Ermion used his staff and drew a slow circle in the air, murmuring words that seemed to bend the very candlelight around them. A seam of pale, shivering light split the space before them, wide enough to step through.
"Through here," Ermion said, already stepping toward it without waiting for questions. "Quickly now."
Seb went after him, and the world dissolved into a rush of cold and green and the smell of wet earth and then, just as suddenly, solid ground was beneath his boots again, and he stumbled forward into open air and pine-scented wind. Behind him, Geralt came through with rather less grace, boots hitting the moss hard, one hand braced against a tree trunk as the portal sealed itself shut behind him with a snap.
Geralt straightened, shook his head once like a dog shedding water, and grunted low in his throat. "I hate portals." He rolled his shoulder, grimacing, as though the crossing had left something crawling beneath his skin. "Never once made my stomach agree with the rest of me."
"All these years and you still can't get used to them," Ermion said mildly, already moving ahead through the trees, staff tapping the ground.
"I've been through a dozen of them and I haven't yet, never knew why." Geralt said, but he fell into step regardless, and Seb, still blinking the strange light from his eyes, followed after.
The forest thickened as they went deeper, the pines growing taller and closer together until the sky above was reduced to a scatter of grey light through the branches. Seb had traveled through enough wilds to know when a place felt old, this was such a place.
Ermion led them without further, until the trees opened onto a clearing dominated by a single, colossal oak. Its trunk was wider than four men standing shoulder to shoulder, its bark deeply grooved and dark, and from its lowest boughs hung offerings, carved bone talismans, strips of woven cloth, small clay figures worn smooth by rain and years. Around its roots, a dozen druids in undyed robes stood waiting, some with staves, some with nothing but their bare hands folded before them, all utterly still.
"Gedyneith," Ermion said quietly, laying a reverent hand against the oak's bark. "The heart-tree. Every soul born under the Skellige banner is brought here once in their life, whether they know it or not." He turned, and for the first time since Seb had met him, the old druid's eyes carried something like solemn pride. "This is the best place to do the ritual."
Seb let out a low breath, taking it all in, the druids, the tree, the artifact bundled carefully in Ermion's satchel. "You really were preparing, seeing that they are here gathered." he said.
"Yes," Ermion said simply. "For this is a great matter, we know what manner of power Ciri wields. If it falls into the wrong hands.." He did not finish the thought.
"It won't happen. Not while I'm breathing, the moment you open that portal, I go through. I'll be the one to bring her back. I promise you that." Seb said.
"Seb." Geralt's voice was low. "You can't go in there alone. We don't know their world, we don't know what they're capable of. That elven sage was strong enough to overpower me and Ciri. There could be more like him waiting on the other side." He paused, and something flickered behind his golden eyes, it was not doubt in Seb's courage, but something closer to fear for him. "And you're weak against magic. You know that better than anyone."
Seb's head turned sharply. "Did you have to say that in front of him?"
"He already knows," Geralt said. "Has known for a long time."
The silence that followed was its own kind of blow. Seb looked between them, Geralt, unflinching as ever, and Ermion, who met his gaze without apology. "You told him," Seb said slowly, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. "About my powers. I know he's a good man, Geralt, a man I'd probably trust with my life if it came to it, but that doesn't change the fact that you went behind my back."
Ermion raised a hand, determined to set a crooked thing straight before it could fester. "I understand your anger, child, and you've every right to it. But Geralt came to me with good intentions, however clumsily carried out. He feared.. still fears, I imagine that whatever runs through your veins might be something dangerous in the long turning of things, precisely because its source is not magic as we understand it. He wanted to know what he was dealing with before it dealt with you first, and this was a long time ago when you were still training with Cirilla back in Kaer Morhen." The druid's gaze softened, turned almost wondering. "I confess I could offer him little comfort. Your power is strange, Seb. Stranger than anything I've encountered in all my years walking between the worlds of men and Aen Seidhe alike. And yet nothing ill has come of it. Not yet. If anything, I would say your gift is more mysterious even than young Ciri's Elder Blood, and that is no small thing to say."
Seb stood very still for a moment, then he turned to Geralt, and though his voice was quiet, there was iron beneath it. "I understand why you did it. But you have to stop doing that, investigating me like I'm some beast that might turn on you in its sleep. If something worries you about me, come to me. Not to him. Not behind me."
Geralt held his gaze, and did not look away, which was, in its own fashion, an apology. "Of course. You have my word." A pause, and something almost raw crossed his weathered face. "It was a long time ago. I worried for you the same as I worried for Ciri. Vesemir was the one who pushed me to it, he said a Witcher who doesn't understand his own blade is a danger to himself and everyone around him, and your flame powers were strange to all of us who walked the path for years. I let that convince me it was the right thing to do. Maybe it wasn't."
Seb said nothing for a long moment, his eyes on the ground, on the roots of the great oak curling like old fingers into the earth. The wind stirred his hair. Finally, he exhaled, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. "You know what. It's fine." It wasn't, not entirely, but it was enough, for now, to let the matter rest.
Ermion, sensing the moment had run its course, turned toward the waiting druids and raised his staff in greeting. They did not speak, only inclined their heads, and began to move forming a slow circle around the spot where Ermion knelt to lay the artifact upon a bed of moss and white stones. Hands lifted. Voices rose, not in words Seb recognized, but in a low, droning chant that seemed to rise from the ground itself rather than from any single throat.
Seb watched, arms crossed. "This is different," he said to Geralt, "from what Philippa and the others did in Rivia. All candles and mirrors and Elder Speech. This is.." He gestured vaguely at the circle, at the tree, at the whole gathering. "This is looks... I don't know how to put it into words."
"Ermion knows what he's doing," Geralt said. "I think."
Seb shot him a look 'that's reassuring' but said nothing more, letting his gaze settle back on the druids as their chant deepened, layer upon layer of voice weaving together like roots beneath the soil. He felt it before he understood it: a change in the air, subtle at first then the wind through the clearing picked up, sudden and sourceless, tugging at cloaks and hair, bending the tall grass in slow waves though there was no storm in sight. The oak's leaves hissed and rustled overhead, and somewhere beneath the chanting Seb thought he heard something else a deeper sound.
Geralt felt it too. Seb saw it in the way his old friend's hand drifted, unconsciously, toward the hilt of his silver sword but the Witcher said nothing, only watched the tree line with the flat, patient attention.
Ermion's voice cut through the chant, "This will take time," he said, not looking up from the artifact, sweat already beading at his face despite the cool of the forest. "The relic will fight us.. it was not made to be handled so, and it will resist. Its energy will draw attention. Monsters, drawn to the disturbance, likely before we're through." He lifted his eyes, briefly, to the two Witchers. "As you can see, our hands are tied to this circle. We cannot break it, not for anything, or all of this is undone. Protect us, if they come."
Seb was already drawing his silver sword, the blade singing free of its scabbard. "Of course," Geralt said beside him, his own sword already in his hand, and for a moment the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the dark line of trees, while behind them the chant rose and the wind screamed through Gedyneith's ancient branches, and somewhere out past the trees, faint but growing, something unwanted answered the call.
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