Ulia sat in the same spot in the same tattered clothing, but the chains were new since she’d tried to file through her previous set. I sat down heavily, rustling the interlinking iron rings, dragging them along to lean my arms on the table.

She was impassive at our entrance, used to the occurrence. I feigned similar disinterest despite this being anything but a typical visit. My heartbeat would have given me away if anyone was close enough to check—maybe there was a spell for that?

Faraya gave us the usual pencil and paper with a few irrelevant questions to get through before setting the stage for the main event. I pushed my heel to the stone floor to prevent my leg from bouncing as I wrote out the first one.

Ulia kept glancing at Faraya out of the corner of her eye as she wrote back her answer, curt even by her standards.

I didn’t care to read it past getting the gist of the response and wrote the second question, eager to get to the fourth that would commence the scheme.

The answer to the third question was passed back to me, and I prepared to write the words I’d been chanting in my head. We are leaving. Get ready. My hands shook, digging the pencil into the page.

However, I didn’t need to write anything; it was already written. I stared blankly at the page. Ulia hadn’t responded to my third question in the slightest. Instead, writing her own message.

I’m escaping. Hold your breath and come with me, or suffer their fate.

She brought her hands under the table, agitating Faraya, who pushed off the wall she leant against. “Show me your hands…Tell her to show me her hands.”

“No.”

My head snapped back to Ulia. Faraya and I had always suspected she understood us, but I had to admit my confidence in that had waned after the second visit.

Faraya reigned in her shock and approached the woman with more urgency. I prepared to warn her about the comment on holding my breath, yet I paused. That would ruin everything we’d done over the last few weeks to make this possible.

When Faraya reached the table, Ulia lifted her arms, hands clenched. At first, I assumed it was a capitulation. However, the witch unfurled her fist to reveal a pile of iron shavings sitting on her palm. The usual mana drain around the iron was gone, replaced by whispers of malice.

She stood and threw the handful of cursed iron at Faraya’s face. I still had shackles on my wrist, blocking most of my access to mana. The small blast of wind I managed with what was contained in my hand hit the iron, bursting it into a cloud of dust that engulfed us all.

I disguised my involvement by following through on my reaction and grabbing Faraya’s shoulder, yanking her away from Ulia and the worst of the iron cloud. The witch had her eyes squeezed shut and a hand covering her mouth.

Faraya was worse off, coughing and convulsing, having taken the brunt of the cursed metal despite my actions. I was the furthest away, but every breath scratched my throat while the powder coated me, irritating my skin and eyes.

Dragging Faraya to the floor, I riffled through her pocket for the syringe and blocked it from view with my body. She squinted at me through watery eyes as I showed her the syringe to question if we should carry on. She subtly nodded, getting her coughing under control, chest still heaving.

I rolled her over to help hide it and get access to the keys on her belt. The glittering cloud of metal had settled while Ulia still spluttered when I turned back. Her eyes also watered, but they found me and the keys in my hand.

Faraya’s orb of light faded, plunging us into the dark.

“Do you understand me?” I asked the witch.

She paused, and momentarily, I worried she’d noticed my interference. “Are you daft? Clearly. Does she have the keys on her? Is she dead?”

I ignored that it wasn’t clear and proceeded to unlock my chains, carrying on with the plan despite the hiccup. “I think she’s just asleep and here, keys.”

Ulia walked around the table, bumping into it before finding my shoulder in the darkness. I tensed, but her hand trailed down my arm to snatch the keys out of my grasp.

Her chains thunked to the ground, and her footsteps moved to the door. “She should be unconscious for a while. Leave her be, only thing worse than a knight is a rabid group of vengeful knights. You can come with me, but you’ll need to stay close. If I get caught because of you, you’re dead.”

I checked Faraya’s pulse and stood from my squat to follow Ulia. She was messing with the key link, trying and failing to find the right one. “Give it here; I know which one it is.”

I wanted to regain control of the situation so I could direct us to the sewer. However, she didn’t respond and kept rattling the keys. The door clicked open before I could press the issue, and the glow of the lamps outside spilt in.

“Follow me, we’re heading left.”

My jaw hung open, having been ready to say those exact words to her. Ulia crouched low to the ground, and I had no option but to follow after her. Panic was evident in her eyes, and her heavy wheezing, her head snapping to check behind us constantly. Though, that could have been from the iron in her lungs.

