The Land of What-Might-Have-Been Chapter 66: In Ruination's Radiance, a wicked fanfic

A/N: And we're back!

It's been a while since I've made a chapter this vast and eventful, ladies and gents, and let me tell you, I enjoyed every minute of it. True, it might have worn down my fingers to stumps, but I've never felt better in my life (maniacal laughter)!

Anyway, enough musings: it's time for the fun to begin! Feel free to furnish me with your theories and speculations on the future along with your wonderful reviews - you incredible people give me the strength to continue!

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

Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine, as always.

Plans within plans within plans.

The Empress had learned long ago that the best stratagems were those concealed by others… or within others: feints, diversions, false starts, secret backup plans – if it meant disguising what she would do next, she would make use of it, and indeed had to. The Mentor hadn't survived for all these decades by being weak or foolish, after all: by now it was in her nature to seize upon any opportunity that would give the Deviant Nations an edge, clawing for even the slightest tactical gain with the determination of a born survivor, parrying one strike with an even devastating counterattack and never once surrendering a single inch. Therefore, it was only logical to use her own vigilance against her; after all, even if the Mentor actually noticed this particular tactic, she couldn't afford to dismiss an immediate threat merely because it offered cover to a much subtler one. In her younger days, this combination of tenacity and aggression might have annoyed the Empress, even reminded her of the abomination she'd once been, but she had since learned to tolerate it: after all, it was the nature of ugliness to be obvious, blunt and unsubtle; beauty, by contrast, could afford to reveal itself gradually.

Accordingly, the Empress had ensured that the Mentor did not have an opportunity to recognize the plan that was about to come to fruition. There'd been a few close calls, though: she had come so close to figuring out what was really going on when the test activation had accidentally sent Commander Thaonn's infiltration squad on a collision course with the Amorphous League's little ritual in the woods… but the mechanized assault on the borders had put an end to that: the human attention span could only twist in so many directions at once, and ever since the Plague of Transformations, the Empress had been a master at overwhelming her opponents with meaningless threats.

Nobody among the Mentor's camp had ever had a chance to recognize that their territory had been seeded with portable teleporters.

Now the Deviant Nations were experiencing an invasion from within: all over the country, dozens of portals were opening and disgorging thousands of soldiers, magicians, tanks, aircraft and the necessary Vigilant Eyes to keep the occupied regions under control. True, the power required to keep the portals open meant that most would be acting without reinforcements, but regardless of whether they'd opened out in the wilderness or close enough to urban areas to launch an assault on the greatest cities of the region, each cohort was fully prepared to keep the other city-states undermined for months on end.

As for the two Gift Baskets that had landed in Greenspectre… well, it was hopelessly optimistic to assume that the battalions that the Empress had brought with her would be able to hold the city permanently. But they'd brought enough explosive ordinance to ensure that this loathsome capital and all its repulsive people would be wiped out of existence within minutes of their retreat. Deprived of their mightiest city, with the Mentor dead and their territories overrun with the noble warriors of Unbridled Radiance, the Deviant Nations would be forced to sue for peace.

Of course, the Empress was getting ahead of herself. Before they could begin, she had important work to complete, for there were prizes of immeasurable value hidden somewhere in this city, and it was vital that they were retrieved unharmed. And before the day was done, Elphaba would need to be dealt with in a very particular manner…

She sighed, looking out at the bristling horizon of Greenspectre with mingled disgust and anticipation: already, several buildings were on fire, and the silhouettes of Vigilant Eyes doing battle with airborne vehicles, magicians and even shapeshifters were plainly visible even from here. As gratifying as it was to see the enemy's heart overwhelmed with fighting and mayhem, it wasn't quite one-sided enough for her liking. It was time to tip the balance in her favour once again.

"I think it's time your friends joined the party, Colonel Gloss," she announced.

The half-Purified mercenary grinned wider than ever, readying a handheld harpoon cannon as he did so. "Alright, boys," he chuckled. "You heard the lady: let's show these stingy bastards what it's like to have the coils around their throats for a change!"

And with an almighty whoop of delight, Gloss's mutineers took off down the corridor at a brisk jog, scuttling through the archway and vanishing around the corner – looking for all the world like a swarm of glossy black flies descending on a picnic.

In the silence that followed, the Empress glanced over her shoulder at the newest arrival to be herded through the open portal, just to make sure he hadn't jumped the gun and departed early. "Frexspar?" she whispered.

Behind her, the billowing cloud of manifest emotions and personality roared to life:

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

"Elphaba's somewhere out there, Frexspar. She escaped you last time; she won't escape you again, will she?"

HATE HATE HATE HATE BITCH KILL TEAR RIP SHRED HATE MAKE HER SUFFER FOR WHAT SHE DID

"But remember what we discussed earlier today: don't kill her. Just brutalize her, leave her in pieces if you want, but make sure those pieces are living. Make sure she's alive when I catch up with her. Understood?"

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE yes

"Exactly what I wanted to hear. Now go – and burn brightly!"

With a blood-freezing howl of wordless rage, the manifest hatred of Frexspar Thropp gathered itself into its familiar comet-like shape, then flung itself clean through the wall, phasing through the stonework and bleeding out into the chaos outside – leaving the Empress and her retinue alone in the corridor.

"Now then," she said, "If you gentlemen would care to join me, I believe we have an appointment with Dr Kiln…"

Elphaba didn't even bother looking for a balcony, nor did she have to time to ask for the Mentor's permission to leave: pausing only to summon her broomstick to her hand, she blasted the conference room windows open with a single flex of magic and flung herself into the chilly afternoon air, rocketing off towards the fighting.

From above, she could already see the enemy swarming across the streets of Greenspectre: there had to be at least five hundred soldiers fanning out from the portal, from lowly guardsmen in immaculate white uniforms to elite troopers layered from head to toe in polished silver armour-plating, from visored engineers supervising the deployment of war engines to white-robed magical specialists glittering with burnished gold talismans and staves. Every single platoon was accompanied by a squad of Vigilant Eyes, and all of them were armed and ready to destroy any building in their path – be it military or municipal… and though they weren't bothering to waste ammo on gunning down civilians, they certainly didn't brook defiance from those in their path; if anyone dared stand in their way, no matter how non-violently, they were roughly clubbed to the ground and beaten into submission. A few brave citizens actually went so far as to throw stones at the advancing troops, only to be instantly burned alive by the Vigilant Eyes' riposte.

To the west of the plaza, though, the invaders were already meeting stiff resistance from the city's defenders: a company of soldiers from the local garrison had arrived on the scene, and with the help of several officers from the local police precinct, were putting up an impressive fight against the Radiant troops. Eager to protect their investment, the Strangling Coils quickly arrived on the scene to provide reinforcements, bolstering the hastily-improvised sandbags with their own armoured vehicles, and soon the streets resounded with the deafening roars and thuds of heavy artillery exchanging fire.

Not far away, a detachment of bomb-toting sappers led by an Imperial engineer had converged on the Irredeemables Chapter Temple, clearly intent on wiping it off the map – only to be brought up short when a horde of Irredeemables burst from the front doors and swarmed over them: a roaring mass of disfigured nightmares armed crablike pincers, leathery pachyderm hide, throttling bouquets of tentacles, acid-spewing glands, barbed stingers, needle-sharp bone quills, bone-crushing mechanized limbs, built-in flamethrowers, shoulder-mounted grenade launchers and Lurline only knew what else, they made short work of the sappers. Then, with the bellowing Chapter Master in the lead, they charged onwards, tearing into the flanks of the light vehicles that had escorted the sappers thus far and ripping the men inside to bloody shreds. Soon after, they were joined by a platoon of Irredeemables visiting from Ironmongery Peak, their bodies agleam with polished brass limbs and pneumatic hammers; together they charged headlong through the streets, pulverizing any invaders unlucky enough to be in their way.

Several Vigilant Eyes took aim, ready to reduce the triumphant charge to charred meat, only for Chistery to swoop in from above and grab one of them by the lens. Once again, they couldn't fire upon the source of their controlling intelligence, so the Eyes were left helpless as the flying monkey tore open an access panel on their compatriot's chassis and begin ripping wires out at random, sending its lens blasting in all direction – cutting down two more of the Eyes in the process.

Far above them, light aircraft and several squads of Vigilant Eyes were wreaking havoc upon the skyline, apparently for no other reason than to do as much damage to the city as possible. Several cruisers from Greenspectre's defence fleet were trying to get close enough to shoot them down, but none of them had been designed for weaving between buildings, and so they could only snipe at them from afar whenever they got a bead on them. Several members of the Amorphous League had joined the fray, however, and were gleefully pursuing the smaller aircraft across the horizon in a variety of deadly flying shapes – and though fire was once again one of the few things that could put down a shapeshifter for good, there were simply too many of them for the Vigilant Eyes to target at once.

