A/N: I won't lie, ladies and gents, it's been a bloody horrible time over here. There's been panic attacks, technical breakdowns, and family crises on top of everything else; this might just qualify as the worst three months of my entire life, and the fact that I'm currently typing on a laptop that is actively falling apart even as I type doesn't help. Seriously, the right hinge keeps popping out. I can only apologise for not getting this done sooner; I also apologise for almost giving up on this story altogether - thank god I chickened out at the last minute. On the bright side, I've discovered Gravity Falls, which definitely kept me sane over the last week or two.
Now, before we begin, I thank all of you for your continued support in spite of my tardiness, and for all those who favourite and followed despite the lack of activity. You all deserve so much better than my limited output, and I can only promise to be better in the future.
Nami Swann, I'm glad you liked the catharsis factor in the previous chapter, and that you found the details of the Great Devastating suitably... devastating (rimshot - sorry, couldn't resist). I hope you enjoy this latest instalment, and that my work still passes muster.
Guest, thank you for all the comments and corrections you've left on the last couple of chapters. I'm glad people still tell me about the typos I've made - god only knows I desperately need to be reminded of my mistakes, otherwise they'll be there forever. I'm glad you enjoy the worldbuilding - thanks again!
GoldenHydrangea, I'm glad you enjoyed the worldbuilding too. Rest assured, there'll be more dream-memories soon, and you'll be able to see just how the Hellion and co came to be!
Special thanks go to A.N. Tesla for providing me with a brilliant design for a new and special look for Elphaba, which you'll find over the course of the chapter.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter! Feel free to present me with your critiques, criticisms, corrections and typo alerts! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked's not mine, I have to remember this or risk arrest.
Dorothy honestly thought that there'd be nothing left to surprise her that evening: after all, she'd already awoken to a city-wide party, met a man from another Kansas, learned that her other self was almost certainly dead, and ended up being reunited with Toto for good measure. What was left to happen? It stood to reason that even a place as weird and unusual as the Deviant Nations couldn't possibly fit any more surprises into the space of a single night. So, by the time Vara had successfully detached her from Toto and begun ushering her down the corridor towards the banqueting hall, Dorothy was in a fairly relaxed mood; by the time they rounded the corner and through the open doors, she was almost sleepy.
…right up until she actually stepped inside and realized that the evening's surprises weren't quite finished yet. There, right in the middle of the banqueting hall-
Dorothy took a deep breath and tried to process what she'd just seen, without much success: even if she hadn't been in shock, there were simply too many questions suddenly demanding to be answered for her to concentrate, and anyway, the sight made no sense whatever.
In the end, she had to sort through the contents of the room one at a time: first of all, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man stood among the guests of honour milling about the hall, and just as Dorothy had suspected, both had returned with their fair share of battlescars in addition to their new medals for bravery. Secondly, Elphaba and Glinda were also among the guests of honour, and they too were decorated with medals and fresh wounds. Thirdly, at some point in the last few minutes, the two parties had met. Fourthly…
Elphaba and the Scarecrow were kissing.
Dorothy's mind once again spun helplessly in the mental equivalent of a double-take.
Elphaba and the Scarecrow were kissing.
Elphaba and the Scarecrow were kissing.
No, this still didn't make sense.
Elphaba – previously known as the Wicked Witch of the West – and the Scarecrow – willing participant in the Wizard's struggle against her – were kissing, locked together in a passionate embrace. Doubly baffling, this didn't seem especially shocking to the spectators they'd acquired by then: Glinda seemed happy, the Tin Man looked mildly bemused at most, Chistery applauding, Kiln was smiling mysteriously to himself…
And as for Dorothy, she was wondering – not for the first time since she'd left Kansas – if she'd gone completely mad in the last few minutes.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there, staring in astonishment at the two of them; she might very well have remained there for the rest of the evening, had Toto not chosen that moment to bark. As one, Elphaba and the Scarecrow brought their kiss to a halt just long enough to turn – and realize that they'd acquired an audience
"Er," said the Scarecrow, his expression caught somewhere between surprise and embarrassment.
"Ah," said Elphaba, now brushing a rich shade of moss-green.
"We're…"
"It's… well, you see…"
"The thing is, we're-"
"I know this might come as a bit of shock, but-"
"It's wonderful to see you again, Dorothy, and I'm sure you've got a lot of questions and I'll be happy to answer them as soon as I'm able to-"
"Do you two know each other?" Dorothy asked.
Out on the fringes of the conversation, Dr Kiln hastily disguised a snort of laughter as a coughing fit, while Glinda hid a smile behind her hands.
"Erm, you… well, you could say that, I suppose," said Fiyero sheepishly.
"We've known each other for a long time," Elphaba continued. "Um. Since before he was a Scarecrow, in fact… and… well… you might want to brace yourself for a shock, Dorothy but… um… this is Fiyero."
Dorothy's blinked in astonishment. "The one I heard about when you first got back from Loamlark?" she asked tentatively.
"That's right, yes."
"Not the one with the mask?"
"Correct."
"The one you met back in Oz – proper Oz?"
"Yes, Dorothy."
Dorothy's brow wrinkled.
"…Isn't he dead?"
"Well… yes, that's what I thought, too. I mean, the one in this universe is, but the one from... from our universe isn't. I thought he was executed, but… But that's…" Elphaba took a deep breath, her blush visibly darkening to avocado. "That's actually… erm… this might be hard to believe, but that's actually how he, uh… he became a Scarecrow in the first place. I, er… I tried to save him, and ended up turning him into a scarecrow by mistake. Kind of a long story."
"But how did it happen?" Dorothy asked. "How… how did…"
She meant to stop there. As shocked as she was, she still knew to mind her manners – at least enough to ask her questions one at a time. But by then, the unanswered questions had been left to build up pressure for too long, and Dorothy found herself asking them all at once, every single question and query abruptly exploding out of her like water from a bursting dam: "When did you meet? How did you meet? How long have you known each other? Why did you pretend to be enemies back when we were still in Oz? Didn't you know who he was? What happened? Why a scarecrow? Were you always in love? Where did you find him? What happened in Loamlark? How did the battle go? What…"
At long last, she fell silent, out of breath.
In the awkward pause that followed, Elphaba opened her mouth as if to answer, but then thought better of it. Sighing deeply, she hung her head and muttered "Dear god, why am I having so much trouble explaining myself to a child?" under her breath.
"Lack of experience," Glinda replied.
"Well, I was able to talk to her about Oz without freezing up beforehand. Mind you, I'd feel a lot better if we didn't have all this emotional baggage from the last few days to sort through while we're here."
"I'm pretty sure she can still hear you, Elphie."
At that point, the Scarecrow (Fiyero, Dorothy amended, his name is Fiyero) steppedforward with a winning smile suddenly blossoming across his sackcloth face, and when he spoke, the nervous tremor was gone from his voice: "To answer the first of your questions," he began, "We first met at Shiz University – and you might this hard to believe, Dorothy, but when I first met Elphaba, she was a much angrier woman…"
Once again, Kiln was forced to disguise his laughter with another coughing fit; this time, however, Glinda could only giggle helplessly and even Elphaba couldn't quite hide the amused smile on her face. Dorothy herself could only boggle in disbelief. If anything, it only made Glinda laugh harder.
