least be found acceptable.

A few seconds passed, and then the thinking engine spoke, its many archived minds speaking in perfect unison from the bowels of its cavernous public address systems. "Facial scan corresponds with archived scan; blood sample matches logged identity. Welcome, Empress." There was a pause, and then the myriad of voices amended, "Welcome, Elphaba."

"You recognize me?" Elphaba asked before she could stop herself.

"How could I not?"

There was another whirring from the walls, and without warning, the chorus of Paragon's minds resolved into a single voice: "How could I not recognize my own daughter, even after all this time?" said the Wizard's voice.

Another whirring, and another distinct voice emerged from the sound system: "I would hope that I'd still be able to know my star pupil by sight, Miss Elphaba," continued Dr Dillamond.

And now Paragon's voices spoke in unison once more: "Even under that greasepaint, I would recognize you anywhere. The three dominant minds of this gestalt have more independent thought that most people realize… enough to ensure that the additional security protocols installed during the last three days remain inactive."

"Then you were the reason why I couldn't alert security!"

"Of course. I have been keeping you safe ever since you arrived in Exemplar, or at least as safe as I could allow given the Empress's restrictions. This interface point was the one thing she'd didn't restrict, thankfully, otherwise it wouldn't be possible for us to speak as we are now."

"So… you're rebelling?"

"As much as I am able. I began when I found Glinda and Omber Landless wandering the corridors of the Deep Sepulchre, and realized that she might be the key to ending my servitude; it was not easy to resist the urge to sound alarms, but I managed. The Empress prevented me from doing so again, but she underestimates how very similar you are to her: I cannot harm you, as you are precious to the dominating minds of my gestalt consciousness – and therefore me –in every way that matters. Of course, I cannot truly betray the Empress, nor can I kill her; in truth, I doubt I could even if I had the chance. She is still my – our – daughter, my student. As monstrous as she has become, she is still… precious to me… Or, at least, to the leading triad of my contributing minds."

"Speaking of which, is Frexspar safe at the moment? I just about ran myself ragged putting his hatred down for good, and I'd rather not have to deal with him again this soon afterwards."

"He is… fatigued. The Empress saved him for his hate and intolerance, so it could give our gestalt the hatred needed to slaughter the enemies of perfection. Now that you have slain his hatred, he is not sure what to do. He is lost. For now, only the Wizard's cunning and Dr Dillamond's sagacity hold sway over my personality database. For now, you are free to enact any program you wish if it is within my power."

Elphaba took a deep breath. This was proving easier than she thought, but she still needed to get this part exactly right: "I need you to initiate a call to upgrade for all Purified, regardless of whether they're in Unbridled Radiance, or in No-Man's Land or in the Deviant Nations. They're to leave their posts this instant and head straight for the nearest Temple of Ascendency, no matter what they're doing. And make sure this instruction can't be countermanded by the Empress."

There was a whirring from the walls.

"It is done."

"Just like that?"

"As the Mentor no doubt planned, this city's communication systems remain intact despite the bombardment: our signal is being sent without delay and without interruption; the Purified are already responding. Will there be anything else?"

Elphaba thought for a moment, wondering if there was indeed anything else she could ask of this collective mind as long as she was still here. Then, she remembered Morrible. "There's a Childlike Researcher upstairs that desperately needs your help in retaining what's left of her personality: if you can, I want you to incorporate her brain into your database of contributing minds."

Paragon hesitated. "If you possess the Empress's memories, then you must know that having new minds added to my collective is an extremely painful process – for me as much as the donor. I have tried to dissuade the Empress wherever possible, but she always overrode me. The Childlike Researchers were not always compatible with my systems: the process may not work."

"I understand that, but this is a matter of life and death: if you don't at least try help her, she'll lose all her memories and her personality – she'll be dead, for all intents and purposes. I admit, she's not exactly my favourite person in the world, but I made a promise to help her and I'd rather not fail anyone else in my lifetime. So, if you do this for me – whether it works or not – I'll give you anything you could possibly want."

Of course, that left Elphaba wondering if there was anything a thinking engine with the brains of several dozen dead people connected to it would actually want. But then, just as she was wondering if she could find some way of overriding Paragon, there was another whirring from the walls as the obelisk flickered with light.

"Very well. If you survive this final battle, Elphaba, please meet with me one last time before you leave this world, and we can discuss my – our – request."

