Rewrite That Witch
CH313 · Rewrite
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Chapter 313: The Battle of the Soul

She had not felt sunshine like this in a long time.

Garcia stood in the garden and breathed in, and the smell of rosemary came with the breeze — not the frozen soil and scentless Winterflower of the Kingdom of Eternal Winter, not the salt-heavy damp of Port of Clear Water where the waves broke over the beach if you closed your eyes and listened. This was different. She knew it before she understood it.

The palace of Graycastle.

Though it looked different from what she remembered. Smaller, perhaps — or rather, the way places from childhood look smaller when you return to them, having grown to a size that makes the spaces narrow. She crossed to the central flower pond and sat at its edge, trailing her fingers over the stones. Here the surface was rough. She remembered why: she had fallen in this garden as a girl, hit her head against the stones, and her father had afterward ordered them all broken into pebbles. No one could hide behind them anymore, but no one could be hurt by them either.

Gerald and Timothy had both been there that day. They’d been frightened enough that they’d each knocked their own heads against the pond’s edge to coax her out of crying — and earned a beating from their father for the performance. She had not thought of this in years. It was the kind of memory that goes underground and stays there, still intact, only waiting for the right ground to surface in.

It seemed as if everything had returned to childhood. As if nothing that had happened since had happened.

“So this is your world,” a voice said from behind her. “A reasonable choice for a resting place.”

Garcia turned.

The woman coming from the direction of the pond wore white — white robe, white hair, eyes the color of pale embers, her face precise and deliberate in its beauty in the way that things carved rather than grown tend to be. Her voice was musical and without inflection.

“You’re the Church’s witch,” Garcia said.

“My name is Zero. ‘Witch’ doesn’t suit me.” She smiled at the word the way you’d smile at something someone has gotten harmlessly wrong. “I’m called a Purified. Our blood — and that of those who have fallen — is different.”

“A Purified. The Church’s term for what they keep.” Garcia looked at the woman steadily. “What is this? An illusion? Your ability projects false environments?” She picked up a stone and closed her fist around it, and squeezed. “None of this is real—”

She opened her hand. The stone was not crushed. The edges had cut into her palm, and the pain was specific and clean, the kind of pain that does not arrive from illusions.

“You are not entirely ignorant of witch abilities,” Zero said. “That makes this easier.” She grasped the hem of her robe and inclined her head. “Welcome to the World of Consciousness. I call this place the Battlefield of Souls. Here we will fight. The winner takes everything; the loser loses all — as God proclaims in the Holy Book.”

Garcia was still processing this when the pike entered her chest.

She had not seen Zero move. One moment there was distance between them; then there was a weapon, and its handle was in Zero’s hand, and its point was somewhere in her lung, and the breath she tried to draw would not come. She tried to call out. Nothing. Zero turned the shaft and pulled it back, and blood came with it, covering Garcia from the sternum down, and the ground arrived against her knees, and then darkness.

She was standing again. Unharmed. Four meters from where she’d fallen.

Garcia’s hands pressed against her chest, against skin that showed no wound and still ached with the phantom of one. A spray of blood dried on the grass at her feet. She stared at it.

“The basic rule,” Zero said. “Consciousness is not immortal. Each death feels completely real, and each one consumes you — your will, your strength. When the accumulated weight exceeds what you can carry, the sleep becomes permanent.” She was composed, not unkind. “Most people manage three or four deaths. Determined individuals have endured seven, eight, more.” A slight pause. “I hope you’ll be interesting. But I understand if you want to give up — continuous dying is genuine suffering, and the outcome is already decided. Choosing to accept that isn’t cowardice.”

She picked up the dropped pike. Drew a greatsword from a scabbard that had not existed a moment ago. Crossed the distance.

The blade came down and hit iron.

Garcia was holding a shield that had materialized between her hands, and the shock of the parry drove both of them back — Zero stumbling, the sword spinning from her grip into the grass; Garcia falling to one knee from the force of stopping a blow that had been meant to end the fight in a single motion.

She got up.

This is your world. Zero had said that. And: The winner takes everything. And: This is the Battlefield of Souls.

“The outcome is already decided?” Garcia spat blood from her bitten cheek and leveled the crossbow that had appeared in her other hand, and fired. Simultaneously, behind Zero, a cross-shaped beam rose from the earth and locked around her limbs. The bolt punched into Zero’s abdomen and the Purified folded around it, gasping, going to her knees.

For a moment neither of them spoke. The garden was quiet.

“That — surprised me.” Zero’s voice came out in fragments, interrupted by her breathing. “Cough. For an ordinary person to not only absorb the shock of this place but begin to manipulate it — you’ve just demonstrated why you’ve given Excellency Mayne such headaches.”

“Thank you very much for talking so much,” Garcia said, and picked up the fallen spear. “If you hadn’t explained the rules, I’d never have understood this place so quickly.” She weighed the shaft in her hands. “Shall I add some more holes?”

Zero laughed. “For now,” she said, “do as you like.”

By the tenth death, Zero finally went still.

Garcia had not aimed for anything vital. She had worked from the extremities inward — hands and feet first, then joints, then the abdomen — moving methodically through the available geography of the body, listening to Zero’s voice change. At first the Purified had spoken. Later she had made sounds, and then the sounds had simplified, and then there had been silence except for the evidence. When the stillness came, Garcia stood over her and breathed.

Now she resets. That’s how it works — she said so.

Sure enough: white light pulsed through Zero’s body, the wounds sealed, the pale eyes opened. Zero was on her feet before the light had entirely faded.

Garcia raised the pike.

Zero’s hands broke the rope of the crucifix Garcia had conjured a moment ago — the hemp simply parted, pulled apart from inside — and then her foot connected with the pike shaft, redirecting its line, and then Zero was beside her, not in front, and her hand was moving, and Garcia felt the impact—

She was standing again. No head. Then a head, her head, reformed. She clutched her throat with both hands and stepped backward.

Zero’s hands had been empty.

“If you didn’t understand the nature of this place,” Zero said, “I couldn’t have had a real fight.” She opened her empty hands. “You wonder how I got free of the rope. It isn’t complicated. ‘The winner takes everything.’ Among the people I’ve absorbed, there have been witches of extraordinary power — strength beyond anything ordinary, speed beyond anything a body should be able to do, immunity to the suppression of God’s Stones of Retaliation. You don’t know the Church’s term for them. We call them Extraordinary.” She let her hands fall. “You cannot beat me by ordinary means. If you want to survive, you’ll have to double your effort.” She settled into her stance. “Now it’s my turn.”

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