A/N: I'm sorry for the month-long wait, ladies and gents; last month was not kind to this story, especially when it came to finding time to write it around all the assessments and family events. Suffice to say, I'm just happy to have gotten this chapter up without any more fuss than was necessary; it's shortened a bit - partly because it was starting to feel ponderous and bloated, but mainly so I could stop the bigger events from bleeding into each other. With any luck, my next chapter will be here very soon, and I can only beg the indulgence of those who are desperate to see Glinda escape from Unbridled Radiance once and for all. In the meantime, please continue furnishing me with your wonderful reviews.
To Zelene2004, I'm going to have to remain silent as regards to the pairings in this story - it might give too much away. It might very well be a Gelphie (I can neither confirm nor deny), but the question is, will it be the protagonist version of the two who fall in love, or will it be their alternate selves? Please forgive me for drawing out the suspense.
Nami Swannn, I'm glad you found the chapter just as disturbing and nauseating as Glinda no doubt found it, and I'm also very grateful that you attribute it to my ability as a writer. Hopefully, you find this latest chapter up to standards in its ability to inspire fear, excitement and - above all - enjoyment.
And finally, to the latest Guest (though given that you were reviewing chapter 4, it might take a little while for you to reach this message), I'm glad you like the Hellion. As I've said before, I love writing descriptions, especially if they're of horrific creatures and mutant monstrosities. With any luck, I can continue to illustrate the revulsion and horror inherent in the other nightmarish inhabitants of this alternate reality - but as always, you'll have to be the judge.
Now, without further ado, the tenth chapter - the latest in a story that is now at 100000 words! Read, Review, and above all, Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked cannot be mine, and thus is not mine. Ipso facto.
Stifling an exhausted yawn, Elphaba found herself once again peering down at the results of the spell she'd just cast – as if there was something she'd missed on her last three glimpses.
Just as the note suggested, she'd waited until midnight to cast the provided spell, whiling away all the intervening hours with dinner, tentative conversation, and reading. In all honesty, this laborious process of wasting time had been easier than she'd expected; normally, with something so important waiting on the horizon, anxiety would have had her pacing the room like a caged animal and snapping at every passing sound – and perhaps the mystery of this world's origins would have made things even worse, keeping her too preoccupied to focus on anything other than her own maudlin musings. But that fleeting but glorious moment of finding the broomstick had driven most of her anxieties out of her head, allowing her to pass the hours before midnight almost pleasantly.
Of course, it helped that the apartment was equipped with almost everything that Elphaba had been unable to enjoy during her rebellion: after spending the last year or so being forced to sleep in whatever muddy ditch would hide her from patrolling guardsmen, the luxury of soft furnishings and warm beds very nearly drove her to sleep through the next few hours. And as for the en-suite, Elphaba very nearly spent an hour in the bath, soaking in the warm water and scrubbing away all the dirt and the grime that had accumulated since her last wash in the nearest convenient pond (and enjoying the benefits of actually having a proper lavatory with toilet paper instead of a hole in the ground and a handful of damp leaves). For good measure, there were clean clothes waiting for her in the wardrobe, all of them in her size and all of them black as night. The bookshelves also provided plenty of diversion, even though none of the contents were spell-books or even non-fictional – obviously a safety measure to prevent the suspected spies from learning too much about the Deviant Nations; by and large, the apartment's library was a collection of pulp novels and award-winning bestsellers, typical for a place meant to accommodate guests but for Elphaba, who usually had only enough spare time to reread a few passages from whatever dog-eared texts she'd managed to carry with her, it was paradise. And the dinner she'd enjoyed... it wasn't until she'd caught the whiff of roast meat and simmering gravy in the air that she'd realized just how much she'd missed properly-cooked meals. She even went on to order dessert once she was finished.
With so much to keep the two prisoners occupied, the moments when Dorothy was able to overcome her nervousness and Elphaba was able to overcome her reluctance to speak with her were few and far between; most conversations centred around how the meeting with the Great Mentor had gone (paranoid suspicions aside), where she'd gotten the idea of flying around on a broomstick, how easy it was to learn magic, and if Chistery always made those strange noises. Elphaba, who knew of Chistery's problematic attempts to speak coherently, politely declined to answer that last one.
Eventually, Dorothy had tottered off to bed, leaving Elphaba to ready the components of the spell for the moment when the clock struck 12:00 and the anti-magic enchantments finally disappeared.
After spending the remaining hour rehearsing the incantation, she barely had the presence of mind to appreciate the all-too-brief electrical crackle to the air of the magic returning; she simple grasped the strand of blonde hair in one hand, dipped a finger into the inkwell and – chanting the words on the parchment – let a few small drops of ink fall upon the map.
Slowly, the droplets had trickled along the length of the paper, the energies of the spell keeping them from staining the map until they'd arrived at their destination and marked out Glinda's precise location.
And now, at fifteen minutes past the hour, Elphaba was still puzzling over the spell's results: according to the notes on the parchment, the spell was supposed to pinpoint the target's exact location on the map, complete with an indicator showing their current physical condition. So, the good news was that Glinda had apparently ended up some distance from Exemplar's Imperial Palace, wounded but not seriously so; even better, she was apparently on the south-western end of the city, which the map indicated was far away from the city's prisons and military complexes. As a final bonus, the spell would remain effective for the next twenty-eight hours, and until then, the enchanted ink would continue to follow Glinda's movements across the map.
On the other hand, there was one drawback that brought all the results of the spell into question: having pinpointed Glinda in Unbridled Radiance, the spell had pinpointed her again in Greenspectre.
Now, this result could only be Glinda's alternate self, AKA the Great Mentor; but did that mean that mean that the two were so alike that the spell couldn't detect any difference?
It clearly wasn't based on biological tracking then... but that brought another issue to attention: now that Elphaba thought about it, the idea that one of Glinda's hairs had somehow ended up on her clothes and stayed there over the last few tempestuous hours before her arrival in Greenspectre didn't seem terribly likely. In fact, it was much more probable that the hair was actually from the Mentor, in which case, who the hell had left these components out for Elphaba to find? Who in this palace would have the motive and the ability to gather up a section of text from the Grimmerie, a broomstick enchanted with a spell from the same damn-near untranslatable book, and a hair taken from the head of the city's administrator and hero – all without anyone asking questions?
She took a deep breath and wondered if it was too late in the evening to order a large brandy from room service. Or perhaps it was too early in the morning to do so, or...
