The wind shifted, and with it came the smell of rot and the sour reek of something that lived in dark, cramped places and fed on carrion. Seb's nose wrinkled first, his head turning toward the tree line even before his eyes could confirm what his instincts already knew.
"Nekkers," he said, low and even, scanning the shadows between the trunks. "And foglets. Quite a number of them, by the smell of it."
Geralt's eyes had narrowed as well, his own senses catching up half a beat later, jaw tight. "Yeah," he said, and that single word was certainty of a man who had smelled this particular stench a hundred times before and never once grown fond of it.
Seb glanced back at the circle of chanting druids, at Ermion kneeling in fierce concentration over the shivering artifact, and made his decision at once. "I hope you'll forgive me," he called out, already stepping toward the treeline with his hand raised, fingers curling as though gathering something invisible from the air. "I have to draw a ring of fire around you. I promise I won't be reckless with it I won't let it touch the tree, or the forest around it."
Ermion did not so much as look up from his work, his voice steady despite the sweat now running freely down his face. "That's fine, boy! Your fire is no magic so it won't trouble our ritual. But mind you, burn the forest burn so much as a leaf of this sacred Oak, and you will pay for it dearly."
"I can control my flame perfectly," Seb said, a faint, tired smile tugging at his mouth despite the gravity of the moment. "Don't worry."
"It's a good plan regardless," Geralt said, already oiling his silver blade, and testing its weight in his palm out of old habit. "Means we don't have to split our attention between them and the circle. Just mind the nekkers. Vicious little bastards can still worm their way through gaps if you're not careful. They dig."
"Already know about that," Seb said, and there was something almost fond in the way he said it.
He lifted both hands, and with a single, sweeping gesture, fire bloomed, it rushed outward in a perfect ring around the druids and the ancient oak, roaring up into a wall taller than a man, and then, impossibly, it simply stopped. It did not lick outward toward the dry grass beyond. It did not gutter or gutter. It burned exactly where he had told it to burn and not a hair's breadth further, which was, by any law of nature Geralt had ever known, entirely unnatural.
Geralt's brow lifted, genuine surprise flickering across features that rarely showed much of anything. "Your control's improved."
"I burned an entire forest in Redania," Seb said flatly, flexing his fingers as though shaking off the effort, "and another one in Velen, smaller, thank the gods. I'm basically an enemy to nature at this point. I'm trying to be nice, for once."
That earned a rare, crooked smile from Geralt, the kind he didn't often let show. "Well," he said, turning his silver blade so it caught the firelight, "we're headed somewhere you won't have to hold back."
"Of course," Seb said, and something in his chest eased at the thought.
Then the trees shuddered, and the first of them broke free of the shadows.
Nekkers came first, low and quick, grasping claws and teeth too many for their snarling little mouths, pouring out of the underbrush in a chittering, scrabbling wave. Behind them, drifting between the trunks, came the foglets pale, drawn faces hanging in mist, their bodies barely appearing until they struck.
Geralt met the first wave head-on, his blade a silver blur, Quen shimmering faint gold around him as three nekkers threw themselves at his legs at once. He pivoted on his heel, let the shimmer of his sign absorb the first snapping bite, and opened the creature's throat in the same moment, the second falling to a reverse cut that spun him neatly into position for the third. He fought the way he always fought, a man doing a job he had done a thousand times and would do ten thousand more.
Seb came in beside him like a second half of the same dance, no wasted move, his blade catching a foglet mid-lunge and cleaving through the mist-thin shape before it could fully solidify into something with claws. He felt the ground behind him buckle, a telltale scrabbling beneath the roots and didn't even turn to look before he slammed his palm flat against the earth. Fire answered instantly, funneling down into the burrow like water poured into a drain, and a heartbeat later the nekker that had dug there came bursting back up out of the ground already wreathed in flame, shrieking a sound that was more animal panic than pain before it went dead.
"Two more, west side," Geralt called, not even breathless, cutting down a foglet that had drifted too close to his back.
"Seen them," Seb answered, and flung a narrow lance of fire in a controlled arc that caught both burrowing nekkers just as they broke the surface, turning their charge into a stumbling, burning collapse.
They fought like that for what felt both like an eternity and no time at all, Geralt anchoring the center with the patient efficiency, Seb weaving fire and silver together in a way that turned the battlefield's very geography against their enemies, scorching burrows before nekkers could even fully emerge, cutting down foglets that thought themselves clever for approaching from the mist. When a trio of nekkers tried to flank around toward the ring of fire itself, hoping to find some gap in the flame, Seb was already there, driving his blade through the foremost one's skull while a whip-thin tendril of fire lashed out from his free hand to catch the second before it could so much as scream.
Behind them, through the wall of flame, the druids' chant never faltered, and Ermion did not so much as glance up from the artifact, trusting, entirely, in the two men who stood between his circle and the monsters.
Geralt buried his blade through a nekker's chest, kicked the twitching body free of his sword, and glanced sidelong at Seb through the drifting smoke and firelight, breathing steady. "Not bad," he said, the closest thing to praise the old Witcher ever offered mid-fight.
"Wait until the real ones show up," Seb said back, driving his sword through a foglet's throat, sweat and soot streaking his face, something fierce and almost joyful burning behind his eyes despite the carnage around them, that was the look of a man finally doing the one thing he knew, without question, he was good at.
And around them, the fire held its perfect, unnatural line, and the ancient oak of Gedyneith stood untouched at the heart of it, its branches groaning in the wind as the last of the nekkers fell burning and the mist of the foglets thinned into nothing.
The ground trembled first not the light shudder of hooves or claws, but a deep, rolling tremor that Seb felt through the soles of his boots before he heard anything at all. Geralt went still beside him, sword lowered but not sheathed, his golden eyes fixed on the darkness between the trees.
"It's big," he said, and there was no exaggeration in it.
Seb turned his head toward the sound, letting it wash over him, the crack of splintering branches, the low, guttural huff of something drawing breath through a throat built for battering, the scrape of something heavy and armored dragging through underbrush that simply gave way rather than resist. His grip tightened on his hilt.
Then it broke from the treeline, and the light of the burning ring caught it fully a hulking mass of grey hide, horned skull lowered, small eyes burning with mindless fury, each footfall driving small craters into the soft earth as it barreled straight toward the fire, toward the druids, toward the ancient oak itself.
Seb let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "This ritual attracted even a chort? What's next, a dragon?"
"They seem almost done," Geralt said, ignoring the question entirely, his focus narrowing to the single, singular problem thundering toward them. "Let's kill this beast before it decides the fire's worth testing."
Seb's smile sharpened, and with a thought his blade answered, flame crawling up the length of the silver sword until the whole sword burned like a brand pulled fresh from a forge. "Gladly."
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