It was, quite simply, not in Judy's nature to give in to despair. It couldn't be. Years of always having to prove herself meant that there was no time for it. There was always the next challenge to face, and when life knocked her down there was nothing to do but get up again and keep trying. And yet, when the half-baked plan she and Nick had tried seemed to have utterly failed, Judy had felt her heart fall.

She would keep trying, she knew that. But she also knew that her odds of succeeding alone were particularly grim. Throughout the long walk back to Phoenix, and to where Cerdo had set himself up, there had been a nearly deathly silence, none of the mammals she was traveling with saying so much as a word. Judy had tried catching Nick's eye, but the chance never presented itself, and the risk of being found out seemed far too terrible. Worse, no matter how much she thought on it, she had no idea what she would do if Nick simply turned on her then and there.

With each passing step, with the confrontation growing ever closer, her thoughts seemed to speed up as though she had consumed a particularly potent quauhxicalli. Ideas presented themselves so fast that they weren't even thoughts anymore, just vague impressions and images flashing through her mind at a nearly dizzying pace.

None of them seemed promising.

But despite it all, when the doors to what Cerdo had made his temporary throne room opened to admit her, Judy felt weirdly calm. Other mammals tended to expect a rabbit to lose her head in a crisis, but that had never been a problem for her. It certainly felt like on such a momentous occasion she ought to be feeling some kind of unease. She was, after all, about to confront the pig behind a sinister plot to enslave the entire kingdom to his will and she didn't really have a plan. But Nick was still on her side.

She hoped.

If she was wrong about that, she was probably doomed to failure. But before the doors had opened, she had heard him whisper two words to the princess. "Not yet."

And with that, everything seemed to have changed. It had to mean that Nick was still her Nick, not some helpless puppet of Cerdo's. What he had done was suddenly so obvious that she felt a little ashamed that she hadn't noticed it before. For all she had gotten to know Nick, for all she could see what other mammals couldn't, she had missed it.

Or perhaps not missed it, but underestimated him. Nick had been carrying a philosopher's stone, after all, and had touched the torc Bogo had put around his neck before it went on. He must have broken the alchemy of the torc in much the same way he had broken the far larger alchemy array inscribed in the tunnels, albeit in a far less flashy way. Everything beyond that moment, then, had been nothing more than acting.

If she was right.

If Judy was wrong, then events had played out in exactly the fashion in which they had seemed to. Her efforts to save Nick had failed, and she was left to try one last gamble on her own to save the entire kingdom. But as she walked into the room Cerdo had claimed, she didn't think she was wrong. After all, if Nick really was being controlled by a torc, surely he would have told Bogo that Judy herself was still free. Or maybe not. It'd be amazingly petty of him, but somehow the idea of Nick actually being on Bogo's side and cheerfully withholding useful information didn't seem entirely out of character.

Still, that seemed less and less likely as she drew closer to where Cerdo was seated. Nick had trusted her to figure it out on her own, and she had. Whether he had any kind of plan of his own was another question entirely, and Judy vowed to pay as close attention as possible. If an opportunity presented itself, she'd have to seize it as quickly as possible.

With that in mind, Judy considered the building that Cerdo had taken as his temporary headquarters, which was in his mind probably the last stop before the palace itself in Zootopia was his. The building seemed to be a guildhall, and a rather impressive one at that. The main area was much longer than it was wide, the floor made of polished stone with the guild emblem—a somewhat abstract version of Xiuhcoatl, the serpentine god's body wrapped around an atlatl—set into the center of the floor in turquoise and gold. Matching pillars ran along the longer walls, supporting a vaulted ceiling from which tiny alchemical torches gave the impression of the stars in the night sky, as though the roof had been peeled away. Closer to the floor, larger alchemical torches had been concealed to fill the main area with a diffuse and gentle light like a perpetual near-dawn.

The room had no windows, which struck Judy as perhaps the reason Cerdo had chosen it, besides its obvious grandeur; even with all the control and power he held he must have been afraid of attack. There seemed to be only one way in or out, which was the door they had entered through; although they had passed through a grand lobby with a number of other doors the room itself was far more secure. Judy suspected, though, that there might be one or more hidden doors intended for the use of servants, and she scanned the walls carefully as the group continued their approach.

The walls themselves had been draped with elegantly embroidered banners, each of them depicting the same seal as the one on the floor, except behind Cerdo where the flag of Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer proudly hung. He had, naturally enough, set himself up at the far end of the room, and where once the guildhall had likely held many long tables intended for the guild to hold meetings and debate business, all but one of them had been removed. The one remaining table, which Cerdo sat at as though it was a desk, was stacked high with papers through which the pig was rummaging, apparently unconcerned with his visitors.

But then, Judy supposed that he had reason to be confident in his safety, because he hadn't been alone. Two dozen guardsmammals stood at rigid attention along the walls, their armor and their weapons gleaming in the light, and Judy didn't like the odds of taking them all on at once. To a mammal, they were all tall and powerfully built, including a gaur even taller than Bogo and considerably younger, her body rippling with muscle. Indeed, even the shortest of the guards was taller than Judy herself was, and she reminded herself that it wasn't just the guards before her that they'd have to deal with. There were also the ones that had followed Bogo and the queen down into the tunnels, as well as Bogo and the queen themselves.

