A/N: Argh! Sorry I'm a little late, ladies and gentlemen, but the last few days have been nothing short of knackering. Worse still, I've been consumed with bizarre ideas for Halloween stories, and there's nothing worse than having a ridiculous idea rattling around your head when you're trying to bloody concentrate on a straightforward story.
But anyway, enough of my nonsense: without further ado... the latest story! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Wicked is still not mine.
Soon...
The Mistress of Mirrors blinked in confusion.
She'd only just gotten back to her house to review her latest batch of findings, and none of it was looking good. By now, she was fully aware that something was definitely going horribly wrong in Exemplar: though the Empress had been able to block her influence throughout the restricted areas, she was still able to pick up a few whispers about those regions, and in the past few hours, she'd learned just enough to realize that something very, very bad was about to happen – a full-scale offensive targeted at Greenspectre, if she was right.
Whatever the case, Elphaba and the Mentor had to be warned.
But for some reason, the mirrors weren't receiving anything: she could send messages to Greenspectre easily enough, but for some reason, it seemed as though none of the mirrors could pick up on her broadcast. All she could see or hear from any of the looking glasses scattered across the city was an endless mass of swirling mist, the magical equivalent of radio static.
"What the hell is going on?" she demanded of nobody in particular.
As if in answering, there was a girlish titter from the other side of the mirror; amidst the smoke and fog that had consumed her view, a familiar face appeared, grinning hatefully as it looked out at her. Even with the obscuring mass of fog in the way, there was no mistaking the Empress.
Fortunately, Nessa was still wearing her hood, so if the Empress really could see her, she wouldn't recognize her… but how had she figured out how to interdict her link to the mirrors? And why had she chosen to do so now rather than any other time?
Once again, it seemed as if the Empress was determined to answer the question for her unprompted. Without saying a word, the spectral figure of her sister reached out and began daubing a message in the moisture condensing on the opposite side of the glass.
As soon as she was finished, she smirked, blew a kiss, and gave a little mocking wave goodbye.
Then she was gone, leaving only the message behind:
): REH EES I NEHW SLLEWERAF DNOF RUOY ABAHPLE EVIG LL'I ?EW ERA ,REVELC OS TON
"Oh shit…"
Colonel Gloss hummed pleasantly to himself as he deposited the last of the day's mess in an oilskin bag and stuffed it into a corner of the room. By now, there was quite a sizeable pile of the bags over there, but they looked almost identical to the standard equipment kits carried by all the mercenary sappers, so they wouldn't raise any suspicion if someone happened to look inside the room.
Plus, none of them leaked.
Officially, they were here to move the "unknown materials" to a secure facility outside Greenspectre, as proven by the signed affidavit from the Mentor. In reality, the Mentor had signed no such document, and the materials were supposed to remain under lock and key until qualified experts had the time to properly examine them, but nobody would know that unless they could recognize that the orders had been forged. For good measure, Gloss had made sure that the guards at the door had no time to report his entry. It hadn't strictly been necessary to kill the two men any more than it had been necessary to butcher their carcasses, but it certainly cut down on the number of potential loose ends, and their faces proved effective disguises once his team's mage-surgeon was finished with them.
While the masked watchmen maintained their post outside the doors, Gloss and the rest of his team were free to complete the mission the Empress had assigned them. There were only fifteen of them assigned to this job, but frankly, they wouldn't need much to properly assemble the "Gift Basket"; even if the Empress hadn't provided detailed instructions, from what little Gloss could see of the various components, they all slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Already, his mutineers had finished unloading components of the Gift Basket from their various crates and were now in the process of fitting them into place. All they needed was perhaps an hour or two to assemble everything, a little waiting time, a tiny spark of magic as soon as the Empress provided the signal, and everything would be ready to go.
There were more than five hundred members of the Strangling Coils just waiting for Gloss to give the word, and hundreds more ready to fall in line as soon as they saw the way the wind was blowing; the discontented added up to over a third of the entire mercenary company, all of them bitter and seething over the temporary pay cut that Branderstove had imposed while he secured additional lucre. With faith in the Leviathan slowly dwindling as the conflict dragged on, any undecided troops would quickly turn on him once it became clear that a mutiny was in progress. There were still loyalists, admittedly, but with most of them on shore leave and away from the airships, they wouldn't pose much of a problem as soon as the mutineer gunners opened fire.
As for Branderstove himself, Gloss had something very special planned for the Leviathan. It wasn't for the sake of vengeance, though: he'd long ago learned that revenge cost too much and paid too little to be worthy of his time… but he'd always wondered how he'd kill Branderstove if he ever had the chance to murder him with zero repercussions, and after all the late nights he'd spent pondering the matter over the last few years, it would be a terrible shame if he passed up on this beautiful opportunity.
Thankfully, he had a harpoon cannon readied just for such an occasion such as this.
Humming contentedly to himself, he sat down with the other members of his team and began assembling the Gift Basket, singing a merry tune as he went to work. Of course, it was no ordinary song, but one that seemed only fitting for the occasion: he'd first heard the tune from Karl, who'd supposedly been a singer back in his home country before the portal storms gobbled him up and spat him out in No-Man's Land with the rest of the Noplace people; as a mercenary, Karl had been fair-to-middling – hence why Gloss hadn't been too troubled when the need arose for the unfortunate singer to be stabbed to death and fed through a woodchipper – but when it came to music, there'd been nobody better in the Strangling Coils. He'd called this song Die Forelle – The Trout – and it was only appropriate that Gloss now purred his way through the melody as he went to work, thinking all the while of what he had in store for the Leviathan.
