A/N: Aaaargh! I'm back again - a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short - aargh!

(deep breath)

I'm okay. Somehow, I'm okay. A huge thank-you to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers: you give me strength in these trouble times!

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

Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine.

Greenspectre lay in ruins, the blood-red sun finally setting on a city that had barely managed to escape total annihilation.

Between artillery damage, the Vigilant Eyes, magical attacks, the efforts of the Hate-Creature and the few bombs that hadn't been found before they'd detonated, the once-proud capital city of the Deviant Nations had been reduced to a smouldering, ramshackle, smoke-smothered wreck. On the upside, it was still standing, but that seemed to be about the only major advantage Greenspectre had on its side thus far.

As soon as Elphaba was gone, the Empress had swiftly banished the execution portal and restored the gateway back to Exemplar, then began recalling as much of her troops as humanly possible. All over Greenspectre, the invaders made a hasty retreat to the portal, closely followed by the mutineers from the Strangling Coils, intent on leaving before the local security forces mounted a counterattack.

By the time reinforcements from Warren and Doorstep had arrived, the Empress was already gone, taking Fiyero and the Champion's body with her; more than half of the invading army had been evacuated, leaving behind only a token remnant of armoured vehicles to cover their escape. Of course, they'd probably meant to take a lot more with them: according to the leaders of the relief column, a party of sappers had been caught in the act of trying to drag several incapacitated captives back through the portal, including Dorothy, Leoverus, Glinda, and Brr – Rostov Branderstove being spared this treatment only because none of the sappers had been able to move him.

If nothing else, it certainly explained why the Empress had spared her most lethal techniques for the Mentor and taken such steps to avoid killing the others. Quite apart from wanting to avoid damaging Fiyero in the crossfire, she must have been intent on capturing as many of them alive as possible, either so she could have them publicly tortured to death back in Unbridled Radiance, or so she could use them as test subjects. Either way, it wouldn't have been pretty: according to Kiln, show trials were very popular under Alphaba's reign, and her Studious Interviewers had a knack for getting the confessions most likely to excite the crowds.

Pure dumb luck had been all that had saved Glinda and the others that day. If the reinforcements had only arrived a minute later, she'd be in Exemplar, awaiting execution or worse.

For the next thirty-five minutes, the armed forces scattered across Greenspectre were in shambles until the Chapter Master of the Irredeemables took charge of the situation and began providing aid to the city's populace. With the aid of a still-crispy Dr Kiln and a painfully lacerated Mistress of Mirrors, he was eventually able to slowly keep the city from collapsing into total chaos through a combination of Kiln's medical knowledge and Nessa's mirror golems. Together, the three formed an emergency triumvirate of sorts, governing both Greenspectre and the Deviant Nations as a whole until such time as the Mentor was well again.

Unfortunately, the Mentor didn't seem to be on the road to recovery.

Indeed, Kiln's reports suggested that she'd sustained so much damage in the duel with the Empress that it'd be a miracle if she lived as long as a week: the sheer magical effort of blasting her way through the armoured vehicles at the plaza, keeping up with Alphaba's lethal barrage of spells and maintaining a shield in the face of no less than three buildings being smashed into it had strained her body to the point of total collapse, and the fact that the Mentor had already been old, infirm and determined to push herself to the absolute limit hadn't helped. Being impaled clean through the left lung and losing roughly half of her blood had left on the brink of death; only emergency medical attention from Kiln, Nessa and a team of other mage-surgeons had saved her life… and that life might not last long even with the best medical care in the world on her side.

There were some things that even mage-surgery couldn't fix, Kiln had said: even if they replaced literally every single organ that had been damaged in the battle with the Empress, even if they had an entire team of healers and mage-surgeons working around the clock to keep her body alive, it still might not be enough to save the Mentor.

Worse still, there was a strict limit on how much help they could receive from the other cities of the Deviant Nations on the matter – or on any matter: thanks to the Gift Baskets that had been scattered throughout the country, the land was now infested with roaming bands of imperial guardsmen, leaving many of the other cities preoccupied with the effort of putting them down. Until their territory was secure, there'd be no additional troops to keep things under control, no help rebuilding Greenspectre, all airships rerouted to the border, and only as many mage-surgeons as they could spare (in other words, not many).

