A/N: (gasp)

Back again! Thank you all for view, reviewing, favouriting and following! Sorry if I'm rushing through the intro, I'm still jittery from the writing buzz and if I sit still a moment longer, I'm going to start vibrating through the floor aaaargh!

(deep breath)

Oh, and before I begin, to RandomGuest: we'll get to hear a bit more about the Nome King very soon. Oh, and I'm pretty sure Wolverine was taken out by the Sentinels in the Days Of Future Past comic and nearly drowned in the films by being weighed down with concrete then dumped in the Potomac. Not sure if they've boosted the healing factor since then. Thanks again for reviewing!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wicked is still not mine.

"WHAT?!" Elphaba roared.

The Mentor sighed deeply. "I'm pretty sure my meaning was reasonably self-contained: at this point in time, we don't have any confirmed means of killing the Empress."

"But you've been fighting her for the last forty or fifty years!"

"Are you implying that we've been bone-idle on that front, Elphaba? I'd choose my next words very carefully if I were you."

Elphaba opened her mouth to return fire, only for a sharp jab of pain in her right arm to abruptly cut off her incoming diatribe. "Ow! Kiln, do you really have to take so many blood samples?"

"You're the one who wanted a thorough check-up, Elphaba: this is necessary to properly determine what's causing the blackouts you've been experiencing. We can keep you off the dream-pills for as long as we need and double-check the recorded list of side-effects until the sun burns out, but it won't matter unless we can recognize a distinct biological cause of these fugue states. Now, if you please, just lie back and let me continue taking specimens; we'll be moving onto psychic impressions in a moment."

Elphaba sighed, leant back in her seat, and allowed Kiln to continue jamming needles into her arm.

She'd been up in Kiln's increasingly cluttered private rooms for nearly an hour, waiting impatiently for the Mentor to stop by and discuss the not-so-important matter of how to kill the Empress; in that time, the mage-surgeon subjected her to a mind-numbing battery of tests concerning everything from blood to brainwaves. And even that had been dragged out by everything else Kiln had to do in the meantime: he had been busy preparing the Mentor's daily treatment regimen when Elphaba had arrived; Brrr was still comatose in the observation lounge, being fed intravenously and requiring regular observation; Glinda and Leoverus had given him the big list of medical details he'd been asking for ever since the Amorphous League had arrived in the city (meaning that Elphaba was now keeping Kiln from his early Lurlinemas present). Still, considering how close Elphaba had come to being blown to pieces, this visit could have been much worse.

"Look," she continued, "I'm just saying that the fact that you're still fighting has at least mean that you've got a working hypothesis or two up your sleeve by now. I mean, you haven't given up, so I have to at least assume you must have some idea of how to stop her. Maybe there's a form of magic she's vulnerable to, or maybe there's a poison she can't recover from, or maybe something from No-Man's Land could-"

"It's not as simple as that, I'm afraid. Much like her magical powers, the Empress's ability to regenerate grows exponentially with every passing year: in the first few battles where we met in person, killing her would have been well within the capabilities of a heavily-armed platoon and some really well-trained magicians – it wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been possible. Then she started soaking up the incendiary rounds we made just for her; then headshots became worthless; then so did decapitation; more than once, she even shrugged off the most destructive spells we had on hand. Once, I saw her shredded in half by heavy repeater fire, intestines flying in all directions; she didn't even flinch – she just tucked her entrails back in her torso, jammed her legs back into place and went on fighting. When we duelled above Greenspectre for the minds of my people, I took the fight to her with decades of magical experience, an entire company of soldiers armed with incendiary repeaters and flamethrowers, a platoon of veteran Irredeemables, a battery of the magical academies' very best and brightest – and that was just my personal guard! I'm not even counting the thousands of soldiers following me to war aboard the Deviant Fleet. And you know what? We only managed to scare her off. She still managed to kill all but a handful of my retinue before being forced to retreat with most of her limbs missing and her skin hanging off. By the end of the week, she was back in one piece. The same couldn't be said for me."

By way of evidence, the Mentor held up her prosthetic hand, gesturing extravagantly to the hexed ruin of her face: aged, mangled and battle-scarred on one side, young, unblemished and beautiful on the other.

"That was well over twenty years ago," she continued. "Since then… Kiln, you've observed her up close. How much have her regenerative powers grown by?"

"A factor of ten, Mentor. Being shot in the head barely even stunned her."

"And the closest we've gotten to killing her was in the Battle of Mourner's Lake, when Glinda fired off that energy sink at her – and it wasn't enough because she teleported away before the explosion could finish her off. From what the Mistress of Mirrors tells us, that blast brought the Empress closer to death than any other battle we've fought in the last few decades; she probably needed to make use of intravenous restoratives just to recover from that encounter… but sadly, we're not likely to be able to deliver that kind of thaumaturgical explosion in a single blast anytime soon. If you want my advice, Elphaba, make use of overwhelming force or the Grimmerie."

"Even after how unpredictable the Grimmerie's been in the past?" said Elphaba. "Let's not forget that misuse of that damn thing created the Empress, for all intents and purposes."

"And it's one of the few things she might be genuinely vulnerable to: fireballs, lightning bolts, meteors and even lesser curses haven't been enough to put her down – she either shrouds herself with enough magic to keep out the apocalypse or allows her regenerative powers to handle it. The Grimmerie is the most powerful book of spells known to history, and it's one of the few things that the Empress hasn't been seen casually shrugging off. The fact that we didn't have a complete copy or someone to properly translate the more labyrinthine incantations until you came along has been one of our greatest weaknesses in this war. So yes, even if it is dangerously unpredictable, it's well worth the risk."

