THE FARAWAY LANDS OF OZ - Book One

Part One, Chapter Six: The Wedding

EVANORA

My head was throbbing. I had never had so many headaches in such a brief time. I swear, ever since Morgana, I have had one about every week! I also felt a hand touch my boiling forehead, with such softness and caress, like I haven't felt in ages. I blinked my eyes open, and the bright daylight hurt my retinas, so I had to squeeze them slightly to be able to see anything.
A handful of silhouettes were standing beside me, either turned towards me or whispering among each other. When they noticed that I had finally woken up, the whispering stopped, and the same soft hands gently helped me up in a sitting position. I wanted to know who was taking such tender care of me.
My eyes followed the hands up to the rest of the body, along the thin arms until they remained focused on the shining face of my sister. All the toxicity had vanished from Glinda's expression and was replaced with love and the goodness I knew her for.
I returned the smile before I tilted my head around to the other few people who had now formed a semi-circle around me. Sometimes, a simple look can say more than a thousand words. I knew Glinda was sincerely sorry for her words and how she had treated me and judging from the guilt in Theodora's and Aliyah's faces, they were too.
"By the Virtues, what happened?" Were the words I could finally muster to say, after a long and awkward silence. I tried to pull myself up with my hands, but the world began spinning and I had to slump back to the ground.
"Goblins. They took their chance and attacked us."
"That's not all." Ruby had been standing in the shadows and startled me slightly by coming forward and speaking so suddenly. "They took some people..."
She looked down at her feet and back at me. I knew that something was wrong. I looked around, frantically, immediately noticing the people who were missing.
"Guys... Where are mother and Zion?"
Glinda placed her hand on my shoulder again. Again, her expression said more than words. Now I was able to stand up, adrenaline and other pheromones pumping through my veins. I cannot lose mom too. And Zion had just returned to my life again. "I'm going to get them."
Glinda moved around me and stood in my way with crossed arms. "NO! I cannot let you go alone!"
I looked at her up and down. "Then come with me!"
She shook her head. I knew it was too dangerous to go there but I could not leave them on their own. Mother was old and getting less mobile with each year and who knows what the Goblins had done to them, weakening their physical and magical abilities...
"Ruby?" She looked at me with pitiful eyes and then back at the others, pushing herself off the wall that she was leaning against and weighing her options. I knew that she wanted to live through another adventure, it was in her blood.
But on the other hand, she knew that she would support my unthoughtful behavior when she agreed. She nodded and led the way out of the castle and off to the caves. I always get what I want with her...
Without a look back, I followed her, walking past Glinda with her crossed arms and furrowed eyebrows.
"Ev!" I turned my head back towards my sister. She still had her arms crossed but her expression was worried.
"Just be careful, alright?"
I smiled at her and blew a kiss. "I will, Glinds..."
I turned back and together with Ruby, we walked past the plaza, out of the city, across the luscious, green grass and right to the stone caves that housed those wretched creatures who stole my mother, my boyfriend and fifty other people...

