#right after they crossed the yaruga | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

write-ur-wrongs · 3 years ago

Text

The Death of Me

Pairing: Geralt x reader

Word count: almost 4K - big whoops!

A/N: This was totally meant to be a drabble / blurb, but the story got away from me! A huge thanks to the sweet anon who submitted this prompt - I was beyond inspired and chuckled warmly throughout the entire writing process. This baby isn’t proofread so thread lightly!! I sincerely hope y’all enjoy this one :’)

Prompt: Heya! I saw your post about wanting to practice writing short stories so I have a small prompt for Geralt! What about: the reader and Geralt have always had a difficult relationship, always running into each other at the most inconvenient moments and hence disliking each other. However, while Geralt is passing through a village the reader comes barging into his room bloody and near death, only getting a chance to say “I didn’t know where else to go” before collapsing. I would be honoured if the idea inspired you :3

____________________________________________________

You’d never considered yourself unlucky but lately life had a funny way of throwing you for a loop, or rather, throwing you to the wolves. One wolf, actually. A damn, irritating, and arrogant white wolf.

At first, it was all business. You’d arrive in a village itching for a contract, only to find that a “legendary witcher” had already come through and taken care of every monster within a two-days ride. Furious, hungry, and broke, you set out determined to get as far as you could and as quickly as possible. Your determination got you far enough that you’d managed a full three months of contract work, but not far enough it seemed.

You’d been on your way to collect payment from your latest contractor when you’d heard the buzz on the street; a witcher had come through asking about work, and had been told to wait and see as someone else (a woman! A human woman!) had already committed to the case. Apparently, he was either incensed or bemused at the idea – the brute was very hard to read, so say the town gossips – but it didn’t matter to you. You beat him to it and now you get to eat. When you finally met with the contractor to collect your coin, you couldn’t help but swell with pride as they thanked you, eyes wide, for taking care of a monster no human ought to be able to handle. You could have sworn your pride had given you wings as you floated out of the inn.

That is, until you heard them mumble under their breath, “Thank Gods that lass was able to handle it! Had it been the witcher, I would have had to pay triple!”

“Thank heavens for cheap labour!” whispered their partner, raising their glass to cheers their big victory.

Suddenly whatever weightlessness you felt transferred onto your coin purse. Biting hard on your cheek you pushed up your chin, determined to remain dignified. But then you saw him.

Impossibly broad chested, rippling muscles evident beneath his leather armour, with golden eyes that reflected back to you with a cruel playful nature that made bile rise in the back of your throat. He held your gaze and raised his own tankard to you as you walked past him. His deep voice rumbled through you as you pushed the door open.

“Cheers to cheap labour,” you heard him say, and swore you could hear the smirk on his full lips.

Groaning furiously, you pushed the door so hard it swung back and slammed shut behind you with such force a flock of birds took off somewhere in town. Undeterred, you stomped off towards your horse and set off at a gallop.

I’m going to make sure I never cross his fucking path ever again, you thought searingly.

You were wrong it turned out, but how were you supposed to know that?

You’d gone years without actually seeing him again, but that didn’t mean you were free of him. You’d alternated winning and losing contracts to each other, and the pressure of beating him to the next one stressed you so fiercely you developed ulcers. That alone would have been enough to push you to murder had you not heard from another witcher that their brother, the great white wolf, was losing sleep trying to keep up with you. Knowledge of this fact spurred you on; after all, if you couldn’t beat him, it’s best to be even, no?

The next time fate brought you two together, though, you could not have been farther from on top. What made matters worse, is that you weren’t even in battle when your paths crossed. Your literal paths just simply… crossed.

You’d been riding east for many days and just as many nights. You were tired, sore, and somehow still soaked to the bone despite the fact that the rain had stopped at least a day ago. You were so tired, your muscles seemed heavy in your limbs, and you had to keep blinking hard to bring the spinning world around you back to its axis. As you rode through an intersection on the trail, the sun peaked out from behind the thick curtain of clouds just long enough to pull you fully into sleep, and right off your still-moving-horse’s saddle.

You honestly didn’t remember falling asleep, or off the saddle. You also had no memory of the moment another traveler, who was riding towards the intersection on the other trail, leapt off his mare just as you started your descent and caught you before you could split your skull open on one of the many rocks sprinkled throughout the street. You had no memory of the way he’d pulled you off the path, leading both horses behind him as he’d carried you over his shoulder. Zero recollection of him laying you down on a bed grass, tying your horse to a nearby tree, lighting you a campfire, or filling your pack with some bread and meat.

What you did remember, was the arrogant look on his face when you finally woke up. The condescending tone he took as he reminded you that you were ‘only human’ and had to take care of yourself accordingly was also seared into the annals of your memory.

You hated that he’d saved you almost as much as you hated the fact that you’d been asleep around him. Completely vulnerable for God knows how long and he’d been there to witness it all. Whenever the memory of the look on his face or the way he’d crossed his arms and tilted his stupid head as he condescended your humanity came to you, you couldn’t help but cringe even months after the fact.