"In einem Bächlein helle, Da schoß in froher Eil; Die launische Forelle Vorüber wie ein Pfeil…"
"I still can't see how you can be me," Boq sighed.
Kiln looked up from his work with amusement, eyeing his counterpart with the same brand of good-humoured condescension used for idiot younger brothers all over the world. He'd been preoccupied with several dozen things at once – from calculating the precise dosage of potion they'd need for the Empress to preparing the next round of treatments for the Mentor – and the question had briefly surprised him, though not enough to catch him completely off-guard: Boq had been standing in the corner of his lab for almost fifteen minutes by now, and Kiln knew that the tin man wouldn't be able to remain completely silent with so many obvious questions on his mind; his other self might have been quite literally heartless and doubtlessly felt the same way in a figurative sense, but he wasn't without emotions. After all, he'd gone to the trouble of traipsing all the way back to Kiln's private rooms after his business at the armourers was complete and staying there throughout the conference until Kiln was finished there. Obviously, he had something on his mind.
"I mean, I've seen your memories in my dreams and everything; I've seen most of your life so far, give or take a few blank spots, but I still can't see how someone like me could become… well, someone like you."
"We're not as different as you think, Boq," said Kiln. "I might have changed myself so much that I can't really use the same name in good conscience, but I've still got a few of the old mannerisms and idiosyncrasies hanging around, even after all this time: I still get a little nervous at times, I still stutter every now and again, I occasionally end up dancing around the truth more than I like, and I tend to work best in a support role because I know I'm never going to be suited to the position of leader. The fact that I've altered my face and reinvented myself doesn't change the fact that we were once the same people; no matter how much you transform your life, you can't help but bring a few scraps of your old identity with you."
"But how did you change so much? It can't have all been due to what the Empress did to you, so what was it?"
Kiln shrugged. "Perhaps my relationship with Nessa; perhaps the long-term effects of my time as a chameleon during the Plague of Transformations; or maybe it was just my years of experience in the Pottery – learning from the best mage-surgeon left in Oz, gaining prestige, gaining friends… and then having to abandon it all once I realized how wrong I'd been. Experiences change us, as you should probably know well enough by now. But I suppose you want to know how I made the leap from saying to myself "this is wrong" to actually doing something about it, yes?"
"That'd help, yes. There's still a few gaps in the story, probably because I didn't have dream-pills to help see what was happening: sometimes I could see what you were seeing, and sometimes I could hear what you were thinking, but not at the same time. So how did you just… jump into the operating theatre and rescue the Mentor?"
"Easily: as soon as I realized that I'd been wrong – that Nessa and I couldn't be a party to what Unbridled Radiance was doing – I promised myself I was going to do something when I next had the opportunity, and when my moment finally arrived, I reacted before I could stop myself."
There was a deathly pause, as the tin man's expression swung from bemusement to utter contempt.
"How is it so easy for you to do the right thing?" There was a note of bitterness in Boq's voice now. "I tried to tell Nessa that I didn't love her, that Glinda had told me to date her that night, but I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth. I thought I was doing the right thing by not breaking her heart, but I only ended up making things worse. I tried to tell Nessa I'd lied to her, but she didn't listen to me! I tried to tell her that she wasn't going to improve anything by changing the laws just to keep me with her, but she didn't care! And I know you had to live with more or less the same things I did, so what made it easy for you to go right when I went wrong?"
"It wasn't easy at all, Boq: I was a pawn of the Empress, as you well know. I'd been a loyal member of the Pottery for years on end by the time by the time I finally realized that we weren't really helping anyone. Everything had been stage-managed by the Empress to make sure that none of us ever realized just how much damage we were doing to society or how many innocent people were being hurt because of our work. When you spend all your life in an underground lab, it's easy to remain ignorant, but the Empress made sure that none of us knew how our inventions and discoveries were being used by the Empire: she censored all the incoming information, made it look as rosy as possible so that us researchers would believe that our work was genuinely helping others, and anyone who knew otherwise was usually too heavily indoctrinated to say otherwise. The only reason I discovered the truth was because I was secretly carrying on a relationship with Nessa. Most of us didn't have friends outside the Pottery, and any communication with the outside world was strictly monitored. Nessa and I met in secret and could exchange details without them being censored… and that was how I first realized that the Pottery was never going to help anyone as long as the Empress was in power."
"In other words, the only real difference between us is luck. You got all of it and I got none."
"Come now, it's nowhere near as simple as that-"
"Yes it is!" Boq shrieked. "You just said that the only reason you realized that Unbridled Radiance was up to no good was because you were getting cosy with Nessa, and the only reason that happened was because she found out who you really were, and the only reason that happened was because you happened to meet her at that party! And let's not forget that the only reason you ended up in the Pottery to begin with is because this Other Elphaba decided she didn't need you hanging around Nessa; if that hadn't happened, you'd still be Nessa's slave!So once again, the only reason you aren't like me or worse is because of undeserved luck!"
He stopped and took a deep and largely unnecessary breath. "You screwed up just as much as I did," he said at last. "You were just as obsessed with Glinda as I was before the Empress snatched you up – and after that, you got obsessed with mage-surgery down in the think-tank. So if there's no luck involved, how did you end up getting saddled with the plum job while I ended up going from indentured servant to wandering freakshow? How did you manage to get everything while I got nothing?"
