A/N: Aaaaaand we have an early upload!
Don't ask me how I got this chapter done, ladies and gentlemen: I suspect that I have gone slightly mad in the process and will go even madder trying to find out. The screen is on fire, the keyboard's melted, and I'm leaving bits of metatarsals all over the place from typing with my feet after my hands dropped off, but I am feeling absolutely fantastic in this moment.
Anyway, a huge thank you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed! You give me the strength to continue this madcap project!
Without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine, and I own nothing except for the bleeding stumps of my feet.
Magic erupts across the operating theatre.
In all her years of thaumaturgical experience, Glinda has never handled so much magical power without the aid of her wand: for the last two decades, she's always harnessed magic with a wand, even though she should have graduated to gestures, words and pure willpower long ago. It had always been a crutch of sort for her powers, a student's instrument that she'd never quite developed the confidence to move beyond: she'd always thought that she didn't have the talent to take her skills to the next level, or at the very least that her real gifts lay in politics.
But now Glinda no longer has the presence of mind to doubt herself: she can no longer think of what she can or can't do, or what Morrible sneeringly wrote on her reports all those years ago, or even of the times she'd tried and failed to aspire to Elphaba's level of mastery. All she can think of is the sight of Allaran's bloodied corpse on the operating theatre table, and the all-consuming realization that Unbridled Radiance had done this to punish her, that she'd taken the bait at every single turn and doomed her own children in the process. Now, her hate is fuelling her power, propelling her mastery beyond what self-doubt dictated she could achieve: in this blazing instant, she is no longer Glinda the Good, smiling politician and dilettante witch; she is now the Mentor, the preacher of resistance, the righteous fury of the Deviant Nations made flesh.
At some point, she'd begun this magical onslaught to defend herself against the security guards rushing in from above, or at the very least to stop the head mage-surgeon from restraining her… but now, all she cares about is destroying everything in sight, in rendering down every last inch of steel, wood and tile in this wretched pit into slag and ashes, in annihilating every last living being that was a party to what was done here. She might have even compared this little rampage to one of Elphaba's most famous rages… but Glinda's spellcraft is not the wild, passionate tempest of immolating power that Elphaba's magic manifested as, nor is it the righteous incandescence of the Empress's self-deifying might; no, the Mentor's power is a scythe, cutting down everything in its path, every move cold, calculated and without feeling. There is no outward passion here, no rage, no self-glorifying stunts, no ostentatious bangs and flashes, no emerald green glow or unearthly white light; there is only the scythe hissing through the air, carving through flesh and crumpling metal.
She is dimly aware of the howling clamour of alarm bells and the thud of booted footsteps hurrying down the corridor towards her; she dimly aware of security guards tumbling helplessly over the gallery railing and into the theatre, their bodies shredded from the inside out long before they hit the ground; she is dimly aware of the audience fleeing in droves, screaming in terror as the scything blasts ripple across the gallery – and Glinda doesn't care if any of them make it to safety or not. She can barely pay attention to any of them: all she can focus on is the effort of casting again and again – and that terrible, terrible sight of Allaran still and cold on the operating table…
Behind her, the little mage-surgeon is providing covering fire as best as he can: occasionally, the door behind her will burst open, and another squad of guards will have just enough time to take aim before another storm of bone quills pincushions them out of existence. At one point, a squadron of guards rappels down from above before Glinda can strike them down, but the mage-surgeon only reaches up his sleeve and casts a suffocating net of living muscles over their faces, constricting it tighter and tighter until their bones crumple beneath their skin. Once, he notices a guard taking aim from the gallery and yanks him over the railing with a tendril lasso, plunging a dagger of bone into his throat before the guard can recover from his fall.
Eventually, the operating theatre is empty except for Glinda, the mage-surgeon, and the barely-living remains of the chief physician: by now, he's lost both his legs and one arm, and can only wiggle helplessly for the exit… only to be brought up short by Glinda swatting him aside with another blast of magic, pressing him flat against the wall with a solid fist of kinetic force – not to kill, but to interrogate. By now, the desperate hunger for revenge has faded, as has the hatred and even the embers of her rage; now, with her grief only barely kept at bay, Glinda needs answers.
"Where's Alyss?" she demands.
"Gone."
Without missing a beat, she draws the Purified bastard ever-so-slightly towards her and then slams him back against the wall – hard enough the crumple the bulkhead.
"WHERE'S ALYSS?!"
But the chief physician only smirks. "Alyssiana has already been moved. The Empress specifically instructed her operatives to keep your daughter away from any corrupting influences, so she was transported directly back to Unbridled Radiance almost as soon as the frigate docked with us."
"Then where are they taking her?"
The physician shrugs, inasmuch as a man with only one remaining arm can shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Do not test me…"
"They didn't share the details with me, Miss Uppland, and I doubt they'll ever be known by anyone. All radio transmissions relating to your daughter have already been expunged, and the same goes for any navigational details of the ship that took her from here. The Empress sees much potential in little Alyss: she's still too young to be Purified, but with a little time away from Distorted siblings and neglectful parents, I've no doubt her caregivers will be able to mould her into a respectable citizen of Unbridled Radiance, especially once she has a decent role model to look up to. But for that to happen, everything of her past is to be… forgotten."
