Child of the Elder Blood

In the time since Geralt and Lan Wangji had left, they'd shored up Kaer Morhen's defenses as best they're able, although it's still little enough. Geralt had done what he'd promised, that's clear enough: allies come alone or in pairs, riding or trudging up the winding path that leads to the ancient keep's shattered gates. Some he knows, some he's never met. 

But all are willing, and that's all he can ask.

Yennefer and Wei Wuxian have spent hours, entire days, warding the crumbling keep as well as they can, while trying to keep the elf Avallac'h alive. He's peaky enough not to show his face down in the main hall – not for meals or for any other reason – and Vesemir can't be sorry for it. Lambert and Eskel train with the grim single-mindedness of men going to an almost certain doom, and spend the evenings making potions and bombs and tinctures in quiet companionship.

For himself, the old witcher is simply trying to keep everyone on an even keel; trying to keep them fed, healthy. As ready as they can be. That goes for the horses, too, which is why the morning sun sees him out near the stables, setting out a bucket of water for a pair of black mares. He strokes along one's warm flank and glances up at movement on a parapet: Yennefer, watching the road for Geralt and Ciri and trying to pretend that isn't what she's doing.

Beneath his palm, the horse shivers, then lays its ears back and shies, trumpeting concern. He tries to calm it before it can set the other one off, but neither horse pays any attention to him. They're attuned already to the thing he only feels a moment later: an impossible wind, a brilliant light.

And then a haze of green mist and sparks appear, three figures stumbling through. In the next second, the haze is gone, but the three remain: the White Wolf, Lan Wangji... and Ciri.

 The black mare the Baron had given her isn't as fleet as Kelpie once was, but she's sturdy and swift and Ciri reaches the inn before nightfall, which is all she'd really hoped for. She sees to the mare first, making certain she's set in a comfortable loose box with plenty of hay and water, then makes her weary way to the heavy wooden front door.

But –

"This inn has improved somewhat, since my last visit," she says to herself, and smiles as she lowers the hood that had covered her ashen hair.

Milliways, again. At last.

---

It's a quiet night, and the Scottish skies at the end of the universe are filled with to the brim with soft gray clouds. The waters of the little inlet and around the lake lap lazily at the shore. Deep in the lake, the giant squid cruises idly for food, trailing its tentacles like smoke through the water. In the stables, the horses whicker quietly to each other. All is peaceful, and perfect.

Until some of those soft, contented sounds turn sharp, and anxious. Wood rattles as nervous horses begin pawing and kicking at their stalls, tossing their heads, wide-eyed and alarmed. 

And then a flash of light splits the clouds with a horrible sound as of a great deal of air being displaced all at once, and then: nothing.

The horses calm. And somewhere, far out in the lake, there is a splash.

***

Ciri surfaces with a splutter and gasps for air as she turns her head, taking stock of the situation.

This is...not Velen. At least, it's nowhere in Velen she recognizes. "Avallac'h?" she calls, her voice echoing strangely over the water, but just inflating her ribcage to project her voice has her wincing. The water is too dark to see through, but she knows what she would find if she could: a faint dark cloud that is seeping from the wound in her side and the tear in her shirt. 

"Wonderful," she says to herself, and eyes the distance to shore. It isn't far – fifty yards, perhaps – but she's exhausted from the ambush, the flight, the portal, and she's already lost a lot of blood. 

But there's nothing for it: she grits her teeth and strikes out for shore, hoping against hope that this lake is not home to drowners...or worse.

In the end, she almost makes it. There's the shore, only twenty yards, ten. A few feet. Everything goes black, and when she comes to, she's washed onto a sandy beach that makes no sense with the cold lake water she's just escaped – but that's all she has time to determine before exhaustion and pain told firm hold of her reins, and she collapses into a heap on the shore at the end of the universe.