There was a deathly pause; for almost a minute, the two stood in perfect silence. Had anyone been observing the two from the opposite end of the room, the differences between the counterparts would have been utterly impossible to ignore: Boq – short, skinny and silvery, unnaturally tall by Munchkin standards but unimpressive by the standards of virtually everyone else, his ungainly tin body and angular metal face practically rattling with aggression; Kiln – tall, slender and bald, remade to the point of being unrecognizable, long fingers swirling fluidly through the air like a nest of snakes.
In the end, it was Kiln who broke the silence: "How's the repair work on your brains, by the way?" he asked, airily.
Boq could only fume for a moment. "First, the armourer says the last of the rust was cleared away just fine. Second, don't change the subject."
The mage-surgeon sighed deeply. "I could say that it was a matter of timing and a willingness to do the right thing, but I doubt you're in the mood to be chided right now. I could say that it was because I was able to listen – or at the very least to assign blame to those truly responsible – but I'm pretty sure you don't need anyone else bitching at you for past mistakes. As long as you're done lashing out in rage, I am most definitely not judging you."
"That's good to hear."
"As I said, I am totally not judging you for lashing out in impotent rage at all the failures in your life and failing to account for your own mistakes. I'm not saying that your traumatic metamorphosis and ensuing brain damage doesn't totally absolve you of blame. I'm not accusing you of bringing your own misfortunes on yourself, or of wallowing in a toxic mixture of self-pity and self-loathing. Nor am I in any way criticizing you for aiding the government that did absolutely nothing about the plight of Munchkins while Nessa spiralled into insanity because of your completely thoughtless attempt to get into Glinda's panties." Kiln smiled, his face a mask of perfect innocence. "I'm not even judging you for your most egregious act – blaming the only person who tried to help you and leading a witch-hunt against her while she was in mourning for Fiyero. Like I said, I'm not blaming you in the slightest."
"…I get the distinct impression that I'm being picked on."
"That's the downside of being my interdimensional counterpart, Boq: I know exactly what pisses you off."
Boq took an even deeper and even more unnecessary breath. "Could you please just stop screwing around and give me a constructive answer? Please?"
"Like I said, I'm not going to go over all the things you could have done to set things right when you had the chance. But I will say this much: you say you've lost everything – but when you get right down to it, you haven't."
"So… my friends, my family, my job prospects, my life savings, my purpose in life, my self-respect, my heart and my body don't count?"
"You have friends, Boq: you've got Dorothy, Brr and Fiyero. You found a new purpose in life by protecting Dorothy." He paused, then added, "And by hunting down Elphaba, but that's another story. You learned to respect yourself as the Tin Man, and don't pretend otherwise: I've seen your memories, don't forget. As for your body, you never liked that anyway. You enjoy your strength and resilience, Boq; even your rage can't disguise that. And the loss of your heart hasn't inconvenienced you in any way, least of all in terms of your emotions; that's your own monumental self-loathing. So really, the only thing you've lost is Glinda… and to be brutally honest, she was never yours to begin with."
For a moment or so, Boq almost looked as if he was going to argue. But then he stopped and seemed to sag. "I always hoped that I could make her see that I was the right man for her," he sighed. "I just… I thought she'd understand if I was persistent enough, if I proved how devoted I was, and that I was more dutiful than any of the other suitors. I mean, I couldn't get her to even notice me for most of our time at Shiz, sure, but I thought that if I just stuck to my guns, it'd all work out in the end. Even after I became the tin man, I secretly always hoped that Glinda could turn me back into a Munchkin and realize we were perfect together."
"The world doesn't work that way, Boq. Pining endlessly after a woman who isn't interested won't magically change her mind and being obsessive doesn't make you a romantic or a good person. But if I can give you some advice that you probably don't really want, it's this: no matter what you think, there will always be people who are willing to love you for who you are, not who you could be if only life were perfect." He paused, and added, "Nessa was one of them."
"So it's too late for me, is that what you're saying? I've blown all my chances to be in love with someone who cared about me?"
"Not in the slightest. You notice how I wasn't talking in past tense for any point? Even the most hateful people in the world can find people who can love them. Why else do you think you've still got friends even after your madness? And if you think your new state of being makes you repulsive, then you obviously haven't toured the local dating scene. I've met Irredeemables who've remade themselves so thoroughly that you could barely mistake them for human beings, and they still manage to find people willing to commit themselves to them; I can actually introduce you to the ones who've settled down and started families if you like."
"I'd be a lot happier if I knew what the hell I was going to do once all this is over and everyone's gone home to Oz or Kansas or wherever. I mean, my job of playing bodyguard to everyone will be over, so what good will I be?"
"Some more unwanted advice, then. The worst mistake you can make is to assume that your life is over, or that it's been completely squandered, because if there's one thing I learned, it's this: it's never too late to do something new."
"But how am I supposed to start?" Boq demanded. "Right now, I'm just trailing after everyone, coasting along with no clue what to do with my life; you're saying I need to find something – or someone – new. But where am I supposed to begin, Mr Genius?"
Kiln considered this for a minute, but eventually realized he had no answer that could possibly mollify Boq under the circumstances. Eventually, he asked, "Can you still eat and drink?"
"Uh… yes. I mean, I can still chew and swallow, but it doesn't taste of much. I don't know where it all goes, and I'm not sure I want to."
"Can you get drunk?"
"…I don't know, I've never tried."
"Then I think this would be our cue to get shitfaced. You take a seat while I get the glasses and booze; I'm pretty sure I've still got a bottle of Magnivore's Old Homicidal around here…"
Somewhere under Exemplar, in the stygian darkness of a holding cell not far from the brightly-lit chambers of the Creche, the little girl who was once known as Madame Morrible seethed in rage.
