A/N: And here we are with the latest chapter, ladies and gents! Morbid details, disturbing stories, and the deepest darkest secrets of Unbridled Radiance on display - read on to learn more, provide nice long reviews and forgive any errors that might creep in as a result of writing this at three in the morning!
RedApple435, thanks so much for your review - I'm glad you're enjoying the AU so far, especially as far as the terrifying details go.
Caliax, thank you for your latest review - and belated thanks for your review of chapter 29 as well! As always, I'm very happy to hear that my story still inspires joy even after all the times and ways I've let my schedule fall to pieces, and I'm glad I can provide some much-needed escape in troubled times.
Nami Swann, yeah, I loved "Alphaba" too when Ichibayashi first coined it; in the coming chapters, we'll no doubt see many more reasons why Branderstove is not a man to be trifled with - and even more reasons to hate the Radiant Empress Alphaba!
So, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: 8 out of 10 doctors confirm that Wicked does not belong to me. The other two went mad and were arrested for trying to weaponize giraffes.
Contrary to the bleating of the Mentor's abominations, this place was called the Deep Sepulchre for a reason.
The ignorant would have called it a charnel house, a mass grave of deeply-buried secrets and the corpses of those who had known too much. Such names were oft repeated by the Deviants and Distortions who cowered in the shadows of Unbridled Radiance's purifying light; they feared the catacombs of Exemplar as a place of inescapable captivity and agonizing death, and those too childish to know any better agreed with them – until wiser souls enlightened them, of course. The Purified knew better: this was no dungeon, no torturous prison like those that had befouled Oz in the irrelevant decades prior to the rise of Unbridled Radiance, nor was it a place where secrets and those who'd known them were permanently interred. Those who were willing to embrace beauty and perfection had nothing to fear from this place: they understood that some truths were too sensitive for the public, too important to be revealed to those who hadn't acquired the wisdom and maturity that Purification brought.
So, beneath the streets of Unbridled Radiance's greatest city, the secrets of the empire were gathered in respectful silence, and in chambers as immaculate as any tomb, they were interred for all time. Sometimes those secrets were documents, weapons, machines, spellbooks, objects too rare and precious to be seen aboveground; sometimes those secrets were people, either invited for brief visits in which they could share their knowledge with the Studious Interviewers, or sentenced to live out their lives in comfort beneath the earth… and a rare few were – in spite of their monstrous crimes – allowed to rest for all eternity in the silent vaults.
And so, this place was called the Deep Sepulchre: a monument to the hallowed secrets of Unbridled Radiance, and a fitting tribute to those who had been sacrificed to keep those secrets buried – and those still being sacrificed.
Here, between the brightly-lit passageways, stockpiles of long-forgotten artefacts were concealed for restoration and use in the war against the Deviant Nations – sooner rather than later. In the heavily-soundproofed wings of the complex, the interrogations proceeded in earnest, drawing the truth from those who'd sinned against perfection, and chastising those who'd blasphemed the holiness of beauty. Away from the inquiries of the Studious Interviewers, other captives waited in cells and sarcophagi, either for punishment or for a Purification they had tried to flee. In deeper regions of the cellblock, they waited even longer, unaware that they had become permanent residents. Here, at the lowest nadir of a converted mineshaft, Paragon sat and hummed in unending computation, swiftly calculating Exemplar's reconstruction and retaliation with all the brilliance its many donor minds afforded it. And, the foot of the great machine and in the laboratories on the upper catacombs, the successors of the Pottery's grand legacy continued their research, experimenting within the mechanical mindscape of Paragon or upon what bodies the prison wing provided them, forever readying the arsenal of Unbridled Radiance for the harshest days of the war.
And yet, even with Exemplar still aflame and its once-great spires lying in ruins, none of these vital chambers of the Sepulchre held the Empress's interest.
Instead, she strode ever-onwards down the corridor, moving through the echoing passageways at a slow but purposeful stride, pausing only to offer the occasional nod to a bowing technician as she descended into the bowels of the Sepulchre.
This afternoon, she had business in the second-lowest compartments of the Pottery; here, hidden almost as deep as Paragon, the survivors of the original Pottery languished. For once, the Empress had questions that only they could answer.
Of course, her encounter with her double and the sincerity of the supposed imposter had left her reeling. The missile attack on Exemplar had caught her by surprise, and only the practiced speed of her casting had prevented the assault from inflicting even more damage… and yet, it wasn't the assault itself that had truly astonished her: it was how easily the barriers had fallen. Normally, the Deviant Nations couldn't dismantle the magical border defences, not even with dozens of magicians working in tandem alongside the Mentor herself; the Empress had woven the enchantments too thoroughly and too thickly for them to collapse in the face of brute force, using the spells of the Grimmerie to ensure that Unbridled Radiance's borders remained effectively impenetrable to lesser magic. So, up until now, the Deviant Nations had made use of attacks too subtle for the barrier to detect, or ordering their infiltrators and proxies to disable the shielding from within.
Today, it had been different: the Mentor had simply cast a spell and the barrier had fallen; no loopholes, no trickery, no sabotage, not even a hint of treachery from the border-maintainers – just one improbably powerful spell. More specifically, a spell that had clearly been taken from the Grimmerie.