***

Your saving grace came a full six months after your damned damsel in distress moment on the trail.

Well fed, well worked, and well travelled, you were taking your time enjoying the market in your town of the week. The work you did wasn’t glamourous, but it did allow you the means to afford a few luxuries every now and then. This time, it just so happened that your coin could buy you the sweetest gift of all: revenge.

The market was busy as ever, you could barely hear yourself think over the cacophony of voices and animal bleats bouncing around the square. Had it been anyone else, the conversation would have been lost among the noise around you, but when that voice came rumbling through the mess of shrieks and shouts, you couldn’t help but seek out the source. You didn’t know why you cared or why you were so surprised to find that the voice’s owner was none other than the White Wolf himself.

“You good?” you asked, making sure to tilt your head, hands on your hips, the same way he’d done the last time you’d met.

“Fine.” He practically barked, not even turning his head fully to address you directly.

The merchant, none-too-concerned with your arrival on the scene, continued as if uninterrupted. “I’m sorry Mr. Witcher, sir, but I can’t go any lower. This is the best I can offer.”

“I can’t pay that much,” he grumbled, hands closed into tight fists.

“I’m sorry-”

“Is this enough?” you interjected, knowingly offering forward far too many ducats.

“Y-yes!” breathed the merchant, looking quizzically at Geralt before picking three coins from your open palm, “thank you, madam...”

“Y/N,” you introduced yourself with a warm smile and a nod.

“Y/N!” Geralt hissed, at the same time, reaching out to push away your hand a fraction too late; the vendor was paid, and you’d won this round.

“What is it, Witcher?” you teased, as the vendor took his sword back for repairs, “been on vacation? Why so skint?”

“Been low on work lately,” he replied coolly, cat-like eyes boring into yours, “not as many contracts as there use to be.”

“Well, I’ll be,” you said, cocking your head to the side and pursing your lips in mock contemplation, “I can’t imagine why that’d be the case! Seems I keep running into monsters to kill.”

“Mmhm.” He hummed, narrowing his eyes at you.

Refusing to let him have the last word, you quickly turned on your heels and high-tailed it out of the market, shouting over your shoulder to the blacksmith to give any change back to Geralt before disappearing back into the crowd.

***

Being even should have brought peace between the two of you but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Your last interaction only fanned the flames of your rivalry. As the months turned to years without coming upon each other again, you still found yourself filled with unreasonable anger whenever you saw a mop of white hair cross you on your travels.

And not that you’d know it, but it turned out that Geralt wasn’t faring any better; finding himself frustrated and acting recklessly whenever he’d come upon anything that reminded him of you.

You were both completely obsessed with one another. Thoughts of the other constantly on the mind. Whether in waking or in dreams, you were both equally afflicted by an intense need to outperform, out run, and also, inexplicably, to impress the other.

It was that need to impress each other that led you to accept a contract you should have never even considered taking. You honestly wouldn’t have even considered it had the circumstances been any different but you’d been hearing about this monster for weeks on your travels. Tales of the mighty griffin tearing people to shreds had been circulating far and wide on this side of the Yaruga, and honestly, with every retelling you’d expected to hear that a witcher had handled it, but that never happened. You’d somehow managed to arrive at the village at the source of these stories before him and had an opportunity to literally rob him of this victory.

Granted, you were the only one who’d been attributing him with this win, but that didn’t matter, not to you. The only thing you cared about when accepting this particular contract was the knowledge that by taking it, you were preventing him from having it, and that was more than enough.

The shock on the villagers faces when they saw you accept the contract only added to your already inflated confidence. The sheer size of the griffin’s wingspan humbled you a little, though, and whatever grand illusions of an easy victory you’d carried into the forest were squashed along with a couple rib bones only moments after engaging the beast. In short, you were fucked.

Some might say that coming out of it alive was enough of a win. Those people would be morons, you thought as you stumbled clumsily back towards the lights of the village, clutching your split abdomen with both hands and blinking back blood dripping from your forehead. Every step you took came with the stabbing pain of additional tearing around your wound. You could barely think, your ears were blocked and caked with dried blood and dirt, your tears stung as they fell across the gashes on your cheeks, and every breath in felt like it could be your last. You’d never admit this out loud, but a part of you wished the creature had finished the job.

Perhaps the only saving grace here was that in your condition, you couldn’t hear the villagers as they pointed and gossiped. You didn’t hear the “told you so’s” or the lewd shouts coming from the drunk men as you stumbled into the tavern. You could barely hear the disappointment in the inn owner’s voice as they reprimanded you for accepting a contract, they knew you couldn’t complete. Rolling your eyes, you pushed your way towards the stairs as quickly as possible – which, as it turned out, was not so quick, praying that someone would call you a healer.

“… and to think a witcher arrived only hours after she went off to kill herself! Tsk-tsk!”

