The soldiers broke from behind the mage's barrier first, a dozen of them surging forward across the bridge with blades drawn, boots striking stone in that same eerie, silent unison the Wild Hunt riders had shown before them. The mage remained where he stood, staff planted, the wall of light humming stead, watching with the detached patience of a man confident his men would not need his help.
Seb watched them come, and for the first time in longer than he could easily remember, he reached up and slid his sword back into its sheath.
The soldiers faltered, confusion flickering across their disciplined ranks at the sight of a man sheathing his weapon in the face of a dozen drawn blades and then Seb spoke, his voice carrying easy and calm over the crackle of the dying plaza fires behind him.
"I'm not even going to hold back my power."
He rolled his shoulders once, and flame began to pour off him in earnest, a heat that seemed to rise up out of the very core of him and spill outward until his whole body was wreathed in living flame, his eyes kindling bright.
"I have no reason to restrain myself here," he said, and his voice had gone low, that made even the disciplined elven soldiers hesitate half a step. "Not against the likes of you."
"Sorcery," one soldier breathed, backing a pace despite himself, "but why is it so strange..."
"Never seen someone wield fire like this," another said, disbelief plain even through his war-mask calm, "What is this.."
The mage's eyes narrowed sharply from behind his shimmering wall, staff gripped tighter.
Then Seb moved, and the soldiers had no more time for words.
He drove forward and swung one arm in a wide arc, and a fist of solid flame, vast and larger than any man's reach should ever have allowed tore through the air and scattered the first line of soldiers like leaves before a gale, sending armored bodies tumbling across the bridge's stone in bursts of fire and smoke. The rest scrambled to close the distance before he could gather himself again, but Seb was already moving through them, fire trailing every motion, fists and open palms unleashing gouts of flame that turned each strike into something closer to a small, contained detonation. Blades that found their mark met only flame that gave no purchase, no resistance, armor glowing and buckling wherever his burning hands so much as brushed it.
Behind his barrier, the mage began to chant in earnest now, sweat beading along his brow despite his composure, funneling more and more of his own strength into the wall as wave after wave of heat rolled against it, the shimmering light straining, flickering and holding, but only just.
"Impossible," the mage saidd through gritted teeth, watching his barrier ripple under the sheer, relentless pressure of Seb's fire. "No human channels power of this magnitude.. "
The last of the soldiers fell, and Seb straightened amid the smoking ruin of the bridge's near end, breathing slow and even, flame still licking hungrily along every inch of him. He lifted one hand, and above his palm, fire began to gather not scattering outward this time it was condensing, folding in on itself again and again until it took shape as a single, roiling sphere of flame, growing steadily larger with every passing second, until it hung suspended above his upturned palm like a captured giant star, vast enough that its light alone cast long, flickering shadows across the entire city.
The mage's chant broke off entirely. He stared up at the swelling giant orb of fire, and for the first time that night, something like true fear crossed his composed features. "That is not possible," he whispered, staff trembling now in his grip as he poured everything he had left into the failing barrier. "That is not.."
Far off, atop the high palace balcony, Ge'els's breath caught in his throat as the light of the gathering flame washed pale gold across the distant rooftops, and even Caranthir, ever composed, found himself briefly, genuinely still, watching the impossible bloom of firelight swell larger and larger above the bridge. Ge'els left the balcony in a hurry, then Caranthir took one final glance before he too followed suit and left, staff glowing in hand.
Seb drew the orb back with one hand, feeling its terrible weight and then, with a single, smooth motion, he hurled it forward.
The mage had time only to fling both arms up before his barrier and his own body alike, a final, useless ward of light flaring weak and desperate around him, and then the world became fire.
The orb struck the barrier and did not merely break it it consumed it, the ward flashing once, brilliant and blinding, before it simply ceased to exist, and the flame surged onward without pause, swallowing the mage entirely before his scream had even fully left his throat, his body gone to ash and cinder before the sound could finish echoing off the palace walls. The bridge itself groaned beneath the impact, stone cracking, shattering, whole sections crumbling away into the river below as the blast rolled outward in a wave of heat that scorched the night sky orange for one long, terrible moment.
Seb stood at the epicenter of it, watching the destruction settle, the roar of collapsing stone and dying flame fading slowly into a low, crackling hush.
"Maybe that was a bit too much," he admitted, to no one but himself, glancing at the smoking ruin where the bridge's near half had simply ceased to be.
He didn't linger on it. Flame gathered once more beneath his boots, and he launched himself forward across the widening gap, over the collapsing wreckage of stone and the churning water below, landing hard on the palace side just as the last of the bridge behind him gave way entirely, crashing down into the river in a final, thunderous roar of falling stone and hissing steam.