She allowed Elphaba a moment to absorb this, and added, "If that doesn't work, excessive force is the only alternative: the witch-crystal has enhanced your powers quite significantly by now, so it might very well be possible within a few months."

"You really think so?"

"When you were last in action, you were barely keeping up with the Empress, and then only because you were experiencing a temporary power boost – and because she was toying with you. In this recent battle, you actually managed to get past her defences and inflict some serious injuries. So yes, it's possible. We've seen that massive magical firepower might be enough to inflict fatal damage – but for that to work, she can't be allowed to run away or teleport to safety. My advice? Don't restrict the damage to her when the time comes for us to take the battle to Unbridled Radiance itself. Blow up the palace if you have to."

Elphaba's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Out of curiosity, how were you planning to kill the Empress before I came along?"

"I was planning on conducting a saturation bombardment of Exemplar, beginning with the palace and expanding to every district of that misbegotten capital, fast enough to prevent the Empress from escaping and thorough enough to immolate her. For good measure, I would have blanketed the area in mustard gas just to be on the safe side. In fact, the only thing stopping me was the need to minimize casualties among our own troops… and the fact that we didn't have a guaranteed method of preventing the Empress from escaping before the bombardment had run its course."

"That's all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"What about all the civilians in Exemplar? You'd have killed them as well?"

"If it meant killing the Empress and decapitating her empire once and for all? Without hesitation." The Mentor stood and hobbled for the exit. "Good day, Elphaba. Let me know if you experience any more unusual symptoms."

And with that, she left.

The next five minutes went by in near-total silence, as Kiln went about taking impressions of Elphaba's psyche using a procession of bewildering hand-held instruments and incomprehensible-looking machines. Eventually, desperate for something – anything – to take her mind off the Mentor's final rejoinder, Elphaba glanced in the direction of Brr's comatose body and asked, "Is there any chance he'll wake up ever again?"

"Hard to say," said Kiln, gravely. "He underwent a lot of trauma during his time in the Hellion's lair: malnutrition, physical abuse, blood-loss, magical assaults, maybe even a bit of interfacing with his brain… and that's just what I've been able to detect. The full scope of his experiences will only be known if he can wake up and tell us. On the upside, I can confirm he's not brain-dead: his mind's still ticking away in there, so there's every possibility he might awake someday; it might happen in the next minute, or might happen in the next decade – we simply have no reasonable way of knowing and no way of rousing him without damaging him. In the meantime, I've been keeping his muscles from degrading with regular internal treatments. Oh, you'll be pleased to know that our friends have been doing their best to keep his mind engaged, if not necessarily active."

"Really?"

"Of course: Fiyero and Boq have been stopping by every week to give Brr some news, and Dorothy visits on a daily basis just to read him a bedtime story. I even hear that Leoverus might be in the mood to regale him with some of his weirder exploits."

"I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear what his other self's been up to."

"You should try it yourself some time."

"…excuse me?"

"You should try talking to him sometime, Elphaba. He's still listening, believe it or not: he can't respond, but psychic analysis confirms that he's assimilating information. It's quite healthy – keeps his brain from going dull through lack of stimuli. Plus, you two have a history together."

"Yes," Elphaba sighed. "I saved his life when we first met, and a few years later, he ends up getting roped into becoming a poster child for the witch hunters. One hell of a history."

"Just because it was sad history doesn't make it worth discussion. When he showed up at the Pottery, the Lion was so badly traumatized by what happened to him at Shiz that he could barely remember any of it. You never know… talking to him might help clear the air between the two of you. Besides, even if you don't feel like discussing your shared past, I don't doubt you've still got a few anxieties you'd like to get off your chest. Everyone needs a confidante every now and again."

"A confidante who can't speak?"

"Oh, that's the best kind: I only managed to get through my time in the middle echelons of the Pottery by talking to the corpses in the mortuary, and-" Kiln's face fell. "Dammit," he muttered.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Minor frustrations: one of the downsides of my position is that I never have enough hours in the day to finish everything before unconsciousness beckons. I've been hoping to catch up on some additional research projects over the last few weeks, but keeping up with the Mentor's daily treatments, monitoring crystal growth, checking on Glinda's powers, keeping an eye on you… well, it's been eating into my other projects. I haven't even had time to complete my autopsy of the Champion's body."

"Wha… you mean he's still in here?"

"Of course. He's been kept in a stasis field so decomposition doesn't interfere with my research, but other than that, he's untouched."

"So you've got Fiyero's other self in an autopsy drawer somewhere here and you haven't touched it for over a month?"

"In a word, yes."

Elphaba took a deep breath. "Kiln, how exactly do you stay sane?"

The mage-surgeon considered this for a moment. "Knitting," he said at last. "Primarily knitting. Also, visits to Nessa, a good book on medical research, and a few blocks of marzipan. But mainly knitting. Now, you should probably get comfortable: reading psychic impressions takes about an hour to complete. We probably won't know the results for a few days. Oh, and don't be surprised if you experience a few lingering visions: you're off the dream-pills for the time being, but the effects still take a little while to dissipate…"

Across Greenspectre, the shapeshifters gathered in their dozens: in the last three weeks, the call for new recruits had met many receptive ears, and the Amorphous League was now hard at work training the next generation of members; a month was usually all that was needed to master the basics and get a start on the intermediary techniques, so by now, the Deviant Nations' newest ally was already fielding a small army of capable journeymen. Throughout the city, the newborn shapeshifters cavorted, tumbling through the busy streets in a haze of transformations, rippling from horse to hawk and back again in the blink of an eye. Citizens always laughed and applauded at the sight, especially when one of the senior League members decided to join in just to "show the kids how it's done."