It could not have been stolen, that much was immediately apparent, for the great spellbook was still under lock and key in the bedchamber. Nor had it been copied: in the decades since she'd first obtained it, the Empress had shrouded the book in layer after layer of devastating hexes, quiescent at her touch but fatally volatile in the presence of strangers; anyone trying to open the book without her blessing would have been eviscerated on the spot. But even if this hypothetical copier had somehow managed to dispel those enchantments, a bevy of the finest diagnostic spells in her repertoire confirmed that nobody else had touched the book in the last thirty years. It was possible that someone had managed to make a copy long before Elphaba had acquired it, perhaps Morrible, perhaps someone among the court magicians of the ancient family of Oz... But the probability of such a copy surviving the destruction of Oz and the decades of neglect that followed was unlikely at best, unless of course it had been under the Mentor's protection at the time – and if so, why hadn't she used it before today?
The Empress wasn't certain… but she had her suspicions. A pattern had formed in the last few days: first, a perfect duplicate of Glinda had appeared in Unbridled Radiance, seemingly ignorant of the last forty years of history and remarkably ill-equipped for an operative of the Mentor. Days later, the False Elphaba had appeared, imitating the appearance and mannerisms of the Wicked Witch in perfect detail… and somehow demonstrating perfect sincerity too, not to mention an impressive grasp of magic. She even carried an enchanted broomstick. The only anomaly in this woman's disguise was the curious energy signature she left in her wake… and, of course, the fact that she didn't possess the Grimmerie as the real Witch had.
Scant hours later, the Mentor had cast a spell from that very book.
Two figures from long-dead Oz, identical to their namesakes in almost every way and showing no signs of lying or insincerity; an impossible copy of the Grimmerie; and far too many disturbing dreams for the Empress's liking. Oh yes, a pattern was forming, but before she jumped to conclusions, she had to know more.
Normally, she would have consulted Paragon for the answers, but the thinking engine had proved itself unreliable as far as the False Elphaba was concerned; recalibration might have toned down its newfound rebellious streak, but the Empress didn't feel in the mood to put it to the test – not with so much rebuilding to be done. Instead, she'd had the technicians manually input some of her more pertinent queries into Paragon's computation centres (a slower process than just asking it in person, but one that ensured none of the donor minds would be able to influence the results).
While they went about the eye-straining process of inputting the data, she had other business to attend to – hence the reason why she was now striding down the increasingly empty tunnels in search of the only other experts who might be able to answer her questions.
Just a few yards ahead, the Childlike Researchers awaited her.
How long had it last been since she'd visited them in person? Five years? Ten? Normally, if there were matters requiring the Researchers' unique expertise, the Empress simply made an appointment and trusted the matron to keep it. But once again, things were different: there were no errands to run on the surface, nothing that would risk exposing the fragile conditions of the Researchers to the outside world, nothing that would prompt another awkward explanation to confused officials or courtiers – and certainly nothing that required another debate among the physicians over whether their condition should be called Age Fluctuation Syndrome, Oscillating Age Syndrome, Youth Sickness, Blood-Drinker's Disease, Just Punishment, or whatever name sounded the most appropriate to the experts. So, here she was.
The corridor abruptly ended in an imposing brass hatchway, sealed with over a dozen sturdy magnetic locks and fortified with almost as many runes and enchantments; with such security, the door itself could only be opened with the explicit permission of the matron – or the Empress herself. Nothing had changed since her last visit: not the door, not the locks, not even the hand-made signs decorating the bulkhead- "Such wisdom from the mouth of babes," and "Welcome to the Crèche!" And once again, the familiar chorus of muffled thuds echoed down the corridor as the magnetic locks disengaged and the hatchway slowly rumbled open, allowing her into the warren of secret passages and hidden rooms that bordered the complex, where the nurses still monitored their patients through two-way mirrors and magical viewscreens. And through another, slightly less-imposing door, lay the Crèche proper.
At once a luxury retirement home, a nursery, a research facility, a mental hospital and a prison, the Crèche had been built specifically to accommodate and contain the Childlike Researchers. As such, the facility had been specifically designed to provide the very best in comfort to its residence, a service befitting the oldest and most brilliant minds in all of Unbridled Radiance; on top of decadent furnishings and five-star food and drink, there was even a subterranean park at the eastern end of the complex, allowing the Researchers to relax, exercise and enjoy themselves in the artificial sunshine. And of course, regardless of security precautions, all areas were prepared to service the same individuals no matter what stage of their lives they were currently occupying.
Here, in the great living room of the Crèche, this rule was in full force: at first sight, it looked like the sitting room of a well-preserved gentleman's club, complete with a warm fireplace, row after row of plush armchairs, mahogany tables, crystal decanters, ivory ashtrays and other luxuries basking in the soft golden light. But alongside the adult furnishings, there could be found children's toys, portable playground equipment, dolls, nursery enclosures, baby bottles, rattles, teething rings, and other paraphernalia. Books of arcane lore and purely theoretic spellcraft warred for space with decaying paperback classics and ancient pulp novels from Oz's long-dead publishing houses, with children's picture books and slender tales of adventure, with cardboard books for the Researchers' youngest iterations – a cascade of books for professionals, adults, teenagers and children spilling off the tables and onto the thickly-carpeted floor. And as always, there was at least one resident in mid-transformation right there in the living room, either ballooning grotesquely into adulthood to the accompaniment of tearing clothes and distending limbs, or regressing to infancy, shrinking smaller and smaller until their coats appeared to swallow them whole.
