Release that Witch

When Scroll climbed up the stairs to the third floor of the castle with a thick stack of paper in her arms, she met the yawning Nightingale, who was just preparing to leave, in front of the office.

“You haven’t slept yet?” Nightingale stopped and raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“It might be because I’m getting old, I’ve been finding it hard to sleep recently.” Scroll smiled and shook her head. “Where’s His Majesty? Has he already slept?”

“Yeah, he returned to his bedchamber half an hour earlier.”

“Then why are you still staying in the office?” Scroll put her hand to her mouth. “You weren’t secretly eating His Majesty’s snacks, were you?”

“Eh… haha.” Nightingale was stunned for a moment before coughing. “Yeah I was, I ate his spicy shredded beef and drank a bit of his Chaos Drink. Don’t tell His Majesty, alright?”

Now it was Scroll’s turn to be shocked.

What happened to her… why was she being so quick to admit? In the past, as long as she was not caught red handed, Nightingale would never have admitted to stealing food.

But thinking of how she and Wendy often stole Nightingale’s drinks as well, Scroll was momentarily at a loss for a reply.

“Um, I’m going to sleep now…” Nightingale avoided her eyes and walked towards the second floor. “Don’t stay up too late, I heard from Roland that the older you are ,the worse the side-effects are from lacking sleep.” She looked up from the bottom of the stairs. “Goodnight.”

“…Goodnight.” Scroll replied, feeling a little confused. Then, she turned around and walked into the office.

Even though the flames in the fireplace had already been extinguished, its warmth still lingered. There seemed been in there for quite a while.

Without thinking any further, Scroll familiarly opened the book cabinet and placed the data that was in her hands into the categorized columns on the shelf before taking out the information that needed His Majesty’s answers.

It held lines and lines of extremely lengthy equations; she could tell from the handwriting that some portions were written by Roland, and others were written by Anna and Celine. One of her daily jobs was to deliver information like this to the Arithmetic Academy and get that group of astrologers to calculate the answer. Then she would hand it over to the central carrier to compare the answers.

From the written descriptions within the information, the information was probably related to His Majesty’s new experiment. But what she couldn’t get her head around was how one could derive the dimensions of an apparatus that no one had ever seen before—or even imagined, just by doing calculations on a piece of paper. It was as if what was written on the paper were not numbers, but sketches of reality. This, in her eyes, was no different to predicting the future.

Scroll couldn’t help but be amazed whenever she saw Anna’s graceful handwriting. Anna was born in Border Town as a simple girl; yet, she had now reached a level that she and the others could no longer understand. Even when everyone sat in this office watching His Majesty do those interesting science experiments in the beginning, any one of them could make a meaningful comment or two. But now, the only person that could follow His Majesty closely at his side was Anna.

But she didn’t feel sad at all; in fact, she felt full of pride.

—Because that was her sister.

Scroll sat in front of Roland’s desk and opened the folder of data, planning to memorize everything like usual. This way, if there were omissions in calculations when she distributed them, she would be able to catch them in time.

However this time, she noticed something strange.

“Are… my eyes going bad?”

Scroll rubbed her eyes and spotted vague strings of characters floating below some of the equations, as if they were the corresponding answers.

It wouldn’t have been odd if she had been reading test papers or permanent residency files. Ever since she discovered the way to do rapid search, she would usually be able to derive where the information came from and think up all content related to it just from looking at a file once.

The problem was that it was her first time seeing this folder of information.

Not only was she unable to understand the meanings of those calculations and equations, even the ‘answers’ floating below them baffled her.

Also, the strange symbols didn’t follow every row of equations, most of the columns were still completely blank.

If she stared at the hazy, illusory symbols for too long she would even feel waves of dizziness.

It appeared as though Nightingale was right—sleep deprivation was indeed taking a toll on her. Scroll sighed softly. Alas, she hadn’t been feeling sleepy at all recently; it was as if her brain was working at high speeds all the time.

Maybe I should just go to the hospital tomorrow and get some sleeping pills , she couldn’t help but think. The side effects of those on witches weren’t huge; using it one or two times wouldn’t do her any harm.

After forcing herself to memorize all the information, an intense wave of dizziness suddenly overcame her and her mind went blank momentarily. He body uncontrollably tipped forwards and she accidentally knocked over the penholder on the desk.

But the dizzy spell disappeared as fast as it came and she became normal again in a short span of a few breaths. Not only did she no longer feel any discomfort at all, but her thoughts seemed to become much clearer than before.

Scroll blinked a few times. After confirming that her body was now fine, she smiled bitterly and bent over to pick up the penholder.

At this moment, she felt as if she had been struck by lightning.

Because the appearance of the floorboards had… changed.

She would never remember His Majesty’s office incorrectly. The floorboards were made of pinewood from the Misty Forest with sheep wool carpet rolled over of it. Although it looked a bit outdated, His Majesty had never changed it. And now, although the carpet below her feet was still made of sheep wool, the floor in the distance had become another material.

It had turned from wood to stone.

How was that possible?

Scroll carefully raised her head and her heart sunk further.

It wasn’t only the floor; the appearance of the entire office had transmogrified. The recliner that Nightingale often sat on had vanished without a trace. In its place was a row of old, iron filing cabinets. It looked much like the archives you would see in an executive office.

But just then, she was clearly inside Graycastle!

The window!

The floor-to-ceiling window was His Majesty’s favorite feature and was the speciality of his office. If you looked out, you would be able to see the the city of Neverwinter at night, spotted with light—

Scroll jerked around and pulled open the velvet curtain behind her.

But what she saw was a gray, brick wall.

Undeniably, this place was no longer the King’s office that she was familiar with.

She frantically stood up, leaped towards the window and banged on the wall twice. The wall didn’t budge at all—from the deep and steady echo, it was clear that the wall wasn’t an illusion but completely real.

Scroll felt a shred of hopelessness.

Anybody would feel a strong sense of helplessness and vulnerability if they suddenly got teleported into an alien, completely enclosed place.

No… She inhaled deeply and forced herself to calm down. It wasn’t accurate to say that it was completely enclosed, in the corner between two rows of filing cabinets was an inconspicuous iron door. It was basically the same color as the cabinets, so it was easy to miss if one didn’t look carefully.

It seemed to be the only exit out of the room.

Where would the iron door lead to?

Was whatever that was waiting for her outside a trap or another wall?

Scroll couldn’t help but think of these questions as she slowly grabbed the door handle.

“Clack”

The iron door opened.

A golden ray of sunlight shone into the room and the silence was broken. Hundreds of noises surged inside along with a blast of icy cold air—there was the clamor of conversation, the tooting of whistles and the ceaseless pattering of footsteps. In front of her, an uncountable number of people were busily hurrying along with their heads lowered. Once in a while, some of them would glance at her and reveal expressions of amazement.

And behind the crowds of people, numerous, gigantic buildings towered like mountains, occupying Scroll’s entire field of view.