As if inspired by the excitement among the newcomers, the Irredeemables whipped themselves into a frenzy of creativity: with the aid of the mage-surgeons, they sculpted themselves into more even bizarre shapes than usual and took their newest augmentations on parade, marching about town in a marvellous display of glittering carapaces, multicoloured tendrils, massive pincers, and jewel-like compound eyes. Nor were the antics restricted to Greenspectre's chapter: a few representatives of the Ironmongery Peak chapter joined in, thundering down the street on piston-powered legs, their shoulder-mounted smokestacks puffing merrily; there were even a handful of Irredeemables from Polyandrium, their sculpted-bone limbs adorned with gleaming silk ribbons for the occasion.

Not to be left out, the Strangling Coils came to town aboard Branderstove's flagship and joined the festivities as only they could: with the latest efforts at invasions, bombardments and other enemy incursions officially squished for the time being, the mercenaries on leave – and free to get hammered in as public a way as possible. Stealing several instruments from a local marching band, they took one of their airships on a drunken joyride around town, playing as loudly and tunelessly as they could until even the Mentor complained about the racket. Elsewhere, less spectacle-prone members of the mercenary troupe challenged each other to spectacular drinking contests; for once, the normally-refined Branderstove joined in – and won tentacles-down by quaffing an entire keg of beer in a single round.

But by far the strangest visitors were representatives of the Mistress of Mirrors herself: gleaming mirrored golems, they wandered pleasantly through the crowds, their silver bodies gleaming brilliantly in the sun. Nobody knew what they were up to, but they did seem to be taking an inordinate amount of interest in the doings of the mercenaries…

However, none of the festivities concerned Elphaba all that much: frankly, she was too busy sweating the last of the dream-pills out of her system. As soon as Kiln had finished taking measurements, he'd advised her to get as much rest as possible, and with some help from Glinda, managed to usher her into bed for the day.

Before long, Fiyero decided he had nothing better to do with his day and joined her, providing her with a rather unorthodox pillow to cuddle for the afternoon.

And when the day began to cool and Elphaba started looking around for a blanket, she was surprised to find a large and extremely warm quilt sitting on the edge of the bed. Also, it appeared to be snickering as she picked it up.

"Glinda, is that you?"

"I've just gotten the bumps ironed out. How do I look?"

"Unsurprisingly, like a quilt. Hang on, do you actually want to be used like this?"

"Leoverus said I need more practice impersonatifying inanimate objects. Plus, you looked cold."

Elphaba thought of all the objections she had to using one of her oldest and dearest friends as a quilt, and realized she was too tired to raise any of them. What the hell, she thought, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've done since we got here...

So, she simply lay down and drew Glinda's shapeshifted form over her.

The two of them were asleep in minutes.

Time passes, first in months, then in years.

Once again, Glinda watches as another child of her household is born and raised in a war zone: sweet little Alyssiana, blonde as her parents and louder than either of them, growing up in a fortress that must become a city amidst bombardments, gas attacks and attempted invasions. Allaran dotes on her, serving as a babysitter on the many evenings Glinda must spend away from their home; by the time little Alyss is five years old, she already knows that her big brother gives the best piggy-back rides in the city – for who else but Allaran can see over the crowds that now fill the streets? She gains a reputation as being a bit of a rebel: she's always sneaking off, always borrowing books from the library without permission, always finding herself in restricted areas. Fiery, tempestuous and more than a little enraged, she couldn't be more different from Glinda if she tried… and frankly, Glinda herself couldn't be happier.

In moments of superstition, Glinda wonders if Alyss has somehow inherited a piece of Elphaba's soul. She knows that such imaginings are wishful thinking and nothing more, but that doesn't stop her from hoping – in those strange moments where daydreams seem truer than reality – that if she looks deep into her daughter's eyes, she might see her long-lost friend staring back at her.

While Alyss grows up, Allaran just grows. At fifteen, her little boy is well over seven feet tall, and can often be found casually lifting equipment that would take a team of three to budge. He's a perfectly happy young man, always ready to lend a hand, generous with bear-hugs and handshakes that can be felt all the way to the shoulder. In fact, his only problem are his occasional headaches. Mage-surgeons that have converted to their cause have examined him: his size is due to a growth in his brain, they tell her, one that might cause problems in later life. With the consent of both Glinda and Allaran, they have reduced the size of the tumour, preventing any additional growth and eliminating his headaches entirely; in time, the surgeons will strengthen his cardiovascular system, preventing any heart troubles that might occur in his later years. Her son will live to a healthy old age, they tell her.

Glinda doesn't want Allaran to become a champion of the Irredeemables, nor does she want him to be worshipped as a messiah simply for being her child. All she wants is for him to be content with himself as he is: she remembers all too well how Elphaba came to hate herself and her skin; she's seen how the disfigured and deformed within Unbridled Radiance are taught that their "ugliness" is a sign of mortal sins that they must repent for. She doesn't want Allaran touched by that madness: more than anything else, she wants her giant son and fiery daughter to live long and happy lives in the land they now call home.

Gradually, the refugees under Glinda's banner begin to expand the lowly settlement established to the west of what was once Oz, transforming it into a proper city. The tents and shantytowns are replaced by stoutly-built houses connected by paved roads; the hunters are replaced by vast farming complexes, and the crude manufactories working aboard the airships become the basis for a ground-based industrial district. Even the dozen or so buildings rescued from the Emerald City soon become part of this new metropolis, and with no better place to choose, the palace is soon declared the de factor centre of government.

Eventually, this place acquires a proper name: once known merely as "the city" or "haven", a fit of nostalgia for the lost land of Oz prompts the residents to dub it Greenspectre – the ghost of the Emerald City.

