A/N: Well, it pretty much killed my laptop in cold blood to bring it forth, but here's the latest chapter (admittedly the last couple of viral attacks and five long years of mistreatment helped it along)! This is another explanations chapter, and another little springboard into the events of the next few chapters; feel free to comment, theorize and constructively criticize the story so far - your opinions are fuel to me, the more informative the better.

To Nami Swannn: As I said, it's long past time that I gave the characters a break; suffice to say, I'm not inclined towards George R R Martin levels of sadism in my writing- not yet, anyway. That said, I don't think this is something any of the characters are going to escape without acquiring a few long-lasting psychological scars. I can't provide all the answers just yet, but hopefully, this chapter will prove enlightening.

To LolaVerdigris: Thank you so much for your review. It's always welcome to hear my descriptions praised, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that you think I convey emotion well - something which I've always been a bit uncertain of, truth be told. In any event, thanks again for a lovely review, and I hope this chapter remains up to standards.

So, without further ado, read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked 'tis not mine; the turnip people have decreed it.

As she and Glinda finally concluded their embrace, Elphaba found herself absently wondering why they hadn't been visited by any doctors since they'd arrived at the hospital; though admittedly she hadn't been to that many hospitals in her short-but-colourful life, it seemed fairly logical to assume that at the very least a nurse would have arrived to check on them at some point – after all, Glinda was recovering from a near-fatal injury, and Elphaba was still a high-priority prisoner. But so far, she and Glinda had remained entirely undisturbed. No doctors, no nurses, no orderlies, no security guards at the door... and more to the point, the door was left wide open.

Yes, because that's the sort of thing you'd want to think about at a time like this, she mentally chided herself. The fact that you and Glinda are finally reunited isn't enough for you? Or maybe the fact that she's about five steps removed from a nervous breakdown and desperately needs your support? And what about the question of what the hell you're going to do next, or how you're going to get the Ruby Slippers back from the Hellion, or how you're going to get home? Is none of that interesting enough?

"Elphie?"

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Elphaba turned to Glinda, doing her best to scrub the briefly-downcast look off her face as she did so. "What's wrong?"

"Now I know I'm not dead or dreaming or whatever, there's just one more question I need to ask: what is this place? Not the hospital or the Deviant Nations," she added hastily, "I'm talking about this whole world: it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, the Vigilant Eyes, Purification and the Thinking Engine are already pretty weird, but how can there be another you running Unbridled Radiance?"

Elphaba winced: this was something she'd been dreading from the moment that she'd learned that Glinda had suffered a run-in with the Radiant Empress. It was bad enough that there'd been all-too-obvious scars left by the encounter (she'd seen the spasm of panic that had rippled across Glinda's face when she'd first awoken and seen Elphaba sitting next to her, before she'd noticed the green skin; the shaking, weeping fit that had followed only made the damage done all the more blatant); having to explain that there was another Glinda around too was only going to make things worse, to say nothing of how she'd react when she'd learn that this world's history hinged entirely on her actions and those of the future Empress.

Just as she was starting to wonder how she was even going to broach the subject, there was a metallic clank from somewhere very close by, mixed with the eerie hiss of pistons, and an ancient voice announced, "A very prudent question, Miss Upland, one that we will answer to the best of our mutual abilities."

The Mentor was standing in the doorway, her decrepit frame now supported by a complicated-looking framework of brass gears and pistons. And she wasn't alone, either: crowding into the room alongside her was a small entourage of figures; along with expected followers such as Dr Kiln and the squad of guards, Chistery and Dorothy had also joined the group – the latter looking understandably pale and apprehensive. But at least her expression was readable: Kiln and the Mentor, who'd at least had the decency to show some emotion during previous meetings, looked even more inscrutable than before.

Meanwhile, Glinda was staring at the approaching retinue with an expression of undisguised amazement, her gaze flitting from one face to the next, taking in every impossible feature. Then, Elphaba saw her turn to the Mentor and finally notice the familiar details on the right side of the Deviant Witch's face. Very slowly, her jaw fell open.

"You," she mumbled blankly, her voice toneless with shock. "You. You're. You. Y..."

("Sedatives at the ready," muttered Dr Kiln, drawing a syringe from the pocket of his lab coat.)

Elphaba put a calming hand on Glinda's shoulder. "I should have told you about this earlier," she sighed, "But now's as good a time as any other; Glinda, this is the Great Mentor of the Deviant Nations, the man standing next to her is Dr Kiln, you already know Chistery and Dorothy Gale, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... Mentor, unless you're going to claim that she's an imposter, too-"

"No, I think you've provided us with more than enough evidence to the contrary." The mutilated face crinkled into a horrid-looking smile. "Not to mention two new ships, a number of potentially-useful captives, and a cargo of highly-advanced magical equipment. As always, you exceed expectations, Elphaba."