He chuckles. "By now, your daughter will have already been incorporated into the foster system, and all knowledge of her previous identity will have been erased from the records. Even the Empress won't know where she is, and frankly, why would she need to? The moment Alyss entered our care, she ceased to exist. She'll be given a new name, a new face, new parents and a much better family; if necessary, she'll be given a new personality as well – a difficult task, but not impossible, given the right drugs. In time, she'll forget her past, her worthless brother and degenerate mother… and soon, she'll only know you as an enemy of the state, to be loathed and feared by all good citizens."
The head physician smirks one last time. "Alyss is gone forever, Miss Uppland," he chuckles. "And once again, you've only yourself to blame."
A split-second later, another scythe of raw magic shears his face from his skull.
And in the deafening silence that follows, Glinda screams. She wails and cries and sobs over the disembowelled body of her son, finally giving voice to the vast reservoir of grief that has been building all this time. Her rampage across the operating theatre could not cleanse her sorrows, only her rage and hate, but now all the sadness must be squeezed from her heart like blood from a stone. This moment has been awaited ever since the moment that Glinda realized that her dearest friend was no more, and a monster sat in her place. In that time, she has lost so much; today is the moment where the dam finally bursts:
She has lost Elphaba. She has lost Fiyero. She has lost her home and what little remains of her family. She has lost her son. She has lost her daughter.
Now she has nothing left of her old life.
Or perhaps, in the end, she has nothing left at all.
When her tears finally dry, Glinda is no longer slumped over Allaran's body, nor does she rise to face her lone ally on the scene; she does nothing at all, for Glinda is no longer present in the room.
She has ceased to exist just as surely as Alyss has.
In her place stands the Mentor.
Now she regards the mage-surgeon beside her coolly through drying eyes. "Spy or defector?" she asks hoarsely.
"Sorry?"
"Are-you-one-of-our-spies-or-are-you-a-defector?"
"Defector! Defector all the way, believe me." The little man issues a rather nervous-looking salute.
"And did you just decided to switch sides today, just like that?"
"Well… I'd been considering it for a long time, but I didn't know how I was going to get across the border. When I heard they needed volunteers for medical work in No-Man's Land, I volunteered… but I didn't realize they'd captured you."
"And did you…" Her throat tightens with rage. "Did you perform the operation on my son?"
"What? No! No, absolutely not. I was assigned to patching up the personnel who were wounded in the capture… and we've probably killed most of them by now, so there's nobody who can corroborate my story, but…"
But the Mentor already knows that the little mage-surgeon is telling the truth: his response was not frightened, but affronted – as if insulted to be even associated with the act. He's currently giving a summary of all the reasons why he wanted to leave Unbridled Radiance, and though the Mentor can tell that at least some of his motives are fabricated, she does not question them. This man is not a spy: no spy of Unbridled Radiance, no matter how masterful, would have gone to such lengths to cover their tracks; more to the point, a spy would be completely superfluous – after all, the Mentor had already been captured and imprisoned, and would have told them everything as soon as the mental effects of the Purification were in effect.
"Um, if I may, Mentor… you've been wounded."
She follows his gaze, and realizes that a long, ragged gash has been torn through her shoulder, staining her jumpsuit with blood. Up until now, she's been so pumped with adrenaline that the pain simply hasn't registered.
Realizing that the little mage-surgeon is obviously asking for permission, she offers him a nod and allows him to begin patching her shoulder. Whoever he is, the nervous demeanour clearly hides a highly experienced professional: the wound is sterilized and sealed in a matter of seconds; he even repairs the damage to the bone, reknitting the gored shoulder with astonishing precision. Obvious not a student, contrary to first impressions.
"What's your name?" she asks quietly, as the mage-surgeon completes his work.
"Around the Pottery, I was officially known as Mr Heart."
This throws the Mentor a little off-balance for a moment. "…you were with the Pottery?"
"Since the earliest days, Mentor."
For a moment, it seems almost too good to be true: if what Heart says is true, then he's privy to secrets that have been hidden for decades – a living treasure-trove of priceless military and scientific information. The likelihood of such a man remaining unPurified and choosing to leave Unbridled Radiance almost sounds unbelievable… but after several years working among the politicians of both Oz and the cities of the Deviant Nations, the Mentor has learned to recognize lies on sight. Heart is not lying, nor is he joking – he is the real deal. More to the point, this man's experience with mage-surgery is even greater than previously imagined.
And as that moment of doubt passes, a strange and terrible idea creeps into the Mentor's brain – inspired partly by revenge but mainly by sheer cold-hearted pragmatism.
"Have you performed any work in the new science of genetics?"
"I have, Mentor; for a time, it was official requirement of my field of study once the resident biological researchers introduced it to the Pottery: I was to study how the afflictions of the parents may be inflicted upon the offspring and how to correct them accordingly. There's been less demand for it in recent months, what with the genealogy program placing restrictions on certain marriages, but-"
"Could you theoretically bring out a deformity that was previously 'corrected' in both parents and offspring?"
"…it's possible. I can make no promises, but it's definitely possible. What do you intend to do?"
The Mentor turns to face him now, and though she is dressed in the tattered remains of a prisoner's uniform and probably looks as though she's been dragged backwards through a hedge, Mr Heart's face betrays a moment of genuine fear – then awe.