You stopped dead in your tracks, drops of blood falling across your brow as you interrupted the momentum you’d been building. “W-what?” you croaked, turning towards them as much as possible to make sure you’d hear them correctly.

“Yeah! And not just any witcher, lass, the Butcher of Blaviken no less! Checked in with us just as you head out. Had you waited half a day you could have saved yourself a world of – ‘ey! Now where’s she off to?”

As you registered this news, something inside you snapped. Before you knew what was happening, you’d made your way upstairs and started pushing your full weight onto every door you passed. The great White Wolf, the Butcher of Blaviken, was certainly arrogant enough to leave his door unlocked. You might have been wrong about the griffin, but you’d be damned if you were wrong about this.

Fortunate or not, you weren’t wrong about this. As you pushed your shoulder against the last door with whatever strength you had left, the door swung open with very little resistance. The heavy wooden door slammed loudly against the wall at the exact moment that your limp body crashed onto the floor.

“WHAT the fuck!” Geralt howled, leaping off the bed and onto his feet. His wild eyes assessed the situation in an instant, and he bound to you in barely two strides. “What the fuck did you do? What happened?” he asked as he flipped you over, so gently you were sure you’d already passed out and were now dreaming. Or maybe the blood loss was finally catching up to you and you were full-on hallucinating.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” you breathed, barely above a whisper, before losing consciousness in his arms.

Regaining consciousness was a slow, painful process. You’d come in and out of it a handful of times throughout the night, and flashes of what you’d seen before you lost it were coming to you in an almost dreamlike haze; terrifying images of the furious griffin, its blood-soaked talon shining in the setting sun as it reared back to strike you again, and warmer visions of Geralt, shirtless, running towards you with – could it be? – genuine concern in his eyes.

Now as the rising sun cast its glow across the room, you squinted painfully against the light. Your head felt as though it was full of cotton; heavy, and scratchy, and unnatural on top of your shoulders. Hesitantly, you ran your tongue over your teeth and were equal parts relieved to find them all there and disgusted at the acrid, mineral taste the blood left behind. Blinking slowly, you tried to bring up your hand to rub at your eyes, but stopped short as you felt the large bandage draped across your forehead.

Slowly, you started to register the other bandages, on your arms, your cheek, across your abdomen. Your eyes grew wide as you finally registered the man facing away from you in the far corner of the room. Geralt’s broad strong back was hunched away from you as he rifled through herbs and small glass vials looking for something. Inexplicably, you found yourself disappointed to see he’d put his thick black tunic back on. Horrified by that realization, you literally gagged, startling Geralt and pulling his attention squarely onto you.

His big dumb beautiful face was all hard lines as he looked you over, stern eyes flashing to meet yours before dropping back down to the vial in his hands. You couldn’t help be notice the way the muscles in in jaw rippled and tensed as he sighed. He was oozing disappointment and anger, and that infuriated you.

“Am I dead?” you ask, squinting at him a little theatrically as you squirmed and winced in your bed.

“No.” he practically growled, his body tense as he made his way towards you slowly.

“Oh,” you breathed, bringing your eyes up to his before adding, “this isn’t hell?”

To your immense satisfaction, his stern eyes widened into shock, but then something unrecognizable flashed across his features – wait, was he hurt?

“Why, because I’m here?” he shouted, as if in confirmation of your hunch, and slammed the damp cloth he’d been holding back into the basin.

“No, jackass,” you retorted, pleased that despite the position you were in, you still had some semblance of an upper-hand, “because a griffin fucking fileted me like a fish and some poor drunk is probably downstairs slipping in a pool of my blood right now.”

You’d kind of hoped that he’d laugh, or at least have a comeback geared up for you, but Geralt just stood there staring at you, his mouth in a tight line, nostrils flaring.

Uncomfortable by the intensity of his stare and the silence accompanying it, you decide to continue to poke the bear.

“Come on, what’s with the face, Geralt? Pissed I’m still alive? You know you could have just closed the door over my body, let nature finish the bloody job.”

“Fuck, no! Y/n!” he screamed, startling you out of the attitude you’d put on, “I’m pissed because you’re an impossibly difficult woman hellbent on killing herself! I’m pissed because you don’t seem to fucking care about what happens to you! You can’t keep doing this Y/N! Because one of these days you’re going to get hurt and you’ll be too far away from me and I won’t be able to fucking save you, again! I am pissed because I am losing my mind spending every god-awful day wondering if you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed! Fucking hell, woman! If you didn’t find me – I-if I wasn’t here, with these herbs – Damnit Y/N!”

You just sat there, mouth opening and closing like a fish. You couldn’t believe it. You didn’t know what to say. This man, your nemesis, was in front of you pacing back and forth, breathing heavily, looking like a maniac. His nostrils were flaring more than the monster that almost killed you just yesterday. Part of you wanted to correct him and demand he never address you as ‘woman’ again, but his wild earnest eyes kept you quiet. My god… was he crying?

Before you could say anything, Geralt sighed gruffly, ran his large hand over his face and stormed out, mumbling something about needing to get you more water.