Further west, the Imperial battle mages were now engaged in a furious battle with the city's own magical prodigies: Greenspectre's College of Magical Warfare was out in force, every student, graduate or professor on the streets and ready to show the invaders what they could do. Fire erupted in fifty-foot-tall explosions barely repelled by shielding enchantments; telekinetic power sent parked vehicles thundering down on the enemy from above or turned the very paving stones beneath their feet against them; miniature tornados and handheld gales flung unsuspecting wizards in all directions; men and women caught outside the shields froze on the spot and shattered into a million glittering shards; rainstorms of sulphuric acid, potassium hydroxide and other chemicals cascaded down on either line, scorching ill-defended arms down to the bone; husks were catapulted into the enemy ranks by space-warping enchantments, their undead frames easily soaking up dozens of spells that would have killed ordinary men before finally being dismantled; gravity warped and twisted and turned inside-out, sending opponents hurtling into the sky or crushing them to pulp against the ground; soldiers trying to break the stalemate were petrified on the spot, suspended forever in dramatic poses, or even vitrified – their bodies instantly freezing into transparent before exploding into a lethal blizzard of daggerlike fragments that tore through anyone standing too close. More than once, Elphaba saw the very light of the sun being gathered into a living creature of blazing radiance, a dragon-shaped energy construct composed entirely of light, and sent swooping down on the Deviant magicians – only to be brought crashing down by a vast tenebrous serpent made of conjured shadows, its body only growing stronger the more light was focussed on it.

But no matter how many magicians were felled in the collision of power, the stalemate held. For the time being, it seemed as though Unbridled Radiance had the advantage of highly-experienced professional battle-mages as opposed to the rag-tag brigade of students, journeymen and teachers defending the city, but Greenspectre's mages had the advantage of being more numerous. For good measure, they'd been joined by several dozen practicing mage-surgeons, some serving as medics, others holding the line with their own vicious concoctions: tumour bombs, flesh nets, arrows of sharpened bone, sprays of boiling blood, spiderlike constructs made of severed hands, bolt-launching ribcages, vertebrae javelins that erupted into deadly shrapnel on impact – if it could add a little chaos and confusion to the enemy ranks, they used it.

But most spectacularly of all, the Mentor herself had joined the battle: at some point in the last few minutes, she'd left the palace with a full retinue of warriors and mages, though judging by the rubble that had piled up in front of the gates, she'd either left via the hangar bay or followed Elphaba's lead via the window. Either way, she and her bodyguards were now making her way through the wreckage-choked streets towards the plaza: it was here that the bulk of the invader's heavy reinforcements had clustered; mechanized infantry, tanks, Vigilant Eyes, and some very serious-looking battlemages were now protecting the portal through which they'd arrived, and all of them were jostling to take a shot at the Mentor the moment she arrived on the scene. For her part, the Mentor was all too happy to let them try, casually holding back entire volleys of incoming fire by sheer willpower while her retinue began carving their way through the enemy flanks.

Though for some reason, Dr Kiln wasn't with her.

All these sights and more Elphaba glimpsed from her position in the skies as she swept through the city. Not sure where to begin, she could only patrol the streets, barraging the enemy from above whenever she found them, doing her best to tip the balance in favour the defenders. Dozens of soldiers, sappers and armoured vehicles were swept aside in a firestorm of emerald-green power, and though the battle-mages were able to shield themselves and their fellows from the bombardment, they all too often ended up getting blindsided by incoming attacks by other magicians in the process.

However, as the fighting continued, Elphaba couldn't help noticing the fact that things seemed to be going a little too well for her: none of the invaders had attacked her since she'd taken to the skies, not even in self-defence; the soldiers had all pointed their guns away from her, the aircraft had swerved around and flew off in the opposite directions, the magicians had hunkered down behind shielding spells, and the engineers had simply run for their lives without bothering to return fire. Even the Vigilant Eyes hadn't glanced in her direction, and Elphaba was certain that this time it wasn't due to any programming errors on their part: they were literally ignoring her.

For whatever reason, none of the U.R. forces wanted to fight her. And as nice as it was to not be shot at for a change, Elphaba knew from experience that this could only mean imminent disaster: no matter the situation, no matter the circumstances, such unbelievable strokes of luck were almost always followed by something absolutely horrific.

And then she heard it:

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

Elphaba had just enough time to brace for impact before the Hate-Creature ploughed into her, knocking her off course and sending the broomstick nosediving towards street-level. By sheer luck, she managed to bring the damn thing up short just before she hit the ground, but by then, the Hate-Creature was upon her again, bringing with it another storm of brain-smothering memories.

MURDERER TRAITOR BASTARD KINSLAYING LITTLE WHORE DISGUSTING COW HATE HATE HATE

But for some reason, the storm didn't completely consume her as it had the last time: the flood of memories washed over her, but didn't sweep her away; the guilt, the self-loathing and the tearful agreement with everything Frexspar had said simply failed to materialize. There was a sense of cloying self-reproach, but that was all. Either she had developed some kind of resistance to the Hate-Creature's power, or it was holding back just like the other Imperial forces loose in the city. Either way, Elphaba couldn't afford to let the Hate-Creature wreak havoc on Greenspectre.

"Alright, old man," she snarled. "Let's see if you can take as much as you can dish out…"

"Hurry up!" the engineer barked. "We're going to need those charges in position at the power station within twenty minutes, otherwise we'll risk leaving survivors!"

The sappers obediently bowed and began hauling the explosive charges into position, dragging them into the chosen coordinates; when detonated, the combined explosions of the other charges laid so far would be enough to scythe through the city like so much decrepit wheat. Each charge was the size of an anvil, nearly double the weight, and had enough incendiary material to take out at least twelve city blocks, but the sappers coped with all thirty of them as if it were nothing. Understandable – most were prisoners who hadn't been aggressive enough to become Penitents, are were now doped to the gills with steroids, anaesthetics and other other work-enhancing drugs; they'd probably torn several muscles just by hauling the charges off the transport, and would likely break several bones accomplishing their assigned task.

But they were expendable. All of them were expendable, from the lowliest sapper to the greatest of the Purified officers, and all of them would be considered acceptable losses so long as Greenspectre was purged in the cleansing maelstrom of flame they were to unleash. Their mission was clear; the troops had cleared the way, the Vigilant Eyes were guarding this sector of the city, and nothing could stop the engineer and his team from setting his share of the charges.

So, it came as something of a shock when one of the Hellion's Dolls dropped from above.

Then another.

And another.

And…

Too late, the engineer realized they were surrounded – and outnumbered.

The two soldiers escorting the sappers had just enough time to open fire before the Dolls pounced – not that it did them any good: the bullets tore clean through their garish motley in a cloud of ashen stuffing, but the Dolls didn't seem to notice or care about the damage. How could they with no internal organs, no bones, no vitals of any kind? They were constructs and nothing more, animated and preserved solely though magic. The only thing that might be able to kill them was fire, but the Vigilant Eyes had been stationed elsewhere to protect the northern edge of the battlefield and the flamethrower teams were all south, trying to fight off the Amorphous League. Here and now, the team was completely helpless.

For a moment, the engineer could only watch in horror as the Dolls swept through the ranks of the sappers, their white-gloved hands carving open bellies and reducing intestines to flying sausage links, disconnecting muscles, cleaving heads down the middle, slicing them up like so many abattoir carcasses.

Then, he turned and ran for his life.

On his way out, however, he nearly crashed headlong into a small girl standing directly in his path. Normally, he would have just shoved her aside and kept running, had he not noticed the faint glow to the child's eyes – and felt the telltale ripple of magic in the air. Realizing he was face to face with Distortion and an enemy combatant, the engineer raised his sidearm, but the girl was quicker.

He had just enough time to recognize the fire blossoming from the child's fingers before it struck him right between the eyes.

The last thing he heard, before his smouldering body hit the ground and the last coherent thought in his head sizzled out, was the little girl shouting "Everyone back to the palace! We need to warn them about the bombs!"

Branderstove hadn't been fully dressed for war that day: officially on R&R, he'd left most of his exoskeleton's most brutal armaments back on the Abyssal Titan, including his colossal arm-mounted cannon, his gatling gun, the secondary layer of armour plating and the limpet mine dispensers. It had been a nuisance, but then, Greenspectre wasn't governed by the same laws as Loamlark; you couldn't expect an attack literally every other minute, and besides, the sight of heavy munitions at the pub tended to put customers off. So, in the interests of allowing his men the benefits of happy hour, Branderstove had doffed his wargear for the day… only to be caught by surprise when the invasion had begun.

Unfortunately for the guardsmen of Unbridled Radiance who'd tried to corner him at the brewery that day, unarmed did not equal defenceless: his exoskeleton gave him unparalleled protection against small arms fire, and with the combined strength of his mechanical support and his own Distorted vigour, he made short work of the first, second, third and fourth waves of guardsmen sent after him. By the time his men sobered up enough to join him outside the pub, he'd torn a lamppost out of the ground and was using it as a cudgel to thresh his way through the oncoming attackers, roaring with delight at the sound of skulls fracturing like eggs.

Thankfully, the dead invaders had left more than enough guns for the off-duty Strangling Coils to arm themselves with, and together, all forty of them were able to begin fighting their way back through the embattled entertainment district towards the palace. Along the way, they passed several of the city's defenders struggling with Vigilant Eyes, Radiant battlemages, guardsmen and god only knew what else, but Branderstove didn't bother stopping to help or ask what the hell was going on: it didn't matter how this little incursion had started, only that they could get their hands on some reinforcements before the enemy got too enthusiastic for their own good.

Less than a mile from the central plaza, however, it seemed as if some especially whimsical deity had been listening, for a gaggle of black-uniformed mercenaries came charging down the street towards them with Colonel Gloss in the lead; there were only fifty of them, but judging by the mutters from their radio operator, they were obviously in contact with the rest of the Strangling Coils. It wasn't quite the relief column the Leviathan had been hoping for, but it'd do for now.

