Sebastian's hand rested on the first pedestal for a moment that stretched just long enough to make Yarvik uncomfortable.
Nothing happened and the dwarf leaned slightly to the side, squinting at it.
"…Aye," Yarvik muttered at last. "Either this is the calmest death trap I've ever seen, or you just touched a simple rock."
Lune gave him a sharp look. "It's not..."
A sound cut through her words.
Without warning.
The air above Seb fractured and a blade dropped from the ceiling, the metal was straight, precise and it came fast enough that anyone else would've been split before thought could catch up.
But it didn't land, the sword passed through Sebastian as if he wasn't fully part of the world it tried to kill him in, the weapon tore through his flame body and found nothing to bite into. The blade struck stone with a dull, useless clang behind him.
Sebastian didn't even flinch, he stared at the pedestal, exhaled through his nose, and said flatly,
"Shit. It's not the one…"
A beat of silence followed, then Yarvik let out a slow, stunned whistle.
"…That was supposed to be the part where you get very dead."
Lune wasn't looking at the sword anymore. She was looking at Seb like the idea of him had just been rewritten in real time. Faelorn, however, stepped forward immediately, eyes sharp.
"I knew it!" Faelorn said, voice rising with sudden conviction. "My eyes did not deceive me. Even through that flame wall back in the forest!… even when the arrows of the Redanians went straight through you, none of it touched you!"
His gaze locked onto Seb. "What in the name of the old world are you, Sebastian?!"
Yarvik muttered under his breath, still half-processing it. "Aye…"
Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck.
"Uhh… hard to explain."
He glanced back at them, almost casual.
"To put it simply, I'm a witcher. Just… not the standard kind. You could say I've got a flame body. No real weak points, fire I can control. Most things that should kill me… don't."
He shrugged slightly.
"That's why I told you to keep your distance earlier. If there are more traps, I'll just trigger them because none of them can really harm me."
Faelorn didn't look reassured. He looked disturbed in the way a commander looks when reality stops being... reality.
"A witcher made of fire…" Yarvik repeated slowly. Then he shook his head once. "I thought I'd seen enough in my life to stop being surprised."
Lune finally spoke again, quieter now. "Are there more like you? More Witchers with these kind of abilities out there?"
Sebastian blinked once, then shook his head.
"No."
Faelorn answered immediately, almost reflexively.
"If there is, then we the elves would be significantly more fucked than we already are."
Despite everything, Sebastian gave a smile at that.
The moment didn't last long, his attention drifted back to the pedestal.
"Salvation didn't work…" he murmured, more to himself now.
His eyes moved across the remaining inscriptions carved into stone.
"Preservation… Destruction… Purification… Memory… Freedom… Silence."
Yarvik leaned slightly forward. "I like the sound of Freedom."
Lune frowned. "After what just happened? I'm thinking we avoid the cheerful ones and aim for whatever sounds least poetic."
Faelorn crossed his arms. "That is… disturbingly reasonable."
Seb exhaled.
"I've got nothing to lose by testing them. Just stay back again."
They all stepped away instinctively and this time, Seb didn't hesitate.
He placed his hand on the second pedestal.
'Destruction.'
For a moment, nothing happaned as well, then something underneath the stone clicked.
A faint hiss spread through the chamber, Yarvik tilted his head. "That's new."
Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "Move!"
They didn't remain to argue, they were already running.
Faelorn turned mid-step. "Get out of the chamber!"
A thin mist was already spilling from the small holes in the floor.
Sebastian stayed behind just long enough to confirm what it was.
His expression shifted slightly.
"Toxic gas," he said. "Flammable."
He flicked his fingers once and flame ignited in his fingers.
The explosion swallowed the chamber in a roar that turned stone white for an instant.
Heat washed down the corridor, chasing them out then, there was silence.
Yarvik coughed, waving smoke away from his face. "Aye… that's one way to solve it."
They stepped back cautiously.
The chamber was still there.
Unbroken, the pedestals stood exactly as they had before, as if nothing had tried to erase them at all, that explosion did nothing.
Faelorn stared.
"…What the fuck are these made of?"
Sebastian walked out of the smoke slowly, brushing ash off his shoulder like it was an inconvenience.
