Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 894: Worthy to Save the World

With First Army soldiers still present, Roland omitted the origins of the Battle of Divine Will from his account. He gave the old man only the shape of the larger story — how the witch empire of old had transformed, over centuries of fear and forgetting, into the church that stood here today.

It was not a complete telling, and yet it was enough. Jacob’s eyes widened at each disclosure, growing larger and more fixed until they looked less like a man’s eyes and more like two pale lamps set in a darkening room. The church’s most closely guarded knowledge spilled out of Roland’s mouth like it cost him nothing — which was, of course, precisely how Roland intended it to sound. Every time the old priest gathered himself to object, the next sentence came, and his objection dissolved half-formed on his lips. Much of what Roland said exceeded Jacob’s private knowledge; and yet it fit — fit with the fragments he had collected over decades, fit with the rumors that circulated only at the highest levels, fit in the particular way that true things fit when you have been living next to them for years without being allowed to name them.

Roland stopped when Jacob’s breathing had become audible, a labored rasp from a man who looked close to fainting. He had not stopped because he ran out of things to say. He stopped because the face he was currently enjoying might not be available much longer.

When the old man’s chest finally settled, Roland continued.

“It appears you were not told the full workings of the church’s inner life. Otherwise none of this would have the power to shake you. You cannot even call it nonsense — you recognize too much of it. What I’ve described fits the clues you’ve gathered yourself.” He let the priest absorb this. “I believe the knowledge of the demons and the Battle of Divine Will was passed down from pope to pope with considerable care — kept alive so that the goal, or call it the faith, would not be lost across the generations. But the people now calling themselves the church’s successors are so deeply afraid of witches that they dare not reveal the truth of what you all are actually fighting. To say nothing of the will of the first Pope.” He paused. “You proclaim to be the guardians of humankind. How many believers in the entire Holy City of Hermes are even aware that demons exist? That the Battle of Divine Will is coming?”

He gave that a moment.

“In Graycastle, it is different. Knowledge of the Battle of Divine Will is not a secret in Neverwinter. Every minister working under me knows what is coming. Our preparations — the planning, the manufacturing, the policies we build around that central fact — these form the foundation of how I govern. Farmers and blacksmiths both understand what they are working toward. That is the largest difference between your church and my kingdom. I have been preparing my people to face this enemy for years.”

The distraught on the old man’s face was there to be read, and Roland read it.

“Do you still believe the church is humankind’s one and only salvation? Do you not think,” he said carefully, “that you have been thinking somewhat too highly of yourselves?”

He stepped forward until he stood close enough that the old priest could not look anywhere else.

“Whatever the ultimate outcome against this enemy — whether I am equal to it or not — one thing is beyond dispute.” He let each word land separately. “How can the church hope to save the world when it cannot even defeat me? Stop dreaming.”

Jacob’s face went the color of old paper. The words had gone in somewhere deep. He had questioned the church’s adequacy before, Roland could see it — the doubt had lived in him for years, small and private, carefully kept. Now it was open, enormous, inescapable. The last of whatever had been holding him upright gave way. His legs buckled and he went down.

The imposing figure he had entered with was gone as completely as if it had never existed.

“Take him to the dungeons,” Roland said, turning away with a wave. “He’s too old to work in the mines. Keep him alive until the Bloody Moon comes — I want him to witness how my people fight the demons. Perhaps by then he will remember what repentance looks like.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The soldiers took the old man under the arms and carried him out.

Roland turned to Isabella. “Well done. Without you, restoring order in the Holy City in this time frame would not have been possible.”

Isabella did something she rarely did — she looked away. When she spoke, her voice had an edge of unsteadiness she did not fully conceal. “Is this truly all right? You really want me to continue playing the role of the Pope’s representative and gathering the abandoned ones?”

He had received the reports from Edith, Eagle Face, and Isabella herself. He understood their proposal clearly: rewrite the church’s history, split its remaining authority, and in the fracture create a space for Graycastle to claim both the old and new Holy City and everything that came with four centuries of accumulated institutional influence. If scattered believers ever attempted to revive something, they would look like pretenders beside Roland, who held Hermes in fact. The Pearl of the Northern Region had praised the approach in her precise way, calling it effective.

Roland considered it practically, as he considered most things. The plateau at the center of the Impassable Mountain Range, facing the great breach — this was a choke point of genuine strategic value for any defense in the Battle of Divine Will. He had intended to hold it since the day he first planned to move on Hermes. Using the local workforce and resources, drawing on what the church had built here rather than importing everything from Neverwinter — the arithmetic was straightforward. He did not need to calculate this twice.

“What would I have to object to if it proves effective?” he said, smiling. “Your sentence still stands, of course.”

“I never had any intention of—” she began, quickly.

“Of course not. But I can’t leave your contribution unrewarded.” He waved a hand. “When you’re called on to act as representative — and there will be such occasions — you’ll be treated accordingly. Befitting of the role.”

Isabella blinked. “Befitting of a representative?”

“The representative’s status would be equivalent to the Prime Minister’s, or the Hand of the King.” He kept his tone casual. “Not the authority, to be clear — only the material accompaniments. A spacious, well-appointed suite. Meals from the imperial cooks. All the Chaos Drinks you desire. Equivalents in gold royals if you prefer the coin to the comfort—”

“No, Your Majesty.” The sharpness of her refusal was not quite what she had intended, apparently, because she immediately softened it. “The former is… fine. Have it your way.”

“Then that’s settled.” Roland said it pleasantly, and left it there.

As the First Army expanded its investigation through the city, the shape of what the church had built emerged piece by piece.

The old priest had not exaggerated: with everything intact. Beyond the collapsed cathedral, the city was in excellent condition. The broken sections of the city wall had been repaired. The mangonels were still mounted and untouched. And in the underground cellars — the Berserk Pills Isabella had mentioned, stockpiled in quantities that staggered the imagination. The count came back at approximately 240,000. Roland thought of Zero’s plan: millions of soldiers made crazed and absolute, used against the demons in the final hour. He had never been able to fully picture that plan without feeling something cold pass through him. Now, standing over the inventory count, he was simply relieved it had never happened.

A large fire was built on the high city wall. The pills burned to ash. The ash was swept over the parapet and fell into the frozen dirt below. At last — the crazed army, the threat that had occupied a corner of his mind for so long, was gone.

But the investigation reports kept arriving, and they kept including surprises.

Food. Weapons. Hidden caches of both, emerging day by day in quantities that suggested the church had been preparing for a siege of indefinite duration. What had been found so far could equip and sustain several orders of knights. The explanation for King Appen Moya’s willingness to march his entire army across hundreds of miles became considerably clearer. And the senior figures of the church, Roland noted, had taken only the gold royals and the jewels — leaving the war supplies entirely untouched. That detail confirmed something he had half-suspected: they were not relocating. They were running. They intended to live, not to return.

The leviathan that had nested in the northwest of Graycastle for four hundred years had finally, definitively, bitten the dust.

For now, Roland had nothing to do but wait — for Iron Axe to finish annexing the Eastern Region, for the march to the border, for the convergence that would let them envelop the Kingdom of Dawn. He had free time, genuine free time, for the first time in what felt like years.

He wanted to look at this city properly. The Hermes in the memory fragment was incomplete; the real thing, standing around him now, deserved actual attention.

The place he most wanted to see was the Reflection Church — the phantom-hall that Isabella had described, where Alice, Queen of Starfall City, had kept her faith alive across four centuries of playback, and where Zero had completed her transformation from Pure Witch to Pope.

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