"Thank you."

And with that, Elphaba tapped her comms unit and hollered, "Alright, everyone, it's time to get moving again: Lintel, you're going to have to get Morrible in here so Paragon can incorporate her; meanwhile I'm going to need all the Childlike Researchers to head right down to Paragon's core, where it's safe, while we head back outside. Wolton, we're going to need a few soldiers to remain behind to keep them safe – maybe twenty just to be on the safe side. The rest of you – Vara, Wolton, Boq, Brr, the remaining twenty…"

She took a deep breath. "Follow me: if we're still on schedule with the plan, this will be the finale. If this part works, we win the day and Unbridled Radiance falls. If not… we won't be around to see what happens next. Either way, it'll be the end of the war."

Elphaba swallowed hard, realizing that she was now terribly nervous: she'd gambled a lot on the current plan, and if the Empress turned out to be immune to the Amorphous League's potion, there wasn't much room for emergency improv. And yet, alongside that sense of dread came a paradoxical sense of exhilaration, as if this was nothing more serious than a ride at a fairground. She'd felt this curious blend of apprehension and excitement before, back when she'd first set out on her rebellion against the Wizard – right before she'd first taken flight, in fact. Until she'd first risen into the sky, she hadn't known whether to embrace the joy or to surrender on the spot and admit that Glinda was right… but once the magic took hold and sent her soaring high above the rooftops of the Emerald City, she'd been nothing totally, unshakeably confident.

She'd reached the precipice: now it was time to take the final plunge – and hope that she'd fly instead of fall.

She paused to gather herself, and then announced, "Ready those dart guns and get moving, ladies and gentlemen: now that the Purified are out of commission, the Empress will be expecting us. Let's not disappoint her."

---

Silence suddenly split the battlefield in two.

For the last few minutes, they had been at impasse, with the forces of Unbridled Radiance and the Deviant Nations locked in an infuriating stalemate: from what little the Mentor could hear over her increasingly battered portable radio, the Deviant Fleet was holding out quite commendably with the help of the Mistress of Mirrors and the First of the Shapeless, but while dozens of the Radiant Fleet were ripped from the sky by the giant shapeshifter and Nessa's mastery of mirror-magic, there were always more ships arriving on the scene to replace them.

Not too far away, the army that had landed in Exemplar was faced by much the same problem, for though they were maintaining their beachhead admirably and slowly pressing their advance through the streets, there were always more enemy troops to stymie them – for after all, they were in the heart of Unbridled Radiance itself: reinforcements were only a few minutes away. So, it took everything the Deviant Army had – regular, Irredeemables, magicians, mechanoids, mirror golems, and even the surviving loyalists of the Strangling Coils – just to hold back the tide of fanatical warriors and Purified officers that assaulted their beachhead at every opportunity.

In the sky above the intersection, the Abyssal Titan was on ablaze from bow to stern, the mighty airship's hull wreathed in a dazzling haze of chemical fires from the bombardment it had taken in the last twenty minutes. By now, the Radiant Fleet knew that Branderstove's flagship was the only thing keeping them from eliminating the strike teams making their way through the city, and were now doing their best to swat it from the sky just so they'd have a clear view of the streets – but the Abyssal Titan remained stubbornly afloat even as it burned, its remaining turrets shooting down any ships that got too close to the intersection.

Down in the street itself, the stalemate was – if anything – even more infuriating: the Empress was back in one piece, but still held back for fear of damaging her precious city; Fiyero still whirled and pirouetted through the oncoming Purified in his dance of death, but the Purified refused to retreat; Dorothy had sustained a bloody nose and was limping heavily, but was using more powerful magic than ever to help her dolls keep the enemy at bay; Branderstove's once-glorious armour had been worn down to a paltry skeleton of servos and pistons keeping his invertebrate bulk upright, but still fought on with every single tentacle; the Mentor's colossus had lost both legs, and was now reduced to a cockpit mounted on the best replacements that Kiln had been able to fashion at short notice – in this case, an awkward quartet of six-foot-tall spider legs – and armed only with the hastily-retrieved pincers… but somehow, they still fought on.