"You're the elf," he said calmly. "You tell me."
Faelorn didn't even respond to the jab.
His eyes stayed on the pedestals.
"This is not a simple fucking puzzle, something is off." he said.
Sebastian looked back at the inscriptions again.
His tone was quieter now, more focused.
"Then we keep trying."
Then, almost casually, he added,
"One of them has to mean progress."
Sebastian stared at the word 'Memory' now, then he let out a short breath through his nose.
"Fuck it," he said at last. "Our whole discussion on the way here was about legacy and memory anyway. Might as well lean into it."
Faelorn didn't even look away from the pedestals when he answered, voice filled with exhaustion and contempt for the entire ruin.
A string of Elder Speech slipped from him, and whatever it meant, it didn't sound polite.
Seb blinked at him once.
"…I know what you just said but I'm going to act like that translates to 'do whatever you want'."
Faelorn finally exhaled.
"That is precisely what it translates to, yes. At this point I couldn't give a flying shit about this ancient puzzle."
Yarvik snorted. "Finally, a reasonable elf."
Sebastian stepped forward again, rolling his shoulder once like he was preparing for a spar rather than another ancient death mechanism.
"Memory it is," he said. Then, almost casually, "and if this doesn't work, I'm done playing nice with this thing. I'll handle it in a more… unorthodox way."
Lune glanced at him. "Fire?"
Seb gave her a faint grin. "yes."
He placed his hand on the third pedestal.
'Memory.'
For a moment nothing reacted, then the ruin remembered it hated intruders.
Arrows poured from the walls, ceiling, and hidden slits that hadn't existed a moment ago. A storm of ancient mechanisms, perfectly synchronized.
Yarvik swore loudly and dropped instinctively into cover.
"Bloody hell!"
Lune's eyes widened. "Seb!"
Faelorn was already moving back, hand instinctively going for a weapon that wouldn't matter against something this fast.
But Sebastian felt something wrong, and he moved differently, he decided to dodge andhis head tilted slightly as if he was listening to something no one else could hear. The moment the first arrows shifted in the air, he was already gone from where they were meant to land.
He didn't just dodge, he anticipated every arrow, a sidestep that shouldn't have been enough became enough. A lean backward turned into a fluid drop that let arrows pass over him like he was slipping between seconds instead of space. One arrow came from his blind side, he rotated just enough that it scraped past his chest instead of piercing it.
But not all of them missed.
One didn't, it struck his shoulder with a solid impact.
Wood bit into flesh. Real blood followed immediately, dark against his sleeve.
The room didn't stop firing, Sebastian staggered half a step, not from pain exactly, but from surprise more than anything else.
Then he reached up, grabbed the shaft, and pulled it free in one clean move and his gaze dropped to it.
The tip glinted faintly.
Silver.
His eyes narrowed.
"…Shit," he muttered to himself.
Faelorn saw it and he said nothing. But his entire posture changed.
Lune rushed forward despite everything, stopping just short of him.
"Seb, you're hurt!"
Sebastian glanced at her, then at the blood on his hand.
"It's nothing."
Yarvik, still half-hiding behind a broken column, let out a rough laugh. "Aye, nothing. Just a nice decorative hole in your shoulder. Very fashionable."
Sebastian huffed a quiet laugh despite himself.
"Relax," he said. "I've had worse."
But Faelorn wasn't laughing.
He had moved closer, not to Seb, but to the arrow.
He crouched, studying it carefully where it had fallen. His fingers hovered just above the metal tip without touching it at first.
Then he thought to himself.
'…Silver arrows... our ancestors used these kinds of arrows.'
Silence followed that word.
Faelorn's eyes lifted slowly toward Sebastian.
An understanding beginning to form in the wrong direction.
He didn't say anything out loud, but his thoughts were loud enough in the way he looked at him,
'You said nothing can hurt you.'
'But this did...'
Sebastian, meanwhile, flexed his injured shoulder once, as if testing how serious "nothing" really was, then rolled it again and forced a casual ease back into his posture.
"Well," he said lightly, looking toward the remaining pedestals as arrows finally stopped. "Memory doesn't like being touched."
A devilish smile appeared on his face.
"…Time to use my way."
/-\
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