Seb rose from his crouch, fire still curling faintly along his shoulders, and looked up at the vast palace rising before him, its spires catching the glow of the fires he'd left burning in his wake.
"If anyone was blind to my flames," he said, drawing his sword once more, the blade igniting anew in his grip, "they'll certainly hear that." His eyes hardened, fixed on the palace doors ahead. "Now everyone knows someone's coming for them. And I want them to know exactly where I am."
And with that, he broke into a run, sword burning bright in his hand, straight toward the heart of the palace.
The Red Riders came at Seb the moment he crossed the threshold into the palace's outer ward, a full detachment of them pouring from a side hall in perfect, silent formation, their black armor rimed with a frost that never seemed to melt even in the warm night air, curved blades already drawn and gleaming.
Seb didn't slow.
The first rider swung low, aiming to take his legs out from under him, but Seb's burning blade met the strike and simply carried through it, the frosted steel screaming as it buckled and warped against the heat, the rider's own gauntlet fusing molten to the ruined hilt a heartbeat before Seb's follow-through opened him from shoulder to hip, armor and flesh alike parting beneath the flame-wreathed edge with a hiss of superheated steam. The rider didn't even have time to scream.
He didn't stop moving. A second rider came at his flank, blade raised for a killing thrust, and Seb turned into it rather than away, catching the strike on his forearm where lesser men would have lost the limb, his skin simply blazed brighter, and the blade melted uselessly against him before he drove his own sword up and through the rider's gorget, twisting free in the same motion to meet a third attacker already closing from behind.
There was nothing elegant in what followed, where he had fought the earlier riders and the mage's soldiers with something at least resembling restraint, here, now, so close to whatever waited deeper within these halls, Seb fought like a man who had stopped counting the cost of mercy. Frosted armor blackened and ran like wax wherever his blade or his bare hands made contact, the Wild Hunt's fabled resilience meaning nothing at all against heat hot enough to render steel and flesh down together into the same ruined mass, a fire that survived the white frost itself. He cut through them without pause, without hesitation, leaving behind him a hallway lit orange with dying flame and littered with what remained of Eredin's finest.
When the last of them fell, Seb didn't linger to catch his breath. He simply kept walking, deeper into the palace, sword still burning, eyes fixed straight ahead.
.
.
.
Deeper still, in a quieter corridor untouched yet by fire or alarm, Geralt moved low and silent between columns of pale stone, senses straining for any trace of Ciri, a scent, a sound, anything.. when a voice, smooth and unhurried, stopped him cold.
"Vatt'ghern." Caranthir stepped from the shadow of an archway ahead, robes settling around him with unbothered grace, staff resting easy in one hand. "I believe this is the first time you and I have met."
Geralt's blade was already clear of its scabbard. "You are.."
"It hardly matters," Caranthir said, cutting him off with the faint, dismissive courtesy. "I've little interest in introducing myself properly to a dead man." His eyes flicked over Geralt. "You're here for the girl, I take it. I'm afraid we cannot allow her to leave. Not yet at least."
He rolled his staff once between his fingers, and the runes etched along its length kindled brighter, pale light gathering at its crown.
"I wasn't planning on asking nicely anyway," Geralt said, and lunged.
Caranthir met him without flinching, staff sweeping up to catch the silver blade in a shower of sparks, and the corridor erupted in steel against sorcery, the elf's movements fluid and precise, each ward and counter-strike spoke of his mastery, while Geralt answered with the hard-won, brutal skill of a man who had survived worse odds through sheer, stubborn refusal to die.
Far above, in the chamber where Ciri had been left under careful watch, Avallac'h burst through the door with none of his usual composure, breathing hard, his pale eyes wide with alarm.
"We must leave. Now." He crossed the room in swift strides, already reaching for her arm. "Come with me, quickly, there is no time to.."
"What is going on." Ciri pulled back from his grasp, planting her feet, refusing to be moved an inch further without answers. "I hear fighting. Shouting. Something outside the palace was just destroyed, I felt it, Avallac'h, I'm no fool, so speak."
Avallac'h's jaw tightened, his eyes darting toward the door, toward the distant sound of chaos still unfolding somewhere below. "It is not your concern," he said, low and tense. "My task is to see you kept safe. Nothing more."
"Bullshit." The word cracked through the chamber, and Ciri's green eyes blazed with a fury that had been building for two long, suffocating days of half-truths and careful evasions. "You'd better start talking, Avallac'h. Right now. What is really going on."
/-\
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