"Gloss!" Branderstove thundered. "Where've you been? Nevermind that – I'm going to need as many men, armoured vehicles and weapons as possible right now. Seems we've got some precious clients to liberate before we can off the Empress."

Gloss smiled wider than ever… and then without warning, began to sing. "Ein Fischer mit der rute/ wohl an dem Ufer stand…"

"We don't have clients," said the mercenary to Gloss's left. "We don't have no money either, thanks to you."

"This really isn't the time for a pay dispute, lieutenant."

"You're right. It really isn't, considering you'll be broke in two months; unless you start taking jobs again, we're not getting paid… and we're not taking orders."

For several seconds, Branderstove could only stare in bewilderment, his tentacles lashing the air in consternation. "Are you threatening me?" he hissed.

"Doch endlich ward dem Diebe/Die Zeit zu lang," trilled Gloss.

"No," the lieutenant to his left concluded.

Too late, Branderstove saw the pneumatic harpoon cannon in Gloss's hand, saw the barrel rising towards him, saw the men behind him taking aim. Only his highest-ranking officers would know that he hadn't brought his secondary layer of armour with him on shore leave, he realized, and only one of his elite would know the kind of munitions needed to punch through his mechanized exoskeleton.

The first harpoon caught him square in the shoulder, tearing a gaping hole through his armour, burrowing deep into his undefended flesh and punching another hole through the armour on the opposite side of him; then the tip detonated, almost ripping his entire shoulder off. The pain was nothing short of astonishing, a white-hot lance of agony pulsing up and down the length of the body; it had been a long time since he'd suffered such a wound in combat – after all, careless mercenaries rarely lived long enough to collect a paycheck – but Gloss wasn't done yet. The second harpoon caught him in the belly, embedding itself in his mighty gut; this time, the explosion wasn't strong enough to completely tear through the immensely thick layer of blubber and muscle shielding his internal organs, but that seemed to be the only blessing on offer so far. The third harpoon hit him in the leg, but because he had no true legs to speak of, all it did was disable one of the colossal prostheses he used to travel on land, shattering the knee joint and sending him crashing to the ground.

Had Branderstove been alone, Gloss would have easily killed him right then and there, skewered him three more times for good measure and left him as a heap of octopus kebabs on the pavement. But as soon as the second harpoon landed, the mercenaries still loyal to him had opened fire, and Gloss's dramatic assassination attempt had dissolved into a brutal exchange of gunfire.

An explosion flung Branderstove to one side, tossing him into the gutter. Snarling with pain, he managed to right himself just long enough to see Gloss slipping back through the crowd, pausing only to hiss an order to the mutineer mercenaries before launching himself onto a first-story rooftop with one almighty leap. "Und ich mit regem Blute/ sah die betrogene an!" he concluded merrily, and leapt away, vanishing over the roofs as he galloped to freedom.

Obviously, Gloss expected that Branderstove would die of his injuries in the chaos of the battle… and looking at the cyan-blue blood now gushing merrily from his belly and shoulder, Branderstove had a sneaking suspicion that the treasonous little shit might be correct.

But he couldn't afford to think about that now.

He had to staunch the bleeding.

Had to get help.

Had to get revenge.

Clambering to his feet, he flung aside the nearest of the mutineers, waded through the remainder of the enemy platoon like a hiker trudging through a bog, and began the long, slow, painful march towards the palace…

The little band of shapeshifters hadn't expected to see the guardsmen taking prisoners that day.

Here in the heart of the Deviant Nations, potential converts to Unbridled Radiance were thin on the ground, and even if they'd been even vaguely interested in looking for new recruits among the so-called Distortions and Deviants, the Empress's men were obviously busy with more practical concerns over the course of this invasion – most prominently in planting bombs in residential districts.

So it came as something of a surprise when Brr and Glinda noticed the struggling figure being dragged out of the tailor's shop far below them.

By then, they'd only been involved in today's battle for a comparatively short space of time: Glinda had been alternately helping Chistery with some of the trickier Vigilant Eyes or surveying the skies for any sign of Elphaba, while Brr had been tagging along with the other shapeshifters for lack of anything more practical to do over the course of this disaster – though given that he was the only member of the team who couldn't fly, he'd spent most of the time riding around on Leoverus's back. However, the moment they saw U.R. troops hauling a man with a bag over his head out of a ruined shopfront, they simultaneously let out a shout to the rest of the League and zeroed in on the hostage-takers.

As soon as they heard the roar from above, the nearest of the hostage takers spun around, levelling a flamethrower in the direction of the League. Immediately, a ripple of alarm spread through the oncoming squad of shapeshifters: fire was one of the few things that could seriously harm even the Shapeless, and though they'd learned to weave around the incendiary beams of the Vigilant Eyes, flamethrowers couldn't be so easily evaded – especially at this range.

So it was that, just as the flamethrower-toting guardsman was about to open fire, Brr found himself taking careful aim – and diving off Leoverus's airborne body with an earsplitting yowl. For what felt like hours, he fell through the air, half-tumbling half-pouncing, not entirely sure what the hell he was doing but determined to make it work whatever it was: a split-second later, he struck the guardsman square in the back, sinking all four sets of claws into his flesh and biting down hard on his undefended face. Immediately, the soldier dropped the nozzle of his flamethrower and let out a piercing shriek of his own as he tried vainly to shake the Lion off, but all he ended up doing was accidentally dislodging the fuel tank he'd left strapped to his back.

A few of his compatriots tried to help him, some of them even swinging rifle-butts in Brr's direction, and for the first time, he saw that quite a few of them were actually fellow Animals. The sight almost gave him pause: after all, it was one thing to hear that the Empress had given the Animals of Unbridled Radiance equal rights and that one of her armies had been led by a tiger, but it was another to see it up close – a goat here, an ocelot there, even a couple of exceptionally well-groomed chimpanzees, all of them working harmoniously among humans. It wasn't as if he'd never seen this before – by now, he'd seen that the Deviant Nations had its own large Animal population regularly accepted by the military and the Irredeemables, but these were the first ones he'd seen that hadn't had themselves augmented or altered until they no longer resembled their former selves; these were Animals, just as he'd known them back in Oz.

But in spite of his shock, Brr couldn't feel the slightest bit of sympathy. He'd just seen them dragging a defenceless citizen off to gods only knew what horrible fate, and he'd seen them doing even worse things these last few minutes: the ruined shops, the gunned-down citizens, the terror, the gas-attack… he felt no kinship with these Animals. They were soldiers of Unbridled Radiance. They were the enemy.

With a roar, he bit deeper into the flamethrower man's face, lashing out with his claws and kicking at the other troops as they struggled to force him off, refusing to budge even as more soldiers began arriving on the scene. Maybe they were here on their own mission, maybe they were reinforcements, but either way, they were now charging towards them; from what he could see through the wild haze of flailing limbs and blood, there were at least seventy troops arriving on the scene, accompanied by three mobile artillery platforms… but even with the odds against him mounting by the second, Brr would not let go: by that point, he was too scared to give up and too angry to even think of releasing his hold on the screaming flamethrower man's face.

And then the Amorphous League landed with an almighty crash in the midst of the reinforcements, and things got a little confused.

The troops were well-trained and the gunnery platforms were heavily armed, but none of them were prepared for the chaos unleashed by the shapeshifters. As they struggled vainly to force the assailants in their midst back (and avoid accidentally shooting each other in all the confusion), Brr finally released his hold on the gurgling remains of the flamethrower man, then flung himself at the next soldier in line, swatting aside his rifle and biting deep into his throat.

Brr didn't remember much of what happened next: the bewildering carnage of the battle was reduced to a series of grisly snapshots, like images in a slideshow, horrifying yet strangely interesting. At some point, Brr found himself running out of opponents – either because they were all dead or because they were all fleeing for their lives – and looking to the Amorphous League in something akin to fascination: each of them had their own unique style of fighting, and though their powers gave them unprecedented variety of methods and techniques to use in battle, they couldn't help but fall back on the same familiar patterns.

Leoverus was every bit as protean in battle as they were in day to day life, constantly switching from one body to another, but their favoured combat shapes were always the biggest and most spectacular: one minute, the First of the Shapeless was a green-scaled dragon towering over the battlefield, ripping the enemy to shreds with scythe-like claws and dissolving them to pulpy ooze with blasts of caustic breath; the next, a gigantic octopus, strangling eight soldiers at once and crushing the rest under the vast invertebrate's bulk; the next, an impossibly vast flock of crows, pecking out exposed eyes and clawing rifles out of hands; the next, a living tidal wave, a solid wall of water knocking aside artillery platforms like ninepins.

By contrast, Shenshen-Pfannee was a tumbler and a trickster, constantly on the move, weaving themselves into a living mass of tripwires and tendrils to attack the soldiers from below: those who fell were quickly smothered under a writhing blanket of barbed wire, shredding and strangling them as it coursed along their bodies. Then the gestalt shapeshift changed again, became a dozen intertwined serpents, biting and poisoning any soldier of Unbridled Radiance that got in their way. Then swarms of insects, pouring themselves up trouser legs and under skin; then…

Leafcutter liked inanimate objects the best, always finding some way to twist even the most unlikely shape to his advantage: one moment, he was an armoured tank, lumbering down the street with guns blazing; then he was a fire hydrant, washing enemy combatants away with geyser-like gouts of high-pressure water; then he was an enormous bronze statue, knocking his opponents to the ground with creaking blows from his metallic fists and trampling them flat.