She'd been in here for well over a month, and still the Empress showed no sign that she was ever going to let her out; frankly, it was beginning to wear on her even more than the already-humiliating process of regressing and progressing back and forth across her life. Here, there was no light except for the tiny self-extinguishing candles provided with meals, "the better to teach the inmates how to treasure the healing glow of Unbridled Radiance." Here, her only luxuries were a bed, a toilet, a washbasin, and the occasional pre-recorded sermon piped in through the PA system. Here, there was no company: nobody would speak to her, not even when the little hatch in the door opened to admit her meals; contact with the other inmates of the solitary confinement block was strictly forbidden – not that any of them would have anything worth saying after years of imprisonment.
About the only upside to this situation was that Morrible couldn't see herself transform. Here in the pitch-black gloom, she couldn't see the humiliating sight of her body shrinking down into her clothes and expanding back to adulthood again. No, all she had to deal with was feeling it.
In the last few weeks, she'd been all ages: she'd been a young woman, she'd been a child, she'd been an adult, she'd been a toddler, she'd been a teenager, and for a few seconds, she'd even been her old self – before regression took hold of her again and shrank her back into infancy. Fortunately, the cells were equipped with automated measures to make sure that terminally-regressed members of the Creche didn't die of neglect: robot arms had attended her in the dark for the next few days, changing her, feeding her, cradling her and treating her as if she really was just a baby. And when she finally aged back into childhood and the arms had retreated back into the walls, Morrible had felt her sense of identity erode just a tiny bit further.
But she hadn't lost her mind just yet. She could tell that the work was still progressing out there, could hear it from the rumble and mutter just beyond the solitary confinement block: the Childlike Researchers would soon deliver Elphaba her greatest victory yet… but even if the offensive failed, there would still be a thousand other reasons for the Empress to continue her visits to the Creche. After all, her good-for-nothing daughters were still hidden away, just beyond the ranks of permanent residents; oh, the Empress liked to think that she'd kept the existence of her freakish daughters and the permanently-imprisoned researchers a secret… but Morrible was cleverer than anyone dared realize.
Less than twenty feet away lurked the heavily-soundproofed bulk of the solitary confinement block's hidden high-security wing: the magicians and scientists permanently interred here knew of magic that the enchantments around the Creche could not suppress, forbidden spells and techniques that had empowered them beyond the abilities of any Childlike Researcher, and it had once been the ambition of every resident of the Creche who was "in the know" to learn their secret. Unfortunately, the handful of researchers who'd been aware of all this had been slowly weathered away over the years, continuous regressions eating away at their memories and personalities just as it had the others; one by one, Morrible's secret partners in crime had succumbed to their conditions and became ordinary children – children with talents only found in adult magicians and a pronounced tendency to randomly change ages, but children nonetheless. Handerson had been the last to go, weeping helplessly over his lost adulthood and sucking pathetically on his thumb as the last of his identity bled away. Now, Morrible was the only researcher left who still knew the secret… and in the months leading up to her latest spell in solitary, she'd been forced to make use of it in order to save her mind.
It had taken everything in Morrible's not-insubstantial repertoire of dirty tricks and stretched her magical talents to their very limits, but she'd managed to send a few well-disguised notes into the hidden wing. After several false starts in which she'd only managed to contact the lesser talents on that wing, she'd finally made contact with the most heinous of all the inmates, the researchers who'd done the most to earn their eternal disgrace.
They called themselves Life-Eaters, but everyone else called them age vampires, and they had magically outfitted themselves with proboscis-like mouthparts, the better to feast upon every last drop of power their victims possessed. Empowered by this siphoned energy, they had been able to temporarily age themselves back into adulthood and gain enough thaumaturgical strength to resist the Creche's anti-magical enchantments. They might have even managed to escape if the Empress hadn't gotten involved: as punishment for the regressing deaths of no less than thirteen orderlies and the most egregious deliberate self-Distortion ever recorded within Unbridled Radiance, all three of them had been permanently banished to the high-security wing.
Morrible had been smarter than them, though. She'd learned their secrets, but she'd kept her knowledge concealed until she had mastered her new powers. By now, she knew that the energy of magicians would not fade away as readily as that of other victims, but could be sustained indefinity within the body of a Life-Eater; the more powerful the magician, the more potent the feeding… and who was more powerful than the Radiant Empress herself?
Best of all, if fed upon the right way, it might even be possible to assimilate the victim's appearance – temporarily or permanently.
The moment she'd realized this, Morrible had struggled with the effort of waiting. Not only would she have a chance to regain her dignity and power, but if she fed correctly, she could seize control of Unbridled Radiance itself! But of course, if she acted too soon her efforts would have been for nothing, and so she was forced to keep her ambitions shackled until the perfect opportunity presented itself.
Her unwanted imprisonment had done her an unexpected favour: as soon as she was let out of this cell, the opportunity would be waiting for her. After all, the Empress would probably want to make a great show of magnanimousness by personally letting her out of solitary. Lurline only knew the hateful little shit would probably expect Morrible to be crying and clinging to Elphaba's skirts, promising never to be bad ever again – and that would be the perfect moment to strike.
Of course, it was not without risk. Her main advantage lay in the element of surprise, in being able to fasten onto her host before she knew what was happening and feed on enough of the Empress's strength to fully overpower her. If Morrible mistimed her attack even slightly, the proboscis would fasten on nothing – or worse still, the Empress might be able to fight her off. And then Morrible would end up banished to the maximum-security wing with the rest of the Life-Eaters.
