Rewrite That Witch
CH1178 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1178: Being a Grown-up

Two days after the orders went out, before the migration policy had even begun its roll-out, Lightning and Maggie returned to Neverwinter.

When they walked into the office, Roland went still.

Maggie had changed little — perhaps a little fuller than she’d been half a year ago, which now made her resemble a goose more than a pigeon. Alarming, but not surprising.

Lightning was another matter.

Her hair had grown out past her shoulders, tangled from a long-haul flight, and her face was streaked with grime. Several misshapen pouches had been sewn — crudely, by her own hand, Roland was almost certain — onto her patched flight suit at the legs, chest, and shoulders. She was windswept and disheveled in the way of someone who had spent months outside the reach of roofs and mirrors. She looked, he realized, more like a true explorer now than she ever had.

The biggest change was in her eyes.

The expression she wore was not one he recognized from the girl he had known. He looked at her and understood, with a small jolt, that she was no longer that girl.

“Your Majesty. You requested to see me?”

She swept a bow.

Roland took a moment to find his words. Then he told her everything: Ursrook’s letter, Edith’s deduction from it. “If the demons are planning what the letter suggests, the consequences will be catastrophic. I need you and Maggie to fly to the Kingdom of Everwinter and explore the unmapped mountain range in the north. Demons can’t survive without the Red Mist — if they’ve moved into that terrain, they would have left traces.”

Lightning’s brows drew together. “That’s… hard to believe. It’s fortunate Maggie found the letter. But Your Majesty — what if the demons are operating underground? I can only do so much from above. Deliberately hidden objects are nearly impossible to spot from the air.”

“That’s the worst scenario,” Roland said. “God’s Punishment Witches will bring a magic core and meet you at Shallow Beach. If your search comes up empty, they’ll conduct a final sweep with the core.” He thought of what the “Torch” results had shown: the demons were not the excavators humans were — the devouring worms had no equal there. But the demons had once occupied half of the Land of Dawn, and their facility with magic outstripped anything humans had mastered. If the Union had discovered carriers from the underground civilization during their explorations, the demons had almost certainly discovered more. There was a real chance that other carriers existed along the ridge of the continent. “Do what you can,” he said.

“I will,” Lightning replied, and nodded.

“It’ll take at least a month to reach the north of Everwinter from the south of Graycastle, so support won’t reach you quickly. The residents there may still be hostile toward witches — even a city may not be safe. Be careful.”

“Explorers are good at surviving in the wild, Your Majesty.” A quick answer, no hesitation. “I could live in the wilderness for a year. One month is nothing.”

“Coo, coo!” Maggie affirmed, flapping her wings.

“I’m sorry,” Roland said. “You just got back, and I’m sending you out again.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Lightning looked away; her voice dropped. “Compared to those who gave everything for the victory — compared to Ashes — this is nothing.” A breath. She pulled herself back together. “Since this is a new expedition, could you, as usual—”

Roland almost missed it. Then he understood. He stood and walked around the desk.

Lightning raised her hand toward him, then jerked it back when she saw the blotchy state of her sleeves. “Oh — no, it’s fine, I forgot to change. I probably smell terrible—”

Roland’s arms closed around her.

“You did a great job. I’ll have the tailor make you extra flight suits so you can rotate them.”

Lightning went quiet. After a long moment, she swallowed a sound that wasn’t quite a sniff, and managed: “Yes.”

“And me, coo,” Maggie said, craning her neck.

“You too,” Roland said, and ran his hand over her smooth feathers.

Nightingale stepped forward and wrapped them both in a hug. “Stay safe.”

“We will.”

After they left, Nightingale said, almost to herself, “Lightning would never have said what I could do is limited before.”

Roland nodded. The Lightning he’d known six months ago would have promised the impossible before hearing the full account. It was Leaf who had told him: after Ashes died with Ursrook, Lightning had wept for days, barely surfacing. Yet standing here just now, there had been no visible trace of grief — only something harder and quieter underneath, the kind of thing that doesn’t soften but becomes load-bearing instead. She hadn’t gotten over Ashes’ death. She had grown around it.

“She’s grown up,” Roland said.

He wanted the migration campaign underway as soon as possible. The distances made it impossible. The journey from Graycastle to the Kingdom of Wolfheart or the Kingdom of Everwinter took months; the Administrative Office and the First Army could not swell Neverwinter’s population in anything resembling a short time. Insufficient manpower stalled the industrial projects he’d been planning for years. The demon threat hung over everything like a blade suspended by a single thread, and Roland moved through each day with a low-grade stress that didn’t lift.

The Magic Ceremony Cube replication offered some relief. He spent long days at Anna’s laboratory on the North Slope, probing whether the cube replicates could anchor a new energy source. After Lightning, Maggie, and the God’s Punishment Witches departed aboard the Roland with the magic core, he invested himself even further in the work.

A magic steam engine — if it could be built — would transform every industrial project in ways no prior invention had.

Celine volunteered to assist. The laboratory sat in a remote corner of the North Slope, heavily guarded, unlikely to see uninvited visitors. Roland discovered quickly that Celine’s dexterous auxiliary tentacles could seat flywheels and pistons with a precision that made Anna’s work noticeably easier. The arrangement was strange, and it became ordinary in the way that useful things do: a man, a woman, and a tentacled intelligence working side by side over a machine.

It wasn’t long before a peculiar prototype took shape on the workbench.

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