A/N: And so the December writing rush begins! Ladies and gents, writing this chapter has been one hell of an adrenaline ride, and with a little luck I can recapture that surge in my next writing period: I'm going to do my best to release a second chapter this month - ideally on December 25th or thereabouts, my present to you, my wonderful readers. Until then, the latest chapter and my accompanying thanks for all your comments and reviews:
Calliax, I'm glad you were excited - hopefully I haven't released another battle royale chapter too soon. I only hope that this chapter lives up to expectations - thanks again.
Nami Swannn: From the beginning of this story, I was hoping to get Glinda onto the front lines in one way or another, and I'm glad you like that bit; granted, I don't think Glinda will ever be at home on the battlefield, but we'll see how it progresses. Rest assured, the Empress will be enduring some much-deserved punishment this chapter...
Anyway! Time's up, game's on, good luck, have fun! The path is up but up is - oh, sorry, had a bit of a Farscape flashback there. Ahem, constructive criticism is welcome, feel free to notify me of your opinions. Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Listentomedamnyou I have no ownership of Wicked, or Wicked-related thingummies.
Contrary to popular belief, quite a lot can happen in the space of a single second. Moments when "nothing happens" are unimaginably rare, occurring only when entropy crescendos and the passage of time breaks down altogether.
In fact, conservative estimates suggest that up to a million separate events can occur in the passing of a second, from the infinitesimal interactions between particles and forces, to the rise and fall mighty empires; from a diplomatic handshake to the final shot of a decade-spanning war. Of course, most of these events go unnoticed, for very few living beings possess the capacity to observe and catalogue the events that can be crammed into a single tick of the clock.
And it so happens that the Mistress of Mirrors is one of those rare few.
Seated comfortably in her throne at the restless heart of her ancient domain, she looks out at the world through a colossal array of mirrors, large enough to take up an entire wall of the chamber. There are mirrors beyond counting here: great gilt-framed masterpieces at home in only the richest of households, their flawless surfaces gleaming like quicksilver in the candlelight; tiny shaving mirrors pockmarked by age and clouded by multitudes of greasy fingerprints, creaking into view on rusty extension stands. Large or small, great or lowly, all of them have long since ceased to reflect the room around them; instead, as the Mistress's power envelops them, these looking glasses now bring back the reflections of thousands upon thousands of people, cast upon mirrors, windows, knife-blades, polished armour, crystals, puddles, ponds, lakes, becalmed oceans, and countless other reflective surfaces that happen to be sharing the same space as her targets. At the same time, shadows gather on the unoccupied walls around her and act out the movements of her targets, pantomiming every action with unearthly accuracy; and as they dance, the echoes cluster around the Mistress to whisper in her ears, repeating the conversations and parroting back the words in spectral mockery of real people.
To the Mistress of Mirrors, secrecy is an illusion.
To the Mistress of Mirrors, there is no such thing as a moment when "nothing happens."
Her eyes – some of them, at any rate – are now focussed on Loamlark, at a moment many would have described as a lull in the action, a momentous pause before a monumental plunge. It barely lasts eight seconds, but millions of events from all over the city flicker across the Mistress's mirrors in these seconds, all instantly observed and logged.
Down in the Mourning Hall:
The Empress stands upon the waters of the lake, arms spread wide, tiny pulses of magic reaching back towards the opposite shore where her army waits in readiness. In a split-second, the waters of the lake freeze solid, forming a bridge towards the horrified refugees. Following close behind is another tide of sorcery that turns the ice to stone, and by the time the road is finished, the army has already taken its first step…
…the crowd stirs; the paralysis is slowly beginning to wear off, and people are already beginning to stagger towards the exits…
…and meanwhile, the entity masquerading as Colonel Gloss slides gracefully into the depths of the crowd, his uniform dissolving into civilian rags as the spy takes on a new disguise…
…oblivious to the shapeshifter, Mayor Wilder staggers backwards in horror, the colour draining from his jowls as he stares up at the spectacle unfolding above him…
…Chief Marchfly's face instantly contorts with righteous fury, his hands flying for the elephant gun slung over his shoulder…
…Vara drops into a combat stance, machete drawn and service pistol at the ready…
…Doctor Kiln's body churns with activity as he hurries to sculpt a weapon from excess flesh and bone, his eyes darting frantically between Elphaba and the Empress…
…Glinda instinctively darts to Elphaba's side, wand in hand, ready for action despite the fear in her posture….
…Elphaba, eyes blazing with anger, lets out a piercing scream of rage and charges towards the lake; she has just enough presence of mind to stab the button on the emergency transmitter, before concentrating every last vestige of her attention on the Empress as…
A few hundred feet away, in the depths of the caverns:
Dr Coil, hearing the noise and chaos of the battle ahead, puts on an extra burst of speed as he slithers down the passageway…
… Boq, awkwardly perched atop Coil's back, mutters a chain of bilious expletives and hangs on for dear life…
…as strange, doll-like shapes creep after them, a giggling skinless monster in the lead. But…
Up on the surface:
…the ground trembles, shaken from below by the Empress's excavations; militiamen are already marching for the churches, for the secondary entrances to the Mourning Hall, with well-informed Irredeemables and DN Regulars in hot pursuit, while…
…Branderstove, receiving Elphaba's signal, smiles grimly as he makes a beeline for the only available means of accessing the caverns below, closely followed by the real Colonel Gloss…
…And in a long-overlooked jailhouse, Fiyero Tiggular is finally succumbing to impatience. It also appears that he's realized one of the few benefits of his unique condition: with no bones or internal organs to disrupt his movement, his body is capable of feats that would cripple human contortionists. Intent on investigating the commotion and finding Elphaba, he's now putting his pliability to the ultimate test by squeezing himself through the crevasse in the wall like the proverbial tube of toothpaste, trying not to snag his burlap on protruding crags of brickwork as he inches slowly towards freedom. By the time the fifth second has died, he's almost out…
But by then the lull in the action, if such a thing ever existed, has ceased: the roller coaster has finally reached the absolute apex of its track and is now ready to begin its downhill plunge. Once again, Loamlark and its surrounding territories are reduced to a chaotic maelstrom of running, shouting, swearing, fighting and killing and utter, utter confusion. The streets of the city are suddenly awash with soldiers from one allied faction or another struggling to get to their positions at the wall, or answer the transmissions from the caverns. Above them, gargantuan airships from the Deviant Nations' fleet and the Strangling Coil's armada lumber across the skies in search of artillery points and incoming bombers, unaware that the enemy has bypassed them completely.
And hundreds of feet below them, the once-hallowed Mourning Hall is suddenly a hosting ground for one of the bloodiest clashes in recent memory, a stage for the latest bit of theatre that the Mistress of Mirrors must now observe…
…and if necessary, rewrite.
Elphaba was dimly aware that she didn't have the slightest clue of what she was going to do next, but by that stage, she didn't care – and more to the point, couldn't. As soon as the light had faded enough for her to recognize the Empress's smug face, anger had banished all doubts from her mind, along with everything else not immediately concerned with killing.
