Last Witch Standing

chapter 7



One Year Later

Thursday, May 17, 1973

The Citadel Universe



Katie could hear them moving in the halls below, blocking her paths of escape. Didn’t matter. They may think that they could just box her in here, and then, when the Witches’ Council Members returned in force, capture her. But they underestimated her. Plasma bombs were not her only trick.

Katie grasped the ladder with white-knuckled fingers. She needed to reach that book: the one on mathematics. Now that she was at war with the Citadel, her learning had to be accelerated. With higher mathematics, she could learn how to create abstract models of physical systems to measure new theories and techniques against. Without it, she was limited to her own crude, trial-and-error experimentations.

Katie stood inside the Citadel’s library, a stack of pilfered books by her feet. Around her were shelves of hefty volumes containing the knowledge accumulated by the Citadel over the course of the last thousand years: magic books, physics and math texts from many worlds, histories and biographies of key events and individuals in history. Painted scenes from the Citadel’s history looked down from the domed ceiling: a group of witches from an earlier millennium, gathered around a stone table in a grass field, hammering out the Accords by which they would govern their world; a battle scene between the Citadel’s defenders and invading witches from, Andreas, another world; the inauguration of the first Headmistress of the Citadel’s academy.

A few plasma bombs had ensured Katie access to this room. Students and teachers had fled. With the Witches’ Council out of town for a convention, the Citadel Guard was probably awaiting instructions before acting.

Calculus could be used to model the world.

That was the tool. Too many variables. If she could create the right models, isolate the needed variables, she could unlock the secrets around her. Physics could tell her which variables were most important, and mathematics, how to isolate these variables to produce usable solutions. There had to be a reason for all of this. Headmistress’s explanations made no sense to her. If Katie could understand science and mathematics, she could discover who and what she was, where her brother, mother and father had gone and how to return to them.

What was she doing here? Where was her family?

With each week that passed, memory of them faded further. Now, she couldn’t even remember their names. She had to return before she forgot too much and couldn’t find her way.

Katie grabbed the books on math and science and put them in her satchel. It was time to make it past the gauntlet.

She opened the library door. The hall was empty. Floor, ceiling and walls were scorched black from her battle to gain entrance and the area smelled strongly of burnt wood and singed plaster dust.

At the end of the hall a box window overlooked the library’s backyard. That was the way to freedom. Downstairs held guards. She did not fear them, but why fight when you don’t have to?

At the window, she grabbed her satchel tightly.

“Halt!”

Katie turned to face the noise. A tall witch in a black robe and red hair pointed at her with a staff, a wood and brass shaft topped with glittering jewels. Katie recognized her as Eudora, a Representative of the Witches Council, here on a visit from another world. Behind this witch stood several robed witches and a squad of the Citadel guard. Headmistress was not among them.

Katie willed a plasma bomb into her palm. It fluttered blue, then extinguished. Katie lit it again. It extinguished again.

“We can block your channeling, sorceress.” Eudora banged the bottom of her staff on the wooden floor.

The window was the thinnest barrier to the outside and Katie backed up towards it, grateful she had never allowed Headmistress or any of the student’s or staff to see her fly. Below it, a drop of nearly a hundred feet: higher than she had ever flown before.

Eudora smiled as Katie bumped into the wall below the window. Trapped. Now or never.

Katie willed her insubstantial body to pass through the windowpane and the crisscrossed iron lattice reinforcing it. Her stomach fluttered as she entered the matter, a jolt of electricity stunning her briefly, then she was through, in the open air. Flying. What would her big brother say if he saw that his little sister could fly?

She looked back. Through the window, Eudora, and the witches in her party, stared at her hovering figure, mouths open. Katie waved at them.

Into the air she fled, each step putting her forward by several yards. Below her lay the deep green of the well-manicured Citadel lawns. Ahead, the lake sparkled in the sunlight. It didn’t matter now that the mill was destroyed; the area was effectively off limits to her. She had underestimated the effect her destruction of it would have upon the Citadel staff. With one act, she had gone from cute little Citadel pet to mortal enemy.

Where to go? How far could she walk through the air like this? This was further than she had ever gone. It was one thing to jump across the squash fields, another to stay in the air and cover large distances.

When she had passed the lake and into the forest, beyond, even, the ruins of the old city, she descended, gently gliding onto a ridge.

Katie looked out across the landscape for signs of pursuit, but saw none. Nevertheless, she could not stay here. If they could block her plasma bombs, they might be able to overpower her. The best thing to do was to rest, then see how far she could fly.

Maybe she could find a place far away, deep in the woods to hide. To hide and study. She clasped the books tightly. Inside, she was certain, was enough knowledge to render her invulnerable to the Citadel. She would study then, perhaps, go on another raid into the library for more books.

After that? Maybe she would know enough to return family, wherever they were? This was a strange place and she was frightened. Katie wanted to go home.