Chapter 1138: Interception
Roland received Iron Axe and Edith Kant in the map room and let them get through the door before asking.
“How was the Seagull?”
Iron Axe administered a military salute with the snap of a man executing an order under adverse conditions. “Fast, Your Majesty. Very fast. And it—” He paused with the discipline of someone choosing words carefully. “It wobbled. Considerably. When the craft moved up and down I was certain I would fall. I was not certain I would stop falling.” Another salute, this one unnecessary, deployed to fill the silence. “I will overcome this fear. I will watch magic films until the fear is gone.”
Very like a Sand National, Roland thought. He turned to Edith.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “Fantastic.”
He waited.
She said nothing further. A faint flush had found the tops of her cheekbones and her eyes held the particular bright quality of someone replaying a private memory. That was apparently all she intended to share.
Roland looked between his Commander-in-Chief and his Chief of General Staff and concluded he had overestimated the aircraft’s dramatic impact. “Let’s begin,” he said, and gestured toward the table.
Six months of construction. The first main railway now ran to within sixty kilometers of Taquila. Once Tower Station No. 10 was built and operational, the First Army would have direct lines of fire on the ruin. The Torch plan had consumed eighty percent of Furnace Area iron output for the duration. It had been, in purely logistical terms, the most expensive operation of the war.
The stakes justified the expense. If the Fertile Plains fell to Red Mist before the Bloody Moon, the demons could cross the Impassable Mountain Range from any direction, at any time. The interior of the Four Kingdoms would become a second front. The First Army was well-armed and well-supplied, but it was not infinite, and Roland had no intention of finding its limits by fighting on two fronts simultaneously.
Seize Taquila and that equation changed. The remaining demon strongholds — Starfall City, Arrieta — sat on the northern plain, far from the inhabited south. A Red Mist enclave there would be dangerous in the long term but not immediately. More significantly: it would buy four centuries. Graycastle was already industrial. Four hundred years of industrial civilization compounding on itself, freed from existential threat, free to develop.
This generation may not see the end. That’s all right.
The plan had almost worked. The plan had very nearly worked exactly as written. The Magic Slayer’s appearance had required adjustment.
Edith’s report on Leaf’s condition was brief and unsparing. The wound was not healing. The infected area was expanding. The curse the Magic Slayer inflicted on contact resisted everything the Witch Union had tried; even very minor wounds progressed toward mortality. The only exception had been Lightning, who possessed some partial self-repair capability, but Leaf’s condition was deteriorating past the threshold her own body could manage.
It was time to end the Magic Slayer.
The witches and army representatives assembled around the table. A map of the front dominated the wall behind Edith.
“First assumption,” Edith said. “When the Magic Slayer judges the battle lost, he retreats. This is inference, not confirmed intelligence. The evidence is behavioral — he has consistently maintained distance from our encampment and declined direct engagement. Kabradhabi fights. This demon does not. Senior commanders are too valuable to spend on principle.”
“Agreed,” Alethea said. “The demons and I share exactly one value and that is: dying pointlessly is not courage. He will run.”
“Therefore we intercept before he reaches his Red Mist supply line. We don’t wait for him to reach us — we cut him off at retreat.” Edith nodded toward Andrea Quinn. “Long-range elimination is the cleanest option. Miss Andrea has range that exceeds the Magic Slayer’s comfortable engagement distance.”
Andrea brushed her hair from her face with the unhurried manner of someone accustomed to having their abilities treated as logistical facts.
Tilly raised her hand. “Two problems.”
“Please.”
“One: a single shot may not kill him. If he survives and understands what was used, we lose the advantage permanently. The Magic Slayer has demonstrated he learns quickly — faster than we prefer.” She spread her hands on the table. “Two: if he’s already concluded that a long-range weapon exists, he simply doesn’t present a clear line of sight. He flies low, he swerves, he stays in cover. We never get a clean shot.”
Edith nodded as though she had been waiting for exactly this. “For problem one: we use a God’s Stone bullet. Even a non-lethal hit immobilizes him. His magic becomes inert. He becomes a target rather than a threat.”
“A God’s Stone as a bullet?” Alethea’s tone carried something between skepticism and delight.
“The difficulty is structural. Stones small enough to fire shatter from the propellant force before they leave the barrel. However, Miss Andrea’s weapon fires a considerably larger caliber. And Agatha has collected two bottles of magic blood from demons — God’s Stones made from magic blood are significantly harder than ordinary ones. We test the combination first.”
“Using their own blood to kill them,” Alethea said, and for the first time she smiled with genuine warmth. “I am, I think, the second mortal I have genuinely admired.”
Edith returned the smile with the composure of someone who did not require admiration to continue.
“For problem two,” she said, “we need something faster than the Magic Slayer and capable of approaching without warning. The obvious answer—” she paused, and looked at Tilly, “—is something he has never seen before and cannot yet believe is possible.”
The room arrived at the same conclusion at almost the same moment.