Pausing just long to activate transmitter still in her pocket, she put her head down and threw herself at the Empress; in mid-sprint, her magic took over, first surrounding her in the familiar nimbus of vivid green energies, then hoisting her off the ground. Suddenly airborne, Elphaba put on an extra burst of speed: the ground blurred beneath her, the fleeing townsfolk instantly reduced to so many smears of colour against the cavern floor, the edge of the lake and monster that stood upon it looming closer and closer; as she flew, she shaped the wild magic around her into bolts of lightning and great hammering fists before launching them at anything that happened to have made the mistake of standing directly ahead of her.
The first blast exploded harmlessly a few inches from Alphaba's face, instantly dispelled by the shielding barriers of spells that surrounded her; the next, more potent than the last, the Empress swatted aside with a contemptuous wave of her hand. The third she just breezed past with a graceful pirouette worthy of a dancer, before turning her full attention to Elphaba: once again, the Empress's own aura of power surrounded her, pure white and almost blinding in its intensity, and then surged outwards.
With no time to re-manoeuvre, Elphaba could only shield herself as best as she could before she slammed into it at full speed: the resulting kinetic blast hurled her into the upper reaches of the cavern, flipping her upside-down and almost knocking her hat off again; she might have lost control at that point and plummeted to her death, if she hadn't had the presence of mind to bring the broomstick into the Hall with her. Hastily calling it up from the ground where she'd dropped it, she clambered aboard and forced herself as far off the ground as possible, readying a counterattack.
Below her, the people of Loamlark were in uproar: perhaps two thirds of them were stampeding towards the exits in a blind panic, trampling anyone too slow to keep up with the mob; the remaining third were now attacking the Empress with anything they could get their hands on – stones, shoes, guns dropped by flattened militiamen, a few even risking a mad charge across the cavern to assault the Empress at close range with their bare hands. But before they could get within ten feet, the light surrounding the Empress flared and blossomed, the incandescent energies swallowing them whole, instantly reducing them to charred bones and drifting ashes.
A rattle of gunfire filled the cavern, not from the armed townsfolk, but from somewhere behind the Empress: following the source of the noise, Elphaba realized to her amazement that a path had formed in the centre of the lake, and now a small army of white-uniformed figures were charging across it and lining up at Alphaba's flanks. The army of Unbridled Radiance were following the Empress to war – and were now showering the defenders with bullets as they skidded into position. With no cover in reach, the first volley scythed through the defiant townsfolk with little resistance, ending their attempted defence of the town in a spray of blood; as soon as the screams had stopped, the soldiers turned their guns on the fleeing refugees and opened fire again.
The howls of pain from below cut through Elphaba's rage in an instant: suddenly lucid again, she launched herself towards the ground, letting her power surge outwards into the toughest barrier she could possibly conjure, strong enough to shield both herself and the retreating townsfolk. It wasn't perfect – she felt a few bullets whizz past her head just as the shield slammed into place, and heard the screams of felled civilians as some of those shots found their targets – and she couldn't hold it for long, but at least it bought them some time to escape.
Meanwhile, the few defenders left in the cavern mounted the best defence they could under the circumstances: as soldiers poured past the Empress and up the embankment, Chief Marchfly stepped out of the stalagmite forest with his elephant gun at the ready, felling about half a dozen incoming troops with a devastating volley of gunfire. Vara leapt into the fray with a triumphant howl, bringing enemy guardsmen crashing to the ground with deft shots to the kneecaps, before carving them up with her machete – pausing only to fling a flash grenade into the bulk of the next rank of soldiers before charging onwards. Anyone soldier quick enough to take aim at Vara was instantly pincushioned by a triad of bone-arrows from Doctor Kiln, or suffocated by the net of human flesh in his left hand.
Elphaba did her best to divert her energies and thin the ranks of the enemy with a few spells of her own – no easy task, for throughout it all, the Empress was pummelling Elphaba's shield with magic, testing it for weak spots, seeing just how much punishment it could endure before it collapsed and took Elphaba with it. She didn't appear perturbed by Elphaba's survival; if anything, she just looked amused – infuriatingly, contemptuously amused.
Let's see if we can't change that, Elphaba thought, suddenly angry again. Thaumaturgically grabbing the shield by its corners, she flung it at the Empress as hard as she could: the impact sent the soldiers around her topping like ninepins, a few tossed headlong across the cavern, landing with a series of wet splats upon the unforgiving granite below. The Empress wasn't harmed, her aura having easily absorbed the blast, but she did look ever-so-slightly startled; the blast had driven her back a step, and best of all, the smile was gone from her face.
Victory!
Elphaba hissed a series of arcane words and sent a wave of fire rippling towards the enemy; the soldiers flanking her dived for cover, four of them engulfed in flames, but the Empress's robes weren't even singed by the heat. Elphaba's fingers traced a complicated gesture in the air in front of her, drawing local gravity tighter and tighter around the incoming intruders; the front rank of gunners once again toppled under the onslaught, first pressed flat against the ground, then crushed to gory pulps as the gravitational vice bore down on them – but the Empress only yawned and strode though the carnage without even slowing. Elphaba's body crackled with electricity, her power arcing towards the intruders in a deadly stream of lightning; two rows of gunmen dropped to the ground in a twitching heap, but the Empress just reached out and snatched the thunderbolt from the air, snapping it in two with a single flex of thaumaturgical muscle.
Then, just as it looked as though Elphaba was going to have to improvise something much more powerful, there was a flash of magic from somewhere behind her, and the Empress blinked in astonishment as another row of soldiers went flying off into the darkness, and a blast of kinetic energy once again sent her staggering back.
Elphaba risked a quick glance over her shoulder, and realized that the source of the blast had been the jade-masked witch, who was now staring down at her wand in something not unlike confusion.
"Did I do that?" she asked nobody in particular.
Then, more gunfire split the air. All of a sudden, armed men and women were lining up next to Elphaba – soldiers of the Deviant Nations, Irredeemables, and of course, Marchfly's militiamen, all peppering the shoreline with suppressive fire. Explosions split the air as mobile artillery streamed into the caverns from either side: portable cannons dragged by the regulars tore gaping wounds in the enemy's defences and fogged the air around them with scalding steam; white-uniformed bombardiers knelt under the weight of shoulder-mounted mortars, before sending a rain of explosive shells crashing down on the Irredeemables; and of course, both Unbridled Radiance and the Deviant Nations had brought their magicians into the Hall – so now the air was once again filled with hissed incantations and multi-coloured blasts of energy.
And the Empress…
Hastily lobbing a fresh curse in the general direction of the enemy's artillery, Elphaba paused and craned her neck as far out of cover as she dared go: the Empress was nowhere in sight.
"Sorry we're late!" Captain Wolton shouted as he staggered to a halt next to Elphaba. "Took a little while to bypass that godawful elevator – wasn't nearly enough room for all of us, had to rappel in. How are things going?"
"Oh I'm doing just dandy! How the hell did these bastards get in here and why didn't we think to guard the damn caverns?"
"1) I imagine they tunnelled in, and 2) the militia didn't let us. Didn't even tell us, as a matter of fact. Oh, and 3) DUCK!"
Elphaba wearily threw herself to the ground as a squad of elite guardsmen readied their energy lances and opened fire, beams of dazzling light casually scything through the front row of regulars before they could even react. Then, as the armoured figures clanked up the embankment for a better shot at the more entrenched defenders, the Irredeemables charged in from the left and slammed into them at high speed; any of the guardsmen unfortunate enough to be knocked down by the collision were immediately set upon by the enraged warriors of the Deviant Nations, tearing the bonded armour plating from their bodies with claws, tentacles, bone-spears, pincers, flesh-webbing, and anything else the Mentor's mage-surgeons had seen fit to equip their charges with.
