Wrath of a Wonderfully Wicked Witch (Return to Oz With a Vengeance Book 2)

by Warren Thomas

  “You're a worse misogynist than… Any man ever born,” Glinda said, shaking her head. “But that's why everyone loves you so much.”

  “Everyone? Yeah. I believe that.”

  “Believe this,” Glinda said as Wanda flew up to hover before them on her broom. “Olivia is bearing down upon us from the north, while Diana is coming up from the south. We have a short window of opportunity to crush the Ozian Grand Army before they join the battle. Let us not squander this advantage we have right now.”

  Glinda studied the Winkie host to the northwest of Emerald City. Wanda's army looked ready, already assembled and arrayed for battle. Their bright yellow battle flags and pennants stirred in the light breeze. To the northeast, Jezebelle's Munchkin army was spread out as they marched into battle. Her eyes lifted a bit, finding a nightmare of fire and death behind that host.

  “I don't like Scarecrow commanding my army, Glinda,” Wanda said. She looked in a foul mood. “I don't trust him, or you, for that matter.”

  Wanda looked very…shiny for battle. Everything she wore, save her Cardinal Witch's hat, was shiny black leather: off-the-shoulder corset, over-the-elbow gloves, tight pants, and thigh boots.

  “Let's not argue about that again,” Glinda said. “Now is not the time. We will never have a better chance of crushing our enemies as we have right now. Dorothy, General Chopper, and Warlord Lion are off on some adventure, leaving Emerald City ripe for the plucking. The hosts of North and South are no match for our combined armies, so if we can crush the Grand Army before Olivia and Diana join the battle, we'll be able to drive them off the field.”

  Wanda barked a laugh, her eyes filled with evil glee. “Yes. And then the Good Witches will be forced to bend knee to us.”

  “Then we are in agreement,” Glinda said. She looked to the northeast. “The Munchkin army is in place. It is time we seize the Ozian Empire for ourselves.”

  “Wahoo!” Wanda cried, and whipped away in a flash.

  Jezebelle did a swan dive off the flying carpet, before deploying her wings. Glinda watched the two Wicked Witches dive down toward the Imperial Grand Army. She opened her palm before her face. A pink bubble appeared. “Scarecrow. Unleash the armies. Vanquish our enemy!”

  The bubble streaked away. The strawberry blonde Witch watched Wanda and Jezebelle pelting the Grand Army with fireballs. A moment later, all three armies lurched toward the Imperial Grand Army's positions surrounding the city. She smiled when the first elements of both sides came together.

  Scarecrow's clear message bubble appeared before her and burst. “Great One, we have engaged the enemy.”

  Glinda leaned forward, sending her flying carpet racing toward the great city. She pointed her wand, drawing tiny runes in the air a moment. Lightning shot out of her wand to striking the city's arcane shields.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  She hit the city's defenses over and over, until a powerful bolt shot back at her from the palace's highest tower. Glinda dodged aside, avoiding death and destruction. She smiled.

  “Nice try, Locasta,” she muttered.

  Wanda, and then Jezebelle, turned their attentions from the soldiers to the city's magical defenses. Their lightning bolts struck the bubble-like mystical shield over and over as well. While the soldiers fought to the death below, the witches strove to shatter Emerald City's most powerful defenses. The city could not be taken until those shields and wards were destroyed.

  While the lightning bolts of the Cardinal Witches thundered and shook the ground, the Lesser Witches within the four armies threw all they had at each other. Fireballs were the preferred weapons of Lesser Witches at the moment, once the two sides met the witches' battles would become a lot more intimate, and deadly.

  “Yes. Well done, Scarecrow,” she muttered, seeing the Wicked armies slowly pushing the Imperials back. Then she noticed her own army had the Imperials facing them on the run. “General Alizan, you are my beast of the battlefield!”

  A black bubble flew up and hovered before her. The Witch blinked at it. A Sa'Kor message bubble? Then he eyes widened. Could it be?

  Popping the bubble, she heard Kala's voice, “The bird is in hand. On the way.”

  Glinda's skin tingled. Dorothy is mine!

