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Glass shatters as Elphaba hurtles through the window, shards bursting through the air like ice caught in a gale. The Monkeys that followed her disperse, fanning out in the air, spreading out to search the castle for weapons, to defend the perimeter.
She soars downward and lands hard on the marble floor flinging her broomstick aside.
She fumbles for the Grimmerie, hands shaking. Kiamo Ko’s great hall yawns around her, vast, vaulted, and empty, but she sees none of it. Her mind is only on one thing, one goal.
SAVE HIM.
Elphaba slams the spellbook down onto the massive oak table in the center of the room. The thud echoes across the hall.
“Help me,” she cries, and then, louder, desperate, commanding. “Help me!”
The Grimmerie answers at once.
Its pages thrash, snapping, then slam open. Ink crawled across the parchment, the spell assembling itself in jagged strokes, impatient, alive. She finds the beginning of the provided spell and begins to chant.
“Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen! Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen!”
Her voice barely keeps pace with the words as she reads. She trips over the pronunciation of the ancient, magical language.
“Let his flesh not be torn! Let his blood leave no stain!”
The vision slams into her without warning.
Fiyero, thrown to the ground, arms around his head, desperately trying to protect himself from the soldiers that swarmed him like predators. They landed blow after blow, across his jaw, his nose, his stomach. One raised his boot and brought it down hard on his ankle. The crack split the air, sickeningly loud.
Elphaba gasps, the spell faltering on her tongue. Her vision swims as she tries to refocus on the words.
“Though they beat him, let him feel no pain! Let his bones never break and however they try to destroy him–”
Another vision, so much worse.
He’s strung up onto a cross-post, blood pouring out of several gashes across his face and chest. He’s screaming, and the sound rips through the air, across Oz, sharp as knives against her heart.
She screams with him.
“Let him never die!” Her voice breaks. “Let him never die!!”
The last word catches in her throat, strangled and hoarse. Die. Fiyero DYING because of her.
She chants louder, more desperate, trying to pour every ounce of will and intention into her words.
“Eleka nahmen nahmen– ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen!”
The words began to warp.
Colorful ink bleeds and ripples across the pages, letters rearranging themselves faster than she could read. Glowing, swirling sigils poured over the ancient parchment, obfuscating the text. Panic surged as she stumbles over the next line, trying to chase the spell before it slipped out of her reach.
“Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka— eleka—!”
The Grimmerie erupted in blinding light, yanking the spell away from her.
Magic explodes. The energy blasts her backwards and she stumbles, nearly losing her footing and falling to the ground.
She lets out a yelp of terror as winds buffet her away, a powerful cyclone with the Grimmerie at its center.
Elphaba fights her way back towards it, fear and terror clawing in her chest. What was that spell? What did it do? She lunges for the book, fingers tearing at the glowing pages, nearly ripping them as she tries to read the shifting words. The book shudders, beams of light carving though the bindings.
But it doesn’t give her anything, doesn't respond to her. There’s nothing else.
No new trick. No second chance.
The final vision comes mercilessly.
Fiyero hangs limp on the beam–burned, bloodied, bruised beyond recognition. Fire crawls up from his left shoulder, devouring his face, and hair. Flesh melts under the heat, his clothing igniting in a rush.
Elphaba screams.
“FIYERO!!!”
She hurls the Grimmerie across the room. It spins through the air, pages flipping wildly with a mind of its own, the spine bending backward, then beating, almost like wings, before crashing away, still glowing like a miniature sun.
She tears her gaze from it. From her failure.
Her strength gives out, energy completely spent from the spell. She crumples, knees striking the stone floor hard, arms wrapped tight around her body. There’s a horrible, awful moaning, and she realizes, distantly, that it’s coming from her.
Agony—deep, raw, all-consuming.
She had failed again.
Again. And again. And AGAIN.
Fiyero.
She could still hear his screams in her mind.
Then, others joined. Boq’s panicked shouts as metal wrapped around his body. Nessa’s cry for help followed, faraway and distant, swallowed by the screaming wind and the crushing weight of the house. Dr. Dillamond loud incoherent bleating as he stared up at her, bound and shackled.
The cacophony of their combined shrieks crescendo, blurring, twisting, echoing through her head. Elphaba screams and clutches at her head, pressing her hands to her ears, desperately trying to quell the noise and the pain. It was unbearable.
She lashes out with a cry, magic ripping from her chest in a violent arc from where she kneels. The massive table splinters like kindling, wood exploding outward, glass cabinets and stone statues and candelabras flung hard enough to shatter against the walls. Tapestries and banners tear loose, ripped from their hooks as if clawed by invisible hands. The cavernous great hall groans under the force of her grief, furniture skidding, windows shattering, floor cracking, in her wake.
Then it stops.
Elphaba freezes mid-breath, the destruction still ringing in her ears. Her eyes track the wreckage in horror and dawning recognition. The familiar patterns in the tapestries and banners, matching the ones so beautifully embroidered in Fiyero’s blue clothing. The carved insignia on the table’s remains. The blue diamond mosaic tiles on the floor, now cracked.
Fiyero’s castle. His family’s castle.
Her magic sputters out. She stares at what she’s done, at the destroyed remains of the hall- in the sanctuary Fiyero had offered her without hesitation. The air feels suddenly too quiet, too hollow. Even the Grimmerie is finally motionless, lying on the floor near the far wall.
Her hands begin to shake. She presses them to her mouth as if she can force the damage back inside herself, to somehow rewind time.
Wicked. The word coils around her ribs, tight and suffocating. She’d seen it everywhere, all over posters and banners, heard it yelled at her when she went on missions to free Animals.
But this, this careless destruction was… wicked.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps, to the destroyed room, to him. Her voice scraps against her throat “Fiyero–I didn’t mean to–I didn’t–”
She falls to the floor among the wreckage, among the broken stone and splintered wood, curling in on herself. This was all she was good at. Destruction.
The castle looms around her, bearing silent witness.
Something sharp digs into her side, likely shards of glass that had fallen from the windows. She shifts and deliberately presses herself down onto it, hard, until it pierces through her dress and into her skin. More pain bursts across her side, sharp and punishing.
Good.
It was nothing compared to what Fiyero had suffered in his last moments.
With all the magic in the world. With the most powerful book ever written. She had still failed him. Failed everyone.
Boq. Nessa. Dr. Dillamond.
Fiyero.
What good had she ever done?
The broken marble floor was freezing, especially against her face, but Fiyero’s absence was colder, made unbearable with the memories still clinging to her body. The previous night lingered in the phantom warmth of her skin where his hands and lips had been, in the dull ache of her hips and thighs. The last remnants of his existence.
She killed him.
There was nothing that could ever change that.
She was wicked.