"I intend to annihilate every last trace of Unbridled Radiance from the world," she replies, calmly. "I aim to destroy the Empress and her legacy in every sense of the world: I want everything she stands for to be dismissed as a lie, I want her seen for the madwoman and hypocrite that she is, and I want her shamed, disgraced and outcast for all time. Then and only then will she die. No stone will stand in memorial, no mourners will grieve for her passing, and her grave shall be the bellies of a thousand nameless vultures. And I want everyone in Unbridled Radiance to know that for as long as they can support the Radiant Laws and the Empress, there is no such thing as innocence in this world. As long as they can stand by and do nothing as children are taken from their parents and people are stripped of their free will, they do not deserve mercy. If they were happy enough to give their blessing to what was done to my son, if they watched as it happened… they'll have to earn the right to be treated like human beings. From now on, they're animals. From now on, everything is fair game." She takes a deep breath, belatedly realizing that her face is once again wet with tears. "Do you have any objections to that, Mr Heart?"
The mage-surgeon thinks for a moment, clearly scouring his soul for any trace of doubt. But eventually, he shakes his head. "None at all, Mentor."
"Good. Do you any special requirements while you're working for me?"
"…I would like to change my name and my face, if that's alright with you."
"More than alright. Now, let's get to the bridge: it's time we called in the cavalry, preferably before these bastards call for reinforcements…"
Fortunately, a fleet of warships from the Deviant Nations arrives on the scene long before a detachment from the Radiant Fleet shows up.
By now, the Mentor and Mr Heart have long since swept the hospital ship for anything worthwhile, including information on the whereabouts of Alyss… but unfortunately, it seems that the physician was honest when he said that no trace had been left. Resigned to never seeing her daughter again, the Mentor wearily crosses from the hospital ship into the depths of the rescue craft, once again feeling her old life slipping further and further away – but only distantly, like the pain of a phantom limb.
The reinforcements from Unbridled Radiance are woefully underprepared, having expected a prisoner breakout rather than a rescue, and the Mentor's warships make short work of the gunships before they can ready their weapons. In the chaos that follows, several escape vessels are launched, but none of them can hope to outrun the fleet. Several hail the warships, begging them to hold fire, even offering to surrender. They are medical personnel, they insist, brought along with the reinforcements to lend aid to any casualties; they can be of use to the Deviant Nations, and there's no need for further bloodshed.
The Mentor has every last one of them shot down.
The gunners hesitate for only a moment before opening fire, pausing only to switch off the radio feed as they begin the grisly work of slowly annihilating every last trace of the enemy.
As the fleeing escape pods and lifeboats are slowly expunged from the sky in an eye-searing roar of flame, the Mentor tries to feel a trace of the grief and fury that her old self would have felt; for the briefest of instants, she tries to remember how Glinda would have felt.
But looking out upon the wreckage of her victims, she feels nothing.
Once they are finished, the fleet returns to Greenspectre. As soon as Allaran's body is buried and the funeral is complete, the Mentor issues commands to the long-range artillery batteries across the country: Unbridled Radiance is to know the true wrath of its victims for the first time; today, there are no restrictions on targets, no limits accepted, no requests for amnesty accepted: there will only be a bombardment such as the Empress has never seen.
Over the next five weeks, every weapon imaginable is fired in the direction of Unbridled Radiance, no matter how dangerous, how unstable or how morally questionable: cluster bombs, white phosphorous shells, toxic gas, corrosive solvents, the deadliest and darkest of magicks, and more radical weapons too. In one notable case, a team of slightly-demented mage-surgeons create a fast-spreading mass of living flesh designed to absorb the flesh of its victims as it goes, and deploy it on military bases in the imperial heartland: nearly two thousand people die – roughly half of them being civilians living between the bases – before the Empress finally manages to incinerate the damn thing. However, the most common targets are the vast farms that the Empress uses to keep her citizens pacified and happy: here, mages specializing in experiment biomancy and plague curse the crops of Unbridled Radiance with blight after blight, lumbering fungal infestations that render them inedible, dosing them with toxic spells that sicken and kill anyone daring the eat them, or simply ruin the soil all the way to the groundwater. Thousands starve and hundreds die of poisoning before the Empress and her own magicians finally manage to cleanse the toxic crops; many of the victims are soldiers unwittingly served tainted rations, but many more are civilians.
Once again, the Mentor can barely bring herself to give a damn about any of them.
The goals of this offensive are threefold: the first is to put Unbridled Radiance on the defensive for the first time in years, using tactics that would be considered shocking even by the usual standards of this war to throw the imperials off-balance; the second is to convince the Empress that the Mentor is a mad dog, a ravening beast who can think of nothing but mindless revenge – for the longer the offensive continues, the less it seems like a calculated strategy and more like an unthinking rampage.
But the third and final goal of this is to buy time for the newest member of the Mentor's advisors to complete his work. Ever since he arrived in the Deviant Nations, Mr Heart has been hard at work on their secret weapon, pouring every last atom of his expertise into an experimental bioweapon designed to attack very specific individuals.
Now calling himself Dr Kiln, the mage-surgeon informs the Mentor that the weapon will not work on the Empress itself: over the course of the last few battles, they have acquired samples of her flesh on which to experiment, and the effects of the gene bomb will be negligible in the face of the Empress's healing abilities and magic. However, the other targets are nowhere near as well-defended. But just to be on the safe side, the Mentor strengthens the effects of the bioweapon with magic, enhancing it with the few spells of the Grimmerie they've managed to copy.
