Rewrite That Witch
CH1446 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1446: Skycarrier

“The key to ending the Battle of Divine Will has been found…” Victor murmured, still looking at the headline. “His Majesty is actually going to take the initiative — bring the fight to the enemy before it reaches the Fertile Plains?”

Even after everything he had seen, this hit him like the first one. Every line was worth lingering over. Once upon a time, news like this would have stayed locked inside the chambers of royalty — a man of his standing, no noble blood, no title, would never have been permitted to know.

The report carried a grand illustration. The sinking of the Deity of Gods into the sea had not ended the demon threat: a new Blackstone stronghold was already moving on Neverwinter day and night, thousands of kilometers distant, millions of demons packed beneath it — enough to swallow every human kingdom whole. To prevent the flames from reaching ordinary people, the King had chosen to go out and meet it.

After the approaching enemy was defeated, an expeditionary force would cross to the other side of the world, to the boundary between continents, and remove the threat of the Battle of Divine Will at its source. Once that was done, a long peace would follow — and nothing, not demon nor demonic beast, would ever endanger mankind again.

Victor understood expeditions. More than a year ago he had watched the First Army load onto a train and push five hundred kilometers into the Fertile Plains to retake the northern ruins from the demons. Graycastle Weekly had covered every step of it, down to the photographs. He still remembered how the black train had looked, rushing headlong into that empty land.

But this was something else.

He is moving a mountain into the sky and making it a stronghold.

Can that truly be done by human hands?

Victor turned to the second page. The plan was divided into three phases. The first was liftoff: North Slope Mountain — a kilometer of soil and stone beneath it — would break free of the Impassable Mountain Range and become a single entity in the air.

The second phase was the flight test stage. North Slope Mountain would be formally integrated into the army and given its official name: the Eleanor Skycruiser. In this phase, the floating island would run patrols around Neverwinter for training and await the right moment to attack.

The third phase: departure. A thousand kilometers away, the enemy waited.

The Administrative Office called it the war to decide the fate of mankind. Soldiers would not fight it alone; every profession had a role. Compensation reflected that — two to three times what a comparable position paid in Neverwinter. And Director Barov had added at the article’s close that only those who volunteered to board the floating island would witness the strongest weapon mankind had ever built.

Victor set down the paper. The Administrative Office would have more applicants than it could process before nightfall.

The difference between Neverwinter’s longtime citizens and people like him — merchants who had come from elsewhere and stayed — was subtle but real. When he spoke with locals, he always noticed it: they didn’t just live in the city the King had built. They seemed to feel, in some quiet way, that they owned a piece of it. And the stranger thing was that the feeling spread. He had heard migrants from the Kingdom of Dawn discussing Neverwinter’s latest accomplishments with something that sounded unmistakably like pride. Something he’d never seen in any other city.

He had a business to run. He knew that. But part of him wanted very badly to board that mountain.

“Contact the Administrative Office. Tell them Rainbow Stones is willing to contribute a thousand sets of clothing.”

“Yes, my lord.” Tinkle nodded.

“And — have you learned the exact flight date for North Slope Mountain?”

“Within two or three days. The mountaintop already looks completely different from before.”

“Two or three days.” Victor folded the paper and moved to the window. Miracle Building was tall enough for a view, but too far from the Impassable Mountain Range to see it properly. He pulled out a key. “Tinkle — you know what to do.”

Anything solvable with money was not a real problem.

“Leave it to me, my lord.” She smiled and took the key.

Three days later, the First Army removed the cordon tape at the foot of the mountain.

The moment had come.

North Slope Mountain was unrecognizable. Dense scaffolding covered its surface. The irregular stone walls had been reshaped — smoothed, patched, reinforced in places with metal fittings and oil-fabric panels that looked nothing like the natural stone surrounding them. The effect was of something raw being armored, a natural thing becoming deliberately lethal.

What stopped Victor entirely were the flags.

Hundreds of them, hanging down from high elevation — a flowing skirt of color along the mountain’s sides, rising and falling with the wind in slow, synchronized waves. The tower and rifle emblem of Graycastle Kingdom, red and black and white. Dignified in a way he had no better word for. He knew that image would live in him for the rest of his life.

By noon the streets below were impenetrable. Black-clothed police and army personnel funneled the crowds toward the Misty Forest with practiced insistence; without them, the city would have seized entirely.

Victor had paid for an exceptional position on the roof of a building on West Street. He felt the tremors in his feet before he heard anything.

Then the tremors became sound — a deep, chest-filling rumbling that spread through the whole city, and in the next moment it seemed like Neverwinter itself had boiled over.

The sound of a mountain being torn free.

He had been expecting it. He still gaped.

Tinkle seized his arm with both hands.

North Slope Mountain lifted in a single indomitable motion, releasing clouds of dust as it severed from the Impassable Mountain Range. The scaffolding across its surface buckled and fell, powerless against a mass of that scale. Trees, gravel, the wreckage of construction — all of it dropped away first, then rose again, lifted by the enormous underside of stone that ascended beneath it. It looked like a radish pulled from the earth, except the soil beneath was a kilometer deep, and where the mountain had been, a vast pit remained — open to the sky, pale as a scar. From the sudden exposure underground creatures scattered in all directions across the pale ground below, tiny and fast and startled, small vivid footnotes to what would become a historical image.

This should have been impossible. Every instinct said so.

But the flags moved against the sky, and there was no doubt: this was Graycastle’s, and it was mankind’s.

The crowd woke from shock all at once. “Long live His Majesty” — someone began it, and from that moment it did not stop. The cheering went on until voices had worn themselves raw.

It took a long time for the fever to break. Victor licked dry lips and turned to bring Tinkle back to the hotel — and caught, in the corner of his eye, a figure on another rooftop.

Elderly. Still. Familiar in a way that made him slow.

He looked again. The figure was gone.

“My lord?” Tinkle had felt the pause. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing.” He hesitated. “I may have been seeing things.”

The figure had looked, more than a little, like his father.

But how would Father end up here? He put the thought away and walked.

Discussion

Suggest a change