Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 727: The Instrument of Divine Retribution

“No—!”

Pasha’s warning reached everyone a fraction of a second too late for Celine to avoid the second beast entirely. She had already knocked two of them down when the third found purchase — the bite cracked her casing, and the grey fluid that sustained her body began to leak. Several wolf-variants reached her integument and began climbing toward the tentacles at her crown.

The other witches were already moving.

Elena was fastest. She crossed the distance to the nearest blocking beast in one fluid motion, her body optimized for exactly this kind of engagement, and split it cleanly as she passed through. She entered the pack of beasts around Celine and worked with the particular efficiency of someone who has no sensation of pain and therefore no protective hesitation — not fearless exactly, but without the instinctive flinching that slowed combat witches who had retained that part of their biology.

The demonic beasts were fast. They were not fast enough.

God’s Punishment Warriors at full capacity were something other than human fighters, and these were God’s Punishment Witches — the same enhanced bodies, with the full development of ability behind them. One by one, the beasts were cut apart, their blue blood spreading across the hall’s stone floor. The swarm had been large enough to overwhelm one researcher managing a magic core. Against seventeen experienced witches fighting in a coordinated circle around a defensible position, it was not large enough.

When the last of the infiltrators was down, Pasha crossed to Celine immediately.

“Status.”

“The holes in my body can be sealed.” Celine’s voice had the specific flatness of someone working through a damage assessment in real time. “Some tentacles are severed. The pain is significant.”

“At least you can still feel it.” One of the others — she didn’t track who. “I haven’t had pain in years. Phyllis is probably envious.”

“Don’t,” Elena said. She was already cleaning her blade. “She did this for us.”

“She did. I just said—”

“I heard what you said.” Elena’s tone ended the exchange without raising.

Pasha let it go. The exhaustion of combat had a particular effect on composure, and these were people who had been holding a defensive position against an escalating assault for hours. Some degree of poor judgment was the expected result. What mattered was that they had survived.

“The hole in the ceiling,” Alethea said. “If one beast found that route, another will follow. Do we split the defense or consolidate?”

Pasha considered. Splitting meant leaving a separate group potentially isolated — if the outer defensive line was pushed hard while they were managing a second infiltration, the inner group would be alone and unsupported. Consolidating meant abandoning the lower floors, which would allow the maze to fill from below, but the lava barrier would slow that significantly.

“Consolidate,” she said. “Abandon the lower floors. Guard the core and the relic. If the instrument is operational before the outer line breaks, the question becomes irrelevant.”

Nods around the circle. No dissent.

An hour later, the first wave appeared at the lower maze entry, and the battle properly began.

Pasha drew lava upward through her tentacles — the river below was inexhaustible as a heat source, and spraying it across advancing demonic beasts was effective in exactly the way it sounds. Fur and skin caught, the beasts’ momentum broke as their biology responded to fire, and the other witches moved into the openings. Some witches took significant damage. None fell. God’s Punishment Witch bodies could absorb injuries that would kill common soldiers ten times over, and as long as the skull remained intact, the identity within it persisted.

Celine was working. Through all of it, she was still at the core, tentacles inserted into the repair sequences, conducting the calculation with the specific focus of someone for whom no alternative exists.

The hall became very loud, and then Celine’s voice cut through all of it.

“The calculation is complete! The mode has switched to foreign-species annihilation. The Instrument of Divine Retribution is ready!”

“I’ll take the rest,” Alethea said immediately. She stepped forward to cover the approach from Pasha’s side. “Go.”

Pasha understood the mathematics. Her Key was the largest among the surviving witches — second only to Lady Eleanor’s, who was beyond reach. What Pasha’s activation could power was limited: coverage of the maze itself, perhaps several hundred meters radius. Nowhere near the ten-mile radius that the Chosen One’s Key could theoretically achieve. But within the maze, it would be enough.

She moved to the instrument, wrapped her tentacles around the spindle-shaped core, and let her magic flow outward.

The polyhedron that formed at the center was ineffable in the specific way that things are ineffable when no language has been built to describe them. Many-faceted, intricate, each surface catching the magic’s light differently. She watched it form and recognized it as the thing itself rather than a model or a copy — this was what the Senior Witch’s magic representation looked like, at the scale and complexity of an ancient construction rather than a single person’s capability.

The black-blue light inside it turned.

White.

The frame of the spindle opened.

The hall became daylight.

“Now!” Celine’s voice.

Pasha directed the release outward, and the lightwave went through the hall in all directions simultaneously — not sound, not light exactly, but something that passed through stone and bone and magic alike without apparent resistance. It reached every corner. It went through the witches with a sensation like a gentle pull, a momentary drawing-away of magic power, and then released.

Then silence.

Pasha looked around through her back tentacles. Every demonic beast the wave had reached — every one of them, within the full radius — had stopped. Not sleeping. Not stunned in the way that shock produces. Simply stopped, and then fallen, and now were still on the floor with the particular stillness of things that are no longer alive.

The magic that had animated their changed bodies was gone.

She withdrew her tentacle from the core and breathed.

Through the hall, the witches were grinning.

Exhausted, bloodied, some of them missing pieces of themselves, all of them grinning at her with the specific expression of people who have gotten through something and are very glad about it. Pasha had to work to keep her own composure.

Every witch is equally important. Pasha had believed this for a long time, but in this moment — looking at the faces of the women who had been fighting beside her for four hundred years — the statement stopped being a principle and became simply true.

“Who needs a new body?” she said.

Elena raised the remainder of one arm. “I do. And I have standards.”

“Come with me.” Pasha scooped her up with a tentacle and started toward the reserve chamber. “I saw some acceptable ones in the new batch.”

“You also care about appearance?” Elena studied her.

“I’m still a witch,” Pasha said.

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