I was equally irritable from the curse but had the benefit of not worrying if we would get caught.

We reached an intersection, which was my next opportunity to take the lead. I grabbed the back of her collar, almost toppling her backwards in her crouch. She turned to glare at me but shut up once she heard the laughter of the planned patrol approaching.

We ducked into the doorway of another cell as they passed, purposefully not looking our way. I left first, turning to the sewer without checking if the knights were looking back. Ulia sucked in a breath, actually worried about getting caught through my reckless actions.

When I reached the sewer door and motioned for the keys, I quickly identified the right one. Yet, I selected incorrectly to disguise that fact. Ulia was pushed up against me, taking turns looking over my shoulder and behind us, whispering to hurry up.

I calmly fit the key in and opened the iron door to reveal the steps down to the sewers. Ulia pushed past me while I retrieved the key and closed the door behind us, pretending to lock it.

“They took me down here before,” I said. “To a cavern, I can lead us there.”

“I know the place, but that’s unnecessary.” Ulia reached the bottom, resting a hand against the stone to feel her way. I started using pulses to walk effortlessly behind her.

“Let me go ahead. Maybe she also had the key for the doors down here,” I tried, hiding my knowledge that there were no longer any doors.

“They’re refitting it all, so no need.”

I stumbled, losing focus on the returning pulses. How did she know that? Was she able to see that far ahead in the dark?

“Shit,” I hissed under my breath as we got to the outer gate, past the materials for the sewer maintenance. There was an orange glow from a lamp, highlighting a cloaked figure. There shouldn’t have been anyone down here.

“Bramble,” Ulia said loudly, and it was my turn to panic at being caught.

“Berries,” came a woman's voice.

The witch confidently walked into the light, hugging the figure, a watch uniform peeking out from under the cloak. I followed behind, attracting her attention and wiping away her smile. At the very least, she wasn’t a mage. “Who’s this?”

“Patela…”

That was the only word I understood, the name I had first given her. They switched to their language, and I was left to listen to the two witches discussing me without knowing what was being said. I made sure to remember her frecked nose, grey eyes, and tied-back auburn hair to tell Faraya later.

I also readied myself to run up the steps beside me if they decided I was unwanted. The iron dust coating me had released the curse and was disrupting mana once again, making me feel off-balance. The curse was of rudimentary design, which wasn’t ideal.

If it had been mana-based, it would have had nothing to latch onto and passed right through me. But it was meant for one quick burst of effectiveness. So, it was constantly active against its physical surroundings, which now included my skin and lungs. Ulia was struggling with its effects more than I was, and I worried for Faraya, who’d inhaled plenty of the stuff.

The discussion heated up while they kept to a whisper, culminating in a huff from the unknown woman. She passed over an embroidered cloak to Ulia with stitchings of silver flowers before taking off her plain dark green to pass to me. “Keep up.”

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With someone else joining and directing us, I’d lost all my momentum and reliability. Before, I expected to point us towards the cavern despite Ulia’s stubbornness. But now, I trailed behind them, unable to break into their foreign conversation.

I searched the bundles of materials we passed on our way out of the palace tunnels, hoping to find something to write a note with. I picked up some pebbles that would have been used to fill in cracks in the wall, ready to make a trail for Faraya to follow. We turned off the path towards the cavern almost immediately, shattering my faint hope of our plans converging.

I placed a pebble at every turn, limited by a single handful.

Could I use the rats to pass along a message? No…

Call over the peluda to divert us? It wasn’t anywhere nearby.

Cause a collapse?

We walked through the tunnels, following behind our guide, who turned without much consideration. We went further than the route to the cavern would have taken and entered a relatively new section of carved stone that did not yet contain flowing water.

We carried on until finding a staircase leading to a hatch that separated us from the surface.

The guide told Ulia and me to wait while she checked if it was clear. I could feel the vibrations of people and carriages streaming across the street above us. We were still in the city, but I had no idea where. The hatch opened again, and sunlight streamed in, blinding me momentarily.

Ulia was helped up first, and a reluctant hand reached for me afterwards. The building we found ourselves in was bare and still under construction based on the missing floorboards. The door to the street was missing the glass panelling, and our guide used the opening to check outside.

