Ciri burst through the palace's inner halls at a dead sprint, sword drawn, eyes sweeping every shadowed alcove for threats that never quite materialized fast enough to explain the devastation around her. The first body she came upon made her stumble to a halt, a Red Rider, or what remained of one, his frosted armor fused so completely into the ruin of his own flesh that she couldn't tell where steel ended and skin had once begun.
"What the.." She crouched briefly beside him, throat tightening, before forcing herself back up and onward.
More bodies followed as she ran, scattered through the corridors in the same terrible condition, and everywhere she looked now she saw it scorch marks blackening pale stone walls, tapestries burned to ash and drifting embers, entire archways charred and smoking as though something had passed through them like a living storm. Her breath caught hard in her chest.
"No," she whispered, disbelief and something close to hope warring behind her eyes. "It can't be.."
She kept running, following the trail of destruction deeper into the palace, until it led her straight through the ruined doors of the throne room. The great hall lay in shambles, its throne cracked clean through, the walls scorched black in a wide, radiating ring, Red Riders scattered unmoving across the shattered floor. And there, propped against a smoking pillar near the far wall, Ge'els sat slumped and bleeding, one hand pressed weakly to a wound in his side, his pale eyes lifting slowly to find her standing in the doorway.
"You," he rasped.
Ciri didn't hesitate, she crossed the ruined hall in a handful of strides, and her blade came around in one clean, merciless arc, and Ge'els's head struck the stone floor before his final breath had even finished leaving him.
She didn't linger over it. She turned and ran on, following the scorched trail further still, past collapsed doorways, her heart hammering harder with every step until, at last, she rounded a final corner into a long, silver-columned gallery, and everything in her simply stopped.
He stood with his back to her, sword still wreathed in flame in his hand, fire licking faintly along his shoulders and arms as though his very body had forgotten, for the moment, how to be anything but burning... he was scanning the corridor ahead, alert, searching, entirely unaware of her standing frozen behind him.
Ciri's sword slipped from her fingers and struck the floor with a ringing clatter she barely heard over the roar of her own pulse. Her eyes filled without her permission, her voice barely more than a broken whisper.
"Seb..."
He went rigid at the sound of it, every line of him going taut, and then he turned and the moment his eyes found her, the flame along his sword guttered and died all at once, the fire fading from his skin. He stared at her for one long, disbelieving moment, as though afraid that looking too hard might make her vanish.
"Ciri," he breathed, and then he was moving, sheathing his blade in one move and closing the distance between them in three long strides.
She met him halfway, and when his arms closed around her, she felt something inside her chest that had been wound impossibly tight for a long time finally, finally break not into pieces, but into something soft and overwhelming and entirely too much to hold back any longer. He pulled her against him, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other pressed flat and trembling between her shoulder blades, as though he needed to feel her breathing to believe it.
"Did anyone hurt you?!" he said, pulling back just far enough to search her face, his eyes moving over every inch of it with a fierce, desperate thoroughness, his hands framing her jaw with a gentleness that stood in stark contrast to the burning ruin he'd left in his wake to reach her. "Anyone. Tell me! I swear to every god still listening, if any of these cunts so much as.."
"No," Ciri said, tears finally spilling freely down her face, her hands fisting in the front of his armor as though letting go might undo the last few seconds entirely. "They haven't. Not yet."
And then there was no more room left for words at all. He kissed her, fierce and desperate and unguarded, every ounce of fear and fury and longing he'd carried across an entire world now poured into it, and she answered with the same reckless intensity, her fingers sliding up into his hair, pulling him closer as though the distance between them could still somehow be closed further. It was not a gentle kiss. It was relief and terror and long days of not knowing, crashing together all at once, his hands sliding down to press flat against the small of her back, hers gripping tight at his shoulders as if to anchor herself. When they finally broke apart, both breathless, foreheads pressed together, Seb let out a short, unsteady laugh, his thumb brushing gently across her cheek to catch a last falling tear.
"I'm here," he said.