Elphaba followed them closely, driving the Empress's forces back down the hill with all the magic she could muster, rolling pebbles into huge boulders and hurling them into the slow-moving ranks of the elite, calling up vast waves from the lake to swamp the others before they could reach the shoreline, even scooping up the corpses of the fallen and catapulting them at the enemy ranks by the dozen.
And as she continued hammering her way towards the lake, trying to catch sight of wherever the Empress was hiding, she noticed – somewhat absently – that she appeared to have acquired something of an honour guard: as expected, Kiln was once again at her side, having swapped his flesh-net for a handful of pulsating blobs tentatively identified as "metastasis grenades"; Vara took up position at her left, her service pistol exchanged for a heavy repeater and bayonet; Marchfly – of all people – brought up the rear, puncturing the silvery hide of elite guardsmen with armour-piercing rounds, and occasionally rallying the other militiamen with teeth-rattling bellows of "TIME TO SHOW 'EM WHAT LOAMLARK'S MADE OF, GENTS! GIVE 'EM HELL AND WORSE!"
For reasons that utterly escaped Elphaba, Jade Mask had also joined the honour guard, and was now pounding the incoming guardsmen with powerful blasts of kinetic force, her technique clumsy and inelegant but devastatingly effective against massed infantry; thankfully, none of the enemy soldiers had realized that breaking ranks would have given them a fighting chance, allowing the five of them to press the attack. Behind them, the portable cannons rumbled, accompanied by all the other members of the artillery corps that had made it into the Hall: Elphaba's own squad of magicians casting their spells in unison, a trio of napalm-bladder grenadiers from Gortrald, a monolithic Ironmongery Peak discus-launcher, a squadron of husks towing a mortar, even some of the gland-men she'd met on the ride over – all doing their best to drive back the tide.
Then, from somewhere just behind the enemy ranks, the Empress sighed. "You'll pardon me if I cut this song short; the tune tends to go flat after a few bars…"
There was a flicker in the air above them, and then the Empress suddenly reappeared, hovering twenty feet off the ground, her aura brighter than ever. Then, before Elphaba could even shout a warning, the first tidal wave of magic broke against the militia's ranks, sending them flying in all directions; another crashed against the Irredeemables, the regulars, the militiamen again, slowly forcing the warriors back up the embankment, every kinetic shockwave denying them a chance to reload or return fire. A gust of magic sent Elphaba crashing backwards into Marchfly's squalling bulk, cutting her counterattack short before she could even begin casting; as she struggled to rise again, another blast sent her tumbling into Jade Mask, and she would have hit the ground facefirst if the masked witch hadn't caught Elphaba at the last minute. Then, just as the Irredeemables were beginning to recover from the onslaught, the Empress changed tactics: this time, dark stormclouds gathered in the air above the allied ranks, shrouding the cavern ceiling from view and filling the air with the tumultuous rumble of thunder: a split-second later, forked tongues of lightning tore through the soldiers below, vaporizing dozens of them and sending dozens more scurrying for cover. Fist-sized hailstones rained down on them, braining the stragglers as they struggled back into position; hurricane-force winds swept militiamen tumbling helplessly back up the embankment, leaving them crumpled against the walls by the sheer force of the gale.
A moment later, the storm was gone as quickly as it had appeared; in its place, fire blossomed across the caverns, Alphaba's magic slowly sculpting the conflagration into a colossal vortex. Smiling triumphantly down at them, the Empress sent the great funnel of flame tearing through the regulars, incinerating almost a quarter of them before they even had a chance to dive for cover, and only the quick instincts of the nearby magicians prevented the firestorm from killing any more of them. As their heat-shielding groaned and creaked under the strain, Elphaba began conjuring a shield of her own – only to find it useless; once again, the fires died away just as quickly as they had ignited, only for a new magical cataclysm to appear in their place: this time, gravity around the militiamen suddenly inverted itself, sending several of them plummeting to their deaths on the ceiling – the rest only surviving thanks to a firm grip on the ground and telekinetic intervention from the magicians. Then just as the world returned to normal, the cavern floor turned molten, once-solid ground suddenly forming deadly whirlpools beneath the feet of unsuspecting Irredeemables and dragging them to their deaths; human arms took shape in the viscous rock, reaching up and fastening around the ankles of soldiers too close to the quagmire, snapping ankles and crushing throats as they fell within arm's reach. A multitude of stones from pebbles to boulders inexplicably leapt into the air and transmuted into crystalline glass, before promptly exploding in the faces of the defenders, puncturing eyeballs and spearing unarmoured throats. A flurry of elemental curses bombarded Wolton's platoon of regulars, and countless soldiers writhed in pain as flames consumed them from the inside and spears of ice punctured them from within; dozens more were blown apart by internal air pressure, or reduced to statues as their flesh petrified; a particularly unlucky few were drowned on dry land, water materializing inside their lungs and bubbling out of their mouths – or worse still colonized by strangler figs and creepers burrowing through their veins and punching through their chests. A dozen more spells, hexes, bewitchments and magical cataclysms thundered down on them, each time whittling down the ranks of the defenders. It was hard to say what saved them from outright destruction: perhaps it was the few meagre shield charms and defensive enchantments conjured by Elphaba and the other magicians, or the simple fact that the Empress was more intent on shock and awe than outright extermination.
One of the downsides of having a god complex, I'd imagine, Elphaba mused, absently ducking the shower of brains from an exploding militiaman's head. You feel the need to prove your godhood at any given opportunity.
Perhaps a minute later, the Empress paused in the middle of her spellcasting, perhaps to catch her breath, perhaps for simple effect – and a militia sniper took the opportunity to open fire; of course, none of the bullets connected, either bouncing harmlessly off the Empress's protective aura or just missing entirely.
Alphaba just rolled her eyes. "Anyone else?" she asked sarcastically.
Gunfire rattled up and down the embankment, salvo after salvo flung at the Empress's defences in the space of ten crowded seconds; bullets ricocheted off the shield, missiles evaporated in mid-flight, grenades fell to the ground as duds, spells and enchantments melted away into thaumaturgical ether, and even Elphaba's hexes couldn't make a dent in the Empress's magical armour.
"Perhaps I haven't made myself clear: I am the One True God, the Undying Spirit of Creation, the Artificer of Perfection; immortal, invincible, indestructible… and unlimited. When all other kingdoms have collapsed into the dust of eons and their people descended into barbarism once more, I will endure in the glory of eternal life, and my works shall know no end." She paused and eyed the militiamen below with barely-described contempt. "Am I making this obvious enough for you? You can't kill me – you can't even hurt me. Surrender now, and I might consider granting amnesty to those of you willing to atone for your crimes-"
A gunshot rang out from somewhere below, and without warning, the side of Alphaba's head suddenly exploded in a shower of blood. Startled, the Empress put a hand to the gaping crater that had been torn in the left side of her skull, and as if in a trance, slowly withdrew her hand to stare in astonishment at the blood now trickling down her fingers.
