Weathering the Storm:
Chapter One

"So," Zero said, his voice raspy with disuse after Ozma only knew how long in that iron suit. He drew his gaze away from the dancing flames of the small fire his men had built in a secluded forest clearing, clutching his cloak tighter around his shoulders, and took stock of the small group of Longcoats who'd come to release him from Wyatt Cain's idea of justice. "Report."

They were a pitiful bunch to his worn and jaded eye: a bare handful of men, still bloodstained, dirty, and downcast after the many days that must have passed since Cain's son and his men had ambushed Zero's convoy. Zero had guessed that events hadn't gone exactly according to plan when the round window of the suit had lit up again with sunlight after the extended darkness of the double eclipse, but the 'mechanical failure' he'd half-expected after telling Cain about the Tower's intended purpose wouldn't have explained the obvious lapses in discipline and morale among his troops-- or the way they'd all been studiously avoiding answering any of his questions about the Sorceress since they'd freed him. More than just the machine must have been destroyed while he'd been penned up out of action.

Captain Jinjur swallowed, a flash of dismay twisting her features. Then she nodded and thrust a hand into the pocket of her long leather coat.

"None of us were with the Sorceress' home guard when the rebels attacked," she said, clutching something small in her gloved fist. "The only news we've had of her since the battle has all come second or third hand. There were more of the Resistance than General Lonot's scouts had projected, and the forces at the Tower were nearly evenly matched until our Lady activated the machine. I don't know what was supposed to happen next; the whole sky lit up and the air buzzed like a swarm of bees, but it shut down before anything else could happen, and then the eclipse was over. And after that...." Her voice trailed off, and she opened her hand slowly, exposing a wafer-thin disc in the center of her palm. "She was just-- gone. The Queen appeared, as though she hadn't been missing for more than nine annuals, and ordered everyone to stop fighting."

"Gone as in...?" Zero prompted her sharply, frowning at the artifact she held. His stomach had immediately sunk at the sight of it; he recognized the poisonously green color of an activated memory recording, and was coming to some pretty grave suspicions about what it contained.

The captain tipped her palm above his cupped hands, dropping the disc into them with a grimace. "They started distributing these in Central City the day before yesterday. She--" Jinjur broke off, shaking her head, lips pressed into an unhappy line. Then she turned to her pack and retrieved the doubled-cylinder shape of a portable viewing device. "You'd better see for yourself, sir."

Zero waited a moment before reaching for the device, irritated by her incomplete explanation. She didn't wilt under his glare, though; she just stared back, straightening her back to a more rigidly military posture as she waited.

"That bad, then," he said, frowning. He took the viewer from her, then slid the disc into its intake slot and raised the binocular device to his face. Inside, the trapped memory played itself out for his private edification, in all its stomach-turning glory: the truth of what had happened during the Eclipse.

After the first run through Zero gave himself a moment to digest, then restarted the recording, tasting bile at the back of his throat. The memory was prefixed with a brief, colorless speech from the Queen, still dressed as she'd been during her long annuals of imprisonment by the Sorceress... but that introduction was quickly followed by a much more dramatic dialogue, captured on an all too familiar balcony under the dim greenish light of the occluded suns. It had only been a few days-- when the recording had been taken, at least; he still didn't know how many hours or cycles his imprisonment had added-- since the Sorceress had reprimanded Zero for threatening her baby sister and escorted the girl out to that very railing, claiming that she wanted to try a softer method of interrogation.

Zero hadn't so much been threatening the suddenly returned junior princess as hoping to get a few answers out of her without Azkadellia overhearing his choice of questions and jumping to unfortunate conclusions, actually. Still, knowing what he did now, he doubted his approach would have been any more fruitful than the ones his mistress had chosen. Neither her appeal to Princess Deegee's forgotten family loyalties, nor the Viewer's attempt to probe her mind after that, had yielded the Emerald's exact location. Deegee had been so young when she'd disappeared... but only five annuals old or not, she'd apparently had even better reasons to forget her past while living in seclusion on the Other Side.

Zero sat riveted as the confrontation between the sisters played out for the second time, a rising tide of anger building inside him as he watched. It had become clear over the last few annuals of the Sorceress' reign that Princess Azkadellia's early promises to her followers had been more sales pitch than substance. Even so, those who held to the old ways had stuck with her, certain that she was the only possible fulfillment of their long-cherished prophecies. The proof that they'd been wrong about that was almost more galling than the memory of the triumph on Wyatt Cain's face as he'd spared Zero's life.