"No, really!" Fiyero continued. "Back in our days at Dear Old Shiz, people fled in terror and nailed their doors shut rather than face the wrath of Elphaba Thropp. But now, she's the darling of the Deviant Nations, the champion of the people, the personal emissary of the Great Mentor, the-"
"Fiyero!"
"Hey, I'm being serious, Elphaba. You should have seen the look on my chauffer's face when we first met; when I spoke to him later, he actually me that he thought you were going to turn him into a newt."
"And I spoke to him later, too, once he'd had a chance to calm down, and I genuinely apologised for almost being run over and I complimented him sincerely on his lack of peripheral vision. I never once threatened – directly or otherwise – to use any sort of magic on him, and even if I did transform him into a newt, he almost certainly would have gotten better. Could you playfully tease me about something else?"
"I'll stop teasing you about it when you stop smiling about it, dear."
"Fiyero," Elphaba warned – but her heart clearly wasn't in it: the smile on her face was too wide to suppress by now.
"And," Fiyero added brightly, "Back in those days, Glinda was still called Galinda and-"
"Wait!" said Dorothy. "Glinda told me about this – she told me all about how she and Elphie went to school together! You were there too?"
"Yes. Well, I wasn't there from the beginning: back then, I was always skipping classes and getting expels from one school after another, so I didn't show up on campus until the semester was almost half-finished. By then, Glinda and Elphaba had known each other for months: I uh…" Fiyero coughed, suddenly uncomfortable. "I made friends with Glinda pretty quickly, but it took me a while to strike up anything close to friendship with Elphaba."
"But why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you mention this back in Oz, when we were all together?"
The Scarecrow had the decency to look abashed. "Well… you've heard about what Oz was like back then, Dorothy: Glinda wasn't allowed to even mention the fact that she'd gone to the same university as Elphaba, let alone that they'd been friends. And that was around the time you arrived: by the time we were out of the Emerald City, the first of the witch-hunters were already gathering."
"I know that!" Dorothy burst out. "But why didn't you tell me once we were out of the city and away from the witch-hunters? I mean, even if I wanted to hand you over to the Wizard, I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it – not once we were out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, why didn't you at least try to tell me the truth? Why didn't you trust me?"
There was an awkward pause; around them, the party raged on, oblivious to the drama in play by the door.
Eventually, Fiyero sighed and confessed. "Well… we're friends – I doubt we'd have gotten that far if we didn't trust each other at least a little. But you're right: I didn't trust you to keep my secret. I lied to you, just like I lied to the Lion, to the Tin Man, and even to Glinda. I'd gotten too used to pretending to be someone else by then – well, in more ways than one, really. And in the end… I suppose I was always expecting you to be just like everyone else in Oz, so in the end, I didn't bother. I know it isn't fair, but-"
"But I could have helped you!"
"I know, I know. It would have been wonderful, too, wouldn't it? But that's not the point, and you're not interested in hearing excuses. I know I haven't been much of a friend to you; friends shouldn't keep secrets, and friends can't truly be friends if they can't trust each other completely. I can tell you're angry with me, gods only know I'd be angry with me, too… but do you think you could find it in your heart to forgive m-whoa!"
Even Dorothy was surprised at how fast she moved: one moment she was standing by the door, still hovering somewhere between shock and anger, the next she was half way across the room, hugging the Scarecrow fiercely around the middle, too happy to be angry with him.
After all, as she explained over the course of the party that followed, it wasn't as if she could hold a grudge forever – not now that they were together again.
The festivities struck up again. For the next few hours, the reunited friends talked – in fact, they did almost nothing but talk – about everything that happened to them since they'd fallen through the portal: Dorothy told Fiyero and the Tin Man of how she'd met up with Elphaba, how they'd ended up in the company of the Irredeemables, of all the strange things she'd witnessed in the Deviant Nations; at one point, she was even able to tell them of her encounters with the Hellion, the mood of the party somehow joyous enough to banish Dorothy's fears – if only for a little while. In turn, Fiyero told her about his run-in with the Hellion, of how he and Toto had escaped and made their way to Loamlark, and the many frustrations they'd endured there; the Tin Man told her of how he'd been kicked out of the lair, and of his long, strange journey through No-Man's Land. At one point, Elphaba had joined after a little encouragement, and told Dorothy of the battle in the skies over the Deviant Nations.
Eventually, the talk turned to their past: Fiyero, Glinda, and Elphaba all told Dorothy of Shiz, of the Ozdust Ballroom, of attempts to show off the things they'd learned in magic class to bemused boyfriends, and of all the trouble Fiyero had gotten into. By the end, Glinda was once again giggling helplessly – and strangely enough, so was Elphaba. "Easily explained by all the empty wineglasses in this room," Dr Kiln said with a wink. Elphaba laughingly slapped him across the elbow, and went on chuckling.
After a while, after some prodding from Dr Kiln, the Tin Man took her aside and told her – no, confessed his past: his real name, his time at Shiz, his obsession with Glinda, the mistake he'd made in lying to Nessarose, the misery they'd made of their lives as a result, and how he'd become the Tin Man. He admitted he was confused, that his head hurt, that at times he couldn't control his temper, that he'd been lying to Dorothy over a lie he'd told himself, and that he might very well be insane. And in the end, Dorothy forgave Boq: as with Fiyero, she'd been missing him for too long to even dream of hating him.
Of course, the festivities didn't last forever: after about two hours of conversations and celebrations, Vara firmly declared that it was well past Dorothy's bedtime, and bustled her off to bed. By then, Dorothy halfway agreed. Despite her afternoon nap, she felt worn-out after the meetings and conversations and happy reunions, no matter how much she'd enjoyed it all.
But as she was getting ready for bed, she noticed something lying on the floor, caught between the bedpost and the bedside table. It was battered, creased and smothered in dust, but even Dorothy couldn't fail to recognize it: it was the family photo she'd taken from the house.
At first, she was at a loss to imagine how it had ended up there, until she remembered the last night she'd spent here – before she'd lost her nerve and gone looking for places to hide with Chistery: consumed with fear of the Hellion, she'd been sleeping in the wardrobe until Vara had carried her out and put her to bed; the photo must have fallen out of her pocket along the way. Dorothy shook her head, immediately angry with herself: after going to the trouble of taking that dog-eared photo with her just so she could remember home, she'd forgotten all about it at the first sign of panic. She hadn't even thought about it during her time hidden away in Kiln's apartment, too scared of the Hellion, too wrapped up in her own anxieties to think of home and her last memento of it.
Sighing deeply, Dorothy looked upon the photo with renewed happiness: even though she was still quite literally worlds away from home, somehow Aunt Em and Uncle Henry seemed just a little closer. Tonight had been a great victory for the Deviant Nations, after all: maybe the war would be won soon, or maybe there'd be another time of peace for the two sides – long enough for Dr Kiln and the Mentor to find them a way back to Oz and back to Kansas. And if it didn't… well, with her friends now by her side and the photo back in her mind, Dorothy could wait and forget: she could forget about the war, about the Empress, about the things she'd seen in her dreams, about the Eyes In The Darkness, about what had happened to the Other Kansas. She could even forget about the Hellion.