"What the-"
Five more gunshots echoed across the Hall, and suddenly the Empress's flank erupted in a spray of blood as all five bullets found their mark: three in the torso, one in the neck, and another in the side of the head – this one tearing her left eye out.
Elphaba followed the source of the noise, and saw to her amazement that it was none other than the Mayor. The last she'd seen of him, he'd been ducking for cover as the Empress had attacked the citizenry, but now he lay in a crumpled heap among the crags and stalagmites bordering the shore, his right leg soaked with blood, a battered-looking revolver in his hands. Judging from the blood smeared along the cavern floor, he'd obviously spent the last couple of minutes dragging himself to safety, and then into a firing position. By sheer luck, he'd found himself in one of the few blind spots in the Empress's shield, right beneath her.
At first, the Empress could only stare in disbelief, her remaining eye wide with shock. Then, as her wounds began to heal and the bullethole in her skull slowly sealed shut, her expression slowly gave way to a furious snarl. Newly-regenerated eyes ablaze with magic, she stretched out a hand and telekinetically wrenched the Mayor into the air; a split second later, she brought him crashing down again, slamming him against the cavern floor with bone-splintering force – again and again and again. Eventually the onslaught ceased, and the Empress slowly hoist the mangled civil servant back into the air, until he was almost eye-to-eye with her. "Weren't you listening?" she roared.
"Oh, I heard," the Mayor gasped breathlessly, his face almost invisible beneath the blood. "But you are no god of mine…"
He raised the revolver, ready to fire his final shot, but the Empress was ready for him this time. Her aura shrouded her once more, brighter than ever; then, the blazing halo of magic expanded outwards, enveloping the Mayor in its incandescent glow – permeating him: his skin blistered, his flesh simmered, his very bones began to burn, and an awful smell of cooked meat washed over the horrified defenders. A moment later, a blackened skeleton crashed to the ground in an ashen heap – the only surviving remnants of Mayor Jonatim Wilder.
But by the time his skull had begun to smoulder, the militia were already charging to the Mayor's defence with a roar of "FOR LOAMLARK!" Suddenly, Marchfly was gone from Elphaba's side and leading the mob, roaring in incoherent rage and firing wildly – for once too angry to care if the shots connected or not; within seconds, both armies were firing on each other again, the defenders trying desperately to provide support for the doomed militiamen, the invaders anxious to impress their monarch. One way or the other, no matter how many bullets the gunners fired or how many spells Elphaba cast, the result was still the same: the Empress's first counterattack scattered the militia platoon from one end of the embankment to the other, and those who weren't killed in the impact were forced to scurry for cover among the stalagmites.
All except for Marchfly: he just went on charging – diverting only to charge up a rocky incline and along a ledge overlooking the lake; he waited until the path led him almost directly over the floating Empress, and then flung himself over the edge of the outcropping, to land with an earsplitting war-cry atop the Empress's shoulders. Once again taken off-guard, Alphaba struggled to dislodge the police commissioner from her back, but by now, Marchfly had her in a headlock and was determined to throttle her to death even if it killed him. For perhaps eight seconds, both armies paused to watch the spectacle of the Empress bobbing frantically in mid-air as she tried to force the police chief's arms off her neck.
Then, Elphaba felt the telltale flicker of magic in the air: Marchfly's arms stiffened and froze in their position around the Empress's neck, turning glassy and translucent as the curse slowly flowed down his wrists and along his biceps, vitrifying everything in its path. By the time the hex had ground to a halt at Marchfly's shoulders, every last inch of his arms had been transmuted into glass; unable to take the strain of the commissioner's body, the glass began to crack and fracture, tiny cobwebs of strain slowly forming along the elbows and forearms – until both arms snapped clean in half, leaving Marchfly to topple off the Empress and crash to the ground.
Brushing non-existent dust off her robe, the Empress slowly descended from the sky, approaching the silent defenders on foot – keeping well away from the outcropping as she approached. "Now," she began, "You should know by now that you can't win. But this doesn't have to end in further bloodshed: if nothing else, I am a merciful god, and those willing to cooperate will receive all due clemency. All I ask is that you stand aside and allow my army to pass, and that you give me Elphaba so th-"
This time, Marchfly didn't even bother to announce himself: he just slammed headlong into her, stabbing her furiously in the back with the jagged stumps of his arms, dagger-like shards of glass sinking deep into the Empress's spine. Roaring in pain and surprise, the Empress whirled around and grabbed him by the collar and flung him to the ground with an audible crack of breaking ribs; then, as Marchfly struggled to rise again, two searing beams of light shot out of Alphaba's eye sockets, slicing cleanly through the militia chief's legs just above the knee.
Marchfly howled in agony, flopping helplessly in the dirt as he tried to upright himself once more. "Is that… all you've got… you fucking underachiever?" he snarled. "I'll bite your kneecaps off, you… false god, you charlatan, you…"
The Empress sighed and delivered a vicious kick to the side of Marchfly's head, knocking him unconscious and probably sparing him a lot of pain. Pausing only to toss the limbless body away, she turned to the rest of the defenders, eyes still blazing with hatred and sorcery.
"Alright, who's next?" she yelled, irritably. "Come on! Is there anyone else who'd like to waste my valuable time?"
And then Branderstove landed on her like a comet, instantly crushing her beneath his ponderous bulk with a shockwave violent enough to dislodge stalagmites from the ceiling and send guardsmen spiralling off in all directions. Reaching down with a tentacle, he wrenched the half-squashed Empress out from under him and dangled her by the scruff of her neck – right in the path of the cannon in his other arm: the ensuing blast sent Alphaba flying across the cavern, tumbling end over end, to land with a muffled splat against the opposite wall.
Looking up in amazement, Elphaba saw a huge portal hovering in the ceiling overhead, easily large enough to fit an airship through; as she watched, a shower of cauldron-shaped figures shot through the magical gateway like a shower of comets, landing smoothly on sturdy, column-like legs, stubby little arms and miniscule armour-plated heads immediately deploying from their spherical bodies. The Leviathan's mechanical infantry had arrived in force.
As one, they lifted their rifles with a metallic bellow of "Suffer-and-die, organic-scum!" and opened fire on the Empress's army. As the suppressing fire continued, several hundred well-armed figures began rappelling from the portal above: some were clearly militiamen, some wearing the distinctive augmentations of the Irredeemables, but most of them black-uniformed mercenaries arriving to support their paymaster; one way or another, the cavalry had arrived. While the clockwork troopers provided covering fire, the reinforcements lined up as quickly as they could alongside the beleaguered defenders, and began pelting the enemy with a steady stream of explosive ordnance.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan was currently striding through the enemy lines, punctuating every step with a thunderous blast of his cannon. Any guardsmen foolish enough to get in his way were unceremoniously kicked aside; elite guardsmen or Purified officers who made the mistake of trying to fight Branderstove in hand-to-hand combat were snatched off the ground by a quartet of tentacles and ripped apart. "COME ON, ELPHABA!" he boomed over his shoulder. "WE'VE GOT AN EMPRESS TO EVISCERATE!"