She even pays an exorbitant fee in order to properly divine the location of the targets, courtesy of the information broker known only as the Mistress of Mirrors – though she accepts only half the fee once she learns that the targets will not be directly harmed by the attack. An oddly principled stand for a mercenary, but for once, the Mentor will not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Five weeks after the new campaign begins, Kiln appears before the Mentor with his completed prototype. By now, he looks significantly different: he's grown by several inches, his head is now shiny bald, his facial features are sharper, and his fingers have lengthened into a set of tendril-like tools for mage-surgery… but there's no mistaking the look of trepidation on his new face. Before they prepare to launch the weapon, he asks her if this is really what she wants, if this final step is really the ideal method of crippling the enemy.
The Mentor only asks if Kiln has any serious objections to the use of the weapon.
He has none, as it turns out.
By now, she knows he is no traitor: he has nothing left to return to after his stunt on the hospital ship; it's just that he feels the need to inquire about virtually everything – apparently a side effect of no longer working for the Empress. The Mentor tolerates his little habits… much as he tolerates hers. Now that her family is gone, he is now the nearest thing to a confidante she has left in the palace: it seems a strange foundation for any kind of relationship, even if it's only a professional one, but he has seen her at her lowest, and he was there to help her when all seemed lost. She can trust him to listen, just as he can trust her to listen in return.
Together, they load the weapon into the artillery shell and allow the technicians to fire it directly at the target's last known location.
Then, with spy drones aimed directly at Exemplar, they sit back and wait for the results to become noticeable.
The Empress is busy undoing the latest chemical attack on the north-eastern farmlands, so she is not aware than an attack has been launched on Exemplar until the first panicked reports begin arriving via radio.
Something terrible has happened to her daughters.
That morning, Elarose and Essella were due to appear at a great rally alongside other wunderkind of Unbridled Radiance, stoking the devotion of the citizenry and calling up them to not despair in the face of the Deviant Nations' latest atrocities. There were even live camera feeds in the audience, broadcasting the rally to the other great cities of the empire. The district where they'd held the rally was directly under the strongest segment of Exemplar's shielding enchantments, and bolstered by the best mages, engineers and soldiers in all of Unbridled Radiance, so the Empress had felt confident in allowing her daughters to attend – at least once she had assigned her Champion to protect them
Halfway through the rally, citizens on the outskirts of the city reported a bright flash of light at the fringes of Exemplar's shield, and a strange chemical aroma filling the air. Though poison gas was suspected, none could be seen even by the Purified, and nobody suffered any adverse effects.
Minutes later, Elarose and Essella suddenly collapsed on stage, writhing and screaming in pain. Medics were immediately summoned to the scene, but by the time they'd arrived, the two children had begun to change: before the stunned eyes of the onlookers, their skin had suddenly blushed green, an emerald stain that quickly spread to every inch of their bodies. Within a matter of seconds, Elarose and Essella had taken on the same Distortion that had made Elphaba so rightly reviled across Oz before her Purification.
Now they are ugly, they are repulsive, and most distinctively, they are green.
And worst of all, the cameras were still rolling for every second of their mutation… and thanks to the live broadcast feed, everyone in Unbridled Radiance saw it happen.
By the time the Empress arrives home, her daughters have been hastily secluded behind closed doors, and the mage-surgeons are already hard at work on trying to erase the horrible colour. But to her horror and disbelief, the Distortion cannot be expunged from their skin. The best mage-surgeons, healers, biomancers and other magicians toil for days on end to restore Elarose and Essella to their former beauty, and even the Empress herself applies her own godlike magic to the task – but without success. For a time, she toys with the idea of using the Grimmerie to cleanse her children of this abomination… but in the end, she abandons the idea as futile: finding the right spell to correct them without Distorting them further could take years.
Over the next few days, as she mulls over her options, the Empress soon becomes aware that questions are being asked about how this could have happened; talkative mage-surgeons have let slip to the rumour-mill that there might be a genetic origin to this calamity, and suddenly people are beginning to talk. Though Oz has been dead and gone for years on end, it has not been forgotten, nor have the events that took place there: people still remember the Wicked Witch of the West.
Since the last days of Oz, the Empress has insisted time and again that her own Purification cleansed her of all ugliness to the very core of her being. If her curse can be passed on, then she is wrong… and given that the Empress has spent the last few decades encouraging people to believe that she cannot be wrong about anything, this does prove somewhat disruptive to public trust. A rumour is already beginning to spread that the Purification of Elphaba was only temporary: the purity passed to her daughters has worn off, the rumour claims, and soon the Empress will be as green and wicked as ever. And though the Empress has her best propagandists assigned to dispelling this outrageous lie, it proves almost impossible to dislodge, and even if they could somehow strip the idea from every mind in the empire, about a dozen more slanderous fabrications are already taking root. Alongside the nonsense about the Empress suddenly turning as green as her children, there's a whole host of unfounded fears about the fate of Unbridled Radiance itself, for now that the heirs to the throne have been corrupted, what will happen if a Deviant-sponsored assassination attempt succeeds?
Too late, the Empress realizes the depths of her error: she had spent so much time at work on curing her daughters that she neglected to direct public opinion in the appropriate direction, and because her propagandists take cues exclusively from her, nothing at all was done to satisfy the curiosity of the citizens. In the absence of concrete information, speculation ran wild… and the closer she examines the situation, the more she notices the hired gossips at work, encouraging the population to think in certain directions.
Furious, she returns to her quarters, leaving Elarose and Essella in the care of her physicians for the time being… only to find an audio recording disc left on her bed.