Not for the first time that day, Elphaba found herself struggling to keep her temper from exploding. "So that was why the spell, the map and broomstick ended up in my quarters?" she asked, her voice resolutely calm. "You wanted to make sure that I wasn't working for the Empress?"

"In a word, yes."

"But how-"

"If you'd put your mind to it, you could have reverse-engineered the tracking spell to assassinate me; you could have used the routine deactivations to break out and assault the palace from within; or you could have ignored the spells altogether and fled across the border to report all that you'd learned."

"Ah. And if I'd actually done any of that?"

"You'd be dead," said the Mentor, quite matter-of-factly. "There were enough countermeasures in place to ensure that any magical attacks on my person would be inflicted upon the caster. And of course, our defences at the border would have shot you down if you'd tried to cross without my permission – which I only gave because I'd been observing your work on the map for the last few hours."

Had this meeting happened perhaps a year or two ago, this would have been her cue to fly off the handle; but by now, she'd learned a modicum of self-control in her time as the Wicked Witch of the West, and besides, she'd exhausted a good deal of her bad mood in the battle aboard the airship. So, it was with a surprising degree of calm that she finally responded: "In case you've forgotten what the other Elphaba was like," she said icily, "I really don't appreciate being manipulated."

"Can you name anyone who would appreciate it?"

"Oh, I don't know - maybe half the population of Oz. Three quarters, if I'm feeling really cynical."

"Well, you're certainly as pessimistic as she was. For what it's worth, I apologize: I didn't get this far in life by being indiscriminately trusting; in fact, when I was young, I had to do a lot of unsavoury things in order to survive my previous mistakes in that regard. Once the medical tests and studies of your magic all turned up positive matches, a test of your character was about the only thing I could do to determine if you really were the same person."

Meanwhile, Glinda appeared to have finally recovered her ability to speak coherently, and was now holding up a hand for attention. "Excuse me," she murmured hesitantly, "but could someone please explain what the hell is going on?"

There was a pause, as Dr Kiln and the Mentor exchanged glances; eventually, the Mentor announced, "That is the very purpose of this meeting, Miss Upland; it has been decided that you and Miss Thropp should be made privy to the findings of our scientists. And Miss Gale as well, of course," she added absently.

"But why here?" Dorothy asked. By now, she'd left the retinue and was now half-sitting half-collapsed in a chair right next to Glinda. "Why are we holding the meeting here?"

"A matter of secrecy; along with the usual threat of enemy spies, we occasionally have to deal with overly-inquisitive journalists and reporters. Even the palace isn't entirely leak-proof, and I'd rather not let everyone in the Deviant Nations learn that we're currently sheltering parallel versions of myself and the Empress."

"Oh," said Dorothy, who now looked even less certain than before.

"To cut a long story short, we're not officially attending this hospital – except of course, for Glinda. As far as the public knows, Elphaba attended only briefly and is now at the palace; I'm currently attending a conference of assorted generals; Dr Kiln is lending his expertise to the Irredeemables at this city's lodge, and you, Dorothy, are relaxing back at the palace."

"Am I?"

"That's what records will say. Now..." She cleared her throat, and gave a curt, approving nod to Kiln.

"It took some cross-referencing," Kiln began, "And a considerable degree of effort, but our scientists have finally come up with an answer as to how you two arrived here. Tell me, have either of you heard of parallel universes or alternate realities?"

For her part, Glinda's only response was a blank stare. Elphaba, on the other hand, thought back to the many books on magic and esoteric phenomena she'd studied while still attending Shiz; eventually, she said, "I think I might have heard a little about it before: most of it was purely theoretical – some idea about how every course of action creates another reality where a different event occurred. The book on the subject brought out a lot of different analogies, too: forking roads to describe divergence points in realities, or possibilities being represented by a coin being flipped-"

"- In one universe, and in ours, it lands on heads; in a parallel, it lands on tails – or on its edge, or it vanishes into the rafters, or bounces off a cliff..." Kiln smiled. "I've done some research on the subject myself. The point is, the options are infinite, and by extension the variety of alternate universes are also infinite... and apparently accessible if your presence here is any proof."

"So the portal we fell through was a rift in the fabric of reality leading to this universe?" Elphaba thought for a moment. "Well," she said at last, "that actually makes sense from what I've seen of this world so far. I mean, you've already told me all about the exact point where things diverged, and I've seen enough evidence around No-Man's Land and Greenspectre. But how did you find actual evidence that we'd come from another reality?"

