"You will not escape," Eredin's voice rolled out across the widening gap between the two vessels.
"We'll see about that." Ciri braced hard against the rail as their ship surged forward, flame still boiling the water in their wake, spray stinging her face. "This thing's fast... and in case you hadn't noticed, it flies too."
"Don't pay them any mind," Seb said without looking up, one hand still buried in the churning water, fire pouring from his palms in a steady, roaring stream. "That's exactly what he wants from you right now, fear. Don't give it to him."
Geralt kept low against the rail, eyes tracking the vast bone hull descending toward them. "Who would've thought," he said, mostly to himself, "that some of the old folk-tale horrors actually turned out to be real, and hunting us across a sky that isn't even ours."
"It's still just a ship," Seb said, teeth gritted with effort. "Their magic's strong, no arguing that but strong isn't the same as invincible. Problem is, out here on open water, neither are we. One good hit from that thing and we're swimming, assuming we're lucky enough to still be conscious for it." His eyes flicked toward the dark tree line rapidly growing closer off the bow. "We need to reach shore. Fast, before they close the gap fully."
He straightened from his crouch, letting the fire around his hands gather and condense, climbing higher up his forearms. "Here's what we do. I go hit their ship directly and draw their whole attention onto me, buy you two the time to reach those trees. The forest's thick enough that a ship that size can't follow in past the canopy. They'll have to land and come at us on foot. And on the ground, I promise you, the field levels out fast."
Ciri's hand shot out, fingers closing tight around his forearm before he could push off. "Be careful. I mean it, Seb."
Something in his expression softened, just for a moment, before the hard resolve settled back over it. "Always am," he said, which was, by any honest measure, a lie, and both of them seemed to know it but she let him go anyway, and he was airborne a moment later, flame roaring beneath him as he shot up and across the widening stretch of dark water toward the Naglfar in a blazing, comet-bright arc.
Aboard the bone-hulled ship, the assembled Wild Hunt turned as one to track his approach, and Caranthir's staff snapped up first, carving a swift, precise sigil through the frozen air. A shimmering dome of frost-blue light bloomed outward, sealing the entire vessel beneath it a heartbeat before Seb reached striking distance.
"What a curious creature," Eredin said, watching the burning man close the distance with open fascination, as though observing some rare and interesting specimen rather than an enemy bearing down on him.
Seb didn't slow, he drew back one fist, and flame condensed around it, thickening, brightening, until it burned nearly white and drove it forward into the barrier with incredible force.
The impact tore the night open in a column of blinding fire and shattering frost, a detonation loud enough to rattle windows in the distant city, bright enough to be seen from the palace itself. The shockwave rolled outward across the water in a visible ring, churning the sea into white froth, catching the smaller ship's sails and hurling it forward even faster toward the shore Geralt swearing under his breath as he fought to keep the sail steady against the sudden gust, Ciri grabbing the rail with both hands to keep her feet.
The barrier held. Cracked, spiderwebbing with hairline fractures of frost-light, but it held.
"Caranthir," Seb growled, hovering just off the ship's flank, fire guttering and reigniting steadily around both fists, sweat already beading despite the cold night air. "You're first. Before anyone else gets a turn."
Eredin stepped forward to the prow, regarding Seb with something closer to genuine curiosity than any real alarm. "Human. You waste extraordinary talent in that pitiful, world of yours. Have you ever considered.."
"No thanks." Seb cut him off flatly, and slammed a second flaming fist into the weakening barrier, baring his teeth in something too fierce to be called a grin. "It'll break. Sooner or later, it'll break, and then we'll talk."
Caranthir answered with a vicious sweep of his staff, bolt after bolt of crackling frost lancing out in rapid succession, and Seb wove and dodged between them, weightless in the open air, fire trailing every sharp turn until a volley loosed from the Red Riders found the gap in his guard, one arrow burying itself deep into his shoulder with a wet, ugly impact that tore a sharp hiss from his throat.