In spite of herself, Elphaba smiled. Ducking under Kiln's arms and gliding out of Jade Mask's reach, she leapt – over the defenders, over the embankment, over the enemy lines and out over the lake. She wasn't even using her broomstick; by now, she was flying under her own intrinsic power, the magic flowing through her with an ease she'd never experienced before. Bubbling through her veins and sparking across the crystals in her back, it radiated from her in a dazzling corona of vibrant emerald light, its sheer intensity almost intoxicating. Giggling euphorically, she soared onwards, giddy with power and excitement: all the sorrows that had led up to this moment, even the troubles of the battle so far were being washed away in a tide of magical energy, and revenge was almost within reach.
As she flew, the lake below her grew substantially, the Empress's once-impressive bridge suddenly dwindling to a miniscule causeway across a seemingly limitless expanse of black water. Branderstove's girth easily took up most of the road as he walked, and the stream of imperial troops still flowing into the cavern found themselves rudely bulldozed into the water by his forward march, if not flattened altogether as he began to pick up speed; despite the Leviathan's monstrous obesity, he moved at a terrifying sprint, charging down the path like a freight train and bowling over any guardsmen too slow to jump out of the way.
By now, the Empress had finally unglued herself from the wall, and was now hovering several feet above the lake; she was almost fully healed by now, allowing Elphaba to get a good look at the infuriated expression on her face. "What brought you here, Mr Branderstove?" she asked coldly. "Madness? A death wish? A chance at redemption? I know for a fact that it's not for money. What could possibly drag you from your debaucheries into the kingdom of a dead god?"
The Leviathan's tentacles twitched and spasmed in rage. "After everything you've done to me, after all the pain you inflicted, you still don't know?" he roared. "You took my home, my family, my business, and now you ask why I'm here? You understand vengeance well enough, Your Radiance: try and imagine that your victims might want a little for themselves."
Alphaba shook her head. "I gave you a chance to end your suffering decades ago, Mr Branderstove. If you want revenge for the agonies you inflicted upon yourself, then I've no choice but to end them for you."
The cannon on Branderstove's arm flared again, but this time the target was ready for it; all three shots dissolved in mid-air, and the Empress's riposte catapulted the Leviathan off the causeway. Flying for about ten feet, he hit the water with a titanic splash, pelting the nearby troops with a storm of freezing raindrops. Fortunately, this region of the lake was only about six feet deep and the waterline didn't even reach his chin; rising like the sea monster that was his namesake, he launched himself out of the water and back onto the bridge, spluttering furiously.
"Haven't you learned your lesson yet, Mr Branderstove?" Alphaba laughed. "No Distortion can erase true beauty, and none can stand before true perfection. I've said it many times before, but it's a sentence worth repeating: I am unlimited!"
"That makes two of us," said Elphaba cheerfully.
The Empress looked up just in time to see Elphaba's fist rocketing towards her at eighty-five miles an hour, before it caught her square in the mouth. Ironically, the punch hurt Elphaba just as much as it hurt her target, for even with all the cushioning layers of enchantments around her arm she still felt the impact rippling down her knuckles and coursing along her bones. But it was worth it; yes, it felt as though she broken every bone in her fist, but it was worth it just to see the Empress tumbling away, struggling to force her jaw back into place and spitting teeth in every direction.
"I was wondering when you were going to take my offer seriously," the Empress hissed, as she clumsily relocated her jaw. "It seems you're not the only one with a death wish, Mr Branderstove. But tell me, Elphaba, do you really want revenge against me… or do you just want to be reunited with Fiyero?" A gleeful smirk played out across her face. "I assure you, the latter is well within my power – one way or another."
Elphaba's only answer was a barrage of hexes.
"Very well then," Alphaba purred, her smile growing. "I think it's time we learned just how unlimited you are, Elphie…"
"CLEAR THE WAY!" Kiln shouted, voice raised to teeth-rattling extremes over the near-constant rumble of gunfire. "CLEAR THE… oh, why do I bother?"
It had only been about a minute since Elphaba had vanished into the distance, and already it was starting to feel like an hour; they could still see her on the horizon, illuminated by the light cast by the Empress's aura, but with a few hundred militiamen, mercenaries, mechanicals and other allied troops in the way, getting to them would be tricky even before they reached the enemy lines. For now, they were stalled within the safe zone formed by the back row of soldiers, and Glinda was almost at her wit's end.
"How could we even get past them?" she asked out loud.
"Well, I'd imagine we could ask for some covering fire from our copper-plated friends over here," said Vara, nodding at the clockwork soldiers. "Of course, we'd still need actual cover. Are you up to deflecting bullets yet?"
"Not even remotively."
"Then we're still grounded."
There was a chuckle from behind them, audible even over the cacophony of the guns. It was Colonel Gloss, the one-eared man who'd been lurking down here prior to the start of the battle. "We can always try ordering some of our Tik-Toks to self-destruct," he suggested brightly. "That'll clear the path for you."
"Thanks, but no thanks," said Vara. "Even if I trusted this place not to cave in – which I don't – I've seen what happens when Tik-Toks commit suicide. Gear shrapnel is a nasty way to go."
"It's your funeral… or your friend's. In any case, we aren't going anywhere without some Tik-Tok bombs."
"Maybe not," said Kiln. "How many corpses do we have down on our end of the hill?"
"About thirty in this particular crater alone. Why do you ask?"
Kiln didn't answer: he was busily hauling the bullet-shredded corpse of a militiamen into a standing position in front of him. Then, pausing only to roll up his shirt sleeves to his shoulders, he plunged his left hand through the uniform and into the corpse's back, not stopping until his elbow was completely buried under the dead man's flesh; as Glinda watched with mingled horror and fascination, the hand glided under the skin and merged seamlessly with the torso – leaving Kiln with an entire human body dangling off his left arm.
"Could you do me a favour and help me get some of the others into position?" he asked, almost sheepishly – as if he was simply having trouble buttoning his collar and not conjoining himself to lifeless bodies.
"How many do you need?"
"Oh, depends on how many we can use to make a riot shield. I think ten would be on the safe side."
So, the four of them set to work gathering corpses: Gloss dragging bodies up the hill towards them without dropping his clerkish smile (pausing only to pickpocket the corpses as he worked), Vara hauling bodies into position with her usual brand of irrepressible exuberance, Kiln remaining clinically detached as he went about fusing them to his arms, and Glinda magically levitating bodies into Vara's stack of corpses – all the while trying not to think about the fact that they'd once been people.
They're just rolls of carpet, she told herself. Just rolls of carpet. Just boring rolls of carpet. Dull, boring rolls of carpet that absently don't have people hidden inside them oh god oh god oh god
The whole process took about three grisly minutes. By the end of it, Glinda had never been more thankful for her mask, if only because it kept the others from realizing just how close she'd gotten to throwing up – but at least the shield was completed: fifteen bodies in total stood before Dr Kiln, organized into three neat rows and merged into a solid mass of corpses, reinforced with keratin and other substances from Kiln's reserves – more than tough enough to repel bullets.
"Are you sure you'll be able to move all this?" Glinda asked.
"Well, it might take a bit of bulking up on the muscular front, but I'm sure I'll manage. You, Vara and Gloss just make sure the flanks are covered, and I'll do the rest."
"There's just one problem," said Vara. "We need to find some covering fire that'll make sure we can get through the enemy lines. If we just charge in right now, the bastards will just circle around the shield and shoot us – and I don't care how fast you can move, we're not going to be able to move quickly enough to just knock them over."