The Mentor cleared her throat. "Over the last week or so, our world's been manifesting portals similar to the ones you've described," she explained. "Most of them have occurred in comparatively remote areas and almost all of them have only been active for about a minute at the longest, but our scientists have taken enough readings to identify some of their potential destinations."

"Also," Kiln continued effortlessly. "The three of you have been giving off faint but detectable energy readings, identical to the energies around the portals."

There was a pause, as the three of them considered this information. Glinda, pale and wide-eyed with incredulity by this stage, was the first to respond: "So you're saying that... you're... that this... that the Empress really is Elphaba - just a different version of her from this world?"

Kiln opened his mouth to respond, but the Mentor beat him to it. "She was," she said tersely. "The divergence point and the events that followed killed my version of Elphaba Thropp."

"Ah. So this world used to be Oz?"

"That's right," said the Mentor.

"And you're an alternate version of me?"

"Exactly so."

Glinda's eyes narrowed. "An alternate me from... what, fifty years in the future as well?" She looked the Mentor up and down, taking in the scars and the emaciated frame, and visibly lingering on the filthy grey robes.

Kiln, who'd clearly noticed this, hastily hid a smile behind a long-fingered hand. "It's been theorized that the dimensions are slightly out of synch with the others; the probes we sent into the other realities arrived decades – sometimes many centuries prior to or following current time."

Glinda's mouth flapped noiselessly for a moment or two; she looked from Kiln, to Elphaba, to Dorothy, and finally to the Mentor, as if expecting one of them to answer a question she wasn't quite able to ask yet. "But how did all this happen?" she blurted out at last. "What happened to Oz? What happened to you and... and your version of Elphaba? How did this war between the Deviant Nations and Unbridled Radiance begin?"

Now it was the Mentor's turn to hesitate. "I've explained most of the story to your friend," she said at last. "She can explain as much to you. However, it might not be necessary... tell me, have either of you experienced unusual dreams since you arrived in this world – dreams that seemed usually vivid or realistic?"

"Once or twice, yes. The last dream I had that was like that got interrupted by something – a nightmare about what happened in U.R., I think. What about you, Elphie?"

Elphaba only smiled: she'd been toying around with this piece of the puzzle for about half a day now, and while she'd had her suspicions, she'd never been able to come up with any actual proof; but now that the jigsaw puzzle was finally slotting itself together, she knew she was right – and couldn't resist a grin of satisfaction. "They're memories, aren't they?" she asked, unable to keep a note of smugness out of her voice.

"Wait, what?"

The other Glinda returned the smile. "Nicely done. What tipped you off?"

"Well, quite a few of the dreams matched your testimony, particularly the one where I was shot out of the air and beaten half to death. What's the scientific explanation behind this?"

"From what we've been able to work out," said Kiln, "once they arrive in a different universe, travellers begin to experience a certain degree of mental synchronization with their alternate selves, largely in the form of long-term memories; the theorists haven't been able to determine exactly why – the most likely-sounding one suggests that it's the fabric of the current reality trying to assimilate the visitors into their new residence – but for the moment, it doesn't matter. Long story short, the brain can't consciously process all the information encapsulated in the transferred memories, hence the reason why it all ends up manifesting as dreams."

"But how do you know all this? I mean, has this sort of thing happened before?"

"Once or twice," Kiln admitted. "We've got a few apocryphal accounts stocked away in the archives, mainly journals of explorers who supposedly travelled to and from other worlds, most of them detailing their experiencing weird dreams. But that's not the source of this line of evidence. As it happens, the synchronization works both ways - not quite to the same extent as travellers like you and Glinda, but enough for the native self to notice."

"One of the reasons why I didn't immediately dismiss you as an imposter," said the Mentor. "The story of your world matched my dream a little too well to be coincidence."

Dorothy cleared her throat. "There's just one thing I don't understand..." she began (Elphaba only managing to bite back a smartassed remark through a superhuman effort of will). "If this is a different Oz altogether, then what was my house doing in the middle of No-Man's Land?"

For the first time in the conference, both Kiln and the Mentor looked completely nonplussed.

Sighing deeply, Dorothy explained: "The tornado that brought me to Oz – the first one, I mean – took my house with it; the last time I saw it, the thing was still in Munchkinland where it'd landed." With Nessarose under it, Elphaba thought bitterly; as if sensing Elphaba's train of thought, Dorothy shot her an almost apologetic-looking glance before continuing. "But when we were travelling across No-Man's Land, I saw the same house stranded beside all those wrecked airships; and when I asked Vara about it, she'd never heard of Kansas before I told her about it. So if this is a different Oz where I never visited..." She trailed off, her brow furrowing as she grappled with the theory. "...Or a different version of me from a different Kansas never visited," she tentatively amended, "then why would the house be here?"

