Chapter 549: Agatha’s Decision
Sylvie found Agatha by sight — the Eye of Magic scanning the ambush area as Maggie flew the shape of the flask that Leaf’s controlled forest made when viewed from above. Under Leaf’s influence, the wood glowed a faint green she could see through closed bark. She pushed the Eye too hard and her vision fractured into competing details, every insect in every hollow of every tree demanding equal priority. Pain crept behind her eyes.
She found Agatha hidden inside a broad trunk near the forest mouth. The bark cracked open as Maggie descended and Iffy landed on her feet.
“Why are you here?” Agatha emerged. Her expression held no welcome. “Did the lure fail?”
“No. Five demons followed.” Sylvie dropped from Maggie’s back and caught the little white-haired girl who had collapsed from the transformation, holding her while she found her human feet. “But three of them are different. I had to tell you.”
She described them: the two with the shifting cloaks and the writhing beneath, the faces like healed wounds with no visible eyes; the armored one with the metal helmet, the red-lit eye slits, the massive sword, flying alone without a mount.
The effect on Agatha was immediate and visible. The analytical blankness broke.
“Fearsome Demons.” She spoke it quietly. “They are killers of ordinary soldiers — they terrify people completely: fear, confusion, paralysis, despair. Even with God’s Stone protection, people cannot shake the feeling. A handful of them can rout a hundred-man force. The demons do not use obvious magic to do it — the power appears to be inherent, undetectable. As long as you don’t look them in the eye—” She pressed her fingers against her temple. “Their real eyes are hidden. Under the scarring. Don’t let them open.”
“And the armored one? It flew alone. Is it a Lord of Hell?”
“No.” The word came out rough and low. “If your description is right — the armor, the size, flying under its own power — that is likely a Senior Demon.” She swallowed. “We are in trouble.”
“What are they?”
“The Union knows very little. More powerful than Mad Demons. They have multiple abilities. They look approximately human, only much larger. Alice told me once that to fight a Senior Demon, you must be completely focused — one small mistake can be fatal.” Her jaw tightened. “We were told only Transcendents can reliably match them.”
“We don’t have a Transcendent.” Sylvie’s voice had gone small. “We should stop the operation. Retreat to the First Army.”
Agatha bit her lip. She was doing the calculation that Sylvie could feel happening — distances, abilities, terrain, what a flying Senior Demon could do to witches who retreated across open ground.
“It can fly,” she said slowly. “Outside Leaf’s control, on open ground, it catches everyone except Lightning and Maggie. We would have no protection and no ground to stand on.” She paused. “We retreat and it cuts us apart at its leisure.” Another pause, longer. “Here, at least, we have Leaf’s forest. We have Anna.”
She pressed her palm flat against the tree trunk.
“Leaf.” Her voice came out level. “Change to plan B. Tell all witches. Plan A is canceled.”
Leaf’s response filtered down through the bark: “Understood.”
Plan B: no capture. The Sigil of God’s Will — every demon in the zone, wiped clean.
“Will we really fight the Senior Demon?” Sylvie pulled Maggie closer without thinking about it.
“Running leads to death. Fighting gives us a chance.” Agatha looked at her steadily. “A Senior Demon never travels alone — they normally command large forces. But this one came out with only two Fearsome Demons as guards. We outnumber it in ability. We may not need a Transcendent.” A breath. “If we use everything we have.”
“I see Lightning.” Leaf’s voice again, from overhead. “They’re coming.”
“Quiet.”
The sound came first: something large moving through high branches, then the heavy impact of things landing in the undergrowth ahead. Rapid footsteps — not human strides, something heavier. Then silence, and then the low, sustained growl of Devilbeasts settling.
Sylvie pressed her back against the trunk and held her breath.
“Three Devilbeasts outside the woods,” she whispered, scanning with the Eye. “One demon unaccounted for — wait.” She swept the range carefully. “Only three Devilbeasts near us. The fourth didn’t follow them in.”
“Good.” The line of Agatha’s mouth went flat and certain. “I’ll kill the Devilbeasts first. No escape routes, even if they want them.” She looked at Maggie. “Can you manage the third if it tries to fly?”
Maggie puffed her small chest. “Mm!”
Agatha looked at Sylvie. “Stay inside the tree. You are not a combat witch.”
She stepped out of the trunk.
A layer of frost spread across the ground before her — not ice dropped from above but ice drawn from the air itself, crystallizing in a smooth mirror surface that moved with her. She crossed the open ground without sound, the frost road forming ahead of her footsteps like thought preceding action.
What happened in the next twenty seconds, Sylvie watched through the Eye of Magic because she could not bring herself to close it.
Maggie fell from the sky in her Devilbeast form — wings spread, tail counterweighted — and landed directly among the three. Instant confusion. The three Devilbeasts responded the only way they knew how: spread wings, raise tails, roar. They pushed against each other for space. One of them, in the chaos of the display, let out something that looked almost like a dance step.
Are they showing off for her?
On the far side, Agatha reached the rearmost Devilbeast. Her hands opened.
The frost descended. It came not from the sky but from the ground and the air simultaneously, rising up the Devilbeast’s legs like water rising in a glass. The beast shrieked and spread its wings for flight. The frost moved faster. Wings, shoulders, neck — the creature became a statue of white ice in under three seconds, frozen solid in mid-launch.
At the same instant, Maggie closed her jaws on the neck of the dancing Devilbeast. It panicked. Maggie was larger than it was — not competing with it but containing it, holding it down with the straightforward geometry of superior mass. It struggled. She held. Then she twisted, and the sound of the neck breaking was clean and absolute. The frozen beast took the force of the falling body in a single impact and shattered like glass across the grass.
The third Devilbeast finally understood that something was wrong. It spread its wings and rose.
Agatha ran after it.
She ran upward.
The frost extended ahead of her feet into open air, each step crystallizing the space before her landed on, creating a bridge that arced upward as she climbed. The Devilbeast was five meters above the ground. Then six. Then Agatha was beside it, and the frost moved like a living thing along its tail and up its body, and it became ice in flight.
The bridge tilted under the added weight. The ice cracked. Agatha fell.
Maggie was already there.
The ice sculpture hit the ground below and shattered into dust and splinters.
Twenty seconds. Three Devilbeasts.
This, Sylvie thought, still pressed against the tree, her pulse knocking in her throat, is what a senior witch is.