Chapter 692: A New Hope
“Nana,” Wendy said, with the tone of someone who had deployed that particular look before.
The child was unmoved. “I’m not joking. His Majesty has also asked me to do experiments — exchanging the wings of roosters and grey eagles, to see if the rooster could fly. Swapping the limbs of frogs and mice. The bodies of cows and lambs…” She counted these on her fingers with the pleased concentration of someone reciting a well-curated list.
The four witches made sounds in unison that were not quite words.
No. 76 said nothing, because No. 76 was paying attention.
Fully investigating an ability rather than fearing it. Systematically testing the boundary conditions rather than accepting convention. That was how the Quest Society had thought. Eight hundred years ago, and here it was again — the same methodological fingerprint, in a border town turned capital, in a king who assigned a twelve-year-old healer the task of transplanting eagle wings onto roosters to see what would happen.
“What happened then?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
Nana looked pleased to have been asked. “Most of the early attempts failed, but once His Majesty brought Lily into the trials, the success rate improved considerably. The problem is that after I join mismatched limbs, they lose function — so I have to exchange them back. Oh—” she paused, as though remembering something. “That’s for Heterogeneous connections. If I join limbs of the same species, the recovery is almost complete. So if there happened to be two legs available…” She trailed off thoughtfully.
“Ahem.” Wendy placed her hand firmly over Nana’s mouth. “Please forgive her. As for Hero’s legs — we will find a solution. It may take time, but she will stand again. I promise.”
The witches by the fire exchanged uncertain looks. No one found the right thing to say.
“Let’s begin with the immediate injuries first,” Wendy said, patting Nana’s head with the efficiency of someone redirecting a conversation that had run long enough. “Go on.”
No. 76 composed an expression of mingled hope and anxiety and watched the child approach her. Nana pressed both hands to her legs.
The ring against No. 76’s chest warmed.
And then she had a new problem, which was: she had no idea how this was supposed to feel.
Pain? Relief? Some sensation that reads as neither? Do people cry out, or go quiet? She was still considering her options when Nana withdrew her hands and said, with clinical brevity, “Your legs are healed. I’ll do your arms next.”
No. 76 tested the movement. The bones responded cleanly. The elbows followed.
Nana studied her with the frank curiosity of a child who hadn’t yet learned to disguise it. “Your mental state is very stable. Most people fall asleep after treatment. You’re the first one I’ve seen who didn’t even yawn.”
The ring.
The sinking sensation was immediate and controlled. No. 76 let panic flicker through her expression, just enough. “I — I just—”
“Sleeping is only a natural physical response,” Nana said, with the generous practicality of someone explaining something obvious. “Waking immediately won’t cause harm. The first few days of movement will feel strange. You’ll adjust.” She tilted her head. “Is that understood?”
“Yes — yes, I understand. Thank you, Miss Nana. Your ability is truly—”
She cut a glance toward Wendy. The lie-detecting witch was elsewhere. Wendy was bent over Hero’s bed, speaking quietly to her. No. 76 let out a breath that was not performance.
“Are you really healed?” Amy asked from close by.
No. 76 lifted her right hand — the wrist that had been at the wrong angle for a month — and moved it in a slow arc. “Completely. Miss Nana’s ability is remarkable.”
She watched the tension dissolve from the others’ faces in turn. And then Amy set her jaw in the way that people do just before they make a decision they have already made.
She walked to Wendy, took hold of her sleeve. “Use my legs to heal Hero.”
Wendy turned. “What?”
“My ability is self-recovery. If you cut them off, they may grow back.”
“Amy, don’t.” Hero’s voice came fast and sharp from the bed. “You’ve only healed from minor injuries. There’s no guarantee—”
“I’m willing to try.”
“Annie — stop her—”
“Amy, even if Hero regained the use of her legs, she’d carry that grief for the rest of her life—”
“But—”
“Stop.” Nana’s voice came across the room with unexpected authority, the kind that comes from someone who has information they haven’t shared yet. Everyone turned to her.
She looked at the floor for a moment, then back up. “There may be another way.”
The room waited.
“I’m sixteen,” she said. “In two years I’ll enter adulthood. When I do, my ability will strengthen significantly. There’s a possibility — I can’t promise it — that at that point I could work directly with incomplete limbs. Make them regenerate.” She paused. “And there’s the other possibility. The evolution. If my ability changes the way Sister Anna’s did, or Sister Leaf’s… I might be able to do things I can’t do now. Maybe even grow limbs that aren’t there.”
“Evolution?” Amy said. “What does that mean?”
Nana’s chin came up a fraction. “When the magic in your body coheres and transforms into something entirely new. Haven’t you encountered it?” She had the particular pride of someone sharing a discovery they’d made before anyone else in the room. “Anyway — it’s extraordinary. If you study carefully and work consistently, there’s a real chance. For all of you.”
No. 76 listened to the girl’s enthusiasm and felt the floor of her thinking shift.
If she was not mistaken, what Nana was describing was High Awakening.
She turned the word over against her memories. The Union records. The long catalogues of the promoted, of the conditions, of the talent-and-time-and-chance constellation required. Senior Witches were not harvested; they were gathered, slowly, from an enormous field of ordinary witches who would never achieve the transition regardless of effort. In the late period of the Battle of Divine Will, the Union had gone nearly a century without a single promotion. That was not a shortage. That was an extinction-level crisis.
But Nana isn’t lying. That was the thing that wouldn’t settle. If she were performing for an audience who had never heard of High Awakening, there was no reason to invent the concept in such accurate detail. She had explained the mechanism precisely — coherence, transformation, the analogy to specific named witches. She hadn’t fabricated.
Which meant the Union had Senior Witches in it.
Which meant the more charitable interpretation was that Nana had simply miscounted — that she’d had limited contact with the upper ranks, had seen the aftermath of their abilities, and had mistaken the scope of what she was seeing.
No. 76 arranged her face into the expression of a woman absorbing a miracle.
It wasn’t entirely performance.
If there is even one Chosen One in Neverwinter—
She did not allow the thought to finish. Wanting something was the first step toward reasoning toward it, and that was a discipline she had too much practice to abandon. She would observe. She would count. She would verify.
But the city outside was still there. And the little girl in front of her had just described, with technical precision, a category of witch that the Church had spent eight centuries insisting no longer existed.