  Considering how fast a Lesser Witch could push a flying carpet, Glinda estimated her Sa'Kor would deliver Dorothy and the Silver Shoes to her around noon. The battle should be over my then, and she really wanted to receive Dorothy while sitting upon the Emerald Throne.

  To do that, she had to destroy Emerald City's magical defenses. Then take down Locasta.

  With the Silver Shoes on my feet, and Dorothy on her knees groveling before me, I'll assume the throne for real. I'll be the Witch Empress of Oz! I'll be First Witch and Empress, and all the Witches will bow to me!

  A purple lightning bolt flashed by her, missing the Witch by inches. Glinda gasped when it didn't vanish in a thunderclap, but whipped around her.

  “Olivia!”

  Glinda struggled within the glowing purple rope of energy.

  “Hello, sister,” the Good Witch of the North said. “Yield!”

  With that command, Olivia sent power through the arcane trap. Glinda threw her head back and screamed her throat raw. The electrical power of lightning pulsed through that sticky tendril of energy, zapping Glinda over and over again. Blackness began closing in on her, but she mustered the last of her strength to twirl her wand in a counter-spell, and tapped Olivia tendril just as her vision shrunk to a pinpoint.

  Boom!

  Both Witches went flying in opposite directions.

  Glinda felt her body tumbling through the sky, dropping fast toward the hard, unmerciful earth. Her numb body continued to twitch and tremble, but she sucked it up and forced her wand through a series of runes.

  Just as suddenly as the explosion hurled her halfway across the battlefield, she stopped in midair, and then slowly drifted to the ground. Her head started to clear as the pain and trembling faded. By the time her booted feet touch the ground, Glinda was alert and looking all around for a foe.

  She spotted Olivia far to the north. The Witches of North and West circled each other high above, the magical battle invisible to the naked eye. It only took a second to see Wanda was not prevailing.

  “Damn Dorothy for making Olivia First Witch!”

  She pulled up a message bubble, “Jez, be alert! The Good Witches are here!”

  Jezebelle could hold her own against Diana, so Glinda called her flying carpet. She had to get to Wanda before Olivia defeated her. Then she heard more explosions, and realized it was Diana attacking the ground forces. And worse, she'd brought a hundred Lesser Witches with her. They spread out wreaking havoc among Glinda's own troops, while Diana attacked Scarecrow and his command and control operations.

  Chapter 24

  The common room proved a riot of noise. Soldiers shouted, everyone moving with a sense of urgency. Horace cowered in the corner in his nightshirt. Nick and Lion stood studying the map from opposite sides of a table. Dorothy descended from her room, fully dressed and armed with pistols and a pair of Uzi submachine guns strapped across her body.

  “Are we ready to ride?” she asked.

  “If you're ready to kill a few dozen locals,” Nick said. “The town's watch, backed by the local militia, has secured both town gatehouses. We have to fight our way out of Hycross.”

  She scowled at him. Three dead was already too many, though they were all Glinda's evil Sa'Kor agents. The townspeople weren't evil, and were probably just scared. Of course, killing the town's ruler didn't help their situation.

  “There is another way,” Dorothy said. “I can magic everyone out of the city with my shoes. I doubt they'd pursue.”

  Lion gave her a curious look. “You mean teleport all of us just outside the town gate?”

  “Yes. Do you have a better idea, that doesn't involve a slaughter?”

  He waved her over to the table and pointed at the map. “I sent advance scout
s out to find the city. They returned just before Wilma sounded the alarm.” He pressed a finger down on the map. “Anark is right there. Using the map, can you use your magic to take us there?”

  Dorothy stared at the map a moment. “So far, I've only used the Silver Stilettos to transport to places I know.”

  Nick gave her a sharp look. “Not true. You transported us all here to the Misty Mountains from Emerald City. I thought you said you'd never been here before.”

  “Well, no, but I'd seen pictures of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is what we call them where I'm from,” she said. “My shoes magicked us to a place I'd seen in pictures.”

  “The pictures were a place you'd seen in your old world,” Nick said. “The shoes didn't take us there, but to the Misty Mountains in our world. So you can do it.”

  Dorothy blinked at him a moment. She hadn't thought of it, but yes. And then a smile spread across her face.