Oh sweet Oz, go to sleep and stop worrying, you halfwit.
There was a yawn from the doorway: Dorothy was standing there, now dressed in the grey pyjamas and dressing gown the servants had provided for her, bleary eyes half-shut and hair a tangled mess. "Find anything?" she mumbled sleepily.
In spite of herself, Elphaba almost smiled. Hours ago, the girl would have never have even thought to be so casual around her, and probably the only reason she wasn't currently treading on eggshells as before was because she was simply too tired to be scared. "I think so," she said out loud. "I'd have thought you'd be asleep by now."
"I tried. Something woke me up a little while ago – I think there's a storm brewing. I never could sleep through them."
This was news to Elphaba, who certainly hadn't noticed any change in the weather during the last few minutes; then again, she'd been so preoccupied with casting the spell and pondering its results, missing the sound of thunder wouldn't have been entirely impossible. But when she pushed aside the curtains and peered out the window, the glittering lights of the city below them illuminated a night sky entirely without stormclouds; indeed, the sky above Greenspectre was quite clear, though the stars were largely obscured by the dazzling array of streetlights, shop windows and neon signs that coruscated below – not to mention the small fleet of airships that still patrolled the skyline, and the few gaudy sky-yachts that barrelled shambolically across the horizon on the way to seedier-looking districts.
For a moment or two, she found herself idly wondering what it could be like down there: was it anything like the Emerald City? Did Greenspectre have the same bewildering assortment of libraries, museums, dress salons, bazaars, parks, cafes, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and red-light districts? Were those labyrinthine streets still thronged with people enjoying the nightlife of the Deviant Nations? And more to the point, what were those people even like? She'd been told that self-mutilators like the Irredeemables weren't the norm around here, but that didn't necessarily mean that the average citizen was anything like the people Elphaba had met back in Oz. And as she wondered, she found herself absently wishing that she could walk those streets and roam Greenspectre just as she had the Emerald City before it. More fervently, she wished that Glinda could be there to explore the city with her. It was a silly wish, mainly driven by curiosity and loneliness more than any sane impulse, but-
A bright flash from above dragged her attention away from the city: there, thousands of feet above the highest spires of the city, a pale, almost ephemeral glow was slowly spreading across the night sky like iridescent fog.
As it continued to expand across the skyline, there was another flash of light from its billowing depths... and a second later, something dropped from the bank of mist; large, metallic and almost bullet-shaped, it plummeted for almost twenty seconds before it crashed head-on into the roof of one of the smaller towers and erupted with a thunderous bang. Then another object fell from the cloud, this one falling all the way to the street below; two more followed, one embedding itself in the side of a building, the other colliding with a passing airship and sending it on a spiralling death-dive towards the ground.
Dorothy was suddenly standing right beside her, peering through the window in astonishment at the chaos unfolding below them. "What's happening?" she asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" said Elphaba, only just managing to keep the weary frustration out of her voice. "We're under attack!"
"But what are those things dropping from the-"
"Artillery shells."
Dorothy looked blank.
"Explosive capsules," Elphaba clarified, and then realized that her current audience was a) a child, and b) brought up on a farm and probably not familiar with military-grade ordinance. "Missiles," she simplified. "Bombs – look, they fall from the sky and explode when they hit the ground, call them whatever the hell you want. One way or another, we're being bombed, probably by Unbridled Radiance or whatever other enemies these people have gathered in the last few decades." A thought struck her. "And what you felt wasn't a storm, either," she muttered. "It was a spell being cast: those bombs aren't being dropped or shot at this city, they're being teleported into the sky above it!"
Thus handily bypassing both the defences at the border and whatever defences this city has around it. Clever, clever bastards...
Another blast shook Elphaba out of her reverie: the bombs were falling faster now, and in greater numbers too, at a rate of fifteen every second. Greenspectre was well aware of the danger too, for a low, droning siren was slowly rippling out across the city, alerting everyone with a functioning set of eardrums and almost drowning out the ominous whistle of bombs in flight; the usual assortment of commercial zeppelins was now replaced by a fleet of small, well-equipped dirigibles that floated from building to building, extinguishing the flames as quickly as they could. But the bombs fell faster than they could fly, for the garish city lights were now almost overshadowed by columns of thick black smoke from every blast-zone, accompanied by the vivid orange glow of fires, either from the explosions themselves or the blazes that resulted.
But the fires and bomb-blasts rippling out across the city weren't the only dangers; as the creeping barrage thundered closer the palace, she noticed that each explosion was accompanied not only by the standard deafening bang, shockwave, fireball, hail of shrapnel and column of smoke, but by a thick cloud of vividly-coloured gas.
Much like the fog that marked the boundaries of the teleportation spell in the sky above, the gas appeared to glow; but unlike the fog's haunting grey colour, it was a deep rosy hue. It crept across the sky, becoming distinct from the smoke as the searchlights of emergency airships swept across it; to Elphaba's eyes, the gas-clouds at first seemed oddly festive, almost inviting. But then she heard the screams and the wails of people enveloped by the cloud, and saw the ships lurching drunkenly out of it, their decks awash with blood...
"What are we going to do?" Dorothy whispered, a note of panic in her voice.
"If this had happened a minute or two ago, I'd have suggested blasting the window open and flying away on the broomstick. But the nullifying enchantments are back in effect; the broom still works, but it'll take hours for us to get through the glass without magic."
"So, we're trapped."
"Not necessarily. Hopefully, if we really are in danger, the palace staff will just have us evacuated." Unless, of course, the Great Mentor's decided I really am a spy and that leaving me out in the path of bombardment is the easiest way to get rid of me.
An airship, freshly escaped from the depths of a gas-cloud, swung violently to the left, flipped almost upside-down and crashed into one of the lowest towers of the palace, barely three hundred feet from the window. As the iron prow of the ship tore through the masonry and the ship's fuel ignited with a flash of eye-searing light and a hollow whoosh, Elphaba's horrified gaze was finally drawn away from the window by a familiar voice from behind her yelping, "Ell ebba! Ooor Ooo-en!"
It turned out to be Chistery, half-knuckling half-flying into the room, hooting at the top of his voice "Ooor Ooo-en! Ooor Ooo-en!"
"What did he say?"