“A diving Seagull,” Tilly said.
“At terminal dive velocity the Seagull exceeds five hundred kilometers per hour. She can hold position in cloud cover above the anticipated retreat corridor and intercept him before he understands what’s happening. A complement of God’s Punishment Witches aboard — even if the God’s Stone bullet fails, the anti-magic field stops him cold. The sniper team takes the final shot on a stationary target.”
Roland watched Wendy’s expression. She was calculating, and he knew the calculation she was running.
“Tilly flies the Seagull,” he said. Not a question.
“I’ll fly the Seagull,” Tilly confirmed, before anyone else could speak.
“Your Highness.” Wendy’s voice was level. “You and the Queen are the two figures the Witch Union—”
“I know,” Tilly said. Not unkindly. “Ashes will be with me. We know what we’re capable of and what we’re not, and we don’t exceed the second. The Seagull carries us in and out before he can respond. The Taquila witches close the trap behind him.” She looked at Wendy directly. “I’m not asking.”
Wendy looked at Roland.
Roland looked at Tilly — at the line of her jaw, the steadiness of her, the specific quality of certainty that he had learned, across four years, was not the same thing as recklessness. He turned back to Edith. “Continue.”
“The ambush site,” Edith said. “We want the chokepoint closest to his Red Mist supply line.” She glanced at Alethea. “There’s a position at the rear of the Taquila ruin with unusual surveillance value.”
Alethea’s main tentacle rose with something like satisfaction. “The phantom instrument. The one that girl nearly wasted.”
“Lorgar’s infiltration mission,” Tilly said, passing a hand across her forehead. “One Five-Colored Stone spent for nothing, we thought.”
“For nothing then,” Alethea said. “For something now. If we activate the instrument from that position, we have eyes on the entire Red Mist supply corridor. We see when he moves and where. The ambush sets itself.”
Roland sat back.
The failed mission from two months ago, repositioned: the phantom instrument now giving the army the sight lines they needed. A Five-Colored Stone’s worth of coverage of the demon’s own retreat route.
You never know, he thought. It’s never entirely a loss.
“Iron Axe, Edith — stay at the Third Border City and draft the detailed ambush plan. Agatha, work with the Ministry of Engineering on the God’s Stone bullet. Begin testing immediately.”
“As you wish.” The room stood.
The meeting was over. Alethea did not leave.
She waited until the others had gone, then moved to Roland’s side and said, very quietly, “Celine asks that you visit the underground lab. She says there has been a breakthrough with the Magic Ceremony Cube.”
Roland looked at her. Alethea’s face gave nothing away by default, but something in how she delivered the message suggested she knew what it meant and thought he would want to hurry.
He did.
Celine stood at the central table in the underground lab with the Magic Cube running — the familiar red light painting the walls in long, quiet pulses. Two small stones lay beside it, each the size of a thumbnail, each showing the abrasion marks of a component that had been handled and replaced.
“You disassembled it,” Roland said.
“I installed my replicates,” Celine corrected. “The cube continues to function. The replicates function. These—” she indicated the two stones, “—are original components I replaced.”
He picked one up. Worn along the face nearest the outer surface, where centuries of use had smoothed the edges. The replicate sitting in its slot in the cube was identical in form, new in material.
“Three months,” he said. He had estimated a year, minimum. “How?”
“Slimwrist helped significantly. The cube’s structure is simpler than a magic core — more elegant, perhaps, but structurally less complex.” She allowed herself a small flush of pleasure at his reaction, then pressed on. “I also revised the material estimate. Not thousands of stones. Five hundred will produce a functional replicate.”
“The garrison at the Festive Harbor is already moving,” Roland said. “We’ll have the stones in time.” He set the original component down gently. If the replicate works at scale, this changes everything. The Magic Ceremony Cube — its ability, its uses — currently a single fixed object in the world. Five hundred stones to replicate it. “This is extraordinary work, Celine.”
“I’m glad.” She gathered her tentacles in the way she did when she was about to ask for something. “In that case — may I ask something in return?”
“What do you need?”
“An assistant. Several, ideally.” The main tentacle moved in a small, expressive arc. “My fellow witches from the Quest Society are willing to help, but the knowledge they need — the books from the Dream World — they find difficult to learn without instruction. Someone to explain, to answer questions, to guide them through the material in sequence.” She looked at him directly. “I would like to send them to school, Your Majesty.”
Roland was quiet for a moment.
The God’s Punishment Witches who had transferred their souls into new vessels — Taquila women, walking in bodies that looked, in many cases, not much older than adolescents. The Dream World’s educational institutions, calibrated for students of exactly that appearance.
He thought about the logistics. The cover required. The abilities that would need to be employed just to move three people through a morning without raising questions.
“I’ll consider it,” he said.
Celine looked at the Magic Cube, its red light steady and patient. “They learn quickly,” she said. “We all do. We’ve had a great deal of practice at surviving things we didn’t expect.”