But this was one risk that Morrible simply couldn't afford not to take. After all, if she didn't grab the opportunity with both hands, not only would she lose her mind and become a child, but she'd end up spending the rest of her life trapped in an increasingly crowed nursery with far too many strangers.
After all, she already knew what the Empress had done to her children once they were in solitary – and she knew that the Empress didn't get this far in life by wasting resources.
So for the time being, Morrible would sit here in the darkness, marshal her strength… and wait until her prey finally emerged. Her new proboscis flickered at the back of her throat, flexing with anticipation as she imagined the feast of life force that would soon be hers…
"…And then the commander gives me this look as if I've just sprouted a fourth head, and he says 'you honestly expect me to believe that? I'll need some credentials if you want to pass, or else I'll have you shot as a spy.' See, he's obviously heard about shapeshifters infiltrating the border garrisons, and even if he doesn't have any of Unbridled Radiance's detectors yet, this officious little bastard's going to make it hard for us as possible. Trouble is, he hasn't counted on us having seen the credentials we'd need in advance, and he doesn't know what we'd learned to do just that year: as far as he can tell, I've stuck my hand in my pocket and brought out my ID for him to study… but the poor idiot doesn't realize that I've grown the ID card out of my own body, detached it from my palm and given it to him right then and there. He's holding the card, he's studying it under the light, he's giving it a scan with his fancy little barcode reader, and he doesn't realize that he's holding a piece of my own damn body in his hands. And then I see that the others are creeping over the perimeter fence: they've finally arrived to rescue me. So, obviously this whole masquerade has been a complete waste of time, so I think 'why not have a little fun?' So, I take control of the fake ID card, and make it pulsate in the commander's hand – just once – and suddenly he's staring down in terror at this card bulging and thudding in his hand like a disembodied heart and… oh, Brr, didn't hear you come in. Join us, by all means!"
The Lion froze.
Discharged from Dr Kiln's surgery less than an hour ago, he'd been aimlessly wandering the palace, unable to make up his mind on what to do with his copious spare time: Dorothy was having a lie-down, Elphaba and the Mentor were in conference, Dr Kiln was busy hashing things out with the Tin Man, Fiyero was undergoing repairs, and Glinda was having a friendly sparring session with one of the shapeshifters-in-training somewhere above the palace with Chistery refereeing. Alone for the time being, Brr had ping-ponged wildly between the archives, the kitchens and the exit, his mind too preoccupied to make a decision – until he'd unexpectedly stumbled into the parlour.
A leftover from the days when Greenspectre Palace had belonged to the Wizard, the room was a ridiculously plush assemblage of soft couches, mahogany coffee tables, cushioned divans, and ankle-deep rugs. Given that the Mentor had little taste for social gatherings in her old age and even less for excesses thanks to her health issues, the parlour hadn't seen much use in the last few decades. However, the arrival of the Amorphous League had changed everything: now that the palace was accommodating guests, the parlour was open for business again, and with close to a hundred and fifty new recruits in Greenspectre alone, the First of the Shapeless and their inner retinue were in the mood to celebrate.
Here and now, Brr's counterpart – currently an octopus from the waist down and a trio of humanoid forms from the waist up – held court over twenty fellow shapeshifters, all of them drinking, laughing and shapeshifting (often all at once). When he'd entered, Omber Landless had been flexing his/her newly-regained powers, making up for the many years spent undercover by transforming wildly from one shape to another at high speed, becoming a blur of shifting identities as the process picked up speed. Brr himself had been lurking in the doorway for almost ten minutes by now, watching the little party play out and wondering if he should intrude.
Now it seemed he had no choice.
Trembling like a leaf, he took a deep breath and stepped into the parlour, taking the offered seat beside Leoverus as the revels went on. For perhaps five minutes, Brr sat in silence, paralysed by nerves and not knowing what to say.
Eventually, he blurted out, "So you're my other self? You're me in this world?"
As Brr silently kicked himself for asking such an asinine question, the First of the Shapeless nodded, a grin at least five feet wide gracing one of their many faces. "Is it really so surprising, after everything you've seen so far since awakening from your coma?"
"Well, it has been pretty crazy out there: Glinda as a hard-bitten revolutionary leader, the Tin Man as some crazy scientist/magician/doctor, Oz destroyed and split into two warring nations… but this is something else. I mean, how did you get so relaxed about everything? I mean, I've seen how you changed over time, but I still can't believe it."
"Cowardice is actually a lot easier to discard than you might think, believe it or not: all you need is something to make you forget about your anxieties, something to devote yourself to. And if all else fails, years of time and effort help as well. But surely that's not your only query? After all, I know from personal experience that you're a lot more inquisitive than you look."
Brr thought for a moment. "I did have one serious question," he admitted, "but – well, it sounded kind of stupid the more I thought about it.
"There's no need to be shy around me, Brr. You can ask me anything you like."
"It's just that I've been seeing bits and pieces of your life in my dreams all this time, and I might not have seen all of it, but I can tell that you've been doing some serious living. You've been everywhere and done everything, you've been everything from a soldier to a rodeo clown, you've written articles for about a dozen newspapers, you've represented people in court, and I'm pretty sure you successfully posed as a magician for a little while. There's just one thing I haven't seen, and I don't know if it's because I wasn't taking the dream pills or because it didn't happen, but I haven't seen head nor tail of it."
"What's that?"
"Family."
