by S Cinders
I landed none too gently.
“Those of you that are stuck. Lay back and slowly make your way over to Indy. She will help to pull you out.”
Listening to Scarecrow, they all fell back and began the strangest backstroke I have even seen.
Scarecrow continued to sink.
I helped Glinda and El out before El could undo the enchantment on Gregory. As soon as he was human again, he flopped onto his back and began to come towards us. We grabbed him by the arms and pulled for all we were worth. Slowly the quicksand lost its grasp on him.
I turned back to Scarecrow, “Hurry up, you need to transition back into a man.”
He snorted derisively, “Do you think I have any idea how to do that?”
“Use your freaky unicorn powers, Goddess, Scarecrow, problem solving—you should try it.”
Scarecrow’s eyes flashed to Gregory and me.
I could have sworn that Gregory took a giant step back.
Suddenly, Scarecrow’s horn began to glow. There was a hush across the forest as if it knew that we were witnessing something special.
“We might want to move back,” El suggested when the ground began to shake.
“I am not leaving him,” I yelled. “I won’t do it!”
Glinda sighed, “Fine.”
“Can you not leave him for another?” El gently asked.
“He is my mate. You don’t understand what it means to mates. They don’t come along every day. You should cherish it always.
“Young love,” Glinda sighed, and I barely restrained an eye roll.
“You do realize that you are younger than both of us?” I blew out a breath, “Stop behaving as I if you were a sixty-five-year-old matron.”
“Scarecrow, do something!” I screamed as he sunk lower.
The glowing reappeared in his horn and then there were running lights, my stomach felt turned inside out. There was a brilliant flash and then standing there, as naked as he was born, was Scarecrow.
My Scarecrow.
Not that I was looking or anything, but his dick stood out prominently from his powerful body. He was hard and wanting.
“Holy shit,” my sisters said in unison.
“Holy shit! Indeed.”
And then without so much as a wave, he flopped onto this back and started doing the breaststroke through the sand.
My sisters were whispering about his dick. Steele and Gregory looked murderous.
When we pulled him out, Scarecrow’s arms whipped around me. He was filthy and covered in sand and muck.
He cupped my face in his, lowering until our foreheads touched.
“I am sorry,” and then he kissed me.
CHAPTER 52 - PART 5 – Indy
No sooner had Scarecrow captured my lips, then we heard the familiar sickeningly sweet voice of Dorothy’s.
“I thought you would never make it. Goodness, I had begun to give up hope!”
I ripped out of Scarecrow’s arms just as El magicked him up some clothes.
Dorothy was nowhere to be seen.
“Come out and fight,” El growled.
“Oh, no!” her voice gave me the shivers. “I don’t want to fight. I just want to go home! There’s no place like home.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Scarecrow, if possible, seemed even tenser and scarier since changing back into a human. It was hot as hell.
There was a loud bark and then Dorothy, “Don’t be silly, Toto. Scarecrow’s don’t talk.”
“I think she is deranged,” Gregory pipped in.
A sudden chill filled the air.
Mombi was the one person that I knew who could control the weather.
“Where is my sister?” I called out. “Where is Mombi?”
The cackle of childish laughter erupted toward us, “You will never find me, cannot catch me, nor will you ever be able to defeat me!”
“Stop being such a bitch!” I screamed.
The stupid dog started yapping again.
“You cursed brat! I will get you, Dorothy!” El said quietly, “And your little dog, too.”
It felt like a promise.
In the next instant, it was like Dorothy’s presence had disappeared. The heaviness had lifted from around us. I looked at Glinda and noticed that Gregory was once again a human.
We were a ragtag group. Glinda and Gregory looked terrified, El and Steele determined, and I had no clue what they would have labeled Scarecrow and me. Then there was Cass, the cutest, purplest Pixie I had ever seen.
Were we crazy to think that we had a chance?
“Did you feel that?” Glinda rubbed her arms as if warding off a chill.
I nodded, “Let’s keep going, it can’t be that much further.”
But it was, the longer we traveled, the more I worried.
Some beasts tried eating us. Plants spat acid and decided to eat Cass. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
Our spirits were sinking with the sun.
“How much further?”
El rolled her eyes, “We are ten minutes closer than we were the last time you asked, Glinda.”
“I am not sure why you are whining when Gregory has carried you on his back the last three hours,” I grumbled.
Gregory looked like he agreed but was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
“You are just mad that your boyfriend didn’t offer to carry you,” Glinda pouted.
Scarecrow raised a brow, “If I felt Indy wasn’t strong enough, I would carry her.”
El and I snorted with laughter as an ugly purplish hue covered Glinda’s face.
She was just about to retort when Steele stopped in his tracks. In the next second, he was yelling at us to get down and arrows were flying all around our heads.
I whisper of wind sliced next to my temple and I knew I had narrowly escaped a terrible fate.
The winds started picking up around us and the sky grew dark.
Mombi, it had to be.
Fat raindrops pelted down from the sky, soaking us. The winds whipped around our bodies and I wondered if we were to have a tornado touch down right on the top of Mount Munch.