"She has a point," Elphaba conceded (doing her best to ignore Glinda's disbelieving stare). "I mean, it's not just an issue of nobody here ever having heard of Kansas; from what I've heard, the Empress's memory spells could have easily erased any mention of it. But the tornado that brought Dorothy and the house here in the first place – in my Oz, that was summoned by Madam Morrible as part of a gambit to assassinate Nessarose and bring me out of hiding. In this world, by that time your version of Elphaba –"

"Was dead and was on the way to becoming the Empress," the Mentor finished; once again, there was a sharp, agitated tone to her voice. "And hence, Morrible would have no need of the tornado. Yes, I see the paradox..."

There was a long pause, as the Deviant leader and her physician considered this; eventually, Kiln announced, "I'm not entirely sure. This is a highly theoretical field of science, and one I'm not a formal student of... but I'd still find it a bit doubtful that your world and ours are linked in the exact same way as they were in a parallel universe. For now, it seems far more likely that what you saw out in No-Man's Land wasn't your house."

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Dorothy, ever-so-slightly indignant.

"The Hellion isn't the only monster that lives in No-Man's Land," said the Mentor ominously. "There are things out there that only an unlucky few have ever witnessed in person, with capabilities that we've never seen the full scope of: we've received reports of creatures that use magic illusions to draw in their prey, monsters that can pass through solid objects, even wandering shapeshifters capable of taking the form of almost anything. And those are the weaker variants. So, until we have further evidence, I think we might have to discount what you saw. And long before we get around to any expeditions to No-Man's Land," she said, audibly bringing the topic to an end, "There's one further item on the agenda for this little meeting: you, Glinda, need to provide a testimony of what happened during your time in Unbridled Radiance."

Glinda paled. "Is that really necessary?" she asked, her voice small and fearful.

"I'm afraid so: we need to know the exact details of your treatment, under what circumstances you met the Radiant Empress, how much you told her-"

"I didn't tell her anything!" Glinda shrilled, suddenly panicked. Elphaba put a comforting hand on her shoulder in a vain attempt to calm her down – and realized with a jolt of shock that Glinda's skin was now ice-cold to the touch. "I didn't say anything that would jeopardizate your war or anything like that!"

"-And we will also need to know just how much confidential information you were privy to."

"And you don't think she doesn't deserve time to recover from what happened first?" said Elphaba furiously. "I mean, it's been a couple of hours; give her a few days to recuperate and then you can ask as many questions as you like. Or better still, question me: she's told me what happened; I can relay the information easily enough."

"Out of the question in both cases: waiting starves us of information potentially vital to the war effort, and you haven't been privy to literally everything that occurred. I assure you, we'll do our best to keep the questioning session as brief as possible: there'll be privacy and sedatives available if she requires them... and there'll be enough time to recuperate afterwards."

If anything, Glinda looked even more miserable. The Mentor sighed, the cliff-like face softening ever-so-slightly, and said, "Believe me, it's better if we get this over and done with immediately: if we delay the questioning process, we don't just risk letting crucial information become useless, but we only end up reopening the wounds. It's better this way; you understand, don't you?"

Glinda nodded, but she didn't look the slightest bit reassured. "Can we go home afterwards?" she asked quietly; if her voice had sounded small before, now it sounded almost childlike – not to mention dangerously close to tears.

"I'm afraid we haven't been able to find a portal leading back to your world, or the technology to keep it open long enough for you to depart safely. The only portal we've heard of that has the heading you require is the one you arrived through – and that area is firmly within the grasp of Unbridled Radiance, and heavily occupied for good measure."

"So we're stuck here."

"You're free to remain guests in the palace for the time being. Of course, should our fortunes change and we acquire new territory, you may yet be able to return home; any assistance the two of you can render would speed the process along, I have no doubt."

"Like what?"

"Your testimony, for a start; any new information that can be gleaned from the memory-dreams; Elphaba's ability to translate the Grimmerie; any magical assistance you and Elphaba can provide... I'm sure you'll have plenty to bring to the table, whether it's in simple utility, artillery barrages, or close-range fighting."

Elphaba felt her temper slowly begin to bubble once again. "While we're on the subject," she said, teeth very carefully gritted, "Could I have a word with you in private?"

"Can it wait until after the testimony?"

"No."