Thousands of new arrivals from across No-Man's Land prompts the growth of new settlements across the new lands the refugees have claimed, each of them soon beginning their own tradition of Irredeemables to celebrate bodily autonomy. Before long, they have become city-states… and within a few years, they have dubbed themselves the Deviant Nations.

To Glinda's immense surprise, they immediately look to her as a leader. She insists that they conduct elections and find leaders of their own, but though they happily elect a mayor of Greenspectre and the other nations, they insist that she keep watch over their people as a whole. They know she has learned more magic in the last ten years than most magicians will study in a lifetime, and gained more strategic experience than any other military leader in all of Oz (admittedly not much of an achievement, given that Oz had been at peace for nearly twenty years by the time of the civil war). For reasons that escape Glinda entirely, they call her the Mentor: they say that she is the one who preaches the ways of freedom, and with more refugees trickling in every day, they look to her for guidance.

And thanks to the enemy on the other side of No-Man's Land, there will always be a need for Glinda's sermons.

The Empress has a new empire, now: far to the east, the loyalists have rebuilt the city they fled and are now expanding across the countryside in search of new resources to claim as their own, assimilating anyone they encounter into the new empire. Any such natives who impress Elphaba are Purified and allowed to join the new elite; any natives "burdened" with deformities are surgically corrected before being permitted to rejoin the populace. Those who resist are exterminated – and quite effectively so, for this empire, this "Unbridled Radiance" has been quick to establish itself as a military superpower. At the time of their establishment in the east, they already had the lion's share of Oz's army on their side, along with all the magicians that the Empress had trained; with the populations that Unbridled Radiance has forcibly absorbed, the army has swelled to gargantuan proportions… and thanks to the prosperous mines within these territories, the Empress has everything she needs to continue where she left off.

To the horror of all who hoped that some other great nation might be able to stop the Empress, the Nome Kingdom has already fallen to the might of Unbridled Radiance: as elemental spirits of earth, the Nomes were a near-unstoppable force on the battlefield, and the sorcerous power wielded by their ancient king made them more than a match for the imperial magicians. Unfortunately, once the engineers of the Pottery produced a working bombardier airship, the tide turned swiftly in favour of Unbridled Radiance. With their attackers well out of reach and no ranged units apart from their sorcerers, the Nomes were forced to retreat. Even with this advantage, the kingdom might well have prevailed despite the odds stacked against them, had the Empress not discovered their great weakness – the poison that Nomes fear above all other things.

Now the Nome King is dead, slain in combat with the Empress.

His land is little more than an outpost of Unbridled Radiance, a vast mining colony where the riches of the once-mighty kingdom are slowly plundered for the enrichment of its conquerors. For some reason, a large number of chicken farms have been built around the borders of the ex-kingdom; seen from above, the farms almost appear to be caging the surviving Nomes in, blocking off potential exists and forcing them to remain within the prison camps that now dot the country.

As the Nomes are not biological in nature, they cannot be Purified through surgery and brain modification, making them ineligible for citizenship within the empire that conquered them: while the Pottery searches for some new means of "perfecting" them, the Nomes have been reduced to workers miners and manufactories of their former home – kept in line by overseers armed with weapons coated in the dreaded poison.

With the last barrier to total domination of the surrounding lands having finally been felled, the Deviant Nations are the only force that can stand in their way. And as word of Unbridled Radiance's atrocities spread, alliances are being made: fearing subjugation under the Radiant Laws, many tribes, kingdoms and republics look to the Deviant Nations for protection – and some even join, adopting their own chapters of Irredeemables.

But for every alliance Glinda makes, the Empress seems to make two more: some fear the consequences of opposing the empire, while others – many of them poor and struggling nations stricken by famine and other maladies – are simply unable to resist the offers to share in the rich bounties of Unbridled Radiance's colossal state-run farms. And a few governments out there are seduced by the promise of Purification: immortality, eternal beauty, unceasing health and enhanced strength prove terrifyingly effective incentives. Nevermind that only the best and brightest will ever be judged worthy of Purification; nevermind that they've been programmed for total loyalty to the Empress; nevermind that their free will has been shackled: nobody knows of these little caveats until it's too late.

So the Deviant Nations must never rest: they must be relentless in their efforts to undo Unbridled Radiance, taking every possible advantage to undermine them – no matter how minor, no matter how desperate, no matter how questionable. Already, collateral damage has been deemed acceptable in long-distance bombardments, and Glinda has been giving aid to several terrorist groups across Unbridled Radiance – some with goals that even the Empress would balk at, but the Deviant Nations cannot afford to turn down allies in this war.

Most of the civilian populace will never know of the sacrifices that are being made in the name of their freedoms, nor will they know just many alliances must be made in order to keep conscription from being enforced. But frankly, Glinda doesn't want to take that final step. She doesn't want every civilian to take up arms in their cause, nor does she want everyone to join the Irredeemables; in spite of everything she's seen, she still wants to preserve what little remains of the country's innocence (such as it is).

She applies much the same treatment to her home life: Glinda's family is kept as far away from the fighting as humanly possible, sheltered from the chaos by the rune-studded walls of her inner sanctum. By nature, this means being apart from them, sometimes for days at a time… but as much as it wounds Glinda to be separated from her children, she knows that she cannot risk having them with her in the war rooms and command bridges that she now works from. Allaran is a little bemused at being kept off the front lines after so many years of assisting Glinda's work in the wilderness, but he accepts his new home without complaint, ever the dutiful son. Alysiana, the wild child, predictably rebels: she resents being apart from her mother, resents being hidden away in a vault at the heart of the palace, and can often be found trying to pick the locks on the sanctum doors.