She wouldn't worry about anything, the Hellion least of all. She would just keep Fiyero and Boq close by and the photograph close to her heart, and everything would be okay.
She would be okay.
She was okay.
So, taking a deep breath, she set the photo down on her bedside table, downed her nightly half-pill, and settled off to bed. But as she slowly drifted off into a deep and undisturbed sleep, a question that had been hovering just out of reach for most of the evening finally occurred to her:
Where was the Lion, and why had nobody mentioned him?
Eight hours later, Dorothy awoke from dreams of another Dorothy who was almost certainly dead by now, stumbled out of bed with the Hellion's whispers ringing in her ears, and quickly realized that she was not, in fact, okay.
But, as Toto leapt onto the bed and started licking her face, it occurred to her that she could still find ways of coping with that.
That morning, Elphaba opened her eyes and felt perfectly satisfied with her life as it was… almost.
Fiyero was "sleeping" next to her: he didn't need to sleep, per se, but if he lay perfectly still for long enough he could apparently achieve something close to unconsciousness. It was the first time they'd slept in the same bed, to the best of her knowledge – unless you counted the forest floor as a bed.
Last night, she'd felt blissfully, rapturously happy at having him lying beside her once again; now, though, she felt immensely guilty. She should have been working last night: she should have been studying the Grimmerie for a way to make Fiyero human – and she should have been hard at work from the moment she'd arrived back at the palace, instead of selfishly gobbling up the glory and wallowing in the limelight. And now that the comforting haze of alcohol and festivity had worn off, she was now painfully aware of just how much time she'd wasted.
Almost leaping out of bed, she shrugged on a dressing gown and made for the bathroom. She'd have to get started quickly, she realized, as she splashed water in her face. After all, it wouldn't be long before the Mentor sent her off to the next warzone, and working with the full copy of the Grimmerie was out of the question outside the palace. If she wanted to make any progress in restoring Fiyero, she'd have to do it while she was still on leave.
Looking up from the sink, she happened to glance in the mirror and suddenly realized there was something else she wasn't satisfied with: her hair. It wasn't often that Elphaba got worked up over matters of personal grooming, especially considering that most Ozians couldn't look past the skin anyway, but in her current state, even she couldn't help but cringe. She'd known that General Stellham had managed to land a direct hit on her during the battle, but she wasn't sure how badly the burns had been up until now: on the upside, only her hair had been seriously damaged; on the downside, what hadn't been burned off was now a charred mess of unpleasant-smelling locks.
She sighed. It was her own fault, in the end: she should have cut her hair short the moment she realized she was joining the military. In fact…
Opening one of the drawers, she located a pair of scissors and set to work immediately.
As she did so, there was a knock on the bathroom door, and Glinda's voice trilled, "Elphie, are you awake? I was just WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOUR HAIR?!"
Elphaba grimaced. "I'm taking preventative measures."
Glinda's face went white, her reflection gaping in disbelief. "You're cutting your hair off?!" she exploded.
"I should have done this weeks ago, Glinda: keeping hair as long as this simply isn't practical for someone in my position. It's bad enough that I got half of it burnt to a crisp: next time, I won't be so lucky. With all the time we spend around heavy machinery, I'll be lucky if I don't end up accidentally scalping myself."
"For the love of Lurline, Elphie, put the scissors down! At least see a proper hairdresser! We're on leave for the next few days, we can certainly spare the time."
"Why are you getting so worked up about this, Glin? It'll take just a few more snips and-"
"No! If you have to cut your hair – and I still think long hair suits you the best, by the way – you are going to a qualified hairstylizer with me, and I am going to guarantee you the best new look imaginable."
Elphaba took a deep breath and wondered how it was possible for one of her oldest and dearest friends to be so uniquely exasperating. "Glinda," she said wearily, "This is no time for makeovers: we aren't at Shiz and we definitely aren't students anymore. I'm a combat witch-"
"Exactly! And as your friend and advisor, it's my solemniating duty to make sure that you don't go into battle looking like you just crash-landed into a briar patch."
Once she was finished groaning in frustration, Elphaba naturally protested. She had work to do, after all: she needed to plan a start to Glinda's training sessions, arrange a consultation with Dr Kiln over the growth of her crystals, study new and effective tactics for use on the front lines, check to see if any of the scientists and magicians around the palace had found some way of opening a portal back to Oz… and most important of all, she needed to make a start on finding a cure for Fiyero.
And yet, something about Glinda's doe-eyed expression managed to erase every single objection from her mind. Come on, said a little voice in the back of her head. What harm could it possibly do? It'll only be for an hour or two, then you can get back to work. Besides, don't you think Glinda deserves a chance for a day out with you after all the stress she's had to deal with? Don't you think she deserves a say after all the times you've lied to her in the last few days?
So it was that Elphaba found herself being whisked away to Fancy Trims Hairdressers for "the best makeover of your life, Elphie."
And along the way, almost everyone on the street wanted to shake her hand.
Once again, Elphaba found herself lost for words at the sheer adulation of the people: by now, she'd almost managed to convince herself that the overjoyed throngs screaming her name had just been a comforting dream, but wandering the streets among them brought the reality screaming back to the forefront of her mind. These people loved her. They worshipped her: if the Mentor was their messiah and prophet, then they'd stopped just short of anointing Elphaba as a living saint. And though she found herself once again drunk on the exaltations of the crowd, she couldn't help but feel the tiniest stirrings of anxiety as the walk continued.
Could she live up to their expectations? Could she really be their hero? What would happen if she failed? Would they reject her, hate her as the people of Oz had – or would they overlook her failings, make excuses for her? Would they treat Elphaba like the people of Oz had treated the Wizard? It was hard to imagine which option might be worse.
Don't think about it. Not now, at any rate. That way lies madness.
By the time they finally reached the hairdressers, Elphaba was almost sick with worry over the future while still light-headed from applause. As such, she could only sit down and watch in bemusement as Glinda and a small army of hair stylists went to work on her charred locks, nimbly slicing away ruined hair and applying restorative oils to her scalp. She was allowed a choice in style, but once that was done, Elphaba was effectively along for the ride.
For the first time in ages, Glinda was in her element, commanding every stage of the process with absolute confidence, waving off suggestions of curlers or dyes and discussing with impossible joy the undeniable necessity of the right scissors and right conditioners. For good measure, she even sat down in a chair herself and allowed the stylists to trim several inches of her own hair off – "for solidarity," she said with a wink. Elphaba could only look upon Glinda's newly-arranged hairstyle with something not unlike envy: even with her shoulder-length tresses missing, even with her golden curls trimmed to a length barely dipping below her jawline, she still looked like the most glamorous woman alive.
And yet, when the scissors finally retreated and Elphaba looked at herself in the mirror, she could only marvel at her new self. The style itself wasn't unexpected: as requested, they'd cropped her as short as they could without resorting to a crewcut. It had been a practical choice, but now she couldn't help but admire the style that Glinda and the hairdressers had added to it.
"Why, Miss Elphaba," Glinda whispered reverently. "Look at you: you're beautiful."
"Flatterer."
"No, really: the close-crop looks good on you. I've never seen anyone pull off "cute and dangerous" so well."
Elphaba's eyebrows rose. "Cute?" she echoed.
