Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 728: A Surprising Communication

The drawing sensation was brief — a few seconds in which Pasha’s remaining magic felt as if something was pulling it outward through her skin, and then the tension released and everything was ordinary again.

The hall was silent.

Through the short tentacles on her back, she watched the demonic beasts in the affected radius simply stop. Not fall in the dramatic way of things struck down — just lose their animation and become heavy. They tilted and settled and were still, their magic power already dispersing, the mutated biology that had enabled their movement and ferocity becoming inert without that animating force to sustain it. The ordinary demonic beasts — the ones whose magic was low enough to partly survive the wave — would not threaten the relic. They were not intelligent. Bereft of the larger hybrid coordination, they would simply mill in confusion until they starved or left.

Celine had finished the repair in time. The margin had been close enough that Pasha planned not to say out loud how close.

“Check the upper floors,” she told Alethea. She turned to Elena. “Status.”

Elena’s condition was visible without asking — half an arm gone, drenched in demonic beast blood, one leg operating with the specific compensating gait of something structurally compromised. “I’m functioning,” she said. “Everyone’s alive.”

Pasha exhaled.

She looked around the hall: the standing ones holding shields, the ones who could no longer stand sprawled against the walls, all of them with the same expression. Not exhaustion and not despair. The particular brightness of people who have passed through something they could have died in and haven’t.

She felt warmth in the part of her that still remembered being a person who felt warmth.

“I’ll need a new body,” Elena said. “This one’s almost finished. I want input on the next one.”

“This isn’t the right moment—”

“There’s never a right moment. You know what I want, Pasha. Let me have this.”

Pasha looked at her — at the blood and the damage and the expression that was still somehow cheerful. “Come with me. I’ll show you what we have.”

She scooped Elena up with a tentacle and carried her toward the reserve chamber, the room that housed the God’s Punishment Warriors from Hermes who had arrived without commanders and now served as transfer options for the witches who needed new bodies.

“You also care about appearance?” Elena said, from Pasha’s grip.

“I’ve been a blob for four hundred years. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what the alternatives look like.”

Elena laughed.

The damage assessment, when Alethea and Celine delivered it, was: one piece of good news, one bad.

The good: the maze was clear. The demonic beasts that had survived the lightwave were disoriented and retreating. The flying species that had been hovering above the mountain had dispersed entirely. There would be no large-scale assault in the near term.

The bad: two components of the Instrument of Divine Retribution had fractured under the activation stress. The new core had been assembled quickly, under combat pressure, with materials that were not ideal for the purpose. The instrument was not going to be available for at least a week.

“If a single activation at Pasha’s scale produces this much damage,” Pasha said, “what happens when the Chosen One activates it? Does it survive?”

Celine’s expression was the expression of someone who has thought about this and not liked what the thinking produced. “The Chosen One’s Key activates the instrument at full power, which would cover a ten-mile radius. The stress would be proportionally greater.” She paused. “We don’t have adequate materials. The proper components would require the Quest Society’s full resources. What we’re working with is repurposed bone ware from the relic itself, which is fragile.”

“So at full activation—”

“We repair it and try again. There’s no alternative.”

Alethea said, with some feeling: “No more testing during the Months of Demons. Please.”

“That was the plan anyway,” Celine said. “What?” Her voice shifted. “Wait.”

Everyone looked at her.

“The phantom instrument.” She was already moving, pulling herself toward the smaller magic core with her main tentacle. “The core sheen has changed.” She examined it briefly. “The Five-Colors Stone has been broken.”

“What?” The word came from Pasha and Alethea simultaneously.

Phyllis would only break the stone to contact the maze. But the timeframe was impossible — a month in the field would not have been sufficient to locate the Chosen One, not even under ideal conditions. Which left two possibilities: Phyllis was in trouble and had broken the stone for help, or someone else had broken it.

Neither possibility was reassuring.

“Can you locate her?” Alethea asked.

“Southwest direction.” Celine was still working the core. “She’s in the Kingdom of Graycastle. Close to the border of the Fertile Plains.”

Pasha ran through what she knew. The Western Region of Graycastle. She had sent Phyllis there because the Western Region’s witch population was the largest and most organized outside of the Witch Cooperation Association. If Phyllis had reached that destination — and apparently she had — then what had prompted the signal?

Hostile witches? Possible in the old era, less likely given what the survivors knew of Neverwinter’s reputation. An accident? Possible but unlikely; Phyllis was careful. Or—

She stopped that line of thinking before it could complete itself.

“When can the phantom instrument be ready?” she said.

“One day, at minimum.”

“Make it ready in one day.” Pasha had already decided. “We’ll activate it as planned.”

If the stone had been destroyed with hostile intent, they might be revealing themselves to enemies. The risk was real. But Phyllis was one of the last surviving Taquila witches, and Pasha had followed Lady Natalya’s path for four hundred years specifically because of what that path meant: you did not leave your companions behind, not while there was any alternative.

One day. Then they would know.

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