Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1161: A Slim Hope

Elena set her down against a tree and the world caught up to Andrea all at once: the needles, the anti-magic field, Elena’s arm around her, the ground where it should not have been.

She looked at her legs.

The stone needles had entered obliquely — one through the left knee, one through the right thigh — and she could see, through the torn fabric, the pale line of bone beneath. The pain was distant and enormous at the same time, the particular quality of an injury too large for the body to report all at once.

She took the painkiller from her belt before she made herself look, and bit into the tab as Elena helped her sit up against the bark.

“Don’t,” Elena said, when Andrea tried to move her right leg.

“I know,” Andrea said. She took a breath. “I know.”

Above them, the stone needles were still falling — a different cadence now, the second Spider Demon reloading. Around the clearing’s edge, the God’s Punishment Witches were in motion: Zoe directing two of the others toward the needle source, the remaining witches holding the Mad Demon line, gunfire and the sharp crack of close impacts mixing together until the individual sounds lost meaning.

Ashes was fighting both Senior Demons at once. Andrea could track her by the sound — the giant sword connecting against something armored, the specific resonance of Extraordinary-level impact, the quality of the shockwaves that went through the ground.

She could not hold this ground. That was clear. Even without running the numbers precisely, she knew: the anti-magic field had stripped her ability, her legs wouldn’t carry weight, two God’s Punishment Witches were down, and Ursrook was still talking — still patient, still unhurried — which meant he still had reserves he hadn’t committed.

The only advantage we have is the Spider Demons. She’d realized it while Elena was moving her: the demons couldn’t use the anti-magic field while the Spider Demons were active, because the field would suppress the Spiders too. As long as the Spider Demons were firing, Ursrook had to keep the field down. Which meant Andrea had a window.

She grabbed the Sigil of Listening from Ashes’s belt as Ashes swept past.

“Lightning. Find and kill the Spider Demons. Both of them.”

Static. Then Lightning’s voice, tight: “But—”

“You and Maggie are the only ones who can. The Spider Demons fire every seven minutes. We’ve used three already. You have four minutes before the next volley.” She paused. “If you don’t kill them, we all die here.”

A silence that was too long.

“Tell Tilly to leave,” Ashes’s voice cut in, low and flat, without looking back.

Another silence.

Then: “Got it. Hold on.”

Andrea let the Sigil drop.

“Give me a weapon,” she said to Elena.

“Your legs—”

“I’ll shoot from your back. One hand on you, one on the rifle.” She met Elena’s look. “I can still guide. An Extraordinary can still be tracked. Don’t argue.”

Elena didn’t argue.

She handed over the bolt rifle, crouched forward, and Andrea pulled herself up and locked her left arm around Elena’s neck, rifle in the other hand. She worked the bolt between her teeth — old habit, field expedient — and braced.

Rough, she thought. But adequate.

Above the tree line, Lightning had the grenade propeller strapped to her back and the wind in her teeth.

The Seagull had the spare munitions. She’d gone there first, climbed in through Wendy’s open door, and found Tilly sitting very still in the pilot’s seat.

“Things aren’t going well,” Lightning said.

Tilly nodded once. “I know.”

“Ashes said to leave.”

Tilly was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice had the specific quality of someone holding something back by main force, and the something was winning.

“Tell her I’m coming back,” she said. “The Seagull brings reinforcements. Ten minutes. Tell them to hold.”

Lightning looked at her. At the hands on the controls that weren’t quite steady. At the face that was.

“I’ll tell her,” Lightning said, and jumped back out.

She found the first Spider Demon in thirty seconds — the grenade propeller made her heavier than she liked, but she knew these targets. She’d been scouting them for six months. She knew what they looked like from altitude, she knew how they moved when recharging, she knew the specific way their stone pillar tracked in the seconds before firing.

She dropped low, treetop height, and pulled the trigger.

The grenade sank into the Spider Demon’s stomach at an oblique angle and the heat found the cavity underneath the obsidian plates. The creature screamed — that articulate, wrongly-pitched sound that still made her stomach turn — and folded.

One.

Maggie found the second while Lightning was climbing back above the canopy: a gray goshawk circling, then diving, banking hard left to indicate direction.

Lightning banked and saw the second Spider Demon below, stone pillar already raising. The timing was wrong. She had four seconds, maybe three.

“Maggie,” she said. “Distract it.”

“Owh—”

The goshawk dropped and grew, transformation mid-dive, and the Devilbeast that struck the Spider Demon from directly above did it with one shoulder and all the weight of a creature that had been, in another form, a very small pigeon.

The stone pillar discharged sideways. It swept across the ground and shattered against the tree-line, taking two Mad Demons with it.

The Spider Demon was down. Lightning put the grenade through its center of mass on the way past.

She pulled up hard.

“Maggie. Are you—”

“Fine!” Maggie said, from directly below, hanging in the air in her small-pigeon form with one wing held at an angle. “Mostly fine! I hit with the big muscle!”

“It looked like it worked.”

“It hurts a lot, awh.” A pause, during which Lightning could see the grimace even on a pigeon face. “But I’m fine.”

Lightning descended to Maggie’s altitude and held position. Below them, through the canopy, she could hear the engagement continuing. Two Spider Demons eliminated. No more stone needle volleys.

Four minutes, she thought. Tilly said ten. We have to give them six more minutes ourselves.

She looked at Maggie. Maggie looked at her.

“In the name of the Neverwinter Exploration Group,” Lightning said.

“Awh,” Maggie agreed, and began to transform again.

They went back in.

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