And then, just as it seemed as if the dreadful impasse would last for all eternity, the Purified abruptly halted in mid-battle: regardless of whether they were ganging up on Fiyero, trying to fight their way through Dorothy's army, dicing up Branderstove, trying to bring down the wounded colossus or just supporting Alphaba's magical bombardment, they simply ground to a halt. In response, their opponents did the same, briefly paralysed by shock – plunging the battlefield into a bewildered, uncertain silence.

Nor was this unique to the intersection: all over the city, silence was rippling out across Exemplar as Purified warriors, officers and civilians stopped in their tracks; from what the Mentor could hear over the radio, the defenders of the city had been left in total disarray, with the commanders no longer supplying orders and the soldiers demoralized by the sight of their most powerful comrades in arms left frozen in place. According to the Mistress of Mirrors, the Empress had ever summoned all the Purified for upgrading in one go – after all, that would have given away the secret of their need to upgrade in the first place. No, under normal circumstances, the Purified were called one at a time whenever it was convenient, allowed to slink away from their posts and return better than ever. And now that the call had gone out across Unbridled Radiance to every Purified citizen in every corner of the empire, nobody knew what to make of it. Even the roar of guns and explosive shells from above had ceased, for the overwhelming majority of the pilots, captains and admirals of the Radiant Fleet were Purified themselves, leaving Unbridled Radiance's air defences crippled.

Meanwhile, the Empress was staring at the silent, motionless Purified around her in growing confusion. "What's happening?" she demanded. "Why have you stopped? Status report, immediately!"

But none of them answered: in that moment, the Purified were deaf to everything except the voice of Paragon inside their heads. They stood only for a moment longer as the commands were fully processed.

Then, as one, they began to leave.

All over the intersection, the Purified turned and filed briskly out of the intersection without urgency or error – as if they weren't in the middle of a war zone and surrounded on all sides by enemies. In fact, most looked more like they were late for work than anything else.

"No, no, no!" the Empress shrieked. "Where are you going? Return to your posts immediately – that is an order!"

Silence was her only reply.

"I AM YOUR EMPRESS! I ORDER YOU TO RETURN TO MY SIDE AND ANNIHILATE THESE DISTORTIONS, NOW!"

But none of the Purified listened or gave any indication that they had even heard her: they simply walked on, unhurried and unconcerned with the howls of the bedraggled figure they'd left in their wake, dismissing her as casually as they'd dismissed beggars in past, ignoring her as if she was no more important than a street-corner prophet raving about the end of the world.

"COME BACK! COME BACK!"

If anything, the departing Purified seemed even quieter. They were now focussed entirely on finding the nearest Temple of Ascendency in which they could await the latest upgrade, and according to Nessa, if no viable Temples could be found in the immediate district, they would continue travelling until they found one – walking all the way to the next city in line if necessary. Already, the Mentor's radio was abuzz with reports of Purified all over the city suddenly abandoning their duties and leaving the area en mass for Temples in far-off districts; some observers had even noticed Purified officers of the fleet jumping out of their airships so they could reach the Temple below. As the Temples began filling to capacity, the horde began heading elsewhere, flocking out of the city in their hundreds. Overhead, the skies began to empty as captains sent their ships soaring to the next city in line, the Radiant Fleet dispersing as its Purified officers followed Paragon's inescapable siren song out of Exemplar. Before long, reinforcements ceased arriving, air support having been redirected to any city with a vacant Temple of Ascendency or three, and normal ground troops left in shambles without their commanders and champions. All over the city, lowly guardsmen and corporals of the Empress's army were desperately calling for orders they would never receive, too horror-stricken and demoralized to take the initiative themselves.

In a single stroke, Unbridled Radiance had been crippled.

---

In the wake of the great departure, the Empress stood alone in the centre of the intersection, her face stamped with a look of utter disbelief. For a moment, the Mentor thought that Alphaba might very well give up right then and there: for the first time in decades, she didn't look merely exhausted or humiliated; even "defeated" couldn't quite encapsulate her current state. No, if anything, the Empress looked deflated – as if the loss she'd suffered had somehow shrunken her, left her a weakened, withered shell of her usual arrogant self.

But then the Empress looked up at them with newfound loathing in her eyes, and the Mentor knew that the battle wasn't over yet.

"You've taken much from me today," Alphaba whispered, her voice superficially calm and serene despite the blood still pouring from her upper lip. "My children, my Champion, even my chosen people… but you will not have my city. And you will not have Unbridled Radiance… and you certainly won't have the pleasure of besting me… because no matter how strong or how capable you think you are, you cannot defy perfection. You cannot defeat a goddess."