Instantly, the atmosphere cooled: even if he hadn't been able to see the suddenly-sober look on the First of the Shapeless' face, Brr could feel the ambient temperature drop by about ten degrees. Suddenly, nobody was laughing, and the murmur of other conversations was gone. Brr had obviously tapped into a very sensitive topic and judging by the dawning looks of shock around him, it was something that nobody had dared voice up until now. But he couldn't afford to stop now, not when he was trying so hard not to be overwhelmed by nerves: nobody had told him to stop yet, and nobody was angry with him; he couldn't afford to let his cowardice get the better of him now, not when he was getting close to answers.
So, he plunged on: "You've been travelling the world for something like thirty years, but did you ever think of settling down and having kids in all that time? Did you even get that close to anyone? Did you just… stay hidden and never reveal yourself?"
For the first time since the two of them had met, Leoverus looked genuinely subdued; their form changed only subtly now, rippling softly through only the slightest variations in form and colour.
"The only family I'd known since I reached adulthood was the Amorphous League," they said solemnly. "By then, most of my relatives had been killed or silenced in the Wizard's great purge of the Animal communities, and the survivors had all but disowned me." He offered a sad little smile. "Cowardice – or what they called cowardice – was unbecoming of a Lion, so I wasn't welcome among them. And anyway, once I ended up at the Pottery, I got to know my fellow shapeshifters better than I'd ever known my biological family. I'd guided them through many a troubled metamorphosis over the years, given them all the support they could need in their work; by the time we left Exemplar, we were as close as siblings. When the League was forced to split up in order to escape Unbridled Radiance, the only thing I could think about was being reunited with them, and when that wasn't possible, I had to settle for occasionally making contact with them via radio. So, for the most part, no, I didn't even consider settling down. But… I admit, there were moments when I was tempted."
"How so?"
"Being a fugitive's a lonely life, even more so when you can't reveal who you really are to others and your only contact with friends is the odd radio transmission once a year. So, perhaps five or six times during my exile, I got attached to some of the people in whatever life I'd built for myself. I won't pretend that I kept my hands off women – or men – at other times; after all, becoming a shapeshifter doesn't mean committing yourself to self-denial. But my point is that usually, the relationships were brief, for lack of a better word: both parties were lonely, the work we did was usually quite stressful, and sex was a little bit healthier than drinking or drugs. But every now and again… I thought of settling down and having children."
"And, uh…" Brr tried very hard not to blush. "You're, um… capable of that? As a shapeshifter, I mean?"
"In more ways than one. As you probably know by now, those of us who've achieved Shapelessness are outside the commonly-held notions of gender: through careful shapeshifting, I'm capable of both fathering children and becoming pregnant if I so desire; I'm even capable of more elaborate forms of reproduction, like sporing or amplexus. You might find it hard to believe, but I once spent a year as a flower out in the meadows beyond Unbridled Radiance, just waiting to be pollinated. I could have been the perfect husband or the perfect wife to any one of the few who'd caught my eye, satisfying them in every way that mattered, giving them exactly the children they hoped for… but in the end, I realized it wouldn't be fair on them: I was living the life of a fugitive, always afraid that Unbridled Radiance might conquer the region and hunt me down, always ready to leave town at a moment's notice. If I married, I'd either have to break my spouse's heart by fleeing for my life or end up condemning them to death along with me; Unbridled Radiance doesn't look kindly on people who willingly share their beds with Distortions. So, I kept myself to myself until I was certain that I – and those I chose to commit myself to – would be safe."
Brr mulled this over for a moment, trying valiantly not to imagine his counterpart's sex life. "Well," he said at last, "Once this war's over, you'll have a chance to finally try, won't you? With Unbridled Radiance gone for good, there'll be nobody to stop you from just getting out there and becoming a parent."
"Unfortunately, no. That was the other thing discouraging me from committing myself to marriage and family."
"What do you mean? If you're capable-"
"If there's one thing I've always striven for, it's a measure of equality in my personal affairs. I didn't get into any committed relationships, but other League members haven't been quite so cautious… and unfortunately, their experiments in parenthood revealed that we can't pass on our shapeshifting traits to our children. In a few exceptionally rare cases, they've produced offspring who are possessed of a few shapeshifting powers, but they always died young. I don't want to foist dead children on my spouse, and I don't want my children to grow up consumed with resentment over what I couldn't share with them. It just wouldn't be fair."
"Oh come on, they wouldn't automatically resent you for something nobody could control. I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but-"
"Perhaps not, but it would still be a part of my life that would be forever inaccessible to my children until such time as they came of age and joined the League… and that's not the kind of society I want to create: I don't want us to become just another trite little brotherhood mindlessly passing its traditions to the next generation without passion or joy. I want the Amorphous League to be a sanctuary to those who cannot find satisfaction within the confines of a single unchanging form; I want it to be for people who sincerely want to transcend their flesh… and making it a tradition of bloodlines would undermine that."
Brr took a deep breath; confidence was still something he struggled with at the best of times, but for once, he felt he could actually manage a chiding tone: "I think you're overthinking this, Leoverus," he said flatly. "Who says they'll even be interested in becoming shapeshifters? Some will be, but not all of them. Not all kids want to grow up to be just like their parents. I mean, did you grow up to be a traditional Lion?"
Leoverus chuckled. "Touché."
"And besides, it's not like having them grow up without your powers is the first step to ruining their lives. We've both known people who've been born without their parents' strengths, people who've been handicapped in more ways than one, and they often go on to live rich and happy lives anyway – and they certainly don't resent their parents for it."