Glinda can only do her best to be there for the kids as often as she can… but it's not easy: there are some issues that have to be tackled in person, and a war of this scale and this nature requires her unceasing devotion.

Still, there are times when the fatigue is so powerful that Allaran has to help her into bed when she finally makes it to the sanctum; at times like these, Glinda can only lie in bed with Alyss cradled in her arms, wondering how the hell she ever got to the ripe old age of forty.

And she knows that it's only going to get more exhausting from here…

High above the glittering spires of her beautiful city, Empress exalts in the latest triumph over ugliness and disorder.

For the last few years, the Empire of Unbridled Radiance has been plagued by terrorists, bandits, and other loathsome criminals supported by the Deviant Nations: knowing that she cannot send operatives of their own over the borders without being detective, the Mentor instead chooses to finance the dregs of society to act in her stead; resistance movements from conquered vassals, anti-Purification groups, apocalyptic movements, all flock to the clink of Deviant coin. Over the course of the last sixteen months, they have been at work on a campaign of chaos, derailing trains, sabotaging power stations, venting poison gas into guard barracks, assassinating government ministers, blowing up Purification temples, and spreading panic throughout the Empire. Even in Exemplar, the first and greatest of all the cities under Unbridled Radiance's banner, malcontents and iconoclasts roamed free for a time – and not even Chistery's flying monkeys could stop them.

But the Empress had a found a way of rooting them out: their own need for attention was their undoing, and they insisted on remaining behind to observe their handiwork. Disguised well-enough, they might have avoided the attention of ordinary spies… but they had not reckoned on ever encountering observers that might be able to scan them for weapons, explosives and other hazardous materials, nor had they imagined that these observers would be able to track their movements from the air without relenting or resting. And they had certainly not expected their pursuers to incinerate them on sight.

Ironically, the failure of the flying monkeys turned out to be an unexpected stroke of fortune for the Empire as a whole: Chistery had long since grown too old to carry on his duties as a spy, and many of his old brigade were planning on settling down with their families… but the Empress understood that the flying monkeys were a mistake in dire need of correction. Up until then, she'd tolerated the distortions she'd clumsily inflicted on them all those years ago, if only because no better secret police existed in all of Oz, but Oz had long since given way to Unbridled Radiance, and technology and espionage had long since overtaken the best efforts of these biological aberrations.

So, the flying monkeys were to be destroyed.

It was sad to see how many of them protested their executions; Chistery's pleas for mercy were particularly tiresome, trying to bank on his years of service and personal friendship to the Empress as a means of saving his life. The Empress had hoped they would have at least understood how ugly they had become – or that Chistery might have realized that a true friend of the Empress would not refuse her commands. No matter.

But perfection is seldom wasteful: the bodies of Chistery and his companions were beyond redemption, but their minds were still of great value once Purified. With some assistance of the Pottery's finest engineers and alchemists, the Empress was able to preserve the brains of the flying monkeys as a conglomerate intellect subservient to Paragon's thinking engine. Eventually, the disembodied minds of the flying monkeys soon took to the air once again as the remote pilot of the newly completed Vigilant Eyes.

As soon as the Eyes were made ubiquitous throughout Unbridled Radiance, the malcontents had nowhere to hide: under the command of the disembodied flying monkeys, the Eyes were able to detect the loathsome deviants long before they began setting bombs, and with their precision incendiary lenses, the fleeing terrorists could be reduced to charred shadows on the pavement long before they could reach safety.

Now, there are no more footpads for the Deviant Nations to finance… and with both sides learning how to shield their land and their cities from conventional bombardments, it's only a matter of time before the two great factions clash one more. The Empress is ready for it: her army now numbers in the millions, supported by Purified officers, professional magicians, the latest in combat automata, and even a few of the Vigilant Eyes modified for the front lines. The Mentor's forces are lagging behind: the Deviant Nations have acquired impressive magical strength, and the loathsome Irredeemables have been empowered beyond the human norm… but the enemy's refusal to harvest conscripts for work details or military service means that their conventional forces will always be lesser than that of Unbridled Radiance – especially with their new farmlands needing constant tending in the face of plague and blight.

The Empress does not fear the failure of her crops: she has invested in collective work, not in the efforts of desperate individuals… and if one of her farms does fail, she has it within her power to restore it through magic. That is what the Deviants will never understand: she does not rule through fear alone, but through charity and benevolence – for selfishness is a hallmark of the ugly. Through her magic, she can cure blight-ridden crops, restore barren soil to fertility, bring rain to drought-ravaged regions, and cure the sick in their thousands. With the power of the Grimmerie and her own near-infinite magical might, the Empress has made it so that no-one in Unbridled Radiance shall ever grow hungry.

Fool that she is, the Mentor probably still wonders why her foe is worshipped as a goddess.

And the Empress has one other major advantage over the Deviant Nations: while the Mentor's distorted offspring are permitted to collapse into irrelevancy, the heirs to the Imperial throne blossom in the limelight, adored by the public and given room to thrive. Elarose and Essella and now the darlings of the empire, worshipped as living saints for the simple beauty and perfection they bring to whatever task they assign themselves.

They are still young, but they have already given the people hope beyond all words: if the Empress falls, then they will gladly take up her mantle. They need not fear assassination, for they can trust in the loyalty of their bodyguards – and the people who love them so.

Would that the Mentor could realize that cloistering her own backward children out of sight might one day backfire. Unlike the Empress, she allowed her children to become a weakness – and that weakness will soon become the perfect bait to lure her in. A tiny camouflaged probe has already been sent over the border and is now keeping the misbegotten abominations under close surveillance, watching their every move. For the moment, the opportunity to strike has not yet arrived, but the Empress can afford to be patient, to soften up the enemy's ranks and distract them with feint after feint. When the time comes, the bait will be ready with a hook.