The door was too big for its frame and jammed, making her yank it open more forcefully. She pushed us out the door and into a waiting carriage, shutting that door behind us, almost catching my heel. A fist banged on the side, signalling the driver to leave.

A horse neighed, and the carriage lurched forward, jostling us. I searched through the vision of the horse pulling us, not finding much except a horse’s ass framed by blinders. The little else I could see had the buildings becoming smaller and the traffic lessening. Outside the curtained windows of the carriage, there was a line of people holding farming equipment, heading back outside the city for the afternoon.

I’d had enough. We were leaving the city limits, and it wasn’t remotely near where the knights were waiting for us. The watch had a checkpoint for carriages to pass through, and when they stepped in to inspect ours, I’d tear this escape attempt to pieces.

Finding out a watch member's involvement would be ample payment for the effort put into this mess. Yis and the knights couldn’t even track her anymore; it was the best outcome to hope for.

The carriage before us reached the checkpoint and stopped. The watch members climbed inside and talked to the coach driver for a long while. I planned what I would do and how I was going to convince them in the fewest words possible, as well as how I’d restrain Ulia if she tried to act out.

The watch steeped out of the carriage, and it moved on, opening a space for us. I took a deep breath, agitating my throat, finalising my words and clenching my fists.

We didn’t stop.

They waved us through without a second glance. How many people were involved in this?

Ulia pulled back the curtains and smiled brightly at the successful escape. I considered persuading the horses to turn around, but my debate was interrupted by Ulia’s delight and the need to match her jubilation.

Did I go back to my original suggestion? Should I let her take me to her coven and find a way to lead the knights there?

It couldn’t have been too far away; her mentor may have still been nearby. We were out on the open road, still passing plenty of carriages and people on foot, exiting and entering the city from the east. Farmhouses and cottages sat just off the road amongst rows of crops, and I waited for us to stop at one of them.

The plan was salvageable. This was fine. I would gather information solely available to those on the inside and then find a way to bring the knights crashing down on them.

That sentiment faded as the buildings became less common and nature took over. The trees around us were still part of an orchard, planted in straight lines for easy management, but there was a distinct lack of people.

Ulia was unhelpful, brushing off my questions about where we were heading.

The carriage slowed when the only sign of people in the area was the dirt road that carried on to the horizon. The sparse trees and shrubbery showed off the expansive greenery of the plains. I jumped as the door opened. The hooded driver made an effort to turn away from us to conceal their face, impatient with our slow exit.

They shut the door behind Ulia and climbed back to their perch, quickly turning the horses around for the journey back to Drasda.

I searched our surroundings for anything that could be used as a shelter and found nothing but the canopies of trees. My thin layer of woollen clothes did little to protect me from the frigid wind. The cloak helped slightly, but I had not had the opportunity to dress for the occasion. The other item I had on me was my shoes, made of a sheet of badly treated leather that let the chill from the ground soak in.

Ulia started walking, looking sure of herself. I glanced back down the road, sighed, and followed after her. I’d gone along with this mess until now; I could go further.

The Red Forest we’d meant to arrive at was just a clump of green on the horizon. There wasn’t much of a trail to help them find me here, but they could follow the pebbles to the city exit. We had limited possibilities to go from here, and I could always follow the road back to the city.

I rushed to catch up to Ulia as she trailed her palm over the trunks of trees, contemplating something about it, then moving on to the next.

She approached a gnarled tree that branched out without much of a trunk. All its leave had disappeared, leaving the knobs and twisted bark exposed. There was a sinister air about it, amplified by how the branches of other trees seemed to avoid its vicinity. Most trees were home to small critters and birds' nests, while this specimen was devoid of life.

Ulia trailed a hand across a root that protruded from the ground and curved to dive back in. “We’re here.”

I strained my senses, bracing for the return of the pulse to confirm what my eyes knew. There was nothing here. “Okay…Are we waiting for someone?”

“In a sense.”

I resisted demanding clarification and waited, a shiver going down my spine.

“You don’t recognise this tree, do you?” Ulia asked.

I craned my neck to examine the branches again, failing to find a name for its type. Her question didn’t sound accusatory, so I felt safe answering it honestly. “No?”