  “Assemble your men, Nick,” she commanded. “Gather your beastmen, Lion. Everyone has to be holding hands or touching, just like back in Emerald City.”

  Lion morphed into a half-lion and raced out to roar his commands to the sky. Nick rolled up the map and grinned at Dorothy, before striding out barking commands. The common room cleared in seconds, leaving Dorothy alone with the innkeeper.

  “Master Horace, I am deeply sorry about the trouble we brought into your fine establishment,” she said. Dorothy placed a heavy coin purse on the table. “I hope you find this adequate compensation. Farewell, sir.”

  Organized chaos ruled the street between the inn and stables. Dorothy watched her generals, Lion and Nick, quickly bring order to it all, gathering everyone into a tight circle with her mount in the middle.

  “Now would be a good time to use your magic, Your Highness,” Nick said, indicating an angry mob approaching. “Unless you changed your mind and want to unleash us upon those poor fools.”

  Dorothy pushed through to her horse and took the reins in hand. And then she held hands with Nick and Lion, before starting the transportation spell. She closed her eyes and concentrated on what she wanted, driving all other thoughts and concerns from her head.

  “There's no place like Anark,” she said, clicking her heels. “There's no place like Anark.” Click. “There's no place like Anark.” Click.

  She felt a brief disorientation, and then opened her eyes. They no longer stood in the middle of Hycross, but upon an ill-used, overgrown road in the middle of a forest. Towering trees cut off any available moonlight, plunging them into the darkest of nightshadows. And then she lifted her eyes.

  “I did it!”

  The ruins of an ancient walled city stood before them. The forest had pretty much overrun it, with weeds, bushes, and even trees growing atop the crumbling walls and gatehouse. It looked dark and foreboding in the night.

  “Lion, did your scouts locate the citadel?” she asked. When he nodded, “Then lead the way, my friend. Let's find this Null Stone and get back home.”

  Lion, still in his half-human form, took off at a trot. Dorothy followed.

  “We're going in dismounted,” Dorothy said. “Nick, post guards on the horses.”

  The beastmen could see well in the dark, but not the humans. Dorothy, Nick, and the cavalrymen all pulled out baseball-sized crystals. With a word from its owner, each crystal began emitting a bluish-white light. Dorothy rather liked them better than flashlights in her own world, or actual flaming torches.

  Anark proved to be a city to rival pre-war Emerald City in size. It was once upon a time the seat of the ruling Cardinal Witch. She'd died so long ago that no one in their troop remembered her name.

  The structures within Anark were even more tumbledown than the walls. Most had once been half-timbered, so there wasn't much left besides their stone foundations. The vast majority did appear to have had their ground floor walls constructed of stone. The once glorious palace stood in the middle of the city, still a good hundred feet tall. Most of the palace's blue tiles had fallen off over the centuries, leaving behind bare grey stone. It looked dreary and spooky, with many of its spires and towers still standing.

  In reality, Dorothy didn't need Lion's scouts to lead them to the citadel. The soaring stone edifice occupied the southeastern corner and stood half as tall as the palace ruins. Like the palace, blue tiles speckled its cold stone keep and towers.

  “Be wary of magical traps,” Dorothy said when they passed through the citadel gates. The actual doors had long rotted away, as well as the portcullis. “I can't even imagine what nasty wards that long dead Wicked Witch left behind.”

  “What makes you think she was a Wicked Witch?” Lion asked.

  Dorothy paused. “Well, Anark sounds like a derivative of anarchy, and we are in Munchkin County, land of the Wicked Witches of the East.”

  Lion shrugged. Nick picked up the argument.

  “I guess you are not aware that sometimes the Land makes the North and South Witches Wicked, and the East and West Witches Good.”

  “What? That's crazy.”

  “Why? Is there something inherently wicked about Munchkins and Winkies?” Nick asked. She just stared at him. “Right. So, like I said, every time all four Cardinal Witches are vanquished at the same time, the Wickeds and Goods that rise up flip-flop their cardinal positions.”

  Dorothy found the idea too weird to contemplate. Wicked Witch of the South? Good Witch of the West? It just seemed wrong. So she turned her full attention to the ruins before them.