Today, the room was almost empty except for a few off-duty Researchers and the one still in transition, most of them sitting on the floor in various stages of regression, either reading or playing – depending on how sane they were after nearly four decades of humiliating transformations and equally shameful imprisonment. As soon as the Empress entered, the least-lucid of them all crowded around her, babbling like the excitable children they were; the most lucid just waved and mumbled awkwardly, too embarrassed to be seen in their younger state, or too afraid of the visitor to approach.
At the head of the welcoming committee was Dr Ailing, a giggling maelstrom of beribboned scarlet curls deliriously spouting greetings from chocolate-stained lips; at present, she was hovering at somewhere around six years old, which was incidentally the same age her mindset had earthed itself in over a decade ago. Once upon a time, she'd been one of the greatest toxicologists ever recruited by the Pottery, renowned among her colleagues and pupils as a pioneering expert in chemical warfare. These days, most of her free time was spent in increasingly elaborate games with her dolls – or with whatever nurse had been assigned to her for the day. True, she was still a genius and one of the foremost innovators in her field; now, though, she saw the world through the eyes of a child and acted accordingly.
"Empress! Empress!" she shrieked, somehow making herself heard over the cacophony of her fellow Researchers. "Are we going outside again? Can we go outside today?"
"Not today, dear."
"Aw. Well, can you join my tea party?"
"I don't know if I can spare the-"
"Just for a bit, please?"
"Ailing, what have I told you about not interrupting?"
"Sorry, Your Rad'ance. I've only just gotten back to normal, and I want to have some fun but everybody's being so noisy so the nurses don't have time to join in and all the other kids are too jumpy to join in so it's just me and Baliss and Maliss!"
Well, jumpiness was to be expected, considering the ballistic hailstorm that Exemplar had just endured; though none of the missiles had detonated any lower than street level, the tremors of each explosion had travelled as deep as Paragon's central chambers before finally dissipating. Earthquake fears were depressingly common among Researchers, regardless of how lucid or delusional they were. To her credit, Ailing didn't seem bothered by the chaos – not all that surprising how nonchalant she'd been around dangerous experiments as an adult.
"What about Calenture?" The Empress asked. "Surely he'd be willing to play?"
"Calenture isn't back to normal yet, he's still a grownup. He's too big and clumsy for the tea-parties and he's no fun when he's a grownup – he's always sad – and Nurse Igridine says he won't be back to normal again for another five hours!"
Oh, yes. "Normal." Young Morrible had stopped just short of conniptions when she'd heard the word used in that context, and even the Empress had to admit that it seemed strange to hear it used in this particular context (though for different reasons than Morrible, of course). For anyone else in the empire, it would have been blasphemous to proclaim this Distortion normal or in any way acceptable, to even imply that the afflicted were "normal" in their transformed state a heresy of the most shocking bluntness. The Childlike Researchers were allowed a certain degree of leniency, however, partly due to the knowledge and expertise they could provide to the greater glory of Unbridled Radiance, but mostly because the Researchers themselves didn't know any better – and in many cases, couldn't.
Mental illness was distressingly common among the Crèche's residents, either because of the incarceration they had to endure as a result of their condition, or because of the condition itself. Of the thirty-eight Researchers imprisoned here in the lower levels, less than a third of them retained their adult personalities, and few of those had managed to escape the passing decades with their sanity intact. Every year, the tally dropped substantially, and every year, more Researchers succumbed to a wide variety of derangements. Those of them still capable of adult thought patterns tended to suffer from chronic depression, crippling anxiety attacks, fits of catatonia that left them almost completely withdrawn from reality, and a whole host of other maladies. One such patient had been so overcome by claustrophobia that he'd actually tried to claw his way through a solid concrete wall with his bare hands, ripping out most of his fingernails in the process – "just to see the sun," he'd sobbed as the nurses had dragged him away. "Need to see the sun."
But lucid Researchers such as these were in the minority. Far more of them had left the world of adult thought behind years ago, mentally regressing to match the physical transformations they so often suffered. Once again, the reasons varied: some minds, faced with decade after decade of imprisonment, physical pain, humiliation and failure, simply broke under the strain and reverted to childhood as a means of coping with the awful reality; others, having been treated as children for so long and so thoroughly, began to unconsciously believe that they really were children, submerging their adult psyches as the final expression of their beliefs. Whatever the case, the results were the same: though they maintained their adult intelligence, their behaviour became increasingly childish, and remained so regardless of whatever age they'd arrived at; bit by bit, they forgot their lives prior to joining the Crèche, until only their abilities and passion for science remained, too deeply-imprinted to be forgotten. Most of these truly Childlike Researchers believed that they were prodigies born and raised in the Crèche for their own safety, recovering from a disease that cursed them to occasionally grow or shrink into clumsy and uncomfortable new shapes, and any impression that they had once been adults was just another symptom of their illness – the more lucid Researchers being branded as "weird kids" for clinging to this impression. For her part, the Empress saw no need to disabuse them of this notion: after all, why ruin a happy workforce?
"I can't promise anything, dear – but I can promise you that you'll have a living participant very soon. Now," she continued, as Ailing jumped for joy, "Where might I find Lintel?"