He wrenched it free mid-air, blood beading dark along the silver, rune-etched shaft, and studied it for half a breath even as pain lanced hot down his arm. "Same make as the ones I found in that buried elven ruin in Redania," he said, tossing it aside into the dark water below. He glanced past the Naglfar's bow toward the shore, and something in him eased slightly at the sight of the smaller ship already running itself aground in the shallows. "Good. They made it."
He didn't linger to trade another blow. Flame flared bright beneath him, and he peeled away from the Naglfar, streaking down toward the beach and landing hard behind the others in a spray of sand and embers, already breaking into a dead run. Behind them, the great bone ship settled onto the shoreline with a groan like breaking glaciers, ramps lowering, Red Riders pouring down onto the sand, Caranthir and Eredin descending at their head.
Eredin watched them vanish into the tree line and laughed, genuinely delighted and utterly untroubled. "Fools," he said, to no one in particular. "They haven't the faintest idea, do they."
Deeper in the forest, Ciri and Geralt's sprint came to a sudden, skidding halt as the trees ahead of them filled with waiting shapes, dozens of Red Riders on foot, royal soldiers with bows already drawn, the entire clearing encircled before either of them had so much as caught their breath.
"Should have expected this," Geralt bit out, blade already rising, putting himself half a step in front of Ciri without conscious thought. "They were already here on the top of the ones behind us... they know this ground.. We're the ones stumbling blind through it."
"Then we go through them," Ciri said, sword drawn.
"Duck!"
Neither of them hesitated. Both dropped low, and Seb sailed over their heads a heartbeat later, twin spears of condensed flame trailing from each outstretched hands as he crashed down into the massed soldiers ahead. The impact erupted into a rolling wall of wildfire that tore through the clearing in every direction at once, consuming Red Riders and royal guard alike in a single, devastating wave of heat and light, screams cut short almost before they could begin.
Ciri stayed frozen where she'd dropped, staring, breath caught hard in her throat as the flames finally began to settle into smoldering ruin and understood, all at once, with certainty, that everything she'd watched him do in the past years, every fire, every burning blade, had still been him holding back.. deliberately. This, here, was the first time she'd actually seen him stop.
Then her eyes caught the dark, spreading stain across his shoulder, and every other thought scattered. "You're hurt!" She was at his side before she'd finished the word, fingers hovering uselessly over the wound, not quite daring to touch it. "This is from their magic, isn't it.. how bad, let me see."
"I'm fine," Seb said, though the tightness threading through his voice argued otherwise. "We don't have time for this right now, we should keep moving."
"Seb.."
"Ciri." He caught her hand, gentler than his tone suggested, and met her eyes squarely. "I promise, I'll let you fuss over it the second we're somewhere safe. Right now we've got bigger problems." He glanced back the way they'd come, jaw hardening. "Eredin's still behind us, with more of them. They've got horses, we don't. Only way we walk away from this is if we kill every last one of them before they catch up to us or you find a way to get us out of here entirely."
"I understand," Ciri said, forcing her breathing to slow, forcing the fear back down into something she could use rather than something that used her. "I'll try."
"I know you can do it. Here's what happens now, I hold them off here and try to put an end to Eredin and his navigator both while I've got the chance. You focus. Find the way out. I don't know how it'll come to you, but it will."
She said nothing more, only closed her eyes, already reaching inward for whatever answer waited coiled beneath her ribs.
Geralt moved to stand at her shoulder, sword raised, eyes fixed on the tree line. "I'll keep her safe. You certain you don't want the extra blade at your back?"
Seb's mouth curved, tired but entirely genuine. "No, but I'll owe you for it. Figure out some kind of payment later." Geralt huffed out something close to a real laugh despite everything, and Seb was already turning, already moving back toward the rising sound of skeletal hooves and the low, hollow baying of frost hounds closing fast through the dark trees.
He planted his feet in the scorched earth, and fire roared up around him in a wall that kept climbing, kept spreading, higher and wider with every moment that passed.
"Come on, then," he said, eyes narrowing on the darkness ahead. "Let's see how the lot of you take to a real taste of fire."
/-\
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