Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 675: Last Hope

The blade opened armor clean. The struck knight grabbed her sword hand — a grip meant to buy his companions a few seconds — and misjudged the difference in their strength entirely. She pulled free, kicked him square, and the impact caved his breastplate. He hit the earth and lay still.

The sword was already dull. She dropped it.

She went up — leaping onto the nearest knight’s pauldron and using his mass as a pivot point. Each landing placed her at a new angle: she dropped her heels onto helmets, felt the cervical snap through her boots, was already moving before the body registered what had happened. When a clear landing wasn’t available she worked the joints instead — elbows, knees, the gap between gorget and breastplate — and drove men off-balance until they stumbled into one another’s weapons.

“This is impossible!”

“What in God’s name is she—”

After a few exchanges, the knights understood that their enemy was not an ordinary human. Extraordinary strength, close-combat technique that no twenty-year-old girl should possess, the killing efficiency of a seasoned soldier — none of it matched. Their counterattacks landed on nothing.

“Everyone back!” Lougan spurred his horse forward, the other knights closing behind him to pen her in.

She didn’t retreat. She caught both the horse’s front legs and stopped it mid-stride. What happened next — she lifted horse and rider together, pivoted, and threw them into the men behind — nobody in that road, none of the knights who survived and fled, would describe later without qualifications. The ones who bore the impact directly were either dead or broken. Lougan himself landed at an angle that left him very still.

The survivors scattered. They ran for their horses without looking back.

She did not give them that chance.

The sun was down by the time she finished.

She dragged the bodies into the nearby field and covered them with wheat straw. Someone would find them eventually — but by then the witches would be across the border.

She climbed into the finest wagon, the one with Yorko’s cushions, and peeled back the mattress. Beneath it, exactly where it had been placed: a ring set with a magic stone, its crystal holding a tiny cyclone that swirled even in the dark. She turned it over once, then tucked it inside her robe and smoothed the mattress back.

She lay down and looked at the ceiling.

The next step was simple: reach the nearest village, hire a driver, ride to Graycastle. They might not wait long at the border — possibly not even a full day — but Neverwinter was her destination, and if they moved on before she arrived, she would find them eventually. The Western Region was where they were going, and the Western Region was where the witches were.

Through the window, the moon had risen. Clean and cold and very far away.

Four hundred years. The Union that had commanded the world had turned to ash. The stars were unchanged — the one fixed thing — and when she looked up at them she felt, almost, as though she were still herself. The woman who had walked in daylight in the Holy City of Taquila, before everything ended. Not the self that had existed underground for four centuries, waiting, drifting between waking and sleep, but the one who had actually lived.

That city had been beautiful.

The road since had not been living. It had been endurance.

What kept her moving was a last, particular hope.

“So — how does it feel, having a female body again?”

She flexed her wrists, settled her heels. “The reach is shorter.”

“Of course. This shell was designed for service, not combat. Too large and they’d become suspicious.” Laughter, warm and without mockery. “Female God’s Punishment Soldiers are already rare. Don’t be precious about it.”

“Appearance matters,” another voice said. “The tastes of common people haven’t changed. They don’t want shells that look like men — ask Elena. She’d rather have a defective male body than what she ended up with. Yours, though, is the best of what we had.”

She shook her head, studying the great sarcoma before her — its tentacles moving slowly in the heat. “That’s not what I meant, Pasha. I have to relearn everything with this body. Every motion from sewing to drawing a blade. It will take time.”

“We have time,” Pasha said, and one tentacle descended to touch her forehead with great gentleness. “All the time we need.”

“Why do we need to deal with common people at all?” Alethea, reclining in the magma, blew a chain of bubbles that expressed her displeasure better than words. “Can’t we bring the witches here directly to assess their talent?”

“Has the long sleep addled you?” Pasha answered without heat. “It isn’t four hundred years ago. Bringing one or two witches here — acceptable. A hundred? We would be remembered as monsters by the next generation of our own kind.”

“Even so, couldn’t a witch carry out this task for us? These shells were enemies of our people.”

“The witch we choose must trust us completely and be able to protect herself without our help. Where do we find such a person? Common people control the world now. Dealing with them is unavoidable — the same as it was in the Land of Dawn at the first Battle of Divine Will.” Pasha’s tentacle swung toward her. “What do you think?”

She tossed her sword upward, let it turn once in the air, and slid her body just slightly aside so the blade dropped back into the scabbard on its own.

“I have no preference,” she said. “As long as I can see Taquila’s glory restored.”

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