Compared to that, all she had to rely on was herself, Nick, and whatever aid the princess could give.

Before she could consider the problem any further, though, Bogo cleared his throat, which made Cerdo finally look up from his work. "Ah, back already Lord Bogo?" he asked, a smile crossing his face, "Marvelously done. I think we've spent enough time in Phoenix, don't you?"

Bogo nodded and then spoke. "There was trouble," he said, and although to Judy's ears his voice sounded carefully neutral she wondered if some part of him, buried deep under Cerdo's control, delighted in giving him the news.

Cerdo stood up, running his hooves across his head as he did so with a sigh. "Of course there was," he said, "Report."

Judy stood carefully at attention as she listened to Bogo blandly rattle off the relevant details, trying to avoid doing anything that would attract Cerdo's notice. She wasn't sure she actually needed to bother—the pig's attention seemed to have been completely absorbed by listening to Bogo—but she considered where she was standing. Bogo, unfortunately, had stopped about twenty feet short of Cerdo's desk, and so she had done the same, sandwiched between him and the guards who had followed him.

It might as well have been two hundred feet.

The simplest option—and Judy would freely admit that when push came to shove she often defaulted to the simplest option—would be to launch herself across the room and strike out at Cerdo. But the way the room was set up didn't seem to make that a particularly winning strategy; the table Cerdo was standing behind was so large that after crossing the distance separating her from it she'd have to jump up on it first before she had a shot at Cerdo. She'd lose precious seconds in the process, and from how the pig's guards stood at rapt attention Judy wasn't sure the time she'd have would be enough. And so, despite the fact that her every instinct cried for action, Judy did what was hardest for her.

She waited.

When Bogo had come to the end of his recitation, Cerdo sighed again and slumped down into his chair. Before, he had sat in it as though it was a throne, but now his posture had degraded significantly as though he was especially weary. "Why?" he asked, "Why does no one see that it's for the best?"

No one answered, and Cerdo turned to Bogo. "Order them to obey me," he said, gesturing at Nick and the princess, and the buffalo instantly did.

Cerdo turned his attention to Nick, considering him carefully with beady little eyes. "Why, fox?" he asked, "Why did you do it? You must have known it'd be futile. I don't even need the array in Phoenix anymore, not really. It was a useful model, but it's already served its purpose as a test. You must know my plan, surely? How could you have possibly been against it?"

The pig was speaking in a tone of long-suffering irritation, a scowl darkening his pudgy jowls. He didn't seem to want to give Nick time to actually answer, because he kept talking, his voice becoming pleading. "Can't you see that what I'm working for is true freedom? True equality? There won't be any more crime. There won't be any more prejudice. No one will care that you're a fox. Everything will be perfect!"

Cerdo slammed a thick hoof against the table, sending some of his papers scattering. As some of them drifted in the air, Judy saw that they were covered with alchemical patterns of incredible complication, the pages printed with so many interlocking lines and curves that at first glance they almost looked to be one solid color.

The pig panted, his fat torso moving like a bellows as he caught his breath after his outburst. For a long moment he simply looked at Nick, who Judy chanced a glance at. His face was a perfect mask. The perfect mask, in fact; the one that Judy recognized as the face Nick presented to the world as his way of keeping everything at arm's length.

"I didn't want you to win," Nick said at last, with a shrug.

"That's what it all comes down to, isn't it?" Cerdo asked, "Winning and losing. Everyone only cares about their own selfish little goals. That's the way everyone thinks. If he wins, I lose. But there's finally a way to break that cycle. Everyone can win."

Cerdo sighed again. "It's disappointing, but not unexpected, I suppose. It can change, though. Once my plan succeeds, mammals will finally start being better."

"If you say so," Nick said, and Cerdo nodded.

"I do say so," the pig said, "I do wish I could convince more mammals with words alone, but... It's my burden to bear."

Judy loathed his self-pitying tone, which showed how monstrous he really was. To Cerdo, the terrible cost he demanded of everyone else—their complete and utter obedience, without question—was the small price to pay for his goal. "But you will help me win now," Cerdo said, "I can always use another alchemist, after all."

"It's my pleasure," Nick said, in what struck Judy as his most obsequious tone.

"Excellent," Cerdo replied, "And you will, of course, do anything I ask?"

"I'm yours to command," Nick said.

Cerdo snapped his fingers, and what happened next was so fast that it was over before Judy even realized what was going to happen. The guards standing behind her, Nick, and the princess had seized them, and Judy felt herself being bodily lifted with her arms pinned to her sides.

"That's a lie, I'm afraid," Cerdo said, "Did you really think I wouldn't be able to tell you weren't under my control?"

"I had kind of hoped," Nick replied, but Judy heard the fear in his voice he couldn't cover with his usual tone.

"Don't worry," said Cerdo as he stood up.

He placed three torcs on the table before him and nodded to the remaining guards, who approached and took them. "It won't be a lie for much longer."