Elphaba thought for a moment, attempting to translate the flying monkey's shouts into comprehensible speech. Given Chistery's somewhat catastrophic difficulty with consonants, it took a few critical seconds and the distant sound of a palace guard hollering the steps to the evacuation process for Elphaba to finally realize that "Ooor Ooo-en" actually meant "Door Open."
She was caught between thanking Chistery for the good news and communicating the aforementioned good news to Dorothy, when she heard the distinctive whistle of another falling bomb – echoing from a point almost right above their heads and getting steadily louder.
"RUN!" Elphaba shouted.
For a second, Dorothy froze, partly out of sleep-induced wooziness but mostly out of deer-in-the-headlights shock. Her mouth flapped open of its own accord, and she muttered "Wha-"
"SHUT UP AND RUN FOR THE DOOR!"
Suddenly no longer frozen, the girl spun around in a bewildered circle, took to her heels and charged towards the door, only just managing to outpace Chistery's desperate flapping.
Elphaba was halfway through following them out of the apartment when she suddenly remembered: the map and broomstick; she couldn't afford to risk their destruction – without the map, she'd be blind to Glinda's movements, and without the broom she'd have no reliable way of getting to her anyway.
So, with the distant whistle growing louder and louder by the second, she hastily backtracked into the bedroom: there, she scooped the map off the bed, hastily rolling it up as she moved, then quickly descend to her knees to retrieve the broom from under the bed. Finally, with the map in one hand and the broom in the other, she got to her feet and sprinted away to freedom, hoping against hope that she'd be able to use the two items before any of the guards started asking questions.
She'd just rounded the corner, the open door barely a few feet away, when the now-deafening whistle finally squeaked to a stop, and through the barred windows Elphaba caught a glimpse of something huge and metallic thundering into the side of the apartment. But instead of exploding – or even hitting the building – the bomb stopped a few feet away from the wall, embedded in a thick, viscous field of magic. A moment later, as Elphaba watched in open astonishment, it exploded quite harmlessly, the gouts of flames and the shower of shrapnel instantly absorbed by the shield.
Oh, she thought, sighing with relief. They've finally got their defences reorganized. Guess I was worrying over nothing.
And then the shockwave blasted out of the exploding bomb and flung Elphaba across the apartment like a tantrum-prone child flinging a toy across a nursery. Cartwheeling blindly through the air, she bounced off the kitchen counter, tumbled over the dinner table, soared clean through two of the nearest chairs and into the living room, her brief journey finally ending in a bone-jarring collision with the right-hand wall.
Then, as she lay amidst the splintered remains of a mahogany dining chair, absently wondering how long it would take for the mages to add kinetic protection to the barrier, she suddenly noticed the smell.
Looking up in horror, she finally saw the cherry-red gas pouring through the broken windows and slowly filling the room around her... and realized, too late, that she'd instinctively taken one deep, self-destructive breath of contaminated air.
The cloud grew thicker, red-tinted vapour slowly dominating her vision, drawing her away from the noise and blanketing her mind in numbing fog.
Soon, all she could see was red.
Deep, dark, comforting red...
"Over here, Dorothy!"
Skidding to a halt, Dorothy blinked and realized that the two figures waiting for her at the end of the corridor were none other than Vara and Harker; it wasn't easy to recognize them, for their faces were almost invisible beneath the goggles and tubing of thick canvas face-masks and their voices (already drowned out by the occasional bomb blast from overhead) were so muffled they were barely comprehensible. Charging up and down the stairwell behind them were dozens of other men and women, many of them dressed in similar masks – or else simply delivering them to anyone unlucky enough to be unprotected, lugging them from one end of the hall to the next in rickety iron trolleys.
"Come on," Vara called. "It's time we were going."
"What are you two doing here?"
"The Mentor's havin' this wing of the palace evacuated until the bombing stops and the place doesn't run the risk of collapsing altogether," said Harker, subconsciously adjusting his mask. "She wants you and that friend of yours out of the line of fire, too. Speakin' of which, where is she?"
Dorothy turned, and realized that while the flying monkey had followed her out of the apartment easily enough, Elphaba was nowhere in sight. Having firmly understood the need to put her head down and run, she hadn't even looked back for the last few minutes; she'd heard the bang echoing along the corridor behind her, but she hadn't thought that the woman might have actually been caught in the explosion. But now that she thought about it, did that mean that she was –
"Oh no," she whispered, her mind suddenly flooded with a very complicated mixture of shock, guilt, apprehension and relief – a holdover from a time when she hadn't been able to think of the Witch as anything other than a monster; admittedly, Dorothy wasn't entirely sure what to make of her at the best of times (or now, for that matter), but whoever or whatever she was, she didn't deserve to burn to death. For a second or two, she stood there, calling Elphaba's name; then, her limbs moving almost of their own accord, she lunged back down the corridor. Almost immediately, two hands clamped down hard on Dorothy's shoulders – Vara's scale-studded palm fastening itself on the right and Harker's gnarled old twig-fingers wrapping around the left.
"Not just yet," said Vara, firmly. "We need to wait until they've got the barrier properly solidified."
"What?"
"Keeps the bombs off the palace," Harker explained. "It's all done with magic; useful thing, but they need to build it up one layer at a time – one for the actual shells an' the shrapnel, one for the fire, one for the concussion, one for the gas, and one for any magical energies they might have sent with 'em. Bit like peeling an onion, but backwards."
Hastily driving away the mental image of a giant onion forming around the palace, Dorothy asked, "But the gas - why are the bombs filled with it? What does it do?"
Harker was opening his mouth to reply when Vara elbowed him sharply in the ribs and gave him a look which seemed to say "not in front of impressionable children." The old man's eyeless face quirked into a sheepish grin, and he finally answered, "You don't want to know, girl. Trust me on this."
Vara coughed loudly. "And I don't think Chistery wants to know either." She turned, hastily grabbed a spare mask off a passing trolley, and handed it to the flying monkey. "Help him get that on as quickly as possible," she advised Dorothy. "Once they've got the barriers up, we'll be protected from any further bombardment, but there's a good chance that it'll end up trapping pockets of gas inside the palace."
"Shouldn't I be wearing one then?" Dorothy asked, as she helped fasten the mask over Chistery's face. "Shouldn't everyone? I mean, why aren't all the servants wearing masks as well, if it's really that dangerous?"
Behind the visor of her mask, Vara's eyes narrowed in anger and disgust. "It's only dangerous to Irredeemables like me and Harker; when it's around people who haven't been modified or "Distorted," the gas might as well be thin air for all the damage it does. But as soon as the gas reaches someone who deviates from their precious ideals of beauty, it activates - then it's all over before you know it."