Not that Glinda knew much about this: she'd been out cold at the time, and had only learned the truth when she'd finally awoken in a hospital bed several hours later with her legs swathed in bandages and a splitting headache bearing down on her battered skull. Bit by bit, the full extent of what had happened became apparent, and shock set in.

It had been bad enough that Greenspectre was effectively crippled, the Deviant Nations was infested with enemies, the Mentor was on death's doorstep, substitute leadership was floundering, military assistance was divided all over the country and nobody knew what the hell they were going to do next. But the damage that had been done to their friends and allies was nothing short of horrific.

The Mistress of Mirrors had been effectively locked out of Unbridled Radiance.

Kiln had been burned to a crisp and was still healing.

The Tin Man had been squished into a cube and would need days of reconstruction at the hands of a skilled metallurgist if he ever hoped to walk again.

Leoverus was still being chipped out of his amber restraints.

Brr was in hospital with nerve damage.

Dorothy was sporting a broken arm, cracked ribs, a mild skull fracture, and hadn't spoken a single word ever since she'd regained consciousness.

Branderstove was horribly injured and still in surgery.

Dr Coil had only narrowly escaped death thanks to his own talents as a mage-surgeon, and even so, he would not be out of the hospital for several weeks.

The Amorphous League, briefly having been buffed up to five hundred new members, had lost over two hundred and eighty of them in a single day.

Between the mutiny and all the infighting that had followed, there were barely a thousand loyal Strangling Coils left alive.

Fiyero had been captured.

And Elphaba was gone, last seen being flung into the execution portal by the Empress.

So far, little was known about the Empress's secret weapon, but from what little the First of the Shapeless had seen and heard, it had supposedly meant to be a door to universe that would be lethal to anything thrown through the portal. By now, almost everyone believed that Elphaba was dead: the citizens of Greenspectre, shellshocked and horror-stricken as they were, clearly believed it – they were already calling for a state funeral to mourn the loss of their newest hero; the soldiers she'd fought alongside her believed it, having spent the last few hours praying for the spirit of their fallen comrade; the generals believed it, for they hadn't stopped consoling Glinda for her loss. Even Glinda's fellow VIPs were already convinced that Elphaba was gone for good: when she wasn't standing guard over the Mentor, Vara was doing her best to console Glinda; Walton was apologetically recommending that they abandon all efforts to find Elphaba and focus on rebuilding; Leoverus, already in mourning for the hundreds of young shapeshifters who'd died in battle that day, was restricting himself to a single form out of respect for Elphaba; even Dorothy didn't have much faith that Elphaba had survived, retreating into a huddle of Dolls whenever she asked.

In fact, the only two people in the entire city who weren't prepared to write Elphaba off as a casualty were Nessa and Dr Kiln… and even they didn't have any concrete evidence to support the possibility that she might still be alive. Kiln only clung to hope out of an obstinate need for concrete facts, and the Mistress of Mirrors had learned not to underestimate Elphaba's knack for survival… but perhaps she was simply in denial, having refused to abandon what she saw as the best possible hope for stopping the Empress.

Glinda didn't know what to think anymore.

She didn't even know what to do next.

True, the most sensible thing to do would have been to continue the plan and to hell with mourning until the war was over – regardless of whether Elphaba was alive or dead. But now there were simply too many obstacles in the way to continue as brazenly and optimistically as they once had: quite apart from all the catastrophic losses they'd undergone, their efforts to produce enough of the Amorphous League's potion to assassinate the Empress were now proceeding at a snail's pace thanks to all the damage done to the industrial district.

And even if they could manufacture all the potion they needed, how could they possibly deliver it?

Elphaba had been their only possible means of luring the Empress out into the open, and she was now gone – perhaps forever.

(No, Glinda thought feverishly, don't think about it, do not think about it)

All other methods of delivery were blocked: Unbridled Radiance still had methods of detecting shapeshifters, the Dolls would never make it into the palace without being caught, the Mistress of Mirror's usual avenues into Exemplar were now permanently barred, and full-scale attack on Exemplar was out of the question while the country was still crawling with infiltrator teams. Until the Deviant Nations had a chance to rebuild and think of what to do next, they were officially scuppered.