Omber Landless operated purely by stealth: s/he would mimic a fellow soldier perfectly, then weave in and out of the enemy ranks, planting a barbed tendril in the backs of everyone he passed, then vanishing into the pavement before anyone could turn around and see what hit them. And if anyone did manage to grab him, he simply melted away in their arms, scalding them to death in the process.

And Glinda, the proverbial new kid on the block, did everything she could: one minute, she was roaring across the battlefield as a living wheel of blades and carapace; the next, she was hunkered down as a living mass of armour plating, soaking up all the incoming fire the remaining troops could throw at her; the next she was a jaguar, leaping gracefully through the air and plunging her fangs into the unsuspecting throats of her opponents. Once, she was even an arrow in flight, slicing through the air to land with a wet thud in an enemy soldier's eye.

Only the Purified officers on the scene gave them any real trouble: their razor-sharp reflexes and vastly-augmented strength gave them the edge they needed to last in a duel even without fire on their side; the four of them put up quite a fight in the end, dancing and somersaulting over every devastating blow, cleaving through conjured flesh with astonishing ease and even managing to puncture one of the scales on Leoverus's dragon form. But in the end, even they were outmatched.

In total, it took a little over two minutes for the League members to wipe the street clean.

As Brr began absently cleaning the blood off his paws, Glinda returned to human form and staggered over to the captive that the troopers had been trying to drag away, and began untying him. However, once the hood was finally removed from the man's head, she immediately gave a start of surprise.

"Fiyero!" she yelped. "What are you doing out here?"

The scarecrow sighed. "I was getting myself repaired," he grumbled. "These stitches have been through a lot in the last few months, and I'd like to stay in one piece. Well, that was the plan before Unbridled Radiance started kicking in doors."

"But why did they capture you? What were they going to do?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Glinda: as soon as the troops arrived on the street, I told the tailor to get undercover while kept the soldiers distracted. Guess I did my job a little too well, though – they started calling me "the prize" or some such crap, then clapped me irons and dragged me away. They said they were under strict instructions not to kill me, so I'm pretty sure they weren't going to just have me executed somewhere quiet."

"Maybe the Childlike Researchers need more material to work with," Omber suggested.

"Or maybe it's just my stunning good looks."

Leoverus shook his head wearily. "Whatever the case, we can't stick around here chatting about it: if Unbridled Radiance wants you, Fiyero, you can't stay out on the streets. Best thing we can do is get you back to the palace quicksmart; the gates haven't fallen yet, so it'll be safer there…"

"How the hell did all these troops get inside the palace?!"

"Does it look like I know? Look out!"

"I see him, I see him… Kiln, are you finished sobering up?"

"I'm trying, dammit, I'm trying; it's not easy to pump all these toxins out of my system at once when I'm under fire!"

Boq and Kiln had been nicely drunk when the alarm bells had started ringing. As it turned out, Boq's tin body could still suffer intoxication if the booze was strong enough, and the good doctor's bottle of Magnivore's Old Homicidal could strip paint off a wall by smell alone; three shots each had been enough to well and truly pickle them both: by the fifth shot, Kiln had been clinging to the ceiling with his feet, weaving his elastic fingers into the most elaborately ridiculous shapes while singing all thirty-seven stanzas of Dear Old Shiz (the unabridged version); Boq had been slumped on the couch, laughing himself silly, thinking that his counterpart might not be so bad after all.

Then they'd heard the first explosions echoing up from below, followed closely by the piercing tolling of an alarm bell and several amplified shouts from the public address system. It hadn't taken long for the two of them to realize that Greenspectre was being invaded. Unfortunately, what with both of them being completely hammered, it had taken a while for the two of them to get their act together: Boq had needed a shot of engine oil directly into his brainpan before he could think straight, while Kiln had begun forcibly sweating the alcohol out of his body, accelerating his metabolism to get rid of what little remained until he was just sober enough to stand upright without hanging on to a wall.

A moment later, they'd seen Elphaba go flying out one of the windows several stories below, followed closely by the Mentor – the later gliding down into the streets with the aid of enchantments placed on her support frame. Kiln had been set on joining her, and was already adding additional skin to his arms so he could form a set of glider wings.

Just as he'd been about to get the window open and take off, however, someone had kicked the apartment door down and opened fire. Somehow, an entire infantry cohort had gotten inside the palace and were now making a beeline for Kiln's humble quarters; none of them asked any questions or made any demands – they just burst in, guns blazing.

After listening to some of the shouting in the corridor, the two of them had just managed to work out that the guardsmen weren't just here to kill as many Deviants and Distortions as they could find: there was something in Kiln's lab that they wanted, a "prize" that they needed to secure – they didn't specify what it was, of course, and Boq was still too tipsy to work out what it might be.

With nowhere to escape to except out the window and no interest in surrendering the prize to them, Boq and Kiln had mounted an eccentric but effective defence: Boq had waded drunkenly into the fray, his axe swinging wildly up and down as he swiftly carved a bloody trench through the incoming troops, fists and feet hammering out at anyone lucky enough to escape being cleaved, caving in skulls and shattering kneecaps. Kiln tried to provide cover with a few well-placed bone arrows and bile grenades, but there simply wasn't enough room in the apartment to take aim before the enemy charged into close range; so, he'd sculpted a whiplike tendril of flesh from his arm and flung himself at the nearest soldier.

For the last minute, the two of them had done almost nothing but fight, pausing only to hastily shore up their defences – not that it did much good. No matter how much furniture they piled up against the door, no matter how many webs of skin they reinforced it with, the troops always found their way in. Once, they even resorted to blasting a hole in the wall so the elite guardsmen could find another way in without getting peppered with bone shrapnel.

So, they fought on.

Boq fought the simplest and the most unsubtly, threshing his axe through the air in wild, brutal arcs and soaking up more bullets than the surrounding walls. By contrast, Kiln was a whirling dervish of techniques and weapons, slicing through oncoming guardsmen with the bone-tipped end of the whip one moment, lobbing blobby lumps of explosive tumours the next; he flung nets of constricting skin, he spat adhesive loogies that smothered unsuspecting targets to death on the spot, he tore the spine from one opponent and used it as a flail – taking his head with it. At one point, he even seized one combatant who'd made the mistake of getting close, forcing his hands through the horrified guardsman's stomach as if his flesh was no more solid than clay; then, just as quickly, he yanked his hands free and flung the man out the front door, right into the ranks of the oncoming attackers. A moment later, was a tremendous explosion, and for nearly thirty seconds, there were no further arrivals at the door.

"How the hell did you do that?" Boq demanded.

Kiln grinned. "I had to get rid of the remaining alcohol in my body somehow."

Eventually, after about twenty dead bodies had piled up and most of the survivors had been forced to retreat, there was a muffled shout from the doorway. Soon after, the sound of marching feet began to recede into the distance.

Kiln breathed a sigh of relief, but still refused to take his eyes off the door. "Something tells me they won't be gone for long," he muttered. "They're probably rethinking their approach."

"So what do we do?"

"Well, one of us tells the Mentor that we've got invaders inside the palace. Right now, most of our forces have been diverted to the streets, hence why all these troops have been able to get around the building without getting besieged at very junction. If we can get word to the Mentor, she can bring in the reinforcements and clear the place out."

"Great! So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that internal communications are down: I can't just get the Mentor on the radio."

"What, so one of us has actually got to find her and let her know what's going on"

"Exactly. And that'll mean leaving the defences a man short. So which of us should it be? I mean, I might be able to reach her faster, but you probably stand a better-"

Kiln never got to finish his sentence. Boq had just enough time to notice the flicker of movement just outside the hole in the wall, but before either of them could react, there was a flash of blinding light that left the two of them reeling; when it faded, Kiln had been yanked bodily into the air and was now hovering about six feet off the ground, flailing impotently for a grip on nothing.

Then, from the depths of the crater in the wall, she emerged.

She was clad in a simple white robe, so clean and so finely woven it seemed to repel dirt, a plain silver circlet that gleamed hauntingly in the afternoon sun. Even in the middle of a warzone, she felt no need to change her ensemble even slightly; not so much as a single hair was out of place.

Back when he'd first seen her on Mourner's Lake, Boq had been a little too distracted to pay attention to the real differences between Elphaba and the Radiant Empress. As far as he'd been able to tell, she was just Elphaba without the green tint to her skin, and that had been it. Now, though, he could clearly see that the two held themselves quite differently: Elphaba was tense and impatient, always expecting the worst, always self-conscious, waiting anxiously for someone to upset her in some way; true, a few months of being accepted and even lauded by the Deviant Nations had softened her a little bit, but even at peace, she still had a habit of looking like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. By contrast, the Radiant Empress was a woman at peace in her own skin and secure in the belief in her own superiority. Her unblinking gaze, her serene expression, her stance, even the subtle gesture of brushing dust from her arm screamed of effortless confidence. She didn't just believe she was in the right; she knew it.

The Empress smiled contemptuously at them for a moment, regarding them in much the same way as she might regard a particularly stubborn pair of plague rats. "So nice to see you both again," she said pleasantly. "Unfortunately, I really don't have time to chat: I have important business with one of the items in your little collection, doctor, and frankly, I have a million better things to do than mince words with the wilfully disgusting."