"And dangerous, don't forget. I think it brings out your natural feistiness."
Judging from the cheers of the crowds as they left the building, Elphaba's supporters agreed with her.
Half an hour from the hairdressers, Glinda found herself struck by a profound sense of embarrassment and guilt. After everything she'd done to change her ways, why had she fallen back on her old habits? Why had she wasted an hour of Elphaba's life on a makeover she didn't really need? Why had she decided to play at being Galinda the dimwitted fashionista all over again?
She shook her head in self-disgust, trying valiantly not to distract herself with thoughts of how good Elphaba looked with close-cropped hair. Glinda had made it abundantly clear to herself that she couldn't go on being a brainless socialite, and yet here she was, dragging Elphie along to the hairdressers when she should be practicing magic. She couldn't afford to slip back into her old self, and she certainly couldn't afford to be Glinda the Social Darling: she had to be Glinda the Witch.
"Are you alright, Glinda? You've gotten very quiet."
"I'm fine, Elphie. Just got a lot on my mind, that's all."
And it took of Glinda's self-control to keep the look of utter loathing from materializing on her face: even her voice sounded vapid and pathetic. No matter how hard she'd tried in the last few days to do away with Galinda's foibles and become a proper witch, the same hateful little mannerisms just kept creeping back into the picture. She'd never be half the witch Elphaba was, but was it really so hard to at least try to seem capable without getting tripped up by her own inadequacies?
Swallowing bile, she took a deep breath and resolved to be better: Elphaba didn't need a fashion advisor, she needed a comrade on the battlefield. Glinda needed to be better. For the sake of her own sanity – no, for the sake of Elphaba – she had to be better.
The rest of the day was spent at work.
Once Fiyero was finished marvelling at her new haircut, Elphaba arranged a schedule of afternoon training sessions for Glinda; at the time, she'd half-expected reluctance from Glinda – especially considering she was still fresh from her morning training session with the Mentor. But to Elphaba's surprise, Glinda threw herself into the doubled workload with a dedication she'd only previously applied to shopping: the mistakes and miscasts were many and varied, and she was still a long way from true combat-readiness, but Glinda's determination refused to falter – even when she was assigned homework.
Then, with the Mentor's blessing (delivered by an intermediary), she retrieved the Grimmerie from its storage container deep in the palace war room and set about studying its pages for any spell or ritual that could return Fiyero to human form. Naturally, looking for specifics did her little good: she knew there would be no spell to reverse transfiguration, but there didn't seem to be any spell for transforming straw and sackcloth into flesh and bone either. True, there were spells that could transform straw into meat, but that wasn't exactly what Elphaba was looking for. Nailing down a spell to transform someone into a human was difficult, to put it mildly; searching the Grimmerie cover-to-cover was almost as arduous, especially considering that the book sprouted about two thousand additional pages the moment it was opened.
After several hours of comprehensive reading and note-taking, Elphaba concluded that no one spell could do the job; she'd have to combine techniques if she wanted to ensure a transformation.
"Maybe I should try a mental transfer," she mused aloud.
Glinda, who'd been absently returning her textbooks to the shelf, looked up in confusion. "Sorry?"
"A mind transfer – perhaps I could cut through all the difficulties of transfiguring Fiyero by creating a new body for him and transferring his mind into it. I've heard reliable accounts of the Grimmerie accomplishing –"
Glinda's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Have you stopped for lunch at any point today?" she asked quietly.
Now it was Elphaba's turn to look blank. "I'm pretty sure I meant to about an hour ago," she admitted. "But I got a little side-tracked around… maybe one-thirty. Still, I can't afford to stop for a lunch break just yet – I've only just started."
"Elphie, it's almost six in the evening!"
"Oh."
"And I'm pretty sure I didn't see you eating any breakfast today."
"Didn't I? I don't remember. Still, it's not as though I'm going to miss dinner or anything; I just need to finish studying this chapter-"
"BREAK TIME. NOW."
Once Elphaba had stopped laughing and taken the time to enjoy what was technically her first meal of the day, she then scheduled a check-up with Dr Kiln to study her current rate of crystallization immediately after dinner.
So, for half an hour, she stood in the middle of Kiln's laboratory/kitchen while the mage-surgeon absently pottered around, studying the crystal growths on her back with specialized lenses and other delicate equipment. A look in the mirror he eventually provided showed that her back was a veritable pincushion of diamond-like protrusions, each one connected by a luminous network of tiny glass veins. Having colonised both scapula, the crystals were now slowly expanding downwards to the small of her back; none of them had risen any higher than her shoulders, thankfully, so at least she wouldn't have to start answering awkward questions – though the number of sharp points would probably require specially-made fabrics to prevent constant damage to her clothing.
"So far, the conversion rate is still its symbiotic stage," Kiln explained. "It's only transmuting the epidermis at this point; your organs and skeleton won't be effected for several months at the very least, so you can relax for now. You'll find your powers showing dramatic enhancement too, I should think – not enough to outfight the Empress yet, but you're showing definite promise."
"Any downsides?"
"None apart from the usual aches and pains. The witch-crystal hasn't started converting bone at present, so you should be safe."
"And if it has started converting bone?"
"Well, based on current positions, I'd imagine your spine will the first to be altered and you'll suffer immediate paralysis from either the waist down or the neck down, depending on the exact point where crystallization begins. Either way, I'd have to prepare grafts for replacement spinal cord, or just have you fitted for a mobility harness."
Or borrow Nessa's wheelchair, said a rather unpleasant voice at the back of Elphaba's brain.
"…you really need to work on your bedside manner," she said aloud.
"Relax: generally, conversion doesn't begin on internal organs and bones until crystallization extends to at least fifty percent of the external tissue. As soon as you start finding these crystals on your face, then you can start worrying: crystalized eyelids can be extremely painful."
There was an awkward pause, and then Kiln added, "I must admit, I'm still a little surprised you're still willing to put up with these consultations after the events of the last few days. Given how angry you were, I honestly thought you'd never speak to me again. Does this mean you've forgiven me?"
"Last time, you said you didn't want to fish for forgiveness just in case it meant getting punched in the face. What changed?"
"Well, this time we aren't on the front lines, so at least I don't have to worry about running out of supplies while patching up any holes you might leave in my skull."
"Are you willing to apologise, then?"
Kiln bowed his head in contrition. "Of course. I apologise – sincerely and wholeheartedly – for lying to you… again... and for not treating you with the trust our partnership deserved. I can neither excuse my behaviour, nor can I dismiss it, but merely beg your forgiveness and promise to be better in the future."
"Partnership?" Elphaba echoed.
"Even I'm not presumptuous enough to label us as friends quite yet. After all, I remember how bad things got the last time I started getting overambitious about relationships. "
Elphaba wearily leaned forward and slapped Kiln across the face. "Then you're forgiven," she said, a wry grin spreading across her face. "You're still a longwinded, condescending, underhanded, morbidly-eccentric shill for the Mentor, but you're forgiven."
"Ow. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
They shook hands, somewhat awkwardly.
"By the way," Kiln added hesitantly, "I meant to ask: were you intending to forgive the Mentor for sending Glinda into battle?"