Kiln was opening his mouth to answer, when there was a chorus of screams from somewhere behind them, and Glinda turned around just in time to get a split-second glimpse of the monster as it barrelled past them: a python over fifty feet long and thicker than a tree, its scales glittering like onyx and rubies in the glow of the caverns; Glinda wasn't sure, but it looked like there was someone clinging to its back – someone that glinted a dull silver among the glossy red-and-black scales.
"GANGWAY!" a voice screamed as it slithered past them. "MOVE, MOVE!" Maybe it was the snake who'd spoken, maybe it was its passenger; whatever the case, the python glided down the embankment at a dizzying speed, it's vast coils slithering from left to right in a confusing pattern that seemed to throw off most of the gunners it had attracted. Fortunately, most of the allied troops had the sense to avoid the beast as it rocketed past; however, the enemy troops were still pinned down by gunfire and not interested in giving up their foothold on this shore of the lake – and so, the giant snake simply ploughed into them, knocking them hither and thither.
There was a pause, as Glinda, Vara, Gloss and Kiln considered the gaping hole in their enemy's defences.
Then they started running, Kiln in the lead with his makeshift shield raised: down the embankment they charged, through the obliging gateway in their own ranks, over the stunned bodies of enemy soldiers, and down the bridge as fast as their legs could carry them.
"Stragglers!" Kiln warned. "Behind us!"
Without missing a beat, they turned in almost perfect unison and saw a cluster of drenched enemy guardsmen splashing after them, bayonets at the ready. A hail of gunfire from Gloss and Vara's heavy repeaters sliced through those closest, and a wave of Glinda's wand incinerated the rest, leaving only a dozen pairs of smouldering shoes. Glinda herself could only boggle at this feat, knowing full well that something about this new wand had boosted her spellcasting ability to ridiculous extremes: she'd never wielded this kind of magic before, not even on best days in the Mentor's training session.
What was this wand made of? Where was all this power coming from? It couldn't be coming from Glinda, so-
"To the left!" Kiln shouted, nodding frantically at another party of waterlogged guardsmen hauling themselves onto the bridge to pursue them, shattering Glinda's reverie in the process; before long, the train of thought she'd been following was lost in a procession of spells, gunshots and explosions as they charged onwards. As the bridge thinned to a causeway and wiggle room for attackers dwindled, the sounds were joined by the periodic thump-splash of oncoming guardsmen being pitched into the lake by Kiln's forward march, the distant hiss of the python as he glided in and out of the rippling black waters, and further ahead, and further still, the clamour and chaos of Elphaba and Alphaba slugging it out.
Eventually, the four of them ground to a halt, Kiln detaching himself from the shield and leaving the bodies as a roadblock for further invaders. Above them, the Radiant Empress and the Wicked Witch of the West brawled in mid-air, floating steadily further and further away from the chaos; even from here, it was impossible to work out which of them had the upper hand so far – in fact, unless Glinda was deeply mistaken, the fight was proving remarkably one-side: Elphaba was on the offensive and from the looks of things had been so for the last five minutes, hammering the Empress with an increasingly destructive array of spells and roaring a long list of grievances against her opponent at the top of her voice; the Empress, on the other hand, seemed content to hover there and soak up every last bit of destructive magic flung in her direction without bothering to retaliate, either blocking an incoming spell with her shield or taking it squarely on the chin without even blinking.
Meanwhile, trudging through the shallows bordering the left-hand side of the causeway, Branderstove was lending a hand by peppering the Empress with cannon fire, undeterred by the obvious fact that neither he nor Elphaba were doing any lasting damage.
Meanwhile, the giant python was now slithering to a halt in the middle of the lake, leaving about ten feet of its colossal body above the waterline. As it did so, the silvery figure on its back clambered up onto the snake's head, and in that moment, Glinda finally recognized him: it was none other than the Tin Man – not his counterpart in this world, but the genuine article, right down to the stubbornest dents in his skull.
"Right then!" he shouted dramatically. "ELPHABA! You did this to me, and I'm here to…"
He stopped, suddenly noticing the Empress. A moment later, there was a low metallic clunk as the Tin Man's jaw slowly dropped open like an overturned cash register. One arm swung up in the direction of the duelling witches, pointing with a shaking hand at Alphaba; a few vague noises escaped his mouth, but none of them could be recognized as words, with the possible exception of "whu?" "bwa?" and "whathafuuuu?" After several seconds of incoherent mumbling and disconnected syllables, he took a deep breath and tried again, still oblivious to the fact that his intended audience couldn't hear him.
"Who the hell is that?" he demanded of nobody in particular. "Why does she… she looks… I mean, how can it… what does it… how? Why? What? How are there two of them? What are they doing here? What am I doing here?" His voice rose to a yell. "Why the hell do people from my dreams keep turning up here? What the hell happened here? Who the hell are you people?" he screamed, now pointing at Glinda and the others. "What is this place? How did we get here? What's going on?! WHY?!"
Kiln very gently hid his head in his hands. "Why now?" he muttered irritably. "Of all fucking times…"
Glinda was about to call out to the Tin Man, ideally to ask how he'd ended up in this world, when there was a fresh rumbled of gunfire from ahead of them and Kiln's makeshift riot shield trembled with the impact of several dozen high-velocity rounds. It seemed that the Empress had managed to summon even more reinforcements, and now that the shock of the giant python's arrival had worn off, the soldiers were now charging towards Kiln's roadblock, guns blazing – at Elphaba, at Branderstove, at the riot shield, at the Tin Man, at the snake, at anyone not immediately recognizable as a guardsman of Unbridled Radiance.
Immediately, the giant snake lunged forward with a nerve-shredding hiss and snatched up one of the soldiers on the causeway ahead, swallowing him whole. Flung from his perch by the sudden movement, the Tin Man landed in an undignified heap in the middle of the road; picking himself up, he drew his axe and waded into the fray, bullets bouncing harmlessly off his casing.
A moment later, everyone at the barricade was fighting again.
By the time he'd reached the end of the tunnel, Fiyero had just about run out of bad language: he'd spent most of it on the frantic sprint through the crowded streets above, exhausting his more-than-substantial lexicon of expletives, epithets and oaths on his attempts to find Elphaba. In between obscenities, he'd asked for directions from the militiamen rushing to and fro across the city, and after a bit of pushing and shoving, managed to find the church she'd been seen entering. The elevator ride to the bottom of the mineshaft and the subsequent charge through the darkened passageways had just about drained the last of his reserves.
Funnily enough, he'd never been much of a potty-mouth in his younger days, if only because it would have ruined the atmosphere of coolness and charisma he'd learned to cultivate. As the Scarecrow, he wasn't quite so reserved, though travelling with Dorothy and the need to conceal his true self from the rest of Oz had curbed his newfound outspokenness very quickly. It was only now, with all hell breaking lose for the second time in as many days, that Fiyero found himself giving full vent to his sizable vocabulary of coarse language; if nothing else, it help take his mind off the bricks raining down on him from all directions.
But now that he was down here, in this "Mourning Hall," he had no idea what the hell was going on, who was fighting who, and where Elphaba might be… and worst of all, he had nothing left to do but stare at the ground and mutter the few nonsense words he had left, wondering what the diassbifuggerunt he was going to do next.
And then, just as he was considering a headlong sprint through the front lines and estimating how many bullet holes he'd have by the end of it, something grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hoist him into the air.