Left alone with your thoughts, you couldn’t stop yourself from spiralling. You’d expected him to be angry – hell, you wanted him to be angry! You’d humiliated yourself twice over, enraging him would ease the blow – but this was… different. He seemed genuinely concerned about you. And what was with his whole speech? He spent every day thinking about you? Worrying about you? There’s no way.

Sure, you thought about him daily, but that was out of spite! You hated the man! Why else would your heart race whenever you thought you spotted him in a crowd? Why else would you actively seek out the most dangerous contracts? What, like you were hoping these contracts would draw him out, and therefore, closer to you? As if!

Your ridiculous inner monologue was interrupted by Geralt’s return. The horrible brute knocked gently on the door before stepping inside, and your heart had the audacity to skip a beat.

Oh, you thought, fuck.

“I need to change the dressing on your wounds,” he grumbled, not meeting your eyes. You nodded wordlessly as he settled onto the chair next to you. You watched him work in silence, praying he would attribute your insane heartrate and flushed skin to a pain response from his work.

“Geralt?” you tried, chewing nervously on your cheek, as was just finished up with the last of your dressing.

“Hm?” he hummed, keeping his eyes cast down as he fussed with the bandage on the gash across your abdomen.

“Thank you… for saving me.”

He finally brought his gaze up to meet yours, but said nothing in return. He merely grunted in acknowledgment. You didn’t know why, but his silence in combination with his inscrutable gaze encouraged you to keep talking.

“I honestly only took this contract because I didn’t want you to have it,” you admitted bashfully.

“What the fuck? No one was taking it because they weren’t paying nearly enough! Hell, and you’re just a human,” he fumed, throwing up air-quotes as he said it, “so what – they offered you a third of nothing?”

Laughing lightly, you shoved him with your elbow, “they offered me three whole ducats!”

“Oh, wow,” he laughed, low and rumbling, “so a big pay day for you, eh?”

“Shut up,” you gasped as pain rippled through you with each peal of laughter, “knowing I could screw you over was payment enough!”

“Well congratulations are in order, you did manage to screw someone over,” he chided.

“Me,” you stated dryly, gesturing widely at your busted up body.

“You,” he echoed with a sigh that seemed to deflate him.

He suddenly looked so small, sitting there next to you. You watched him as clenched and unclenched his jaw, rubbing his large hands up and down his thighs – was he anxious? You mind raced as you felt his eyes travel slowly up your body. You held your breath as he worked up the nerve to finally bring his eyes up to yours.

The moment his eyes landed on yours, something shifted. Whatever had been lodged uncomfortably between the two of you all these years had finally clicked into place. This change, albeit small, was palpable. His eyes dropped to your lips and lingered there. He was looking at you like he’d never seen you before. Like he was afraid he might never see you again.

Without speaking, Geralt inched himself closer to you and reached a tender hand to tuck your hair behind your ears before cradling your face.

“You’re not allowed to die, do you hear me?” he whispered, gently stroking your cheek with his thumb.

You gave him a quick nod and brought your hand up to his, nuzzling into the warmth of his palm before giving his hand a quick kiss.

“I need to hear you say it,” he begged, bringing himself even closer to you.

“I do,” you breathed, trying to sit up to bring your face closer to his. “I’m not going to die, not on your watch, but I’m also not quitting.”

“Y/N –”

“No! If I quit, you’d get lazy. Who’d push you? What would be your driving force?”

“Wow,” he scoffed, looking at you incredulously but fondly, “you’re so fucking arrogant.”

“And yet…” you said, quirking a brow flirtatiously as you pulled him closer by the collar.

“… and yet?” he murmured, letting himself be pulled closer to you. His eyes half-closed and his lips slightly parted.

“You love me.”

“I love you.”

And then he kissed you. His mouth claimed yours urgently but his hands were ever gentle, ghosting over your bandages and caressing your skin with a feather-light tenderness that would have brought you to your knees had you not already been bedridden. Any hesitation or doubt melted away under the heat of his touch as all those years of tension sprung apart catastrophically. The knot you had carried in your stomach unfurled into flittering fireflies, their heat traveling up your stomach to your chest as his hands worked their way into your hair.

You didn’t know when they’d fallen, but you let out a shaky laugh as Geralt kissed away the tears on your cheeks, his thumb swiping at the tears his soft lips failed to catch. Breathing heavily, he rested his forehead against yours; his hands cupping your face as yours captured his.

Gods – this man was going to be the death of you.

1K notes · View notes

bard-llama · 3 years ago

Text

Today is Wednesday!?!?! Guess it’s WiP Wednesday then

I literally thought it was Tuesday until I looked at the clock on my car and it said Weds. How about some pre-relationship stuff?

Thronebreaker

I dunno where this fic is going, but the working title is Cajones lmao. This is set during Chapter 1 of Thronebreaker, right after Meve captured Gascon.