The First of the Shapeless regarded Brr with something almost like admiration. "And they still call you 'cowardly?'" they remarked.
"Well… I think I might have learned a little from my dreams."
"You make a good point, Brr. Perhaps I'm not entirely free of baseless anxieties after all… but still, I'd like to one day bring a child into this world with full knowledge of the freedom that it took so many decades for us to earn. It's likely an impossible dream, but… nobody ever said dreams had to be realistic."
But even as his counterpart said these words, the Lion couldn't help but wonder a bit: maybe it was some kind of sympathetic intuition developed over Lurline only knew how many dreams of the past he'd experienced, maybe it was just instinct, but Brr had the distinct impression that Leoverus already had some idea of exactly how they were going to make this impossible dream a reality. But of course, he'd no way of proving this – and besides, he'd been outspoken enough already; so, he decided to keep quiet for now.
"Enough of this melancholy nonsense!" Leoverus boomed. "Let's get back to the party – drinks all around! We've finally got something to celebrate, and I am not going to let little things like past misfortunes distract us: we are going to enjoy ourselves if it takes every last drop of booze in this city!"
The groundwork had been laid.
The preparations had been completed.
Now at last, their next great effort could proceed: Gloss and his mutineers had reassembled the Gift Backet within the palace, and their instruments were already detecting at least one more within the walls of Greenspectre – scattered, but easily assembled once the signal was given.
Under the Empress's direct supervision, the troops chosen for this venture had gathered in the single largest hall of the Deep Sepulchre, and all of them had been armed with only the best weaponry and assistance that Unbridled Radiance could possibly provide: gas mortars, specially-modified Vigilant Eyes, and some of the best magicians in the empire. In total, more than two thousand soldiers had been assembled in this hall alone – and they were barely a quarter of the army now being readied across Exemplar.
At the head of the hall, Lintel was making final preparations for the first of the two Gift Baskets: currently nine years old, he was just tall enough to chalk the necessary doorway on the wall and utter the necessary incantations.
"Ready when you are, Empress!" he squeaked proudly.
The Empress smiled. "Is the Execution Portal prepared as well?"
"At your command, Empress! We'll be ready to deploy it as soon as you've secured the target!"
"Good. Now, ladies and gentlemen, your orders are clear: destroy at will, but leave the target to me; do not damage the prize or the captive. I assume we need no further preparation, so let us begin…"
Elphaba sighed.
Hours had passed since the end of the conference, but it seemed as though the Mentor was determined to breathe as much life back into it as humanly possible before finally adjourning the damn thing. Elphaba would have thought that there'd be reason enough to take a break and relax, but the Mentor just couldn't take being given unambiguously good news: ever since then, she'd insisted that Elphaba remained behind and discuss strategies for the assassination of the Empress.
Admittedly, it was an important issue, but was there any reason why it had to be resolved right now? The industrial district was churning out gallons of the Amorphous League's potion every day, but for this mission, they'd need at least a ton of the stuff just to make sure the Empress absorbed a fatal dose. They'd need at least a day or two to cook up the exact quantities they needed.
Besides, a planning session like this would probably be better if the participants were fully rested and able to think straight: after Lurline only knew how many hours she'd toiled through insomnia, she was just about ready to drop, and the Mentor had to take some R&R at some point – even if it was only an afternoon nap. And besides, she needed to think of all the weird things she'd seen in her latest vision.
Then, just as she was starting to wonder if there would never be an end to this discussion, there was a vivid flash of light from somewhere outside the windows.
There was a stunned pause.
Then, it happened again.
For once in perfect unison, Elphaba and the Mentor hurried to the window just in time to see a third flash of light ripple across the city, emanating from somewhere at ground level.
"What the hell is that?" the Mentor demanded.
In the streets far below, a dazzling light had suddenly erupted from the middle of the plaza just outside the palace, a solid column of eye-scorching incandescence rising from the paving stones and extending all the way to the uppermost spires of Greenspectre. Already, several passers-by had stopped in their tracks and were staring in astonishment at the display, perhaps believing that it was some new bit of magic cooked up by one of the visitors to the city, or maybe just lulled into complacence by too many peaceful days in a row. By contrast, the savvier members of the crowd were already running for their lives.
As the column of light stretched ever-higher into the sky, there was a deafening clatter of metal from across the city, somehow audible even from this distance. Elphaba was at a loss as to figure out where it was coming from, but then something that looked vaguely like a roofing shingle went flying past the window – and from there it didn't take long to figure out the cause: dozens of tiny objects across the city had been swept into the air and were now being irresistibly drawn towards the light at the plaza.
The Mentor produced a telescopic lens from the depths of her prosthetic arm and Elphaba hastily cast a diagnostic spell or two, but they already knew what these strange metal oblongs were: Elphaba had seen one of them in Kiln's laboratory under examination scant hours ago; she'd seen dozens more being scattered across the Deviant Nations during the attempted air raid a month or so past, and the Mentor had locked up a whole stockpile of them downstairs, just waiting for examination.
But it seemed that whatever these strange tiles were, they weren't interested in waiting around to be examined. However far they'd been scattered across the city during the attack, they were in motion and all converging on the light at once, forming a shape at the centre of the plaza – a strange wheel-like configuration hovering just above the ground.