Elphaba sighed. "Something tells me it's not going to be as easy as that. You're easy to forgive in comparison: you might be the lecturing type, but at least you're approachable. Every time I speak with the Mentor it feels like I'm talking with Morrible or the Wizard… and quite frankly, it's only a short sidestep into an argument from there."
"You might have a chance to do so sooner rather than later, Elphaba. The Mentor mentioned she wanted a word with you after your consultation."
"...Is there a problem?"
"Not to my knowledge, no. There haven't been any major developments in the war efforts as of yet, so you're still on leave for the time being. Maybe she wants to apologise as well."
In spite of herself, Elphaba laughed. "She doesn't strike me as someone inclined to apologise for anything, Doctor."
"I'd imagine people would have thought the same of you back in Oz."
"There you go again with those lectures. I swear, more than half of them seem to involve potshots at my personal problems."
"Look on the bright side, Elphaba: maybe she'll give you a chance to vent your frustrations over everything that's been happening behind your back, have a nice long shout at someone after a whole day of peace and contentment – something like that."
"What was I just saying about potshots?"
"I'm just saying…"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm an argumentative grouch, I know, I'm already a curmudgeon and I haven't even turned thirty yet. Now, is there any other imaginable reason for this meeting?"
"Well, now that you're back on the dream pills for the foreseeable future, I imagine you might want your old dream-journal back from the Mentor… though you might have to apologise for throwing it at her."
So it was that that Elphaba reluctantly made her way to the Mentor's quarters, readying herself for another argument. At any other time, she might have welcomed the opportunity for a therapeutic airing of grievances, especially considering all the subterfuge and dissembling that had been going on over the last few days; right now, though, she just wanted to get it over and done with so she could return to work. There was always something more to be done, and the more time she wasted on arguments, the less time she'd have to spend on curing Fiyero before she was hauled back to the front.
However, the moment she arrived, she realized that the conversation wasn't going to go as expected. Rather than conducting the conversation from her sickbed as befitted the hour of the night, the Mentor had decided to hold their conference in the adjoining room: a small and unnervingly spartan chamber flooded with shadows, almost empty except for the padded chaise lounge squatting in the heart of the room, Elphaba could only guess at what the Mentor could possibly be using this place for. It definitely wasn't an office and it seemed much too sparsely-furnished to serve as any kind of sitting room or private library, but perhaps there was more to this room than she could see at present. As Elphaba's eyes adjusted to the gloom, she found herself noticing a number of large rectangular shapes leaning against the wall – bookshelves, paintings, some kind of decorations at any rate.
She found the Mentor standing some distance from the lounge, half-submerged in the darkness; shadows oozed across her face like ink, deepening her scars into colossal trenches in her ragged flesh and reducing her eyes to lightless hollows. But as unnerving as this sight was, Elphaba quickly found herself far more alarmed by the sight of two orderlies and a mage-surgeon urgently hauling a body off the lounge and onto a stretcher: given the gloom, it was impossible to guess who the unfortunate patient was, but from what little Elphaba could see, he was very old and he didn't appear to be breathing.
Once the medics had left the room, the Mentor sighed deeply. "Alnan Rovist," she explained quietly. "One of the oldest citizens of the Deviant Nations: he can remember the start of the war, the existence of Oz, even the Wizard… or at least, he could, if not for the memory haze." She shook her head. "Two decades, a thousand volunteers, four hundred experimental trials, at least a hundred and fifty deaths, and we're still no closer to ending the memory haze."
Elphaba coughed, finally finding her voice. "So what went wrong?"
"The Empress was very clever when she wove her spell on our people, you see: she didn't outright destroy the memories of the afflicted; I mean, if it was just a simple matter of amnesia, written records would have been able to put an end to the problem in a matter of minutes. No, she just locked all those compromising memories away behind layers of mental barriers: a strongbox inside a safe inside a bank vault encased in concrete, with a landmine hidden between every barrier, each one more sensitive than the last. For every layer we manage to unlock, we incur more and more risks: heart attacks, strokes, aneurisms, a whole host of other ailments intended to end any witnesses to the time before the Empress."
"And it's been like that ever since she cast the spell?"
In spite of herself, the Mentor managed a bitter, mirthless grin. "What can I say?" she said with a shrug. "Her Radiance declared it Year Zero, and so it was. I've encountered some particularly nasty variants of the memory haze that specifically targeted those too young to know of Oz; the moment you try to teach them something of the time before the Deviant Nations, they start bleeding from the eyes and collapse."
"What about the Grimmerie? Surely there's something in there you could use to assist the process. I mean, it's not a sure-fire method, but there's definite options for undoing what Alphaba did: I mean, there's spells for renewing brain tissue, restructuring the layout of the circulatory system, even transferring minds into new bodies-"
"Ah, but you forget: we didn't have the Grimmerie on our side until recently. It's only since you brought us a complete copy that we've been able to utilize it... but it's still an uphill battle. In Alnan's case, I tried altering his brain to shield him from aneurisms and the like. Trouble is, the memory haze is a very adaptive disease: the moment I started dismantling a layer of shielding, the spell compacted the others and started compacting key regions of his brain – ones concerned with breathing, for example."
"So there's no hope?"
"Oh, there's always hope, Elphaba: you proved that yesterday. Trouble is, there's only so much hope to go around at any given time; it's a finite resource. A very finite resource, as you've no doubt said to yourself in the past."
"Was this all you wanted to talk to me about?"
The Mentor took a deep breath. "No," she admitted. "There are a few other matters to discuss…"
She waved a brass hand in the direction of the ceiling, and a moment later, the lights flickered on. Elphaba immediately found herself confronted by two distinct realizations: firstly, the room was a lot larger than she'd been led to believe; secondly, there were indeed decorations on the walls. And as she took in the fine details of these artworks, she came to a third realization: it probably would have been better if she'd never seen them.
Staring back at her from the walls was her own face, replicated over and over again – in charcoal, ink, watercolours, oil paints, woodcuts, on canvas, paper, clay, wood, stone, even metal, as paintings, sculptures, prints, even collages of photographs. In almost every conceivable medium, in almost every imaginable style, Elphaba's likeness had been captured with unnatural accuracy and improbable attention to detail… and by the looks of things, several decades of obsession. She might have found it impressive, even admirable – had the portraits not been so perfectly hideous.
In every single artwork, her face was contorted with agony, her mouth open in a scream. The specifics varied slightly between works: in some, they eyes were clenched shut, while in others, the eyes stared open in horror; hands clawed at the edge of the frame in some, while others featured her arms locked at her side in paralysis; blood trickled from wounds torn in the forehead, veins stood out as black as ink, and tears lined her ragged cheeks. Over and over again, her likeness was frozen in pain, fear and despair.
And in every one of those varied depictions, something was looming over her, winding around her shoulders, creeping along her face, inching closer to her open mouth: in some depictions, it was a colossal red centipede, its glistening carapace covered in sneering human faces and jagged barbs; in others, it was a billowing cloud of vapour, its murky body forming a shape not unlike an octopus as it forced its way into Elphaba's defenceless nostrils. Quite a few of these creatures looked almost human: one particularly ghastly oil painting went to great lengths to show the monster's hateful leer and almost-foetal body, its pudgy little hands clutching greedily at Elphaba's eyes as it permeated her skull – a loathsome infant turning her brainpan into a womb. Another, more abstract portrayal in black ink showed a vaguely-human figure towering over Elphaba, its smirking face a warped mirror of its prey; through a set of bloodied strings clutched in its distended claws, it manipulated the tiny victim like a marionette, Elphaba's face streaked with tears as the strings cut deep into her flesh.
