Euodia Kauppi | WITCH HUNT

December 10, 2026 Ilyrden Outskirts

The road north of Ilyrden cut through black pine forests, abandoned farmland, and the ruins of old shrines older than Myria itself. Before the war it had carried timber convoys, trade caravans, and pilgrims traveling toward the western cathedrals. Now it mostly carried ammunition, corpses, and whatever Velksan soldiers were desperate enough to try escaping the city alive.

The MBR fireteam had been watching it since dawn.

Euodia lay prone halfway down a wooded ridgeline overlooking the route. Through her binoculars she could see the upper half of Ilyrden several kilometers south: shattered marble towers, collapsed apartment blocks, and ancient temple spires split apart by artillery fire. Smoke rolled over the skyline in dark layers while tracer fire occasionally flickered between ruined streets below.

The city looked haunted.

Even from kilometers away, faint blue wisps drifted above portions of the old district where the dead had accumulated too quickly for proper burial rites. Sometimes they moved against the wind.

A cold breeze pushed through the forest.

The trees here were old Myrian growth, towering black pines and silver-barked rune oaks whose trunks still carried faded carvings from kingdoms long erased by time. Some of the roots glowed faintly beneath the mud where dormant mana veins ran underground like buried rivers.

Somewhere inside Ilyrden, machine guns rattled in short bursts followed by the deeper concussive boom of combat spells. The air carried both the smell of burned fuel and the sting of expended mana.

The war inside the city never really stopped anymore.

It only shifted districts.

Euodia lowered the binoculars.

“Scouts confirmed movement,” she said over squad comms. “Velksan convoy moving west to east. Likely exfil attempt.”

Gustaaf shifted beside a moss-covered tree twenty meters uphill from her position. Even sitting still he was difficult to see beneath the ghillie netting and strips of forest cloth woven through his witch hat and shoulders. Several rune-marked mana shells hung across his chest rig beside fragmentation grenades.

“How many?”

“Three transports. APC lead.”

“Escort?”

“Possible VGRU.”

Ivo looked up from the RPK resting across his knees. Small focus charms carved from animal bone hung near the weapon sling to reduce recoil fatigue during sustained fire.

“Fantastic,” he muttered. “Drug addicts with night vision.”

“Try not to die dramatically,” Natasja replied while checking the leather-bound grimoires tucked into her belt pouch beside trauma wraps and mana vials.

“Depends how cinematic the moment feels.”

Euodia ignored them and unfolded a laminated terrain map against the dirt.

The hidden supply road narrowed through a low section of forest roughly eight hundred meters north of their current position. The terrain boxed inward there, thick trees, steep embankments, exposed roots large enough to overturn vehicles if drivers panicked.

A good place to die.

She pointed at the bend.

“We initiate here. Lead vehicle first. Funnel the rest into the kill zone.”

Gustaaf nodded once. “I’ll wire the road.”

“Ivo takes opposite ridge. Interlocking fire.”

“Copy.”

“Natasja establishes casualty point behind the rocks. Prioritize stabilization only. No mana waste unless necessary.”

Natasja glanced at her. “You expecting casualties?”

“Yes.”

No one spoke after that.

The team moved out in staggered formation through the woods. Boots sank into wet earth softened by winter rain and weeks of artillery vibration. Their ghillied witch hats swayed with the vegetation while talismans and charms quietly clicked against magazines and rifle stocks.

The MBR operated differently from conventional infantry. Smaller teams. Faster movement. Controlled spell discipline instead of overwhelming force. Most battlemages died young. Not from bullets. From overcasting.

Too much mana forced through the body too quickly could rupture blood vessels, fry nerves, or leave a mage hollowed out mentally long before the enemy ever reached them. The inexperienced treated magic like infinite ammunition.

Veterans learned restraint.

Or ended up buried beneath forests like these.

Forty minutes later they reached the road.

Burned civilian cars lined portions of the shoulder, skeletal frames half-swallowed by moss and climbing roots. One still contained luggage strapped to the roof beside children’s toys warped black from fire. Another had protective warding symbols painted desperately across the doors in faded white ash.

The wards had failed.

Nobody looked for long.

Gustaaf buried mana charges beneath mud and root systems near the rear approach while quietly reciting ignition phrases under his breath. Thin orange runes flickered briefly beneath the soil before disappearing completely.

Ivo climbed the opposing ridge to establish suppressive fire angles between the trees.

Natasja settled behind a cluster of rocks overlooking the center lane, opening one of her grimoires across her lap while softly rehearsing restoration incantations to keep the cadence fresh in memory.

Euodia positioned herself near a fallen pine overlooking the kill zone.

Then they waited. The kind of waiting soldiers eventually grow to hate because every minute lasts long enough for memory to creep in.