The toxicologist made a face. "He's still in his room, trying to make doors in the air. He won't listen to any of us – he just keeps screaming that we used to be grown-ups and that we've all gone crazy, the usual weird kid stuff. A while ago, he was saying something about getting out and taking over the world, but that's it."
How little things change, even after almost half a century of warped health.
"What about Little Miss Emmataal?"
"Oh, she's in an is'lation cell: she tried to escape during the quake – almost blew the door off its hinges before Matron managed to stop her. She wouldn't stop shouting at us, either, saying we were all stupid and crazy and we were once really grown-ups – Emma, not the Matron, I mean. But she was even calling herself Morrible – as if that'd make us stop calling her The Brat!"
Again, how little things change.
A muffled scream split the air as the transitioning Researcher finally completed his regression, vanishing under the collar of his shirt as he did so. Snapped out of her reverie, the Empress drew herself up and – pausing only to utter a few cursory goodbyes to Ailing – she strode onwards, towards the open doors to the facility's eastern wing.
Here, just a few hundred yards along the winding blue corridor, past the kitchens, the dining rooms and bathrooms, lay the sleeping quarters. A modified cellblock with more privacy and luxury than any real prison would be allowed, each room had been engineered to completely restructure itself in the event that its resident transformed: when the regression alert sounded, beds would be replaced with cribs or cradles, wardrobes would replace their contents for age-appropriate clothes, cuddly toys would be provided, and so on. And if anything went wrong, the nurses were always patrolling the corridors.
The Empress was quite proud of the Crèche's nursing staff, and rightly so: finding the right candidates had been a difficult task at best, given that each nurse had to be fully qualified to care for infants, children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly – and more importantly, they had to be ready to deal with a patient that could and frequently would fluctuate wildly between those ages over the course of a single day. Tracking down the right individuals, screening them for criminal or Deviant tendencies, and ushering them into the nondisclosure agreements all took time, but – much like everything that occurred under the Aegis of Unbridled Radiance – it was all worth it in the end. The nurses were trained and equipped to deal with just about any given situation that might occur: they provided first aid, they served the meals, they mopped the floors, they assisted the Researchers with their experiments, they cared for those too young to attend to their own needs, they made sure that the transformations were painless as humanly possible, and of course, they made certain that every new regression, progression or symptom was carefully noted. But above all, they maintained order and enforced discipline, for this place was still very much a prison for all the luxuries its inmates were afforded.
The rules were known and enforced by the nurses at all times: the Researchers were not to be allowed outside of the Crèche except on official business. Their only exercise was conducted in the subterranean park at the eastern end of the facility, and once again required the presence of an escort. Most forms of magic were banned outside the labs, a rule enforced by a bevy of nullifying runes permanently installed across most of the complex, ensuring that all but the most powerful of magicians would be incapable of anything stronger than mild illusionism. The Researchers would only be permitted access to their laboratories if they were accompanied by an armed escort, and experiments conducted without the permission of the Empress and the Matron were strictly forbidden. Anyone attempting to flout these regulations would face harsh penalties – ranging from corporeal punishment to solitary confinement.
As one of the misfits of the inmate population, Lintel had required more disciplining than most: already known as an accident-prone bigot with delusions of grandeur, his attitude had plunged to new lows following his induction into the Crèche, a problem only worsened by the rigors of repeated regression. Back in the Pottery, his anti-Animal prejudices had been easily smothered with flattery and veiled threats; during his first few months in the Crèche, he'd been so enraged at having to share the dinner table with a wolf – or as he'd called him, "an uppity flea-ridden mongrel" – he'd actually tried to stab the unfortunate Researcher to death with his fork. When he wasn't trying to hurt someone, he was broadcasting his bigotry to anyone in earshot; if it wasn't bigotry, it was a temper tantrum befitting the toddler he so often was; when he wasn't throwing a temper tantrum, he was wasting his time on hilariously elaborate escape attempts; when he wasn't trying to escape, he was blowing up his workstation out of sheer spite. It took ten long years of rehabilitation before his behaviour returned to the lofty standards of his Pottery days, and another thirty to scrub away the remaining character deficiencies; by now, he was almost a model inmate.
The key word being "almost."
In a cluttered cell at the end of the sleeping quarters, the greatest living expert on portal magic now sat in silence on the edge of his bed, watery blue eyes downcast, crooked legs dangling aimlessly in the air. Lintel couldn't be much older than nine years old, but he was showing signs of all-too-adult depression: it couldn't be a result of his most recent transformation – after all, he'd once shrank down to exactly six months of age, and as long as the nurses kept him fed and swaddled (and away from Animals), he'd been perfectly content to giggle maniacally and scrawl revolutionary designs for portal machinery on butcher paper. Now, at an age that would have easily allowed him to work and rave about everything his theories had to offer the world, he just sat there, wilting silently under the watchful eyes of Nurse Henderlay.
He didn't look up as the Empress entered, nor did he rise to greet her; he just mumbled a "hullo," and said nothing more.
Clearly not in the mood to talk, then. But no matter how stubborn old age and youth sickness might make them, the Childlike Researchers were still passionate scientists, and the thrill of discovery was often motivation enough: all the Empress had to do was wave the folder marked CLASSIFIED under Lintel's nose and watch his eyes light up.
"Wha's this?"
"The reason why Unbridled Radiance has need of your services again, my dear. Read it."