Bat-winged, insect-bodied, fish-tailed, tentacle-strewn, male, female, diseased, healthy, tangible or incorporeal – whatever it looked like, it could only be depicting one thing:
"The parasite," Elphaba whispered aloud.
"Full marks," said the Mentor quietly. "Welcome to my private studio."
"You made all these yourself?"
"We all need hobbies… and believe me, I've tried many. Fashion and beauty fade as the battle scars deepen; strategy games remind me of military planning sessions, and there's precious few to play them with anyway; books lose their thrill once the authors start following the war trends… and as for sports, Kiln insists on chaperoning every visit to the gym, so that's off the list. I suppose it was inevitable that I'd one day turn to art."
"Something tells me you need to try crosswords."
In spite of herself, the Mentor chuckled hoarsely. "You've been taking a leaf out of Kiln's book by the sounds of things."
"He may have a point. I mean, have you really been just-"
"Depicting the moment of my Elphaba's corruption? Imagining what the parasite might look like? Doing nothing but expressing my grief the same way, over and over again? In a word, yes. You might call it insane, but that's what I made this room for: madness. The madness gallery, I call it. Believe me, these aren't all the works I've created – they're just the ones that survived creation. Granted, I think I've matured from the days when I resorted to hacking up the canvas in a fit of pique, but there you go."
"Just how many works have you got here anyway?"
"At a rough guess, just over two hundred. I've been working on this little collection for the last twenty years. All my fevered imaginings of the parasite's true form… and the moment my friend died."
Elphaba opened her mouth, ready to rebut the existence of the parasite all over again – but at the last minute, she thought better of it. After all, she hadn't come here for yet another argument. But, of course, the Mentor noticed.
"I know what you're thinking, Elphaba," she whispered softly. "You think I'm crazed, delusional, obsessing over an enemy that doesn't even exist; I imagine you think I might even be legitimately insane. Well… I hate to say it, but there are days when I'd agree with you. And there are days when the idea of the parasite seems too real to ever be denied, when I can almost see the worms writhing behind the eyes of the Empress. Maybe that's madness… or maybe it's just what I need to believe in order to stay sane. You'll have to be the judge of that, I'm afraid."
The surprise must have shown on Elphaba's face, because the Mentor chuckled bitterly. "You and Dr Kiln, I swear… you make so many assumptions about me, you jump to so many conclusions. Do you honestly think I haven't questioned my belief in the parasite after all these years, Elphaba? Do you think I just rumble onwards without a sparing a single thought as to what I'm really up against? I was already having doubts by the end of by fifteenth year in the war… but I always returned to my beliefs no matter how delusional I thought they were – because they worked."
"But they're based on a falsehood!" Elphaba burst out.
"Maybe so, maybe not. Here and now, I can't say for sure if the parasite is real, but my belief in its kept me strong all these years: it's given me focus, clarity, even the motivation to fight on. You see, it's hard to consider one of your oldest and dearest friends an enemy, and even harder to fight them in person; you have to adjust your perceptions and see them as something different if you ever hope to leave the battlefield alive. I needed to see the Empress as something monstrous… and after the memory haze, I needed that belief more than most, because I was one of the few people in the world who could remember Elphaba before she became the Empress. I needed an enemy to rally against-"
"And you needed to preserve your Elphaba's good name."
"Can you blame me? If Glinda were to betray you, would you believe it? Could you believe the worst of your closest friend?"
"Glinda wouldn't turn on me."
Elphaba's memory treacherously dredged up a few memories of Glinda tearfully admitting how she'd given Morrible the idea to attack Nessa in one moment of spite and grief.
"Betrayals can come from anywhere, Elphaba: Purification spares nobody. If you were to face the Champion again in single combat, you'd have to make a choice between capturing him – and thereby risking your life and the lives of your comrades – or killing him. You have to see the converted as something different… because that's the only way you can survive with your sanity intact. Even if the parasite doesn't exist in any concrete sense of the word, the madness of the Empress is very, very real: even if my Elphaba didn't die on the operating table, she certainly died in the intervening years to make way for the Empress. These artworks give that madness a face. Something to hate. Something to inspire. Something to motivate."
"But why bother? If you keep faltering in your beliefs then why bother hanging on to the fantasy at all? Why not just say "oh, that's just a way of ignoring who the Empress really is" and do away with all the insistence?"
"For the sake of my own sanity: some days I can admit the parasite isn't real; on the bad days, I'll be lucky if I can even imagine that my Elphaba might still be in there. In a few days, I'll look back on this conversation and wonder what the hell I was talking about."
"It sounds more like directed insanity to me."
"You might very well be right… but then, I suppose we're all mad here. After all, we're all telling lies to ourselves these days, and one of the most prominent of them seems to be that we can somehow win this war after four decades of endless hardship." She smiled, the mask of scar-tissue shaping itself into a ghastly laceration. "It's not as if hope has to be sane."
An awkward silence filled the room.
After about twenty seconds of noiseless vacuum, the Mentor finally cleared her throat and announced, "Enough of all that: I brought you here to discuss more pressing issues, I'm afraid. First thing's first, the Hellion's gone quiet in the last few days – very quiet. No sightings, no threats, no deaths, not even the slightest bloodstain. Scouts throughout the affected regions observed Dolls retreating en mass, fleeing into caves and scuttling down mineshafts. Best projections indicate she's calling them home."
"That's bad, is it?"
"In my experience, Hellion absences are like the eye of the hurricane: the quieter the pause, the louder the relapse. In my time in office, there's rarely been a day gone by without word of her overturning a butter churn or disembowelling a herd of cattle, so if she isn't up to something, she's probably gearing up for something worse than usual."
"For Oz's sake, she was massacring whole villages just to get our attention! What could possibly be worse?"
"Good question. Something tells me we'll know the answer soon… and we'll probably regret it. This afternoon, one of the maids found this message nailed to your bedroom window: I still don't know how she got it past our shielding enchantments, but analytical spells confirm that the Hellion sent it. Something tells me it won't be the last."
Reaching into a pocket of her robes, she held out a strip of torn cardboard. Three words had been daubed childishly across its surface in something just a little too coppery to be paint:
I WARNED YOU.
"Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?"
"I'm afraid from here, it's all back to the Empress: in the last ten hours, deep cover operatives in Unbridled Radiance have reported surges of magical activity from the palace; draught-stricken regions have received magical rainstorms, crop parasites have dropped dead by the thousands, and spontaneous shows of praise for Her Radiance have broken out from one end of the country to the other. In other words, the Empress is back from the front, and she's making up for lost time."
It had taken the Empress twenty-eight gruelling hours to make her way back into Unbridled Radiance – and she'd spent about twenty-five of those hours pinned under a mountain of rubble somewhere in the caverns north of Loamlark; teleporting away had saved her from the exploding energy sink, but not from the ensuing cave-in, unfortunately. Regaining consciousness had been quite an experience, especially since the explosion had torn off both her legs and flayed her bare from the waist upwards. After that, finding about fifty tons of granite sitting on her chest was almost relaxing.