In time, the baited hook will become a noose for the Mentor…

At or around this time, Mr Heart and Lady Nessarose come to the realization that they can no longer tolerate Unbridled Radiance's atrocities. It's taken an embarrassingly long time for the two of them finally realize their dreadful mistake in supporting the Empress, and by now it might almost be too late.

Nessa has been nurturing suspicions about Elphaba's habit of emotional manipulation ever since she realized that Boq's death had been faked, but she's remained loyal to her sister – if only because she hoped that she would eventually realize that her self-imposed mission was impractical, unnecessary and probably insane. She hadn't known the role that Elphaba had played in creating the Plague of Transformations, and even when she did discover the truth, tried vainly to justify it… up until the casualties of Purification became apparent. The destruction of the Emerald City had finally opened her eyes to the truth, and now there is no other option than to oppose her own sister.

As for Heart, he'd anxiously clung to what little power and prestige he'd acquired as a researcher, believing that the Pottery was the only place he'd ever be welcome… up until he'd found himself assigned to Purifications. Anger and frustration over a wasted life could make him a willing participant in a lot of questionable things, but forcibly remaking men, women and sometimes even children who were begging for mercy was where he'd finally drawn the line.

Thankfully, both of them have their own ways of avoiding discovery: Nessa has been Purified for many years and the Empress does not suspect that she retains free will, nor does she imagine that she had help in preventing her conditioning from being completed. To Elphaba, Nessa will always be a frail songbird, a small and fearful creature in desperate need of guidance. At once above and below suspicion, she is free to do as she pleases with her life and her money: now a fully qualified witch, she now has the excuse of advanced experimentation to cover up her true activities, and the necessity for an isolated research base means that her habit of buying only the most isolated tracts of land will not attract notice. Here, in the solitude of the wilderness, Nessa will be free to pursue her more sensitive work – both as a student of magic and as a potential ally to the Deviant Nations.

Meanwhile, the Empress still doesn't realize that the Pottery harbours a different kind of deviant: Mr Heart has already disobeyed her a thousand times over without crossing the line into outright betrayal, but now he must finally cross the threshold into open treachery. The Empress does not find it unusual that he has not sought or accepted Purification yet, nor does she consider that his repeated absences from the Pottery are due to him carrying out a secret affair with Nessa… but in all fairness, Heart cannot pretend that his success is entirely due to his own efforts: the authorities that normally would have caught him are currently preoccupied in dealing with the "parasites" infesting her think tank. Between Morrible's gang of immortality-hunters trying to refine an elixir of youth from Elphaba's blood and the mysterious pack of shapeshifters trying to have fun under the radar, the Empress has her hands full.

For the time being, they are free to pursue their own agenda.

Nessa has neither the power nor the inclination to kill the Empress: for all the crimes she has committed in the last decade and a half, Elphaba is still her sister… but she will not simply allow the imperial cause to thrive unopposed. Thanks to her unprecedented research in the field of Imagomancy and other related studies, she has it within her power to ensure that the Deviant Nations survive what is undoubtedly going to be a very long war. Of course, it'll no doubt require her to cultivate a mercenary image… but it won't be the first time that Nessa's had to pretend to be something she's not.

Mr Heart's plans are more direct: with what he knows of the Empress, he is aware that assassinating her would likely be impossible… but with his knowledge of the Pottery, he can provide the Deviant Nations with much-needed information, and some updated techniques on mage-surgery that their own professionals don't know of yet. After all, ever since Dr Coil having vanished into the depths of No-Man's Land, Heart has been officially recognized one of the Pottery's foremost experts in mage-surgery – quite a step up from being a near-unemployable manservant to the governor of Munchkinland. He can even commit a little sabotage on the way out.

Unfortunately, this leaves him with the not-insignificant problem of how to begin. How is he supposed to contact the Deviant Nations? How can he get them to trust him? And how the hell is he even supposed to make it out of Unbridled Radiance alive?

The "gutter art" of mage-surgery can accomplish a great many things, given sufficient materials: it can shape flesh and bone at a touch, heal injuries that would beggar the powers of ordinary physicians, improve and augment bodies beyond the norm, sculpt weapons from internal organs, mould the face into new configurations entirely, and even accomplish a rather limited form of shapeshifting. As Heart's own research has proved, it can even renew the body efficiently enough to extend the human lifespan by several decades.

But unfortunately, it can't actually make the user invincible. Fire and magic are still able to grievously wound him, and enough bullets in a short enough space of time can easily kill him if runs out of flesh to heal himself with. And while he has no doubt that sufficient experimentation could find means of lessening such weaknesses, he doesn't have the time for that.

So how is he supposed to get from the depths of Exemplar to Greenspectre without getting blown to pieces? Nessa hasn't quite mastered the art of travelling through mirrors, stowing away on an airship would be impossible with the amount of security around the cargo holds, and wearing a new face might not be enough to outsmart the guards at the border.

For weeks on end, Mr Heart wracks his brains for a possible solution. Then, as luck would have it, the Empress unwittingly offers one of her own: a hospital ship is bound for No-Man's Land and in desperate need of mage-surgeons to serve as assistants…

Glinda doesn't see it until it's too late.

Deluding herself once again, she mistakes the constant bombardments of the palace as a series of assassination attempts aimed directly at her. Logically, she can see no other reason for Unbridled Radiance ignoring farmlands, industrial districts and the magical colleges in favour of attacks on Glinda's base of operations: as much as modesty insists otherwise, she knows that she has become vital to the morale of the Deviant Nations. Killing her would deal crippling injuries to the resolve of the people – if not fatal ones.