A confused silence followed as Lintel leafed through the folder; most of it was newly-compiled information, including damage reports on the bombardment of Exemplar, photographs of the False Elphaba, official summaries of the last two battles for Loamlark, a transcript of Dr Marsh's attempted vivisection of the False Glinda, and even the first telegrammed notification of the imposter's presence aboard Ambassador Hayfelt's train. It took some time for Lintel to read through all of it, and once he was finished, he looked up with an expression of utter bewilderment stamped on his face. "What does it all mean?" he asked. "Who is this… woman… supposed to be?"
"That's exactly the question I was hoping you could answer, Lintel. I won't trouble you with all the theories I proposed in order to explain the presence of this False Elphaba; suffice it to say that none of them could explain why the Mentor suddenly has a copy of the Grimmerie. Then, I remembered one of your more extraordinary inventions…"
In spite of himself, Lintel smiled. "You want to know if anything like this False Elphaba could have originated from another world," he whispered, only just managing to keep the excitement from his voice.
"Correct. You showed me conclusive proof that these other worlds exist, and that travel between them is distinctly possible; you even showed me how those portals could be used in warfare. What I want to know is if one of the worlds beyond Kansas could somehow replicate our own."
There was a pause, as Lintel considered this. "It's possible… but not in the way you're thinking. My gateway has showed me many different worlds beyond Kansas: worlds where molten gold flows in rivers across endless grasslands of carnelian shards and into forests of golden trees with silver leaves; ruined civilizations where the sky is hidden behind rainclouds of sulphuric acid, and the caverns beneath the blasted earth are haunted by the half-melted remains of once-prosperous peoples; domains of unending night where the ground has cracked open and the endless void of space flows through like water; worlds like ours, like Kansas, where one world clings to another like a barnacle clings to the hull of a ship…" His voice was suddenly beginning to change, becoming older and deeper even as his body remained that of a child, and there was a hint of the old megalomania in his tone, too. "I've seen worlds that dominate others," he continued, "with capital cities that span entire continents, with armies that march ceaselessly for the will of their masters, where Kings, Queens and other Potentates rule as we should, as I should, as masters of-"
"Lintel, what have I told you about keeping your ego under control?"
"Sorry. But my point is, all these worlds are within our sphere of reality; they might be all but unreachable without the aid of my prototype gateways, but they are still very much a part of our overarching universe. The world you describe belongs to a realm outside our reality altogether, an entire set of alternate realities paralleling our own. Here, the difference between worlds is not a matter of varying environments and physical laws, but a matter of divergent timelines."
"You know this for a fact?"
"My machines have only recently been able to penetrate the barrier between the universes, and only showed me the closest worlds beyond our plane of existence, but I can confirm that such parallel realities do exist. Take a look at my records if you don't believe me: scientists and magicians alike have speculated upon the existence of parallel universes for decades, but I was the first to witness them, the first to prove their unambitious-"
"Lintel…"
"Sorry. Anyway, these parallel universes… from what I have seen, many of them are almost identical to ours except for a few subtle differences: same geography, same weather patterns, even the same history; over the course of my experiments, I've seen alternate versions of you, the Mentor, even of me and the other Researchers. But there are always differences in the history of the world, and the further I strayed from our own reality, the greater the differences became – worlds where the war was over and the empire at peace, worlds where you were dead and the empire had died with you, on and on and on…"
The Empress's eyes narrowed. "In other words, this 'False' Elphaba is from a reality where the Great Purification never occurred – and she brought her world's copy of the Grimmerie with her, no less. But how would she and this Other Glinda have arrived in our reality? I've had spies in the Deviant Nations for some time now, and they've yet to report any portal developments remotely similar to yours – other than what they managed to salvage from the Potter's Ground."
"Well, it… erm…" Lintel blushed. "It may be possible that the boundaries between universes have weakened over the past decades, aha, possibly as a result of damaged caused by..." He swallowed nervously. "By the, uh, weaponry we used during the first years of the war. Aha, specifically the Portal Collision Enabler. And, as a result, the walls have become thin enough for inhabitants of other universes to arrive in ours upon exposure to similar weak spots in the fabric of their own reality. It's not unlike how people from Kansas accidentally travel to Oz on freak storms. Or used to, at any rate."
"I see."
"Your Radiance, I'm really sorry about this, it never occurred to me that this would happen, I-"
The Empress held up a hand, cutting the childish babble of apologies short. "Lintel," she calmly announced, "In the event that this particular hypothesis turns out to be correct, I want you to assess just how accessible these other universes are, and determine if it's possible to reverse the flow of arrivals into this reality."
"You mean send this Other Elphaba back where she came from?"
"And ensure that no further accidental incursions can occur, yes. If possible, I want to see just how far our reach into the Alternate can extend. For now, though, I have business to attend to elsewhere."
"Wait, you're going already?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Can't you stay just a little while longer?" There was a note of panic in Lintel's voice.
"Unfortunately, no; I have other matters to attend to, and you have your work to attend to."
"But isn't there anything else we can talk about? I mean, surely there's other details I can help with, some way my portals can be put to good use. You said yourself that we both have our work to attend to – shouldn't we discuss that further?" His voice was almost frantic now. "How are the portable portals doing on the northern front? Do you want me to create more of them? Do you want me to help transport them again? What do you need me to do?"