She already knows the source long before she listens to a single word of it, but that doesn't stop her from letting out a barely-restrained snarl of fury when she finally plays the recording and hears the Mentor's voice issuing from the speakers.
"Greetings, Your Radiance," the voice whispers icily. "I think I've finally accepted the fact that Elphaba's dead by now. That was my mistake, you see: I thought there might be something of my old friend left in you, some trace of her heart and mind; at the very least, I thought you might at least have principle enough not to harm the innocent. But… you've made it abundantly clear that nothing is beyond you, least of all the murder of a boy who'd never harmed a living soul and the kidnapping, indoctrination and abandonment of a little girl. So, I must accept that my friend is dead… and you occupy her corpse. Whatever you are – parasite, demon, or maybe just my own crazed imagination – I will not hold back any longer.
"So, here is my rebuttal, both to your atrocities and to your demented beliefs: you might try to pretend that Elphaba's legacy is gone forever… but I know that there are some things that cannot be erased from history, no matter how hard you try to forget, how desperately you struggle to destroy them. They still exist in memory. Today, I remind you and your people of the past… and I will make sure that your past will undo everything you've ever done: your empire, your culture, and your carefully stage-managed family. The truth is loose in Unbridled Radiance and all your lies cannot stop it. But frankly, even if you could, there's the simple fact that your own hypocrisy is now unveiled before all your people. See, I know all about the "incurable" patients who cannot be purged of their Distortions or Purified, the ones you euthanize and cremate. Everyone knows about them… and now, everyone knows the names of the newest incurables!
"Tell me, Empress, can you bear to look upon your darling girls, knowing that the past you tried so hard to destroy now lives on in them? Can you kill them as casually as you kill the other incurable cases in your care?
"I'll let you ponder that for a while, Your Radiance. Farewell."
Five seconds after the record has finished playing, the Empress wrenches the entire player out of its housing, drags it onto the balcony and flings it into the street below with a wordless howl of rage. And as it shatters into mechanical wreckage on the polished paving stones below, she can only collapse to the ground and bury her face in her hands, snarling incomprehensible expletives.
The Mentor has done the unforgivable. What she has accomplished today is worse than any war crime; if she'd killed Elarose and Essella, it still wouldn't be anywhere near as hateful as the atrocity she committed.
The Mentor has embarrassed her.
In a single stroke, the hateful rabble-rouser has dishonoured her, the imperial family, her sacred beliefs and Unbridled Radiance… and thanks to the spread of misinformation, it's now officially impossible to undo it.
But as the echoes of the shattering record player finally fade away, the Empress realizes that there is still a solution: what was done today cannot be undone – but it can be forgotten. The Mentor was wrong; the past can be erased, not merely from the history books, but from memory itself… and as she has access to the Grimmerie, she has the means to ensure that this act can be extended not merely to her citizens, but to the world as a whole.
In truth, she has been considering something like this for a time, but had come close to dismissing the idea altogether, believing that her people had more or less abandoned any interest in the distant past in much the same way that the people of Oz had lost interest in the reign of Ozma. But now there is a tangible need for this, her most ambitious strategy yet…
So, while Paragon and her generals begin planning a brutal retaliatory campaign against the Deviant Nations, the Empress's daughters are hastily shepherded into the Deep Sepulchre, where they will remain until a cure for their condition can be properly developed. Down here, there is already a hidden sanatorium for the members of the Pottery who have ruined themselves through Morrible's demented search for immortality; within the heavily-armoured heart of this concealed facility, Elarose and Essella can kept in comfort and total privacy away from the prying eyes of the increasingly curious public.
Across Unbridled Radiance, guardsmen begin quietly removing anything that might serve as a reminder of Oz: books are burned, paintings are shredded, statues are torn down, old coins are melted, and all artefacts of the Wizard's reign are swiftly rendered down into ashes.
And then, from the highest tower of Exemplar's grand palace, the Empress opens the Grimmerie, and begins casting a spell…
Within minutes of the spell's completion, almost everyone in Exemplar has forgotten that Oz ever existed: to the minds of the affected citizens, all that existed prior to Unbridled Radiance was darkness and chaos, a meaningless void from which the Radiant Empress saved them.
A few still retain their memories of the past: Morrible and her little clique of childish researchers can remember, as can a few of the veteran generals; one or two members of the enslaved Nome populace stubbornly cling to their recollections of a world before Radiance, but they are easily disposed of. Paragon retains its memories of Oz, but as a thinking engine it only remembers what is required of it, so the retention matters little.
The Empress can remember everything, but that is her burden to bear: as the mother of the nation, it is her duty to remember the follies of the past so she can guide her children to a better future, so she does not complain.
As the hours go by, the spell's radius gradually expands, spreading slowly across Unbridled Radiance and eradicating history as it goes: one by one, every citizen in its path forgets everything of Oz. In the days that follow, anyone who remembers Oz will be tracked down and pacified, but for now, the spell continues rippling out across the world.
Eventually, the entire empire is purged of the past, and only an infinitesimal minority still retain memories of what was.
Then, it's the Deviant Nations' turn to forget.
The Mentor and her cronies manage to save themselves at the last minute, and a few especially Distorted horrors within their care prove too inhuman to forget, but as for everyone else in the Deviant Nations, Oz is gone forever.
And once again, the Empress exalts in her victory…
…until the next counterattack.