Thanks to the sheer quantity of shielding around the city and the palace in particular, none of the bombing raids leave so much as dent, but the fact that so many of the bombs landed close to the inner sanctum worry her immensely, as do the many cannisters of toxic gasses dropped along with the usual explosive shells. The newest of them, Clarity, has already claimed a substantial death toll among the Irredeemables… and the fact that Allaran came within twenty feet of getting a lungful of it leaves Glinda almost sick with fear.

With gas attacks harder to shield against, Glinda decides it might be best if Allaran and Alyss were moved to a new location – far from the violence of the capital, where they can live out their days in peace. However, the spaces between the cities are still thinly-shielded, and travelling is still a risk; conventional logic suggests moving them via an isolated route across the Deviant Nations – but such tactics might get the enemy's attention, and Glinda can't risk the Empress discovering the safehouse. So, instead, Allaran and Alyss's transport is sent through the densely crowded airship lane between Greenspectre and Ironmongery Peak, where an underground train is ready to take them to their new home on the further border of the country.

Unfortunately, Unbridled Radiance expected this: within minutes of their journey's start, a small squadron of fighters suddenly rise from the depths of the forest below and open fire on the airship lane. Dozens of freighters, air-yachts and transports are shot down, killing hundreds of people in the process; had they fled instantly, Allaran and Alyss might have been able to escape… but their fighter escort decided to engage the enemy, drawing attention to them. Believing that they are no danger now that their attackers have been drawn away, Allaran – poor, kind-hearted, gentle Allaran – briefly diverts the airship to help travellers that had crash-landed in the confusion. No sooner has he brought the ship within reach of the ground, a second squadron of fighters emerges from the forest, harpoons the escape vessel and begins dragging it away across the horizon.

Glinda's fear is beyond description: in all her days, she has never felt as angry, betrayed and terrified as she does in that moment. How could she have not seen this coming? How could she have not realized that an attack on her own children was imminent? Why couldn't she have stopped it?

It is these questions that drive her out of the palace, out of Greenspectre and into the wilderness. The kidnappers have not yet left the Deviant Nations, and Glinda believes that she might be able to intercept them; against the advice of her ministers, she leaves ahead of the search party, aboard her own personal airship. Somehow, she arrives ahead of the others – and the moment she sees the fighters laboriously dragging the escape vessel across the horizon, she goes on the attack, blasting the kidnappers one by one with devastating bolts of energy from her wand, crumpling hulls and scorching cockpits.

She even deploys the Bubble for the first time in years, floating out across the blazing skies in a desperate attempt to reach Allaran and Alyss before their captors decide to try anything drastic.

And then, just as she's within arm's reach of the captured ship, just as she's within inches of freeing her children, a shadow suddenly blots out the sun. Looking up in horror, Glinda finds herself staring down the gun barrels of a silvery grey frigate painted in the livery of Unbridled Radiance.

Too late, she realizes why the kidnappers were moving so slowly: they hadn't been fleeing for safety at all; they'd been reeling in the bait.

A hail of tranquilizer darts darkens the skies, puncturing the Bubble and sending Glinda plummeting into unconsciousness; then last thing she feels before her mind slips into the void is the muffled crash of her falling body being enveloped by a cargo net.

When she finally awakens, she is aboard the frigate, locked inside a holding cell not much bigger than a coffin. Her wand is gone, her arms have been chained to the wall, and she has been dressed in a stark white jumpsuit of a prisoner of Unbridled Radiance. For good measure, she can sense a number of minor enchantments being worked on the cell around her, smothering her magic: the power she could wield without her wand is now officially useless for as long as these nullifying spells last.

After about an hour spent here, one of her jailers opens a slot in the door and gives her a full account of what to expect… but by now, Glinda already knows what her sentence is: she's to be taken back to Exemplar, "rehabilitated" and Purified into a loyal, upstanding citizen of Unbridled Radiance.

The Empress knows that executing Glinda or allowing her to die in battle would only create a martyr that her enemies could rally behind. By forcing her to join them, Unbridled Radiance gains a powerful psychological advantage over the Deviant Nations: they'll probably have her make speeches decrying her past "ugliness", then broadcast them to Greenspectre by every medium available to them, along with plenty of evidence to support the fact that their beloved Mentor accepted the operation "of her own free will." This in itself doesn't worry Glinda – not yet, at any rate: she has a sneaking suspicion that whatever plan for indoctrinating her into accepting Purification will take time, more than enough to stage some kind of breakout or even take some of the bastards with her.

No, what worries her is the fact that nobody will tell her what they've done with her children. For after hour, she demands to know: she yells, she harangues, she threatens, she insults, she goads, she persuades (or tries to), and in the end, she simply begs… but no matter how hard she tries, they tell her nothing.

"Wait and see," they chuckle. "Just wait and see."

To Mr Heart's confusion, the hospital ship isn't attending to explorers and away teams sent into No-Man's Land, as he initially expected, but waiting to rendezvous with a frigate returning from a secret mission to the Deviant Nations.

Aboard are several badly wounded pilots, and Mr Heart attends to their injuries with all due swiftness… but they are not the only patients aboard: Dr Luonarg, the chief physician and veteran of a thousand Purifications, has been secured for a very special operation on a man supposedly rescued from the Deviant Nations. Heart tries to catch a glimpse of the patient as he's brought into the operating theatre, but he's ordered back to work long before the man arrives in view, and the guards are not in the mood to take no for an answer. However, he does notice a handful of grim-faced men and women from the Studious Interviewers following Luonarg into the room…

He doesn't see anything that happens next, being too busy patching up some of the terminal cases from the fighter squadron. Later, he hears word from one of the janitors the guards were seen dragging an eight-year-old girl away from the frigate's holding cells not long after the operation was complete; she was being taken to the hangar bay, by the sounds of things.

