Rewrite That Witch
CH1385 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1385: Establishing a Basic Agreement

For a moment Roland said nothing.

He had expected silence from her—stone walls and deflection and the kind of patience that outlasts questions. Not this. Not the Nightmare Lord sitting across a café table in a Dream World that wasn’t hers, explaining the origins of the most dangerous weapon her race had ever built because she had decided it was the right thing to do. His coffee was going cold in his cup. He noticed it without touching it, and sat with what she had just told him for a moment before answering.

“What’s with your expression?” Valkries opened her eyes and fixed him with a look of clear irritation. “I am not betraying my race. I am acknowledging Heathalese’s way of seeing things. The Battle of Divine Will cannot guarantee our continuation—it can only guarantee we remain God’s instruments. Stopping God is the correct course of action.”

That is, he noted, also my position, more or less exactly. He scratched the back of his head and composed himself. The correct move here was not to gloat, not to rush, and above all not to give her reason to suspect she had made a mistake.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’ve finally arrived at it.” He straightened, managed something he hoped approached magnanimity, and extended his hand across the table. “God has already taken notice of us both, but I believe it isn’t too late—”

Valkries did not take his hand.

“Before that. I have a question.”

“Ask.”

“If the end comes out as the Oracle described—what are your plans for managing the relationship between our races?”

Roland went still.

The question was deliberate—not rhetorical, not a negotiating position. She was asking because the answer mattered and would determine everything. He could see it in the precision of her attention: she had begun genuinely considering the possibility of cooperation, was thinking through the actual way forward for her people, and she needed to know whether the man across the table had thought past the immediate crisis or was operating entirely on instinct.

If she didn’t accept his answer, she would leave. He understood that without being told. Might sever herself from the Dream World entirely, even at cost to herself, rather than commit to a course built on nothing.

He was quiet for a moment.

“To be honest, I haven’t thought it through.”

Valkries frowned. “So everything you said before was impulse. You never seriously believed I might cooperate.”

“No—I did think about it. But this is genuinely complicated.” He let out a sound that was close to a laugh, though it carried more exhaustion than humor. “The war between humans and demons has lasted a thousand years. That kind of history doesn’t dissolve in a conference room, and it’s close to impossible to recreate the conditions of the Dream World in the real one. The only answer I can think of, at the moment—the only temporary answer—is separation. Your people leave the human world. Permanently.”

“Leave to where?”

“That’s the question we’d have to work out carefully. But the world is larger than either of us has mapped. I expect there’s a place.”

They sat with it. At the table beside theirs, someone laughed. The café noise moved around them like weather indifferent to both sides.

“If you had answered immediately,” Valkries said at last, “assured me with perfect confidence that you had planned for everything and it would all be managed—the probability that this was a trap would have been extremely high.” A beat. “The fact that you don’t have an answer is what makes me believe you mean to find one.”

Roland blinked. ”…Not having a plan is the correct answer?”

“You could say that.” The Nightmare Lord exhaled—slowly, carefully, as a person does when they are letting something go. “I’ll acknowledge that this is a long, narrow bridge. I cannot see the far end. But I have to make the attempt, because there is no one else in my race who could.”

Roland noticed her hands tighten on the cup when she said it.

She was not nearly as certain as her voice suggested. He made no comment.

“Don’t be too pleased with yourself,” she added, looking at him flatly. “God planned the Battle of Divine Will. God may have designed the entire world we’re sitting in. If that is true, neither of us has any real probability of winning. There is a version of this that ends with both our races destroyed without a trace remaining.”

“I agree.” He extended his hand again. “Which is exactly why we’re on the bridge together.”

This time, Valkries reached across and took it.

Brief. Precise. A transaction that cost her something.

“Then—the Deity of Gods.” Roland set that moment aside and picked up the thread of the problem. He signaled the server for a fresh cup for her—her first had gone as cold as his own. “Do you have a way to reach Hackzord? If he could be persuaded to move the floating island back, or at minimum allow the First Army to occupy it, that would also work in parallel with our plans for the Bottomless Land.”

“It’s too late for that.” She shook her head.

“What?”

“My original intention in bringing Hackzord into the Dream World was to give him access to real information and a path toward reason before the situation became irreversible. I underestimated how far things had already gone. He believes in Ursrook’s assessment. He was most likely the one who petitioned the King to deploy the Deity of Gods.” She folded her hands. “It cannot be recalled. Once the Deity of Gods moves, it moves under the authority of the whole race, not any individual lord. I cannot convince the King or the other Senior Lords to reverse it. Neither can Hackzord.”

“Then—”

“I am the only one willing and able to work with you. For now.” She watched him note the qualifier. “I know Hackzord. You cannot make him defy the King in circumstances he doesn’t fully understand while bearing the full consequences himself—it’s not who he is. But there is a difference between defiance and caution, and Hackzord is, above all, committed to keeping himself alive.”

Roland’s expression shifted slightly—not quite amusement.

“If I write to him, and you can deliver the letter, there is an eighty or ninety percent chance he listens. The letter tells him to remove himself from direct engagement with the Deity of Gods. That is the most I can accomplish from inside this world.” Her gaze moved somewhere past him—at something behind his shoulder, or at nothing. “But the letter alone is not enough. If the fighting has already begun before it reaches him, your only remaining option is to destroy the Deity of Gods itself. Only when Hackzord watches it fall will he understand that this path leads nowhere. Only then does convincing him become genuinely possible.”

She looked at him directly.

“He has to survive until the Deity of Gods is destroyed. That is the foundation of our agreement. Without that, there is no path to what I’m describing.” A pause, and then she shifted her gaze away—not quite concealing what it cost her to say the next part. “If you cannot commit to that condition, treat this conversation as though it never happened.”

Discussion

Suggest a change