“You’re captured, Duke of Dogs,” the Queen said his name with derision and Gascon laughed all the louder for it.

“I’m right where I wanna be, Queenie,” he smirked, talking out of his ass. Mostly. There was an awfully good view, after all.

Said view glared fiercely down at him. “Wouldn’t try anything if I was you,” one of the soldiers tying him up muttered. “She’ll have your balls in a vice afore you can say ‘mutt’.”

Gascon grinned his very best salacious grin. “Why, Queenie is welcome to grasp my balls any time she’d like.”

The queen’s look of disgust was damaging to his ego and she stepped forward, nodding to the soldiers behind him to shove him to his knees. She kicked his thighs apart and pressed her foot very intentionally against his cock. Then she started applying pressure.

Getting hard was really, really not the right reaction, but Gascon’s body was doing it anyway, so he figured he may as well lean into it. Hopefully she wouldn’t actually maim him.

“Sweetheart, if you wanted to touch my cock, you need but have asked.”

She pressed down harder and a muscle in his back twitched, but he kept his eyes steady on hers, daring her to do it.

The world outside of her eyes and her foot seemed to fade out of existence, and he kept all of his wits focused on matching her ferocity, challenging her with everything he had. If he was lucky, she might find that intriguing enough not to kill him immediately. Or to step a little too hard.

“It would seem all bandits are vile men,” Queen Meve spat and it took more restraint than Gascon knew he had not to reply, ‘good thing I’m not a man, then’. Realistically, though, the queen would not only not understand but maybe view him as even lower because of it.

See? Sometimes he could keep his mouth shut!

“And it would seem the queens of the north are as alluring as one hears.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Not a single untruth shall cross my lips,” Gascon promised, daring her to use that. He hadn’t practiced his wordplay much lately, so it was good to dust off those skills with a little verbal sparring.

Also, he liked the way her attention entirely focused on him felt. One of the proudest women on the continent, from the rumors, and he was standing – well, sitting – on even ground with her. She was treating him as an equal and he flicked his tongue out to wet his lips.

“Is that so?” she cocked an eyebrow. “Then what shall I ask first? Let’s start simple – who told you where to find the tax money?”

“Not you,” he winked at her.

“Ugh,” she scoffed and his smirk only grew wider. There was a battle happening here, a showdown that he refused to falter during.

“Really, though, do you need more gold?” his mouth said without input from his brain. “I mean, that gilded armor – it’s quite shiny.”

Eyes narrowed, she pushed her foot down harder, and he wasn’t sure whether the twitch he suppressed was from pleasure or pain. “It is,” Meve agreed. “Makes it easier to wash your blood off of.”

“Ooooh, scary,” he drawled. “Think what else it makes easier to clean,” he waggled his eyebrows.

She snarled, pressing down harder, and his breathing was starting to come fast, but he would not back down.

“Your Majesty!” a messenger cried out loudly, terror evident in his tone as he stagger towards her, stinking of sweat and blood. “Nilfgaard’s crossed the Yaruga! Black-clad hoards! Villages burn! Folk lie murdered!”

“Nilfgaard!? Gods help us,” Count Caldwell bemoaned, but there was a look in his eye that he couldn’t hide and quite suddenly, Gascon realized that he had been double crossed. There was no arranged escape for him, no prize awaiting his Strays. Caldwell had never intended to pay.

He’d known Nilfgaard was coming.

“Awoooo,” he called, warning his Strays. They hadn’t been stupid enough to trust Caldwell, at least, and there were plenty of Strays in transit that would be able to break them out of Lyria Castle. There was a way out of this, he was certain of it.

The Queen seemed to agree, proclaiming grandly that they would be riding to the aid of Dravograd. With their captives trailing along behind them, of course, wrists tied to the wagons in front and staggering after them.

Iorveth/Roche (pre-relationship)

This one was just an excuse to write sex pollen lol. lus gnè = Scots Gaelic for “sex plant”

“Iorveth!” one of his commandos called, and Iorveth turned to a sight he’d never expected to see. Face bruised and bloody, Iorveth’s mortal enemy was dragged in front of him, captured and subdued by two of his Scoia’tael.

Iorveth would admit to being genuinely taken off guard. This was not how things were supposed to go. Everyone knew that their eventual meeting would end with only one of them walking away. It was supposed to be a magnificent fight, the kind that demanded everything from Iorveth – but in the end, he would walk away a victor.

So why the fuck was Vernon Roche being hauled by the grip on his arms in front of Iorveth, denying him his battle!?

He looked at his general in explanation as she ordered Roche dropped in front of him.

“He surrendered,” Maeral reported, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Rightfully so, too, because why would Vernon Roche surrender!? “In a field of lus gnè on the outskirts of the forest.”

Iorveth nodded, assessing his prisoner. The dh’oine stared up at him with dark eyes, glare every bit as forbidding as it had been during their brief encounter outside Flotsam mere days ago.

Which made even less sense, because if Roche still had his fighting spirit, why would he surrender!?

