Mother of Magic

Tower One

The water was several feet deep now. A quick perimeter check showed it was the same at every place along the Ward. It only varies with the ground level. Lower spots in the ground had higher water lines on the Ward. The ground level varied enough there were some locations with no water line yet. That would soon change.

Le looked at his watch. "She should be started now."

Stephanie knew who 'she' was and gave a silent confirmation.

Ava was started. All along the southern perimeter of the Ward, she was flying along and stopping at intervals. Reaching through the now inner Ward with a magically insulated hand and arm, she would issue a spell to punch a hole in the outer Ward. It was as Ava suspected about the outer Ward. Not constructed by aligned Witches. Not built by a Witch of her access to power. The blasts easily penetrated the out Ward, and did so in a way that would not 'heal'. The land remembered right up until Ava told it not to.

It was difficult to calibrate the size of the breech. Ava wanted them to be large enough to leak the water out at about the rate it was flowing in. She did not want the Witches to know she was doing this immediately. Ava wanted there to be a line of damage first. It was not even an educated guess because Ava had never had to do anything like this. At best, she could punch a hole, and then wait a few moments to see if it obviously changed the water level of the newly forming moat.

That set the pattern. Hole. Wait. Watch the water line. Move on down the Ward a random distance. Punch a new hole farther along. Be annoying but not immediately annoying. Make them take time to find all her damage. Ava tried not to be regular about how far along the next hole was, or how far up the Ward it was. Some were down low. Some higher. Some bigger than others. Some of the breeches were designed to be purely irritating: The diameter of a finger. Hidden away by terrain. A few were up higher than the current water line so that once the lower holes were repaired they would not become visible until the water rose a bit. Some were thin slashes or fine mesh screens in the Ward wall. Designed to leak rather than spray.

Ava assumed the outer Ward was made in sections. That she was damaging different Witch's work as she went along the perimeter. This did not mean that the same witch had to pair it. It did mean the attacking forces would have to dispatch someone to repair a breach by adding yet another Ward. Overlaying and interlacing the repair into the external Ward structure. Eventually, the Witches would realize they needed to build something a single Witch of Ava's capability could not so easily puncture. That would take time and require aligned pairs to work in the weather. Maintain weather Wards, and needing to fly and repair Ava's damage.

The damage had to look bad enough to be a real response to the flooding problem. Not be obvious what it really was.

What it really was is a distraction. By flying along an arc at the south and curving around to the East Ava was pulling their attention away from the real planned exit. Keep racing along the Ward and annoying the living hell out of the Witches. For the scare tactic to work, the water had to rise. For the water to rise, there had to be a maintenance crew.

"They could magically fill the space between the two Wards. Water. Lava. Whatever they wanted. They don't need all the drama. The slow fill by thunderstorms. This is a long game about water torture and a slow build-up. Instant pressure is not as effective as a slowly increasing amount. Creating a feeling like nature itself is aligned against them. This is about trying to get the people of Collins to turn on me." Ava said.

"This is a mind fuck." Stephanie concluded.

"Exactly, my dear. Exactly."

Ava did not assume the guarding Witches would be stupid enough to leave the cabins and mountain portions of the Ward unguarded. Being up the mountain, they would have no water accumulation. Their physical isolation from Collins made them too obvious an escape. "They'll be watching up there like hawks. Waiting." Ava had asserted when they were making this plan.