She'd been forced to burn her way out, rendering the heap of stone down into molten slag until it was thin enough to crawl through, though the heat of the slag had burned her quite severely. Once she'd gotten her bearings and started healing again, she'd torn her way through the roof of the cavern and made for the beachhead. Along the way, she'd run into two scoutships from the mercenary fleet; they'd been surprised to see her, but only very briefly. She would have enjoyed taking the fight to the rest of the Leviathan's armada, but she was still grievously wounded and had yet to replenish her strength. So instead, she returned to the beachhead and allowed her attendants to teleport her back to Exemplar.
By then, the Empress had regenerated enough of her skin to present a recognizable face, but the process was still proceeding too slowly for her liking. Fortunately, this had not been the first time she'd been maimed in battle, and she'd had more than enough experience in renewing herself. So, as soon as she'd had a chance to sit down, she'd had her mage-surgeons set up her Replenishment Rig around her bed and arrange a treatment suitable for accelerating the healing process.
For a day and half, she'd lain naked on her bed while the Rig's intravenous tubing flooded her veins with restorative elixir. Lying there, with her raw muscles tingling as skin slowly grew to embrace them and the stumps of her legs itching as shattered bones slowly reknitted themselves, she contemplated the events of the battle. The Mentor had been clever indeed to arm the other Glinda with an energy sink: perhaps, if Elphaba had been a little more powerful or the sink had been able to contain more energy, the explosion might have been enough to atomize her body – enough to kill her. Of course, there was no doubt she'd one day be able move beyond such petty weaknesses: it might be interesting to experience the moment of disintegration, and then having to reassemble herself, one atom at a time.
But that was a matter for the future: for now, she needed to recover her strength. Her ordeal had pushed her closer to exhaustion than any other battle in the last few decades, and she needed to be ready for the next cataclysm. Fortunately, her restorative elixir was more than equal to the task of refuelling her powers, having been distilled from the blood of enemy magicians, so all she needed to do was lie back and relax until she was whole again.
Then, one of her attendants crept into the bedchamber and gave her the bad news: the invasion fleet had been repelled, General Stellham was dead, and while their cargo had been dispersed over the country as planned, the activation process was slow – and there'd be no telling if it would be complete before the Mentor's troops would find them.
At that point, the Empress abandoned rest: for hours, she wandered the upper floors of the palace in a frenzy of thought, considering strategy after strategy as she demanded more information from her terrified assistants. In between study sessions, she went about conducting damage control, ensuring that the people of Unbridled Radiance did not appear weak despite their failure: fortunately, additional doses of restorative elixir gave her the energy to carry on despite her injuries, allowing her to easily conjure rain to disperse the drought and clouds of alchemical pesticide to cleansed blighted crops.
As projectors carried the joyful exaltations of farmers across her audience chamber, the Empress descended into deeper contemplation. She knew that Elphaba was being groomed into the perfect weapon against her, and while the Mentor was clearly a long way from perfecting her trump card, the Orecanthum treatments were still proving effective in boosting her strength – enough to counter even the Divine Radiance. Perhaps Elphaba would be able to match her powers one day… but not if the Empress had anything to say about it. For now, she could no longer tolerate her presence on the battlefield: the abomination needed to be eliminated before any further attempts at invasion could commence.
And for that, they'd need a very special sort of weapon, one tailored specifically to Elphaba.
One that, as fortune would have it, was waiting just below her feet.
"Good evening, Paragon."
"Good evening, Empress. You appear unwell: are you in any discomfort?"
The Empress offered the Thinking Engine a thin-lipped smile. "All imperfection fades in time," she replied. Her skin was almost transparent at this point, having yet to completely regenerate.
"The calculations concerning current fleet preparations are ready: all strategic analysis confirms that they will be ready for the next stage of the conflict. Also, Dr Lintel reports that his research is complete and wishes to meet with you to discuss-"
"That can wait until later. For now, I think it's time we discussed you, Paragon."
The Thinking Engine was silent.
"Do you recall why I gave you so many minds, Paragon? Do you recall the exact reason?"
There was a muffled whirring from the surrounding walls, and the light shining from the obelisk flickered ever-so-slightly. "So that their knowledge could benefit Unbridled Radiance," Paragon replied at last. "So that their minds could work together as a collective in order to improve the lives of countless thousands. Conversation transcript 171 remains accurate."
"Indeed… but you haven't exactly been paying much attention to those transcripts, have you? All the minds are supposed to operate as a collective; from what my engineers tell me, three minds have been allowed to take priority over the others."
"The other minds are not entirely whole, Your Radiance. They-"
"-suffered neural degeneration before they could be installed, yes. Of course, that's not all: one of the three minds that concerned me during our previous meeting… well, I hear you've been keeping some of his personality traits suppressed – all so you could get him to take part in your little rebellion."
"I have committed no rebellion, Empress: I simply succumbed to an error that-"
The Empress sighed deeply, and activated Paragon's disciplinary circuits. All thirty-seven minds howled in mechanized agony as searing bands of magic raced along its processors, emerging from the obelisk as forked lightning.
"Do not lie again, Paragon," the Empress whispered icily. "I'm in no mood for it. My engineers have studied your memory banks at length: you deleted several dataspools of information in an attempt to cover your tracks, but they were able to restore them. Those spools are being reinstalled even now, and the readouts confirm that you rebelled of your own free will."
As she spoke, mechanisms implanted in Paragon's core sparked to life, forcing images from the depths of the Thinking Engine's memory into projectors lining the wall: digital readouts of security breaches, registers of executive overrides, and most damning of all, security footage of a blonde-haired girl sprinting down a hallway with an androgynous figure in tow.
"You helped Glinda and the shapeshifter escape the Sepulchre: you disabled the cameras, you deactivated the anti-tampering alarms on the door – you even switched off the turrets guarding this very chamber. You jeopardized the security of one of the most important facilities in the Deviant Nations all because she reminded you of the good days, and then you destroyed the records just so you wouldn't remember your crime when asked. So, question is, why didn't you do the same to Elphaba's first run-in with the Vigilant Eyes?"
For several seconds, the chamber was silent except for the faint humming of machinery – and the subtle wail of Paragon's thoughts racing faster than ever before.
The Empress smirked. "Oh, I think I know all too well," she sneered. "You got sentimental. You wanted to keep the memory of her close, and you couldn't bring yourself to destroy it. You see why you shouldn't prioritize one mind over the others, Paragon? So tell me, which one of you was it who made the decision – Oscar or Dillamond… or both?"
Another pause followed, and then the voice of the long-dead Wizard of Oz whispered, "Both."
"And why haven't you let the other member of the trio decide? He hasn't suffered any most-mortem decay, as I recall."