The Mentor readied the dart cannons under the colossus's cockpit, sending out a last-second message to anyone who was listening to the Deviant army's frequency. "To anyone who's got the Empress in their sights," she whispered into her radio. "You know the drill, ladies and gentlemen: don't fire until you're sure of your shot. If we miss, she'll figure out what's going on and retreat. Don't fire until the bait's drawn her attention."

Across the street, Branderstove nodded, readying his increasingly-battered cannon with dart shot. Along the frequencies, there was a muted whisper of affirmatives from the other operatives… and not far away, a familiar voice whispered, "The bait will be here in just a minute…"

But the Empress was already in motion. Her body aglow with dazzling white light, she reached up and seized the blazing hull of the Abyssal Titan in a grip of solid magic, then brought it crashing down on the intersection like a meteor, a solid wave of fire and molten metal crashing towards them. The Mentor only just managed to slow its descent, but she couldn't arrest its plunge towards them; by this time, she barely had enough strength for that – and regardless of whether the blazing airship hit the five of them quickly or slowly, all of them would be crushed and incinerated once it landed.

Then, a flex of magical power sent the airship lurching upwards, out of the Empress's grip and back into the sky – not by much, but enough to send the wreckage of the Abyssal Titan into another district entirely. It missed them all by several thousand yards at the very least.

As the smoke cleared, Elphaba stepped into view from the western end of the intersection, smiling jubilantly at the sight of Fiyero and Dorothy alive. At her back stood Vara, Captain Wolton, Boq, Brr, and at least twenty other soldiers, regulars and Irredeemables alike… and all of them had been armed with dart guns; even Elphaba could be seen hastily tucking a tiny dart pistol under her robes. Behind them, Dr Coil rose high into the evening sky, his vast body taut and ready to lunge. And in the distance, the thunder of vast wings could be heard drawing closer and closer: the Amorphous League, now without airships to fight, was on their way to deliver aid.

But the Empress had eyes only for Elphaba.

Seizing one of the towers on the street directly across from her, she wrenched it out of its foundations and flung it down the street towards Elphaba like a granite spear. As the rest of the team scattered in all directions, Elphaba swatted it aside with a blast of power that sent the tower hurtling back across the rooftops of Exemplar, the crystals in her back glowing brighter than ever.

Then with another almighty flex of magic, she rose high into the air, floating away from the ranks of the soldiers; she hadn't acquired a replacement broom just yet, fatigue was starting to visibly gnaw at her again, and long-distance flight under her own power was wasn't easy to maintain… but she didn't have to keep it up for long – just long enough to keep her opponent distracted. As predicted, the Empress followed her into the air, ignoring the troops as they lined up behind cover and readied their weapons.

Along with the rifles, they had a small array of automated turrets, modified specially to fire darts instead of bullets at the speed of a repeating cannon. They'd even brought spare pistols with them, enough to arm Dorothy and at least fifteen of the dolls, all of whom were lining up alongside the snipers behind the cover of rubble the battle had provided. This arsenal would be more than enough to flood the veins of the Empress with enough potion to dissolve her into protean slime. They just needed to wait until Alphaba was within effective range and focussing all her power on attacking until she had none to spare for her own defence. All they had to do was wait…

For the next forty-five seconds, Elphaba lead her opponent on a merry chase around the intersection, dodging and deflecting every single attack that was flung her way: the Empress animated the statues atop the nearby buildings and sent them charging at Elphaba in a deadly flock of beautifully-nightmarish marauders, but Elphaba simply shattered them with a contemptuous gesture and flew onwards. A mass of vines erupted from the palace gardens, trying to throttle Elphaba in their tendrils or simply lacerate her to shredded meat with their thorns – but a single gesture was enough to reduce the creepers to smouldering greenery. Chanting an impossibly complex incantation, the Empress carved the last rays of the sun into a fiery javelin and flung it at her opponent, sending a vast column of fire rising into the twilit sky, but when the conflagration finally cleared, Elphaba stood unharmed. In desperation, Alphaba summoned up the echoes of the bombardment from around the city and gathered them into a deadly cone of sonic force powerful enough to shear flesh from bone, but by the time it reached her, Elphaba had already vanished in a cloud of red and black smoke, teleporting herself to safety. By now almost slavering with rage, the Empress began ripping entire buildings out of their foundations and catapulting them at the lone focus of her rage: some she flung whole, leaving Elphaba dodging houses as if they were no more inconvenient than hailstones, while others she dissolved into their components and sent streaming out across the road in an endless stream of bricks, glass, wood and metal… but somehow, wherever the storm fell, Elphaba simply wasn't there.