Kiln flung out his arm, launching a dagger of solid bone directly at the Empress's face; it never made contact, shattering into dust less than half an inch from her left eye. Without missing a beat, the Empress waved a hand and flipped him upside down, slamming him facefirst into the ceiling.

"You and your mistress have cost me much," she hissed. "And I don't suffer disappointments – or traitors – lightly. Consider this your severance package, Mr Heart."

There was another flicker of magical power, and Dr Kiln suddenly exploded into fire, his body instantly engulfed from head to toe in stark white flames. For perhaps five seconds, he burned in mid-air, screaming in agony as he tried in vain to extinguish himself, his body sprouting limbs and tendrils and anything else he could think of to pat out the flames layering his body.

Then, unable to think of anything else to do, Boq flung his axe straight at the Empress. On instinct, she stopped the incoming missile scant inches from her face – but in the process, she released her hold on Kiln, sending him crashing to the ground; still on fire, the mage-surgeon took to his heels and ran screaming through the apartment, leaving a trail of smouldering footprints in the carpet as he charged for the nearest window. Kiln didn't even stop to open it: he simply put his head down and ploughed headlong through it with a musical crash of glass, plummeting out of sight as he began the long, awkward plunge down the side of the palace.

If the Empress was in any way irritated by this development, she gave no sign of it. Tossing Boq's axe aside, she advanced on him, her body aglow with raw magical power.

"So what now?" Boq demanded. "Is this the part where you spent the next few minutes taunting me, revealing all my hidden securities while you trounce me in single combat, then torture me to death while I'm still weeping over all the awful things you've said?"

He was stalling for time by now, hoping that he might be able to get her off-guard just long enough to tackle her, maybe even put his fist through her face; it probably wouldn't be enough to kill her, but at least it'd keep her down long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

But the Empress only smiled.

"Oh Boq," she said sweetly. "Whatever gave you the impression that you'd be worth the effort?"

And before Boq could reply, the Empress waved a hand, and instantly, the tin man felt his body turn traitor: his arms began to bend backwards, crumpling in on themselves until they were wrapped flat around his torso; his legs folded upwards, each fold being crushed flat against his rapidly-collapsing upper body; his chest flattened, instantly compacted inwards by some invisible yet astronomical weight. Finally, his head was squished down into his shoulders, crumpled and squashed into an unrecognizable mass of packed-down tin. Finally, his flattened remnants were contorted into a single cube of mangled metal and tossed aside.

In less than fifteen seconds, Boq had been reduced to a solid lump of unrecognizable scrap… but somehow, even after everything that had happened, he was still alive.

With his mouth squashed flat and folded over, he couldn't call for help, but by sheer luck, one of his eyes had ended up squeezed into a gap in the cube; like a man peering through a keyhole, he could get a tiny glimpse of what was going on outside his own body, and though it wasn't much, it was enough to confirm that the Empress appeared to be finished with him.

"Alright, gentlemen," she announced. "The road ahead is clear."

There was a rumble of footsteps all around him as the Empress's retinue swarmed over the apartment once again. To Boq's confusion, they overlooked every single item in Kiln's laboratory: the Ruby Slippers were ignored; the schematics for limb augmentation were dismissed; the priceless brain-growth experiments didn't even earn a passing glance. Instead, their search eventually led them to the examination room: here, a human corpse layered in stasis-inducing mechanisms was unearthed from a row of lockers. It took a while for Boq to recognize it – quite apart from his limited view, it had been a while since anyone had clued him in as to what had happened in Loamlark – but eventually he realized that this could only be the body of the Empress's Champion, this universe's equivalent of Fiyero.

They remained just long enough to load the Champion's body onto a stretcher, and then they were gone – marching out of the room with the Empress in the lead. In their wake, they left Boq, alone, cubed, half-blind and completely helpless.

And in that moment, Boq would have given anything in the world to be able to scream…

Dr Coil hadn't been overly inconvenienced by the invasion of Greenspectre. After spending the last month languishing in a specially designed vivarium and living off meals brewed entirely from lab-generated tissue, a few live lunches were more than welcome. He'd lent a hand here or there (so to speak), eating a few dozen screaming guardsmen alive, crushing the odd armoured column and healing a few wounds via incantation.

However, upon approaching the palace to see if the fighting had spread there, he was unexpectedly greeted by the sight of an upper story window suddenly exploding open, disgorging a screaming man wreathed in flames and smelling strongly of roast dinners. He fell for nearly a hundred feet before he hit the first rooftop, rolled down the sloping roof for several minutes, bouncing off various chimneys and turrets as he fell, at some point managing to accidentally extinguish himself in the process. Unfortunately, he wasn't in any fit state to stop himself by then, so he tumbled off the edge of the roof and crashed through a series of awnings before plummeting the remaining ten stories all the way to street level. He landed with a stomach-turning crunch of shattering bones and immediately went still.

For a moment, Coil could only stare at the mangled heap of smoking flesh and contorted limbs: whatever had happened to this unlucky creature, there was no way of working out who it had been, for the fire had erased most of the identifying features and left it naked except for fourth-degree burns.

He gave the mound of flesh an experimental prod with the very tip of his tail – only for the body to groan loudly and awkwardly turn over. Somehow, this pile of chargrilled human wreckage was still alive.

"Hello?" Coil asked tentatively.

'Owwwwwwwww."

"Are you in any fit state to sssssssurvive your injuries? If not, can I eat you?"

"Aaaaargh." The mound groaned again, and hauled itself upright until it was at eye-level with Coil. "Goddammit, it's me, you overgrown handbag. Last I looked, you tried to avoid eating your own students."

"Kiln? What happened to you?'

"I'll (ow) explain later. For now, just (aaaaaargh) get me some raw materials so I can patch myself up. Then we've got to (ow, ow, ow fuck) find the Mentor as quickly as possible…"

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

"The feeling's mutual, old man!"

INSOLENT LITTLE SHIT HATE HATE HATE HATE HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

After what felt like centuries, Elphaba and the Hate-Creature were still locked in their duel: it had taken them across the length and breadth of Greenspectre, somehow always advancing or retreating to a new district; sometimes, Elphaba had needed to lure the hellish manifestation away from defenceless citizens; sometimes, the Hate-Creature had flared with rage and advanced on her, forcing Elphaba to back off lest it consume her on the spot. More than once, they'd given up fighting on the ground and launched themselves skywards, fighting their way across the skyline amidst the airships, the enemy fighters, the shapeshifters and all the myriad airborne battles that had erupted along the horizon.

For the time being, it seemed as though they were pretty closely matched (though Elphaba secretly doubted it): her spells tore vast gouts of spirit-stuff off his semi-corporeal body, forcing him into a fresh surge of explosive hatred that caused the streets around him to ripple with crimson flame, forcing her to take cover behind her shielding spells; every so often, his cometlike tail would lash out, slicing through one of the neighbouring buildings and bringing the whole thing crashing down around her – either sending her behind another shield or forcing her to soar out of the way. Every now and again, Elphaba would abandon complicated spellcraft in favour of blasting the Hate-Creature with the raw magical power she'd known and harboured all her life, the world around her aglow with emerald green light as she pelted Frexspar Thropp's manifested rage with crackling bolts of energy and a wave of unbridled telekinetic force. And though it seemed to do only slightly more damage than her usual routine, it definitely angered the Hate-Creature more than any other weapon in her arsenal – no surprise, given how ashamed and infuriated Frexspar had been every time her powers had been seen in action – and its anger was enough to make it lose just enough control for Elphaba to drive it back ever-so-slightly.

But in the meantime, the struggle to keep away from collateral damage was constant: more than once, their tussle drew them into the middle of a zone where the Deviant military had dug in heavily, and in the soldiers had tried to lend a hand by shooting the Hate-Creature, only to end up drawing its ire. Elphaba could only do her best to shield them and force her opponent back into the sky. Once, she was forced to reach out with every last atom of thaumaturgical strength in her body and telekinetically hold up a falling building, just so the people inside would have a few precious minutes to escape. That had exhausted her so badly that she'd been left panting like a marathon runner, barely managing to recover enough of her energy to go on fighting once the Hate-Creature caught up with her.

And yet, as hard as the fight was, wherever the seemingly-endless duel took them, there was a strange sound filling the air, gradually drowning out even the mind-pummelling howls from the Hate-Creature. It was the sound of hundreds of people calling her name, crying out in triumph and exaltation just as they had on the day of her victory over General Stellham.

"ELPHABA!" they roared, cheering her on. "ELPHABA! ELPHABA! ELPHABA!"

Hearing those shouts echo across the streets, Elphaba could only fight on, energized and invigorated in a way that no drug could possibly achieve. Even after all the applause and all the adulation and all the respect she'd received on that night and so many nights thereafter, somehow the joyous roar of the crowd shouting her name was enough to make it feel as new and wonderful as it had the first time.

And yet, as exhilarated as she was, she couldn't help noticing the direction this duel was taking them.

Slowly but surely, they were drifting towards the plaza…

Somehow, in all of the chaos and confusion of the battlefield, several parties of defenders ended up meeting at once.

Having just finished clearing through the third and final layer of defences surrounding the plaza portal, the Mentor was immediately surprised when, through the heavy layer of smoke that was now shrouding the city districts, Glinda suddenly appeared, followed closely by Leoverus, Brr, and (for some reason) Fiyero.

"What are you all doing back here?" the Mentor demanded. "I'd have thought you'd be busy elsewhere?"