Much to Elphaba's surprise, the Mentor didn't appear annoyed or disgruntled by this show of defiance; if anything, she'd clearly expecting it. Doubly surprising, rather than trying to stonewall her, she clankingly marched over to the door and waited patiently outside for Elphaba to join her.

"Now listen," snarled Elphaba (hastily shutting the door before any of the occupants heard too much), "I didn't just spend ten hours tracking, finding, rescuing and healing that girl just so you could drag the two of us into your war. Glinda has been through enough without adding any further trauma to the mix, and I've spent three whole years of my life fighting a different war that cost me everything – Nessarose, Fiyero, my own sanity, what little potential I had... point is, we're not up to being flung back into the meat grinder. Understand."

"Perfectly." The Mentor's voice was a deathly hiss now, a sibilant, glacial whisper that seemed to freeze the air around her as she spoke. "But while I'm not inattentive to the pain the two of you have endured, I have a responsibility to the people of this city and the people of the Deviant Nations as a whole; your assistance could be the weight that tips the fulcrum in our favour."

"How does that make any sense, exactly? I can see why the testimony might be useful, but why the hell would you need someone like me – or someone like Glinda – to provide say, a magical artillery barrage. What can we do that any other magician, witch or wizard in your service couldn't do?"

"Are you joking? Have you forgotten the power you wield? I doubt anyone in my army can utilize magic so effortlessly, or for that matter the unique thaumaturgical energies you've exhibited from birth. And what about the Grimmerie? You are the only person on record with the ability to decode the Grimmerie by instinct alone; doesn't that mean anything to you? All the power that the Empress is able to muster today is drawn solely from what she inherited from my Elphaba. She's survived a half-century that's seen my mutilation, the destruction of Oz, the death of the Wizard, the disappearance of Fiyero, Nessarose, Morrible and countless other titans of the old world. That survival skill and power – the Empress didn't come upon them by accident, and she didn't develop them on her own; you can wield the same power if you put your mind to it."

"And I suppose that Glinda could wield the same power as you if she put her mind to it?"

"Why not? She's not a complete idiot, Elphaba; if you were to take over her education in magic, you'd be astonished at the progress she'd make. And don't give me that incredulous look, I know what I'm talking about; after all, it was only a few short decades ago that I was just like her."

"No," said Elphaba, emphatically. "I am not helping you transform her into a weapon, and I am not going to let you use me as a weapon; I didn't tolerate this sort of thing from the Wizard, so why do you think I'd put up with it when you bring out the choke-chain and the dog whistle?"

"Amongst other things, the fact that the enemy we face is one spawned from the Wizard's meddling."

"Really? If you're going to go that far to try and motivate me, then why don't you just try a full-blown guilt trip - tell me that my other self's killed and mutilated hundreds of millions-"

"Because she didn't!" the Mentor roared. She took a deep breath to steady herself, her fists (both flesh and brass) clenching in subdued rage. "Your other self," she whispered shakily, "Is dead; the Empress is not her – just the twisted reflections of a woman long dead, a sick parody of Oz's last hero."

She cleared her throat, and continued in a much steadier voice: "In case you haven't noticed, Elphaba, the Deviant Nations are at war and we're not exactly making much progress towards winning, either. We've spent almost forty years embroiled in this conflict - not counting the years of disorganized rebellion leading up to it - and we've endured just about every single hardship thrown in our direction. We've sunk entire fortunes into acquiring armaments, vehicles, provisions, mercenaries, anything that could possibly help us win the next move in the campaign, and the jerry-rigged economy we've built up has undergone so many swings, recessions, crashes that the economists we've hired can now send their great, great, great grandchildren to university on bartered favours. We've weathered bombardments from airship fleets, artillery barrages, incursions by ground troops, attempted doomsday devices – all of them with a death toll and a cost in property damage that would make your head spin. We've dealt with traitors of every stripe: saboteurs, insurgents, assassins, even full-blown military coups funded by the enemy. There've been plagues, natural disasters, droughts, famines by the dozen until we managed to put the Smogeaters to work. Trial after trial we've endured, and we've always emerged from the maelstrom intact."

The Mentor sighed. "And it's still not enough. We're losing this war – slowly but surely, we're losing: it's not because of economic issues, it's not because Unbridled Radiance has acquired some strategic advantage we can't match, and it's not even the matter of disunity. We're losing this war because morale is well on its way to a total collapse."

"Because of how long the war's been?"

