—Goodbye, Braenn —Geralt said, turning to the young dryad—. Take care of yourself, and good health. And one more thing…
—Yes, Gwynbleidd?
Braenn raised her head, and in her blue eyes something moist glistened.
—It's easy to kill with a bow, girl. Very easy to release the string and think: it wasn't me, it was the arrow. In my hands there is no blood from that boy. The arrow killed him, not me. But the arrow dreams nothing at night. I hope you too dream nothing at night, blue-eyed dryad. Goodbye, Braenn.
—Mona…
Braenn's voice was almost unintelligible. The goblet she held with both hands trembled, and the liquid that filled it to the brim rippled in small waves.
—What?
—Mona! —she gasped—. My name is Mona! Lady Eithné! I…
—Enough! —Eithné's voice fell like a blade—. Enough. Control yourself, Braenn.
Geralt gave a dry smile.
—There you have your destiny, Lady of the Forest. I respect your resilience and your struggle. But I know that soon you will fight alone. Despite everything, I wish you luck, Eithné. Goodbye.
—Geralt…
Ciri's voice was barely a whisper. She remained seated, motionless, her head bowed and her fists clenched on her knees.
—Don't leave me… alone…
—White Wolf —Eithné said, embracing the girl's hunched back—. Did you have to wait for her to ask you not to leave her? To stay with her until the end? Why do you want to leave now? Leave her alone? What are you running from, Gwynbleidd? From whom?
Ciri lowered her head even further. But she did not break into tears.
—Until the end.
The witcher sighed deeply and nodded toward the girl.
—Alright, Ciri. You will not be alone. I will stay with you. Do not be afraid.
Eithné took the goblet from Braenn's trembling hands and raised it.
—Can you read the Elder Runes, White Wolf?
—Yes.
—Read what is engraved on the goblet. It is a goblet from Craag An. Kings whom no one remembers drank from it.
Geralt brought his gaze closer to the burnished silver and read aloud the runes that sparkled under the lamplight.
—Duettaeánn aef cirrán Cáerme Gláeddyv. Yn á esseath.
—Do you know what it means?
—The sword of destiny has two edges. One is you.
—Rise, Child of the Elder Blood.
The dryad's voice resonated with steely authority.
—Drink. This is the Water of Brokilon.
Geralt pressed his lips together. His amber eyes fixed on Eithné's silver ones, without blinking. He did not look at Ciri, who was slowly bringing her lips to the edge of the goblet.
He had seen this process before: the convulsions, the tremors, and those terrifying screams that gradually faded, giving way to the emptiness, the clumsiness, and the apathy of eyes that opened recognizing nothing.
Ciri drank with an unnatural rigidity, like a puppet moved by invisible strings. Her movements lacked hesitation and will; she raised the goblet and swallowed obediently, as if a strange force had taken control of her body and guided her to drink.
Braenn's impassive face was streaked with bright tears that ran down her cheeks painted with green stripes.
Ciri's eyes suddenly rolled back. The goblet slipped from her fingers and rolled across the mat with a muffled sound. Her body tensed, her back arched, and her pupils completely disappeared, swallowed by a milky white that invaded everything. Her gaze, once full of green sparks, blurred until it was nothing more than a pale, empty smudge.
Darkness fell upon her without warning.
She did not feel the ground beneath her knees nor the weight of her own body. The world dissolved like a reflection in a pond struck by a stone, fragmenting into countless shreds of light and shadow. For an instant, there was no up or down, no time, no sound… only an unbearable sensation of being dragged through something immense and unknown.
Then, the vision took shape.
Before her eyes stretched a chaotic dimension, a place that seemed to exist beyond all logic. Where an inconceivable battle must have once erupted, now only the remains of an impossible devastation remained. Lightning still tore through the darkness with absolute indifference, while nebulae of impossible colors continued their slow dance, oblivious to the destruction.
Ciri did not know where she was. She could only contemplate that scene, unable to distinguish whether it was a memory, a dream, or something more.
The chaotic dimension, previously illuminated by the flashes of hundreds of thousands of spells, war cries, and explosions of power, was now a floating cemetery.
Nicol Bolas stood at the center of the dimension, but he was no longer the imposing, unbeatable figure from the beginning. His state was terrible. One of his colossal wings hung broken, splintered bones protruding through tears of leather and membrane. He was missing an entire arm, torn clean off, and from the stump oozed thick black blood that floated in the void, forming dark globules. In his stomach, a hole the size of a carriage gaped open, its edges scorched and smoking, revealing viscera that pulsed weakly.
But the dragon smiled, revealing a fierce, triumphant grimace that widened his jaws and made his pale green eyes gleam with a mad light.
Beneath his feet, the magical matrix he had woven over countless eons overflowed with crimson power. It was a network of lines and concentric circles spanning hundreds of meters, carved directly into the fabric of the dimension. Its light pulsed like a heart, and within it, spinning slowly like insects trapped in amber, swirled the remains of the fallen planeswalkers. Of the hundreds of thousands who had begun the battle, no one remained. Their bodies, their souls, their sparks… everything had been absorbed by the matrix.
All but five figures.
Ugin and Amaterasu still stood, though it could barely be called standing. The blue dragon's scales were cracked in dozens of places, his translucent wings were perforated, and one of his eyes had closed beneath a crust of dried blood. Amaterasu, in her nine-tailed fox form, breathed with difficulty; three of her tails hung limp and broken, and the white fur that had once shone like freshly fallen snow was now scorched and stained red.
Beside them, three other intermediate rank-ten figures held on with great difficulty. An elven woman whose left arm ended in a charred stump. A man wrapped in crystal armor that was now shattered, revealing burned skin beneath. And a creature of shadows and tentacles that had lost half of its body mass.
They all looked at Nicol Bolas with the same thought: even with all their combined power, with the strength of existences at the peak of rank ten, they had not been able to defeat that entity. Because Nicol Bolas had already taken half a step into the rank they all dreamed of: rank eleven.
Ugin was the first to move. Gathering every fiber of power he had left, the blue dragon opened his jaws and roared.
From the void around him, chains of translucent blue shot toward Nicol Bolas like hungry serpents. They coiled around his torso, his intact wing, his neck, his legs. The green dragon growled as he felt the bindings tighten, immobilizing him.
—Now! —Ugin roared.
The three intermediate rank-ten figures roared as well, channeling all their remaining power. The elven woman raised her healthy arm and traced a circle in the air; the man in broken armor pressed his palms together and recited a prayer in a strange tongue; the shadow creature extended its tentacles and merged them into a single beam of pure darkness. From their combined efforts, new chains were born—these of a blinding gold—that joined the blue ones. They tightened with a crack that echoed through the entire dimension, forcing Nicol Bolas to arch his back and let out a roar of frustration.
But the golden chains trembled, unable to hold for long.
Ugin turned his head toward Amaterasu. The nine-tailed fox was the only one who had not yet launched an attack.
—Amaterasu, now! Attack!
Ugin's mind receded a few moments in time.
—Ugin, there aren't many of us left. Make sure to hold him for an instant. One instant will be enough. I'm going to give everything in the next attack.
—Don't tell me you… —Ugin looked at her with disbelief, and sadness surfaced in his blue eyes. But he said nothing more. He saw her golden eyes, which had witnessed the birth and death of entire universes, and understood that there was no turning back.