Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 719: The New Union

The forest had gone quiet around them. Wind moved through the high branches at intervals but didn’t reach the ground. Phyllis stood for a long moment in the snow, working out what she’d heard.

“I thought you would stand by Taquila,” she said at last. There was reluctance in it rather than accusation — the reluctance of someone who had almost had a certainty confirmed and found instead something more complicated.

She didn’t say the rest of it aloud, but the thought ran through clearly enough: she represented us in the competition. She cares about winning on our behalf. That should mean—

But she stopped herself. She had been about to impose a logic that wasn’t there. Agatha had been exiled by the Quest Society. Neverwinter had kept her alive. It would be stranger if she owed primary loyalty to the institution that had cast her out.

And yet.

“I’m a Taquila witch,” Agatha said. “That doesn’t change.”

Phyllis looked at her. The statement had been simple and complete, as if it were a fact about the weather rather than an answer to the question she’d been afraid to ask directly.

“Then why should we accept the leadership of a common person?”

Agatha stopped walking. She turned slightly, not toward Phyllis but toward the middle distance, and the expression on her face was the expression of someone recalling something from a different angle than the one she’d originally seen it from.

“When the Union was founded — whether you mean the original roundtable parliament or the Three Chiefs system that came after — what was the purpose?”

“To defeat the demons.”

“Yes. Not to establish the supremacy of witches. Not to prove that witches were superior to common people. Only to find a way to win.” Agatha exhaled, and her breath was visible in the cold air. “After the first Battle of Divine Will, when the Union consolidated authority over the Fertile Plains, it did so because the common people of that era couldn’t contribute to the fight. That was the circumstance that produced the structure. The structure wasn’t the point.” She looked at Phyllis directly. “The situation has changed. The common people have shown what they can do. If we serve Roland Wimbledon and accept Neverwinter’s leadership, and Neverwinter is committed to defeating the demons — what has actually changed? The vessel. Not the purpose.”

The thought arrived for Phyllis with the quality of lightning — not painful, but sudden, and bright enough to change what she could see.

Neverwinter as the new Union.

“You mean Neverwinter would become—”

“A part of it. A continuation of it.” Agatha shook her head slightly. “He may not want the name. That doesn’t matter. What matters is the structure: Taquila, the Witch Cooperation Association, Sleeping Island, the secular kingdoms — all united under a single authority to fight the demons. Four hundred years ago the leader was the Three Chiefs. Now it’s one person who happens to be a common man. Is that different enough to matter?”

Phyllis was quiet for a long time.

It was different enough to unsettle her. The centuries of the Union had always placed witches at the center — not out of arrogance, she had believed, but because witches had been the weapon and the leadership had simply followed the weapon. But what Agatha was describing was a Union that had adjusted to new weapons, new sources of power, a new arrangement of capability.

Was she attached to the center, or to the purpose?

“Your assessment of him is very high,” she said carefully.

“Yes.”

“We’ve been working toward the same goal without him, and we would continue to do so if we found the right witch.”

“You haven’t found her.” Agatha’s voice was neither unkind nor impatient. “And now you’ve found an unexpected chosen one. If the right witch exists somewhere in this world, Roland Wimbledon will help you find her — he’ll want to, for his own reasons. But the witches who come to Neverwinter are growing in number. Your search would be more productive here than anywhere.”

Phyllis turned the argument over and found no obvious flaw in it.

“You truly believe a common person can do what the Three Chiefs did.”

“I believe it of this one. Not as a category — as a specific person.” Agatha’s mouth curved slightly. “The artillery exercise he’s planning — he said it would help you understand something. I think what he called the ‘key of art.’ I don’t entirely know what he means yet, but I expect to, afterward.”

A sound came through the forest then — low and resonant, a rolling roar that shook the snow from the nearest branches, followed by others in sequence, closer together.

Phyllis’s body remembered the sound before her mind processed it. Her hand moved instinctively toward a threat that wasn’t there.

“That’s Maggie,” Agatha said, with no inflection. “Her evolved ability includes the Devilbeast form.”

Phyllis exhaled slowly. The ancient response to that sound faded.

But she frowned. “If she can fly and take that form — she could panic all the lower beasts in the area. They’d freeze in place. She could take them all.”

“She could.” Agatha was already walking again. “But transformation is expensive. The Devilbeast form burns through her magic quickly. She’ll change back eventually, and without that advantage, she and Lightning are back to being fast rather than overwhelming.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They haven’t had combat training. They use what works until it doesn’t, and then they have to improvise. We know how to pace ourselves.”

Phyllis understood.

The contest wasn’t decided by the largest single advantage. It was decided by sustained efficiency against a diminishing resource pool.

She looked at the forest ahead, where the sound of something large was moving through the undergrowth toward them.

“Then the next one is mine,” she said.

“Yes,” Agatha agreed. “It is.”

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