"WANdering so far from safety, little stuffed doll?" cooed a familiar voice. "To run SO far from MY toybox and END UP by my side once again, WHYEVER did you bother, silly little thing?"
The Hellion laughed, gleefully dangling Fiyero further and further off the ground even as he struggled to escape.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"Why, I'm going to give you back to your owner, silly straw doll!"
"Wait, what?"
"The green girl wants you back, RAGDOLL, though she doesn't know it. Silly, mad thing doesn't know WHAT she wants. MAYBE she'll repay your return by returning one of MINE… or maybe not. Maybe you'll be a worm for MY fishing rod, something to DRAW in a plump green trout once the battle is won or lost! Oh, the Mentor won't want to lose her little green soldier; she'll GIVE my dearest Dorothy Doll back in return forher pet witch." The Hellion giggled. "Perhaps it's time to cast the hook…"
And before Fiyero could brace himself, the Hellion drew one muscular arm back and launched him into the air, speeding him along with a blast of magic.
Tumbling end over end through the air, Fiyero found his vision of the world below reduced to a blurry succession of snapshots: armies protected by magical shields battling in slow motion; reinforcements charging in from hidden tunnels and narrow causeways; a gleaming black lake, miles and miles across; a crude barricade of human corpses; a giant snake and a giant octopus (or something very like it)… and then, he saw what he'd been looking for – the distinctive green skin and pointed hat, illuminated by the glow of spellcasting.
He had just enough time to shout "ELPHABA!" before he hit the ground.
Not for the first time, Glinda could only stop and stare at the thing that had almost landed on her. Whatever it was, it was about six feet tall, made of burlap, and in the split second before it had thudded to a halt in front of her, it had shouted Elphaba's name; it wasn't until the crumpled figure had staggered upright that Glinda finally realized that it was none other than the Scarecrow.
Then, before anyone could ask him all the logical questions that had occurred to them (how he'd gotten here, why he was here, if the Lion would be joining them, etc), the Scarecrow took to his heels without paying the slightest heed to the carnage around him and sprinted towards the distant figures of Elphaba and the Empress with a shout of, "Elphaba, it's me!"
To Glinda's continued surprise, Elphaba actually stopped in mid-fight at the cry from below, almost as if she recognized the Scarecrow's voice; privately, Glinda couldn't blame her – back when she'd first seen him, she'd spent most of the time wondering if they'd ever met before. But then, as Elphaba stared down at the straw man without a trace of recognition in her eyes, Glinda saw the Empress slowly raising a hand to finally retaliate.
Glinda's heart almost stopped.
Lunging forward with her own desperate scream of "ELPHIE, LOOK OUT!" Glinda raised her wand to strike – only to be blasted off her feet by the Empress's counterattack. She landed heavily, the impact almost blotting out the snarl of "You stay out of this!" from the Empress.
As she rose, she became aware of a sudden breeze on her face, and realized with a jolt of shock that her mask had been dislodged in the fall.
Darting forward, she plucked the mask out of the dirt and fastened it back on – but not before Elphaba got a good look at Glinda's face. For perhaps five seconds, she could only stare in a mixture of shock, horror, and outrage; then, the Empress's counterattack hit her head-on, and this time, Glinda didn't have the chance to intervene.
The first bolt of concussive energy caught her square in the chest, almost knocking her out of the air; the second flung her upside down; the third struck her hard across the face, bursting her bottom lip with a spray of blood. A telekinetic lasso descended over Elphaba's shoulders, instantly tightening to vicelike proportions as the Empress yanked her back through the air, slamming her in the cavern wall opposite them, then into the roof, before finally slamming her hard against the causeway. Torturous energies rippled from the Empress's outstretched hands, flowing freely into Elphaba's defenceless body and eliciting fresh screams of pain. Blizzards gathered in the air around her, dropping the temperature to freezing extremes and allowing crystalline growths of ice to form across Elphie's skin. As Elphaba struggled to take to their once more, gravity hammered down on her, sending her crashing to the ground with such violence that Glinda swore she heard bones crack.
Glinda hurried forward with her wand raised for another attempted intervention, but this time she didn't even get as far as the first quarter of a gesture; an instinctive blast of magic from the Empress swatted her aside. The Scarecrow made a grab for the nearest rifle, only for another blast to send him tumbling into the lake; Kiln and Vara, attempting to mount their own desperate rescue attempt with what little weaponry they had, were hammered into their own barricade by the riposte. Even Branderstove and the giant snake were forced into cover by the storm. And as for Gloss…
… where was Gloss?
Several hundred feet away, the army of the Deviant Nations finally noticed the disaster on the horizon and opened fire on the Empress; unfortunately, Alphaba wasn't in the mood for any further interference: once again, the light of her aura blazed across the cavern towards the reinforced army, accompanied by a swell of heat powerful enough to melt the stalactites as it passed under them. And everything the light touched was instantly destroyed: flesh disintegrated, wood burned to ash, steel melted like tallow, and even the bones of the victims blackened and charred under the onslaught. The beam of light swept across the shoreline, incinerating the defiant militiamen in mid-charge, scattering the ranks of the Irredeemables, and forcing the regulars into a desperate scurry for cover; even the mercenaries' Tik-Toks couldn't withstand the searing heat, their cauldron-shaped bodies slowly dissolving into puddles of coppery ooze as the light fell upon them, still trying to fight on in their death throes. Even the survivors weren't spared: anyone making a dash for the exit was immediately targeted, the corona searing down from them and instantly washing the flesh from their bones. Within twenty seconds, almost three quarters of the defenders were dead or dying.
Glinda was left staring in horror as the Empress returned her attention to Elphaba; she didn't know exactly how many people had been lining up on that shoreline in total, but it couldn't have been any less than five hundred defenders – not counting all the guardsmen who'd made the mistake of charging at the wrong moment.
She's been toying with us, she realized numbly. She could have killed us all at any time, and now that she's satisfied with what she's seen-
Above them, the Empress gathered the blazing light around her into a single sphere of devastating energies and flung it at Elphaba; however, to Glinda's immense relief, Elphie had managed to recover by that time, and caught the sphere in one hand, before letting it slowly dissolve back into the ether.
The Empress blinked, head cocked to the side in a quizzical stare. Then, she flung another blast: Elphaba caught it too, this time tossing it over her shoulder and leaving it to explode harmlessly in mid-air. Without missing a beat, the Empress threw yet another bolt: this one shattered against Elphaba's shield, dissolving into its particulate energies and vanishing.
At last, the Empress laughed. "You've been enjoying the Witch-Crystal a little too often, I think," she chided. "But if we're still intent on making this a test…"
She flung another bolt of energy, this one more potent than the last. Elphaba blocked it – but only just.
"…Let's see just how much punishment you can take!" the Empress boomed.
Another blast erupted against Elphie's shield. "You'll have to do better than that!" she screamed back.
"Oh, I intend to…"
Another spell, this one summoning a vast flock of birds, their ethereal wings dazzling white and their vulture-sized bodies glittering with immaterial flame; with an eardrum-puncturing warcry, they descended on Elphaba, pecking and stabbing at her with their needle-sharp beaks. More than once, they found a weak spot in her shield and fluttered through, tearing into her undefended flesh with ravenous abandon and forcing Elphaba to drop her defences long enough to destroy the flock. By the time the birds were gone, the Empress's next spell was being cast.