"That's one reason. Wouldn't you start to lose hope, knowing that the war's been carrying on for so many decades, knowing that it wouldn't be won in your lifetime? But it's more than that: we aren't nearly as unified as we'd like to think. Oh, we've had millions of people join our consortium of nations to escape the Radiant Laws and they fight to defy Unbridled Radiance as surely as the Irredeemables do, but all of them have their own private reasons for fighting: the average soldiers want to make a living for themselves and their families; the businessmen want to keep on doing business and raking in money without having to worry about the measures of control they'd suffer under the enemy's reign; the defecting military officers want honour and glory for themselves; the magicians and scientists want to carry on their research free of the Empress's restrictions and censors… only the Irredeemables fight for the cause alone – that's why they're the elite.

"Unbridled Radiance has no such problem: they've been trained from birth to accept fanatical worship of the Empress and genocidal hatred of us as a way of life; they've known no other life, no other options other than blind loyalty. They fight and die because their Empress demands it: even people like the hacks you captured this morning, even rank-and-file soldiers who haven't been brainwashed through Purification are dyed-in-the-wool fanatics. As long as they have their triumphant icon blazing on the horizon, they'll keep fighting us until our resolve has been eroded away – and that's what war's all about, really: not destroying the opposition altogether, not controlling or eradicating their resources... just breaking their will to fight. And our will is slowly being chipped away.

"There've already been a number of peace talks with Unbridled Radiance – all of them ending in disaster: our enemies refuse to agree to a truce until all Deviants and Irredeemables in the Nations' populace are dead and our leaders have submitted to Purification. How long, I wonder, until my colleagues give in, and the Deviant Nations becomes just another province of Unbridled Radiance? And what happens after that? The empire continues expanding, keeps Purifying the deserving and spreading the influence of the Empress and the Radiant Laws, until entire world conforms to the doctrine of beauty. And who knows, maybe Purification will change again – as it has in the past: maybe the Empress will no longer be satisfied with seeing only the elite as perfect, and she'll make Purification mandatory for all citizens, fill the streets with line after line of the selected, have her soldiers drag the unwilling from their beds and onto the operating table, and clog the surgeries and hospitals with all the tormented souls destined for perfection. On and on, until the work is done and the world is as beautiful and efficient as a clockwork engine, and populated only by silent, smiling, perfect beings without any memory of what it was like to be an individual.

"What we need, Elphaba, is hope. After so many years, there's only so many ways I can inspire my people… but you might succeed. You might just be the one we need to reinvigorate the flagging morale of the Deviant Nations."

There was a long silence. Eventually, Elphaba remarked. "You've had time to rehearse this speech, I take it?"

In spite of herself, the Mentor returned her smile. "It's one that I've spoken many times before in some format or another – adding an element here, subtracting another; I've had decades to polish and perfect it... and I've had decades to imagine the outcomes I mentioned at the end. Do any of them sound welcome to you?"

"None."

"Then, would you agree to render assistance?"

Elphaba let out a low groan of exasperation. "We'll see. I can't promise anything... but whatever I decide," she added sharply, "you stay away from Glinda. If you try to get her involved in this war as well, then this deal is officially over; you lose your secret weapon, and I leave with Glinda to find another way home. Understood?"

"Perfectly. With that out of the way, shall we carry on with Glinda's testimony? It's going to be a busy afternoon, and I don't think that beating around the bush is going to make it any shorter."

"You're certain of this, my lady?"

"Positive."

"Just to make sure that we're both on the same page, you are aware of the potential side-effects?"

"More than aware, Doctor: I've done plenty of research on the subject, and I wouldn't have bothered asking you to perform this service if I didn't know all the possible outcomes. And besides, Elphaba needs this; she might not know it at present, but it could be only thing that might put her on a level roughly comparable to that of the Empress."

"And I trust that you've prepared countermeasures just in case the side-effects reach critical levels? Alright, alright, you needn't give me that look. But in the meantime, if she's going to actually be under the influence for substantial periods of time, I'd imagine that you'd arrange for her to be fighting on the front lines. The question is, how are you going to convince her to do so? From what I've seen, she's still reluctant to work alongside us and even less willing to join us."

"Leave that to me. You just ensure that this drug makes it into her food, and keep an eye on her. If she starts to show signs of negative side-effects, you have to be first on the scene. Let no-one else treat her."

"Understood. We'll start tomorrow, then: 50 milligram dosages taken with morning and evening meals. What about Glinda? Do you want her to receive any-"

"No. Elphaba made it clear that trying to recruit her for the war effort in any way would be very much a deal-breaker. Just keep providing her with the dream-capsules she requested, and make sure Elphaba receives her own dosage as well; hopefully, that'll be enough to keep the two of them stable and providing regular information. Apparently, they're almost up to the Plague of Transformations, so we may yet harvest some useful information on the Empress by tomorrow morning. And keep an eye on Glinda's friend in intensive care – the shapeshifter; he or she could be a very valuable source of information."

