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Chapter 1159: The Ambush

Ashes had her sword out before anyone else moved.

The shape came from directly above — no wind, no disturbance of air in advance, nothing Sylvie’s Eye had tracked — and hit Margie with the full force of something that had dropped from altitude and chosen exactly who to hit. Ashes’s blade intercepted it at the last moment, deflected the trajectory by a margin that turned a killing strike into something else entirely.

Margie collapsed.

She was still breathing. That was the first thing Andrea established. The second thing was the bone spear lodged through Margie’s shoulder, angled inward toward the lung, and the blood at the corner of Margie’s mouth.

The third thing was the figure standing at the edge of the clearing.

Blue-skinned. Slender for a demon, almost human in proportion. Standing with the unhurried ease of a person who had arrived at a planned destination on schedule.

“Found you,” he said.

The words arrived with complete absence of urgency. Not triumph — satisfaction. The satisfaction of a calculation confirmed.

Andrea’s mind was still running the problem. We shot the Magic Slayer. We watched him fall. The body folded in half — that was not a decoy, no decoy bleeds like that — unless—

Unless what she had shot was not the Magic Slayer.

Unless what she had shot was designed to be shot.

She looked at the figure in the clearing. She looked at the way he stood, the weight he carried, the specific quality of stillness that was not relaxation but command. She had seen enough senior people in her life to recognize the register.

“The ‘eye’ of human beings,” the figure said, and indicated Sylvie. Then Andrea. “And the genius shooter.” His tone was the tone of someone naming landmarks they’d researched in advance. “You’ve caused us considerable trouble. The fiery rain alone has cost more than I’d budgeted for.” He placed his right hand flat on his chest. “I’m Ursrook. Commander of the Expedition Corps. And the person who will give you your final rest.”

Margie’s wound was bad. Andrea could see it from where she stood. The bone spear had gone deep — the angle was wrong for a clean extraction, and the blood at Margie’s mouth meant the lung was involved. Margie could not operate the Magic Ark. That was why Ursrook had chosen her first: not the highest combat value target, but the one whose ability enabled escape.

He cut off our retreat before he introduced himself.

“You planned this,” Andrea said, and she heard in her own voice the quality of someone recalibrating every assumption they’d brought to this position. “Not just today. You planned to be here.”

“The ambush was your idea,” Ursrook said pleasantly. “I simply made a better one.”

She thought backward through six months. The Magic Slayer growing more dangerous with each encounter. Healing too fast. Learning too quickly. The progressive sense that they were fighting something that was becoming more itself with every injury they gave it.

We thought we were watching him upgrade.

We were watching him perform.

“The decoy,” she said. “The thing I shot — the thing that fell — what was it?”

“Something with approximately my magic signature at appropriate range. The Eye Demon’s ability works outward as well as inward.” He glanced upward — a brief movement, almost reflexive. “Your flying girl saw me. Which means she saw what I wanted her to see. Since Sylvie saw through her and neither of you noticed anything unusual, it appears the deception was adequate.”

Sylvie was very still.

“But why?” she asked. Her voice was controlled. “Taquila. You abandoned Taquila. You sacrificed thousands of demons on the Fertile Plains. We aren’t worth—”

“I can’t tell you,” Ursrook said.

“A dying person’s curiosity—”

“But you aren’t dying,” he said, and something that wasn’t quite amusement moved across his features. “You haven’t given up yet. Even now, you’re calculating. Aren’t you.”

He was right. Andrea was calculating.

Margie was down. Camilla and Sylvie had no direct combat ability. Ashes had her sword and the specific fighting capacity of an Extraordinary pushed past her previous limits. The God’s Punishment Witches — Elena, Zoe, the others — were positioned, armed, experienced.

He’s waiting, she thought. He’s not attacking. Which means he’s waiting for something. Which means we have time he doesn’t want to give us.

Which meant Lightning.

Lightning had taken off before the shooting. If she’d seen something wrong — or if she was close enough to hear the engagement — she might already be repositioning.

Play for time.

“You hid underground,” Andrea said. “We checked the air. We didn’t check the underground.”

“The passages required years to construct,” Ursrook said. He seemed willing to answer questions. That itself was data. “The entrances are inside the God’s Stone field perimeter — undetectable by the Eye of Magic by design. They fork below the surface in multiple directions. I was positioned here before you arrived.”

“And the decoy was in the air the whole time.”

“Flying your intended route at your intended timing. Yes.” He looked upward briefly. “You did check everything. Your planning was sound. The flaw was in your model of what I would sacrifice to succeed.”

There was something almost admiring in the way he said it. Andrea found this more unsettling than contempt would have been.

She made herself hold the conversation level. “You gave up Taquila. Four centuries of occupation. The God’s Stone infrastructure. All of it, for six witches and a sniper shot.”

“I didn’t say you were the only objective.”

He raised his arm.

The air displaced from above — two sounds, muted and distant, coming from different directions.

“Spider Demons!” Sylvie shouted.

The grenades were already in the air before the first stone pillar arrived.

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