She smiled, a rare occurrence, and gestured for me to walk. “A failure in your education. This is why it’s essential we unite and forget the old solitary customs. Too much knowledge is hoarded by too few.”

The hairs on the back of my neck warned me something was amiss as I stepped forward under the protruding root. I jolted as the sensation of falling came over me, the wind no longer howling through my clothes. My head spun, and I leaned against a nearby truck for support.

I looked to Ulia for an explanation and found her missing.

The landscape had changed from plains to a dense forest with a different kind of tree than I was used to. The furry needle-like leaves of the evergreen trees surrounded me as opposed to the leafless branches I’d seen before. I slowly turned, taking in my new surroundings.

It was warmer, possibly only because the trees blocked the wind. The ground was wet without any of the snow I’d gotten used to and covered in needles. The animals around me were comforting but unused to humans, so they stayed away once they smelt me.

I sensed a person appear behind me and spun to find Ulia equally as disorientated as I’d been. “What did you do?”

“Me? I got lost, same as you. I simply know how to ask which forest to get lost in. The irrwurz did all the real work.”

“We’re lost?”

She regained her footing and checked where the sun was. “If anyone else had walked under the root, yes. We’re…close enough to where I wanted.”

This invalidated all my past reassurances. I didn’t want to believe I was somewhere else entirely. However, that would be calling into question my sanity since the evidence was all around me.

“And where’s that?”

“You ask too many questions. Even during our time in the cell, most of those weren’t even being asked by our captor.”

Faraya and I had always acted under the assumption she could understand us. But she was right. I had asked most of my questions without prompting from our ‘captor.’ However, that was by design.

“I haven't met another witch before, so there’s a lot I don’t know.”

Ulia scoffed and started walking, her steps crunching on fallen needles. “You’re not a witch.”

Now, without any option to get back to Drasda and not knowing where we were, I reluctantly followed after her. She was less sure of her path than I would have liked, and I swore we passed similar trees before finding an animal trail to follow.

Trees full of life abruptly turned to stumps with discarded branches littering the muddy ground, leaving us on an empty hill. It overlooked an expansive grassland covered in brown, leathery tents, with white and red flags flying from the tips of each. Buildings made out of fallen logs were rarer but towered over the city of tents.

Beyond that was a wall reaching up to the sky made of a single piece of grey-speckled stone. It was marred by cracks and breaks in the smooth surface, while the boulders that caused the damage lay below. Entire sections had crumbled to the ground, spilling into the stretch of scared land that separated it from the tents.

Overgrown ditches ran in rings around the breaches, wooden spikes sticking out of the knee-high grass—empty watchtowers observing the land at regular intervals. Trebuchets sat further back, their boulder piles stacked in neat piles nearby. A patrol marched through a thin strip of packed dirt leading between the chaos, dressed in white and red, chainmail glinting in the sun.

“Get back,” Ulia hissed, seeing the same patrol and dragging me back to the tree line. “This is a different side than I thought; we must go around.”

“We’re at the capital,” I absently commented.

“No wonder you were captured,” she muttered, retreating deeper into the trees. “You’re like a witchling leaving the coven for the first time.”

I wondered if Tometh, the Remnant captain, was down there and if bringing the necklace he’d given me would have helped in this situation. Probably not, since I was travelling with a witch, and he had already been suspicious of me from our last meeting.

I followed after her for the hundredth time today but kept my eye on the wall. Small settlements occurred at every breach, and larger ones at the monumental gates placed in the wall in every cardinal direction. The gates themselves were all missing, and short stone walls blocked the entrances instead.

The larger settlements outside of these gates were made of wood and stone, more permanent than the tents placed elsewhere. People without the red and white uniform moved through the cobblestone streets, making the town look like any other.

They also had greater defences, deeper and more numerous ditches, fields of metal spikes, and siege weapons pointing in their direction. The watchtowers were manned by a lone person leaning against the railing, begging for something interesting to happen.

One section we passed had creatures with pale white skin impaled onto the spikes as if they ran full speed onto the pointed end.

I was still overwhelmed by moving across the country and hadn’t stopped to consider that I was passing dead ghouls and cities of The Revivified Remnant. Perhaps the worst place I knew of for a coven of witches to call home.