Wheezing for breath, she lurched awake, struggling for a grip on the present as she tumbled back into full consciousness.
As her senses returned, several realizations occurred to her at once: she wasn't actually the Empress of Unbridled Radiance, and she wasn't lying in bed next to her Champion, and she wasn't due to get out bed and test a new cure for Elarose and Essella.
She was Elphaba.
She was herself again.
More specifically, she was clinging to Fiyero like a life preserver and breathing so fast she thought her lungs might explode inside her ribcage – almost exactly the same way she'd have reacted to a nightmare… except this hadn't been a nightmare.
This had been the past, and it had felt more intense – more real – than any dream she'd ever experienced in her life. Even the last few dream-memories hadn't been this vivid: it wasn't just that she'd seen the things that the Empress had seen, or even that she'd felt an echo of the righteous hate and fury she'd felt. No, this almost felt as if she'd become the Empress, if only for the briefest of instants.
Elphaba had even experienced the moment the Empress had given birth to twins. She remembered holding them in her arms, cradling them as if they really were Elphaba's own children… and she'd experienced the moment where the Empress effectively abandoned both of them for the most disgusting of reasons. By now, she'd almost given up on being shocked by the horrible things her counterpart had done, but this latest dream-memory somehow managed to sicken her just as much as the moment the Other Fiyero had become the Champion. Worse still, Elphaba had felt the sense of loathing and humiliation that the Empress had felt, even believed that locking them away in the Deep Sepulchre was the best thing that could possibly happen under the circumstances – and now that she was awake, that was swiftly transmuting into a very deep and poisonous sense of self-reproach.
How could any parent be so callous to her own children? How could anyone be so heartless as to erase the memory of an entire world just to make sure nobody remembered the moment she'd been humiliated? She hadn't even been thinking of Elarose and Essella, not really: she cared about them, but only in a very narrow fashion, their compliance with the Radiant Laws coming first and their mental and emotional wellbeing always coming second. When the Empress cast that spell, she'd been more concerned with making sure that their "ugliness" would never have to be tolerated.
But what had happened to those little girls? Surely they'd be adults by now.
Were they still down there, in the Creche?
And did-
"Elphaba? Are you alright?"
Taking a deep breath, she finally relaxed her grip on Fiyero and collapsed back against the pillows. "I'm fine, Fiyero," she gasped. "I… I think I'll be okay, at any rate. What time is it?"
"About four-thirty in the morning. You've been out cold for something like fifteen hours; same goes for Glinda. Whatever you saw, it must have been one hell of a nightmare: you were talking in your sleep for the last half hour of it."
"Really? What did I say?"
"Just the word 'ugly,' over and over again… and maybe once or twice, 'wipe the slate clean'."
"Sweet Lurline. Okay, I think it's time we figured out a way to prevent me from experiencing dream-memories: whatever the hell the Mentor's getting out of my reports, it's not worth the cardiac arrest. Frankly, if she saw the things the Empress did, Glinda would probably agree with me." Elphaba blinked, suddenly realizing that there was now a quilt missing from the bed. "Hang on," she muttered, "where's Glinda?"
They eventually found her sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes wet with tears, her body quivering with repressed anger and grief. In fact, she was so upset that she'd briefly lost her grip on her powers: from the waist down, she was still a quilt, while from the waist up, she was shifting wildly between her original form and at least half a dozen other bodies – the Mentor, the Empress, Elphaba, the Champion, Fiyero, and Dr Kiln.
It took about five minutes of soothing and cajoling before Glinda could hold a solid shape again, and when she did, she was nearly on the verge of tears.
"It was horrible," she whispered. "I – no, she… oh gods, what happened? How could you – I mean, how could the Empress have done that to-"
"I know," said Elphaba, gently. "I saw it happen as well, right from the planning stage."
"But it felt so real! It felt so much more intense than any of the earlier dream-memories. When I woke up, I actually thought I was dreaming because you and Fiyero were there; I still thought like the Mentor did, just for a few seconds. And… I can still remember what it was like to be a mother, even though it didn't really happen to me: I remember giving birth to Allaran as if it happened yesterday… and I remember seeing his body. Everything that happened in the last few decades of dream memories, it feels more real than my own life: it feels more like I'm dreaming right now, and when I wake up, I really will be the Mentor… and I'll have to live with everything she suffered and everything she did."
She took a deep breath, tears coursing down her face.
"Hey," Fiyero soothed, "Kiln said something like this might happen: it only lasts for a few minutes after you wake up, it's nothing serious."
"No, no, that's not why I'm crying. It's just that… how could it have gone so wrong? I mean, I know all the history between the two of them, but I still can't make sense of it! The Mentor and the Empress – they used to be us! They used to be just like us in every way, and now… I just don't understand how, even with what Morrible did to screw with Alphaba's mind, how she could have changed so much. And the Mentor, she means well but – she targeted children! I mean, she didn't kill Alphaba's daughters, but she knew that the Empress might kill them, and…"
She let out a choked sob.
"Is that what this war is going to do to us, Elphie? Are we just going to keep fighting until we turn into monsters? Leoverus keeps talking about how joyful the Amorphous League used to be, how they only used their powers for fun… but now we're using them as soldiers. Is that what's going to happen to us? Are we just going to keep fighting until we give up on caring and start hurting people if it means winning the war?"