“We have to find out where this is coming from!” Scarecrow shouted over the wind.
“You can’t stand up. They will kill you!” I yelled back.
Steele’s eyes flashed eerily similar to Scarecrow’s in beast mode. Both men seemed to grow in stature, teeth elongating.
Steele looked at Scarecrow in shock, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Scarecrow looked as surprised as Steele, “I thought I was the only one, and I don’t suck blood.”
Steele looked at him as if that was the stupidest comment he had ever heard.
El shook her head, “Can we talk about this later? Maybe when we are not fighting or dying?”
Scarecrow flipped her off. I’d like to think that was his way of saying good point.
I am fully aware that it was wishful thinking.
The guys crept away from our hiding spot, looking for the direction of the shooters. The winds howled, and the rain kept pouring from the skies.
“We need to do something about this!” I called out to El. “What about a shield or dome to protect us?”
El considered it, “We will only be able to do our little group because if we covered Mombi, she could just recreate this inside of our shield.”
“You think Mombi is doing this?” Gregory sounded horrified.
“Has to be,” Glinda said through gritted teeth. “I saw a similar storm in high school when the twins ripped her favorite jeans. Father was furious. It took weeks to clean up the castle, and it still smells moldy.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Why?” Gregory cupped his hands to his face to be heard.
“She would never intentionally hurt us,” I yelled back. “Dorothy has to have taken control of her actions.”
This was a terrifying thought.
How could Dorothy have the power to alter someone’s thinking process?
Especially someone as fierce and independent as Mombi.
“We need to follow them,” Gregory urged, “The storm is getting worse.”
He was right. The sun was completely blocked at this point. One would think it was the dark of night.
We stumbled across the grass, keeping low to the ground. Every one of us muddy, scratched, and miserable as we tried to see through the downpour.
“Just there!” Glinda called out. She was pointing to the left, and when I wiped the rain from my eyes, I saw a yellow coat fly through the air. It was one of the lions, and they were attacking Scarecrow.
Perhaps what I did next was foolhardy, even stupid, but I reacted the instant I knew he was in danger. To hell with shields and force fields, it was time to kick some ass.
I rose to my feet in a flash. My hands burning as a tremendous amount of power built up. I held balls of fire in my hands and didn’t hesitate to throw the first one at the lion Scarecrow was fighting.
I am not sure who was more surprised, the lion or Scarecrow, but the fire bomb blew him, at least, twenty feet in the air.
“Fuck, Indy?”
I ignored Scarecrow, “Stop hiding Dorothy!”
My voice was amplified by my fury. I threw another fireball, and then another. The lions began to back away in fear.
“You can’t hide from me forever,” I warned.
Electricity sparked between the fireballs in my hand. I allowed the energy to grow to dangerous levels before throwing the lot of it towards the trees where the lions as gone to take cover.
They scattered like ants as the trees caught fire and began to blaze.
“Somebody is angry,” Dorothy’s singsong voice came from behind me. I whipped around to see her standing there with a knife to Mombi’s throat.
“Somebody has taken too many things that don’t belong to her,” fury raced through my veins. I wanted to kill Dorothy, to rip her apart, piece by piece.
Mombi had tears streaming down her face, “I didn’t mean to do this.”
I heard her shout before Dorothy tightened the knife, drawing a thin line of blood to trickle down Mombi’s neck.
“Fuck that!” I raged, “Release her, and you might live.”
Dorothy’s eyes narrowed, “What makes you think that you can give orders?”
And it was at that moment, with Mombi clinging to her life, and Glinda and El fighting to keep a shield over them and Gregory, that I realized something. I could give any damn order I pleased because I was meant to rule this land. The only reason I lacked before, was I didn’t have the balls to step into what I had known, all along, was meant to be mine.
“Because I am the Queen of Oz and you are nothing but a spoiled little girl that needs to go home.”
I felt power radiate through my body, coming up from the land, through my feet until I had to be glowing with it.
“I will repeat this one more time, and then I will kill you. You murdered my people, destroyed crops, dropped a house on me, kidnapped my sister and stole my fucking shoes. You will release Mombi or face your death. What is your choice?”
CHAPTER 53 - PART 5 – Indy
There are times in your life that you will look back on and wonder how you had the strength to carry through. You will question where your head was, and how your courage seemed to grow one hundred-fold in that one instant.
You may even wonder what it was that led you to follow your heart instead of your head or your gut.
The power that I had raging through me could have taken out half of Munchkin Land. For all intents and purposes, I should have been dead.
Perhaps this is what caused the massive overhaul of my anxious former self, but the moment Dorothy chose death, I attacked.
My hair was standing on end, the power causing my already curly hair to weave into tight ringlets that floated above my head.
The first fireballs that I had thrown were nothing compared to the power behind me as I screamed in outrage. Trees uprooted from the ground, boulders rolled as if they were stones, and my sisters lost their force field as everyone in a mile radius was thrown into the air.
Dorothy’s innocent brown eyes flew open in surprise. Her body smashing into a large evergreen.
I turned to Steele and Scarecrow, “Round up the lions and free Mombi. I will deal with Dorothy.”