Euodia adjusted slightly against the wet ground. Her right hip hurt again. Cold weather always made it worse. Underneath her plate carrier hung two sets of dog tags. One belonged to her. The other belonged to Alekss.

December 11, 2026 Ilyrden Outskirts, Camp The sea swallowed you whole, brother, even if I thought I could level the waves. Perhaps it was my own doing, my own pride and ambition that buried you six feet underneath this cursed land. Tonight I hear your voice, or maybe it is my own, and the war has simply taken its toll on my mind. Whichever it is, it no longer matters. Faceless drones who wear gray banners push deeper into the city. We will purge them all, and I am thankful you will never see the monster that I've become.

The moon was up and didn't care what it was shining on. It lit the mud and the carcasses and the broken shrine wall at the camp's northern edge with the same indifferent silver it had used on everything else since before Myria existed as a name for anything. The rune-oak at the center of camp had a faint pulse to it, deep in the bark, the kind of bioluminescent mana bleed that happened when old growth sat too long above a ley line. At some point it had just become part of the furniture.

The breeze came in off the hills carrying pine and something underneath the pine that wasn't pine. Rot and corpses.

Ivo had the north position, RPK rested on a bipod he'd assembled from sticks and animal bone bound with leather cord, which should not have worked as well as it did. The sightline from the rocks gave him a clean angle on the approach road leading to Ilyrden's outer walls, a natural killzone that the terrain had arranged without anyone's help. He'd been up there for two hours. He had the particular stillness of someone who had made peace with being uncomfortable.

Closer to the fire, Gustaaf was working a loose thread on his witch hat with the focused irritation of a man who had run out of larger problems to solve. The hat was old, ghillied with strips of forest cloth and dried leaves, and the thread had been loose for approximately four days. He hadn't fixed it yet. He also hadn't stopped noticing it.

Natasja sat cross-legged with a small leather grimoire open across her knee, lips moving slightly as she worked through a restoration cadence. The pages near the back were annotated in her own handwriting, cramped and precise, the kind of marginalia that accumulated when someone used a book as an actual working document rather than a reference. A mana vial sat uncorked beside her boot, its soft blue luminescence mixing with the orange of the campfire.

Euodia was tending to her staff.

The bloodwood showed its age in the firelight, hairline fractures along the lower shaft where the grain had stressed under heavy casting, the red veins running through the dark wood dimmer in the sections around the cracks. It still worked. She'd checked. But the fractures were new since Bylica and she hadn't decided yet what they meant about how much she had left to spend before it became a problem. She wiped grime from the shaft with a cloth and the motion was careful.

Her hand trembled slightly. It did that. In firefights, in the quiet after, over supper. She didn't try to stop it anymore.

Inside Ilyrden, the fighting had pulled back to something approaching a lull. The gun bursts came in shorter intervals, and the heavier combat spells had gone quiet for the last hour, though the sky above the southeastern district still flickered occasionally where residual mana discharge drifted upward from whatever had happened there earlier. Spent magic didn't dissipate cleanly in urban environments. It caught in the architecture, pooled in basements, left cold spots in rooms where offensive spells had been cast too many times. The city was accumulating it the way cloth accumulated smoke.

"Our boys in the city," Ivo said, not turning from his sightline, "think they strung up every Velksan they find?"

"Probably." Natasja turned a page. "I'd string you up a tree. Imagine what I'd do to a Velksan."

Gustaaf let out a short, dry sound that was adjacent to a laugh. "I'd pay to see Ivo used for bait. Drugged-up super soldiers, they'd come running."

"Funny." Ivo adjusted his grip on the stock. "Real funny. We'll see who's laughing when you miss the way my gun talks. Last I checked I was the MVP on that convoy. Well." A pause. "Boss was the MVP. But the point stands."

Euodia looked up from the staff. She pushed the witch hat up with two fingers, the brim casting a crooked shadow across her eyes in the firelight.

"Team effort."

"See." Ivo pointed without looking away from the road. "Even Boss agrees."

Natasja rolled her eyes with the efficiency of someone who had done it many times at this specific person. Gustaaf picked up a small rock from beside his boot and threw it without particular ceremony. It landed directly on Ivo's hat. Ivo turned just long enough to present a finger, grinning, and then turned back to the road.

The rune-oak pulsed once, quietly, in the dark.

Euodia set the cloth down and looked at the staff for a moment longer than she needed to. Then she looked at the team, Ivo at the rocks, Gustaaf now finally addressing the loose thread with his knife, Natasja's lips still moving through the restoration cadence, and she pulled her gaze back to the fire.

"Rest up. Upper Warden's orders. We're providing fire support to the light brigade inside the city at first light." She let the fire pop once before she finished it. "Every block. Every corner. Every single Velksan."

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