Too late, Elphaba realized what this was. In the end, there was only one thing it could be: hadn't Unbridled Radiance been working on this sort of thing near Loamlark? They'd been working with portable teleportation stones in order to transport their army north of the border, even used the same process to assemble a factory in their own camp so they could build the invasion fleet that Elphaba had destroyed. All this time, she'd thought that the fleet had been forced to improvise that day, that the only goal of the attack had been to make it as far as Greenspectre and blow it to pieces, decapitating the Deviant Nations in the process, and as for the tile-like objects that they'd been dispersing across the country, she'd assumed they'd been bombs or some other kind of weapon.
How wrong she'd been.
You cannot stop us, General Stellham had said, just before Elphaba had reduced him and his ship to molten slag. Even if you stop this… plans within plans within plans, remember?
Every step of the way, the invasion fleet had been dropping portable teleporters all over the Deviant Nations, trusting that they would serve as an effective backup plan if the mission to destroy Greenspectre failed, trusting that nobody would find them all before it was too late and that not even the shields around the Deviant Nations would be able to keep them out once they were activated.
And now…
With a blinding flash of light, the components finally finished assembling and erupted into a single glowing portal. But to Elphaba's horror, what emerged from it first wasn't a charging wave of enemy troops or even a hail of gunfire, but a billowing cloud of gas that swept across the plaza and across the city for several thousand yards, enveloping everyone on street level in its toxic depths.
Clarity.
Any Irredeemables who hadn't run for their lives immediately scrambled for their gasmasks (now required emergency gear for most of citizens). Those of them who weren't quick enough fell to the ground in droves, clawing at their skin and eyes in paroxysms of self-loathing. The unaltered humans in the crowd did their best to aid the wounded or call for help, but few had a chance to do so.
Next came a swarm of Vigilant Eyes – dozens of them: their blazing lenses tore through the crowd, incinerating anyone who hadn't already succumbed to the gas and maiming hundreds more. As the survivors fled the area in droves, a few of the Eyes remained behind to secure the beachhead; the rest swarmed onwards through the city, igniting storefronts, destroying vehicles and firing their lenses at anything that moved.
Only then, with the plaza clear, did the first troops finally emerge from the portal – thousands of them.
For the first time in decades, Unbridled Radiance had troops inside Greenspectre.
Less than seventeen floors below them, a lone sentry was hurrying down to the storeroom, late for his shift.
Given that there were no windows on this floor for several hundred yards, the sentry couldn't guess what could be causing all the commotion outside, but he needed to make sure that a guard was on duty at the storeroom. If he was needed elsewhere, he'd be contacted – and until then, it was his job to look after whatever the Mentor had locked away there.
As he rounded the corner, he immediately saw that the door to the storeroom was not only unattended but had actually been left open. Shaking his head in disappointment, he strode up to the door, reaching out to shut it – and as he did so, he happened to catch a brief glimpse of the room inside.
The sight instantly paralysed him on the spot.
By his own admission, he wasn't the brightest man in his unit, but he knew for a fact that giant glowing portholes should not be seen inside restricted areas of the palace, and more importantly, the men wearing those uniforms should not be on this side of the border, much less in this room. Hoping against hope that nobody had seen him, he shut the door as quietly as he could, turned around, and hurried for the stairs as quickly and quietly as he could.
He'd barely gone five steps when a solid wall of kinetic magic exploded from the storeroom, blasting the door to splinters and sending the lone sentry flying across the hall. Cartwheeling helplessly through the air, he flew for perhaps three seconds before he hit the opposite wall spine-first with a stomach-churning crunch. The pain was nothing short of incredible, his nervous system ablaze with white-hot fire as he slid down the wall, and by the time he collapsed all the way to the floor, he was nearly unconscious.
He couldn't have blacked out for more than a few seconds, but that had obviously been long enough for the occupants of the storeroom to begin filing out, for by the time he awoke, he was surrounded. From his position half-slumped across the wall and the floor, it was hard to see what was going on and he didn't seem to be able to move far enough to get a better look, but he could clearly recognize the immaculate white uniforms of Unbridled Radiance's guardsmen gleaming down at him, accompanied by the red-and-black fatigues of the Strangling Coils.
Furthermore, there was a strange light blazing from the ruins of the storeroom door, a stark pale glow that seemed to bleach the colour from everything it touched.
Then the crowd of guardsmen parted, and the light suddenly grew so harsh that the sentry could only shield his eyes as a human shape began marching briskly towards him. When it finally faded enough for him to see clearly, he found himself looking up into the eyes of the most unwelcome face in the world.
For what seemed like eons, the sentry could only stare up in bewilderment at the figure now towering over him: he saw the spotless white gown, saw the gleaming circlet of metal gleaming across the brow, saw that beautiful face smiling down at him, and knew at once who it was. Dazed as he was by his impact with the wall, even he couldn't fail to recognize the intruder; had he been able to run in that moment, he'd have done so, screaming and shouting and doing everything he could to raise the alarm – but his legs didn't seem to be responding to his internal cries for action. Instead, all he could do was stare back, watching helplessly as the figure inched closer to him.
She's here, he thought, his mind all but blank with horror. She's actually here, in Greenspectre, inside the palace…
He opened his mouth to scream.
Without even giving him a chance to fill his lungs, the figure raised a hand and a beam of incandescent white light seared down on him; for a split-second, the sentry felt the agony of his flesh beginning to sizzle and char as the magic roasted him from the inside out. But then the split-second passed, allowing his charcoaled remains to crack, shatter and finally dissipate into nothingness, and he thought no more.
"You know," said the Radiant Empress, "It's moments like these that I live for…"
A/N: Care to guess what happens next?
Hopefully, it involves me releasing the next chapter in a timely manner :)