And yet another mood swing in progress, the Empress thought sadly. "I've already told you what needs to be done," she soothed. "If I need anything further from you, I'll let you know; until then, you've still got another hour of breaktime to enjoy, so if you'll excuse me-"
She turned to leave, only for Lintel to grab the hem of her robes in a vain attempt to drag her back into the room. "Can't we talk about something else?" he pleaded, voice on the edge of hysteria. "Surely there's something else you need me for something else we can talk about only don't leave me alone with all these lunatics not yet or I'll go mad just like the rest of them-"
Before the nurse could reach the two of them, the Empress let her magic flare outwards in a blinding wave of light and kinetic force; too potent for the runes of nullification to suppress and too strong for Lintel's suppressed talents to resist, her power surged outwards, lifting the Researcher off his feet and sending him hurtling back onto the bed.
"What exactly is the matter, Lintel?" the Empress whispered. "In the past, you've made no secret of resenting me for keeping you imprisoned here. Why so eager to stay with me all of a sudden? Is this the start of another assassination attempt?"
"I…" Lintel sagged with despair. "I need your help," he admitted, almost inaudibly. "For the last few weeks, I've been… forgetting. Just little things at first: names of old professors, addresses where I used to live, arguments I had back in college, that sort of thing. But now I can't remember where I grew up, the names of my brothers and sisters, my birthday, my real age – even my real name. It's all slipping away from me, all of it: I've had days when I can't even remember what I was doing before I joined the Pottery, or what Oz was like before you took over; I've woken up at night, wondering if my entire adult life was just a dream and I've been a child all along." He took a deep breath. "Whatever's happened to the other Researchers is finally happening to me: soon, I'll be just like them – no memory of my life up until the Crèche, no adult thoughts, just a delusion."
"Unfortunate," the Empress conceded, "But I'm afraid there's little that can be done about it. You know the statistics well enough by now: once the process begins, there's little that can stop it. Whatever caused the psychological degeneration, it's self-sustaining and quite beyond any methods we have at our disposal."
"But you can help me remember! Refreshing my memories could stop the degeneration, and by now, you know more about me than I do: you still have access to my dossier, to my records – you even have my diaries locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere, if I remember correctly. That's not too much to ask, is it? All you have to do is just sit with me for a little while and talk about… about who I used to be."
The Empress considered this for a moment. "No," she said at last.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, but even if I could spare the time to restore your memories, I wouldn't: you see, you need to forget."
"Why? Because you want to wipe out all memory of Oz?"
"Partly," she admitted. "But you see, it's not just a matter of needing to erase the last putrescent memories of a degenerate nation: it's a matter of allowing you to move on."
"Move on? Move on?! How am I supposed to move on from forgetting everything? How am I supposed to move on from losing my mind? I mean, I…" Lintel floundered for a moment, coherency briefly escaping him. "I'm going to die!" he exploded. "Unless you help me, I'm going to lose everything – my memories, my personality, my aspirations, my dreams – they'll all be gone! I might not be dead physically, I'll still be able to think and reason and draw on ingrained knowledge, but everything I was will be gone. I'm going to die-"
"And be reborn," The Empress finished. "Just as the chosen must die on the operating table if they are to be reborn as the Purified. Just as Oz had to die so that it could be born again as Unbridled Radiance. Just as Elphaba had to die in order to rise again as the Radiant Empress. You see, Lintel, you've been living in the past for too long: even decades after the collapse of Oz and the end of the Pottery as you knew it, you're still acting out the same tired drama, still screaming "I'll show them! I'll show them all!" night after night after night. Just a few minutes ago, Ailing was telling me all about your latest temper tantrum, about your boasts of taking over the world someday – the exact same boasts you spouted back in the Pottery. You've done nothing but stagnate for the last few years, and quite frankly, your work has been heading in the same direction: same theories, same ego, same narcissistic pandering. It's time you saw the world with new eyes, with an outlook untarnished by old prejudices… and a clean slate."
"So that's it? You're just going to leave me to die and be reborn – as what? A ward? A pet? A slave?"
"I'm not forcing enslavement on you, Lintel: I'm allowing you to reclaim your innocence, and take the first tentative steps on the road to perfection. You'll understand soon enough. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
"Your Radiance, please... I beg you: I've already forgotten so much, I… I can't go on like this anymore, I can't. Please, just a few lines from my dossier, that's all I ask." He was in tears by now, only just keeping himself from bawling through sheer force of will. "I can't remember my mother's face," he whimpered softly. "I can barely even remember what she was like, I… please, you've got my diary somewhere; just let me remember her. Let me remember my family – if you won't let me keep anything else, just leave me that much at least. Please, don't take them away from me…"
They all made the same pleas in the end: they always begged with her, imploring her to leave them their memories, their dignity, their families, their adult lives – in much the same way that the less-willing recipients of Purification begged to be allowed to keep their ugliness and imperfection. But the Empress had learned to ignore such futile pleas: after all, to leave them chained to their old lives would mean forcing them to abandon their true potential – a cruelty too vicious to even countenance. In the end, once their metamorphoses were complete, they knew that they had been saved through a moment of callousness on her behalf; in the end, they thanked her.
"I'm not taking anything away from you," she said coldly. "I'm returning what you lost. Everything you squandered in Morrible's quest for immortality, I've given back a thousandfold: a clean slate, a world of potential, a new home of comfort and luxury – I've even given you a family: you've got thirty-seven brothers and sisters last I looked, and all the parental figures you could ask for among the nursing staff."