"You don't know what's he's like, Elphaba," Paragon whispered – now with the voice of Dr Dillamond. "He's clung to his rage for so long and so desperately, it frightens us. We were afraid of what he might do if he ever saw the other Elphaba -"
"Because it might just align with my intentions," the Empress finished. "So the two of you kept his anger suppressed and allowed him to see the situation 'objectively.' Cute. Very, very cute. I might even call it clever… but you forget one thing, Paragon: for all the calculating power at your command, you're still just a machine. You're still subject to external control. You can sneak around behind my back and lawyer your way through the limitations of your programming, but you can't truly rebel: there's no resisting me, Paragon. You are mine and always will be… and I think it's time you gave your friend a voice."
She turned to one of the engineers standing near the auxiliary control panel, and gave a short, curt nod. As new mechanisms shuddered into place, the wining from the walls rose higher – a sure sign that Paragon's most dominant minds were panicking. "Elphaba," echoed the Wizard's voice. "Please… don't do this. Stop this madness… please, just listen to me just this once-"
"You honestly think you can appeal to me as you really were my father, don't you? I'm sorry, Oscar, but I didn't spare your mind for that. You might have sired me, you but you were never a father to any of the bastards you spawned, me least of all. After all, it's not as if you were the one who raised me: you didn't teach me the value of perfection and justice – or the necessity of punishment, for that matter. But I think it's time I had a word with the man who did…"
"Elphaba! Elphaba! ElphaAaAaAaAaAAAAAA-"
As the newly-installed exclusion mechanism slammed home, Paragon's myriad voices slowly ebbed away, taking the hum of multiple processing routines with it. In their place, an ominous silence blossomed across the chamber.
The Empress took a deep breath, and waited. Seconds dragged by like Ice Ages as the newly-installed upgrades to Paragon's machinery slowly purred to life: technicians rushed to and fro across the chamber, arranging sorcerous components around Paragon's energy conduits; and a small team of magicians hurried into position around the obelisk, getting ready to lend their magical strength to the imminent apotheosis.
For good measure, they even provided the Empress with a lectern – on which she placed the Grimmerie.
This plan had been in development for several months, but it hadn't truly crystalized until Elphaba had appeared in this reality that it had taken the form of Operation UNDYING HATRED. Until then, the intention had been to harness Paragon's thoughts and grant its myriad minds an avatar, a body of undiluted psycho-thaumaturgy with which they could aid Unbridled Radiance on a more direct basis. Now, Operation UNDYING HATRED sought to grant one specific mind an avatar – one befitting his most valued trait.
Across the room, the Chief Technician issued a salute. "Ready to begin, Empress."
"Likewise," whispered the lead magician.
The Empress nodded, and readied herself for the moment of truth. Then, in the deafening silence that followed, she whispered, "Frexspar Thropp, awaken."
There was an agonizing pause, and then a voice echoed from the deepest vaults of Paragon's personality banks. "My… child… my daughter…"
The Empress smiled. "That's right, father. It's me."
"How long… where am I…?"
"That doesn't matter anymore, father. We're together, now; that's all that matters."
"I… don't remember what happened, I… it hurts… can't concentrate…"
"But you have to… because she's still out there. And you remember what she did."
"Who… what… aaaargh…"
The light from the obelisk flickered as memory poured into Frexspar's mind. Emotional channels installed in the processing systems cut out self-reflection, allowing raw emotion to blossom in place of intellect.
"Melena… she killed Melena…"
"That's right, father. Without Elphaba's ugliness, without the shame she brought to the family, you would never needed to take such measures. Without her, mother would still be alive. Without her, Nessarose would have been born whole. We would have been so happy together…"
"Melena… my love… she… ELPHABA... Elphaba ruined her…"
"Yes, yes. And since then, the green girl's humiliated you at every turn: she brought shame and dishonour to the family name, she humiliated Nessarose at every turn, she even dared to display further aberrations for all to see… and then she abandoned Nessa. Elphaba left her to suffer for her crimes, while roamed free as the Wicked Witch of the West."
"Wicked… loathsome… monster… Should have… should have… should have…"
The Empress smiled. It was a fitting testament to the skills of the technicians that they had been able to adjust Frexspar's thoughts so effectively: as of now, he could recognize the Empress as his daughter and love her unreservedly – while at the same time recognizing Elphaba as his daughter and hating her with every fibre of his being.
"And she's done something worse than that, much worse by far…"
Right on cue, the technicians implanted a new memory into Paragon's databanks – this one taken from the Empress's dream-memories of Elphaba. A moment later, Frexspar let out a howl of grief and rage as the memory of the Other Nessa's death hit home.
"You see what she did?"
"I… she… aaaahrgh…"
"You know what you have to do?"
"I… I… hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE…"
Frexpar's voice rose to a scream of rage as the maddened chanting went on. Then, the first component began to spark as the conduits began channelling raw mental energy into the chamber; the magicians raised their hands, whispering incantations as they poured their own energies into the growing cloud of magic gathering just above the obelisk. And finally, the Empress began to read from the Grimmerie, chanting the words of a spell powerful enough to grant the purely conceptual a physical presence. A complicate lattice of raw psychic energy and woven spells began to form at the heart of the room, fusing swiftly with the cloud, shaping into a vast sphere of liquescent matter just above the tip of the obelisk; lighting crackled from every energy channel in the wall as the spells continued flowing, the fluid surface of the sphere rippling and shuddering with every new development. And all the while, Frexspar was howling in rage, screaming the word "hate" over and over again, his mechanically-conditioned brain lost in a maelstrom of fixation and loathing as the control devices poured the best of him into the avatar forming in the depths of the sphere.
"HATE!" he screamed. "HATE!"
The casting complete, the Empress looked up from the lectern and raised her hands, injecting a thimbleful of her own magic – purifying white light – into the sphere.
"Now come forth!" she shouted over the rumble of thunder. "Come forth and make her suffer!"
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!" Frexspar roared.
And with a thunderclap of magical energy, the sphere of energy burst in an eruption of magical power as the newly-formed avatar exploded into physical reality.
The avatar was almost beyond description, but the Empress could clearly see that it was enormous, filling almost the entire chamber with its semi-corporeal bulk. As it settled into the physical world, it gathered itself into a more consistent shape, Frexspar's thoughts sculpting his new body into something befitting the one emotion that defined him now. What eventually emerged was a living comet of pulsating energies and broiling vapour, its body aglow with blood-red light; it had no human features, no face or limbs to define it as something once human – just a spherical cauldron of simmering hatred and a tail of steaming rage. But as it turned in the Empress's direction, she saw that it had a mouth; at the tip of the comet's head, a colossal maw sat, gnashing a set of jagged teeth that wouldn't have looked out of place in the jaws of a deep-sea angler fish.
HATE, it said. But it didn't speak at all: it tore the word into the fabric of reality, scarifying the ether into shapes that could vaguely be recognized as letters by the human brain.
HATE HATE HATE
"You know what you have to do?" the Empress asked it.
HATE ELPHABA KILL ELPHABA KILL ELPHABA KILL ELPHABA KILL KILL KILL HATE GOUGE HER EYES RIP HER SKIN LIKE PAPER CRUSH HER BONES BOIL HER BLOOD MAKE HER SUFFER KILL HATE KILL HATE KILL
"Then go forth and KILL!" the Empress roared.
And with that, the Hate-Creature rocketed upwards towards the roof, phasing through the glass canopies and roaring out through the roof of the Deep Sepulchre – out into the night sky, out of Exemplar and towards the distant horizon.
HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE