Rewrite That Witch
CH815 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 815: Discoveries and Decisions

Over the next three days, reports and messages from the Great Snow Mountain arrived in Neverwinter in a steady stream.

The news that Nightingale had exhausted her magic power and lost consciousness mid-battle had stopped Roland’s heart briefly. By the time the report reached him she was already recovered, and she had apparently thought to ask Maggie to carry the reassurance separately, knowing he’d need it.

The exploration’s findings were detailed and strange.

The ruins within the mountain were real — a genuine remnant of the underground civilization. But unlike the maze inside the Impassable Mountain Range, this site had not been preserved well. Most of its cave sections had collapsed long before any living memory. The intact compartments were filled with spoiled food, insect egg casings, and corpses. Near the underground lake, the Taquila witches recovered a broken magic core. The scouting team found no written records. The most significant discovery, in terms of assets rather than understanding, was an original carrier and two devouring worms living inside the mountain.

He sat with the results and thought.

If the many-eyed monster were simply a large and unintelligent animal that had settled in the ruins, its behavior would be unremarkable. Animals secured territory; they gathered food. But this creature had sent devouring worms to swallow Agatha’s laboratory and the Blackstone Pagoda in Devil’s Town — acts not explicable by appetite alone. The intelligence was evident. And on this most recent expedition, the team had found something that confirmed the creature’s purposes more clearly: both human beings and demons preserved inside what appeared to be specimen bags, strange organic egg-like structures that held the bodies intact.

The decomposition of those bodies was distinctive. Not corrosion — he had noticed it in the first batch of recovered specimens — but corpse wax, the particular form of preservation that results from prolonged, stable storage. These were not food. They were samples. Specimens.

Only an intelligence with interest in study would treat the dead this way.

What he could not make consistent was why such an intelligence would have allowed this underground city to be destroyed. Did it not value what the Taquila witches had valued? Or had it simply regarded those relics as irrelevant to its purposes?

He scanned through Soraya’s pictures of the ruins, turning the question in his mind.

He kept returning to the images taken just before the monster disappeared into the lake. In those final frames, the creature’s remaining eyes had an expression — if he could call it that — which seemed different from anything visible in the earlier pictures. The early images showed eyes that were simply gazing: dispassionate, observational, the flat attention of something cataloguing. But the final images, after the explosion, showed something else. Something that looked uncomfortably like recognition. Like a wound that had been inflicted by something it would not forget.

Whether this was a genuine emotional expression or an artifact of his projection onto an alien creature, he couldn’t be certain.

As for the underground lake: Sylvie had confirmed that it connected to a water vein leading to the Swirling Sea. Roland’s current technical capabilities did not extend to tracking anything once it entered open ocean. The creature had escaped. What he could do was collapse the dome of the ruins with powerful enough explosives, blocking the vein and sealing off that entry point. Neverwinter’s immediate safety could be secured.

But the larger question would wait.

The exploration team had also reported something of a different nature.

Among the smaller organisms Lightning had documented was a type of bug that resembled the specimen-bag creatures but was neither intelligent nor aggressive. These had attacked Fran by producing a highly adhesive mucus, able to change quickly from liquid to a consolidated, thread-like material not unlike spider silk in its anchoring strength. Agatha’s preliminary assessment suggested these bugs were not native to the Fertile Plains — which meant they were almost certainly part of the creature’s own ecosystem, brought with it.

What interested Roland was not their origin but a practical property: their mucus solidified quickly, and according to Lightning’s observations, they appeared to be viable for captive breeding.

He drafted a reply requesting that Agatha compile a detailed report on their diet, lifecycle, and range of potential hazards. He also asked the team to collect samples of the unusual flora and fungi from the ruins — particularly the fruits that emitted a dim, cold light in darkness, and the giant mushrooms described as being roughly the size of an adult person.

He was still reviewing Soraya’s pictures when a knock came at his door.

Phyllis entered, bowed with both hands at her chest. “Your Majesty, Lady Pasha would like to speak with you about the ruins.”

He nodded immediately. He had forwarded all the exploration reports to the Taquila survivors already and had been genuinely curious to hear their interpretation of the creature.

“Good. Let’s hold a video meeting.”

Phyllis blinked. “Vi… what?” A pause while she assembled what he’d meant. “You mean a meeting through the phantom instrument?”

“Yes. The usual place — first floor reception hall.”

He caught himself grinning as she departed. There were very few people in Neverwinter who could decode his vocabulary on a short delay rather than requiring a full translation. It was a small pleasure.

When he entered the reception hall, Faldi and the other God’s Punishment Witches rose and saluted with both hands to their chests: the formal gesture of one recognizing a higher ascendant. They were composed and grave, bearing nothing of the Dream World’s relaxed warmth. Since he had brought them into his Dreamland, Roland had noticed a shift in how they regarded him — something closer to the reverence they gave to their own Three Chiefs, a form of deference that seemed to operate as an internal law they could not quite put aside even when he asked them to.

He had decided to let it be.

Pasha was already visible through the light curtain, waiting.

“First, my sincere gratitude.” She bent her main tentacle in what he’d learned was the Taquila equivalent of a bow. “Your assistance in exploring the ruins has been immeasurable. And what you’ve done for the God’s Punishment Witches’ lost senses — we could not have expected that.”

“I’m helping myself by helping you,” he said. “We’re fighting the same battle.” He leaned back. “What’s your plan for the newly discovered shells in the ruins?”

“Two options: transport them here, or move the soul instrument to their location.” She paused. “I prefer the second.”

He’d already been thinking through the logistics. An empty shell — even a magic core gone dark, reduced to something resembling a dry skeleton — could theoretically be transported by concrete boat. But the original carriers and the devouring worms were a different problem. The shells were large, strange, and to any person in Neverwinter without context, indistinguishable from nightmare. The city’s universal education program had not yet produced citizens prepared to encounter something that looked like a creature of hell being unloaded at the docks.

He agreed with Pasha’s preference.

“Transportation of the instrument is still a logistical challenge, though.”

“I understand. We’ll manage.”

He moved on. “Have you selected the witches willing to accept the Soul Transfer?”

Half a month ago, the question had seemed settled. The Taquila survivors had hoped to find new shells in the Great Snow Mountain precisely because so many of the God’s Punishment Witches had wanted to undergo the transfer — to accept the monstrous form in exchange for permanent sensation. Touch. Taste. Smell. Things most people never had to think about, because they had never been taken away.

But circumstances had changed.

Now there was another option.

Discussion

Suggest a change