Finn, Ciri, and Avallach stood in a loose circle in the garden behind the penthouse.
They had already changed for the journey. Finn wore a black leather jacket with chainmail worked into it. The rifle strap ran across his chest, and the lightsaber hung at his belt. Ciri wore a chainmail vest over short sleeves, with her sword at her back and nice boots. Avallach wore the same robe as ever.
Ciri looked down at the grass between their feet. Her jaw was set, but Finn could see the tension in her shoulders.
He reached out and touched her shoulder. "Ready?"
She nodded once, then lifted both hands and set one on Finn's shoulder and the other on Avallach's.
"Here goes nothing."
"Clear your mind, Zireael," Avallach said. "Focus on the image of the desert."
"I know, I know."
She closed her eyes.
It was then that magic gathered around them. Cyan light ran over the grass and up their boots. It crackled around Ciri's arms and across the space between the three of them.
A crack opened in front of them, thin at first, then wide enough to swallow all three. Ciri pulled in a breath, and the next second the world gave way under Finn's feet. The garden vanished and the crack closed behind them, leaving the penthouse grounds empty.
—
The first thing they felt was heat. Finn could feel that his boots hit sand. Sun slammed down on the back of his neck and on the leather of his jacket. Dry air hit his mouth and nose. The land around them spread out in dull gold and pale stone with nothing to stop the light. They were definitely on a desert.
But, a few seconds later, the heat was gone. Cold bit through Finn's jacket and his next breath became fogged. Mist rolled over the sand.
Finn frowned. "They're really quick at detecting us."
He pulled the lightsaber free with one hand and the automatic rifle with the other.
"...Caranthir," Avallach said. "One of my... products. Be ready. He may nullify portals around us. If that is the case, I will need more time to open one."
Finn flicked the lightsaber once without igniting the blade. The ice crystal got activated.
Cold burst outward from his position in a hard ring. Wind whipped the mist into a spiral. Ice raced over the sand and up into a wall around them, thick enough to stop a charge, high enough to cover them, with narrow gaps left open to shoot through.
"Then do your thing," Finn said.
"Finn, give me one," Ciri said.
He glanced at her. "Give you what?"
"A gun," she said. "I cannot be useful behind all this ice if I only have a sword."
Finn raised a brow, but only for a second. Then he holstered the rifle long enough to pull his pistol and two extra magazines free. He shoved them into her hands.
"Safety's off already. Point and squeeze. Don't waste shots."
Ciri checked the grip and took position at one of the firing gaps.
The first portals opened a second later, not one or two but a whole batch of them.
The cracks split open in the fog all around them and spat riders and hounds onto the sand. The hounds came first. The riders followed behind them in dark armour with frost running over plates and reins. The storm slowed them, but not by much. They pushed through it with weapons ready.
Finn raised the rifle and fired.
The burst tore through the nearest opening in the ice wall. One rider jerked backward out of the saddle. Another hound lost its front legs and rolled across the sand. Beside him Ciri fired the pistol in shorter shots, slower but effective enough. One of her rounds caught a hound in the skull. Another clipped a rider at the throat where the armour left a gap.
For every rider that dropped, more portals opened. More hounds came through. The storm kept them slowed, but it did not keep them away.
Finn changed magazines and shouted, "Chip!"
The Gible burst from his ball and hit the sand running. He dropped under the surface, his fin cutting a line through the desert floor before it vanished.
Chip erupted beneath the front rank, took one hound's head off in a single bite, raked another open with his claws, and disappeared again into the sand before the riders could bring weapons down on him. A heartbeat later he came up somewhere else and tore through another pair.
Ciri glanced to the side. "Kelpie, stay in your ball."
Her own ball burst open and the Ponyta shot out into the storm with her mane burning.
"Kelpie, what are you doing?!" Ciri shouted.
Kelpie ignored her completely.
She charged the nearest group of hounds that had made it close to the wall, hit the lead one shoulder-first in a burst of fire, and sent it crashing sideways. The flame melted the frost crust on two more and opened them up long enough for Chip to rip through both when he came up beneath them.
Finn cut another burst into a rider trying to force his horse through the storm. "Avallach! Any progress?!"
"They are blocking portals farther than I expected," Avallach said. He had both hands raised now, light gathering between them. "We cannot go to Novigrad from here. We must travel farther first."
A hound cleared the storm, hit the wall, found one of the shooting gaps, and lunged through.
Ciri put two shots into its face before it crossed half the distance.
"Good enough! Just do it!" Finn said.
Then another portal split open inside, smaller than the Hunt's portals, but it was theirs.
Avallach stepped back from it. Frost cracked around the edges. "Come. Before they push any closer."
Finn did not wait. He recalled Chip the moment the Gible surfaced near the wall, then ran for the portal with rifle in one hand and lightsaber in the other. Avallach went first. Finn followed right after him.
Ciri came behind with Kelpie on her heels.
—
The first thing Finn felt inside the portal was interference.
The pull of the passage twisted wrong around him. It felt rough and unsteady, something dragging at him the whole way through.
When he stumbled out the other end, his boots hit wet ground instead of sand. Finn straightened and looked around.
Trees. Thick ones, dark trunks, water pooled everywhere between the roots. The air was wet and heavy after the desert heat.
Avallach and Ciri were not there. Finn swore under his breath and turned in a full circle, rifle already coming up. Nothing moved near him but branches and reeds.
"...Shit," he said. "Fucking Avallach. He should've anticipated this."
He kept scanning the trees, trying to decide whether the split had dropped them close together or thrown them across half a damned continet. Too wet for Novigrad itself, probably. Marshland, maybe, or river country.
Then pale light rose through the trees ahead and burst high above the canopy, a signal. Finn let out a breath.
He started to walk toward it quickly.
The ground sucked at his boots and water splashed around his shins where the marsh dipped low. He kept the rifle ready and pushed through brush, reeds, and crooked roots toward the place where the signal had burned above the trees.