"We're bringing back these two," said Glinda, nodding briskly at the Lion and the Scarecrow. "Brr's going to need some proper armour if he's going to be fighting on the front lines with us, and Fiyero needs to be kept somewhere safe for a while – people are trying to kidnap him and he's still too fragile for this kind of work."

"You know, I can still hear you, Glinda."

"Oh hush, you."

"I think we might need to reassess priorities a little-"

"And where's Elphaba? I thought she'd be with you, Mentor?"

"Have you actually tried getting her to sit still at any point? She charged off the moment the fighting began; according to the troops, she's been fighting with U.R. forces non-stop and currently making her way in this direction."

"Well, that's one weight off my mind-"

From somewhere in the smoke clouds, there was a clatter of several dozen sets of footsteps making their way towards them; a moment later, Dorothy materialized out of the apocalyptic murk with at least thirty Dolls at her back – all of them soaked in blood, as was the front of Dorothy's dress.

"I thought I told you to remain where you were!" the Mentor exploded. "My orders were for you have the Dolls pick off the invaders, not for you to join them on the battlefield!"

"But-"

"You realize that if you die, we've no way of controlling the damn things?"

"But I found bombs! Unbridled Radiance has been planting bombs all over the city, and I was able to stop some of them-"

"I know, Dorothy, I know. Several of my troops have already reported and disarmed several other such bombs; the situation's almost in hand. You don't need to do everything yourself, you know."

In the background, Glinda rolled her eyes.

From somewhere nearby, there was a thunderous rumble of something huge and extremely heavy hauling itself through the smoke. A moment later, Rostov Branderstove lurched through the chaos with a small retinue of battered-looking mercenaries in tow: his armour was riddled with holes, through which several-ghastly-looking injuries could clearly be seen, all of them dribbling bright-blue octopus blood. A purloined mage-surgeon in the colours of the Deviant Nation was hastily patching him up, but it was obvious that the poor man had his work cut out for him, as Branderstove refused to sit still for any of it.

"We've been betrayed!" he roared. "There's been a mutiny among the Strangling Coils, and that little bastard Gloss is behind it."

"That might explain why we've heard so many reports of infighting among the mercenaries," said the Mentor airily. She eyed the horizon disconsolately, where several blazing silhouettes could clearly be seen even through the smoke: even without the reports she'd been receiving over the radio over the last few minutes, it was plainly obvious that the Strangling Coils were making good on the element of surprise in order to wreak havoc on airships and the uppermost stories of buildings, but frankly, that was a matter that could wait until later.

"I'm going to need transportation to the Abyssal Titan immediately!" the Leviathan raged. "If Gloss is still loose and alive, he'll be heading for my flagship – and I will not have that greedy shitheel seizing control of my property!"

"One thing at a time, please."

"We've still got to find a way of closing that portal," Glinda added.

"One thing at a time."

"Maybe my Dolls could-"

"One. Thing. At. A. Time. Please."

"But what about Elphaba-"

"ONE THING AT A TIME, IF YOU PLEASE!" the Mentor screamed. She took a deep breath, her ancient frame creaking audibly under the weight of stress and fatigue.

And it was then, just as they seemed to have reached a lull in the action and the noise and clamour of the citywide battle was beginning to subside, that the gigantic serpentine figure of Dr Coil burst through the clouds with Dr Kiln riding upon his back.

"Mentor," he shouted, "Urgent news! There's been a disaster at the palace and-"

"What the hell happened to you and why are you naked?"

Kiln fumed quietly, the remaining burns on his shoulders smouldering ever-so-slightly as he did so. "That," he winced, "Is a very long story that can be best summed up as THE EMPRESS IS INSIDE THE PALACE!"

"What? How?!"

"I don't know! She was upstairs in my apartment, looking for something – very nearly killed me in the process; for all I know, Boq's already dead. Either she arrived with the others and found a way in while we were distracted, or there's a secondary portal inside the palace itself. Either way, she's in this city and unopposed!"

The Mentor paused, taking a deep breath as she processed this "Alright," she said grimly. "Dorothy, get out of sight before something happens – now, please. Leoverus, I'm going to need as much of the potion as you have on your right now; if you don't have any, I'm going to need you to head to the industrial district as quickly as possible and gather up as much of the potion they've brewed so far and as many of the darts they've been manufacturing. Glinda, Branderstove, Coil – the three of you stay with me. Kiln, head back into the palace and retrieve as much Witch-Crystal as you can get your hands on; if this potion solution doesn't work, we're going to need to revert to the suicide-bombing option… and for the love of Lurline, put some damn clothes on!"

Dorothy had already left the plaza and the others were about to get moving, but in that moment, the relative silence of the plaza was broken by the sound of an intruder alert at the palace gates. A moment later, the smoke clouds around them parted, instantly dispersed by a powerful gust of wind. Behind the sudden gale, a figure was making her way down the palace steps, rubble and debris sweeping itself away from the steps as she marched towards them.

At this distance, it wasn't easy to discern her face through the clearing smoke, but there was no mistaking that glowing white aura of magic.

"…too late," muttered Kiln.

The Empress smiled, allowing herself a moment to savour their terror.

"So," she purred, as contented as a cat with a mouthful of canary. "Who's first?"

There was a deathly pause, as everyone in the plaza silently assessed the threat ahead of them.

Then, Branderstove put his head down and lunged. Though one knee of his exoskeleton was still damaged, the machine was still functioning well enough to operate at a decent gallop, and once he'd begun to pick up speed, even a limp couldn't stop his forward moment. Bellowing with rage, he bore down on the Empress like a charging rhinoceros, mechanized legs ready to reduce her to so much trampled pulp and his tentacles preparedto strangle whatever remained.

The Empress didn't so much as flinch as he thundered towards her. Instead, she simply waited until he had broached the last eight feet between them, and then darted to one side at an impossible speed; for a split-second, she was airborne, floating to the ground in an elegant glide. The Leviathan went galloping past her, almost too angry to realize he'd missed his target entirely. But then he turned – just in time to find himself on the business end of the Empress's riposte: the kinetic blast flung him clean off his feet, sending him hurtling over the heads of the imperial retinue and crashing sidelong into the palace wall. As if to add insult to injury, a wave of the Empress's hand brought down a huge pile of rubble and broken pillars raining down on top of Branderstove, leaving him alive but very firmly pinned to the ground.

Immediately, the Strangling Coils who'd followed the Leviathan this far then opened fire on the Empress, pelting her with every weapon they had in their arsenal. Credit where credit was due, they were well-armed, but even the few rocket launchers they had on hand were no match for the Empress's shielding spells. After less than seven seconds of bombardment, she simply held out a hand and bathed the courtyard ahead with a devastating beam of white light, reducing the mercenaries to charred shadows on the pavement where they'd once stood.

No sooner had they vanished, Dr Coil launched himself at her, several hundred tonnes of giant reptile shooting across the plaza with a speed that should have been physically impossible for a creature of his size. Still clinging to the giant snake's back, Kiln could only hang on for dear life, desperately launching a few hastily aimed bone arrows in the Empress's direction as they charged.

Without missing a beat, the Empress casually seized Dr Coil by the middle in a telekinetic grip and whisked him into the air – all with Kiln still clinging to his back like an oversized tick. Then, before the two mage-surgeons could recover or react beyond a few startled expletives, she magically tied Coil's body into a neat half-hitch, then catapulted him and Dr Kiln across the skyline with a single flex of magic. For a moment, the knotted serpent and his hapless rider were plainly visible in the skies, tumbling end over end as they soared towards the horizon, before finally vanishing behind the blazing wreckage of one of Greenspectre's taller towers.

As the Empress turned to face Glinda and the others, the Mentor's own retinue leapt into action; to the surprise of all present, Fiyero was in the lead, armed with a borrowed rifle and trying desperately not to let it slip through his clumsy, boneless fingers. As one, they opened fire, their guns briefly aglow with the Mentor's best enchantments, their bodies shielded with all the magic she could must at short notice: not a single one of the magically-enhanced shots missed its marks, several of them even penetrating the Empress's shield and digging smouldering holes in her chest and face – not that it did much good, given how quickly she regenerated.

"Get to the industrial district!" Fiyero shouted in Glinda's direction, raising his voice over the deafening spates of gunfire. "Get the potion before-"

A colossal explosion tore through the ranks of the Mentor's bodyguards, sending them flying in all directions and drowning out the rest of Fiyero's speech. Not even the Mentor's own shield could stand up to the onslaught. In the confusion, the scarecrow was flung aside with the others, though the lack of bones made him the only member of the platoon who hadn't broken something in the fall; unfortunately, the Empress appeared to have been counting on that, for the moment he tried to claw his way upright, a bouquet of deep green creepers burst from under the pavement and wrapped themselves tightly around him, binding him from heat to foot.

"You just stay there, Fiyero dear," said the Empress, as she tossed the struggling scarecrow into the depths of her waiting entourage. "I'll have all the time in the world to spare for you later."

Briefly torn between helping Fiyero and fetching the potion, Glinda launched herself into the air, reshaping herself into a peregrine falcon and catapulting herself across the skyline as fast as her wings could carry her. She didn't get far, however: less than twenty feet into the air, a solid fist of gravity seized her by the throat and brought her crashing back down to earth.

"So disappointed in you, Glinda," the Empress tutted, as she telekinetically dragged Glinda back towards her. "You had so many opportunities to embrace Purification as was your right, and you've thrown them all away for the sake of debasing yourself in the filth with the rest of the perverts and bottom-feeders. What's the humane thing to do in a situation like this, I wonder?"

And then the Lion pounced: Brr had been edging along the side of the battlefield throughout the confrontation, and now he saw his chance. Springing off the crumbling balustrade of the stairs, he threw himself at her, claws extended and fangs ready to sever jugulars. But the Empress was once again ready for him: spinning around at an impossible speed, she raised a hand and sent a bolt of lightning crackling through his chest. Instantly electrocuted, the Lion shot past her and collapsed to the ground in a twitching, smouldering heap, alive but barely conscious.

By the time she'd refocussed her attention on Glinda, she and Leoverus were already on the attack: together, the First of the Shapeless and the journeyman shapeshifter wove themselves into the most destructive shapes in their repertoire, trying to debilitate the Empress just long enough for one of them to make a run for it. Dragons, elephants, giant spiders, colossal swarms of bees, lions, tigers, bears – the only limitation on hand was that of their imaginations.

Unfortunately, the Empress was once again barely even fazed by the assault. With a wave of her hand, she sent a gout of flame rippling through the shapeshifters' formation, narrowly missing Leoverus and immediately enveloping Glinda's bear form in searing white flames.

As she staggered away with a yowl of agony, the Empress hissed a complex series of incantations; when Leoverus next tried to go on the offensive (this time in the form of a giant dragonfly), he found himself instantly frozen in place: the air around him had solidified into a mass of amber, imprisoning him within it. Thankfully, his powers as First of the Shapeless made it almost impossible for him to suffocate to death, but even with his strength, it would take a lot of effort to force his way out of this makeshift cage. Gleefully, the Empress tossed him aside, flinging him into the gardens for another one of her underlings to collect.

Still desperately trying to extinguish herself, Glinda gave up on rolling back and forth in one form or another in favour of reverting to human form. She'd just managed to pat out the remaining flames on her arms and legs before another blast of magic from the Empress sent her rocketing away, her head bouncing off the mosaiced tiles as she cartwheeled helplessly along the plaza; she hit the ground at the opposite end of the square at a dead roll, spun to a halt, and then lay still.

Now the Mentor stood alone in the plaza, now the only thing standing between the Empress and the dormant portal leading back to Unbridled Radiance.

There was a funereal pause, as the two remaining combatants inclined their heads in mocking greeting.

"Mentor."

"Your Radiance."

"I suppose this must have come as something of a surprise to you. After all, I've no doubt you and Elphaba were thinking of some sure-fire plan that would destroy me, my empire and my ethos once and for all. Well, I'm sure I've already told you that beauty has a funny way of undoing those who refuse to strive for it. Now, your lieutenants are incapacitated, your forces are scattered, your city has all but fallen… and now it's just you and me."

The Mentor glared balefully up at her, but otherwise remained completely silent.

"What, nothing to say? No paranoid rantings about the so-called parasite? No idiotic screeds about how people should have the right to abase their bodies if they so choose? No claims of how I disgrace Elphaba's memory through presence alone? You used to be so fond of those once upon a time."

If anything, the ancient revolutionary seemed even quieter.

Behind her back, the Mentor was hurriedly working the controls to the radio concealed in the wrist of her prosthetic limb, signalling anyone who was listening to bring Elphaba as much potion or witch-crystal as she could possibly carry.

"Come on, Mentor. Don't you have anything to say to me?"

"Just one thing," whispered the Mentor, her face splitting into a nightmarish grin. "Burn."

A small volcano erupted at the Empress's feet, sending a blast of magma and superheated smoke directly into Alphaba's surprised face. She barely managed to shield herself in time, and it still left a rapidly-healing fourth-degree burn on her otherwise unblemished cheek; very slowly, the remains of the smile slid off her face, replaced with an enraged snarl.

Sweeping aside the volcano, she waved a hand and called down a bolt of lightning right on top of the Mentor – a blast of electrical energy powerful enough to melt the tiles where it stuck and send a lethal current rippling across the ground. But when the light finally faded, the Mentor still stood, her shield still holding. In retaliation, she raised her mismatched arms and telekinetically catapulted the mangled wreckage of the tank fleet that had been protecting the portal into the air, before bringing them thundering down on the Empress like meteors; one by one, the Empress blasted them from the sky before a single one could hit her, dissolving each heap of wreckage into nothing more than free-floating vapour. By then, though, the Mentor was already pressing her advantage: beneath the Empress, the ground itself buckled and cracked, the pavement splitting open into a vast fissure that threatened to swallow Alphaba whole; gigantic fangs formed at the lip of the chasm, and a long, stony tongue oozed out, wrapping itself around the Empress's legs, threatening to drag her to her doom.

With one petulant stomp of her foot, the Empress sent a seismic wave through the ground, shattering the crevasse apart and snapping the tongue in half. Forcing the fissuring ground back together, she then sculpted it into an army of improvised golems and directed them to advance upon the Mentor. One by one, the Mentor blasted them out of existence, shattering them into dust with a single wave of her hand, before sending the fragments racing back into the Empress's face – accompanied by a blast of scalding steam. With a snarl of barely-suppressed fury, Alphaba warped the very substance of the ground beneath their feet, converting it into metal that instantly erupted into a forest of seven-foot-long spires, threatening to impale the Mentor; not a single one touched her, the Mentor casually levitating out of reach of the deadly forest and shattering them with a snap of her fingers. Once again, the needle-sharp spears went hurtling back at the Empress, but this time, she was ready for the riposte, disintegrating the volley of missiles with a single contemptuous glance.

The Empress summoned up a deadly gust of cyanide gas, shrouding the Mentor in clouds of sickly grey-blue poison; the Mentor effortlessly contained the toxic air in a conjured bubble and flung it away. She retaliated by folding space, doing her level best to misalign reality itself into squishing the Empress into bloody chunks; Alphaba wrenched reality back into shape with one almighty flex of her powers, then wove the light of the itself into a vast array of vinelike tendrils that scorched everything it touched, before sending the glowing creepers straight at the Mentor. The Mentor erected a shield of darkness from her own shadow, swallowing the glowing threads – before counterattacking with a summoned portal that would have snipped off the Empress's head if she hadn't swatted it aside the last minute. Alphaba retorted by willing up a ravenous mass of carnivorous greenery from the earth that threatened to strip the flesh from the Mentor's bones; the Mentor just rolled her eyes and incinerated it with a lazy wave of her hand. Then she tried to boil the Empress's blood…

For minute after minute, the two witches fought across the courtyard, bombarding each other with all the spells and techniques they'd learned over the last few decades. To the few onlookers who were able to see clearly enough through the smoke and the carnage, it was a scene right out of a child's storybook, a good old-fashioned magician's duel with every thaumaturgical flex matched and countered with another. However, what these storybooks rarely mentioned was the historical precedent for duelling magicians to gradually abandon all finesse as the battle dragged onwards and impatience set in: by the middle of the battle, the Empress and the Mentor had given up on their artful exchange of fiendishly-calculated spells and were now conjuring up elemental constructs from the surrounding environment to dominate the battlefield, the Mentor sculpting enormous fists of solid rock from the pavement to squash the Empress flat, Alphaba retaliating with a giant, bellowing replica of herself crafted from living flame that threatened to consume the Mentor whole. Towards the end, even that level of artistry had been discarded, and the two were simply hammering each other with raw, unsubtle blasts of kinetic force, relentlessly pummelling each other back and forth across the battlefield.

Finally, the Empress couldn't stand another minute of the exchange. Reaching out towards the nearest building, she focussed all her might upon the foundations, the bricks, the roof, the very tiles that composed the roof – and began launching it at the Mentor one piece at a time. Caught off-guard, the Mentor could only swat aside what she could and seek shelter behind her shield as a solid stream of tiles, bricks, support beams and Lurline only knew what else began pouring down on her. Before long, the Empress had expanded her reach to the tower next-door, and was pelting the Mentor with entire sections of wall launched at her like meteors; already pinned down by a steady stream of debris, the Mentor could barely deflect the incoming chunks of wall before they hit her, and thanks to her increasingly-battered support frame, dodging or fleeing was out of the question. Exhausted, fatigued, and hoping against hope that help would arrive before much longer, all she could do was hunker down behind her shield and try to weather the storm.

And then the Empress brought down an entire building on her head.

Reaching out for a third seven-story tower, she wrenched the whole thing out of its foundations with a bloodcurdling scream of exertion and flung it at the Mentor. Against all expectations, the Mentor just managed to shield herself against the impact, somehow emerging from the colossal pile of rubble almost unharmed – but by then, her strength was well and truly spent.

Too late, she saw the Empress's final missile arcing through the air towards her: it was the spire of the second building, a sharpened tine of metal arcing across the sky like a javelin. Wheezing with exhaustion, the Mentor tried to stop it, to deflect, it to send it back at the Empress, but she couldn't so much as grasp it. All she could do was watch.

The spear caught her squarely in the chest just to the right of her lower sternum, punching clean through her ribcage and burrowing through internal organs; the Mentor felt the breath explode out of her as something inside her burst, and as the spear tore through the other side of her, a hoarse, agonizing gasp escaped her throat – sending a plume of bloody froth arcing into the afternoon sky. Then the tip of the spear hit the ground, and suddenly the Mentor was hurtling backwards, lurching drunkenly along the ruined plaza as the eight-foot-long spire tore a trench in the ruined ground, stopping with a sickening jolt a few short yards away.

Impaled, the Mentor struggled for a grip on the spire, trying to haul herself up the length of it in a vain attempt to free herself, but it was hopeless. The last thing she saw, before she lost consciousness and slipped back into the darkness encroaching on her vision, was a familiar figure soaring through the sky towards her…

As Elphaba skidded to a halt in what was left of the plaza, she found herself briefly distracted from her ongoing duel with the Hate-Creature by several sights at once:

First, the impaled body of the Mentor; to her astonishment, a few quick diagnostic spells revealed that the old bird was somehow still alive, her heart still ticking away in spite of her catastrophic injuries… but judging from the blood pouring down the length of the spire, she might not be clinging to life for much longer unless Kiln got to her in a hurry.

Secondly, the Empress standing just past her.

Thirdly, the unconscious figures of Glinda and Brr, lying prone around the plaza.

Fourthly, Fiyero – trussed up like the proverbial turkey and held down by three members of the Empress's entourage.

Suddenly awash with rage and fear, Elphaba launched herself at the Empress, her mind blank except for the desperate, all-consuming need to get her away from her friends… only to be brought up short by a bone-jarring wall of telekinetic force.

"Well," said Alphaba, pleasantly. "You've clearly had quite the adventure across the city, haven't you? No doubt you're expecting for us to settle our differences with a spectacularly showy magical duel to the death, yes?"

"That did cross my mind," snarled Elphaba.

"Unfortunately for you, I've had my fill of fighting for the day… and besides, I've got something much more permanent in mind for you. Frexspar, dear, would you help me with this?"

Once again, Elphaba felt the familiar onslaught of self-loathing coursing through her body as the Hate-Creature's anger seared down her, except this time worse than ever, a dose of inescapable abhorrence that left her almost incapable of moving. She struggled to resist the effects, to try and fight in spite of the crippling waves of self-revulsion eating her from the inside, but the Hate-Creature let out a howl of rage and pummelled her with a solid fist of destructive magic that sent her crashing to the pavement.

In spite of herself, Elphaba tried to rise, but the Hate-Creature only lashed out and hit her again… and this time, the Empress joined in, hammering her to the ground with a solid wall of force. Bruised, bleeding and out of breath, Elphaba tried to cast a spell, to force the two of them away from her just long enough to force down a lungful of air, but with the magical storm of blasts raining down on her, she could barely manage to budge the shattered bricks around her more than a few inches.

"Feeling a little tuckered out?" the Empress chirruped. "Not so surprising: you've spent most of your energies fighting Frexspar here. You never learned how to conserve your strength, Elphaba; you never hold anything back, and you never have to good sense to avoid a trap once you've seen it."

Oh goddamn it, Elphaba thought. Not again…

For over a minute and a half, she and the Hate-Creature worked Elphaba over, smashing her against the pavement until she was simply too battered and exhausted to move another inch, pounding her again and again until Elphaba swore she felt her ribs shattering. Then, once they were certain that Elphaba wasn't going to be able to move anytime soon, the Empress grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and began dragging her across the plaza towards the waiting portal.

"Now," said the Empress, her voice almost incongruously cheerful. "I suppose you're wondering why-"

A fireball exploded against her face.

More surprised than hurt despite the rapidly-fading burn scar, the Empress looked around for the source of the spell, and then let out a shriek of laughter.

Elphaba followed her gaze, and realized with a thrill of horror that Dorothy was standing on the other side of the plaza, arms raised in a spell-casting stance; she was terrified, hopelessly out of her depth, and clearly had no idea what she was going to do next… but there she stood all the same, ready to fight.

"Now that's just adorable," the Empress cooed, mockingly.

Dorothy raised her hand to launch another fireball, but this time the Empress was ready; after all, even with the inherited magical might of the Hellion on her side, Dorothy's training was still months or even years from completion – she was no match for a master of the sorcerous arts with over fifty years of experience behind her.

The Empress's rebuttal caught Dorothy hard in the stomach and brought her crashing to the ground; another magical blast sent her skidding away, half-contorted into a foetal ball of pain. A moment later, Dorothy rose shakily, trying to continue the fight – only for the Empress to slam her bodily to the paving stones with a loud crunch. Dorothy twitched once, then lay still.

Immediately, the Dolls swarmed out of hiding, ready to avenge their wounded mistress, but once again, the Empress was ready: with a single wave of her hand, the air around Dorothy and the advancing dolls hardened into crystal, imprisoning them inside. Immediately, the Dolls began pounding furiously on the walls, chipping their way through the crystal with a strength that belied their minuscule frames – prompting several dozen members of the Empress's retinue to hurry over, ready to open fire just in case they broke through.

Meanwhile, as if nothing had happened, Alphaba then went on marching towards the portal, still dragging Elphaba along by the neck.

"Now," the Empress continued, "You might be wondering why I'm going to all this trouble of capturing you, Elphaba, especially after my last three or four attempts at snuffing your life out. Well, the simple fact is that I'd love nothing more than to snuff your life out with my bare hands… but unfortunately, I can't afford to take the risk of killing you – not while you're in this dimension."

Bleary-eyed, Elphaba looked up at her counterpart in sudden horror.

"Of course, it's a purely theoretical possibility, a remote chance at best… but once dear little Dr Lintel warned me about it, I couldn't afford to ignore it. After all, I didn't become Empress by being careless."

She's talking about dimensional sync, Elphaba realized. She knows about what might happen if one of us dies: she's worried about me taking over her mind if I die. Surely that's all she knows about, right? She can't know about the steps we took; she can't know about the potion…

"So, I had to find a way of killing you – without actually doing so in this dimension. It wasn't easy, but Lintel and I eventually found the perfect method." She tapped the side of her head, and whispered, "Lintel, the target's secured; open the execution portal."

Ahead, the glowing portal at the very centre of the plaza began to change: the colour bled away, followed by the light, leaving only a pitch-black doorway hovering perhaps half an inch above the ground, rippling with tendrils of glistening obsidian energy.

"It took a lot of effort to find a dimension we could access without wasting excess energy," the Empress purred. "Even more to find one you'd have no chance of ever returning from… but eventually we found it. Do you like it? According to Lintel's survey, it barely qualifies as a world, more of a dark corner in the spaces between spaces than anything you'd call a universe. It's completely empty – and quite inhospitable to organic life: no air, no gravity, no means of producing life, nothing but emptiness. I felt it suited your sunny disposition down to the ground. It might not be the most hospitable place in the multiverse, but it'll be yours until your lungs finally give up the ghost."

Elphaba tried to struggle free from the Empress's grip, but with Alphaba's power and the Hate-Creature's omnipresent loathing beating down on her, she was all but paralysed.

"But… what do you want with Fiyero?" she gasped.

"Isn't it obvious, Elphaba? You took my Champion away from me: you all but ruined his body, you corrupted his soul and left his brain too damaged for me to repair… so now I'm obliged to find a replacement for my favourite warrior's mind and soul. Thankfully, Fiyero didn't appear to be using either, so…"

In spite of herself, Elphaba actually managed to recover enough strength to lash out, clawing wildly at the Empress in a frenzy of terror and rage, swearing at the top of her lungs. But once again, Alphaba easily overcame her, swatting her hands aside and hoisting her into the air.

"No need to worry about him, Elphaba. You'll be dead long before I finish making a masterpiece of him. Besides, he'll be much happier with me than he ever was with you: he'll have a functioning body again – more than I can say for your efforts."

The execution portal loomed ahead of her, dark as night but without stars or moon even the slightest hint of illumination – only nothingness.

"When you think about it, this might be the best thing that could possibly happen to you," the Empress purred. "This way, you'll finally be cleansed of the agony of being you, Elphaba. I've no doubt you're terrified, but you shouldn't think of it as murder: it's a mercy killing, really. I'm finally putting your out of your misery, freeing you from that loathsome husk of a body."

The Empress began to giggle, unable to hold back her mirth as she drew back her arms, ready to throw Elphaba in.

"Go now," she laughed. "Be free. Be free of everything..."

And then Elphaba was flying once again, spiralling uncontrollably through the air towards the waiting execution portal.

She hit the doorway head-on, crossing the threshold with a jolt as she passed into another universe; she was immediately rewarded by a harsh and all-consuming chill to every inch of her body, as if she'd been plunged through the surface of a frozen lake into the bitterly-cold depths below. But of course, there was no water here.

There wasn't much of anything here except for darkness.

Forcing herself to turn around in mid-plunge, she tried to claw her way back to the portal, imagining that she could return if she could only reach it before the cold consumed her, as if she really was trying to escape a frozen lake… but the harder she tried, the portal only drew further away – or perhaps some invisible current was dragging her away, deeper into the darkness.

Instinctively, she opened her mouth to take in a lungful of air, but nothing arrived. There was no breathable air here, no atmosphere of any kind, only cold vacuum. Terror immediately flooded her veins, and she once again found herself instinctively gasping for breath, her body refusing to respond to the logical insistence that there was nothing to breath.

For a split-second, she was faintly aware of tumbling through the darkness, lit dimly by the distant light of the poral as she struggled against the invisible tide, trying vainly to force her way back into reality – and all the while drowning, drowning in emptiness.

Then the portal slammed shut behind her, and all she knew was infinite void.

A/N: Well, this is pretty grim, isn't it? Any guesses what might happen next? Let me know - I'll be over here with a large brandy...