Deep within the keep, in the small, quiet chamber where Seb had lain unmoving for a full week, something shifted.
He was dreaming or thought he was.. back once more in that same strange, white-walled hospital room from before he came to this world, lying flat and still on a bed that wasn't quite real, staring up at a ceiling that flickered at the edges like a half-remembered photograph.
"Am I dead," Seb said to the empty room, and then, with weary resignation, "Shit."
Nothing answered at first. He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, studying his own hands as though checking they were still solid. "Why am I back here," he muttered, "instead of just... nothing. Darkness. Whatever comes after."
A voice answered, low and resonant, carrying from everywhere and nowhere at once. 'Your time has yet to end. Your story has yet to satisfy me, for it to conclude so plainly as this.'
Seb went very still. "What.. This voice.. That's you!"
'Now go back,' the voice said, unhurried, almost amused. 'It seems something is presently trying to kill you.'
"What?"
He woke in an instant, eyes snapping open and flaring bright with sudden, fierce light, just as a shape dropped through the narrow window above his bed pale, gaunt, fanged, a garkain that had slipped unnoticed into the keep amid the chaos outside. Seb's hand found his sword on sheer instinct before his mind had even finished catching up, and he drove the blade up and through the creature's chest in one smooth, brutal move, finishing it with a single fiery arc that took its head clean from its shoulders.
He stood, breathing hard, looking around the room in genuine confusion. "A garkain. In here. In the keep." He glanced down at himself, the veins gone entirely, his skin clear and whole, not even a scar left, and felt something new and strange humming faintly beneath his skin, a power he didn't recognize but had no time at all to examine properly.
Outside, the sounds of battle reached him at last, faint through stone walls but unmistakable.
"Vampires.." Seb said, already moving for the door, sword in hand, fire kindling instinctively along his arm. "Something's happening out there."
The higher vampire's patience finally broke.
It happened in an instant, one moment he was circling Ciri with that same careful, almost indulgent restraint, and the next his form twisted, flesh splitting and reknitting into something far less composed, claws lengthening into black, serrated talons, his mouth stretching wide with rows of needle teeth, dark blood weeping from cracks opening along his own arms as the bloodlust finally overtook whatever discipline he'd been holding onto.
"Enough of this," he snarled, voice warped now, guttural, barely recognizable as the same cultured thing that had spoken to her moments before. "You are no mere prize to be collected gently. You are a threat!"
He lunged, faster than anything Ciri had faced all night, and she barely managed to blink away in time, his claws raking through empty air where she'd stood a second before, but he was already turning, already anticipating her reappearance, and this time her teleport landed her directly into the path of his next strike.
"Don't kill her!" Leo's voice cracked out across the courtyard, real alarm finally breaking through his earlier amusement. "She's no good to anyone dead, you absolute idi..."
The vampire didn't seem to hear him, or didn't care. His claws came down in a vicious arc aimed squarely at Ciri's throat, and she threw her arm up on pure, desperate instinct, knowing even as she did it that it wouldn't be enough..
The world turned to fire.
A column of flame tore down out of the night sky with a roar that drowned out every other sound in the courtyard, so bright it turned the falling snow to hissing steam before it ever touched the ground, so violent that the vampire was simply swept aside by the shockwave of it, flung bodily across the yard to crash through the remains of the old stable wall in an explosion of splintered timber and shattered stone.
And yet, where Ciri stood, the flame curved around her entirely untouched, a perfect, impossible dome of fire that left her standing in a small, quiet pocket of still, cold air while devastation roared on every side of it.
The flames parted, and there he was.
"Hey," Seb said, like he hadn't just torn half the courtyard apart arriving.
Ciri's eyes went wide, and for one full heartbeat she simply stared at him, disbelieving and then she was moving, closing the distance and throwing her arms around him hard enough to stagger them both, a sob catching in her throat that she didn't even try to hide. "Seb."
"I'm here," he said, one arm wrapping tight around her, the other still holding his burning blade steady, eyes already tracking past her shoulder to the smoking ruin where the higher vampire was already clawing itself upright. "I know I probably been out for some time, but I'm here now."
He held her a moment longer, just long enough before easing her gently back and turning his full attention outward, surveying the courtyard properly for the first time: the scattered corpses of fleders and katakans, Lambert bleeding and exhausted near the inner gate, Vesemir and Eskel braced for another wave, Geralt standing a short distance off with his blade raised against a scarred, pale-eyed man Seb had never laid eyes on before and beyond all of it, the thing in the wreckage of the stable, already rising, already furious.
"Sorry for the delay," Seb said, rolling his shoulders, fire gathering thick along both forearms now. "Apparently our walls don't repel shit anymore, considering how much vermin's managed to crawl inside tonight."
Leo Bonhart's face split into a wide, delighted grin the moment he laid eyes on him, something almost reverent in the way he lowered his blade half an inch, just to look properly. "Oh, boy," he said, soft, savoring it. "There he is.."
Seb's gaze settled on Bonhart in a cold way. "You must be Leo Bonhart." He said the name like something distasteful on his tongue. "Can't say I expected a man like you to actually storm a keep full of witchers. But then...I don't imagine you'd have dared it alone. Not even with a blade as fine as that one looks." His eyes flicked to the higher vampire, still pulling itself free of the shattered stable wall, dark blood weeping from cracked, reforming flesh. "This is your insurance policy, I take it. Solid backup, I'll give you that much credit."
"What a strange witcher," the vampire said, voice still warped and guttural beneath the bloodlust, dragging itself upright slowly.
"You haven't seen anything yet," Seb said.
He said something in Elder Speech and raised one hand, and the ground itself answered him cracking open in a dozen places across the courtyard as molten shapes clawed their way up from beneath the frozen earth, towering figures built from fire and stone, heat rolling off them in visible waves that melted the snow to hissing steam a full stride in every direction. Ten of them in all, rising in near-perfect unison, immediately turning on the scattered vampires still contesting the yard.
Vesemir's sword lowered half an inch while retreating, recognition dawning hard and fast across his weathered face. Eskel actually took a step back despite himself, and Lambert, bleeding and exhausted, let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
"Those are the Elementa," Geralt said, something almost reverent beneath the exhaustion in his voice. "The ones Seb and Yennefer made, years ago..."
Ciri's mouth curved into the first real smile she'd managed all night.
"They were underground hidden... now there's a use for them," Seb said, watching the elementas tear into the remaining fleders and katakans with brutal, merciless attacks, fire meeting flesh in gouts of steam and shrieking collapse.
The higher vampire straightened fully now, claws flexing, eyes fixed on Seb. "You still cannot kill me, witcher."
Seb settled into a ready stance, flame curling slow and steady up both arms, his eyes narrowing on the creature across the ruined courtyard.
"I have something I need to try... and you seem like a fine test subject, so let us find out, shall we?"
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Shadow Monarch: In One Piece / Shadow Monarch in DC
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my pat-reon / FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to More Chapters Ahead of Release on All of My Stories!