It had to be a trap. Surely it had to be a trap.

Maeral clearly thought so too, because Roche was decked out in the heavy duty dimeritium shackles. Not that dimeritium would do anything against Roche – none of Iorveth’s reports on Roche indicated even a hint of magic – but Maeral was probably just covering all bets.

Besides, Roche was a tricky one. If anyone would be able to hide all intel on their magic from the Scoia’tael, it would be Roche.

Iorveth stepped closer to Roche, glaring right back at him, neither of them speaking.

What could the trap be? What could Roche possibly gain by surrendering?

Distraction, perhaps? A means to keep them occupied while the Blue Stripes snuck up on them?

“Send out patrols and prepare for attack,” Iorveth barked in Elder. Every guard in the room leaving would certainly clue Roche in to the fact that they were onto him, but every second of subterfuge could lead to essential knowledge.

Except. When the guards left – Maeral with a parting warning to be careful – Roche… didn’t really react. At all.

Iorveth frowned. Roche’s eyes glared fiercely, but there was an odd hazy quality to them, and Roche’s brow was dotted with sweat and his face was flushed and–

“What’s wrong with you?” Iorveth demanded.

Roche snorted, glare sharpening. “Getting a little personal, aren’t you?”

“Ugh,” Iorveth rolled his eye. Of course Roche was going to be difficult. “My men didn’t beat you,” he said, thinking through what about this situation screamed at him that something was wrong with Roche.

“No?” Roche cocked an eyebrow, which restarted the bleeding from a cut on his brow.

“You were found outside the arachas’ territory, plus you’d be unlikely to escape relatively unscathed,” Iorveth continued, walking around the man knelt in the middle of the floor. “Nowhere near a body of water, either.”

In fact, Iorveth realized, the field of flowers Roche had been found in was not only part of a nekker tribe’s domain, but was notable because of what the flowers were.

“I would not lose against a fucking drowner,” Roche protested, but Iorveth ignored his words and focused on the breathless quality of his voice, the way his chest rose and fell rapidly, the way his skin was too pale.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Iorveth swore, the turth of the matter finally becoming clear. “You ate one of the lus gnè flowers, didn’t you?”

Roche blinked, face creasing in confusion. “I what?”

“The field of flowers you surrendered in,” Iorveth said, “they have a known neurological effect on most species. But only when consumed.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Roche frowned. “That’s what’s happening to me!? The effects of some fucking flower I apparently injested during a fight!?”

“So it would seem.”

#throne3 #rorveth #meve x gascon #iorveth x roche #pre-relationship #WiP Wednesday #the witcher #thronebreaker

9 notes · View notes

bloededhoine · 4 years ago

Text

world building cause twn doesn't part 6: geography (3/3)

colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras

previous part

series masterpost

episode 7: nazair

yen visits *vomit* istredd in nazair in this episode. why was he in nazair? i don't know. probably there was a hideous eugenist conference there and they needed him as a keynote speaker but idk

we see geralt at the marnadal stair again in this episode, observing the nilfgaardians before he goes into cintra

episode 8: sodden hill

sodden hill is, as you remember, the north's last stand against the invading nilfgaardian forces. the river that you see right north of it is the yaruga, which traditionally separates the north from the south

sodden hill has huge strategic and historical importance, and will be referenced a Lot in future seasons as nilfgaard tries to get revenge against the 22 mages that utterly humiliated them

important geological features

okay, now i'm gonna go into the specific parts of the continent you will probably hear referenced a lot, either in this series, twn, the books, or the games. here's the whole map for reference

oceans and seas and shit

i don't know the difference between them

the great sea separates the new continent from the old continent, basically sapkowski's version of the atlantic ocean. the north sea in the witcher is really the same as the north sea in the real world, it's just a smaller part of the larger ocean

it also contains the great sea civilization, where multiple aquatic races live in a complex society, and the sedna abyss, a bermuda triangle type area between skellige and cintra where ciri's parents died.

the gulf of praxeda is just really cold and according to dandelion contains an island full of seagulls?

rivers

the yaruga river, as i have mentioned quite a few times, generally separates the north from the south. this definition is a bit over simplified since borders are less stable than my gender, but it gets the point across

the yaruga is also fucking massive (it goes across nearly the entire continent) and never freezes over, so it really is the north's last natural defense against nilfgaard

the mouth of the yaruga was also where the first nordlings arrived on the continent and later built the cities of cintra and nastrog

important cities include the two above, dillingen (where we meet the lovely regis), sodden hill, and lyria

next up, the pontar!

the pontar (aevon y pont ar gwennelen in hen llinge) divides the north, providing a border between redania/temeria and kaedwen/aedirn. it runs from the blue mountains to the north sea, with the free city of novigrad at its mouth.