The same went for any mad ideas Glinda might have about conducting a solo mission into Unbridled Radiance: until there was a confirmed method of completely outfoxing the Vigilant Eyes, any such mission would only end with her captured or dead… and frankly, she didn't have the skill necessary to carry all the potion she'd need to defeat the Empress anyway.

In the end, Glinda couldn't bring herself to do anything. All she could do was sit in her hospital bed and wait for this terrible sense of helplessness to pass, hoping against hope that Fiyero was okay…

All told, Fiyero reflected, waking up to find yourself staring into the lifeless eyes of your doppelganger was probably the worst start to the day he could possibly imagine. True, there might be worse things to wake up to, but they probably involved things like active volcanoes and spiders getting ready to lay eggs in your skull.

Fiyero recognized the face before him all too well: once upon a time, it had been the one staring back at him from the mirror – not even Purification could disguise that. This was obviously the Champion's body propped up in front of him, but the sight of the flesh-porcelain-shrouded features would have taken his breath away if he'd still possessed such a thing. By now, he'd spent so long as a scarecrow that it seemed almost uncanny to see his old face as it had once been, give or take a few alterations; he might have even found it a welcome sight… but unfortunately, seeing that same face adorning a corpse was where any semblances of familiarity came to an abrupt end.

And for some reason, he couldn't look away. Wherever he was, his head had been braced in position, and the Champion's body had been propped up so close to him that it was impossible to look in literally any other direction. So, all he could do was stare straight ahead at the cold, empty eyes of his other self.

He was just about to open his mouth and start screaming when a piping voice next to him squeaked, "Empress! Empress! He's awake!"

There was a murmuring from behind him, followed by a rumble of machinery. Next thing Fiyero knew, he was being yanked sharply backwards onto a heavy metal slab laid across the floor; across from him, the Champion was being shifted into the horizontal position as well, leaving them so close together their feet were touching – not much of an improvement on staring into the poor bastard's dead eyes, but Fiyero was willing to take what he could get. Now that his doppelganger was officially out of his face, he could see that he was now in a machinery-crowded room comprised almost entirely of stark white tiles and polished steel; more worryingly, there were two armed guards in position by the door, along with a small army of technicians tending to the machines. He couldn't guess as to where the place might be, but the curiously damp atmosphere around him suggested it might just be somewhere underground… and given that his last clear memory was of being carted off by the Empress, this was probably deep in Unbridled Radiance.

He didn't have much time to reflect on this, however, for within seconds of his descent, he was surrounded by a bewildering huddle of people: there were eight of them in total, all of them dressed in a variety of ill-fitting robes and protective gear, and not one of them older than sixteen years of age; the eldest of them was a pimple-faced teenage boy somewhere in the ballpark of perhaps fourteen to fifteen, while the youngest was a one-year-old infant being carried around in a backpack slung across the shoulders of one of the assisting technicians.

As if this sight wasn't ridiculous enough, Fiyero got the distinct impression that these kids were all supposed to be magicians, even trained experts if the deference shown them by the guards was any evidence. To his left, a scrawny little girl was jotting down calculations far too advanced for her age, her ginger plaits bobbing wildly from left to right as she began inputting her work into one of the machines by Fiyero's head; to his right, a chubby boy of about twelve was chalking magical designs across the slab, murmuring impossibly complex incantations and occasionally looking to the teenager for reassurance. Strangest of all, even the baby of the group was preoccupied with work, clumsily pointing out machines for the technicians to attend to.

Then, as if the situation couldn't have gotten any more confusing, the Empress appeared above him.

"Ah, Fiyero," she purred. "Glad you could join us. I'd introduce you to the Childlike Researchers, but chances are that you won't know them for very long before we begin your therapy."

Fiyero's brow wrinkled in bemusement. "Is that what you're calling this?"

"Of course. What else could I call this? You're currently the prisoner of a curse-ridden, loosely stitched ruin of a body; your strength is barely a ghost of what it was, your former beauty lost forever. I'm restoring all that Elphaba stole from you – and enhancing it beyond all that you once knew." Her smile grew. "I'm making you well again, Fiyero: I'm giving you a new life in my Champion's body. What else could this be but therapy?"

