Rewrite That Witch
CH294 · Rewrite
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Chapter 294: The Devil’s Attack

Morning came grey and cold, and Roland woke with the particular discomfort of a man who had slept on iron strapping and knows it. He hadn’t fully slept, which the mirror of the leather water bag confirmed: hair in disarray, skin sticky with dried sweat, a pallor that suggested neither rest nor vigor. He splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth, and tried to feel something other than a longing for the castle’s shower.

The witches emerged from the tent looking unchanged — hair settled, expressions composed. Whatever wilderness did to them, it apparently left no mark on the outside.

An hour after dawn, following Lightning’s directions, the Cloud Gazer reached the predetermined location: the ocean face of the snow-capped mountain, hovering above deep water, the view around the mountain’s southern flank unobstructed. Roland had the balloon climb until the red mist was visible above the horizon.

It was exactly as Lightning had described. A red-brown fog sitting heavy against the land beyond the mountains, its color deepening toward the ground where atmospheric pressure compressed it. Below the fog, at the edge of what was visible, flat and dry land extended toward the limit of sight.

“Sylvie — anything?”

She shook her head. “Too far. The Eye of Truth can’t reach.”

“Then we wait for Soraya’s sketch before we move closer.”

While Soraya worked, Roland raised the observation glass to the coastline. Cliffs, rock beach, the exposed stone of wave-cut shelves. No wharfs. No docks. No structures built for the use of boats. He found himself releasing a breath he hadn’t been holding consciously — if they could cross the open ocean, they would have. They hadn’t. That told him something about the limits of what he faced.

The balloon drifted closer to shore in slow increments. Sylvie’s expression sharpened.

“I can see structures now. Approximately fifteen kilometers from the shoreline — black stone buildings. Triangular form, pointed at the top.”

“Like spires.” Wendy’s voice held something that was not quite calm. “Those are the same as in the mirage — the vision we saw from the barbarian wasteland.”

“Not quite.” Soraya kept drawing as she spoke, her pencil moving in short, deliberate strokes. “The spires in the mirage were enormous. A hundred feet or more, and they rose above the surrounding terrain. These are smaller.”

“Perhaps those were a city,” Anna said. “And what we’re seeing now is something closer to an outpost.”

So they have a settlement hierarchy. An urban system. Which means they have the organization, the surplus, and the expansion impulse of something that doesn’t simply want to survive. Roland studied the horizon through the glass, the mist blurring detail into suggestion. Please let them be few.

“What can you see inside the structures?”

“Most of the towers are hollow — or filled with liquid, some kind of — wait.” Sylvie’s voice shifted. “Leave. Now. They’ve found us.”

“How?” Roland raised the glass again. The horizon was still a wall of red.

“They were buried. Only the pipe on their back was visible above ground — I couldn’t distinguish them from the landscape.” Her voice was rising. “They’re moving now. There — some of them are in the air!”

“Wendy — full retreat, now.”

The balloon lurched sideways as the wind hit, a hard lateral gust that Wendy had summoned instantly. The ropes sang under the sudden tension. Roland braced against the basket wall.

“Two of them,” Sylvie said, the steadiness in her voice costing visible effort. “Flying mounts. They’re fast.”

Flying mounts. He pressed the glass to his eye but the mist gave him nothing. If they can carry a fully armored combatant on their backs — how large are these things? What manner of creature can sustain that and fly?

He had his answer shortly. Two black shapes detached from the red horizon and swelled as they came, closing distance at a speed that made the balloon’s retreat feel like standing still. Through the glass: the mounts were hairless, sharp-fanged, the basic form of birds scaled upward into something else. Hybrid. Purpose-bred. The saddles at their hips told him enough about the relationship between rider and animal — this was not a wild creature half-tamed. This was engineered.

“Get down to the ground. Land as fast as possible.”

He said it quietly, which was the only way he knew to say things when there was no good option and everyone needed to hear it clearly.

The calculation was simple and grim. Lightning was the only witch who could operate in the air against a flying enemy, and Lightning had gone pale the moment the shapes appeared. She had never fought anything that actually intended to kill her. None of them had — not in direct combat, not at altitude, not against something that could match their speed. If the mounts collided with the balloon, the envelope might hold against impact and bite, but the basket wouldn’t survive the shaking. Anyone thrown out at this height hit the sea the same way they’d hit stone.

The Devils were close enough now to see without the glass. Black armor, demonic-skull helmets, scarlet crystal shards covering their eyes. Leather tubes running from chin to the carapace on their backs. Exactly as the old descriptions said — and for the first time, Roland understood that the descriptions had been accurate and that accurate was worse than he’d hoped.

“Spears,” Sylvie said. “They’re preparing to throw.”

The memory arrived before the thought could: Leaves had described this. In the previous encounter, the spear had crossed the distance before anyone could track it, and Scarlet had died in the second it took to understand what had happened.

He didn’t see the arms extend. He didn’t see the spears.

Anna’s hands were already out.

Black flame spread across the front of the basket in a dense sheet — not the cutting edge she used for precision work, not the contained heat she maintained in the furnace, but something that filled space and held it, like a door made of fire. Two detonations followed, closer together than thought. The basket shuddered. The black fire shattered in Anna’s hands like struck glass, and the spears fell into the sea as half-burned iron rods.

She caught herself against the basket wall, breathing harder than before.

Roland watched her hands. He knew what macro-scale deployment cost her — in the forge, containing and lifting the entire black-fire furnace drained her in minutes. What she’d just done was equivalent. If they threw again, she might not have enough left to keep the balloon in the air.

The Devils swept past on both sides, circling. Waiting.

The other witches had drawn their revolvers, but the basket swayed with every gust and the mounts moved at the edge of tracking speed — two full cylinders emptied, nothing hit. Roland watched the pattern of the Devils’ flight, the angle of each pass, the way they were spacing themselves. One front, one rear. Classic pincer logic, the same regardless of what species was running it.

The arms went out again.

Anna turned to cover the front — there was no time and no angle to cover the rear simultaneously. Roland had one moment of clear, cold understanding: the rear spear’s trajectory was aimed at her.

He threw himself across the basket.

The impact took him in the shoulder — not the blade, or he would have had no shoulder left, but the shaft driving full force into the joint. His feet left the deck. The basket wall stopped him. Somewhere in the transition between impact and stillness, the world dimmed at the edges and the pain arrived all at once, enormous and white, like an ocean wave that picks you up before it pulls you under.

He turned his head. Where his shoulder had been, there was a gap. Not a wound — a gap, the basket wall behind him showing the sky through a torn edge of iron and wicker, and his sleeve soaked dark and glistening.

That’s a lot of blood.

“No—!”

Nightingale’s voice. He recognized it. Then the white edge spread inward until there was nothing left to recognize, and he let go.

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