She paused, allowing this information to sink in a little before continuing: "Besides, can you honestly tell me that you'd want to remember your old life, knowing just how much of it you wasted?"
The Researcher didn't answer, but in all honesty, he didn't need to: the look of hurt and despair on his face was the only response the Empress required at that point.
"I thought so. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
Lintel's sobs followed her out of the cell and all the way to the end of the corridor.
The Empress didn't pay much attention to the noise as she left the sleeping quarters; after all, crying heard too often in the Crèche for anyone to think it out of the ordinary – especially in her next port of call…
The Deep Sepulchre was a place of well-hidden secrets, and the Crèche was no exception to the rule: though the Childlike Researchers were an open secret to the mage-surgeons at the University, almost nobody outside campus grounds knew of their existence; few citizens imagined that the precocious children shadowing the Empress's footsteps were anything other than prodigies in the service of Unbridled Radiance. Even the nurses had no idea what the Crèche really was until after they'd signed their contract of silence, though they adapted very quickly to the reality of their situation; after all, they were required by contract to witness a transformation upon arriving at their new workplace, and few remained sceptical after seeing a grown man melt into a bawling infant before their very eyes.
There were layers of secrecy, however: the nurses rarely knew exactly what the Researchers were studying or why, and only a few senior staff members were permitted to know the exact reasons for the experiments. As the Researchers grew less lucid and more childish, they were given less and less information on the exact purpose of their studies; at the end of their degeneration, they could be easily satisfied with a few vague assurances of "you're helping Unbridled Radiance," a fond pat on the head, and a few chocolates as a reward. Their true identities also became secrets, their dossiers either sealed away in one of the inaccessible vaults beneath the sepulchre, or simply burned; in turn, the nurses never learned how the Researchers first entered the Empress's service, and remained ignorant of Oz and its long-forgotten Pottery. Bit by bit, the few remaining traces of the world before Unbridled Radiance were being erased; soon, only Purity would remain.
But the best-kept secrets were held in the solitary confinement block.
All the Researchers, lucid or childish, knew about the punishment that would await them there; all the nurses knew of the harsh concrete cells where problem inmates and serial escapees were imprisoned. Some of them had even protested leaving children and teenagers locked away in coffin-like darkness for days on end, though the Empress knew that it was the only punishment that truly deterred repeat offenders – especially given the Researchers' capacity to regenerate. But few of them knew of the permanent residents: even the most frequent visitors to the isolation cells, from Morrible to Handerson, remained blissfully unaware that they were getting off comparatively lightly compared to those sentenced to an eternity of isolation.
Few crimes merited such a sentence as this, and few Researchers were desperate or monstrous enough to commit them… but a very rare few had. After all, the Crèche had once supported an inmate population of forty-five Researchers, though the remaining thirty-eight were too afraid to ask what had become of their missing compatriots.
Beyond the imposing concrete chamber that housed the isolation cells, past the looming rows of soundproofed metal doors, another solitary confinement block was hidden – accessible only through the hidden doors and passageways that bordered the complex. Here, along a dimly-lit corridor of riveted metal, past doorways thicker than a battleship's hull and locks that would have driven dedicated safecrackers to suicide, lay the second-best kept secrets of the Crèche: here, those Researchers who had violated the most sacred laws of Unbridled Radiance in pursuit of their freedom would remain for all eternity, interred in a grave of their own making. Denied even the semblance of freedom by the magnitude of their crimes, only their vast knowledge had saved them from outright execution; as it was, they were provided with the bare minimum of food and water to keep them alive, and just enough entertainment to keep them from going completely insane. But other than that, they were allowed nothing other than their lives.
In the end, the crimes worthy of eternal isolation were all united by one thing: Distortion.
One of the isolated, a mage-surgeon by trade, had been sentenced for one of the most violent attempts to escape in the Crèche's history; having decided that a breakout could only be accomplished through force, she'd first sabotaged the runic nullifiers over the bathroom, then went about catching cockroaches; in the privacy of a disused toilet stall, she'd used her newly-freed magical powers to sculpt her captured roaches into human-sized abominations, and trained them into warriors. Her charge on the front door had claimed the lives of twelve nurses, and only the quick intervention of the medics had saved the Researchers trapped in the living room; outnumbered by the guards and desperate for reinforcements, the offender had captured several nurses and moulded them into new soldiers, driving them into the line of fire like a dog herding sheep. In the end, it was the willing proliferation of blasphemous Distortion that had seen her sent to the isolation cells, and her unwillingness to repent that had ensured she would never leave.
Another researcher had been caught trying to teleport himself out of the complex by means of a ritual powerful enough to bypass the nullifiers; normally, such an attempt would have only been punished with a fortnight in solitary confinement… but then the nurses discovered that he'd been using his own blood as a power source, permanently disfiguring himself in the process. Worse still, the ritual had been meant to send him to Greenspectre. Outed as a self-Distorter and a traitor, he vanished into the darkest depths of the isolation cells.