Dorothy considered this for a good ten seconds before replying. "So... the gas can't hurt me, in other words?"
"That's pretty much the long and short of it, but- HEY!"
Before either of them could tighten their grip, Dorothy slipped free of Vara and Harker's restraining hands and sprinted back down the corridor towards the apartment; she wasn't entire sure what she was doing, or even if she could find the correct door out of the twenty-five royal guest chambers she'd passed on her way out, but leaving Elphaba to die wasn't on the agenda at this point. Admittedly, if she really was in serious danger – trapped, burning to death, crushed, or whatever else this bombing attack could do to her – there probably wasn't a lot that Dorothy could do to help, but at this point her conscience was in command and it was still kicking her over leaving the Witch behind in the first place.
Before long, she recognized the red pillars that had marked the right-hand turn leading to their apartment's particular corner of this maze; with a hiss of effort she rounded the corner, outpacing the pursuing Irredeemables in one single guilt-fuelled burst of speed and charging on towards what was left of her temporary home in the palace. They were still chasing her, but with any luck, she'd have the time to make sure that Elphaba was okay before they caught up.
It turned out that finding her way was a lot easier than she'd expected, for the previous explosion had swept a huge pile of broken glass through the doorway and into the corridor, marking the apartment with a glittering heap of jagged glass shards. Painfully aware that she wasn't wearing shoes, Dorothy stood in front of the apartment and called Elphaba's name; hearing no answer, she plucked up her courage and gingerly stepped over the glass and through the doorway.
Inside, the apartment turned out to be surprisingly intact, apart from the smashed windows and splintered furniture. There were no fires, no sign that the roof might collapse, and what little gas remained had thinned to a vague pinkish tinge to the air; even the sound of the bombing outside was beginning to fade a little. Much more troubling was the fact that the apartment appeared to be deserted.
And then she heard the noise: a low, watery scraping sound, punctuated by harsh, desperate whisperings. It was coming from the living room, so, pausing only to listen for the sound of footsteps in the distance, Dorothy tiptoed forward.
Elphaba was kneeling in the centre of the room, half-obscured by a mass of toppled furniture: from what little Dorothy could see of her, she was hunched low over the floor; and with the fingernails of her right hand, she was now frantically slashing and tearing at something just out of view– producing the nerve-rending scraping sound she'd heard a moment ago. Occasionally, she would stop and whisper something almost incomprehensible to herself, before launching back into the attack with a vengeance.
"Elphaba?" Dorothy whispered.
A terrifying silence descended on the apartment as its sole occupant finally looked up. It took all of Dorothy's willpower not to recoil at the sight of Elphaba's blank gaze: as frightening as she'd found the Witch's baleful stare during the last couple of days, there was no denying that she'd seen intelligence and heartfelt emotion in it. There was nothing of the sort in these glazed eyes, no hint that they'd actually seen anything, or even that there might actually be a mind at work behind them. Worse still was the vacant, idiotic grin she wore: it didn't show emotion either, not even the grief that Elphaba had tried to hide behind a smile not too long ago; the only thing this painful-looking rictus showed was teeth.
"It's almost off," she whispered, giving absolutely no indication that she was talking to anyone other than herself. "It's almost off and everything will be perfect. Nessa won't be ashamed. Father won't hate me. Mother won't be silent any longer. I can make everything right. I can make everything right."
Dorothy blinked, mind reeling in shock. It was hardly the first time she'd found herself learning more about the Witch than she'd thought possible, but this was a different story altogether; even those brief moments of sorrow when she'd spoken of Nessarose and her absent friend were nothing compared to this devastating sentence. Hearing that she had a family beyond Nessarose wasn't that much of a surprise, though it was pretty hard to imagine what such a family could have been like, or even what the green girl could have been like as a child for that matter; but hearing that her sister – the one that Elphaba had been prepared to kill or worse for – had been ashamed of her, and that her father had outright hated her... well, that hinted at things that Dorothy wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know about.
It was so out-of-the-blue that she had to wonder if Elphaba had hit her head on something during the bomb-blast and was just babbling nonsense. In fact, she actually considered asking what this strange confession meant, even if questioning the Witch on such a personal topic naturally ran the risk of getting on her bad side all over again; but then she heard the distant rumble of explosions beyond the palace wall, and realized she had to hurry.
She was opening her mouth to suggest that, at the very least, it might be a good idea to get out of here before they were all blown to kingdom come. But then, she happened to glance down and notice the puddle of blood that had soaked into the carpet around her, and with a heart-stopping jolt of shock, realized what Elphaba had been doing.
The thing she'd been attacking with her fingernails was her own left arm.
Having already shredded the sleeve of her dress to ribbons, she was now busily digging a series of deep, gory furrows from her shoulder to her wrist. And worse still, she was still worrying at them, tearing the gashes wider and wider with every scrape. Dorothy found herself fighting the urge to do several hundred million different things at once, because she honestly didn't know what she was supposed to do next in order to make the awful sight unfolding before her eyes go away. She wanted to scream, to shut her eyes, to run for her life, to try and stop Elphaba from hurting herself any further if such a thing were possible, but she couldn't decide because the only thing she could concentrate on in that moment was the horrible noise of fingernails raking through flesh.
But all of a sudden, Elphaba was shaking her head. "Nails won't be enough," she said softly. "Need something more." And, reaching into the heap of debris that had accumulated around her, she held out a long, jagged shard of glass.
In that moment, the spell was broken.
Taking the deepest breath she'd ever taken in her entire life, Dorothy opened her mouth, and in a voice that could probably be heard three cities away, screamed "VAAAAAAAARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
And then the world disappeared behind a charging mass of figures, all hurrying to restrain the witch.
She is standing on a balcony; the sky above is lost amidst storm clouds, thunder crashes through the air like celestial percussion, and sheets of ice-cold rain pour down upon her.
Naked as the day she was born, she stands there with her arms outstretched towards the night sky, silently marvelling at the spectacle of her own skin, now drained of the grotesquery that once earmarked her as a pariah.
She is cleansed.
She is purified.
She is reborn.
And for the first time since the Wizard's men shot her down, she is entirely without fear.