Elphaba was opening her mouth to say no, to reassure Glinda that nothing in the world could make her as cold and remorseless as the Mentor, to promise her that she'd never be anything like the Empress. But then she thought of the rage Alphaba had felt, of the moment when she'd flung the record player out the window, of the tiny relics of Elphaba's old personality peeking out from behind the Empress's mask. She thought of the witch-crystal that was still turning her back into a tiny mountain range of geodes, enhancing her powers while slowly vitrifying her from the inside out. And then she thought of how vivid the memories had appeared this time, to the point that it had taken several seconds for her to remember who she was.
Without a word, she hugged Glinda tightly around her shoulders, then helped her to her feet.
"Come on," she said grimly. "We're off to see the Mentor: from now on, no more dream-memories."
"Absolutely not!" the Mentor snapped.
"For Lurline's sake, haven't you been listening to a word we've said?"
"I've been listening to every single complaint you've had since you've arrived in this dimension, Elphaba, and I've given them all due consideration. My verdict is that the dream-memories are too valuable to be abandoned now: unless Dr Kiln's diagnosis confirms that you're having an adverse reaction to the pills, you're to keep taking them; we need all the tactical information you can provide on Unbridled Radiance, especially now that we've had an opportunity to eliminate several key targets your notes have identified."
Elphaba took a slightly deeper breath than usual and tried not to scream.
They were now upstairs in the Mentor's private chambers, most of them bundled into dressing gowns and trying not to notice just how cold the room was. By now, it was almost dawn, and Elphaba was beginning to regret this expedition: quite apart from the glacial temperature, all of them were missing out on the perfect opportunity for a hot breakfast or at the very least a few hours of extra sleep. By comparison, another hour spent arguing with the Mentor almost wasn't worth the effort. But this had to be done, for the sake of Glinda's sanity if not Elphaba's: they had to make the Mentor see reason.
"Why exactly does Glinda need to experience these dream-memories?" Elphaba continued. "Why does she need to keep taking the pills?"
"Because she will learn everything I learned over the years: spells, tactical information, research data – everything. Glinda, have you forgotten anything you've seen in the dream-memories?"
"No," said Glinda. "Unfortunately. I remember seeing a lot of spellcasting technique and incantations written in books, but-"
"You see?" the Mentor interjected. "With that information, you have the potential to enhance your skills a thousandfold: you can be a master witch, an expert strategist, a political tactician, anything. Imagine your powers in battle! Most of the Amorphous League members have no skill in magic to speak of; imagine how effective you could be in battle if you could use my magical expertise alongside your shapeshifting powers!"
Elphaba eyed her dubiously. "And it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that you might want her to adopt your perspectives as well, would it?"
"… I beg your pardon?"
"You've been giving Glinda private tuition, Mentor; you've been whispering in her ears, telling your version of events, getting her used to idea of commit war crimes for the greater good. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the dream pills you've been giving her was for the same reason: you want a protégé, maybe even a successor when you finally kick it – and who better that a younger version of yourself. So you give her the pills, allow her to remember everything you experience – especially the moment when the Empress orders your son killed and your daughter kidnapped. So, when the time comes, you've got an heir who won't hold back. Doesn't that sound just the tiniest bit plausible?"
The Mentor didn't even dignify this with a direct response. "What brought this on, Elphaba?" she asked instead.
"We both had trouble recovering our own identities when we woke up this time around. What if that was what you'd intended, just so you could make Glinda sympathize with the things you've done-"
"What I've done was solely to preserve the Deviant Nations, as you well know-"
"Apart from all the things you did for the sake of revenge? I mean, hexing children is a step too far-"
"They would have been brought up to be just like the Empress; they would have grown up as living saints of Unbridled Radiance. Now, they are ineligible to take the throne when we finally slay the Empress-"
"And that justifies creating a situation that might have ended up killing both of them if the Empress hadn't decided to erase the memories of her people? And let's not forget what prompted you to do this in the first place: the Empress took your children away, so you decided to take her daughters from her in return. That was revenge, plain and simple-"
"That's enough, Elphaba,"the Mentor hissed. Her face was almost completely impassive by now, her voice no louder than a whisper, but every word was like a blade being slowly sharped against a whetstone.
"Why? Am starting to actually make sense, or do I need more examples? Like how-"
A loud thud from the doorway abruptly cut off any further conversation; a moment later, the door swung open, and Dr Kiln staggered in, stark white with shock and glistening with cold sweat. His coat was unbuttoned, his shoes were on the wrong feet, his spectacles were askew, and his snakelike fingers were practically tying themselves in knots. All in all, the perfect picture of blind terror.
"Sorry to interrupt," he panted, "but this is officially an emergency: the dream pills prescriptions are to be cancelled immediately, and both Glinda and Elphaba need to be placed on psychic nullifiers ASAFP."
"What did I tell you," said Elphaba triumphantly. "We are getting off the dream pills, Mentor: end of story."
"I'd like some more information first."
"Oh for Lurline's sake! You've got the personal testimony of your own private physician – what more do you need?"
"Reasons for this sudden change in perspective would help."
"What, you don't trust him all of a sudden?"
"No, but I'd like an explanation for why a perfectly functional plan is suddenly no longer possible, preferably before the temperamental twenty-something decides to jump the gun."
Somewhere in the background, Dr Kiln coughed for attention. "Um, if I could just borrow your attention for a moment-"
"You know what your problem is, Mentor? You've gotten so used to being obeyed without question, you don't know what to do when people actually have a good reason to dispute your orders. In your old age, you've gone right back into spoiled brat mode-"
"Hey!"