He'd seen the Sorceress' behavior grow more and more erratic as the Eclipse approached, and had even speculated that whatever bargain she'd made to gain her power was weighing more heavily on her as its resolution drew near. Still, the truth of her situation came as an unpleasant shock. He'd been so sure that everything would improve once the event had passed; that, at long last, the Zone would surpass even the 'piece of heaven' it had been before the Queen had begun withholding her Light from her subjects.

Before the younger princess' unexplained death. Before the drought and the spread of the Vapors. Before her elder daughter's emergence as a serious young woman, curious about the forgotten legends of the OZ and the ways that new technologies could combine with the lingering traces of wild magic in the land to make things better for all of its peoples.

Princess Azkadellia's combination of youth, intelligence, and magical strength had seemed tailor made for the hopes and dreams of those the Tin Men called the Unwanted, back then. When she'd removed her faded and ineffectual mother from the throne, they'd believed that the restoration of the Zone's ancient glories was finally on the horizon.

None of them had suspected that Princess Deegee might have survived. None of them had so much as guessed that the Queen's decline might have been kindled by something more substantial than grief, or that the Sorceress hadn't voluntarily sought her increased powers. If they had…

If they'd known, so many things might have been different.

The Queen's brief appearance on the viewing disc had obviously been intended to verify the second memory capture; to offer proof that the true oppressor of the Zone for the previous nine annuals had not actually been her daughter. She'd claimed that the ancient evil Witch defeated by their ancestresses had used the innocent elder princess as her instrument of revenge and destruction. It seemed too easy, too neatly tied-up to be true, but if it was… if he'd really spent the last several annuals helping the Sorceress ride roughshod over his homeland for nothing….

Zero swallowed thickly as he put the device down. "Where are they now?" he asked, staring into the fire as he drove his fingernails into the flesh of his palms.

It stung; but the tactile sensation also helped ground him, reminding him that he wasn't hallucinating in the suit anymore. Though he might have been better off if he had been. They had so many strikes against them after the recent losses, it would take a lot of work to scrape any kind of success from the collapse of the Sorceress' regime. "The royal family. Where are they?"

"Still at the Tower, from all reports," Jinjur said somberly. "They released all the Viewers and the dissidents we were holding, and they've been using the cells to house the Longcoats they've captured. The Queen's made a few appearances in Central City to confirm that she's taken the throne back, but she and her family have mostly stayed holed up in the Sorceress' chambers while the Army of the Resistance finishes sweeping the Zone. There haven't even been any public executions; we think they're waiting for the Court to be restored so they can make a production out of the trials."

"The Queen's playing to public opinion," Zero nodded, a sour twist to his mouth. "She'll look for any chance she can get to contrast herself to the Witch; if she hopes to keep the throne this time, she'll have to ride the wave of backlash against Azkadellia's policies and portray herself as the generous and forgiving all-mother of the Zone. Just like every other Gale Queen since the Good Sorceress destroyed every possible challenger to their authority."

"She'll put things back exactly the way they were before," one of the other soldiers spoke up, a conflicted tone to his words.

"Maybe not," Zero shook his head, still mulling over what he'd seen, taking in more of the details as his mood slowly cooled. There was something about the way the younger princess had taken charge of the encounter with her sister-- something about the way Azkadellia had reacted that gave him a thread of hope. "Not if we get to Princess Deegee before they finish filling her head with all their justifications."

The young soldier-- Ervic, Zero thought his name was, a recent recruit still all blond curls and earnestness for the cause-- frowned at him across the small fire. "But-- she's the one who defeated the Sorceress. You saw it, same as we have; she'll never listen to us."

"Maybe," Zero drawled, thinking aloud. "And... maybe not. She was travelling with Wyatt Cain, and the Sorceress-- the Witch-- sent me after her, so you're right, she'll never listen to me. But the rest of you-- she's the soft-hearted type, and hasn't been indoctrinated with the Gale view of history yet. She might decide you were just... misguided." He made a disgruntled face. "Remember, she grew up on the Other Side; and if you say nothing else about that place, you have to admit it has a way of producing people with strong ideas about freedom and fairness."

The original Slipper would never have been able to destroy the Witches of her time, wed the lost heir to the throne, and claim the Good Sorceress' patronage if she hadn't had an unusually strong will. Dorothy may have started the Zone on its long path to stagnation and decline, but even her detractors had to admit that probably hadn't been her intention.