"Yeah, I'm sure that's how you're going to justify it. You're probably going to brainwash me just like you did the Champion as well, aren't you?"

"Brainwashing suggests an effort to control the mind; I simply adjusted my beloved's brain in order to make his thought processes more effective. The boys and girls of the Creche will no doubt have to make a few modifications to the mechanized segments of his body, probably replace the old augmentations with new ones, but I'm sure they'll have his mind ready for you within a matter of days."

"And what's going to happen to my body when you're done with it? Are you just going to leave it in a field somewhere like a real Scarecrow?"

"Considering that your body used to be human, I'd never do something so ghastly with your mortal remains. No, I think there'd be only one logical conclusion in this case – the same conclusion as all the other wilful Distortions we've been forced to dispose of over the years in this complex."

The Empress pointed towards the end of the room, where a stainless-steel chute had been set into the wall; more worryingly, Fiyero could just make out a line of rails connecting the chute directly to his slab.

"As soon as you've been transferred, your body will be incinerated," she said smugly. "The process will be fully automated; by the time you rise again in your new, perfect form, this abomination that imprisons your mind will have been reduced to ashes."

"And you think I'll be here that long?"

"Where would you go, my sweet? How would you possibly escape? You've been sewn into your restraints in case you haven't noticed. If all else fails, I can remove your limbs. So really, what makes you think you'll be going anywhere?"

Fiyero offered his best devil-may-care grin. "Well, sooner or later, Elphaba's going to rescue me. And then you'll be completely screwed. I don't care where you sent her: she's still alive, and she'll doing her damnedest to get back here and save me."

"The thought had occurred to me," the Empress conceded. "From both her memories and my own experiences, I know she's proved infuriatingly difficult to kill… but even if my counterpart did miraculously survive the execution portal, how would she find her way back, Fiyero? Elphaba is now lost in an infinite multiverse. Assuming she'd be able to move through the void and find her way into another world, how would she ever find her way back to this one? The term 'needle in a haystack' wouldn't do it justice."

"If you've seen her memories, you'll know she's also got a knack for doing the impossible. You've got that much in common."

For a split-second, the contented smile on the Empress's face vanished, replaced by a bestial snarl of rage and hatred. Then, just as quickly, the smile was back on her face as if nothing had happened.

"You don't know how much it hurts me to see that you've got so much faith in Elphaba," she said, pityingly. "After all the horrors she's inflicted on you, after all the misfortunes you've been subjected to because of her, you still somehow believe that she'll be there to help you. Can't you see that her help is the last thing in the world you need, Fiyero? She ruined your life: she lured you away from your fiancé, wrecked your career, and would have gotten you killed if she hadn't condemned you to this eternal half-life. Can't you see you'd have been happier if you'd never even met her?"

Fiyero just rolled his eyes. "Funny thing, Empress: all that stuff about luring me away and destroying my career – I did that of my own free will. For someone who actually saw that play out, you really are clueless."

"To your mind, perhaps. I, on the other hand, can see what you've been reduced to because of her."

"In other words, you think my life is ugly, and to you, being ugly is worse than dying in agony. Like I said, ma'am, you're an idiot."

"It's not just that, dear heart: she destroyed your happiness. Don't you remember what you used to say? 'Life's more painless for the brainless.' You were an innocent, once: you would have gone through your life without hurting a single soul, perpetually carefree and untroubled by the ugliness of the world. But then Elphaba came along and made you start thinking."

"Now you're all aboard the 'knowing nothing matters' bandwagon? I thought your Purified were supposed to be brilliant."

"And they are. I don't often consider ignorance to be an ideal method of inducing perfection in the mind… but you and the Champion are special cases. You see, Fiyero, sometimes the mind threatens the perfection of the soul; if perfection cannot be achieved by improving the mind, it must be removed… or limited."

Fiyero recalled the grisly moment of the Champion's Purification, barely managing to suppress a shudder of disgust as he did so.

"And that is what I hope to achieve in the next few days," the Empress continued. "The modifications to your new brain will ensure that you never have to think above a certain level ever again: no more independent thought, no more disturbing dreams, no more memories of your old life, no more concerns over right and wrong, no more this and no more that. Nothing but pure, unadulterated, unthinking bliss."

She turned to the Childlike Researchers. "How soon can we begin?" she asked.

There was a muffled chatter from among the children, and then the teenager squeaked, "We'll need at least three days to fully modify the Champion's body, and another two to prepare the Scarecrow's mind for transfer into the waiting host."

"Excellent. I think I can leave the preparations to you, then."

"Uh… Empress… it might have to wait. I think I'm about to-"

The teenager's face contorted with pain and alarm, his features suddenly undergoing a rapid succession of shuddering twitches. Then without warning, he began to shrink, his body contracting inwards as he dwindled down into his clothes; it happened so quickly that it took Fiyero a while to notice that the kid wasn't shrinking at all, but getting younger. What eventually emerged from the heap of oversized clothes was a toddler not much older than the infant on the technician's back; he looked rather shell-shocked by his transformation, but on the upside, he didn't have to worry about his acne any more.

At the same time, the redheaded girl began to age rapidly, her body suddenly growing taller and lankier as she was propelled swiftly through adolescence and into the earliest years of adulthood. One of the technicians hastily draped a heavy-looking overcoat atop her before she could begin ripping through her clothes, sparing her dignity as the changes became more aggressive; by the time she was done, the girl was just shy of eighteen.

"Not to worry, dears," the Empress soothed, as the two researchers began to visibly panic. "We don't have to commence work immediately: you run along, have some dinner and recuperate. You can begin after dessert."

The Childlike Researchers hastily exited the room with the newly grown-up redhead in the lead, the former teenager being hastily scooped into a blanket and carried after them.

There was an awkward pause as the door hissed shut behind them.

"What the hell was all that about?" Fiyero demanded.

"Suffice it to say that Morrible's botched attempts at grabbing immortality are still being felt decades onwards – by her and her co-conspirators. Still, the degenerative effect on their minds has at least been able to eliminate the Deviancy that led them to this sorry state. It's a benefit that may very well be extended to any scientist or magician who makes the mistake of seeking eternal life without Purification."

Once again, Fiyero's brow wrinkled in consternation. "…are you saying you'd be willing to give that to anyone studying certain kinds of magic without your say-so? You'd force them to join the Childlike Researchers and spend the rest of their lives swinging back and forth between childhood."

"Oh, I wouldn't force it on them: I'd merely supply them with a few details that would effectively derail their research and put an end to any Distortions on their part. Besides, it's a very good way of identifying dissident intellectuals before they can become a serious problem: the years they spend in the Creche atoning for their crimes will make them infinitely worthier of Purification when the time finally comes."

"But while they're still transforming back and forth, you can't Purify them, can you?"

"Correct."

"So you'd be preventing Purification?"

"No. I'd be willing to tolerate their fluctuating ages as long as the condition can be cured… and as long as their adult knowledge remains intact. I will cure them one day. Until then, their innocence is the only Purification they need."

"For someone with so many rules, you don't have much of a problem with bending them, do you?"

If the Empress was in any way offended by this, she didn't show it.

"And if you can't cure them?" Fiyero plunged on.

"Who says I wouldn't be able to cure them, Fiyero? By nature, I am perfect; by nature, my successes are inevitable."

Fiyero smothered a sigh and tried again – hoping against hope that he might be able to get through to the demented empress, if only so he could buy some time or undermine her confidence somehow. "Just for the sake of argument, what happens if you'd never be able to cure the members of the Creche? Or what if they lose their adult knowledge? Would you just… kill them, just like all the other wilful Distortions you've executed?"

"Not necessarily. I'm still not sure how far this condition will take them: the results from the mage-surgeons changes all the time. Perhaps, in time, their age will fluctuate so low that they may eventually regress to a point that they wouldn't be able to survive – certainly, I've already seen one or two of them regressed to exactly one month of age in recent years. Perhaps they can get even younger than that; in which case, I don't need to sign their death warrants at all. All I need do is withhold medical aid and wait for them to be reduced to a pre-foetal stage of development; no doubt it'll be a messy process, but one that the janitors are ably equipped to deal with. So, it's not an execution at all, Fiyero – it's simply allowing nature to take its course."

"And have you told any of the Childlike Researchers this?"

"Of course not! They're children: I don't want to alarm them."

"I'm guessing nobody ever told you how ugly it is to lie as casually as you do."

"If reality is imperfect, then it is in the best interest of those in power to prevent the people from recognizing it as such. And if reality cannot be denied, then it must be altered."

"What kind of talk is that?"

"Consider it a benefit of understanding the true nature of the universe, Fiyero," the Empress sneered condescendingly. "I wouldn't expect you to understand after spending so many months in Elphaba's degenerate company. But enough about that; I think it's time I left you to your thoughts. You'll need a lot of peace and quiet to contemplate the wonder that awaits you…"

And with that, she strode briskly away, smiling contentedly to herself. However, she paused at the door and turned, a look of contemplation stamped across her otherwise serenely beautiful face.

"Perhaps you're hoping that someone will rescue you even if Elphaba really is dead," she remarked. "Maybe you hope Glinda or someone else in the Deviant Nations will somehow save you – after all, I didn't have the time to capture her or the other Distortions. Well, thank you for reminding me, Fiyero: preventative measures are very important… and it's time I played a requiem for their poor, dear, dying Mentor."

And then she was gone, vanishing through the door without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

Glinda sighed and did her best not to say anything she'd regret.

She and the rest of the entourage had just gotten back from a tour of the reconstruction efforts: right now, it consisted mainly of a few decent-sized soup kitchens run by Nessa's mirror golems, some shantytowns and tent cities set up in the parks, and a few dozen mage-surgeons doing their best to treat over a hundred thousand wounded civilians. And this was all that could be spared from the army, who'd bagsied most of the doctors to treat their own wounded.

On the upside, Nessa's powers made it very easy to transport food and materials.

On the downside, it seemed as if things were only going to get worse. By the time Glinda got back to the palace, she desperately wanted a stiff drink and an opportunity to forget everything she'd seen out there.

And then Wolton had hurried up and said the worlds that had nearly prompted Glinda to resort to obscenities:

"We've just had a radio transmission from Doorstep: it's about to get worse."

Glinda looked at him incredulously. "Things are about as bad as they can possibly get, Wolton: the city's been ruined, the Deviant Nations are stretched to breaking point, the Mentor is currently boring a hole in Death's welcome mat, our best and brightest have been trounced so soundly that some of us aren't in any fit state to walk, and the only people willing to take charge are a crispy mage-surgeon and a disenfranchised information broker. What could possibly be worse than the current situation?"

As if in answering, there was the not-too-distant sound of an explosion, and then a massive shockwave rippled across the room, sending dust cascading from the ceiling. Glinda hurried to the window just in time to see a long line of fireballs slowly making their way across the city below, proceeding methodically from left to right and obliterating anything in their path; in time, the procession of explosions left Greenspectre behind entirely and began crossing the continent to the next city in its path. It took a while for Glinda to recognize the source of the blasts from so far away, but eventually she noticed the tiny black darts whistling through the air: missiles were slicing neatly through the sky and detonating in a perfectly straight line upon the landscape below, uninterrupted by any of the usual protective enchantments that kept the city safe from harm.

"A creeping barrage," said Wolton, grimly. "While we've been busy trying to keep the city from collapsing further, we've been neglecting the aerial defence spells… and we can only assume this was exactly what Unbridled Radiance was hoping for. As long as we're busy with repairs and soup kitchens, we're sitting ducks."

"And the same goes for the rest of the Deviant Nations," said the Mistress of Mirrors.

Vara looked from the triumvirate to the chaos below in dawning horror. "But if we don't attend to matters in the city, there'll be more deaths anyway: without sanitation, medical support and food, we'll have people dying by the hundreds in a matter of days – at best."

"Exactly," said Kiln, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't. The Empress really loves piling it on all at once, doesn't she?"

Glinda very quietly buried her face in her hands and wished, more than anything else, that Elphaba was here.

"AWAKEN."

Elphaba groaned and tried to pull the covers over her head, hoping against hope that it'd be enough to keep out the thunderous din from outside until Glinda got tired of this latest prank and went back to bed. For some reason, though, she couldn't seem to find the blankets. Perhaps she'd kicked them off in her sleep… though that certainly didn't explain where her pillow had gone. Or why shouldn't feel the mattress under her.

"AWAKEN, PLEASE," the thunderous voice proclaimed.

With an almighty start, Elphaba suddenly remembered why she couldn't find her blankets, pillows and mattress: she wasn't lying in bed, nor was she safe in her room at Shiz; in point of fact, she hadn't been anywhere near Shiz for several years, and hadn't even been in Oz for months on end. In fact, the last she remembered, she'd been fighting the Empress and losing badly… and she'd been flung through a portal to-

"YES, YOU'RE TIRED. I CAN TELL. YOU NEARLY ASPHYXIATED TO DEATH. THAT'S BOUND TO LEAVE YOU A LITTLE WOOZY. PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE, BUT I'M GOING TO NEED YOU TO OPEN YOUR EYES AND CONCENTRATE ON THE HERE AND NOW."

Elphaba forced her eyes open – and promptly found herself staring into oblivion.

Darkness stretched from horizon to horizon, infinite void dominating the world around her as far as the eye could see. From what little Elphaba could tell, she was floating somewhere in the midst of the nothingness, bobbing like a cork in a vast and fathomless lake… though with a lake, you'd at least have the chance to sink or swim for shore: there were no depths to descend to, no shore to seek shelter on. This was all there was.

Emptiness.

And then that impossibly deep voice boomed, "AH, THAT'S BETTER. NOW, IF YOU'D BE SO KIND… TELL ME WHO YOU ARE, AND WHY YOU HAVE COME ALL THE WAY TO MY… HUMBLE ABODE… AND WHAT I CAN DO TO MAKE YOU HAPPY."

There was a pause, as Elphaba tried and failed to speak: something about the endless night ahead of her seemed to strangle all attempts at conversation.

Then, the voice began to chuckle: "AH… AT LAST. IT'S YOU. WELCOME, ELPHABA THROPP. WELCOME TO THE VOID."

And without warning, light dawned on the horizon – a harsh metallic blue glow without warmth or mercy, cold as a winter sunrise and almost as pale. Elphaba was so dazzled by the light that it took her a while to realize that, wherever it had come from, it was confined to a very specific area, as if it were being shone through a very large porthole directly ahead of her.

Two large portholes in fact.

Except, Elphaba reflected, portholes don't normally have pupils and irises and oh my god…

She was hovering less than fifty yards away from a colossal pair of eyes, each one at least three hundred feet across. And now that there was light in the void, Elphaba could just about recognize the contours of the impossibly vast face that framed those two eyes: a heavy, looming brow like the edge of a cliff; an aquiline nose that could have felled a battleship; a moustached smile yawning open like a chasm, ready to swallow her… and beneath that, a gargantuan beard of glistening silver tumbling away into the darkness below. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she swore she could see the rest of this creature's body looming out of the darkness towards her, uncannily human despite its gigantic proportions, and all of it rendered in the most ethereal shades of grey and silver.

The only colour to be found anywhere in the giant's body were in his searing blue eye.

The legendary Eyes In The Darkness.

"Who are you?" Elphaba whispered. "What are you?"

The Eyes In The Darkness crinkled in amusement, a wicked grin making its way across the giant's face.

"I AM… AN AGGLOMERATION. I AM A COLLECTION OF SUNDERED SOULS. I AM A COMPOSITE OF MANY SELVES. I AM ITERATION AFTER ITERATION OF THE SAME BEING FROM ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE, SLAIN AND DEAD AND YET STILL CLINGING TO FRAGMENTARY LIFE IN A SINGLE UNITED FORM. I AM A SURPRISE… AND YET, I AM EXPECTED."

The giant chuckled with the roar of an earthquake.

"MY NAME IS ROQUAT THE RED. AND FOR THE TIME BEING… I AM YOUR ONLY FRIEND."

A/N: I'm pretty sure some of you saw this coming, so for now, what do you think's going to happen next?