"As you wish, my lady. It'll be interesting to see how the Amorphous League have changed since they left the mage-surgeons."

"Oh, and one more thing, Doctor... have you received any word from your contact?"

"Yes. I received a coded broadcast shortly after Elphaba and Glinda returned to the palace, asking about their condition."

"You're absolutely certain that it was her who aided Glinda's escape, then?"

"More than certain, my lady; I know it was her: only the Mistress of Mirrors would have the capacity to release Omber from the sarcophagus without being detected; and the fact that Glinda and Omber travelled through the Sepulchre for so long without raising an alarm certainly sounds like a classic example of the Mistress's sabotage."

"I'll put my trust in your judgement for the time being in that case. Has she asked for anything in return?"

"Nothing."

"And why exactly would she do that? She's been more than happy enough to accept boons from us in the past. What made this job so special to her that she'd be willing to refuse payment?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, my lady."

"Very well then; don't answer me. You know, Kiln, one of these days I'm going to get you to explain exactly who that damnable woman is and why you insist on protecting her identity."

"Well, there's an easy answer to the latter half, Great Mentor: you wouldn't believe me if I told you. She's proved her trustworthiness to me a thousand times over, and for the moment, that is all that matters."

"That remains to be seen, Doctor. Perhaps she'll deign to grace us with her presence and her true identity one of these days... but until then, I think it's time we left the remainder of our problems until the morning. Do inform me if the Mistress decides to ask for anything concrete – and if you've any evidence of U.R. loyalties on her part."

"Without hesitation, my lady; without hesitation..."

Elphaba sighed, and gloomily regarded the jar of glossy blue pills that Kiln had given her earlier that afternoon.

Once Glinda was finished providing her testimony to the Mentor's stenographer and Elphaba was finished providing a rough summary of what she'd learned about this strange parallel world (and Dorothy had finished gawping incredulously), the three of them had been bundled into an airship and transported back to the palace, Chistery remaining outside to enjoy himself in the evening sky. Following a hearty late lunch-turned-dinner, they'd been provided with another royal apartment; thankfully, this one was much larger and far more luxurious than the former, complete with en-suite bathrooms and an additional bedroom - "for the newest addition to the Great Mentor's growing retinue of guests," Vara had cheekily commented.

By this time, it was almost eight o'clock and all three of them were tired: so, under the unspoken agreement that they should all go to sleep, they'd all filed into their separate rooms and started getting ready for bed. Unfortunately, this left Elphaba staring down the latest of Doctor Kiln's remedies.

Because her dreams were actually the Radiant Empress's memories, the Mentor had wasted no time in ensuring that the Deviant Nations was able to capitalize on this potential source of valuable information: quite apart from providing Elphaba with a notepad and pen to record her dreams with, Kiln had also given her a small supply of drugs that greatly reduced the occurrence of dreams in human brains, to be taken before going to bed every night. "Of course," he'd amended, "They've only ever been able to keep out ordinary dreams: psychic transmissions, magical curses and other supernaturally-induced dream-states can't be blocked by the pills; the good news is, that's exactly what we need to prevent you from having your access to the Empress's memories interrupted by ordinary dreams and nightmares."

Elphaba had accepted the pills, but only reluctantly: after listening to the Mentor's desperately little speech, she still wasn't entirely sure if she could be trusted; after all, the fanatics among the Deviant Nations might have been few in number, but it was pretty obvious that the Mentor herself was one of them. With this in mind, was it really such a good idea to trust such a dedicated revolutionary with mind-altering drugs?

Then again, she thought, if I don't take them myself, they're probably going to end up slipped into my evening meal. At least Glinda got her own supply to keep the nightmares at bay.

Sighing even deeper, she unscrewed the jar, shook a single bullet-sized pill into her hand and downed it with a shudder.

There. Let the madness begin.

There was a knock at the door: waiting behind it, palefaced, gnawing her bottom lip in anxiety and dressed in a rumpled-looking nightgown, stood Glinda. "I… would you mind if I came in?" she asked hesitantly.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I… I just couldn't sleep. I mean, I've taken the pill and everything, but I just can't shut my eyes without imagining that… that I'm trapped in one of those sarcophagi, just waiting for the mage-surgeons to open the doors and drag me onto an operating table. And that's if I'm not back in the lecture hall, hiding behind a door and hoping that nobody finds me… and I keep thinking about the people I murdered and-"

Elphaba swung the door open and deftly ushered Glinda into the room, pausing only close the door behind them before sitting her down on the edge of the bed. "Listen," she said firmly. "You didn't murder anyone; what you did was justifiable homicide – they were trying to kill or capture you, and if you hadn't fought back, they'd have succeeded. And you said yourself that these were same people who made Walter into one of the Purified; at the risk of sounding callous, they weren't exactly innocents."