so many of the super important witcher cities are on the pontar, including rinde, oxenfurt, flotsam, hagge, vergen, and loc muinne

last and sort of least, the alba

this one flows from the great sea to lower alba, the original part of nilfgaard. it's really only important because it provides water to the city of the golden tower, home to the emperor of nilfgaard

mountains

the dragon mountains separate the continent we know from the far north. not many people live there cause it's so fucking cold and filled with dragons, but there are a few exceptional human craftsmen.

the kestrel mountains form a barrier between hengfors league and redania and kaedwen. they're really remote, and the only way to cross them is through the buina pass (also leads to kaer morhen!)

i've talked a lot about the blue mountains before since they are easily the most populated, especially by elves including ida emean and filavandrel aén findháil. they separate the majority of the continent from the far east and are home to the witcher fortress kaer morhen, dol blathanna, and the sorcerer school ban ard.

mahakam, a vassal state of temeria and the mountain range dividing temeria and aedirn, and tir tochair, a mountain range separating nilfgaard from the eastern korath desert, are both inhabited primarily by gnomes and dwarves, many of whom work in the mines that produce most of the continent's iron, opal, and weapons

other

the korath desert, also called the frying pan, is a massive desert between the continent and the far east. although both zerrikania and nilfgaard have tried to make claims to the land, none of it has really stuck

beyond of the continent

i mention zerrikania quite a few times, it's a large human kingdom to the east of the continent. although the two don't have much contact, we know zerrikanians love women with swords and dragons. i'd fit in well there

the only way to get there from the continent is through the elskerdeg pass, but even that is barely used

haakland is in the northeast, we don't know much about the people there except that they make really nice silk that is traded with redania, and are excellent horsemen and archers. they also launch a huge invasion of the north around 100 years after twn

ofir, hannu, zangwebar, and barsa may exist on another geographic continent south of nilfgaard, but we don't really hear much about them.

74 notes · View notes

kirk-spock-in-the-impala · 5 years ago

Text

Witcher Timeline (sources cited)

Known dates are cited to source. This includes book/game canon and DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS for those who have only seen the Netflix series.

This took so much time and effort extrapolating from all sources and finding relative dates, so I hope it’s helpful.

---------

Late 1170s - Geralt of Rivia is born (this is based on him being “nearly a century” old in the Witcher 3, which takes place in 1274)

1173 - Yennefer is born (she states she’s 94 in The Tower of Swallow, which is set in 1267)

Late 1180s - Yennefer enters Aretuza (there is no set date, but she is presumed to be an early teenager at the oldest)

Late 1210s - the Black Sun occurs, prompting the “Curse of the Black Sun” whereby 60 girls, born during the eclipse, are hunted down and either imprisoned or slaughtered (some, like Renfri and Eskel’s child surprise, Deirdre, escape) (The Witcher game; “Lesser Evil”)

1229 - Jaskier is born (Jaskier is 38 in The Tower of Swallow, which is set in 1267)

mid-1230s - Renfri encounters Geralt in Blaviken while hunting Stregobor. Geralt earns the title The Butcher of Blaviken (”Lesser Evil”; no set date is given for Blaviken, but Renfri is roughly 18 and was born in the late 1210s)

1237 - Pavetta is born; Duny saves Roegger of Ebbing’s life (Pavetta’s father) and is granted the Law of Surprise, giving him the right to Pavetta.

1247 - Geralt and Jaskier meet in Posada; encounter with Filavandrel at the Edge of the World. Jaskier 18 and Geralt is around 75 or so (his exact birthdate is unknown, but it is in the early 1170s)

1252 - Pavetta’s betrothal feast (she’s 15); Geralt is granted the Law of Surprise; Geralt breaks the curse on Duny (who is future-Emperor Emhyr in hiding) (Jaskier is 23, he’s known Geralt 5 years)

1252 - Geralt removes the striga’s curse for King Foltest of Temeria. The striga, henceforth Princess Adda the White, was born a striga in 1239 and terrorized the city for six years after emerging seven years after she “died” in the womb when her mother was murdered. (The Last Wish; the Witcher games)

1253 - Ciri is born on Beltane in Skellige

1257 - Pavetta dies in a shipwreck at Sedna Abyss; Duny (Emhyr) is presumed dead, but was in fact teleported away by the mage Vilgefortz to Ebbing (dependent state of Nilgaard). Vilgefortz was meant to transport Pavetta and Ciri away as well, but the plan went awry when Pavetta learned of Duny’s plans to bring them all to Nilfgaard, left Ciri with Calanthe in secret, and argued with Duny, ultimately being thrown overboard to her death. (The Witcher novels)

1257 - Emhyr becomes Emperor of Nilfgaard after overthrowing the Usurper (The Witcher novels)

~1257 - Jaskier and Geralt encounter both the djinn and Yennefer in Rinde (there is no exact date given for this in canon, but reference is made to it being about a decade after they met). (Jaskier is ~28) (”The Last Wish”; Netflix series)

1262 - Geralt rescues Ciri from Brokilon Forest after she flees from her betrothal to Prince Kistrin of Verden (from the “Sword of Destiny” short story; this is not shown in the Netflix show)

