Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 917: Ashes’ Plan

“Ashes, demons aren’t blind!” Iffy’s voice cut through before the decision had fully settled. “As soon as you appear against the sky at dusk, they’ll spot you. There’s nothing to hide behind up there. You’d be visible with no way to fight back.”

“Iffy’s right.” Lotus pressed the same point from a different angle. “Lady Tilly told us the Stone of Flight only moves you vertically — up and down. Lateral movement is yours to manage, and you can’t escape quickly if something comes at you. Couldn’t we at least wait for full dark?”

Ashes felt the concern land. Even Iffy’s — which surprised her more than it probably should have. A year ago, the Bloodfang Association and Sleeping Island had barely been able to occupy the same room without the temperature dropping. Heidi Morgan had been plotting to kill them both. The idea that Iffy would now speak to protect her was something Ashes had not anticipated, and found she did not quite know what to do with.

She chose to be pleased by it and move on.

“I can’t see anything in full dark,” Ashes said. “Taquila will be buried under vines by now — there are no lit windows, no fires, nothing to navigate by. At dusk, I can still use the light. And we may not even have deviated significantly — the ruins could be right on the other side of that low rise, or behind one of the larger trees.” She met each of their faces in turn. “All I need to do is fly up, confirm the position, and crush the Magic Stone. A few seconds of exposure.”

“And if a flying demon spots you in those few seconds?” Lotus’s brows stayed knitted. “You’d have maybe ten percent of your normal capability in the air.”

“I’ve thought through the scenarios.” Ashes raised three fingers. “There are three situations, based on how many come.”

Orbit materialized from wherever she had been sitting, eyes bright with the particular interest of someone who enjoys watching competent people work through hard problems. “You sound like Lady Tilly now.”

Lotus covered her forehead. “Please tell me you didn’t plan for the situation where you get caught on purpose.”

“Bahaha —” Iffy couldn’t hold it.

“Don’t interrupt,” Ashes said. “Hear the plan first, then criticize.”

“If I were Maggie,” Orbit said gravely, “I would raise both flags in your favor. Now I understand why she likes your plans so much.”

In the end, they heard her out.

Ashes had organized it simply: the only demons who could detect her at altitude were Mad Demons mounted on Devilbeasts. Based on that constraint, she had worked out three responses — one, two, or more than two. The three situations were easy to mock when stated as a list. The countermeasures, once Lotus and Iffy had examined them, turned out to be sound. Lotus saw it as careful tactical thinking; Iffy called it accumulated combat instinct, the kind you only get from surviving large numbers of accidents. Both assessments were accurate, and not incompatible.

They moved through another day. The air that came down through the ventilation cracks shifted from afternoon white to late-afternoon amber to the flat grey-red of a sky letting go of the sun. The Fertile Plains were dying the light somewhere above them.

Time.

Orbit moved to Ashes’s back and placed her palm between her shoulder blades, pressing the Magic Mark into position. A spot of light blue appeared above Ashes’s head — shimmering, intermittent, the way light looks when you’re underwater and looking up at the sky through moving water. Ashes knew it wasn’t the surface. It was the opening of the magic corridor: the space through which she would travel.

She pressed two fingers to her pulse, confirmed that no footsteps sounded overhead, and nodded to the three of them.

She poured magic into the ring.

What followed was difficult to describe. The sensation was of something growing from her shoulder blades — a new limb, invisible, that she had no previous map for. Tilly had described it as growing invisible wings, and the description was accurate in the way that all true descriptions are slightly insufficient: it conveyed the fact but not the strangeness of the fact. Tilly had lived with the Stone of Flight long enough that the wings responded the way fingers respond — immediately, without thought. Ashes did not have that fluency. She had to reach for it.

She closed her eyes. She imagined the motion. Then she jumped.

The underground silence ended all at once, replaced by everything at the same moment: fresh air across her face, leaves rustling close and then receding, birds in the middle distance, insects underfoot and overhead, the evening wind moving through grass somewhere she couldn’t quite see. She opened her eyes.

The ground was already small. The corridor’s exit was a point of light below her, shrinking.

She controlled the exhilaration by directing her attention north, toward where Taquila ought to be.

Her chest dropped.

There was nothing. The horizon in that direction was scrub and crimson meadow and shrubs catching the last light. No ruins. No skeleton monsters. No city outline. Nothing that matched any description she had been given.

Did we go completely wrong?

She began to turn, looking for the Impassable Mountain Range to establish her position — and stopped.

Southeast. Three hundred meters, perhaps less. Among the trees: enormous shapes, dark and massive, unmistakably manufactured — things that stood the way natural things don’t stand. And below them, broken walls. The towers and walls of Taquila’s ruins stood at the feet of the skeleton monsters, almost invisible beneath the jungle that had grown up around them.

They had not missed the ruins. They had passed them. The accumulated bearing deviation had put them northeast of Taquila when they thought they were still southwest.

If I go back now and correct course, it costs us two or three days. If I fly to the ruins directly—

A horn blasted from the direction of Taquila — a sound that was less a musical note than a physical impact, low and resonant and very large.

A dozen Devilbeasts leaped from the back of the nearest skeleton monster and came toward her. On the ground below, Mad Demons emerged from the earth around the ruins, dozens of them spreading outward in a coordinated ring.

Well. Ashes looked at the situation. More than three. Significantly more.

She had planned for this scenario. The plan was clear. She took out the Five-Colored Stone and crushed it without hesitating.

Then she dove.

For a warrior, the essential skill was not having the right plan for every situation — it was recognizing which plan the situation required and acting without delay. She had intended to break the stone from a better position; she was breaking it from this one. The angle was worse than ideal. The angle would have to be sufficient.

She injected more power into the Magic Stone.

The invisible wings expanded, pressed against their own limits, each imaginary downstroke producing a howl of air she couldn’t quite hear. She dropped at a rate that she estimated was three or four times faster than her ascent — fast enough that the Devilbeasts couldn’t close the distance before she reached the corridor, fast enough that the spear-throwers of the Mad Demons couldn’t track her trajectory properly.

The problem was inertia. At this speed, five or six meters of empty tunnel was not enough stopping distance under her own power.

The blue light appeared below her. Small. Getting larger very fast.

She tucked her hands against the top of her head, tightened every muscle she had, and entered the corridor straight down.

Purple light seized her from every direction.

Iffy’s cage — the Magic Cage, solid and sudden, wrapping her like a fist closing — stopped her forward momentum in the space of an arm’s length. Ashes hung there for a moment, suspended, the cage’s purple light around her and the bottom of the tunnel an arm’s length below her head.

“You’re heavy,” Iffy said from somewhere above her. A pause. “Well? Do we know where we are?”

“Yes.” Ashes looked at Orbit. “Get us to Misty Forest. Right now. The demons are coming.”

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