They nodded and in an instant were gone on the task I had placed before them.
I felt a whisper of magic float by me and saw that El had changed Toto into a flying monkey.
My lips twitched, my sisters might be deranged, slightly wicked, and a right pain in the ass, but they were mine, and I loved them.
Dorothy had risen to her feet. She ripped a wand out of her picnic basket and flicked it, changing Toto back.
“You shouldn’t have messed with my dog,” she sounded throatier, the little girl voice had finally vanished.
“You shouldn’t have messed with my family,” I responded.
Her wand flicked, and lightning struck near where I was standing. I raised my hand and started sending streams of fire, lighting the plants around her on fire.
Dorothy’s mouth tightened, “You can’t win, Indy. I am the hero of this story!”
“What are you talking about, you, egocentric bitch?” I responded.
“You don’t know what it is like!” she screamed. “I live on a fucking farm back in Kansas. My aunt ignores me. My uncle works night and day to put food on the table. Life is hard.
"Things are black and white there. And I have lived everyday wishing for a place where troubles melt like lemon drops, where I could be anything or anyone. And the secret things that I dared to dream really do come true. I didn’t want to be an ordinary girl! I wanted to be a great one!”
Dorothy’s body shook with fury.
“And then the tornado came and swept me over the rainbow. Suddenly, I had the respect of those stupid Munchkins. I had powers I could never have imagined.”
“But it wasn’t enough for you,” I interceded. “You killed those fools that worshiped you.”
“They said you were evil!” Dorothy raged.
“So, when you couldn’t get to me, you went and started to gather your army of lions. You poisoned the crops so that thousands would die, and you kidnapped my sister,” narrowing my eyes I took a step forward.
“She brought me here!” Dorothy accused. Turning to see where Mombi should have been lying on the ground after they fell.
But Steele had already gathered her up and was carrying her to El and Glinda. They would care for her and see to her needs.
Dorothy raised her wand to strike out.
I flicked my wrist, sending a rapid bolt of energy that snapped her wand in half.
“Where did you get that wand?” I growled, “Is that how you have been working magic?”
Dorothy’s cheeks pinked with anger, “I am a Witch!”
“No, you aren’t,” I guessed, and the moment her face drained of color, I knew it was true.
“Indy,” Scarecrow cried out, “The spell is broken. The Lions are no longer under her control.”
“Where did you get the wand?” I repeated harshly.
She tried to run, but I stopped her with a glance.
“How are you doing this?” she pulled at her legs, but they wouldn’t move.
“I am the Queen of Oz. It yields its power to the ruler of the land. You stole that wand from my father thinking that you had his power, didn’t you?”
“I did have his power!” Dorothy’s hair had come undone, whipping around her face.
Gregory and Glinda came to stand beside me.
“No,” I said forcefully. “You had a small fraction of the power that knew its true master when I snapped the wand in half.”
“What of your father?” she spat hatefully.
I paused for a moment.
And Glinda stepped forward, placing her hand on my arm, “I Glinda, Witch Queen of Oz, yield my power, my life and my soul to Queen Indy, the true ruler of
Oz.”
El came to stand on the other side of me, “I Elphaba, Witch Queen of Oz, yield my power, my life and my soul to Queen Indy, the true ruler of Oz.”
Mombi placed her hands on my shoulders behind me, “I Mombi, eldest of the Witch Queens of Oz, yield my power, my life, and my soul to Queen Indy, the true ruler of Oz.”
Power that I never dreamt possible, surged into my frame until I wasn’t sure where my sisters left off and I began.
“Dorothy of Kansas, you are a murderous villain and will forever be banned from Oz,” my voice was steady as I made my vow.
Gregory spoke up, “As a trustee and protector of Oz, I banish you Dorothy forever from Oz.”
Mombi repeated his words and then I, the last trustee as the ruler of Oz, raised my hand into the air.
“Dorothy of Kansas, return from whence you came, never to return!”
I lowered my hand as the winds picked up to deafening speeds. A funnel cloud shot down from the sky sweeping Dorothy and her dog Toto into its vicious circle.
She screamed vile threats, pleaded for mercy, and spat venomously at us, but it was too late. The funnel cloud disappeared and Dorothy along with it.
I glanced around and the fires that had been lit vanished. The trees walked back to their roots and the boulders rolled until they lay in their dirt beds.
Scarecrow was upon me in seconds, “I have never been so fucking proud of you! You have always had the power, Indy! You just had to learn it for yourself!”
His lips crashed into mine, devouring my mouth, and stealing my senses. I didn’t notice when Steele arrive, sweeping El off her feet. Nor did I watch Gregory sink to his knees as Glinda fainted dead away.
I was too busy getting the shit kissed out of me.
His rough hands grasped my face, “I fucking love you! Do you understand me?”
I felt my throat tighten, “I love you more.
His forehead met mine as he laughed softly “Not possible, Indy, not possible.”
From beside us, I heard Mombi cry out when Jake came into sight, I broke away to watch my sister fling herself into Scarecrow’s bartenders' arms. I tried to remember that he was the Ping of the Pride, but he seemed like good ole Jake to me.