Others still had been caught in their attempts to cure themselves of their condition: two particularly devious Researchers, experts in illusion and enchantment, had noticed the regular card games held between the inmates and the nurses, and took advantage in a particularly novel way: sneaking a pack of cards into the laboratory wing, they'd surreptitiously enchanted them with a very complex spell of transference, and then sought out the gambling addicts among the staff. Luring one such unfortunate back to the labs with a promise of a high-stakes game, one of the pair kept the watching surveillance teams bamboozled with illusions, while the other gambled with the nurse. Every time the Researchers won a hand, the nurse would regress, and the stolen years would be used to stabilize the victors' ages; worse still, the Researchers were incorrigible cheaters, and by the time the unfortunate victims figured this out, most of them were too young to hold their cards. Not that it mattered, though: too ashamed to publically admit to being conned and too conditioned to stop playing yet, most victims carried on, trying to convince themselves that the next hand would be a winner even as they shrank smaller and smaller, as their clothes grew larger and baggier, as their bodies wilted and fattened and withered away, as their teeth withdrew into their gums, as their limbs grew too weak to support them… In the end, the two researchers were finally caught trying to escape the Sepulchre in the uniforms their victims had left behind, but by then, five nurses had been irreversibly regressed. On the upside, the Empress was reliably informed that the ex-nurses were very happy with their new home at the orphanage.
And then there were the hateful gang who'd been so desperate to escape the rigors of their condition that they'd resorted to a particularly loathsome form of vampirism: through arcane rites of mage-surgery, they'd modified their regressing bodies as best as they could, augmenting their mouths with retractable feeding proboscises and implanting new organs that would allow them to process the years they stole. Unlike the gambling duo, however, the victims of the age vampire could die while being fed upon – and often did.
In time, perhaps these loathsome souls would find redemption… but only once they forgot their old selves – an unlikely prospect at best, given that those permanently isolated were among the most resilient of all the Childlike Researchers.
But even these monstrous beings were only the second-best secret of the Crèche.
Unknown to all but Paragon, the Matron, and the Empress herself, there was another secret chamber beyond this secondary isolation block – accessible only through a cell that was to be left unoccupied at all times. Past the secret door at the back of the cell, a brightly-lit passageway spirals into the depths of the earth, gleaming white-tiled walls winding slowly towards one of the deepest vaults in the entire Sepulchre. The passageway ended in an imposing door of polished steel and platinum, sealed with magical locks that only responded to the touch of the Empress herself.
And it was this very door that the Empress now approached. Normally, she did not traverse this deep into the complex: the inhabitants of this particular chamber had been undergoing a lengthy process of rehabilitation, one that even the Empress herself didn't dare to disturb. However, the Matron had recently reported that their condition was almost stable by now – just stable enough to permit her to visit; so, with Paragon still processing the data Lintel had provided, she was now going to grant an audience to the best-kept secret in the Crèche – if not the best-kept secret in all of Unbridled Radiance.
Tiptoeing closer, she reached out to the intercom beside the door, and whispered, "Elarose? Essella? Are you awake?"
There was a pause. Then, a sleepy voice whispered back, "Mother, is that you?"
The Empress smiled. "Yes, my darling. I've come to see you at long last."
"We… we aren't fit to be seen, yet. We still have the… the…" Essella's voice quavered as she struggled to confess, and the Empress's heart ached to hear such pain in her child's voice. "The green," she finally whispered, barely managing to keep the self-disgust from her voice. "It's still in our skin, on our hands and faces. We aren't fit to be seen yet."
"You don't have be ashamed, my sweet: you're being cured – slowly, yes, but you're being cured all the same. Matron tells me you've made a lot of progress in the last few months."
"But we aren't cured yet! We're still… Distorted – ugly!"
"Be patient, darling; your treatment will soon be complete, and you'll be fit enough to leave the sick room at last. It might take months, but the Mentor's curse will be lifted, I promise you that. Now, let's talk in person, shall we? You've no idea how dearly I've missed the two of you…"
As the door rumbled open and the delighted giggling of the two children echoed down the corridor, the Empress permitted herself a moment of purest satisfaction.
In the end, all would be cured: the Pottery's successors had been experimenting on Morrible's original serum for several years now, and corrected most of the errors in its composition, their ultimate goal being to create a serum that could reset the Childlike Researchers' warped constitutions once and for all. Having been freed from the constraints of their own irrelevant memories by years of imprisonment, they would then be cured of their unnatural condition and allowed to begin life again as infants; still possessed of their adult intellect and abilities, the reborn prodigies would be nurtured and trained to the highest possible standards. Then, at the apex of their potential, they would be Purified: finally cleansed of the label of "Childlike," Morrible, Lintel, Ailing, Calenture and all the others – even those in the isolation cells – would live forevermore as the Empress's Chosen.
And if the cure didn't work, or the researchers became too much trouble to maintain, or if they simply forgot the knowledge that made them such valuable citizens of the Empire… well, the Sepulchre had always been a hallowed tomb of secrets and those sacrificed to keep them: perhaps, if all else failed, the Childlike Researchers would at last find peace in the airless vaults beneath the city, where secrets slumbered for all eternity. One way or another, they'd be cured.
But for her children, only the cure of Purification could be countenanced. When the Deviant Nations finally fell and its people were guided back into the worship of beauty and perfection, Elarose and Essella would rule it in her stead.
Perhaps, if she were to be captured alive, this Alternate Elphaba – if she really was a traveller from another universe – could be made to see the happiness she could attain by accepting Unbridled Radiance as her new home.
Perhaps, with the help of Lintel's gateway, she would only be the first of many alternates to rally to their cause…