This time, it was a spate of coughing that dragged her out of the dream. And it wasn't just any ordinary tickle at the back of the throat either: this was one step removed from vomiting, a hacking, wheezing, throat-scouring, lung-clenching explosion of coughing that left her slumped against the wall, struggling for breath like the proverbial fish out of water. Her walls of her throat had been rasped red-raw by the attempts to clear her lungs, her back ached from colliding with the wall, her arms were alight with searing pain from gods-only-knew-what, and she was distinctly aware that she hadn't even opened her eyes yet and her day was already off to a bad start.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and somewhere overhead a voice murmured, "Easy now, miss. You've just recovered from a very extensive dose of Clarity. No sudden movements for a minute, if you will; give yourself time to recover."
Elphaba vaguely discerned a glass of something invitingly cold being put to her lips, and she eagerly drank, taking in the chilled water with huge gulps in a desperate attempt to douse the burning pain in her throat. She almost choked once or twice, she drank so quickly, but eventually she was able to put the glass aside (clumsily, for there seemed to be something wrong with the fingers of her right hand) and breathe easily at last.
Then she remembered the fact that she still hadn't managed to get her eyes open yet; groaning wearily, she prised her eyelids open and found herself back in the royal apartment, now slumped against the living room wall amidst the splintered furniture and broken glass. The explosions from outside had finally ceased, but the bombing had clearly left their mark: on top of the rubble scattered across the apartment and the whiff of smoke in the air, the overhead lights had given way under the barrage and left the room in near-total darkness. However, the palace staff was clearly taking steps to repair the damage, because the room was full of people sweeping up the debris, removing the damaged furniture, replacing the window panes, and providing candles and lanterns wherever light was needed. There were even a couple of dour-looking magicians surveying the walls and ceiling of the apartment with an increasingly pedantic series of diagnostic spells, checking for any signs of instability.
Meanwhile, several other occupants had gathered around Elphaba and were now peering down at her with undisguised concern: along with the expected figures of Dorothy and Chistery, Vara and Harker were also looming over her – the eyeless face of the latter somehow managing to perfectly convey the wariness in his expression.
"What happened?" she groaned.
"We got bombed," said Harker flatly.
Elphaba rolled her eyes. "Thank you for stating the very obvious. Now, at the risk of sounding overly confrontational, what the hell happened while I was unconscious? I mean, I can tell that the bombing stopped, but how much damage did it do?"
Vara's already grave expression somehow darkened. "The death toll's still coming in: we've got over seven hundred people dead, almost two thirds of them Irredeemables. It's been about four hours since the attack ended; you've been out cold for almost the same amount of time, at least once we managed to bring in a doctor and keep you from getting any worse... once we could spare one from all the other medics we've got patching up injuries about the palace."
"Was it really that bad?"
"What, your condition or the casualties?"
"... the latter."
Vara opened her mouth to answer, but Harker beat her two it. "They caught us off guard," he said grimly. "They took as many shots as they could before we could alter the shields and stop the bombs from falling on us: we've got reports of similar raids on military bases outside the city. That was mainly firebombs for destroyin' buildings and equipment, but they used the damn gas there too; bastards wanted to be thorough."
"The gas," Elphaba whispered. "I breathed it in, didn't I? What was it, anyw-"
"Clarity," answered a voice from somewhere to the left. "One of the more... discriminating of Unbridled Radiance's weapons; it's not quite as openly destructive as the explosive shells or battle magicians they've employed in the past, but then again, it wasn't meant to be. As for the damage that was done... well, I'm sure you'll see it when we finally get you back on your feet. In the meantime, would you be so kind as to hold still for a minute? I need to check for any lingering symptoms of gas exposure."
As it happened there was a fifth member to this huddle that Elphaba didn't recognize, at least at first; but as he knelt forward to examine her face for injuries, the glow from a nearby candle was cast upon his face, and she realized that this was none other than the Great Mentor's personal physician. And oddly enough, now that she no longer had the shocking presence of the Mentor dominating the room, she couldn't help but take in the details of the man's appearance for the first time: at some point since the disaster had began, he'd doffed his immaculate white coat and black rubber gloves (but kept the opaque spectacles) and headed into the fray in a rather sedate button-up shirt and trousers.
Dressed as he was, it was quite obvious that the physician was startlingly thin, the veiny, pallid skin on his arms and face drawn so tightly across the bones that Elphaba had to wonder if the man wasn't suffering from some kind of degenerative illness. Certainly, he already looked like a walking corpse: his face was so gaunt and hairless it could have easily passed for a skull if not for the long, dagger-like nose.
The physician's arms drew her attention, too: even from here it was obvious that they were very long – to the point that his hands would have been dangling past his knees had he been standing upright. More unusually, they moved so fluidly throughout the examination that at times they seemed almost boneless, like the tentacles of an octopus. The man's fingers were also long and thin, sometimes just as sinuous and serpentine as his arms but at other times as crooked and pattering as the legs of a spider. This transition happened so many times in the next minute that Elphaba couldn't help wondering if this physician was literally changing the shape of his body in order to better perform certain operations. In fact, once, she was certain she saw the vein-studded skin of his face briefly warp and twist, his sparse flesh appearing to ripple eerily across his skull in a way that should have been impossible for any muscle of the face to accomplish. But when she looked again, his face had returned to normal. Perhaps it had been a trick of the light and nothing more; and yet...
"No sign of cranial trauma," the physician murmured; his voice was calm and without affect, almost a monotone. "No magical damage... and best of all, no lingering symptoms of the gas." Behind him, Vara and Harker finally released the breaths they'd been holding for the last minute. "Injuries aside," he continued, "you're in perfect health."
"Injuries?" Elphaba echoed.
"Due to be treated very shortly, ma'am. I thought it prudent that I kept them under stasis gauze up until I could be sure that you weren't in the mood to stab me to death halfway through the procedure."
He took her left arm in one tendril-fingered hand and gently drew it into the light – and with a jolt of surprise, Elphaba realized that the offending limb was now swathed in thick, blood-sodden bandages. "What the hell did that?" she asked, shock almost turning the question into a shout.
"You did," said Dorothy. She'd been silent and ashen-faced over the last five minutes, at times all but hiding behind Chistery. Now that she was finally speaking, her voice was a hoarse, trembling whisper that sounded dangerously close to tears, and not the familiar bawling that had so frustrated Elphaba in the past.
"I? Why would I do something like tha-"
"I don't know!" Dorothy hissed, the fear in her voice unexpectedly joined by anger. "You were hurting yourself! You were tearing your arm open with your own fingernails – look at them if you don't believe me – and you were going to use a piece of glass on yourself before Vara and Harker stopped you! You were saying... you were saying... you were saying..."
She stopped, her nervous energy seemingly exhausted.
Elphaba very slowly looked down at the fingers of her right hand: they were coated with a thick layer of dried blood, the nails torn and blunted from constant impact against flesh. More blood was caked under the nails themselves, accompanied by tiny giblets of something that could only be flesh.
"Oz," Elphaba breathed. "How... why did I...?"
"Clarity," the physician explained smoothly. "As I said, it's a very discriminating weapon: it only affects those who have been "Distorted" from Unbridled' Radiance's true image, or have been modified in ways they don't approve of. As soon as a victim fitting this description inhales the gas, it swiftly begins to affect the brain, disrupting normal thought processes and replacing them with implanted suggestions – most of them to the effect of "I am abnormal and I must rid myself of this abnormality by any means necessary." If that's not enough, it has a tendency to help along this process by enhancing certain emotions; self-loathing for example, or despair. Quite an elegant solution, when you think about it: the Empress' troops already distance themselves from the battlefield through gas weaponry, but Clarity grants them the luxury of saying that they didn't kill anyone at all. They just... 'enlightened' them."
Minutes passed, as Elphaba considered this. "So I qualify as Distorted, then?" she said at last.
A ghastly smile split the physician's face in half. "The exquisite irony is not lost on me," he said. "If only Radiance's bombers knew who they were attacking..."
"Yes, I'm pretty sure that'd be hilarious if I hadn't just shredded my arm to confetti as a result. It'd be even funnier if there probably hadn't been civilian casualties as a result, too. Plus, it's not as if they actually bombed the city just to get at me, right?" A thought struck her, and as the physician began tentatively peeling the bandages away from her arm, she voiced it: "Why is it so specific about targeting?"
At this, Dorothy finally recovered a smidgen of her old inquisitiveness. "I was wondering that ever since you told me about it," she said to Vara. "I mean, you're at war so I can kind of understand them dropping bombs on the city. But why the gas? Why use something that only hurts some people and not others–"
"They call us "Irredeemable" for a good reason, girl," Harker muttered solemnly. "As far as the Empress is concerned, we can't be forgiven for refusing beauty and embracin' ugliness; they want us dead – every last one of us. And yeah, Unbridled Radiance might give deformed foundlings and scarred veterans a chance to be beautiful, but they'll swear black and blue that any Distorted that were killed here this evening gave up the right to mercy when they sided with us, even if the poor bastards were kids who never even heard their offer of true beauty. But as for people who haven't been modified or distorted, Unbridled Radiance wants to give them a chance to change sides and accept "redemption." So the gas doesn't target 'em."
"Oh." She breathed a sigh of something not unlike relief. "Fair enough then..."
"At least until the next strike, anyway."
"What?"
"This won't be the first attack on civilian territory: they've given the redeemable folk a chance to surrender and warned them on what'll happen to enemies of Unbridled Radiance. So, they'll wait a while for people to accept the offer. Then, once they've given it enough time and seen a couple of refugees trickling over the border, they'll launch another strike on civilian territory. And this time, it'll be firebombs and cyanide gas from beginning to end and anyone who refused "their generous offer" will die with all the other Deviants."
"But how do you know all this?" There was a subtle hint of outrage in Dorothy's voice, now, a touch of angry disbelief; Elphaba found herself distinctly reminded of the way Glinda had tried to deny the Wizard's involvement in Nessa's murder: she'd spoken with the same tone of voice then, too – the "I know they've done horrible things, but surely they can't have stooped that low" voice. "How do you know that they'd kill Distorted people for not siding with them? How do you know they'd kill the... the redeemable people for not taking the chance?"
"From first-hand experience."
A dreadful silence followed.
"You mean –"
"I can neither confirm nor deny..." Harker wearily recited.
The physician looked up from unbinding the last of the bandages, and suddenly cleared his throat for attention. "With all due respect, I think it might be time I sought out some privacy to continue this operation; Elphaba, if you would follow me...?"
Thankfully, her collision with the wall hadn't done any permanent damage to her spine, so Elphaba was able to get to her feet without too much difficulty, though it did take a little while to recover enough of her balance to walk without tottering all over the place like a month-old giraffe. Once she was upright and moving, she was immediately escorted out of the living room and into the bathroom, where the physician unceremoniously sat her down on the edge of the bathtub and removed the final layer of bandages around her arm.
The wounds were nothing short of extraordinary: in all the time she'd spent fighting the Wizard, Elphaba had never received an injury quite like this; from shoulder to wrist, her arm was criss-crossed from front to back with dozens of bloody lacerations torn through the flesh, some of them deep enough to expose tiny slivers of bone.
About the only thing that had stopped her from bleeding to death were the magically-impregnated bandages her arm had been swathed in, and now they were off, the tears were already starting to ooze again. And even if the physician (who was currently prodding her wounds with his bare fingertips in open defiance of any rational kind of medical training) could actually solve the problem without resorting to amputation, Elphaba would still be facing a very long recovery time, and probably a permanent scar for good measure.
Just as she was beginning to get used to the idea of spending the next week or so with her arm in bandages, she realized something much worse: this recovery process would almost certainly scupper any attempts at rescuing Glinda; even if she'd be able to fly the broomstick with her hands bandaged up, by the time her stay in the hospital was up, the magic of the tracking spell would have well and truly worn off.
After all, this little operation was a prelude to that, wasn't it?
She glanced down at the physician, who was now absent-mindedly rubbing his hands together. "Don't you need any medical equipment for this?" she asked tentatively.
"If the injuries were serious, I probably would. I think the stasis gauze was enough, don't you? Now, hold still for a minute, Elphaba; this is a somewhat delicate process."
"How can this not be serious-?"
Suddenly, the physician's boneless fingers were in motion again: slithering fluidly across the tattered flesh of Elphaba's left wrist, they carried on upwards in a slow and methodical ascent towards the shoulder, tapering fingertips gently brushing each wound as they climbed. But to Elphaba's astonishment, every single injury that the physician touched instantly began to heal.
Looking closer, she realized it actually wasn't as simple as that: as the fingers touched each wound, they pinched the edges of the lacerations together, drawing them shut as if her flesh was nothing more than clay. Before her very eyes, tiny magical flourishes expressed in each subtle movement of the doctor's fingers sealed weeping blood vessels, wove torn muscles back together, and grafted webs of conjured tissue over the deeper injuries. And for the most part, it was almost completely painless; indeed, she spent most of the operation numb from the shoulder downwards to anything except for the vague itching she felt whenever one of the wounds closed - and of course, the distant spidery tiptoe of unearthly fingers along her arm.
Trying not to think of poisonous spiders crawling up her elbow, she found herself studying the physician's technique, curious to learn what spells he might be using for this procedure. To her surprise, she recognized quite a few of them: some of them Elphaba had learned back in Morrible's magic class; others were more sophisticated, drawing upon esoteric spellbooks that she'd had the good fortune to discover during her long years of rebellion against the Wizard (most of them either stolen from Ozian libraries or gifted to her by Animal benefactors). There were even a few spells that looked as though they'd been cobbled together from bits and pieces of other incantations, combining different words or gestures for different effects. And while there were several techniques she honestly didn't recognize at all, there was one thing that Elphaba knew for a fact that the physician wasn't using: the Grimmerie.
Was this because its spells were too complicated or too volatile for safe usage... or had this world's version of the Grimmerie been stolen or destroyed before any of the Deviant Nations' magicians had a chance to study it?
That disadvantage won't last long, she thought grimly. They've got my copy now, haven't they?
Within minutes, the process was complete and Elphaba was completely healed: all that was left of the horrendous injuries that had all but torn her arm open was a smooth expanse of green skin. And I never thought I'd be happy to see that at any point in my life.
"Can you move your arm?" the physician asked.
Operating almost on reflex, Elphaba stretched out her arm, swivelling her hand from left to right.
"Do you feel any pain? Any difficulty in performing certain movements?"
"Not that I can tell at this point..."
She glanced down, and saw that the doctor was now cleaning and repairing the tattered stumps of the fingernails on her right hand. "Please don't tell anyone about this," he said, almost sheepishly. "As amusing as the title would be, 'manicurist' just doesn't have the same ring to it as 'mage-surgeon.'"
"So you're one of the mage-surgeons the Irredeemables told me about?"
"I doubt they would have told you about me: sadly, acting as physician to the Mentor keeps me away from the usual work of alterations that the Irredeemables commonly request, unless they want something truly extraordinary. Of course, it also keeps me off the lecture circuit, so I suppose there's always a silver lining."
He cracked a smile that almost looked human, and with one last flourish of magic, concluded the healing process and shook Elphaba's hand. "Doctor Kiln," he introduced himself.
"I'm –"
"Yes, I know: you're Elphaba Thropp, formerly known as the Wicked Witch of the West."
Her heart suddenly leaped. "You believe me?"
"I didn't say that," Kiln soothed. "I just thought that, considering that no other name has presented itself, the name of our Mentor's apparently long-dead friend will suffice for now."
Elphaba took a deep breath. She had a sneaking feeling that pursuing this avenue of conversation was going to lead her right back into an argument over her true identity, and after starting the day with exposure to mind-controlling gas and self-mutilation, she really wasn't in the mood for any further excitement. But by this time, she was curious about how it would be possible for someone to mimic her appearance through magical alteration. So she asked, "Would it really be that easy for someone to make themselves look like me? Or like Elphaba, if you're feeling picky."
"For a mage-surgeon of sufficient experience and ability, it'd depend entirely upon the materials you had to work with, but generally speaking, the operation would take at least five hours at the most. Of course, I don't think anyone too closely aligned with Unbridled Radiance would willingly have themselves altered in such a way, but let's leave theories of mercenary activity aside for now."
"Five hours? That's all it'd take for a perfect impersonation?"
"And that's assuming you're not actually a mage-surgeon yourself," said Kiln, his unearthly monotone suddenly playful and teasing. "I think I could easily mimic that face if I had the time and details to alter myself accordingly."
"Hang on, alter yourself? You can do that?" She suddenly recalled all the times she'd seen him apparently change the bone structure of his arms, seen the skin of his face ripple; in fact, now that she thought about it, Kiln actually looked a few inches taller than she remembered from their first meeting. "Okay, okay, stupid question," she sighed wearily. "So you're not just an expert at modifying human bodies, but you're also a shapeshifter?"
"Not exactly. It's not shapeshifting in its most classic form, or the kind practiced by the Amorphous League – and sadly, it's not nearly as versatile or as quick as either. But the ability to manipulate flesh and bone has its uses, as you've no doubt noticed. And permanent modifications can be... enjoyable."
"But why would want to make permanent modifications to yourself? I mean, Vara told me all about why she and the other Irredeemables had themselves altered, but you aren't a member of the organization and you're not bound by the same creed as them, are you?"
"No. Technically, I'm just a member of the Mentor's inner retinue."
"Then why would you do this sort of thing to yourself?"
Kiln shrugged. "It all comes down to curiosity, I suppose. When you've had a few years to get used to powers like these, you eventually start to wonder what it would be like feel your own flesh shift and warp beneath your fingertips, to feel it flow like melting candle wax. So, you start to experiment."
"In what way?"
"Well, in my profession, it's quite common for graduating student-mages to display their mastery of our techniques by adding personalized touches to their appearance: maybe a crest or a plume here and there; a different skin texture or colour; or maybe something more exotic. And that's just the beginning. I mean, do you really think I came by this face or these limbs naturally?" He spread his arms wide, and by way of a demonstration, folded his fingers backwards across his hands until they were all but flatted against his wrists. "And I'm quite sedate by the standards of my profession, believe it or not," he added, casually returning his bone structure to normal. "Some of my colleagues have implanted themselves with tools to assist in more complicated operations, or even weapons for the days when they have to work on the front lines. And on occasion, some mage-surgeons decide to reinvent themselves as different people altogether; they fake their deaths, give themselves new faces, and rejoin society under new names."
In spite of herself, Elphaba managed a smile. "If you can change your identity that easily, why the hell are you worrying about being saddled with the title of 'manicurist'?"
Trying valiantly not to smile, the physician shook his head with an exaggerated air of solemnity and disappointment. "I should have never have told you about that."
"Oh, I don't know; if you're still acting as her personal physician, I think Glinda might appreciate that sort of thi-"
There was a pause, as Elphaba realized her mistake.
"She's still the same person, you know," said Kiln gently. "She might have changed a great deal, but it's still her under all the scars and stitches."
"You could have fooled me. If the Mentor really does have any of the old Glinda left about her, she's doing everything she can to hide it." She sighed. "Then again, she still thinks I'm a spy, so maybe it's not so surprising after all."
The physician remained tactfully silent.
"But has she always been that bitter? I can understand her being angry with me, but was the bitterness just a result of the war, or... or was it because of me again? I mean, if me and the Empress really are the same person, then..." She shook her head, struggling not to let the familiar haze of depression descend upon her, and trying her very best to think of a response.
"You're not that much alike," Kiln pointed out. "I've actually met the Empress in person, and there's more to the differences between the two of you than skin colour alone. I won't lie: some mannerisms are frighteningly similar, some personality traits are almost identical, and your spellcasting technique might as well be a direct replica of hers... but you're most certainly not her. And I very much doubt you're to blame for the Mentor's bitterness: in truth, she's been that way for quite a while now. The War's been hard on her, as you could see; one spy being audacious enough to impersonate her best friend wouldn't be enough to turn her into a curmudgeon. As for what she'll make of you when she's gathered all the evidence together? That remains to be seen."
Elphaba thought carefully for a moment or two, slowly mulling over everything she'd been told. Then, a question occurred to her – something that had been sitting right in front of her for about thirty seconds, the logical conclusions of which had only just occurred to her.
"You met the Empress in person," she whispered. "How long ago was this? Who did you work for back then? And how did you get close enough to the Empress to notice her behaviour?"
Behind the opaque black lenses of his glasses, Kiln's eyes widened.
"You said some mage-surgeons completely reinvent themselves, give themselves new names and faces: were you one of them?"
In the tremulous pause that followed, the physician's expression rippled, black veins coursing wildly across his gleaming scalp.
"I... I think it might be time for me to, uh, see if there are any other patients requiring aid," he stammered. "In any event, I wouldn't worry too much about unanswered questions; they'll probably be resolved sooner than you think."
He turned, and hurried away, his physique hastily rearranging itself as he walked.
Elphaba followed him, fully intent on seeing if she could squeeze some answers out of Kiln before the night grew any older.
However, as they entered the living room, they happened to pass two workmen who were putting the finishing touches to the apartment by replacing the last few remaining chunks of ruined furniture: as the two burly labourers seized the glass-shredded sofa by both ends and hauled it out of the apartment, something slid out from under of the cushions, tumbled off the sofa and landed right in the middle of the floor in front of Elphaba.
It was the broomstick, having presumably been knocked out of her hand when the shockwave had hit. For good measure, the map was also there, crumpled around the broomstick's handle but otherwise intact.
Unfortunately, it was now sitting right in the middle of the floor – in full view of Kiln.
Time stopped.
Elphaba found herself hurriedly examining almost every possible outcome of this discovery: the broomstick and map would almost certainly be confiscated, that much was certain; after all, nobody with half a brain in their head would willingly leave an escape vehicle in the cell with her. But that might not be the only possible repercussion: there could be punishments, investigations, interrogations, or even a transfer to a more secure location. And maybe, if she was really unlucky, this could be the proof the Mentor needed to have her declared a spy and executed.
And just to add a final cherry to the proverbial sundae of inevitability, she'd been caught by someone absolutely guaranteed to report back to the Mentor.
So far, there didn't seem to be many options on her side: she could feel the anti-magic enchantments descending on the apartment already, once again weighing down on her psyche like a blanket made of woven lead. And unless she was willing to try and fight Kiln to the death over the broomstick – which would probably take too long and risk getting the attention of the guards anyway – there'd be nothing to stop him from reaching out and claiming the broom as evidence.
But perhaps it would be best if she did try and fight for it: if this was the moment where she was guaranteed an execution, she'd much prefer to face it kicking and screaming. After spending Oz-only-knew how many times expecting to go out peacefully, resigned to the fact that she'd never see Glinda again, the knowledge that Glinda was still alive and within her reach was galvanizing her into action again: she was ready to fight the chance to see her again.
Yes! She thought furiously, her mental processes suddenly running on pure adrenaline. Just grab for the broom, you skull-faced bastard. I'm not going out quietly this time.
For three agonizing seconds, the physician stared down at the broom on the floor.
Finally, he looked up: at some point in the last few seconds he'd removed his glasses, and now he gazed back at her with inexplicably familiar blue eyes.
And to Elphaba's utter amazement, he winked.
He winked.
Then, without a word of explanation, he kicked the broom out of sight under one of the freshly-arrived couches and strolled gracefully out of the apartment with a strange smile on his cadaverous face.
For what felt like eons, Elphaba remained where she was, her body frozen from the toes up. Then, letting out a breath that had been sitting in her lungs for almost a minute, she concertinaed backwards onto the couch, put her head in her hands and groaned.
What the hell are you playing at, doctor? Why did you just do that?
And what about everything else you've done since I first met you? Why did you stand up for me while the Mentor was dressing me down? Why did you decide to attend to my injuries ahead of anyone else in the palace? Why did you call me by my first name? And how do you know I was the Wicked Witch of the West? Did the Mentor tell you that... or did you actually live through that time and manage to avoid losing your memories of it?
Who are you?
Who were you?
Whose side are you on, really?
She looked up, and suddenly became aware of the environment around her: the apartment was almost empty except for the few remaining workmen and technicians, Vara and Harker having left some time ago. And through the freshly-replaced windows nearby, she once again had a perfect view of the devastation occurring outside: however, by this time, the bombing had well and truly subsided; across the battered cityscape, fires were slowly being extinguished and the lights were slowly returning to normal. The parade of revellers trickling back and forth from the residential zone to the red-light district had been replaced by a steady stream of white-hulled airships, many of them announcing (through loud hailers) that they were carrying medical supplies for certain districts. Other airships strayed much closer to the palace, and just past the vast crates of equipment stacked across their decks, she could just about discern the people milling about upon them – all boiler-suited technicians and builders, presumably on their way to repair the damage and help rebuild.
All around the palace, Greenspectre was slowly binding its wounds and returning to work. But was that a sign of the Deviant Nations' utter indomitability... or was it a sign that they'd been at war so long that this was all part of the routine?
She shook her head, and decided to go on watching. After all, she had quite a while before the enchantments deactivated again, and it wasn't likely she'd be spending any of that time asleep.
A/N: Who is the mysterious Doctor Kiln? Guess away, dear readers, - detail them in the reviews if you like; your input keeps my corroded old heart going!