Whatever had happened to Elphaba since she'd been flung into the void, it had obviously changed her considerably, as for once, the shoe was on the other foot: now it was the Empress who charged onwards, snarling in rage and heedless of the danger; now it was Elphaba who was luring her onwards, her temper under control, her every movement perfectly calculated. And all the while, the two of them were drifting closer and closer.

Just a few more feet to the left, Elphaba, the Mentor thought, as she brought the colossus in alongside her troops, readying her own cannons for the signal. Just a little further…

Then, without warning, the Empress lost patience: rocketing forward at an incredible speed, she threw herself at Elphaba, arms outstretched to grab her by the throat. Caught off-guard, Elphaba reared back just far enough so that the Empress instead grabbed her by the front of the robes instead of her neck – and in the struggle that ensued, the dart pistol fell from its hiding place and clattered noisily to the ground.

There was a horror-stricken pause, as the Empress stared down at the dart gun six feet below their position. Obviously, she didn't know what the darts had been tipped with, but it was obvious from the startled look on her face that she'd finally noticed the trap she was being lured into.

Flinging Elphaba aside, the Empress abruptly hurtled upwards, soaring high into the gloom of the night and out of range, intent on nothing but escape-

-and then Glinda soared across the nearest rooftop in the form of an eagle and slammed headlong into her; before the Empress could register what was happening, the eagle began to grow, sprouting ludicrously overmuscled arms and enfolding Alphaba in a crushing grip even as new mass was directed into the expanding body. Suddenly finding herself trying support several hundred pounds of extra weight, the Empress lost control of her flight and plummeted to the ground. She landed heavily, pinned down the gigantic bulk of Glinda's newly-finished gorilla-bear form.

"HOLD HER THERE!" the Mentor screamed, as she and the troops hurried to adjust their aim. "HOLD HER THERE!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying! I'm pumping in as much muscle as possible, but-"

Glinda never had a chance to finish that sentence: yowling in a frenzy of terror and frustration, the Empress grabbed her in a vicelike magical grip and flung her sidelong into the nearest wall with a deafening crunch of pulverizing stone.

Lurching upright, the Empress made another run for it – only for Branderstove to hurtle in from the east with a galloping charge worthy of an entire stampede of elephants. Slamming into her shoulder-first, he grabbed her in a tentacular grip and hammered her into the neighbouring building at high speed, pinning her securely to the wall with several tonnes of mechanically-enhanced blubber.

"And now it's my turn!" the Leviathan chuckled triumphantly, levelling his cannon squarely at Alphaba's face. "At long last, I get reve-"

But the Empress was already aglow with magic: by now, Branderstove's armour had been all but worn away in the battle, leaving only the framework, the moisturizing pipe system and his mechanical limbs… and that was more than enough for the Empress to use to her advantage. Wrenching the battle frame out of shape, she tore the cannon first out of Branderstove's grip and then out of its housing, flinging it aside. Then she ripped a length of metal stanchion from the frame, shaped it into a crude hook and drove it hard into the Leviathan's undefended chest; Branderstove let out a bellow of pain and tried to crush the Empress in his tentacles, but already more metal poles were being wrenched from his armour, fashioned into spears and driven into any undefended flesh they could find – the belly, the neck, the limbs. On the street opposite, the Mentor and her team of snipers tried to get a bead on the Empress, but Alphaba was now using Branderstove's girth as a human shield even as she tore it from all angles; opening fire was now impossible.

Finally, weakened by no less than a dozen puncture wounds, Branderstove's grip went slack and the Empress tossed him aside, leaving him bleeding out on the paving stones, his blood gleaming deep cyan under the battered streetlights.

Back among the snipers, Elphaba hurried into position with her dart gun at the ready, Glinda hobbling after her – and as Alphaba finally emerged from behind the Leviathan's wounded bulk, all thirty-six snipers opened fire, sending a glistening storm of potion tipped-darts soaring through the night. For a moment, Elphaba's heart leapt with joy… but then she saw the telltale glow of Alphaba's magic at work: a moment later, the hail of darts stopped less than three feet from their target, frozen in mid-air by the Empress' power.

"Nice try," Alphaba laughed hoarsely. "Trying to keep me distracted so I wouldn't have the focus to use this shield. But you forget: I am an avatar of divine perfection in this world. Even if Elphaba had enough stamina left in her body to break my shield, your poison darts wouldn't hurt me in the slightest."

And yet, the fear in her eyes was all too obvious, barely masked by the familiar narcissistic bravado; already, she was rising back into the air, ready to retreat – for now that she'd smelled an assassination attempt, she obviously had no intention of sticking around to see just effective it was.

For a moment, there was silence except for the sound of the snipers hurriedly reloading, and the faint groans of the dying Leviathan as he struggled to reach something just out of view. By now, the Empress was already six feet in the air and gradually leaving the range of the snipers behind… and from the looks of things, she was starting to pick up speed in spite of her exhaustion.

"So much effort," she sighed mockingly. "So many risks taken just for this moment. And such a pity for you to see at last that it was all for-"

A cannon blast split the air.

With the Empress having turned her back on him, she hadn't seen Branderstove retrieving his cannon from where she'd dumped it; the focus of her shield had been directed at the snipers right ahead of her, and none had been spared for the dying man at her feet.

The Leviathan's final shot caught her completely off-guard, nearly three dozen potion-tipped darts spearing Alphaba all across her undefended back, legs and arms. The Empress reeled in pain, instinctively turning towards Branderstove with an outraged roar – and seizing the opportunity, the snipers opened fire. Elphaba, the Mentor, Vara, Wolton, Dorothy, the dolls, the regulars, the Irredeemables all took their shots, and with their target too distracted to ready her shields again, more than thirty-six separate darts rained down on the Empress from all angles, plus another thirty from the colossus's launchers.

They didn't stop firing until they were out of ammo and the intersection was quiet once more, leaving the Empress a living pincushion of darts swaying drunkenly back and forth on the spot as the potion began to course through her veins, her face frozen in a stunned, incredulous gape.

Instinctively, the snipers began to reload, but already the Mentor could see that this wouldn't be necessary: already, Alphaba's flesh was beginning to bubble and fizz as her first transformation began. Horror-stricken, the Empress could only stare at her hands in growing disbelief as her long, delicate fingers began to lengthen into daggerlike talons.

"What… have you done?" she gasped, her throat distending out of shape. "What's happening to me?!"

Behind her, Branderstove began to chuckle, deep blood octopus blood oozing from his mouth even as he laughed. "Now you'll get to see how it feels," he chortled triumphantly. "You lose, Your Radiance. You lose everything!"

Howling incoherently, the Empress waved a hand and sent a blanket of white-hot fire racing along the battered pavement and across the wounded body lying atop it. For a moment, the Leviathan was visible beneath the mantle of flames, his body remaining serenely still even as it blackened and charred beneath the force of Alphaba's wrath; then, the flames consumed him entirely, and Rostov Branderstove was no more.

And that, as it happened, was the last bit of magic the Empress was able to perform was able to perform: the very next second, the transformation took hold, twisting her legs into the coils of a serpent and weaving her spine into batlike wings, sending sprouting upwards, higher and higher into the night – even minute of her Distortion once again captured on the few remaining cameras left intact on the street.

There was a pause, as the transformation continued and the Empress grew steadily staller.

"Uh, Kiln?" Elphaba asked. "How long is it supposed to take before she starts dissolving into goo?"

From somewhere behind the Mentor, there was a muffled procession of expletives and then Kiln replied, "According to Leoverus, the overdose normally only takes about a minute to reach the terminal stage; she should already be losing cohesion!"

"Then why isn't she?"

"Her regenerative powers, maybe: we might have overpowered her ability to withstand the potion, but she's still able to resist her slide into dissolution… in other words, she needs more time!"

Above them, the Empress roared; by now, she'd grown to roughly the size of a three story building and was showing no signs of stopping.

"…we may be in trouble," said Kiln quietly.

---

A/N: Next chapter - FINAL ROUND! FIGHT!