Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 990: Behind the Soul

“What approach?”

A brief pause. “Since channeling a demon is too dangerous,” Agatha said, “we are thinking of transforming the demon into a man first.”

Roland took a moment. “You’re suggesting a soul transfer.”

“You’ve mentioned that there are demons in the Dream World,” Zooey explained. “Which means that Starfall City’s successor has extracted a demon’s soul before—at least once. That tells us demons are affected by a soul device the same way humans are.” She let that land, then continued. “We simply transfer the Senior Demon’s soul into a God’s Punishment Warrior’s body. This way, all the risks of the transfer fall on the demon—the sensory loss, the disorientation, the confusion of waking in a foreign vessel. During that window, the channeling witch can read its mind. And the witch will be far more familiar with what a human body feels like than what a demon’s does.”

Roland turned it over. The logic was sound—but something tugged at him. “Has it occurred to you that you’d lose a God’s Punishment Warrior if you go through with it? Once the church fell, there was no way to make new ones.”

“Compared to a senseless existence, we’d all rather live in your dream,” Zooey said placidly. “So—that’s fine with us.”

Roland almost choked on his tea. He knew Zooey was a woman. He’d known it for some time. But hearing something like that delivered from inside a man’s body still raised the hair on his arms.

“Joking,” Zooey added, with a rare and measured smile. “In reality, we have several defective bodies in storage that can serve for this. And compared to what we might learn from a demon commander, losing one impaired God’s Punishment Warrior is a negligible sacrifice. We’d make that trade.”

“Defective bodies?”

“The journey from Hermes to our hiding place wasn’t easy—especially during the Months of Demons. Climbing the Impassable Mountain Range. Some of the God’s Punishment Warriors who made it there had lost their feet to demonic beasts along the way. Those bodies are no use in combat.” She paused. “We had originally planned to offer them to nobility—let someone enjoy a life of effective immortality in exchange.”

Roland’s mouth twisted. He had doubts about whether that would truly count as enjoyment.

“Still, even a defective body would carry some residual God’s Stone power. If the body released that during the experiment, wouldn’t it cause interference?”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Zooey’s voice was composed. “It took us decades to learn how to fully control a new body—and longer still to successfully activate our God’s Punishment Realm. A great many witches couldn’t manage it until their second transfer. Even if the demon has unusual aptitude for adapting to a new vessel, it isn’t likely to do so during an interrogation that lasts hours.”

“The worst scenario,” Agatha added, “would be the channeling being interrupted. But we’ve confirmed with Sylvie that the pain from an interruption is temporary.”

Roland nodded slowly. Then a thought surfaced. “Have you told Camilla?”

“We have.” Agatha’s tone shifted slightly. “She refused at first. This would be unlike anything she’s done before, and regardless of who the subject is, the channeler takes some risk. But Zooey persuaded her.”

“Did she.” Roland was skeptical. Zooey was not, by any measure, a persuasive speaker. She tended toward pronouncements, not appeals.

“It was simpler than it sounds, Your Majesty,” Zooey said. “I told her I would be the one channeled into the demon.”

Roland stilled.

“I’m an Extraordinary, and the first awakened God’s Punishment Witch. That makes me the most suitable person for this.” Her voice carried no trace of martyrdom—just clean, flat certainty. “I proposed the experiment. It’s right that I bear the risks.”

He sat with that for a moment. It was, he realized, precisely why he found it difficult to simply dislike the ancient witches despite how exhausting their pride could be. They were arrogant and imperious, often haughty to the point of provocation—but when there was something dangerous to face, they stepped toward it first.

“All right,” Roland said after a pause. “Do what you’ve planned. And keep a close watch on the Senior Demon on the way back.”

“I will take very good care of it, Your Majesty,” Zooey said, with a smile that suggested she and care had somewhat different definitions.

Perhaps escorting the demon interested her more than the interrogation itself.

After the call ended, Roland sat alone in the quiet.

Do men and demons truly have souls?

If they did not—if there was no such thing—then what were the Taquila witches switching between bodies? What mechanism was the soul device actually exploiting? And if souls did exist: why could they be extracted, transferred, assigned to any vessel, yet still could not stand independent of a body? Why were they not immortal?

And then the Dream World. A virtual space that felt entirely real. How had it come to exist? The ancient books from the ruins spoke of light beams leading to the Divine Domain. What would that domain look like? What was it?

He would not know until he understood the nature of magic itself—and perhaps not even then. The Battle of Divine Will still held its secrets at its center, wrapped in questions that kept generating more questions.

But for the moment, at least, he had a chance to observe a soul transfer himself. That was something.

Time moved strangely after the battle.

At the front it had crawled—every hour a negotiation with uncertainty. Back in Neverwinter, it accelerated. The city absorbed him again, and the city was growing faster than he could track.

City Hall had expanded and deepened its institutional experience. Its people were seasoned now, capable of managing their own problems. As a result, Roland found more of his hours freed for the large industrial projects that had been waiting.

The glider pilot program continued. Tilly’s Aircraft Operation Manual, which had begun as a few sparse pages, had grown into a volume as thick as Intermediate Chemistry. When Roland added the cover, he chose gold for the lettering.

Thunder had mastered the steel ship—slowly, through a series of mechanical breakdowns and iterative fixes, and finally to a point where the vessel was ready to sail regularly.

The Spellcaster Tower, built specifically for Agatha, had been completed in the final month of autumn. Five stories of concrete, peculiar in its proportions, it had become Neverwinter’s new landmark the moment the scaffolding came down. It stood taller than the lord’s castle. It would remain the most conspicuous building in the city until the Miracle Building was finished.

Beyond those: the oil fractionator construction was nearing completion. The new power engine assembly plant was nearly ready as well.

In the past, the whole Western Region had quieted as winter approached—every town entering a kind of dormancy, activity slowing, people turning inward. Neverwinter had broken that pattern. This year the city barely paused. Crowds and new construction pushed all the way from the North Slope Mining area down to the harbor at Shallow Beach, and the merchants who came through could not hide their astonishment. They had expected a western frontier town grinding to a halt before the snow. They found something else entirely.

A month and a half later, the First Army came home.

The residents of Neverwinter gathered at the meadow on the city’s edge to meet them. The cheering was deafening.

On that day, the first flurries of snow drifted down from an overcast sky.

A long winter was coming.

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