Ciri wiped the last traces of tears from her cheeks, and something bright and fierce broke through the wetness in her eyes, the ghost of the old, familiar spark Seb hadn't realized just how much he'd missed until this very moment. "Let's get the hell out of this place, shall we."
"Of course." Seb bent to retrieve her fallen sword, pressing the hilt back into her hand before drawing his own blade, and together they broke into a run down the scorched gallery, blades drawn, footsteps falling in practiced rhythm beside one another.
"How did you find me?" Ciri asked between breaths, eyes still darting to every shadow they passed.
"Got here with Geralt," Seb said. "Ermion helped us cross over.. long story, we'll tell you the whole thing once we're home." He glanced sidelong at her.
"I see." Ciri's brow furrowed as they rounded another corner, and she cast a quick look back over her shoulder. "Where's Geralt?"
"Somewhere in here too, we got separated." Seb's grip tightened briefly around his hilt. "You shouldn't worry about him, though. The White Wolf's a legend for a reason."
Seb slowed to a sudden stop mid-stride, one arm sweeping out instinctively to bring Ciri up short beside him as a figure stepped into the corridor ahead, silver hair, staff in hand, blocking their path entirely.
"Avallac'h!" Ciri's voice cracked with fury.
"There you are," Seb said, low and cold.
"I commend you," Avallac'h said, his gaze settling on Seb with genuine respect, "for managing to come this far, Witcher. Truly. None of your kind could have."
"Get out of our way," Ciri said, sword rising. "I'm leaving and you won't stop me."
Avallac'h's staff lifted, magic gathering bright and steady. "Forgive me, Zireael. I cannot allow that."
"You bastard! Even now you.." Ciri surged forward, but Seb's arm caught her before she could take more than a single step, holding her firmly back behind him.
"People like him," he said quietly, eyes never leaving Avallac'h, "won't be a match for you eventually. But for now, let me protect you for a bit longer."
Ciri looked at him a long moment and then, slowly, she nodded, stepping back behind him.
Seb raised his sword, fire beginning to crawl up the blade once more, curling slow and steady around his shoulders as his eyes fixed on the elf before him. "Elven sage. I've heard quite a lot about you.. I've been through a great deal to get here. I'm tired. I'm angry. And every one of your kind I've cut down tonight hasn't done a damn thing to satisfy that anger... if anything, it's only worn me down further." Flame gathered thicker around him, his eyes hard and unblinking. "But killing the one who kidnapped her, who made her a prisoner in his own world.. I think that might finally do it."
Avallac'h's expression did not waver, though something old and weary settled behind his eyes as he lowered his staff into a ready stance. "So be it."
.
.
.
Eredin's blade came in low and fast, and Geralt met it, steel ringing against steel in a shower of sparks and then the general simply wasn't there, vanishing in a shimmer of blue-white light and reappearing a full step to Geralt's right, sword already swinging for the gap in his guard. Geralt threw himself sideways, silver blade coming up just in time to deflect the blow, the force of it numbing his arm to the elbow.
"Fine work, Witcher," Eredin said, circling him. "Few men, human or otherwise, have made me work quite this hard for a kill." He blinked away again, and this time struck from directly behind, and only Geralt's honed instincts let him spin and parry in time, steel screaming against steel a hand's width from his throat.
"The girl will never leave this palace, Witcher," Eredin said, pressing the advantage, driving Geralt back a step with sheer relentless force. "You will fail the task you came here for."
"Might," Geralt said through gritted teeth, twisting free of the lock and putting distance between them with a sharp Aard that Eredin blocked with ease. "But the other one won't. And you already know that, don't you."
Something in Eredin's stance shifted, and behind the helm his laughter rang out low and genuinely amused. "Ah. The fire demon you brought with you." He tilted his head, considering. "Tell me, did your lot stumble onto some manner of unusual mutation to create such a monster? No matter." He raised his blade again, settling back into a ready stance. "We'll kill him as well, and learn the answer for ourselves soon enough."
/-\
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