In fact, if Dorothy hadn't brought her brand of plucky heroism to the OZ, their world might have been drowned in darkness and decay five hundred annuals before. Queen Lavender's consort, Ahamo, had been stamped from the same mold; he might be an artist, not a warrior, but he'd won the crown princess' hand out from under several noble aspirants and successfully defended his claim to her parents, a feat that had caused a great scandal at the time.

If Zero was right about his suspicions, that stubbornness would work for them now. If Princess Deegee could be persuaded of the strength of their original cause, see it as something separate from the destruction the Sorceress had wrought from their support, the prophecy might yet be fulfilled in their favor. And if not-- they could hardly fall any further than they already had. He had nothing left to lose.

"Think about it," he added, glancing away from Ervic to briefly match gazes with each of the other soldiers around the fire, willing strength back into them. "On the disc, Princess Deegee said that she was the one who got her sister into trouble."

He held up the shimmering chip of moritanium-infused glass, tilting it so that it caught and scattered the light from the flames. "Why would she say that, when she was only five annuals old when she died? I was brand new to the bodyguard detail at the Northern Palace back then, but I met her a few times; she was a willful little thing, but she wasn't cruel, and she was hardly old enough to be held responsible for her actions. If she was the one who freed the Witch, it would have been because she was drawn to her presence somehow, not because she meant her sister any harm."

"Drawn?" Ervic blinked, starting a little as Zero's meaning dawned on him. "Wait. As in, 'one to darkness'?" he quoted in wondering tones.

Zero nodded solemnly. "And given what happened to Princess Azkadellia, up there…." He gestured in the general direction of the Tower, deliberately referring to her by the title she'd inherited, rather than the one she'd claimed by right of a power he now knew had never truly been hers.

"One to light, she be shown," Jinjur added breathlessly, reciting the next line of the old nursery rhyme.

"Exactly," Zero concluded. "Looks like we've been supporting the wrong princess all this time."

Silence settled heavily around the fire. Then Jinjur nodded. "So there might still be a chance," she agreed, frowning. "But how? The Queen's keeping both of them close after everything that's happened; Princess Deegee hasn't appeared in public since the Eclipse without at least a four-man escort of Resistance soldiers. They'll never let her out of their sight long enough for us to speak to her."

Zero tucked the recording disc away in his pocket and idly picked up a loose stick to nudge at the fire as he considered the problem. The tip smoldered greenly, gradually charring as he nudged sparks free from slowly burning logs. The sight reminded him of the way Finaqua had looked after the Sorceress' first visit there as an adult, and he narrowed his eyes in speculation.

"They'll have to tear down the Tower soon," he thought aloud. "It'll remind people of the Sorceress every time they see it, and the Queen won't like that. The Northern Palace is still mostly frozen over from the magics fading there, and the Old Residence in Central City was partitioned off for Longcoat barracks annuals ago. That just leaves Finaqua. It'll be a lot easier to access the princesses there; Princess Deegee magically restored it exactly the way it was fifteen annuals ago, so the entrances and exits should all be the same, and I remember most of those."

"But what if they go somewhere else?" one of the soldiers who'd not yet spoken raised his voice.

"And what are we going to do with her once we've found her?" Ervic wanted to know. "How are we supposed to convince her?"

"They won't," Zero said, projecting more confidence than he felt as he answered the first question. "For the same reason the Queen won't stay in the Tower in the first place. Appearances. She'll want to reconvene the court in a place the Sorceress never used, a place with positive associations."

"Which leaves out most of Central City," the soldier agreed, grimacing.

Zero nodded. "And where else would they go?" he asked. "What inn or manor could be found that wouldn't be even more difficult to secure, or else make her look like a petitioner in her own lands?"

That settled, he looked up from the fire again to match gazes with Ervic. "As for how we're going to approach Princess Deegee...."

The boy had been right; the princess would take a lot of convincing. Coercion wouldn't work; not after what he'd seen of her during the quest for the Emerald. So he'd have to send someone the Gales had no reason to distrust to draw her away; someone neutral, who'd never worn the coat of Azkadellia's service, yet was also a convincing representative of the older traditions Zero's people supported.

The man Zero was thinking of had not traveled in generations, and had repeatedly refused to be introduced to the Sorceress. But for Deegee-- born Dorothea Glinda of the House of Gale, bearer of the power of the Lurline fairy bloodline, raised in the Other Side homeland of her namesake--

"We need to find Nick Chopper," he said.

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