We had walked for quite a long time, and it was only then that I realized how close the Goblin caves had actually been to the Emerald City. Right at the border of Green Dawns and the Blue Beach. And now, I was responsible for all of it. For me, those were still father's lands and I'm very unsure whether they'll ever be something else.
Chewing these words over, in my mind, I think that I was finally accepting my place as an heir to the throne. Mother had been right, if Theodora became queen, peace would be difficult to maintain.
My sister is a hundred years younger than me and very inexperienced when it comes to politics and ruling a kingdom. Besides, she has all her life before her, and I didn't want to waste it by placing her on the throne.
As convenient as it may appear, I have seen father have too many breakdowns over the years and didn't want this horror to happen to any of my sisters. And especially not to fragile Theodora. As the oldest, I was ready to take the risk on my own.
Ruby and I were standing in front of the pitch-black holes that the Goblins called home and I had to take a deep breath to prepare myself for what was to come. I admit now that I should have thought this plan of mine through a bit, but it was too late for us now.
And as long as Ruby was with me, not much could go wrong. We looked at each other and silently dared ourselves to go in. We had no clue what to expect...
We were engulfed in darkness immediately. One couldn't even see one's own hands in front of the eyes, that's how dark it was. I heard Ruby clash her one sword down the ground, splitting the rock and letting itself get soaked with hellfire. The flames now illuminated the cave at least a bit and we finally got to see our surroundings.
Two more corridors split the cave in front of us and I knew what we had to do in order to succeed in our mission in any way: we had to split up. I looked at my friend and knew that she was thinking the same thing.
"We have to split up," I announced and she nodded, sighing deeply.
"I know." With that she held up her sword and took the right entrance. I saw the light bounce and fade away as she moved deeper into the labyrinthine Goblin home. Before I was stranded in blackness again, I directed the electricity from my amulet to my fingertips.
I felt the current run through my nervous system and saw the sparkles crackle out of my nails, gathering in a bright orb of lighting that illuminated the way ahead of me. After I took a deep sigh as well, I began to march down the left corridor with very careful steps. One could never know what types of deadly mechanisms and contraptions these Goblins had installed on the walls and the cold, clay floor.
I had been walking for a while, I figured because I slowly began to feel the soreness in my feet and knees which turned into pain soon after. And still wearing the funeral dress did not help. This cave was just a gigantic maze and I had never been good at walking in the first place and the accident I had as a child did not help in this.
It had been one of our annual trips to Albion – I had been five or six at that time (fifty/sixty in witch-years) – and me and my sisters had been playing around a very large oak tree, climbing it, and jumping from it, using our yet untapped magic to break our fall.
Eager and competitive as I was, I had climbed higher than the others had dared and was about to pull myself onto the highest branch, when I lost balance and landed with my back on another branch, almost snapping my spine.
The doctors had said that I could have died from this, hadn't my sisters prevented me from falling any further. He also said that fortunately, my spine hadn't fractured completely but the bone had just been split halfway in. "Nothing that three months of recovery and the right herbs and teas cannot fix" were his words that day, which I remember as if yesterday.
Ever since, I had the most agonizing back pain, when I would walk for too long. To my misfortune, I really enjoyed having nighttime strolls, for example.
But as I was so sunken in thoughts about the past, I barely noticed the warm light that came up around the corner in front of me. I first thought that Ruby and I made a full circle.
Yet I had just enough time to react, in order to put out my orb and plaster myself against the nearest wall, when I already heard the coarse voices of the Goblins talk in an almost not understandable dialect.
"Who' do ye think 'bout doin' with the prisoners now?"
"I dunno! I thought ye were s'posed to come up wi' somin'..."
"No, we decided that ye had to figure somin' out!"
And this bickering about continued for too long to have kept me patient. Goblins were not the brightest in any form and that allowed me to peek around the corner to see if the prisoners were with them, while they were distracted by fighting about it.
I was not surprised to see the two creatures sit on the floor around a small fire and boiling pot of soup. Behind them, a section of the cave was divided from the rest of it by rusty metal bars; a cell that confined the people taken from the party. Including Zion and mother.
After I had made sure that no other Goblins would come in and join the other two's pointless bickering, I took a minute to charge my magic and came out of the little nook that I had been hiding in.
"I'm sorry to disturb your little party but I believe that you took something that doesn't belong to you." The two creatures looked into each other's eyes and then began laughing the most disgusting laugh I had ever heard. Even Morgana could have taken a leaf out of their book.
"Do you think we are afraid of you, woman? We Goblins have conquered hundreds of human cities and never left anything alive! What makes you think that you're different from the others?"
"Well, boys... You must have been hiding in your filthy holes for very long, not to notice that magic now dominates these lands..."
For a fact, Oz had once been populated by humans, long before magic had been discovered. Yet this human-dominated country was plagued by civil wars and wars between the humans, Dwarves, Fairies and Goblins.
Once magic arrived with Morgana and Merlin, these wars had been stopped and peace had conquered my beloved lands ever since. To think that this bitch was responsible for peace made me gag!
"And I'm a witch!" With that said, I released the electricity that I had been holding inside me and fried the two Goblins alive but not before they could let out an agonizing pain that had warned the remainder of the Goblin population about what was going on in their home. I hope Ruby had heard it too and was now heading back to regroup with us.
I stepped closer to the cell, blasting it open with magic, releasing the fifty-something people that had been taken hostage by the Goblins. Mother immediately fell into my arms, squeezing me almost tight enough to break my ribs.
After she released me from her embrace and joined the others who had begun storming out the way I had come from, I was noticed by Zion.
He must have given the Goblins a fair fight, judging by the looks of him. Dust and clay matted his hair, his once so neat clothes were torn in places and covered in dirt and his skin was cut and bruised on multiple spots. I had never realized how much I really felt towards him... Not until this very moment.
It had been the unspoken truth between us, ever since I decided to leave him to protect him from the darkness that had manifested inside me. But now, I was free of it and could finally live the life I had always wanted for the two of us.
I looked at him with watery eyes and he smiled the sincerest smile, I have had the pleasure to see in these last few weeks, showing off the dimples that formed by his cheeks when he did so. This was my favorite Zion: Happy Zion.
I slowly walked towards him, feeling the smile jump over to me as I pulled him close and embraced him in a hug myself. I felt the warmth of his chest against mine and his strong grip around my waist, as I flung my arms across his shoulders and touched the back of his head.
After a minute that felt like ten, he released himself from my soft grip and cupped my cheeks in his hands, looking into my bright green eyes with his swamp green ones.
For a while, we only looked at each other like that, happy that the other was alright but then our faces began closing in on each other, as if magnetically charged.
His lips moved closer and closer to mine...
Only the sudden screech of another Goblin pulled us from our almost-kiss, and we decided to migrate to someplace more pleasant, as we began to run after the other prisoners.
With him at my side, the way seemed shorter than before and we found ourselves inside the first cave, in almost no time. Ruby was already tending the wounds of some of the other prisoners though most of them had remained unharmed.