  The citadel looked in far worse shape up close. She did not relish the thought of going inside. Most of the service structures built inside and against the outer walls had long since crumbled away. There was a well before what she assumed had been the stables, and a huge stone keep as part of the city and citadel's outer walls. The top half of that impressive keep had been blown away.

  “I can't even imagine the spell that destroyed that keep,” Dorothy said. “Shall we go inside, my friends? As much as I hate to say it, I have a bad feeling the talisman is below ground, down in the dungeon.”

  “That's where they usually put the treasury,” Lion said. “Follow me.”

  Lion strode in like he owned it, before half his beastmen swarmed in around him. The other half spread out throughout the citadel to post as guards, while Nick assigned an entire platoon of soldiers to guard the citadel's gate and the keep's entrance.

  Dorothy followed Lion, with Nick close on her heels and hovering protectively around her. He barked orders, sending soldiers to check all the side chambers. Their light crystals revealed the upper levels had all rotted away, leaving behind nothing but a stone shell. Even the rotting wood was long rotted to dust, leaving behind what few bits of metal that had been left behind. Rusty swords, arrowheads, knives lay on stone floor, along with shattered pottery and plates. A single, crushed human skull lay in one corner.

  Lion's scouts quickly returned.

  “We found the basement, Warlord.”

  “Lead on,” Lion commanded.

  The stairs were part of the keep's wall, basically a circular stairwell from the lowest dungeon to the roof. Worse, it spun upward in the opposite direction that she felt was natural. Nick explained it was for defensive purposes, so the defenders above would be able to swing their swords right-handed and down, while the invaders would be hampered using their right handed swords. Of course, at ground level the direction reversed down into the basements, going counterclockwise.

  “Are the steps irregular, too?” she asked after the second time she stumbled.

  “Yes.”

  They found the treasury on the lowest level, three floors below ground. The door had rotted away, so they strode in to find it empty. Nothing but bare stone floor, walls, and ceiling.

  “Well, this sucks greasy balls,” Nick said.

  “Eww,” Dorothy replied, taking a step away from him. Then she looked around. “Look for a hidden door. Check the floor, too. One of the paving stones might be a trapdoor.”

&nb
sp; “How the hell are we supposed to find a secret door?” a soldier muttered.

  Dorothy spoke before Nick could explode on him. “Look for scratches that could indicate a door swinging open across the floor, or a seam that looks too wide.”

  Even as she said it, Dorothy stepped up to the back wall and noticed scratches on the floor. The scratches curved in arches from a single point on the wall. She studied the wall, noticing it was a single piece of stone, but carved to make it look like stacked stone. On top of that, she found matching scratches on the ceiling above.

  “Found it,” Dorothy called. “A hidden door swings out here.”

  Finding the door and opening it proved two different problems. They spent an hour trying to pry the hidden door open. It didn't budge. Being granite, they couldn't quickly pickaxe through it, either.

  “It's held closed by magic,” Lion said in disgust. “I should've brought Locasta.”

  Dorothy waved everyone away and stepped up close to lay a hand on it. The stone was cold. She Willed it to open, hoping her magic shoes would help. Well, she tried anyway. Nothing happened, so she started to place the light crystal on the floor so she could use both hands, when the light reflected off the mirror like Silver Stilettos.

  Of course!

  “There's no place like the chamber beyond.”

  Click.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Nick cried.

  “There's no place like the chamber beyond.”

  Click.

  “No!” Nick and Lion shouted as one, lunging at her.

  “There's no place like the chamber beyond.”

  Click.

  She felt a different sensation. More of a surge forward, and in an eye blink Dorothy stood alone in a small chamber.

  Thank God I didn't put the crystal down, she thought, holding it up to illuminate the ornate chamber. “Wow!”

  The walls looked like something found in an ancient Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, minus the hieroglyphics. The colors were amazing, so bright and looked like they'd been painted yesterday. One wall was covered in battle scenes, both magical and mundane. Four Cardinal Witches fought. It showed cities in ruin, burning. Then on the other walls it showed a beautiful blonde in Munchkin Blue with a blue crystal mounted on a golden scepter, she fought with the scepter, striking down Witch after Witch. Until there was just one. And then it showed her placing the scepter in an underground chamber.