"Sorry, Glinda. But the point stands: you're so determined to do things your way, so convinced that solution is the only way that'll work, you don't really listen to anyone, do you?"
"If I could just say-"
"It's one thing after another," Elphaba plunged onwards, heedless of the voice in the background. "First this bullcrap about the parasite and now this!"
The Mentor just rolled her eyes. "And the last time you started talking like this, Elphaba, you nearly tore your hand open."
"You've always got an easy response on hand, haven't you?"
"Call it one of the benefits of my many years of experience in dealing with grouchy young people who insist on not acting their age."
"Oh, you smug bitch."
"Also, I know your temper, Elphaba. I might not have seen it for nearly fifty years, but it's a little hard not to remember how your angry rants go."
"Would anyone like to hear what I've got to say? Anyone?"
"That might explain why you sent a spy to look after me. Remember that, Your Trustworthiness? And now you wonder why I'm trouble trusting you from time to-"
As the argument skidded back and forth across the room, Glinda stood up, straightened her dressing gown, and transformed: her chest expanded as new lungs blossomed inside her gargantuan ribcage, her throat clustered with amplifying organs, her jaws gaped open wider and wider until it hung down to her knees. Then, she steadied herself against the wall, took a breath that made dust bunnies vanish from shelves on the other side of the room, and let out a foghorn-like bellow of "QUIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!"
There was a pause, as the echoes slowly died away and Glinda returned to normal.
"Sorry," she said at last, "But I really don't like it when you two argue. You were saying, Dr Kiln?"
Kiln coughed nervously. "Well, I've been running experiments on the samples I took from Elphaba yesterday, and I've found a number of anomalous signs within the psychic impressions. I wasn't sure what to make of them at first, but then I consulted some of our ersatz experts on dimensional synchronization and eventually began a few low-scale simulation tests. Not all of them are conclusive, but the ones that did generate coherent results are extremely worrying."
"So you're saying that what I've been experiencing is all due to dimensional synch?" Elphaba asked.
"Primarily, yes. It seems that I was a little overhasty in my assessment when we reviewed the case of Dorothy and the Hellion: as always, when a subject finds themselves in a universe in which a another version of them exists, the universe attempts to assimilate them, but cannot deal with the paradox of two versions of the same person existing within the same dimension – so the memory synch occurs as a compromise. Initially, I believed that Dorothy's reaction to the Hellion's death was the worst possible reaction that could occur if the native counterpart died: rejection syndrome, psychic trauma, attempted adoption of the subject's physical traits… but unfortunately, it seems as though this might be the most optimistic result of complete synchronization."
"…what the hell are you talking about, Kiln?"
"Beforehand, I said you and the Empress were so physically similar that, if you did kill her, you would not experience any rejection syndrome; I believed that her psyche would simply pass through yours and leave no trace within your conscious mind. But now… it seems you're a little more similar that I anticipated – mentally, I mean."
"But we're nothing alike!" Elphaba exploded. "She's an egotistical despot with a god complex and an obsession with making society 'perfect' – how are we even remotely alike in terms of personalities?"
"If I can put this delicately, her personality is a corruption of yours: you're both fiercely intelligent; you often believe yourselves to be wiser and better-informed than others; you care very deeply for those dependent on you, not always for valid reasons; you both crusaded extensively for your beliefs without compromising, constantly sacrificing for what you believed to be right at your own expense; you even put yourself on something of a pedestal for a while, don't forget. It's just that where she has a god complex, you have a messiah complex."
"Excuse me?!"
"Alright, a hero complex."
"Better."
"Also, the Empress even has a bit of your old temper; it's heavily suppressed by Morrible's alterations, but it's there. My point is, she's not like the Mentor or the Hellion or Leoverus or me: she's reinvented herself, but not so extensively as to become totally unrecognizable. You can see traces of who she once was. And that's why you and the Empress are becoming much more synchronized than ever before: you're so much alike that your assimilation into this universe is progressing faster and easier than any other test subject on record. Your fugue states are due to your counterpart's unconscious mind beginning to merge with your own – so potent as to emerge independent of dream states. And that's why Elphaba needs to be on nullifier drugs as quickly as possible, if only to prevent the immediate side-effects from becoming dangerous: if Elphaba can experience the Empress' memories while still awake, what might happen if the Empress begins to experience them as well? What if she begins hearing your thoughts while fully conscious as well? I still don't know the full extent of how the two might psychically merge... but it's not going to be good for us, one way or the other."
There was a horrified pause.
"What'll happen if the Empress dies?" Glinda asked, clearly not wanting to know the answer. "Assuming we can actually find a way of killing her, will that mean that Elphaba dies as well?"
"No… but current projections suggest that if Elphaba is so similar to counterpart as to avoid rejection syndrome once fully assimilated into this universe, the mind of the Empress will spread like a cancer into her personality, converting her mind into an exact replica of her own."
This time, the silence that followed was nothing short of funereal.
"I'm not sure how long it would take – maybe seconds, maybe a few months… but whatever the case, the result is the same. And for time being, there's nothing we can do to stop it."
"You mean-"
"I'm afraid so," said Kiln, gravely. "We would kill the Empress… only for her to take over Elphaba's mind and start all over again."
A/N: How's that for a cliffhanger line? Any guesses as to how this might be resolved? Let me know!