"They were once," said Glinda. The panicky quaver in her tone had vanished, and her voice had dropped to a deathly, haunted whisper. "Maybe they were just like Walter before they were Purified; I mean, nobody said that they'd undergone the procedure voluntarily. Maybe they had to be dragged there. Maybe they begged for mercy. Maybe they called for their mothers, maybe they…" She swallowed hard. "And ever since that last dream, I keep seeing them like that – not Purified, not mage-surgeons, not even loyal to the Empress… just ordinary people, screaming and begging for mercy even while I'm… I'm…" Suddenly, Glinda's cheeks were coursing with tears. "I can't stop myself, even in the dream, I just keep beating them and beating them and-"

Elphaba put a calming hand on Glinda's shoulder. "You're not the only person in this room who's ended up killing and regretting it," she said gently. "I've barely told you a quarter of what happened to me when I was fighting the Wizard… and believe me, there's plenty of things there that I wish I could undo or just forget."

She took a deep breath to steady herself. "I remember the first day I realized just how hard it was going to be to live with myself. It must have been a month or two after I left the Emerald City; I was making my first full-scale attack on one of the Wizard's guard encampments: they were clamping down on the local Animals as harshly as they could, crushing potential rebels, looking for anyone who might have been sheltering me… and the ones they didn't execute on the spot were to be brought back to the Wizard's specialists to be rendered down into beasts." She fought back a wellspring of bile at the memory –the long line of dispirited Animals being herded off into cargo carriages, and the much later sight of Dr Dillamond bleating mindlessly in the dust, his once-brilliant eyes dull and unaware.

"What happened?"

"Well, those were the early days of my "Reign of Terror," when even the guardsmen were too scared to stand and fight: oh, they were happy enough to pelt me with gunfire from afar, but if I got close enough, they ran like hell. All it took were a few bright flashes and a few loud noises, with a few suitably ghoulish illusions thrown in for good measure, and all of them took to their heels and ran. So once I was certain that everyone had left and wouldn't return anytime soon, I flew down into the encampment to see if any Animals had been left behind in the cages or the stockades; at the time, I didn't know that the guards had emptied both and most of the captive Animals who'd been waiting in line for transportation had run for the hills once they realized that the guards weren't interested in sticking around. So, I was wandering around the camp, looking for any sign of prisoners to rescue… when I saw him.

"He was probably only a corporal at the most; young – probably lied about his age to join up. He was lying on the ground, covered in mud from head to toe; I think he must have been knocked into the dirt when people started stampeding for the exit. But at the time, I didn't notice any of that: all I saw was that he was getting to his feet… and there was a rifle on the ground in front of him.

"Before I could stop him, he'd snatched it up and pointed it at me. He was scared, you could tell that much from the look in his eyes… and he was desperate. I don't know how long we stood there, both of us too afraid to make the first move; maybe it was just a minute, maybe it was twenty. It could have been eight hours for all I know.

"Then, I saw him lower the rifle – and on instinct, I attacked. I flung everything I could at him: fire, ice, lightning, and enough kinetic energy to pulverize bone. It wasn't until…" She swallowed. "It wasn't until after the storm passed that I realized that he'd said something, just before I'd launched the first spell at him:

He'd said "Please."

Once I found the gun he'd been holding, I realized why: the rifle hadn't been loaded at all – and he'd known it. Maybe he was trying to surrender, maybe he was going to try and negotiate a cease-fire, maybe he'd realized his mistake and he was about to run for life. I don't know; to this day, I don't know what he'd been trying to do, where he'd come from, or even his name. All I know is, that was the first time I'd killed at close range… and my victim had been completely defenceless. And after that, I realized just how hard this fight was going to be – and how much harder it would be to live with myself."

"So, you see, Glinda, you're not alone in feeling like this at all. I know it might not be much comfort to you but-"

Without saying a word, Glinda flung her arms around Elphaba; suddenly no longer on the verge of tears, and without warning almost laughing with relief, Elphaba returned the hug.

It took a minute for the two to finally part, and another thirty seconds before Glinda finally recovered enough of her voice to whisper, "Can I sleep in here, Elphie? I… I know it sounds silly, but I really don't feel safe sleeping on my own."

"It's not silly at all. And of course you can sleep in here."

A/N: Coming up next - The Plague of Transformations!