Then, as soon as the work of healing the pilots is finished, Heart finds himself abruptly summoned to the operating theatre alongside most of his fellow mage-surgeons. Doubly confusingly, they are not instructed to dress in fresh gowns or wash up beforehand; instead, they are directed to take seats in the amphitheatre overlooking the operating floor. This makes no sense to Heart, for according to Luonarg, the operation has already been completed; why the hell should he need an audience now?

But then, as he takes his seat, he sees the results of the operation – and as dread floods his veins, he realizes too late that the procedure wasn't curative in nature. Of course, Heart realizes, cursing himself for his stupidity: why else would a doctor specializing in "corrective surgeries" be working on a military hospital ship? Why else would the patients have been kept a secret from even the most trusted members of staff? And why else would professional interrogators have been brought into the room beforehand?

Then, just as Heart is starting to wonder how much worse this situation could get, the door to the operating theatre is opened, and a struggling figure in a white jumpsuit is dragged bodily into the chamber. A black bag has been forced over her head, but even from here, Heart can already see the scars and old war wounds dotting her bare hands and feet – scars that have been appearing on every single dossier, official report and propaganda film for the last ten years; there's even a trace of blonde hair trailing down the back of her neck.

Then the bag is roughly yanked away, and suddenly, there's no doubting who this is.

Glinda can only stare in confusion for a moment, not knowing where she is: harsh lights are pouring down on her from all angles, made all the more brutal by the gleam of the tiled floor and the stark white gowns of the surgeons. Beyond the lights, there are faces glaring down on her from above, watching her every move with undisguised anticipation

Then, her eyes focus on the figure lying on the operating table in front of her.

For a moment, she can't recognize him until her eyes focus on his pallid, bloodless face, and even then, she can't bring herself to acknowledge who the figure on the table is. She tries to convince herself that the resemblance is coincidence, a consequence of the surgery, or maybe her own terrified eyes playing tricks on her.

But in the end, she has no choice.

Allaran is lying dead in the middle of the operating table.

Her son has been slimed up to his collarbone in his own blood, his chest has been peeled open, and his internal organs are gone. His wrists are chained to the table, each cuff still dropping with blood; Allaran was fully conscious throughout the whole procedure – enough to struggle, at any rate. Through the haze of disbelief and shock now fogging her brain, Glinda is dimly aware that there are signs of torture alongside the marks left by the surgery, a burn mark here, a broken bone there… but ultimately, the obvious "corrective" work is what draws her attention.

His limbs are criss-crossed with sutures, and with a thrill of horror and revulsion, Glinda realizes that his left arm and right leg have been surgically reduced: they were trying to shrink him, trying to render him down until his size was acceptable to the Radiant Laws.

Whatever the case, it hadn't worked: either they'd incorporated too much torture for good measure, or they just didn't care whether their patient survived or not.

Either way, Allaran is…

Her son is…

Suddenly, Glinda can't breathe.

She's crying, she dimly realizes, choking out disbelieving sobs as the awful reality forces its way into her skull and refuses to leave no matter how she desperately tries to retreat into delusion. More than anything else, she wants her mind to snap, to plunge into the murky waters from insanity and never return to the real world, because coming up for air will mean seeing what they have done to her little boy…

"He died less than an hour into the procedure," said the head physician; he was Purified, his smile almost etched onto his gleaming porcelain face. "His heart couldn't take it. Maybe he'd have survived the procedure if you'd only have corrected his ugliness earlier in life. A shame: this was only a preliminary corrective operation. Had he survived and proved his worth, he might have been worthy of full Purification."

She can't tell if he's lying. Maybe this is the truth, or maybe he's just trying to hurt her. After all, the Empress no doubt wants her spirit completely broken before the indoctrination process can begin.

"Still," he continues, "You've only yourself to blame. Good mothers don't breed Distortions…"

If the guards hadn't been holding her by the arms, Glinda would have lunged for him right then and there; she would have ripped him to pieces, smashed his gleaming flesh-porcelain carapace open and leave him flayed and bleeding under the lights. Without her wand, she is not completely helpless; she could easily boil the blood in his veins or burst his eyes from the inside, or spray fire across the audience (who are currently grinning like idiots). She might not be able to destroy airships, as she could with her wand… but she can make everyone here pay for every drop of her son's blood.

But of course, the guards are trained magicians for a reason, and her powers are still suppressed.

So instead, she can only scream, giving vent to every last atom of rage and grief and pain in a single, all-consuming howl that somehow manages to blot out the laughter of the audience.

And then, just as she thinks her throat will split open, something rushes through the air in front of her – a tiny storm of fletchettes erupting from the darkened gallery above.

There is a stunned pause; the smile abruptly vanishes from the Purified physician's face. And then the two guards crash to the deck, their skulls pincushioned with a small mass of bone quills.

In the disbelieving silence that follows, a figure jumps from the gallery above, landing clumsily on the tiles next to Glinda: now that he's out of the shadows, she can see that her rescuer is another mage-surgeon – unPurified but still dressed in the uniform of an imperial medic; pallid, gaunt and cadaverous, he looks just about ready to throw up… but the bone daggers emerging from his arms tell a different story.

And now that her newfound ally's managed to take out the guards, the nullifying spells are no longer in effect.

Glinda's magic is back.

And in that moment, everything seems to happen at once…

A/N: Any guesses as to what happens next - or what happened next? Let me know!