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.

9. The Darkest Pits of Hell

A/N: This is one chapter that went a little longer than I thought it would; I kept debating on wether to cut it short at around the three-quarter mark, but I felt it was high time I gave the villains and their deeds a bit more attention than before - hopefully preventing Unbridled Radiance from entering the realms of "Designated Villain." So in the end, I went for a twenty-five thousand word chapter. In any case, I enjoyed writing this one, and I hope you enjoy reading it - and that the extra length won't seem like literary metastasis. But before I begin, I'd like to once again thank reviewers, followers and favouriters for your continued support.

Nami Swann, I'm glad it's all making sense so far; with any luck, I'll be able to keep the story coherent and understandable as it continues - while still providing enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.

LatinPaprika, fear not. Glinda's lot will improve. I mean, she's been horrified, paralyzed and told that she's in line to be cut open - after that, things can only get better... eventually. (Evil Laughter)

WickedlyTragic, first of all, I have absolutely no problem with the way your reviews are arranged: it's actually a very good system, given that it keeps all the points you found noteworthy assembled and discussed in an orderly fashion. Secondly, I'm not sure I understand the hatred towards Dorothy at the best of times; I mean, yes she's naive, a pawn of the Wizard and more than a little dim at times, but then, she's a kid - there's a limit to how much brilliance you can expect from children adrift in another word. The only situation when I really dislike her is in the 1940s film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, where giving the child's dialogue to a grown woman with her boobs taped down resulted in "childish and naive" being downgraded to "possibly brain damaged." In any event, I tend to write Dorothy as a largely neutral character at the mercy of events that she barely understands, and I'm glad you find it awesome. Thirdly, the Hellion's identity will be revealed soon; in the meantime, keep an eye out for the clues - I'll do my best to keep them subtle without making them unnoticeable. Fourthly, I'm very glad you like the descriptions of the Irredeemables; big, intricate descriptions are one of the aspects of writing I live for and having my work on them complimented makes it all the better. Fifthly, in regards to the green dye, I will see what I can do. I may incorporate it into a later chapter, but as I said, we'll see. Sixthly, more details about the Empress's surgery will be forthcoming - as will how details on much of her turn to villainy was due to it alone. Finally, it's great that you're enjoying the story so far, and I hope my work continues to entertain and intrigue.

So, with that out of the way, let's begin. This chapter: despair, horror, gloom and villainy! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked was not mine, is not mine, and will not be mine. And the term "magocracy" wasn't my creation either.

04/08/16: Correcting long-running errors; thank you guest for pointing out that spectacular screw-up - can't believe I left that typo there for so long without noticing.

---

Elphaba wasn't sure why she'd started crying.

After all, she had so many reasons to do so: her separation from Glinda, the disastrous meeting with the Great Mentor, being trapped in this bewildering nightmare of a world, the long chain of events that had led her to this especially dismal point – and the awful knowledge that her oldest and best friend might be dead or about to die with no chance of rescue. And maybe there was also just a hint of disappointment and frustration here, too: she'd gotten used to being accepted and trusted by the Irredeemables; by the time she'd been introduced to the Great Mentor, she'd lapsed into complacency – unprepared for the barrage of suspicion and hatred that had been directed at her. But that was silly, bordering on ridiculous: she'd been subjected to distrust and discrimination for her entire life. Why should the scorn of one paranoid leader bother her so much?

Because she's Glinda, you idiot, a vicious little voice at the back of her skull whispered. Deny it all you want; it's still her. You're crying because your best friend just called you a liar and an imposter – it's obvious to anyone bothering to look!

Furiously wiping a few errant tears away, Elphaba tried to think of something else: as accurate as these nasty little voices could be, the sense of confusion and betrayal couldn't be the only reason. After all, there were all the questions she'd tried to ask on her way along the corridor, all of them ignored by the guards: she'd wanted to know if, in this madhouse reality she'd found herself in, her old friends had somehow survived? Had Doctor Dillamond been rescued from the Wizard's specialists? Was Boq still alive, and was he still human? What of Nessa? Was Fiyero still among the living in this world? Of course, she might not be able to recognize any of them after fifty years of hardship, but then again, the Empress somehow still looked young and healthy even after all that time, so maybe not... and contrary to the Mentor's desire to cut a long story short, Elphaba honestly wanted to know how her other self had gone about setting the stage for her gradual rise to power. So, she'd asked all these questions and more of the guards on her way to the apartment, and all of them had been maddeningly ignored.

And what about this Radiant Empress, Elphaba wondered: was she really this world's version of herself? There didn't seem to be any reason for the Mentor and the physician to lie about this, but could she really have become so monstrous, even with her oldest and dearest ambitions in life achieved? In a word, yes: after all, back in Oz Elphaba had, while in pursuit of Animal Rights, managed to accidentally ruin the lives of her friends; it only made sense that this version of her had gone on to deliberately ruin so much more in pursuit of something grander. But why did the Mentor claim that this Empress "wasn't Elphaba?" Was there any truth to her belief that the Empress was some monstrous parasite inhabiting the body of her long-dead friend, or was it all just a matter of perspective? Uncertainty – coupled with frustration and exhaustion at the sheer enormity of the problem – was doing it's very best to unhinge Elphaba.

But in the end, the reason for her tears was painfully simple, one blunt, blatantly obvious problem that stuck in her head and refused to budge no matter how many times she told herself that this wasn't the case: Glinda was going to die and there was absolutely nothing Elphaba could do to save her life. Quite apart from the fact that the Mentor was right and Glinda was guaranteed to be noticed, there was next to no chance of Elphaba reaching her: at present, the apartment (the cell) was guarded by a squad of heavily-armed guards; the windows were barred and anyway, the only place they led to was a thousand-foot drop to the ground below; her broom was still lying in pieces, and even if she could find some kind of substitute she wouldn't be able to enchant it because the Grimmerie had been confiscated; and that didn't matter anyway because, just as the Mentor had said, the entire apartment was enchanted to nullify Elphaba's powers. She could sense it even now, pressing down on her like blanket made of lead and making the air around her feel dull and lifeless. And even if by some miracle she managed to get out, find the Grimmerie, enchant a broomstick, make it out of Greenspectre, over the border and into Unbridled Radiance without getting shot down... what the hell was she going to do next? She might be able to find her way to Exemplar if she followed the rails from the air, but as for what she'd be able to do once she got there, she hadn't the slightest clue: she didn't know where Glinda would be held, what was going to happen to her and when, or even if she was being held in Exemplar anymore. Plus, thanks to her skin, Elphaba would be about the most noticeable target in the entire area.

Glinda is dead and there is absolutely nothing you can do to save her.

No, no – there was something, there had to be something. She just needed to think; she needed to clear her mind and concentrate on a solution... and she needed to clear her head of every single niggling issue that kept screaming for her attention... and she needed to calm down too; she needed to take a deep breath, wipe away a few more tears and look at the situation dispassionately... and try to forget that Glinda was going to die or might just be already dead and-

Elphaba fought a very powerful urge to take the alarm clock off her bedside table and fling it at the vanity mirror. She needed to concentrate: she needed to push every terrible thing that had happened to her that day into the very back of her mind and try to focus on some kind of escape plan, or some way of convincing the Mentor that she wasn't a fraud... but right now, all she wanted to do was lie down under the covers of the increasingly-comfortable bed and sleep for the next two hundred thousand years.

There was a knock at the door; from somewhere out in the apartment's main quarters, Dorothy's voice whispered, "Can I come in?"

With her patience and her nerves stretched almost to breaking point, Elphaba would have gladly told the girl to leave her alone; she'd have opened the door just for the opportunity to scream the words in her face – after all, the girl didn't know that magic didn't work in here yet, did she? It'd be easy enough to intimidate her, if only to earn a few precious hours of silence. But at the last moment, just as she was crossing the room towards the door with her fists clenched and her teeth gritted, all the fight went out of her – for somewhere in the growing cloud of nagging thoughts that her mind was immersed in, a particularly horrible one emerged: the Mentor's already decided your fate, it said. They're going to keep you here for the rest of your life, and nothing you say will do anything to stop that because the guards are forbidden to speak to you or listen to you. And Dorothy is going to be the only human contact you're allowed for the rest of your pathetic life. From now on, she's the only friend you've got, because you've killed all the others – and if they find out she's not allied with you, or that you might hurt her, they'll take her away and leave you here alone with nothing but your grief for company.

A vision of the future briefly flickered into her mind's eye, a glimpse of the room perhaps thirty years later – filthy, polluted with dirty dishes and rotting food scraps, the walls smeared with bloody handprints. And through it all, Elphaba's older self wandered in a daze, hair greying, eyes wide and unfocussed, wrists swathed in blood-soaked bandages. But she wasn't alone. In every room she entered, the dead and the worse-than-dead awaited her: behind the coach, the withered shape of a goat cowered and bleated unintelligently, occasionally glancing up at her with eyes that held an ever-so-subtle glint of reproachfulness; Boq stood in the corner, metal limbs far too rusted to move, his sorrowful eyes fixed upon the warped, shrunken heart that lay in his corroded hands; Nessa, torso and legs crushed to pulp, lay on the floor in a bloody heap and tearfully begged for Elphaba to help her up; Fiyero dangled from a rope outside the window, perpetually out of reach, still mobile enough to smear "WHERE WERE YOU" on the glass with a bloodied, broken hand; and Glinda, lying on the table in the same sorry state as the Empress' victims seen in the photographs – naked, slit open from neck to navel, her skull gaping open and her brains exposed to the air. "I feel fine," Glinda said placidly, a beatific smile gracing her now-cadaverous features. "It didn't even hurt. You should try it, Elphie; it'll make you feel so much better about everything. You can use your fingernails if you like, and once you're finished, we'll be together just like we always wanted –"

Hurling herself out of her imagination and back into the real world as quickly as she could, Elphaba opened the door in almost blind panic. "Hello?!" she screamed, voice on the edge of hysteria.

There was a sheepish pause, as the echoes died away; Dorothy took a very cautious step back from the door, and Chistery took shelter behind the kitchen counter.

"Sorry," Elphaba mumbled. "Don't know what came over me there."

Dorothy blinked. "Are you alright?'

Aha. Words I'd never thought I'd hear you say at all, let alone twice. "Fine," she said out loud. "Just a little... distracted."

Another long and slightly worried pause followed; Dorothy appeared to be plucking up her courage for something. Eventually, she said, "I heard you crying a minute ago."

Silence. After all, what could she possibly say to that?

"Was it something the Mentor said?"

Elphaba nodded silently.

"... Do you want to talk about it?'

"What's there to talk about, and more to the point, does it really matter that much to you?"

"You were the one who told me that I never bothered to question anything," the girl said, a touch defensively.

"True enough," Elphaba sighed. "If you're really interested, you might as well come in and have a seat. You too, Chistery."

Hands clasped agitatedly behind her back, Dorothy tiptoed into the room and sat down on the bed, Chistery knuckling after her. Then, after perhaps thirty seconds of gathering her thoughts, Elphaba finally announced, "I've already told you that they're keeping us under house arrest... but it's worse than that. Do you remember that friend of mine I mentioned?"

There was another pause, as Dorothy visibly tried and failed to conceal her incredulity at the idea of the Wicked Witch of the West having friends. "Back on the airship? Yes, I think so."

Elphaba briefly contemplated just giving in and explaining everything to the girl: her relationship with Glinda, the Wizard's true nature, her rebellion against Oz, the conversation she'd had with the Mentor and the story behind this madhouse world; even if she didn't believe a word of it, the chance to at least voice her frustrations and grievances would be a welcome change if nothing else. But in the end she decided against it, partly out of exhaustion but mostly because she didn't want to finish off the evening with yet another shouting match. "From what this Great Mentor tells me, my friend is right in the middle of Unbridled Radiance and there's a very good chance that she's been caught... in fact, the Mentor think that she's already dead. And even if she isn't, I can't do a thing to help her from here."

"But can't you just cast a spell or-"

Biting back an expletive, she detailed the nullification of her magical powers as quickly as possible. Once she was finished, Dorothy remained silent for a while – as if trying to think of a response that wouldn't set off Elphaba's temper; but eventually, she asked, "What was she like?" Her eyes widened, and she hastily amended, "What's she like? What's her name?"

For the second time in as many minutes, Elphaba considered just admitting that Glinda was her best friend (is, she told herself, not was) and unveiling all the tawdry old secrets. But then apathy set in, and all she said was, "You wouldn't know her."

"Would it matter if I did or didn't?"

"Would it matter if I told you?" Elphaba shot back.

"Please?" Dorothy wheedled. "If you're afraid I'll tell the Wizard when we get back to Oz, I swear you've got nothing to worry about; you don't have to tell me her name or even what she looks like – just who she is. Besides, you never know - telling me might just make you feel better."

Elphaba rolled her eyes; after dealing with the girl's near-constant fear of just about everything that moved for the last few hours, she'd almost forgotten just how unbelievably naive she could be; then again, Dorothy was still a child, so that wasn't exactly surprising. But in all honesty, she didn't have the heart to tell her that the chances of getting back to Oz were low even before they'd ended up detained and under house arrest in the nerve centre of a heavily fortified city – or that Kansas might just be out of her reach as well. And perhaps, if nothing else, a conversation might just make the time pass a little quicker; so, sitting down on the bed next to Dorothy, she thought of the best way to explain her missing friend.

"She... she's..." Elphaba took a deep breath, and tried again. But the words didn't want to be said; the possibility of Glinda being captured or executed froze them in place and they died in her throat. Giving herself a little shake of exasperation, she tried one last time: "She's my opposite in almost every way," she said at last. "Light-hearted, bubbly, outgoing, popular... and a bit of a ditz at times, I hate to admit. We couldn't stand each other at first: opposite personalities clashed too much, you see – I thought she was a shallow, self-important bimbo who spent so much money on shoes that she'd be broke by the end of the month, and she thought I was a freak and a snob who cared too much about work or study to really fit in anyway." The words were emerging faster now; somewhere inside her mind, a floodgate had been opened. "But that was in the early days; back then, we did everything we possibly could to avoid sharing the same space for longer than necessary – which meant that neither of us learned much about each other during those first months. And then everything changed: I learned that, under all the gloss and the fashion, she actually had a kind heart; and she learned that I..." She paused; she couldn't talk about that now – her throat was beginning to freeze again. "We developed a trust... and we went out of our way to help each other; she kept me company when my sister was out of reach, and I helped her with work. We even went so far as to entrust each other with our deepest secrets. For the next month or two, we were the closest of friends; and then... and then it almost fell apart."

"What happened?"

"I took a path in life that she couldn't follow. From there, we rarely saw each other; the second-last time we met, we argued. The last time we met was just before the portal opened at Kiamo Ko – and that's how we ended up here, and how we ended up getting separated."

As Dorothy considered this, Chistery put a furry hand on Elphaba's shoulder, and hooted sympathetically; in spite of herself, Elphaba smiled. At least I have one friend left, she thought.

"Do you have anything to remember her by?" Dorothy asked suddenly.

Without saying a word, Elphaba took her hat off – and was immediately rewarded with a look of utter astonishment from Dorothy. "I had to get it from somewhere," she remarked, almost too amused to be melancholy. "And when you have to spend your adult life on the run and effectively homeless, you learn very quickly to keep your most precious belongings close by or risk losing them. And when you're separated from the people you love, you learn to treasure what little of them you manage to keep." She thought of the little green bottle, safely concealed in a pocket of her cloak as it was, and of the many times she'd almost lost it while hurrying to escape a squad of guards. Then she thought about the Ruby Slippers, and suddenly what little humour remained in the room evaporated.

"And that's why you wanted the Ruby Slippers," said Dorothy - as if she'd read Elphaba's mind – and a look of utter wretchedness crossed her face. "Were they really the only things you had to remember her by?" she asked, in a voice so small it was almost microscopic.

"The only things I had to remember her happiness by," Elphaba clarified. She wanted to stop there, but something in the guilt-stricken look on Dorothy's face made her continue: "... and I needed to remember a time when I'd been there for her... or at least, a time when I tried to be there. The spell I placed on the slippers allowed her to walk, you see; I thought it was the best thing I could have possibly done for her – I even thought that she'd be able to live a longer, happier life... and then you showed up."

Dorothy cringed. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'll get them back somehow. I'll get them back. I'm so sorry," she added unnecessarily.

"Don't be," Elphaba sighed. "You're not the one keeping them from me at the moment, are you?"

But you're the one the Hellion wants, she thought bitterly. I hate having principles. Of course, even if I didn't, I'd still be trapped in here with no way of handing the girl over.

"What about you?" she continued. "Do you have something to remember your family by?"

To her surprise, Dorothy nodded: from the pocket of her dress, she held out a battered and slightly crumpled photograph; standing in front of a run-down looking farmhouse, Dorothy and a couple old enough to be her parents posed for the cameraman, the man grinning from behind a fledgling beard, the woman looking on the verge of laughter. Though both looked worn down and rugged from years of hard labour, the spark of happiness in their expressions was startling by comparison; on the other hand, Dorothy looked as childishly carefree as she had in Munchkinland just before Elphaba had arrived on the scene, perhaps even more so – not surprising, considering it predated her arrival in Oz.

"I took this from the house just before I left Munchkinland," Dorothy explained. "It's of me and my Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. I... I wasn't sure if I'd ever get to see them again, so I decided to hang on to it. I shouldn't need it, though, right?" she asked tentatively. "I mean, the Mentor should be able to send us home... shouldn't she?"

Damn it, child: one minute you're almost competent, the next you're worse than Glinda with a hangover.

Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed gently; it was now eight o'clock. "That reminds me," said Dorothy, clearly eager to change the subject. "The guards said we can order dinner around this time if we like. Do you want anything or –"

"I'm not really hungry," Elphaba lied. "I think I'll be better off getting some rest."

Thanks to the chaos at Kiamo Ko, she'd missed out on breakfast and lunch, and after only a few slices of cake at the victory party, she was in the mood to eat a horse – hooves and all, provided it was non-sentient. But at present, she simply wasn't up to spending dinnertime getting stared at for every vaguely human foible she made the mistake of demonstrating; and eating dinner alone in her room might just plunge the already miserable evening into the lowest depths of cataclysmic depression. All things considered, it'd be better for all parties concerned if she went straight to bed and slept through the next few decades of her inevitable life sentence; in fact, she was already going through the motions without realizing it – taking the cushions off the bed, drawing back the covers...

"Fair enough," Dorothy went on; she was obviously disappointed that she wouldn't get the chance to ask any more questions that evening, but at least she had the decency to pretend otherwise. "I'll try not to make too much noise or... wait a minute, what's that?"

Elphaba followed her gaze, and saw, lying just under the neatly-folded blanket, a small parcel wrapped in glossy black paper and tied with green satin ribbons. Affixed to its side, a small envelope cheerily proclaimed it to be addressed "To the Wicked Witch of the West; with hugs and kisses from An Old Friend (or maybe not)."

"Well," she said bemusedly, "This is either a very bad joke or a bomb. Possibly both."

"But why do you think it's a bomb?"

"Pattern recognition: it's been that kind of day, really."

Pausing only to hastily feel the parcel for anything that might double as an explosive, she then went about unwrapping it; thankfully, the contents were largely harmless: a pot of ink, a small parchment scroll, a folded map of various territories (including Unbridled Radiance, No-Man's Land, and the Deviant Nations), and oddly enough, a glass phial containing a single strand of blonde hair. At first, Elphaba wasn't sure what any of it meant; then she unfurled the scroll and found scrawled on it a series of a arcane words that could have only been copied from the Grimmerie. Suddenly excited, she opened the envelope that had arrived with the package, and found a small handwritten note that Dorothy peered over her shoulder to read:

Dear Miss Thropp

The Great Mentor doubts your friend's chances of surviving her time alone in Unbridled Radiance; having been witness to the sheer dumb luck that so often protected her in the days prior to her acquiring a gift for combat magic, I do not.

The spell inscribed on the scroll is a potent means of locating and tracking individuals over great distances; it will require a map, ink, and a sample of the target's body. All have been provided for you – complete with a single hair, found on your clothes during the identity test and confirmed to belong to your friend. Every four hours, the magicians keeping your power suppressed will change shifts, starting at midnight; there will be a two minute interval as the next magician in line begins casting, during which time you can use the tracking spell. It is also advised that you also use one of these intervals to remove the bars from the windows.

As for who I am and why I trust you, we can answer those questions when it comes time to determine who you are.

Sincerely,

An Unmet Friend

PS: Look under the bed.

In perfect unison, Elphaba and Dorothy peered under the bed: there, sitting right in the middle of the floor beneath the mattress, was an old but serviceable broomstick. As she reached out to grab it, Elphaba could hear herself – as if from miles away – muttering "Please don't let this be a joke. Give me just one even break, and please let this be real..."

And then her right hand closed around the handle: immediately, she felt the enchantments placed upon it, even through the nullifying haze that surrounded the apartment, and her heart leapt with joy as the familiar promise of flight crackled into the forefront of her mind.

Suddenly, she was laughing. She knew that this might very well be a trap, perhaps an assassination attempt waiting to happen, or maybe just the Great Mentor's way of getting enough incriminating evidence to have Elphaba in front of a firing squad. And even if it wasn't, she was also well aware of the possibility that Glinda might be too far out of reach, hidden from magical attempts at locating her, or just imprisoned somewhere so well-protected that trying to mount a rescue might end up killing them both. She could guess at just about everything that could probably go wrong: the spell might not work, the hair might lead her to the wrong person, the broom might be jinxed to fail the moment she tried to fly, or the border defences would be ready and waiting to shoot her down. None of it mattered – not even the fact that she'd have to wait until midnight to actually cast the spell –, because now that she had the chance to fly within reach once again, all the fears and doubts that had arrived to plague her somehow couldn't touch her anymore; she was flying out of their reach, if only figuratively speaking. For the next minute, she leaned against the wall and guffawed, her voice rising from tentative giggling to the familiar peals of maniacal laughter that had sent the people of Oz scurrying for cover; finally, the cackling dwindled to a halt and left her standing there aglow with triumph, a wide and irrepressible grin etched on her face.

Then, she realized that Dorothy was staring at her again.

"Sorry," she said, barely stopping herself from cracking up all over again. "I, uh... I got a little carried away there."

If anything, Dorothy looked even astonished (though admittedly, even Elphaba had never thought she'd find herself apologizing to the girl). "So this means you can save your friend?" she asked hesitantly.

"Well, it probably won't be as simple as that, but... yes I think that's something that might just be happening at some point next morning." She giggled deliriously, and staggered towards the front door of the apartment; with her mood now soaring once again and another three and a quarter hours until the spell could be cast, she was in the mood to admit to being hungry and order some dinner.

As she hollered for the guard's attention, she pondered the identity of the "friend" who'd sent her the spell components and broomstick. The aliases that had been used - "An old friend (or maybe not)" and "an unmet friend" - seemed oddly specific; given that this was a world somehow derived from Oz, the writer might actually be an alternate version of someone she'd known. So, with a range of infinite possibilities in mind, who could it be? Doctor Dillamond? Fiyero? Nessa? Perhaps it might actually be Glinda/The Great Mentor after all, but if so, why?

One way or another, some wild and slightly delusional part of Elphaba's brain told her that she was going to have a lot of fun finding out.

---

"Do you think they've gone yet?"

"No, I can still see the lights from here. They haven't turned back yet. In fact, I think they're heading right for us this time."

"Damn. Sorry, Lion."

Without changing his expression (which had remained uniformly miserable over the last half an hour) The Cowardly Lion gently lowered himself to his haunches, pressed his face to the dirt and groaned quietly.

Travelling through the forest hadn't nearly been easy as Boq had originally hoped: once they'd lost the Hellion's trail, they'd found themselves getting lost very quickly; after their attempts at finding a path back to the grasslands had come to nothing, they'd continued walking as if nothing had changed – after all, what else could they do? Even if they could make their way back to their starting point, they'd still be no closer to tracking down the Hellion, Dorothy, or Elphaba; at least out here, they had a very vague and distant chance of finding one of them.

Unfortunately, someone had found them first: perhaps two hours after they'd entered the forest, a squad of brilliantly-uniformed soldiers had abseiled from the treetops and opened fire on them; none of them had bothered to explain why they were attacking, or even say much apart from "Irredeemables!" and "Deviant scum!" They'd just taken aim and pelted them with bullets; and when the three of them had fled, the soldiers had quite naturally given chase. At first, the pursuers had seemed to be at a bit of a disadvantage: both Fiyero and Boq were effectively bulletproof and incapable of tiring, and when the Lion's stamina finally wore out, Boq went so far as to pick him up and carry him over his head just as Fiyero was carrying Toto under his arm. Unfortunately, though the soldiers couldn't easily catch up with them, it turned out they were more than capable of outnumbering and outpositioning them: another squad had swept in from the left barely an hour after the first ambush, herding the three back into the first squad's approach; and when they'd tried to escape to the north, another squad had arrived to try and surround them once and for all, and it had only been through a mad berserk rampage on the part of the Tin Man that they'd managed to punch through the advancing wall of gunmen.

Now it was night-time, and the three of them were hunched in a shallow ditch perhaps five or six miles away from the ambush point; with the forest around them plunged into darkness and the terrain being so wild as to be impassable without sunlight, they'd decided to seek shelter and wait until morning. Unfortunately, the soldiers were armed with searchlights, and didn't seem in the mood to call off their search until the morning; indeed, they were less than thirty feet away and their lights were currently pointed almost right at the ditch, forcing the three of them to hunch down to avoid being seen. Any minute now, they'd find them, and judging by the angry shouts they didn't seem in the mood to conduct an arrest or to show mercy.

Boq would certainly try to fight them off; his metal body and piston-powered muscles had given him a confidence that his younger self had never possessed. Even the Lion would be able to fight if the situation was dire enough to make him forget his neuroses. But Fiyero... well, he might try to fight, but could he really manage anything worthwhile? Unlike Boq, his immortality had made him oddly fragile: his arms were too flimsy to throw a punch or wrestle a weapon out of someone's hands; maybe if he had a gun or a knife, he might be able to put up some kind a struggle, but other than that...

Fiyero shook his head and hoped that Toto wouldn't pick this as an appropriate time to bark, and if Elphaba was somewhere out in the wilderness, that she'd somehow been able to avoid the soldiers, the Hellion, and whatever other hazards this insane asylum of a countryside could throw at her. As for Dorothy, he'd just have to hope that Elphaba was in the mood to defend the girl... and that he'd have the chance to see both of them again – alive and healthy.

"Do you think there's any chance of getting away if we start running right now?' the Lion whispered.

"Well, they'd probably hear us," Fiyero replied. "The trees are too thick to travel through most of it. We might be able to find our way through that pathway on the left quietly enough if we had a torch... and none of them noticed the light."

"And we don't end up setting something on fire," grumbled Boq. "They'd probably notice that, if you ask m-"

"Am I interrupting anyTHING?"

There was a nerve-wracking silence, as the three of them looked up in terror at the enormous six-armed shape towering over them. Even with half of her body concealed by the forest, there was no mistaking the distinctive figure of the Hellion – or the metallic stench of blood that surrounded her. Worse still, she was hovering right in front of the suggested escape route, her long arms wrapped thickly around the front-most trees of the passage and almost completely blocking the way; Fiyero didn't need to glance in the opposite direction to know that the only way of escaping her would be to head to their immediate right, out of the ditch and into the hunting party's line of fire.

At that point, time ceased to exist: the three of them might have sat there for years, paralysed under the Hellion's baleful stare, even though it couldn't have been for more than a few seconds. The horrified silence continued, growing thicker and thicker until it drowned out not only the familiar hoots and howls of the forest wildlife but even the distant shouts from the approaching soldiers. Fiyero, Boq and the Lion remained frozen in place, each of them tense and ready to move: Boq was slowly bringing his axe into position, fully prepared to charge at the Hellion before it could attack; the Lion looked torn between either joining the attack or running for his life; Fiyero was wondering if there'd be any chance of trying to draw the soldiers into a fight with the Hellion, giving them some time to escape in the process. But somehow, he could tell just by a few quickly exchanged glances that all of them were thinking the same thing: What would be more painful; trying to attack perhaps thirty armed soldiers head-on, or trying to attack the monster with an interest in taking prisoners?

But it was the Hellion who moved first – and not in the way they'd expected: instead of pouncing on them, she swooped to their right with an eerie giggle, circling around the ditch until she was right between them and the oncoming soldiers. She turned in their direction just long enough to put a talonlike index finger to her smirking, skinless lips in the universal gesture for "shhh"; then, in a blur of flickering afterimages, she turned and hovered silently towards the clearing where the soldiers had gathered.

A moment later, the first scream rang out.

In near-perfect unison, the lights swung wildly away from the ditch and towards the crimson blur that the Hellion had become; immediately, the soldiers opened fire, but it was clear that the Hellion had the advantage: not only did she know the terrain better and moved almost instantly from shadow to shadow, but on the few occasions when the frantic gunman managed to hit the target, there didn't seem to be much evidence that the Hellion was wounded or even slowed. In a matter of seconds, the once-orderly platoon dissolved into a fracas of gunfire, exploding grenades, screams, and drunkenly-swinging searchlights.

With most of the lights being broken or pointed the wrong way, Fiyero's view of the carnage was reduced to the brief glimpses he was afforded when a searchlight moved in the right direction, or a grenade exploded, or something caught on fire. He saw men breaking rank and running for cover as thick purple tendrils rippled across the ground after them, licking their heels with daggerlike tongues; he saw an explosion send a man flying through the air to land with a sickening crunch against the trunk of a tree; he saw a particularly desperate-looking soldier try to bayonet the Hellion, only to be snatched off his feet by all six of her limbs and ripped to pieces; he saw colourful magical flames ignite a cluster of people who'd made the mistake of standing too close together, leaving them to stagger blindly into the forest as their flesh dissolved; he saw, one after the other, perhaps five men shouting desperately into a handheld machine, each one trying to call for help; and perhaps worst of all, he saw a man caught in the act of trying to crawl away from the advancing Hellion, weeping hysterically and pressing a revolver to the side of his head – only to be rewarded with the dull click of an empty chamber.

And through it all, over the noise of battle and the agonized screaming and the pleas for mercy, the Hellion's voice could be clearly heard: "Not suitable. NO. No.Perhaps. No. HopeLESSLY uninteresting. Perhaps you? Yes, yes, I can PICTURE you as a doll even now; come closer, join my GLORIOUS collection..."

It was hard to tell how long the massacre lasted, but it couldn't have been for much longer than a minute or two at the most; eventually, however, the last scream finally died away and the forest once again fell silent. Then, quite unexpectedly, a handheld searchlight rolled over the edge of the ditch and landed at Boq's feet; switching his axe to his left hand, he picked up the light and pointed it in the general direction of the clearing – only to find himself once again staring up at the Hellion.

This time, however, she wasn't alone: tucked under her arms were four battered-looking soldiers, alive but unconscious. Fiyero tried not to look too closely at them, but couldn't stop himself from seeing the elements that the Hellion had been so careful to select: they were fresh-faced young men with clean-shaven cheeks and boyish casts to their features; they probably couldn't be much older than eighteen or nineteen years of age, and none of them higher than the rank of corporal – despite the ostentatious uniforms. In fact, the more Fiyero looked at them, the more he found himself reminded of his friends among the guard, back when he'd still been a captain; most of them hadn't really been fanatics when push came to shove, just overconfident boys anxious to earn a paycheck and impress someone – maybe their parents, maybe their superiors, maybe even a girlfriend. And now here they were, dangling from the arms of a monster and powerless to do anything about it.

"I got what I CAME for," she gloated. "What the Hellion wants, the Hellion takes. Enough to tide ME over until The Green Girl returns WHAT SHE STOLE from me." She laughed, her distorted voice echoing unpleasantly against the trees around her. "PERhapsyou'll help me in that regard, soon..."

One of the soldiers coughed, and his eyes flickered open; he immediately began to struggle, trying and failing to escape from the iron grip around his waist. He turned to Fiyero and the others, apparently no longer caring that he'd been assigned the job of hunting them down over the last few miles; "Kill me," he whimpered. His blue eyes were wide with terror, his round, freckled face an ashen grey. "Please, kill me, don't let her take me, oh sweet Empress I'm sorry please kill me kill me ki-"

The Hellion's upper-right hand suddenly clamped over the back of his head: instantly, the soldier went limp, his body suddenly as loose and boneless as a ragdoll. "Hush NOW, sweet little thing," the Hellion crooned, stroking the man's hair and leaving thick trails of blood through it. "You'll be so MUCH happier AS a doll..."

She turned back to the horrified onlookers. "You won't be DISTURBED any further tonight," she whispered. "So, until NEXT TIME, farewell. Oh, and when YOU pass by the silver lakes of No Man's Land, do say HELLO to the Mistress of Mirrors from me; she's been SO LONELY of late I hear tell she visits the dollhouse in Exemplar for a friend. Poor, sweet Reflection. Oh well, you'll cheer her UP, won't you? Of course you will. SWEETdreams, sweet dolls!"

Then she was gone, leaving Boq's searchlight pointed directly at the wreckage she'd left in her wake. Not for the first time since his transformation, Fiyero was very glad that it was no longer possible for him to vomit, for the sight would have driven even the strongest stomach to nausea: of the thirty soldiers that had been in the area a few minutes ago, only six of their dead were intact enough to be classified as bodies; the rest had been pulverized so thoroughly there was precious little to identify them as human remains. There were a few signs here and there, a petrified hand protruding from a heap of charcoal and ashes, or maybe a severed head sitting atop a small mountain of shredded flesh, but that was about it. Blood was everywhere, splattered against the trees and pooling on the ground where it had fallen too thickly for the soil to absorb; at one point, he thought he could see what looked like faces bobbing inside those small lakes, and eyes staring blindly out of the red murk, but Boq thankfully swung the light away from them before he could see any more than he wanted. And decorating the branches of the nearby trees were things that Fiyero's brain initially refused to identify: some of them looked like tattered white bedsheets; others looked like strings of pinkish tinsel; there were even a few objects resembling white clothes-pegs embedded in the trunks of these trees.

There was a long and awkward silence, as the three of them considered the bloodbath in front of them; the Lion was the first to break it. "There is no way in hell I'm sleeping anywhere near that," he said firmly. "And I'm not planning on spending another minute within spitting distance of someone who can do that either."

"Agreed," said Boq hoarsely.

"Likewise," Fiyero concurred.

Toto barked in the affirmative, leaving the decision mercifully unanimous. As one, they turned in the direction of their original exit and marched off into the night. This time, however, they stayed silent – just in case something tried to follow them.

---

Halfway along the corridor, Elphaba stops to lean against the wall. She's trembling worse than ever now, a cold sweat layers her forehead, and her breathing is starting to accelerate again. The orderlies are already in motion, clearly intent on getting her moving again, but Glinda gets there first; she can immediately tell this is more than just a nervous quaver, because Elphaba's almost hyperventilating by now. "I can't do this," she was whispering, "I can't do this, I can't do this..."

"Yes you can," Glinda murmurs, trying to keep her voice low enough for the orderlies not to hear. "Everything's going to be okay. You heard what Morrible said: once the spell's been cast, you'll have a fresh start and you'll never have to worry about the green skin ever again."

"But is it worth it? Do you think I'll ever be able to live with myself afterwards?"

"Elphie, you'll be incarceritified for life if you don't take this chance! You'll die in prison if you refuse the offer now."

She laughs bitterly at this. "Morrible clearly didn't tell you about the possibility that they might miscast the spell and accidentally kill me – assuming that this isn't just a disguised assassination attempt and a miscast is exactly what they're hoping for."

"But that's not what's frightening you, is it? What do you really have to lose by going in there, sitting down for a few minutes and letting them cast the spell?"

"Oh, I don't know," Elphaba snaps, a ghost of her old sarcasm briefly rising to her surface. "Maybe my principles. What little's left of my self-respect. My sanity... and my self," she adds quietly.

Glinda winces involuntarily: another sign that the events of the last few months had come so very close to destroying her friend is rearing its ugly head; a year ago, she'd have jumped at the chance to be normal – and even after starting her rebellion, she might have been willing to take the chance if it meant bringing down the Wizard. Now, she's a shadow of her former self, her confidence in tatters and her self-esteem lying in ruins. Of course, that's hardly the worst thing on the horizon: outside their conversation, the orderlies are loading their sidearms and the doctor waiting by the surgery door looks almost on the verge of giving the order to fire; if they're forced to restrain "the patient" now, Morrible might just cancel the entire project and leave Elphaba to rot in an improvised cell at the bottom of a mineshaft. If Glinda wants this to go according to plan, or indeed to see Elphaba ever again, she's going to have to press the issue. At the instance of both Morrible and her own desperate need to see this life-saving measure succeed, she's prepared a rough script (something she'd never thought she'd ever have to do at all, let alone for this sort of occasion) for what to say if anything went wrong, but saying it out loud is even harder than she'd expected.

"You once told me that you'd be willing to do anything to stop the Wizard and save the Animals," she hisses, just managing to sound appropriately furious; "You'll be able to do that once you've been degreenified. Don't you want that? Or when you said "anything," did you really mean "anything that's comfortable by my standards"? What matters more to you: your self-respect, or the lives of every Animal in Oz?"

Elphaba sighs deeply."You always were a heartbreaker, Glinda," she says quietly – the faintest hint of reproach in her voice.

Then, without another word, she pushes away from the wall and continues the long march down the corridor; as she does so, Glinda gets a brief but terrible look at the expression on Elphaba's face: instead of the familiar look of determination she'd hoped to see, Elphaba now wears a sickly, helpless-looking grimace.

Seconds later, she reaches the open door of the surgery: in the room beyond, Morrible is waiting for her, now dressed in a crisp white surgical gown and accompanied by a small horde of assistants – some of them magical experts, others medical professionals. Together, they are preparing to cast the spell: apparently, it's not nearly as simple as chanting the words of the spell anymore, not with the sheer number of countermeasures demanded of this operation; after having almost lost her to first an unintended rebellion and then to an attempt at retrieving her, the Wizard doesn't want to take too many chances with his investment's life.

As the assistants move to close the door, Elphaba manages one last look over her shoulder in Glinda's direction; she still looks hurt, but at least most of the reproachfulness in her gaze is gone. Now, she just looks sad and resigned, as she takes a deep breath and silently mouths the words "Goodbye."

Then the door slams shut.

A few of Glinda's aides remind her that she'll be expected back at the palace soon, and quietly urge her to leave; she ignores them: the possibility that something might go wrong has just about rooted her to the spot... but then again, she wouldn't leave even if she could; she'd all but forced Elphie into this – the most she could do was be here for her when the time came to help her recover.

From behind the thick door, there's a faint but recognizable sound of heavy equipment being gently hauled into place, and the sound of Morrible whispering orders to the assistants, most of them in technical jargon so complicated that Glinda can't even begin to guess at what they meant. But clearly audible over even these noises is Elphaba's breathing; it's no longer the frantic hyperventilation that she heard a moment ago, but there's still a noticeable tremor there – particularly when Morrible orders her to disrobe and stand in the harness at the centre of the room.

A familiar series of clicks, whirrs and buzzes can be heard now; Glinda has witnessed these noises many times during her stay in the hospital, usually accompanying the more invasive check-ups. This time, it was presumably the assistants slowly going about connecting their intricate machines to Elphaba's body. For the most part, she suffers in silence, only reacting with the occasional wince or shudder of pain; it's not until a minute or two into the procedure that she finally asks, "Are all these – ouch – needles really necessary?"

"In a word, yes," said Morrible. "This isn't any ordinary spell, Miss Elphaba; it's a combinatification of four very different magical techniques contained within the Grimmerie, with assistance from these devices being temporarily implanted on your person... and these surgeons over here. We need to be prepared for almost anything. The needles in your spine draw off excess thaumaturgical current; hopefully, they will be enough to shield you from any surges of energy should something go wrong."

"I take it that it's also to prevent my powers from going wild – or just to keep me from using them at all, yes?

"As I said, we need to be prepared for almost anything."

"And the vat over there?"

"That's the skin-tone we're currently preparing to graft."

"Hang on a minute... I've had a bit of time to study the Grimmerie while I was on the run, and I think I know what you're trying to do: you're merging a spell to drain pigmentation with a spell for chameleonic mimicry."

"Familiar with them, are you?"

"I was considering using the first one on myself," Elphaba remarked testily. "Trouble is, it doesn't work very well on living things: it works perfectly well on inanimate objects, but when I experimented on flowers and mice, it ended up killing almost every single test subject. How exactly are you planning on keeping me alive? What's the third spell you're planning to use?"

"Are you familiar with page 487 of this book, Miss Thropp?"

There's a shocked pause. "Ah," said Elphaba quietly; there's a very subtle note of horror in her voice. "So, you're going to... remove it before you alter it. The fifth spell is the antibiotic barrier, then. That's actually... a very inspired solution."

"I'm flatterated you think so: it took several months to translate, merge and formulatify, especially the means of allowing you to survive the trauma."

Elphaba swallows hard. "This is really going to hurt, isn't it?"

"Very likely. Now, if I could have silence in the operating theatre..."

A hush descends upon the room; Glinda is standing right next to the door by now. She's anxious to listen in on what's happening – in part because she isn't entirely certain as to what might be about to happen next; in the initial discussion, Morrible had been worryingly vague about how the procedure of degreenifying Elphaba was supposed to work, and refused to elaborate on the precise methods used when Glinda got around to actually asking; even the conversation she's just eavesdropped on doesn't explain that much.

Then, the chanting slowly begins: unlike the eerie, fluid pronunciation of Elphaba's spells, Morrible sounds coarse and businesslike, without any kind of flourish and artistry. But there's power behind those words – even Glinda can't help but notice the magic rippling across the room in response to the harsh spellcraft.

And suddenly, the incantation is briefly drowned out by a loud, wet RRRRRRRIP.

The chant continues unabated as the noise fades, but there's a curious sound in the background, now – a strange dripping sound, punctuated by the muffled expletives of the attending surgeons. But as the seconds drag by, Glinda realizes that it's not what she's hearing that's so unusual, but what she isn't hearing: Elphaba's breathing. For some reason, her friend is now completely silent. For a moment, Glinda's heart lurches with sudden alarm – what if she's in shock or unconscious? What if the treatment has actually killed her? But then she thinks for a moment and realizes that she can still hear the spell being cast – something that probably would have ground to a halt if their patient had died.

So, Glinda presses her ear to the door, hoping to hear even the slightest whisper of breath from beyond. Moments later, a deafening scream from within sends her lurching backward in fright: she was holding her breath, she realizes as her hands slam down hard over her ears. She was holding her breath and waiting to scream.

Elphaba is screaming in agony, and isn't showing any sign of stopping: there's no attempt at calling for help or begging Morrible to stop – it's just a solid wave of noise rippling out of the operating theatre, rattling doors, shattering windows and sending nurses and orderlies scurrying for cover.

And Morrible just keeps on chanting, Elphaba keeps screaming, and suddenly the cacophony is joined by a sudden roar of metal grinding against metal...

Emerging from sleep like a drowning swimmer, Glinda inhaled deeply and tried to sit up and open her eyes – without much success; the frost was still at work beneath her skin, keeping her body restrained and preserved. The most she could do was lie there, take deep breaths, and wait as the memories gently trickled back into her head – and immediately regret it.

Quite apart from the fact that she was still trapped in what could only be her own private corner of hell, she was still waiting to be vivisected, and whatever the hell that was, it didn't sound good. But then, anything that required you to be completely paralysed and left to freeze for the next few hours before it took place was probably bad on general principle. And now, as far as she could tell by the feel of the materials her frozen fingers rested on, she'd been moved from the gurney and onto what felt like a metal table – steel, if the ice-cold surface was any evidence; she couldn't guess at why, but Glinda had a sneaking feeling that it could only mean trouble.

And then she heard footsteps on the tiled floor, and realized that she wasn't alone in the room anymore; someone was pacing around the table, humming a nonexistent tune to himself... and judging by the metallic sounds, he was sharpening something. A knife, possibly.

The words "The surgeon may cut you open" echoed in and out of Glinda's brain, and an ice-cold droplet of fear trickled down her spine to land at the very pit of her stomach. Somewhere in the very back of her skull, a desperate little voice tried to convince her that this was all a misunderstanding, and she was going to be given an injection that would allow her to sit up and realize that everyone was playing an elaborate practical joke, and they'd all laugh and she would hug Elphaba in sheer relief and everything would be alright. The little voice was promptly told to stop talking nonsense, whereupon it curled into a ball and pathetically suggested that this might all just be a bad dream. And meanwhile, the steps had finally slowed to halt right next to Glinda's prone body, and her mysterious visitor's humming came to an end.

Somewhere above her, there was a loud click, and a low, dull voice announced, "Subject is female. Appearance suggests early to mid-twenties. Chronological age presently unknown and possibly disguised through glamour, shapeshifting, or surgical magic." The voice paused. Rubber-gloved hands gently lifted Glinda's arms up into the air, as if the speaker was trying to study them under the light; once this was finished, another hand titled her chin from left to right, smoothing her hair back against her scalp and exposing her forehead.

"Initial assessment shows no visible signs of poor health, Distortion or Deviancy," the voice continued. "Apart from slight bruising to the arms and elbows, only visible sign of injury is a penetration wound to the abdomen, with little signs of injury to internal organs. This was likely induced by the frostfang stasis spell; as is common with intended uses of the spell, blood loss has halted and the injury is in no danger of worsening at present. Comparisons with health records show that subject's appearance and physical condition is generally consistent with that of the fugitive known as Glinda Upland, AKA the Great Mentor – albeit records of her condition prior to her betrayal of Unbridled Radiance. The purpose of this evening's vivisection is to identity any signs of disguise, alteration, Distortion or Deviancy, and –if possible – to determine an explanation for the subject's appearance. As per the Empress' commands, this will require only the standard incision across the thorax and abdomen, followed by the study of the chest cavity, internal organs, and the spine. This procedure is only to be extended to the skull and the brain if no conclusive results can be found elsewhere. The Empress has specifically commanded that if the subject's body suffers irreparable damage over the course of this procedure, and no signs of corruption can be found, the subject's psyche is to be incorporated into Paragon and allowed to join the other incorporated souls in blissful contemplation."

Ahahah, Glinda thought, almost hysterically. They're going to cut me open after all. I'm going to be autopsied while I'm still alive. Haha.

Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps hurrying down the corridor towards them, before finally stopping just a few feet away to the accompaniment of breathless panting.

"Where have you been?" the dull voice asked, following another loud click. "The vivisection is almost underway."

"Oh... right. S... sorry, I'm late, Doc... Doctor Marsh. I was... detained. Hope I can still assist."

Was it Glinda's imagination, or did the assistant's voice sound familiar?

"Well naturally," Doctor Marsh snapped. "I was just about to begin secondary stage examinations, so you'd best prepare the subject right now: start with her shoes, if you please." He coughed, and the mysterious click once again sounded. "Her clothing shows no signs of concealed weaponry," he loudly announced to the thin air, "So further examination is largely unnecessary. Disposal may begin. Her shoes, if you will..."

Cold hands rudely prised Glinda's shoes off her feet; and in spite of all the other competing horrors that had befallen her over the past twenty-four hours, somehow the loss of the gleaming white footwear somehow still managed to jab painfully at her nerves; in fact, she actually found herself trying to scream Wait a minute, those are my best stylish heels! But alas, she couldn't produce anything louder than a vague gargle at the back of her throat, and scant moments later, the deep whoosh of a furnace and the smell of burning fabric signalled the end of Glinda's favourite stilettos.

There was an embarrassed pause.

"The dress, now," Marsh whispered, clearly annoyed at having to actually tell the assistant what to do next.

"Oh, right. Sorry."

Slowly, Glinda was unceremoniously rolled onto her front, allowing the assistant to begin slowly cutting her bodice in half from the neckline down with a pair of scissors. Once again, Glinda found herself wishing that she could scream in frustration: the dress was – had been – another favourite, of the kind she loved to wear on special occasions. And yes, it had been battered, crumpled, crushed, fouled with dirt and now effectively ruined by the blood-streaked tear in the midriff, but it was still one of her very best; from what some citizens had proclaimed, it was this dress that most identified her as the Good Witch, more than her wand, more than her tiara, sometimes even more than her bubble. Now, it was being cut to pieces, soon to be incinerated. She knew that getting so upset over the loss of her clothes after everything else that had happened that day was silly, bordering on pathetic, but ever since she was a child, she'd often resorted to thinking about silly, pathetic things whenever the situation was too dire to focus on the real world. And now, it was almost reassuring after so many hours of worrying and wandering, to let her brain drift for a while and bitch about fashion... and try not to think about what was going to happen next.

The scissors paused perhaps halfway down her back, ice-cold blades resting horribly against her back. The voice of Doctor Marsh didn't: "No visible signs of alteration present in the back, shoulders or scalp," he mused aloud, his gloved hands tousling her hair. "Mage-surgeons employed for the purposes of disguise usually manage to transfer any flaws in their modification to these points to prevent them from being easily noticed in public; I can only presume the surgeon who performed this subject's alteration was very skilled. In fact, if possible I would like to recommend keeping the subject's body as an example of what medical thaumaturgy can accomplish. Are you finished yet?"

"Almost."

"Well hurry up and strip the damn dress off her. I'd like to open the subject's ribcage before the end of the month if it's all the same to-"

There was a loud squish, and for one horrible moment Glinda thought that Marsh had gotten carried away and started cutting into her already. But then she heard the squishing sound again, this time followed by a faint gurgling noise, and realized that she hadn't felt anything on either instance except of course for the familiar chill in the air. Then, there was a muffled thud of something heavy and unwieldy collapsing to the ground, and the assistant's voice muttered, "Pig."

A moment later, the assistant was shaking her. "Come on Glinda," he (or she?) said, gently slapping her face. "Wakey-wakey, eggs n' bakey; we've got to get moving. Oh for godsakes, the frost venom too..." There was a loud clattering from somewhere to her left, and a minute later, the assistant could be heard muttering, "Knew he'd have brought along a vial or two of this. I think I know how to wake you up; it might sting a little, but you know how these things are..."

For the second time in the vivisection, Glinda was rolled over; as soon as she was lying on her back, she felt something square and metallic briefly press against the wound in her stomach – and suddenly, blazing heat flooded her veins. It was though someone had pressed a red-hot iron to her skin - she wound have cried out in pain had she been able to speak; then, the fire swiftly radiated outwards, slowly diluting itself to a soothing warmth as it went. But all too soon, the warmth faded and left Glinda shivering in the polar temperatures of the hospital, which seemed even worse now that she was barefoot and missing half her dress. Instinctively, she drew her arms up to her chest in an attempt to preserve what little warmth remained – and realized she could move again.

Eyes shooting open, she sat bolt upright in a surge of panic-induced energy; instantly, there was a sharp pain in her chest and she slumped backwards with a groan, dazzled by the overhead lights. "Easy, now," warned the assistant; a scrawny arm gently slid under her back and lifted her up again, slowly helping her off the table, back onto her feet. "Frost venom's a nasty thing to recover from. Plus, you've still got that hole in your gut... but at least you're not in danger of bleeding to death."

Groggily thanking him (or her), Glinda looked her saviour up and down. This wasn't what she'd been expecting, to say the very least; after all, if this insane reality really was some kind of private hell or at the very least a nightmare, she'd have thought that the only possible rescue would have come from either Elphaba or Fiyero, perhaps someone else she'd known when she was still alive and awake. This man (or woman) clearly wasn't any of those.

Standing perhaps a few inches shorter than Glinda and dressed in a purloined set of hospital scrubs, her rescuer was lithe and skinny in build, with dark skin, close-cropped black hair and a frowning, downturned mouth. However, most strikingly of all was the fact that, even after a good thirty seconds of puzzling over it, Glinda still couldn't determine this apparition's gender: the features seemed a mix of both male and female, a flat bony chest and heavy jaw offset by full lips and a narrow, slender cast to the face (complete with high, delicate cheekbones). Eventually she gave up on guessing altogether and decided to focus on more immediate problems – among them escaping captivity, trying not to bleed to death... and actually learning who her rescuer was.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The androgynous face briefly wrinkled in confusion. "Fair enough," s/he said at last. "Voices do sound different over intercoms, I suppose. We met a couple of hours ago on the train; I was tinkering with the systems of your sarcophagus, remember?"

Glinda blinked in amazement. "Omber Landless?" she whispered incredulously.

"Omberature Parakeet Landless, at your service. And you're Glinda Upland?"

"Well, yes... but... how did you get out of your coffin? I thought you and the others were still locked up and waiting to be interrogated."

"True enough. As far as I can tell, the rest of my fellow "Nobruvan dignitaries" are still being worked over one-at-a-time by the Studious Interviewers. I'd probably be among them if not for..." A perplexed frown briefly marred his/her features. "I'd like to say I'd managed to get the damn sarcophagus open on my own, but even I can't jimmy the lock on a portable prison without tools and time. No, someone deliberately unlocked it from the outside; whoever it was, I didn't stick around to get a good look at them – just got a disguise and some tools together and ran like hell. I'd have kept running if I hadn't heard your name being wafted about."

"So you came back for me – just for me?"

Omber looked a tad sheepish. "Well... I had an escape plan to get out of the complex and hopefully out of this city altogether. I'm not sure where we'll go from there, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Long story short, the plan depended on me having another pair of hands on hand, and I didn't have time to save any of the prisoners. The morgue was the least-guarded room in the entire complex."

"Complex?" Glinda echoed. "Where exactly are we?"

"Not the time for questions, believe me; I'll explain soon, but first we've got to get the hell out of here before people start wondering why Dr Marsh is taking so long to finish the examination." S/he nodded at the human-shaped figure crumpled at the base of the table in a sizeable puddle of blood, a large pair of surgical scissors embedded in its throat. "First of all," Omber continued, "We need to get that wound patched up as best as I can manage until you can find a qualified doctor... and we also need to find you some new clothes."

All in all, it took about fifteen minutes to complete this task: thanks to the dried blood virtually gluing the dress to her front, the danger of accidentally tearing the wound any further open and her own reluctance to dispose of the garment, it was quite some time before Glinda was able to actually remove the dress. Once that was done, she had to sit shivering and half-naked on the table for the next minute or so while Omber went about the arduous process of cleaning and bandaging the wound; long, monotonous and painful though it was, it thankfully Glinda an excuse to hurry into the adjoining bathroom and freshen up. Finally, she was given a fresh set of clothes: another set of blue-green hospital scrubs, complete with ill-fitting shoes, a surgical mask, and a hairnet.

"Is there any particular reason why I have to wear this?" she asked wearily, slightly muffled by the mask.

"Well, it's mainly to keep you from being recognized by the guards; once they find out we've escaped, they'll have our faces bulletined everyone. So long as we're dressed in something that blends in with the other employees, we won't end up having to fight off the bastards with scalpels and tongue depressors."

Glinda was halfway through nodding when a thought struck her like a lightning bolt: suddenly, after a whole day of feeling completely useless and at the mercy of everything and everyone, she was finally able to contribute something. "What about my wand?" she asked excitedly. "Maybe that'll help."

Omber's lips pursed as s/he digested this information. "You know how to use magic, then?"

"With a wand, yes. I'm not exactly a combat expert, but the guards don't know that. And I've got this trick that could get us out of the capital really easy."

"Brilliant! So where is this wand of yours?"

"Um, I'm not sure. I think they confiscated it when they first captured me. But it can't be too far away, can it?"

Omber thought for a moment, and then turned to the nearest of the equipment trays that surrounded them, hunting through the labelled drawers for about two minutes at the most. Eventually, s/he let out a sigh of mingled exasperation and disappointment, and very slowly withdrew the lowest of the drawers for Glinda's inspection: rolling around at the very bottom of the container was the wand - crudely divided into five separate pieces.

It was at that moment that Glinda swore she could actually hear the deflating-balloon sound of her optimism collapsing in on itself: it wasn't just the fact that the two of them were now short a very useful piece of equipment and a means of escaping via the Bubble, but now, Glinda's only reliable way of performing magic was gone. She'd been so proud of her magnificent silver wand when it was first presented to her, even if it really was just a crutch for her own hideously limited spellcasting abilities; for the first time in her life, she'd felt as though her talents had some measure of uniqueness, for no other magician in the country used a wand (mostly because they were considered embarrassing for fully-trained Witches and Wizards to be seen with). At times, she'd even managed to convince herself that was on the same level as Madame Morrible or even Elphaba, which was utter crap: Morrible was able to change the weather with an elegant gesture and a contemptuous glance; Elphaba could translate the Grimmerie by instinct, project magical power by force of will, and learned the art of spellcasting faster than any other student of the magic class before her... and what could Glinda do with her wand? Very little, apart from summon a huge bubble. What could she do without it? Nothing.

"Something tells me they weren't taking chances with potentially dangerous materials," said Omber flatly.

"It wasn't dangerous," Glinda mumbled in reply, absently pocketing the bits of shattered wand and trying to console herself with the fact that she at least had a memento (or several mementos) of it.

"If you say so. Suffice to say the wand's no longer an option: we've got to get out of here on foot. But first, we just need to dispose of the evidence... could you help me with this?"

As she took hold of Dr Marsh's legs, Glinda absently reflected that this had been most usual day for her: having started the day by falling through a portal, she'd been knocked unconscious, separated, hustled onto a train, drugged, imprisoned, shocked, stunned, horrified, stabbed in the chest, paralysed, chilled to the bones, threatened with disembowelment, rescued by a complete stranger with no recognizable gender... and now here she was, freshly clad in an outfit that she normally wouldn't have been caught dead in, helping her rescuer dispose of a corpse in a mortuary furnace.

---

Outside, the chill in the air was only marginally lessened; unlike the morgue, it wasn't necessary to keep the hallways cold in order to preserve the dead until their autopsy. As far as Glinda was concerned, it was another measure just to make the place feel just a little more hellish... and there were already too many.

All around her, bleak white corridors stretched on for mile after mile, distances blurring and forks in the road appearing to vanish under the stark lights; the corridor they'd chosen had to be more than three hundred feet long, and it looked to be one of the shortest possible distances in this sterile labyrinth. Worse still, thanks to the tiled floor, their footsteps echoed so loudly that it felt as though they were setting off a dozen alarms with every step they took; before long, Glinda was almost too scared to speak in case a guard happened to overhear the conversation from a thousand yards away. And the only thing that soothed that particular fear was the equally-terrifying fact that nobody seemed to be travelling the corridors except for them: no workers, no doctors, no guards, and certainly nobody that might be in the mood to help. Maybe it was a busy time of night, and everyone was hard at work behind the many doors that lined these halls, but she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was going to burst out of a room to their left and order their arrest... or that the entire maze had been evacuated hours ago, and that she and Omber were only people left alive entire building.

In an attempt to quell her paranoiac imaginings, Glinda found herself resorting to the old coping strategies: although she couldn't distract herself with thoughts of fashion at this point (at least not without bringing up the fact that her shoes and dress were currently disintegrating at the bottom of a furnace), she could try and direct her attention elsewhere. First, she simply stared at the floor, if only to give herself something to look at other than blank white walls... but if anything, the tiled floor was all the more disturbing, in part because the cleaners apparently hadn't arrived yet to mop up after the day's... leakages. Worse still were the drainage gratings dividing each stretch of floor; apparently, the spills around here were so copious that they required drains to stop them from flooding the corridor – a thought that made Glinda's stomach twist in revulsion. After that, she tried thinking of what had happened to Elphaba and Dorothy, but that only led in the direction of more horror when she remembered what the train passengers had told her about the Irredeemables and the acts they committed upon their prisoners. Finally, she broke her silence and started talking with Omber, if only because s/he might have something that would stop her from going absolutely mad.

According to Omber, the complex that they'd ended up in was just one small corner of a vast network of underground tunnels and chambers hidden deep beneath Exemplar, inaccessible and largely unknown to the general public; only the most important, the most throughout-qualified, or the most unfortunate of citizens ever found themselves down here. Known to executives and employees alike as "The Deep Sepulchre," this labyrinth extended over three miles beneath the city streets – even deeper, according to some rumours. As for what it was used for, quite a bit of it was for processing criminals; the cells, the interrogation rooms, the disposal furnaces, the medical bays, and even the surgeries where Purification took place were all concealed down here. Of course, that wasn't the only use for the Sepulchre: from what Omber had heard, it was also a handy place to store classified information (governmental, military, or otherwise), with warehouses full of secrets comprising the chambers to the west; and thanks to the seclusion and sterility of the area, it was also a popular venue for scientific research too sensitive to be practised above ground. There was even a rumour that the University of Exemplar had a basement entrance to the facility, allowing novice mage-surgeons the opportunity to practice their skills on live human captives.

"How do you know about all this?" Glinda whispered. "I thought you said you were from Nobrewer."

"Nobruvo," Omber corrected. "True, I live – well, lived – there, but I was born in Unbridled Radiance. And this isn't the first time I've been down here," s/he added darkly.

"Why were you down here the first time?"

"Well, I was halfway through university and they needed engineers and – in my case – trainee engineers to help redesign the generators and power distribution network."

"They hired you to help build a place like this?"

"Oh, of course: even top-secret facilities need people to make renovations every now and again. They need people who can keep the lights on and the power running, and fix the pipes and clean the floors and do the paperwork. They can't all be guards and doctors."

Glinda, who'd been conversing mainly to stop herself from paying too much attention to the really unpleasant things she'd seen and heard over the last few hours, suddenly asked, "You said that was the first time – how many times have you been down here in total."

Omber thought for a moment. "This'll be the fourth," s/he said at last.

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm shocked too."

"But why do you keep coming back here?"

"Not by choice, let me tell you that: like I said, I was here on commissioned work the first time. They kept me away from the really extraordinary things, made me sign about five dozen different confidentiality forms, paid off my student loan and sent me on my way. The second time, one of the other hired engineers had been caught spilling the beans to a spy from the Deviant Nations, so Her Radiance's finest brought me down here to 'assist in their inquiries.'" S/he shuddered. "They didn't find me guilty or anything, but I didn't sleep for quite a while after that. The third time... well, that was what prompted me to get the hell out the country - they'd accused me of having ties to Deviant groups, you see."

"And did you?"

Omber fell silent for a moment or two, the already-frowning face overshadowed by depression. "I don't know," s/he said at last. "These days, Deviancy means whatever the Empress wants it to mean. And that's why I left the country, after they were finished breaking my fingers and sentencing me to permanent house arrest. As soon as I had a chance to escape, I fled across the border and settled in Nobruvo. Then, of course, Unbridled Radiance annexed Nobruvo and I got dragged all the way back here to serve as a low-priority information source."

S/he offered a distinctly unhappy-looking grin. "Once this place has its talons in you, there's no escaping. It's like having an invisible bungee cord around your waist – you can run and fall as far as you can and as many times as you like, but you always end up bouncing right back here."

A scream split the otherwise perfect silence of the empty corridor; once the two of them had recovered their nerves, they slowly crept towards the source of the noise. It turned out to be an open door perhaps ten feet to their left: the room behind it was apparently empty except for a number of filing cabinets and a large box-shaped device with two spinning wheels on its front; but Glinda's eyes were swiftly drawn away from those objects by the sight of a large window overlooking another, slightly smaller concrete-walled cell. Here, a bloodied figure was strapped to a chair, his bruised head lolling drunkely back and forth as he mumbled a confession through broken teeth. As he did so, machinery set into the ceiling above him whirred and chattered as they transcribed his speech; an expressionless doctor withdrew the syringe from the man's arm and went about preparing another injection... and two grim-faced gentlemen in slick leather aprons briskly sharpened their tools for another round.

"Oh Oz," Glinda whispered.

"We're back in the interrogation block," Omber whispered, eyes carefully averted from the carnage beyond the window. "Means we're on the right track to the Clarion road exit."

S/he was about to set off down the corridor, when Glinda grabbed him/her by the shoulder and urgently hissed, "Can't we help him-"

Omber's face twitched involuntarily. "No. I'm sorry, but no: he's dead meat already, and we'll be the same or worse if we try and break in."

"But you rescued me from vivisection a few minutes ago. What were you risking when you saved me from being cut open?"

"Nothing: you were alone except for one non-Purified hack. He isn't."

"But we can't just leave him! I mean, he can't have done anything to deserve anything like that!"

"I know that, Glinda, I know," and there was a hint of desperation in Omber's voice, as if s/he thought Glinda was about to take a flying leap through the two-way mirror. "Not even the actual criminals who end up here deserve it. But we can't help him or the few hundred others like him, not without getting killed or captured."

"You-" Glinda hastily lowered her voice, and whispered, "You don't know that! We could set off an alarm somewhere, distract the guards long enough to get him out of there. I mean, if you've been down here three times, shouldn't you know alternate routes we could take? That way, we can avoid the guards on our way back here, and rescue him without being caught!"

The engineer's lips pursed in exasperation. "Okay, okay, that's possible... but I don't know anywhere we could set off alarms without getting cornered by the guards – not unless we catch them between shifts. Plus, I'm not sure if the poor bastard's in any condition to walk, let alone breathe unassisted. And how are we supposed to mop up the blood-trail he's going to be leaving for the guards to follow? We won't be able to outrun them while we're carrying him around – and trying to stop that hole in your gut from tearing open. And what if we get lost? I know this place well, but I haven't got the floor plan entirely memorized."

"I... I... w... we can't... I..."

Glinda floundered. She had no idea what she could possibly say to any of Omber's suggestions, and worse still, it had just occurred to her that she didn't even know what would happen if they actually happened to meet with inquisitive guards – guards that might want to know why the two "nurses" were so reluctant to take their masks off. She knew that all things considered, it would probably be better if she just admitted that there was nothing they could do and went on trying not to think about what was going on in the room just beyond the two-way mirror. But she couldn't shake the crippling sensation of guilt that was slowly crushing her insides to pulp; it was a sensation she'd been largely oblivious to for much of her life, except on the few occasions when she managed to direct a thought towards what she was actually doing – which had been a rare occurrence during the first eighteen years of her life, sad to say. And she'd found herself feeling it more and more as every day went by, usually at times when she couldn't have made any sort of difference (or so she thought), so by now, that awful feeling of helplessness and isolation from the world around her was becoming acutely familiar – and acutely painful.

"We can't just leave him to die," she finished pathetically.

Omber's frown deepened. "He's not going to die," s/he said grimly, "Not if the Studious Interviewers have their way." With that, s/he very carefully shut the door, muffling the captive's screams behind a layer of soundproofing, and tiptoed away.

Glinda followed, hating herself a little more with every step.

After that, silence prevailed for several minutes: Omber was trying to figure out where they were in relation to where they'd been intending to go, and Glinda was trying think of anything other than what she'd just witnessed; how she'd ended up in this madhouse, the truth behind the Empress, where the real Elphaba had been taken, Omber's gender – anything, so long as it wasn't the sound of torturers at work.

Eventually, after more than half an hour of wandering down the long, echoing corridors without meeting a single human being, they finally starting encountering the Sepulchre's other employees: most of them were bureaucrats and messengers carrying huge stacks of paper from one end of the facility to the other at high speed, barely even noticing the two masked nurses long enough to shout "'scuse me!" Some were mechanics and janitors hauling toolkits or pushing carts of disinfectant, and they barely gave anyone a second glance, their eyes very carefully directed at the ground. A few were guards, resplendent in their gleaming white uniforms and heavily armed with a deadly-looking assortment of blades and firearms; these usually travelled in pairs, either on patrol or escorting prisoners to the cellblock or the interrogation chamber. It was these hard-faced characters that the two of them had to be careful around, for the guards were constantly on watch for any sign of rebellion or Deviancy among their fellow workers: apparently, making eye-contact with them was considered a sign of both, forcing Glinda and Omber to mimic the janitors and keep their heads down whenever a guard passed by.

Occasionally, there'd be a mage-surgeon prowling the corridor, and everyone – including Omber – went out of their way to give them a wide berth; even Glinda found herself following suit very quickly, if only because the wandering surgeons terrified the life out of her: the ones who were fresh out of the operating theatres were often still splattered with blood, and they tended to wear opaque black spectacles that – coupled with their surgical masks and caps – gave Glinda the uncomfortable feeling that they didn't really have faces, just fleshless skulls with gaping sockets. But those who'd had time to change into their splendorous tailored suits were even worse: from the sculpted cast of their faces and their porcelain-smooth skin, it was clear that all of them were Purified, and their eerily luminous eyes all but transfixed Glinda as they passed her. The fact that all of them were smiling didn't help. Of course, there were perhaps one or two mage-surgeons who didn't seem to have been Purified just yet, but judging by the way people spoke to them, they were quite low on the career ladder.

After perhaps ten or twenty minutes of wandering past the mixture of functionaries and officials, the two of them turned a corner, then another, and suddenly found themselves in an otherwise empty hallway – empty except for a single frosted glass door at the very end, a bright red "KEEP OUT" sign emblazoned above it. It was hard to tell through the haze of reinforced glass, but it looked as though there might be a marked exit somewhere in the distance beyond. The door itself was quite securely locked, a keypad and no less than five solid steel bars keeping it from being forced open.

"Do you know the code?" Glinda asked.

"Don't need to," said Omber smoothly, drawing a screwdriver and a pair of pliers from his/her pocket. "Hopefully," s/he added. Very slowly, the keypad was prized away from the wall, exposing a small bird's nest of wires and cables that s/he immediately set upon as methodically and carefully as possible; this very quickly left Glinda keeping watch on the passageway, if only to keep Omber's eyes focussed on the keypad and stop the "hotwiring" process from dragging on forever

"I think it was this way," the engineer muttered after about fifteen minutes of rummaging and twiddling. "It was this way the last time. Or was it a left instead of a right at the fork? Or the fork before that?"

"There's only one way to find out," said Glinda, almost proud that she'd managed to keep her patience in check. "What's supposed to be behind this door?"

"As far as I can remember, it was just a bureaucratic storeroom; lots and lots of filing cabinets but nothing else. Of course, if I've taken us in the wrong direction, this could probably lead just about anywhere. We could end up in very serious trouble."

"But if we turn back now, we'll have officially gotten ourselves lost," Glinda pointed out. "We'll be stuck wandering around until somebody realizes that Marsh hasn't reported back and sends the guards after us."

"Screwed if we do, screwed if we don't. Fair enough then." There was a spark from one of the wires, and the locks on the door noisily disengaged. "I really hope they haven't posted gun-turrets on the other side," s/he muttered. Then, without another word, s/he fastened the keypad back onto the wall and swung the door open, allowing the two of them to enter in what was hopefully the most nonchalant way possible.

As it turned out, the room was a two-hundred-foot wide rotunda of polished granite, dotted with gated entrances and exits; however, perhaps twenty or thirty feet in, the room opened up into an enormous hole in the floor. Peering gingerly over the railing, Glinda saw an immensely deep shaft leading down hundreds upon hundreds of feet, its walls ridged with the spiralling steps of a very long staircase. However, every few hundred feet, both the shaft and the stairs were blocked by a very thick sheet of glass, the rim of each one carved with an indecipherable series of glowing symbols. Other than the heavy steel doors in each sheet there didn't seem to be any way down the staircase, and judging by the fiendishly intricate-looking controls beside the nearest door, this left whatever was at the bottom of the shaft just about untouchable.

"Definitely not just a storeroom," she said, unable to disguise the awe in her voice. She glanced back up at the many doors of the rotunda, and asked, "Which of these do think leads to the exit."

Omber said nothing: s/he was staring in astonishment at something far below them. Perhaps five floors and three layers of glass below them, the walls alongside the stairs were etched with dozens upon dozens of luminous green channels like veins, emerging from the granite in weirdly straight lines and converging as they descended. Very slowly, Glinda followed the channels down the walls to the very bottom of the shaft where, perhaps a thousand feet below them, they united at the base of a towering obelisk. Even from here, it was pretty obvious from the colour and the slight transparency to it that the monolith was solid emerald.

"Holy shit," Omber breathed.

"What is it?"

"I... I knew it was real, but I never actually thought it was down here. It's... it's Paragon, Glinda."

"Paragon?" Glinda echoed. "I heard the Empress say something about that earlier, and Marsh too; once they were finished cutting me open and they couldn't put me back together again, they were going to "incorporate" me into it. But what does that even mean? And what is Paragon, anyway?"

Omber licked his/her lips and took a very deep breath. "From what I've been told, it's meant to be a fusion of cutting-edge machinery and enchantments cast by the Empress herself; supposedly, it's used to control the Vigilant Eyes, to help plan military strategies, even to predict economic developments. That is essentially Unbridled Radiance's second brain at work down there, and it takes orders only from the first brain – otherwise known as the Empress."

"So, it's a machine?"

"It's not just a machine, Glinda: this thing doesn't just calculate statistics and puke out details; it's capable of sentient cognition – or something so much like it that nobody can tell the difference. It's a Thinking Engine!" S/he was smiling now, a wide manic grin that stretched from ear to ear. "If only we had more time to watch, if only we could get past those damn doors," s/he muttered, dark eyes aglow. "I've barely even heard of tech that comes close to the stuff at work down there, let alone seen anything like it. Oh, I wish I'd held on to that map of the storerooms – they might actually have the blueprints of the damn thing there..."

Just like Elphaba and libraries, Glinda thought, barely managing to hide an amused smirk.

She was about to ask for more information (which wasn't entirely surprising, given the details of a machine that could think for itself) when she saw, just out of the corner of her eye, a cluster of figures descending the stairs perhaps three hundred feet below – just above the first layer of glass but thankfully well out of earshot. Even at this distance, she clearly recognized the Empress, still cloaked all in white as she made her way towards Paragon.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit..." Omber muttered; he'd obviously seen the Empress too. "Why is it that you never have a decent sniper rifle on hand when you really, really want it?"

The other figures in the entourage were equally familiar to Glinda: the bodyguard in the silver mask was still flanking the Empress at all times; behind them, Ambassador Hayfelt followed closely, nodding deferentially at every order provided; behind him, a few of the diplomatic staff from the train struggled to keep up... in fact, the only members of the group that Glinda didn't recognize were the tiny knot of gentlemen in peaked hats and opulent gold-and-white uniforms, though Omber helpfully identified them as generals.

"And what about the one in the mask, who's he?"

"Nobody knows his name. Hell, nobody's even seen what's under his mask. Technically, he's not a bodyguard; after all, when you're as powerful as the Empress, you don't really need bodyguards. No, he's much more active than that: he's an assassin, he's an enforcer, and he's even led troops into battle – and fought on the front lines, too. In any event, when things are dire enough to get the Empress's attention but not quite enough to get her to appear in person, she sends him in as muscle." S/he shrugged. "Suffice to say, most people just call him the Empress's Champion and leave it at that."

Meanwhile, the Empress had reached the first sheet of glass and was now making a number of extremely complicated gestures over the control panel. But as the door rumbled open, a voice spoke – a voice that seemed to emanate from the very walls of the shaft.

"Positive match for executive entry #1. Identity confirmed. Welcome, Empress."

"Good evening, Paragon. I trust that your computations run as smooth as always?"

("It's talking!" Omber whispered excitedly, as the Imperial retinue began their descent into the pit. "It's actually talking!")

"Estimates for the required batch of flesh-porcelain are complete," the Thinking Engine intoned. Its voice didn't sound like a singular voice at all, but that of dozens of people speaking at once in the same emotionless drone. "The ones concerning the replacement of the eastern border facility are well underway, likely to be finished within the hour."

"Excellent. And has there been any news from the squadrons of Vigilant Eyes dispatched to the border?"

"They reported in perhaps five hours ago, Empress. As intel suggested, groups of Irredeemables were encountered across the border at varying points: two squadrons were successful in eliminating their respective bands of Irredeemables before they could escape; the majority of the squadrons only managed to score perhaps five or six confirmed kills before their targets escaped over the border. The group responsible for the attack on the railway building escaped before the Eyes could locate them. Overall, we have a total of eighty-seven enemy casualties."

"As opposed to the three hundred and fifteen personnel lost in the attack on the military base. We'll have to even the score a little... In the meantime, I have good news for you, Paragon: you may have another friend soon."

The serene hum of Paragon's background noise fluttered a little. "Is this truly necessary, Empress?" it asked, a slight hint of uncertainty in its voice.

"Very necessary. There's a purity to her mind I wish to see preserved before it can be corrupted by enemy agents, and believe you are just the gestalt to keep her safe from the enemy's deceptions... and she may have secrets that only you can unveil – the kind of secrets only a mystery in the guise of my dearest friend would possess."

"Are there no alternate methods?"

"None that will ensure both her survival and that of her innocence; you don't really want to be without a new friend do you?"

There was an anxious-sounding whirr from the surrounding walls, and Paragon reluctantly answered "No."

"Good. Then we can schedule her incorporation for nine o'clock in the morning. Now, in the meantime, we have the matter of retaliatory strikes to consider: I feel we should avoid attacks on the border altogether this time and take advantage of the latest developments in teleportation. Tell me, exactly how far above Greenspectre do the magical defences extend? Oh, and do shut the door, Paragon; I'd rather not have to include every single member of staff in this discussion..."

The door obediently clanged shut, dampening any further attempts at listening in. For almost a full minute, the two eavesdroppers remained perfectly silent; Glinda still puzzling over everything she'd seen and heard, Omber shivering in mingled fear and exhilaration.

"What now?" Glinda whispered at last.

Omber swallowed hard. "Now," s/he mumbled, "I think I'd like to get out of here and try to put everything we just heard to good use. I know a few people – well, I know of a few people – who'd be able to get us out of the country in exchange for that information."

"Like who? Last I looked, we weren't exactly swimming in allies, and that's assumiating we can even get out of this maze. And how would we find them? Actually, let's get back to the first point – who could we sell it to?"

"Oh, the Deviant Nations for a start; I don't think they know much about Paragon or where it's kept. They'd be happy to help us in exchange for that. Plus we've got a nugget or two of tactical information to sweeten the pot – so long as we can find one of their agents in time."

Glinda made a face. Even without every other bit of gossip from the train ringing in her ears, she still didn't think much of the Deviant Nations: after all, it was their soldiers who'd attacked and (hopefully) captured Elphaba. And besides, even if the rumours and propaganda were accurate and the Deviant Nations really did have agents in Exemplar, how the hell would they find them and how the hell would they get the out of the country. "Any other ideas?"

"Well, there's other countries who have it in for Unbridled Radiance; Nobruvo had allies, of course. And there's plenty of independent organizations who'd be willing to pay: the Watchful Eyes society, Dark & Stormy Nights Inc, the Sorcerer's Ironmongery, the Mistress of Mirrors, the Amorphous L-" S/he stopped, the frown returning to his/her face with a vengeance. "Well, we'd still have to find their agents first."

"Let's just focus on getting out of here," Glinda sighed. She straightened, ironing out a crick in her neck as she went. "Come on, let's pick one of these doors and get going."

Omber nodded, reluctantly tearing his/her eyes away from the machinery at work on the walls of the shaft; as one, the two of them made a beeline for the nearest doorway to their immediate left. But they'd barely gone ten feet when a strident voice from behind them barked, "You there! Halt!"

Instantly, they halted; for a tenth of second, Glinda considered ignoring all orders and just running for her life, but almost as quickly thought better of it. After all, the owner of the voice might just be armed, and she wasn't all that enthused about dying from a gunshot wound to the back, especially scant hours after she'd managed to narrowly escape death on the operating table. Very slowly, she and Omber turned to face the source of the voice: as it turned out, it was a pair of irritable-looking guards with rifles at the ready. "What are you two doing there?" one of them growled. "This is a restricted area."

Under the mask, Omber's jaw flapped helplessly for a moment or two, a deer-in-the-headlights look written clearly in wide, terrified eyes. And with a thrill of despair, Glinda realized she'd witnessed this before during her own vivisection, when Marsh had had to prompt his new "assistant" through the process; once again s/he'd been caught off guard, and this time, Omber didn't have an excuse ready. Worse still, they weren't dealing with one preoccupied surgeon, but two armed guards who might just declare them spies and shoot them dead on the spot. And they were getting angrier even as Omber was getting more flustered, and their fingers were slowly creeping over the triggers and...

And suddenly, Glinda found herself stepping forward and saying, "Thank goodness you're here, officers! We've gotten completely lost!" Without even realizing it, she'd adopted the same irrepressibly bubbly tone of voice that everyone who'd ever met her tended to remembered her by – that cheerful, giggling trill that, in hindsight, had probably made her sound a bit dim.

"How did you get in?"

"The door was unlocked, sir; we were in a hurry and we needed to take a shortcut."

There was another heart-stopping pause, as one of the other guards checked the locks on the door they'd emerged from. "Broken," he said at last. "We're going to need a repairman down here."

"Dammit. Alright then, where exactly are you two going?" the first guard asked; he wasn't snarling anymore, but there was still a dangerously no-nonsense edge to his voice.

"Um..." What had Omber said? Oh yes! "The Clarion Road exit," she answered.

"In hospital scrubs and masks? You know damn well you're not supposed to leave the job in uniform, nurse."

Glinda's mind raced. "We're, um, not leaving exactly: our shift's not over yet." She did her best to sound sheepish, amping up the childishness ever-so-slightly – though Glinda had to admit that she sounded worryingly like she was about to apologize for getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "But we were told to meet someone there for, um, a special assignment in about fifteen minutes. One of the doctors said it was really important, said we'd be out of a job if we didn't show up." Puppy-dog eyes now, with just a hint of "oh god, I hate my boss" in her tone.

"Really? Who?"

"Dr Marsh," Glinda lied smoothly. After all, the bastard was dead, so it wasn't likely he'd be able to refute the statement.

The guard thought for a minute. "Hmm. I'll let you off with a warning this time," he said at last. "But I warn you: if we catch you two wandering around here again without special authorization, you'll be spending the rest of your day in the cellblock; and don't think you're invisible either – the door you walked through was on a silent alarm, and this chamber's under watch at all times. Is that understood?"

"Absolutely," said Glinda, adding a note of pathetic gratitude to her voice.

"Good. Now, the Clarion Road exit's to the east of here – that doorway over there. It's a walk of about half an hour or so; don't take any of the paths that fork to the left, and keep on doing that until you see the signs pointing you the rest of the way. Got that? Good. Now be on your way."

"Thank you, sir," Glinda simpered. She elbowed Omber in the ribs, and s/he hesitantly followed suit. Then, they turned and all but ran in the direction that the guard had indicated. For a few minutes, the two of them were silent except for the thudding of their shoes – first against granite and then against tiles as they jogged out of the rotunda and back into the labyrinth of corridors. Eventually, as they rejoined the trickle of traffic along the path, they slowed to what hopefully looked like a leisurely stroll to any of the other employees drifting along the corridor and finally breathed easily.

"Nicely done," Omber whispered, in a voice just low enough to avoid the hearing of any eavesdroppers. "But let's not do that again in a hurry; I don't think I could stand two heart attacks in as many minutes."

"Minutes? I seem to be managing one just about every other second, these days." Of course, given the way this stab-wound in my gut feels right now, a heart-attack's probably the least of my worries.

"You certainly didn't show it back there. You're a very effective liar."

Glinda cringed. "It's... it's what I do for a living," she admitted sheepishly.

"Really? What line of work were you in before you were captured? I can see you as an actress – don't take this the wrong way, but you've certainly got the looks for the part. Or were you in one of the more intensive fields, like media or politics?"

Of course you want to know, Glinda thought exasperatedly. Because I went out of my way to ask so many questions about the mysterious Mr/Ms Landless, now s/he wants to know about my past. And we're starting on the stuff I'm not particularly proud of. Wonderful. Out loud, she replied, "Politics. Well, I wasn't a politician exactly, but I did represent the government of Oz; specifically the Wizard – the ruler of the country."

"Oh, so it's a magocracy, then?"

"I'm sorry?"

"A magocracy – a government controlled by a magician or a group of magicians. Unbridled Radiance is a good example; apparently one or two of the Deviant Nations are like that, but they're apparently a bit more open to changes in leadership. So, is the Wizard anything like that?"

"Um, no. Technically, the Wizard doesn't really have any magical power of his own; he's just very good at convincing people that he does. For the most part, he just fakes magic with machines and special effects – except of course when he actually needs to get something done and not just pretend it happened, and he usually gets around that by hiring magicians to do the work for him. Then he takes all the credit for himself. And because the Wizard keeps them well-paid and happy, none of them ever complain." She wanted to stop there and leave her secrets unsaid, but something at the back of her mind very quietly gave way, and suddenly she found herself continuing: "Of course, one of them complained – not about the pay, she wasn't anywhere near that petty – and quit before the Wizard could even properly hire her and started a rebellion against the Wizard in the name of Animal Rights and no it wasn't me because let's face it I'm honestly not that talented and I didn't realize that the only reason Morrible and the Wizard kept me around was because they needed a pretty face to explain things to the public and if they ever found a good enough reason to fire me they'd fling me out the door without a second glance because Elphaba was supposed to be their golden girl and when she rebelled they got stuck with less-than-second-best because they were running low on trained witches and I was the only one slightly qualified." She took a deep breath, and realized that Omber was staring at her. "Or maybe," she finished weakly, "I was just the only one who didn't have the guts to say no."

"... I take it you've been waiting to get that off your chest for quite a while now," said Omber.

"You have no idea."

"But you used present tense – does that mean the Wizard's still in power?"

"He was the last time I looked."

"So, he's collaborating with the Empress, then? I mean, it wouldn't be the first time I saw a head of state kowtow to Unbridled Radiance just to stay in power, but it's still –"

"No, no, no, Unbridled Radiance hasn't invaded Oz at all. As a matter of fact, I hadn't even heard of it before I got here."

Omber's eyes narrowed. "So, if you weren't transported from occupied territory, how did you get into the country – or even onto the train? And more importantly, if you're not a political prisoner or an enemy operative, then why is the Empress so interested in you?"

Glinda opened her mouth to reply, and quickly realized she didn't have a reply to this. After all, putting into words the fact that she'd been accidentally dragged through a portal into a world where her best friend was actually a megalomaniacal dictator who'd ended their last meeting by stabbing her through the belly with a dagger of ice was a bit beyond her ability to communicate at this point.

And it was that moment that, just as she realized that she couldn't guess at Omber's reaction to the truth, the ear-splitting wail of an alarm bell tore through the air (and Glinda's eardrums); a moment later, the dull, officious voice on the other end of the facility's public address system intoned "THIS IS A PRIORITY 1 ALERT: TWO PRISONERS ARE ON THE LOSE IN THE FACILITY, LIKELY DIGUISED. THE PRISONERS' DESCRIPTIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS: ONE FEMALE, BLONDE..."

"Don't run," Omber hissed. "Stay calm; they don't know it's us just yet. Keep your eyes to the floor, walk slowly, and just act casual."

Behind them, a distant voice roared, "HEY! YOU TWO – STOP RIGHT THERE!"

"Forget everything I just said. RUN!"

Glinda didn't need to be told twice: unencumbered by high-heels and hallway-blocking skirts for the first time in years, she put her head down and sprinted away; in that moment, she was completely oblivious to anything other than the forks in the path she'd been warned about, the blurring presence of Omber to her right, and the distant sound of jackbooted feet thudding after them.

---

"Where the hell are we?"

"Does it matter? They're not following us anymore."

"Well, that's probably because we're nowhere near the Clarion Road exit, Glinda; this is a completely different region of the Sepulchre!"

Mopping sweat from her forehead and trying to ignore the stinging pain in her midriff, Glinda wearily surveyed the scene: as far as she could tell, the corridor that they'd arrived in was almost identical to the last twelve they'd hurried down, which was probably the exact reason why they'd ended up accidentally taking a wrong turn. Or at least, she had to presume that they'd taken a wrong turn, because the signs that the guard mentioned had been nowhere in sight. At the moment, other than the next few hundred feet of corridor, the only other way out was the enormous wooden door to their left – a door that was surprisingly unlocked. Omber made a point of noting that s/he didn't know what was behind it.

"Is there any reason why we shouldn't check to see what's behind it?" Glinda asked, once she'd gotten her breath back. "I mean, even if we do find the exit, they'll still be chasing us and the corridors are full of guards. Why don't we hide in there?"

"For all we know, that's the Sepulchre's armoury, or worse still, the barracks."

"But what if it isn't?"

"Well, I hate to burst your bubble over this, Glinda, but they're going to be searching this place for us and we don't know if this place can work as a hiding place. For all we know, it's an empty room with nothing that we can actually hide behind, under or in. And..."

Somewhere in the distance, there was the loud thud of a door being battered down; much closer, the familiar echoing thud of boots on tiles could be heard.

"... And we're kind of starved for choice," Glinda finished. "We either hide in here or take our chances with the next corridor."

Omber sighed. "And if there's no unlocked rooms or no rooms at all on that one, we take our chances with the one after that, until we're both exhausted and arrested. Fair enough. Here goes nothing..."

As it turned out, the door led to the junk-cluttered base of a freezing concrete stairwell leading up – up, out of the Sepulchre and hopefully towards the street. Without even bothering to ask each other if this might be an exit, the two of them took a moment to lock the door and jam it closed with an old chair, then charged up the steps as fast as their legs could carry them; and when they started to run short of breath and their pace almost ground to a halt, they took hold of the railing and hauled themselves bodily up the remaining eight flights. There was only one other door in the entire stairwell, and that only came into view on the last leg of the climb; hiking onto the landing, they wearily shouldered the door open and staggered into the dim light of another corridor. On the upside, this one had carpets and polished wood panelling in place of tiles and drainage gates (though the inevitable doors leading to storerooms and supply cupboards were still about; sadly, Omber rejected them as being "too obvious" hiding places).

But it wasn't until they'd crept around the corridor and into the light that they finally saw the glass display cabinet almost overflowing with polished trophies: this was a school.

"Exemplar University," Omber whispered. "So the rumours were true."

"Do you think there's anyone around?"

"Of course; even universities have security guards and janitors. And it's been years since I attended, but I think they'll still have a few night classes on at this hour."

"Shouldn't we get out of here, then? I mean, if we've got both the Sepulchre's guards and the university guards after us –"

"It all depends on where we hide. The night classes will all be mage-surgeons in training; the guards aren't allowed to interfere with their seminars unless someone's died. Unless one of the students or teachers died," s/he amended.

An idea struck Glinda. "Do the janitors have a locker-room somewhere on the campus?" she asked. "Would they have uniforms in storage?"

"Possibly. Is it really important?"

"Well, back in Oz, some janitors were required to wear masks and goggles while handling certain cleaning chemicalities. Is it the same thing here?"

Omber's eyes lit up. "Yes," s/he said. "It's probably not far from here. Hopefully, the guards won't think to update their search from a pair of nurses to a pair of cleaners. We'll just have to chance it."

"Wonderful! Let's go –"

"Hang on," Omber hissed. "I think it might be a good idea if you stayed behind for this one."

"What? Why?"

"Because it's very difficult for two people to be perfectly stealthy; if we go crashing about the corridors, both trying to stay hidden at once, we're going to get caught. Plus, I know the place better than you. If you can just stay in hiding for the moment, I should be able to get into the locker room from here and steal some uniforms for both of us."

"And where am I supposed to hide?"

By way of an answer, Omber tried the nearest door; much to their mutual surprise, it turned out to be unlocked and swung open quite easily.

"In there," s/he answered, glancing inside. "It looks like a lecture hall to me; there's plenty of hiding places about. All you need to do is stay still and stay quiet."

"But what are we supposed to do if they find me... and what are you supposed to do if it turns out that they knew we'd look for a change in disguises? What will you do if the locker-room's a trap, or if they've started conducting random inspections for anyone wearing a mask or hats or whatever?"

Omber's lips pursed, apparently his/her signature way of saying "good point." But just as s/he was about to reply, there was the familiar squeal of a swinging door opening, followed by the sound of dozens of people talking as quietly as possible. Without saying another word, Omber darted forward and bodily shoved Glinda through the open door, shutting it as quietly as possible. "I'll be back in a minute," s/he whispered, almost as an afterthought. "Keep out of sight."

As the engineer's footsteps vanished into the distance, Glinda fumingly surveyed the room she'd been deposited in. Just as Omber had said, it was a lecture hall; in sharp contrast to the weird and otherworldly sights that she'd been witness to that day, this place looked almost identical to the halls she'd seen back at Shiz: arranged in an amphitheatre, centred around a blackboard, ringed with hard wooden seats and flimsy built-in desks (each one complete with a wad of old gum, no doubt). There were even supply cupboards dotted around the room in the event of an equipment failure. True, it looked substantially larger than the lecture halls she'd deigned to attend at university, but other than that it was almost completely identical.

With so much familiarity around her, it wasn't until she took a good look at the centre of the room that she realized that something was ever-so-slightly wrong: here, the seats ended with a guardrail and a thick shatterproof glass barrier; it was clear enough to see what was going on behind it, and the presence of doors behind the stage and set in the glass (locked), but what was being studied in this hall that needed this kind of protection? More disturbingly, this part of the room wasn't carpeted, but tiled just like the halls of the sepulchre; most of the blackboard was now covered with large charts depicting either cross-sections of human anatomy or surgical procedures that made Glinda's badly-abused stomach lurch; and finally, the traditional lectern had been replaced by what she at first mistook for a dentist's chair, up until she realized that no dentist that she'd ever visited had needed leather restraints on the armrests, or the fearsome-looking array of machines looming over the chair from above.

Just as Glinda was starting to wonder if this place was really such a safe place to hide, she heard the sound of whispered conversation once again, but much closer this time – not only was it getting steadily closer, but it was clearly heading straight towards the lecture hall. Remembering what Omber had said about night-time classes, Glinda hastily surveyed the room for possible hiding places; after twelve frantic seconds of ruling out "behind the door" or "under the chairs," she finally settled on the nearest supply cupboard at the back of the room. Scurrying over, she flung the door open to find (alongside the small column of shelves cluttered with medical equipment) an alcove for spare surgical gowns just large enough for Glinda to hide in. So, ducking her head and thanking all her lucky stars for the latest diet, she sidled into the cupboard and carefully shut the door behind her.

Then, the students streamed in by the hundreds. Opening the cupboard door the tiniest crack to observe them, Glinda couldn't quite stop herself focussing on the similarities between the crowd and her university friends: by and large, the Exemplar U kids weren't much different from the Shiz U kids – the uniforms were black and red instead of blue and white, and the student were much more obsessively-groomed (and a few of the men seemed to be wearing makeup for some reason) but other than that they weren't so different. Why the hell am I analysifying this? She wondered to herself. I'm already scared, worried, jittery from all the excitement, and in danger of tearing the hole in my stomach open again. The last thing I need is to add disillusionment with my university days to the list of problems.

By now, the lecturer had arrived, and was now clearing her throat for attention; to Glinda's surprise, the goings-on in the centre of the room were projected onto vast screens around the room, allowing even the most distant of spectators a clear view of what was happening – including Glinda. As such, she could see that the lecturer was clearly one of the Purified, as was the man who'd accompanied her in; and both of them were wearing surgical gowns.

"Good evening, ladies and gentleman," the lecturer trilled, an almost-friendly smile gracing her heart-shaped face and full lips. "Before we begin, I'd like to thank Professor Dreyditch for inviting me and Dr Rance for this most important demonstration, and I would like to thank all of you for attending at this late hour. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Dr Visseria Cataphlax; I specialise in the physical component of Purification, and I work either in the Ascendency Temples or in more classified areas, but today, I've been requested to provide your first practical demonstration of the procedure in question. The man with me is Dr Raynald Rance, an expert on the mental components of Purification – an altogether more intricate aspect, as you'll soon discover. And our patient for tonight's lecture..."

The door behind her swung open, and a gurney was wheeled in by a pair of orderlies: strapped to the gurney by the legs, arms, waist and head, a man flailed pointlessly against his bonds and screamed for help. Completely naked, he was pale as a sheet and bleeding from shallow cuts on his wrists and ankles, presumably from his attempts to escape the restraints. But it wasn't until the camera projected the captive's pallid face onto the nearest screen that Glinda realized with horror that she'd seen this man before: it was Walter, the man who'd been rescued from the guards at the train station – just before his rescuers had been charred to a crisp by the Vigilant Eyes and he'd been recaptured.

"...And sent back to us as one of those... things!" she'd heard the rescue party shout. "You might as well kill him right now!"

Back in the present, Walter's restraints were very carefully undone, and with his arms clenched in the vicelike grip of the orderlies, he was forcibly seated in the chair and belted into place once again. And all the while, the man was screaming at the top of his voice, either begging for the mage-surgeons to have mercy on him, or just begging the audience to save him – up until Cataphlax drew a syringe from the nearest tray of instruments and injected it into his neck. It didn't silence Walter altogether, but it did cut down on most of his attempts to escape or call for help: indeed, as the injection took effect, it was pretty clear that he was barely able to turn his head, and when he spoke, it wasn't much louder than a hoarse whisper.

Then the chair began to change shape, flattening out into an operating table that left Walter lying helplessly under the brilliant glare of the overhead light. The screens took a bird's-eye view of him then, splayed out across the newly-formed table and looking half-dead already, even as he waited for the mage-surgeons to start cutting him up. Glinda absently wondered if she would have looked like that when she was still unconscious and awaiting vivisection, and shuddered in revulsion and pity.

"Our patient for tonight," Cataphlax continued, "Is Mr Walter Luddestone of newly-annexed Galathos. Having distinguished himself in both accounting and administration in one of the city's most prominent banking groups, he was selected for promotion and transferral to the centre for economic management here in Exemplar. However, when it became clear that this would entail Purification, he went so far as to hire the services of a known mercenary band and set off a bomb in his apartment in an attempt to fake his death. As you can see, he was unsuccessful, and given that he is the most recent arrival of the scheduled candidates, we were able to secure him for tonight's demonstration.

"So, to begin: you have been told in the past that Purification is a necessary operation to provide those pure of spirit but impure of body with the bodies they have been denied. This is true, except for one element: this is more than just an operation; this is an art. We are not simply cleaning a wound or amputating an infected limb; nor are we mass-producing the elite guardsmen's armour-plating, content to build one-size-fits-all skins for the dozens of intakes inducted every month. We are crafting better bodies for the Empress's chosen; we are sculpting new forms out of living clay, utilizing magic, technology, and fusions of both; we are utilizing a wide variety of data, from the patient's own health records to the shapes and themes of classical art. We may call this man here a patient, but in truth, he will be the latest in a long line of men and women who, with our help, have transcended imperfection and unrighteousness to join the Empress in the purity she has attained."

In the silence that followed, Walter slurred, "Please, don't do this. Please..."

"Drugs are a necessity in the early stages of the operation," the mage-surgeon continued, ignoring her captive's pleas. "Quite apart from the need to concentrate on the task at hand and eliminate all sources of noise, it is imperative that the patient remain still as possible. In the past, many who were not sedated tended to die of shock, or simply ruined the procedure through constant struggling. Of course, it is also necessary to ensure that the patient does not lose consciousness either, hence the spells of wakefulness in effect. Pain is also required for this transformation, so anaesthesia will not be provided."

"You don't have to do this... you don't have to do this... please... I'm not that important... I'm just an accountant. Just a bean-counter..."

"It is an unfortunate aspect of Purification that sometimes, the patient will not wish to cooperate; perhaps he harbours Deviant tendencies, perhaps he has been misled into believing that the procedure is a death-sentence, or perhaps he simply fears the pain or the dangers involved. The latter is understandable – after all, Purification carries with it the risk of death – but it is our duty as servants of the Empress, as preachers of beauty, to both grant the deserving forms more suited to their souls and to teach them the glory of perfection. So, occasionally we must be prepared to guide the fearful among the worthy to their rightful place in the world, by force if necessary."

"Please, someone... my family... some of them are still alive... please at least let me say goodbye..."

The mage-surgeons ignored him. If the students were at all bothered by Walter's sobbing, they certainly didn't show it. Indeed, many of them actually seemed disinterested – even bored. Glinda even heard a boy sitting not too far away from her hiding place mutter, "No surprise he had to be Purified, the ugly little shit," which made little sense to her: true, Walter had the plump, well-fed face of man who enjoyed his desk job a little too much, along with a paunch, a hooked nose and explosively curly hair, but calling him ugly was a bit much. Glinda had seen people like him throughout her life, and while they never would have won any beauty contests that she knew of, they weren't exactly offensive or anything like that.

"Now," Cataphlax said briskly. "I'm sure that you're all familiar with basic spells of telekinetic movement and levitation; these are necessary to expose as much of the patient's skin as possible for the first stage of the procedure." She murmured an incantation, and instantly, Walter began to float upwards, stopping perhaps two feet above the cushions, arms almost bending backwards from the restraints that kept them belted to the chair. He was crying very softly now, still asking if he could be allowed to say goodbye to his mother before things got any worse, pleading that he didn't want her to see him like-

"Next," the lecturer interrupted, "we have the first and likely the most dangerous aspect of Purification. As some of you may know, the human skin is all too easy to damage and Distortion, with even the most healthy practises leaving it open to the effects of aging: the sagging and wrinkling, the accumulation of liver spots, and other regrettable corruptions. Alas, attempts at preserving its youth and beauty have been mixed successes, even with magic: some processes only last a comparatively short period of time and require constant renewal - an unsuitable aspect to what should be a simple and elegant metamorphosis; other techniques have side-effects that make them unsuitable for this kind of work, ranging from insanity to outright Distortions of the body. There were even a rare few who succeeded in granting what they thought would be a state of eternal youth; unfortunately for them, it resulted in what I can only describe as Oscillating Age Syndrome. As some of you may know, the Childlike Researchers are still with us, but generally only appear in public on a day when they've stabilized at eleven years of age or older - at least since the accident."

Somewhere in the audience, a few people chuckled.

"I'm still blaming you for that, Miss Hatterton."

Raucous laughter followed.

"And then," Cataphlax continued, her voice abruptly turning solemn (or some semblance thereof), "there were those few Researchers who ultimately turned to Deviancy, those who parlayed their skills into forming the Amorphous League and its hedonist following! Those men and women who cast aside the beauty of stability and order for the decadent pleasure that only chaos could offer them; yes, their techniques were revolutionary... but ultimately, they sacrificed too much in the name of their selfish desires, and we would have sacrificed much more had we used their method of preserving beauty.

Now, the only true success in rendering the skin completely immune to aging, Distortion and injury was, of course, none other than our beloved Empress – a technique that we have not been able to replicate, sadly. So, the only viable solution is to replace the skin with a substance that does not respond to these vagaries: flesh-porcelain. Light, durable, malleable enough to substitute skin, and much more pleasing to the eye, it has been the skin of the Purified from the moment of its first synthesis. It is the skin I was privileged to assume when I was elevated from novice mage-surgeon to full graduate, and it is the skin you will wear when you finally join me in the Empress's service."

Glinda very slowly digested this, finding herself more and more incredulous with every passing moment. Did I just hear what I thought I heard? Are they going to tear his skin off right in the middle of this lecture hall? No, no, there is absolutely no way that this is going to happen. They can't be that insane, and he can't be that unlucky. Her optimism rallied, and she thought, I mean, someone's going to rescue him, right? This'll be just like that time when Elphaba rescued the Lion Cub – someone's going to protest this, put a hex on the class and get Walter out before anyone can recover.

Right?

"Of course, the difficulties of ensuring the patient's survival once the removal of the skin is complete are many... as we shall see." Her smile widened. "And now, a practical demonstration..."

She crossed to Walter's side, removing her gloves as she went: her hands were very delicate, almost childlike in dimension – as the screens made clear – with tiny, rounded nails. Slowly, gently, almost tenderly, she placed both hands on the "patient's" chest, as if this was no more than a rather bizarre method of checking his heartbeat; then, Glinda saw the mage-surgeon's hands sink below Walter's flesh, permeating the skin as if it were no more solid than water. Then, with a spark of magic, she drew her hands away in one smooth flourish – as if she were conjurer whisking a tablecloth off a table.

Except what she'd just whisked away wasn't a tablecloth at all, but...

Glinda's stomach lurched sickeningly, and she only narrowly stopped herself from vomiting; she wanted to look away, but the sight in the distance and on the screens had all but glued her eyes to the spectacle, and even if she could have closed the door or shut her eyes she'd never be able to blot out the horrific sight of Cataphlax holding Walter's flayed skin in her hands like an empty wetsuit, or the human-shaped mass of gore that now writhed and screamed on the operating table... or the wild applause from the students, and the fact that many of them were still happily chewing their way through bags of sweets and buckets of popcorn.

What is wrong with you people? She screamed silently, momentarily too angry to be horrified. Why the hell are you cheering for these lunatics, and why has the fact that a man has just had his skin ripped off not registered with you? Why hasn't someone protested? Why isn't someone – anyone - trying to save him?!

Pausing only to dispose of the empty skin, the mage-surgeons then went about ensuring that their "patient" survived this stage of the procedure, hurriedly explaining things as they went: the machines above the table hummed to life, surrounding Walter with antibiotic fields to prevent lethal infections, monitoring his vital signs and maintaining the temperature at a level that would keep the incoming modifications stable until they were finished; the magicians themselves cast spells to stop the skinless victim from bleeding to death, to slow his heartbeat and (again) ensure that he remained conscious.

"Now," Cataphlax announced, once the preparations were complete, "It's at this stage that we actually modify the features: by now, you will have been acquainted with the normal range of techniques we would use in these circumstances – either mundane or magical in nature, so this doesn't require too much explanation. The cheekbones need to be lifted, the nose needs to be modified towards a more acceptable shape, the legs need to be straightened, and the fat needs to be trimmed, all before we apply the new skin. We also need to provide the injections of the alchemical fluid that will preserve the body across the decades to come, though in some cases this will also require us to replace defective organs and strengthen weak muscles to avoid prolonging the existence of negative traits. Because this is by far the easiest aspect of the physical alteration, I'll hand over the lecture to Dr Rance for a much more labour-intensive aspect of the process."

So, to a standing ovation, Rance took the stage. "It is not enough merely to purge the body of all ugliness," he began solemnly. "We must also purge the mind of all that might lead it back into ugliness: neurosurgery is one such method we use, surgically removing aberrant sections of the brain if the patient has shown signs of Deviant behaviour and replacing them with more elegant substitutes. In cases where Deviancy is not evident, much more subtle methods can be used... though it will still require us to open the skull."

Ignoring Walter's agonized whimpering, the mage-surgeon doffed his gloves in much the same way as Cataphlax had and crossed to the patient's front; he gently ran a long finger along the crown of Walter's head, leaving a thin incision in both the muscles and the bone beneath. Then, whispering incantations and gesturing very subtly, Rance magically prised off the tip of his skull, exposing the brain.

Glinda swallowed hard, once again doing everything she could to keep her gorge down. Once again, she wanted to look away, but she couldn't; she was still all but hypnotized by the monstrosity unfolding in front of her.

"For this," Rance continued, "We will require an especially delicate method." He reached into the bank of machinery looming above the table, and drew what looked like a miniature eggbeater attached to the end of a long hosepipe. "This is a very special piece of technology, incorporating both ingenious mechanisms and arcane sorcery - both subtle and powerful: it is designed specifically for the purpose of thaumaturgically traumatizing sections of the brain concerned with negative emotion, and then draining any remaining neuronal activity associated with these emotions into the machine. We will still have to make physical alterations, but this obviates the need for surgery to replace the emotional centres."

He flicked a switch, and the "eggbeater" began to rotate, emitting an ominous purple light as Rance directed it at key section's of Walter's brain; slowly, the terrified whimpers that he'd been uttering for the last minute or so ground to a halt. He was still making noises, but now they were of confusion and pain rather than fear. "Thus," Rance explained, "We modify this initiate's personality traits, removing fear, anger, sorrow, indolence and greed, destroying all potential for Deviancy, and allowing what once was flawed and weak to kneel before the Empress as a new man, reborn into perfection."

A student in the first row put her hand up and asked, "Sir, is there a name for the technique that we're utilizing at the moment?"

Rance chuckled. "We've yet to provide a proper scientific title to it, I'm afraid. Although I am reliably informed that the Empress herself has bestowed upon it a nickname: she calls it 'personality dialysis.'"

As the uproarious laughter of the students rippled out across the lecture hall, Glinda very quietly shut the cupboard door, took a deep breath and threw up.

For the next five minutes, she remained slumped against the inner wall of the supply cupboard, shivering, barely holding back tears and trying to forget everything she'd just seen and heard. But there was no cleansing this nightmare from her brain: even the techniques that were currently on display probably wouldn't do much to help her drive this incident out of her mind. It wasn't just the blood, the gore, the torment and the inhumanity that was now crushing down on her: it was that one innocent phrase – the words she'd spoken almost as joke to Elphaba back at Shiz, now used as the centrepiece of this insane ritual. It was sick, it was cruel, it cast a pall upon every happy memory from her time at university... and, worst of all, it was a worrying sign that Glinda had been an influence on this demented country – however small.

But what if her other guess was correct? What if this really was hell? Perhaps the joke was meant as a cheeky jab at how callow she'd been when she'd first said those words. Or perhaps it was an attack on how superficial she'd been in those days (Don't delude yourself, Glinda, she thought bitterly; you're still just as shallow as you were back then). Maybe this society and its insane culture of beauty was just a twisted parody of the beliefs she'd so happily followed in her younger days: of the importance of beauty and fashion, of how the unattractive were beneath notice, and how the ugly deserved every bit of cruelty bestowed upon them. True, she'd never sunk as low as some of her friends had in their acts of bullying; the young Galinda simply hadn't the brains to outwit the school pariahs, let alone bully them. But she'd done more than her fair share of mocking, teasing, excluding, and slandering, and hadn't thought it wrong or even upsetting. She'd even lied for the bullies among her clique when they'd been caught by the teachers...

And maybe that was yet another aspect of her damnation on display here: perhaps this grisly performance was an indictment of her unwillingness to act, even if it would save a life. Back at Shiz, when the lion cub had been tortured and tormented in class, she'd done nothing to stop it, even though she'd disagreed with the treatment and secretly praised Elphaba for rescuing the cub; when the Wizard's frauds and violations of Animal Rights had been revealed, she'd done next to nothing about it – in fact, when Elphaba had rebelled, Glinda's first coherent act had been to chastise her for it; when Morrible and the Wizard schemed to draw Elphaba out of hiding, Glinda did nothing to stop them. Worse, she helped them use Nessarose as bait. And when Fiyero had been captured...

Glinda put her head in her hands. It all made sense: she'd been unable to save Elphaba from the Irredeemables; she'd been unable to save the interrogation victim; and she'd been unable to save Walter. Quite simply, the opportunities for her to save anyone had ended a long time ago; this was some higher power's way of telling her that if she wasn't interested in saving a life, she'd never get the chance again. This afterlife would be spent wandering from atrocity to atrocity, untouched by the horrors all around her but unable to do anything about them - even as every other soul she met suffered and died.

And it would continue for all eternity.

She shook her head, trying to convince herself that she didn't know the truth just yet, that there might be a reasonable explanation. But it didn't work.

Outside, Walter had started to laugh. Rance had now exchanged the eggbeater for a small metal probe and was slowly inserting it deep into the patient's brain. This, he explained, was to correct the indignity of the common human pain-response: while adequate as a form of warning against damage, this configuration was inelegant and often pointless in execution, too subjective to judge the level of danger, sometimes even acting as a barrier to what a human being could achieve; so, the probe would be used to reduce pain to a simple objective warning and heighten the pleasure response to the bliss that only the Purified deserved.

Water giggled idiotically. "Don't stop," he chortled, drool splashing over his skinless lips. "Don't stop, don't stop, keep going, keep going keeeeeeeep-"

He was moaning now – and most assuredly not in pain.

In that moment, Glinda wanted to open the door and run, out of this lecture theatre and away from this horrorshow unfolding before her. But she knew that this would mean instant capture and eventual execution – not just for her, but probably for Omber as well. The most she could do was surreptitiously reach into one of the shelves for some cotton buds to block her ears with, cover both the vomit and the hard floor with as many surgical gowns as she could gather, and settle down on top of the makeshift bed in the hope that she might just be able to sleep through this nightmare.

---

The call finally arrives at nine o'clock, on a rainy evening eight days after the operation had been completed.

"She's awake," is all it says. "We need you here now."

This is the moment Glinda's been simultaneously anticipating and dreading from the moment her friend had left the operating theatre - on a stretcher, her body carefully shrouded to prevent anyone from seeing the results of Morrible's work. From what the specialists have told her, the procedure had been a complete success; the only problems were that their handiwork needed time to stabilize, and Elphaba had been left comatose by the pain. Worse still, Glinda hasn't been allowed anywhere near her sleeping friend since then: the last time she tried, she was unceremoniously bundled out the door by overly-polite security guards, and told that she'd be informed the moment Elphaba regained consciousness.

So, with nothing to do other than release the occasional statement to the press, she's spent the next week sitting around her palace apartment and trying not to worry. Trying, and most notably failing. Out of a sheer desperate need to give herself something to do apart from project her anxieties at Fiyero and Nessarose, she's gone to the trouble of borrowing the Grimmerie from Morrible (along with the hateful press secretary's notes on it) ostensibly in the hope that she might be able to learn something in the meantime. Of course, it wasn't until she fetched a broom from the janitors that she realized what she was actually doing.

It's doubtful that Elphaba will ever use the broom even if Glinda ever manages to successfully enchant it; after all, the Wizard won't want her flying around on something associated with her old life. No, this is to give Elphie a touch of her old confidence back, something to patch up the damage done to her personality. As for wether it'll actually work...

By the time Glinda arrives at the prison, it's raining so heavily that she might as well be underwater; she half expects to see fish swimming through the air as she steps out of the coach and under the safety of her umbrella. But she doesn't: instead, she sees the figure of a woman standing on the roof of the hospital building, right at the edge – with no safety rail, no ledge, no barrier, nothing except air between her and a five-story drop. And even though she can't quite discern the features (or the colour of the skin), Glinda knows that there's only one person this can possibly be.

Hurtling indoors, she charges up the stairs as fast as humanly possible, barely listening to the explanations of the doctor presiding over this disaster as she grapples with the urge to punch him in the face. Apparently, Elphaba had regained consciousness a little over half an hour ago; because most of the guards had dismissed the comatose witch as a lost cause, it was relatively easy for her to sneak out of the ward and onto the roof, where she'd stayed for some time until someone had happened to look out the window. Nobody was certain if she meant to escape, to commit suicide, or even if she was sane enough to want anything out of this; she'd ignored all requests to come back inside, and most of the staff were too scared to try and retrieve her.

With no other ideas, they'd called Glinda.

So, still holding her umbrella and now armed with a tranquilizer dart gun, she tentatively scales the service gantry and climbs out onto the roof. The noise of her heels against the wet concrete must be clearly audible even over the din of the rain, but Elphaba doesn't look up at her approach; then again, she mightn't been able to see her through the blinding spotlights the orderlies have directed at her.

The first thing that Glinda realizes is that the treatment has worked: under the gleaming lights around her, the skin of the former Wicked Witch of the West is as pale and smooth as paper, every last drop of green pigment drained away by Morrible's incantations. The second thing that occurs to her is the precise reason why this was so obvious: Elphaba is stark naked.

Drenched from head to toe, almost blue from the cold, with slender arms reaching skywards and her face upturned towards the torrential rain, she stands deathly still; and she's muttering something over and over under her breath, something that can barely be heard over the storm. It's not until Glinda arrives within six feet of her that she understands the words of this mantra: "I hear she can shed her skin as easily as a snake, I hear she can shed her skin as easily as a snake, I hear she can shed her skin as easily as a snake..."

"Elphaba?" Glinda calls. "Are you alright?"

She slowly turns, revealing a face almost invisible beneath locks of dripping-wet hair. This in itself is something to behold, for Glinda has never seen Elphaba after showering or bathing, not even during their time at Shiz - understandable, given how they'd gone out of the way to avoid each other during those first few argumentative months. Elphie's glossy black hair was one of the few aspects of her appearance that could have been called attractive, especially when she could be persuaded to unbraid it; now soaked by the rain, it looks even more pleasing to the eye. Perhaps its just the enchantment of seeing her like this for the first time; perhaps its the tension and danger in the atmosphere; or maybe its just the way her hair cascades down the length of her body, just covering her breasts and-

Focus, you idiot! Glinda's brain screams at her. Furiously shaking herself out of her own reverie, she calls Elphaba's name again, and this time, she responds.

"Glinda," she murmurs; her voice is at peace, so calm it's almost unnerving in its serenity. "It's good to see you."

"Why are you out here in the rain?"

"Enjoying the weather; seeing if my skin reacts to wind and rain as it used do... and unless I'm wrong, I think I might just enjoying my first day of freedom." A frown appears on the barely-visible face, and there's suddenly a note of fear in her voice. "Do I look normal now? I can see my skin's no longer green, but I was too scared to look in mirror. Glinda, has anything gone wrong? Please, tell me..."

She looks up at last, a face emerging from beneath the veil of soaked hair: suddenly, Glinda's back at Shiz, marvelling at the makeover she's just bestowed upon Elphie; but this time, it's even more shocking, because instead of her somehow achieving something close to prettiness in spite of her green skin, it's now a case of her natural beauty finally seen unimpeded by the colouration – natural beauty that Glinda honestly hadn't seen before today. And for some reason, in that moment, she finds herself resisting the temptation to step back and admire Elphaba's new appearance in its entirety.

"Why, Miss Elphaba," she said, unable to keep the astonishment from her voice. "You're beautiful."

She draws a pocket mirror from her purse, allowing her friend to see her transformed features reflected for the first time.

For a whole minute, she stands there, looking at her face as if it belongs to a complete stranger; it could be just the rain, but Glinda swears she can see tears in Elphaba's eyes in that moment.

"What do you think?" Glinda asks, if only to break the silence. "How do you feel?"

Elphaba considers this for a moment. "Cleansed," she says at last. "I don't know if it's what they did to remove the colour or just being normal at last, but... I feel as though I've never been clean before today."

"Um, I think that might have something to do with you standing in the rain for the last few minutes, Elphie. Speaking of which, don't you think we should go indoors? You're going to catch cold if you stay out here like this."

Elphaba blinks. "Oh, right," she says, suddenly aware of her surroundings. She takes a very wide step back from the precipice, back under the safety of the umbrella – and Glinda fights a very powerful urge to hug her fiercely and demand that she never take risks like this ever again. But as she's led indoors, her friend beats her to it by turning around and embracing her tightly; Glinda returns it, for once not caring about her dress or the rainwater it's just been soaked with.

"Thanks for being here for me, Glinda," Elphie whispers. "And thank you for making sure I went through with it in the end; I almost forgot our promise, I was so scared... but you didn't."

"Oh, it was no problem." A touch of bashful modesty here; Glinda's still a little too shocked and awed by the evening's events to respond the way she really would under the circumstances - ie: hugging Elphaba back so tightly that she might just accidentally leave bruises on her pale, perfect skin, weeping tears of joy and relief all the way. "We're not just friends anymore," she continues brightly. "We're working together, now!" And it takes all of her hard-earned political reflexes not to punch the air and whoop in triumph as she says those words.

"Yes," Elphaba agrees, as she's ushered back into the warmth of the hospital, a nurse hastily draping a blanket over her shoulders. "We are indeed. And we have so much work to do..."

---

A/N: Who is Elphaba's "unmet friend?" Who released Omber from captivity? How will Glinda and her newfound ally escape from Unbridled Radiance? What has the Hellion in store for Fiyero and co? And what form will the retaliatory strike against the Deviant Nations take? Answers to these questions and much more - next chapter!