"… because I'd like to see just how long it takes for you to burn out!"
An impossible multitude of cable-thick vines poured out of the Empress's outstretched hand and shot towards Elphaba; instantly repelled by her shield, they festooned the air in front of her, layering the bubble of energy surrounding her in a dense layer of strangling plantlife. The vines ballooned grotesquely as the barrage continued, swelling into gigantic roots that bore down on the shield so heavily that it was a wonder they didn't bury it entirely; they were feeding off the magic, Glinda realized, absorbing the energies of the shield to fuel their growth until they'd be able to throttle Elphie to death. Once again, Elphaba had to drop her shield and burn away the vines before the inevitable occurred, and once again, the Empress took this as an opportunity to pounce.
This time, a beam of purest light lanced forth, piercing Elphaba's shield and ripping it apart. Elphaba only just managed to catch the beam in time, forcing the energies away from her body with hands now sparking with enchantments.
Then, with a subtle gesture from the Empress, the beam grew. Once again, Elphaba had to block the expanding energies of the blast and force them painstakingly away – only for the Empress to intensify the beam once more. By now, beads of sweat were rolling down Elphaba's forehead as her attempts to contain the blast grew more and more exhausting and the pauses between spells grew shorter and shorter. Glinda tried to approach, but every time she got close enough to cast a spell, the energies around the two flared so violently that she had to back away or risk getting her face sheared off.
Finally, as the Empress intensified the beam for the seventh time, Elphaba let out a groan and collapsed to her knees, hands still just managing to contain the energies of the beam even as she fell, even as the searing magic reduced her fingers to hunks of smouldering meat. As Glinda watched in horror, dozens of tiny crystalline shapes began erupting out of Elphaba's back and shoulders, burrowing up through her flesh and tearing through her cloak; more began to emerge on her shoulders, each new growth accompanied by a fresh spray of blood, one even sprouting on her neck. Before long, Elphaba's groan had risen to a scream, and the effort of holding back the blast and withstanding the growth of the crystals had forced her down onto her hands and knees.
Then, just as the all-too-familiar smile began playing out across the Empress's face, Glinda felt a buzzing in her right hand, and realized that her wand was starting to tremble of its own accord. As she watched, a faint emerald glow began to slowly emanate from it… and were those cracks racing along its surface?
Suddenly, Kiln was screaming. "It's reached critical mass!" he shouted over the roar of the wind. "Glinda, you need to dump the sink now!"
"We need to save Elphaba first!"
"Dumping the sink will help Elphaba; why do you think the two of them are overloading?! Just dump the sink before it blows!"
"How do I do that?"
"JUST THROW THE FUCKING WAND!"
Startled by the noise, Glinda threw her wand – instinctively aiming it in the general direction of the Empress. By now, the wand was crackling with rampant magic and surrounded by a visible haze of multi-coloured energies, and the moment it left Glinda's hand, it virtually took flight: soaring towards Alphaba like a guided missile, it rocketed towards her at an eyewatering pace; startled by the blur of motion, the Empress disengaged her final spell and turned to face the oncoming wand, her smile quickly fading to a confused frown.
Without the threat of the beam, Elphaba finally lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground in a bloodied heap. But no sooner had she hit the ground, Glinda's runaway wand collided with the Empress's shield, snapping cleanly in half on impact.
There was a baffled pause, as the Empress regarded the broken halves of the wand with no small degree of consternation.
"Wh-"
The wand exploded, sending the Empress hurtling backwards; a hundred-foot pillar of random magical energies shot heavenwards, shattering the cavern roof and sending a hailstorm of rubble thundering down on the surprised onlookers. Magical discharges rippled out across the Mourning Hall, transfiguring anything in their path: stalagmites turned into flocks of pigeons, cave toadstools turned into toads, guardsmen caught in the discharge were instantly petrified; roast chickens took flight from two dozen ruptured stomachs, corpses split into their component organs and scuttled away on crab legs, tadpoles rained from the ceiling alongside plum puddings and chunks of the cavern roof, and the horrified screams of the onlookers suddenly dissolved into a manic duet for accordion and banjo. Finally, the Empress's hardy stone causeway suddenly reverted to the ice she'd sculpted it from, and then began to slowly melt in the growing heat of the cavern.
Bleeding from over a hundred visible wounds and assaulted on all sides by eruptions of random energies, the Empress herself teleported away with a howl of frustration, leaving her troops to face the disaster on their own.
Unfortunately, that left Glinda and Elphaba stranded in the middle of a steadily growing lake with an explosion still raging the in background.
Fortunately, Kiln's riot shield proved surprisingly buoyant for its size.
Once she'd managed to take a breath and get her bearings Glinda staggered across the collapsing bridge towards Elphaba's unconscious body and, with a little help from a suddenly web-footed Dr Kiln, managed to haul her to the safety of her improvised raft; fortunately, Branderstove was already wading briskly through the lake with Vara and the Scarecrow standing on his shoulders, with the Tin Man and the huge python following close behind.
"What do we do now?" Glinda asked.
There was a thunderous explosion from overhead.
"I think it might be prudent to get the hell out of here!" Kiln suggested.
For once, the decision was unanimous.
All too soon, however, there was another explosion from the cavern roof; Glinda looked up just in time to see a huge fissure tearing its way through the pitted rock as the Mourning Hall's ceiling finally gave way under the abuse it had been subject to. Glinda was no great judge of distances, but she knew there was no way in hell they'd be able to reach the exit before the entire roof collapsed.
A chunk of rock roughly the size of the city gates landed with a splash in front of them, large enough to block the shoreline from view, and Glinda's heart sank as she realized that they weren't even going to get as far as the beach.
Then, just as Glinda was starting to regret all the things she'd never told Elphaba, there was a yell from somewhere behind them. A split second later, Colonel Gloss was standing in front of them… and yet it wasn't Gloss: his perpetual smile was gone, and his face now wore a distinctly un-Glosslike expression of fear and concern. His face seemed too long and narrow, his arms too ungainly for the mercenary captain's slight frame, the scarring to his ear nowhere to be seen – and somehow, he was standing ankle-deep in a lake that was currently over eight feet deep. Even his uniform looked wrong: the buttons were gone, the medals just streaks of random colour painted on his shirt, and as Glinda looked closer she realized that the shirt, jacket, trousers and boots were all part of a single one-piece garment. Unless Gloss had been literally sewn into his uniform, how could this be the case?
And then, just as Branderstove's eyes were widening in realization, Colonel Gloss changed.
His arms mushroomed outwards into two great flowery bouquets of tendrils, each vine-like limb thicker than a tree-trunk; before Glinda could reach for a wand that had long since exploded into shrapnel, the tendrils were in motion, wrapping around her waist – around Elphaba, around Branderstove, around anyone still in range who couldn't reach the shoreline.
"Hold on!" Not-Gloss warned them. "This is going to get problematic!"
Then without another word, he dived into the lake, taking his unwilling passengers with him.
The last thing Glinda saw before she lost consciousness was the surface of the lake rushing towards her at high speed, its suddenly turbulent waters changing colours as the blast erupted across them, shifting from glistening black to gleaming platinum, almost like…
… a mirror…