1262/1263 - The dragon hunt (also another event with no set date in canon, but we know it’s about six years after Geralt meets Yennefer and that it’s before the Slaughter of Cintra. (Jaskier is ~33-34)

1262 - 1263 - the First Nilfgaard-Nordling war. Ends with Nilfgaard’s defeat at Sodden Hill (The Witcher novels)

1263 - The Slaughter of Cintra and the Battle of Sodden Hill (”The Tower of Swallow”; The Blood of Elves)

1264 - Geralt encounters Yurga in Temeria and is gravely wounded. Yurga brings him on his cart across the Yaruga and to his home in Sodden. In the books, Geralt encounters Jaskier at the crossing of the Yaruga. This does not happen in the Netflix series. (”Something More” from Sword of Destiny)

1263-1264 - Ciri escapes Cintra, first spending two weeks wandering the forests before being taken in by druids for a month and then spending six months with Goldencheeks, Yurga’s wife, on their farm in Lower Sodden. (”Something More”)

1264 - Geralt and Ciri reunite on Yurga’s farm in Lower Sodden; they start to travel toward Kaer Morhen for Ciri’s safety and training (”Something More”)

1266 - After training at Kaer Morhen, in the spring of 1266, Ciri travels with Geralt and Triss (who came to teach her at Kaer Morhen that winter) to Ellander to continue her education at the Temple of Melitele (The Blood of Elves)

1267 - Yennefer takes Ciri from the Temple of Melitele to Aretuza to continue her education. But at a conference of mages in June 1267, there’s a coup, during which Ciri escapes through an unstable portal and is ejected in the Korath Desert (under Nilfgaardian control), after which she joins a group of bandits called The Rats under the pseudonym “Falka” (Time of Contempt)

1267-1268 - The Second Northern War; ends with the Peace of Cintra on April 2, 1268. Cintra is ceded to Nilfgaard. (Witcher novels (various))

1274 - Events of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt take place; Ciri is 21 and Geralt is “nearly a century”, as he says. (The Witcher 3;

----------------

If you want to know any more dates, let me know and I’ll do my best. The timeline is occasionally internally inconsistent, or dates are not cited, so that’s why there are some ranges given above. I also use book canon as the control where conflicts exist between that and the games/show.

#the witcher #kirk-spock-in-the-impala writes #the witcher timeline #timeline project #geralt of rivia #jaskier #renfri #yennefer #ciri

101 notes · View notes

aenwoedbeannaa · 5 years ago

Text

Forest Fires Pt. 6 | Geralt of Rivia x Reader

Warnings: None, for once. Hmm.

Summary: Geralt is tied to her by destiny, and you are tied to her by guilt. Now that you’ve chosen to stop outrunning the inevitable, you are going to need some help from one of the Continent’s most powerful sorceresses.

Word Count: 2,444

A/N: The plot thickens. Hope you all enjoy! And hopefully I have everyone who wanted to be tagged on the taglist, it’s a bit hard to keep up with, but I am trying my best! (I will be making a specific post/page on here to keep my taglists up-to-date hopefully this week.) Thanks to @salmonbutter for the original request/idea.

If you enjoy my work, be sure to follow to stay up to date and maybe reblog if you’d like (it always helps out)! And if you’d like to be added to my taglists, either comment or message me. Thank you all for reading!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Masterlist

In Search of Aid

“The Temple of Melitele?” you ask, eyebrows raised in suspicion, “You cannot be serious.”

The Witcher looks at you with an expression that indicates that he is in fact quite serious. It has been two days since the Nilfgaardian unit descended upon your home, and the two of you are still picking your way through the forest. You are tired from walking and sore from sleeping on the forest floor – not to mention cold down to your very bones. The weather is unnaturally cold for this time of year, which seems only reasonable considering the state of things—Nilfgaard threatening the Northern Realms via indirect means, using Scoia’tael and other non-humans as guerrilla armies, sending hundreds to their deaths for the sake of expanding its borders north of the Yaruga.

Your life as a recluse in the forest had suited you well. You’d never cared for politics; even when you’d been a court mage in Nilfgaard. It was nothing more than a group of powerful men making decisions for the whole of the Continent; moving humans and non-humans alike as if they were nothing more than pieces on a chessboard. And, while Nilfgaard was certainly your current and most pressing pursuer, you were far from fond of any of the other nations, either. They were all the same—tyrants with too much power and too little care for the citizens whose lives they were supposed to protect.

So, when the Witcher suggests that the two of you head for Temeria, specifically Ellander and the Temple of Melitele, you are more than wary. You remember Aretuza, the things you learned there – the way it was run. You expect the Temple of Melitele is much the same despite the difference in course material.

“Why not the Temple?” Geralt challenges, “Do you have any better ideas?”

“Mhm,” you mutter noncommittally, “Going somewhere less… populated, for a start.” You narrow your eyes at him, not wanting to admit that you don’t have anywhere specific in mind. You’d been hiding in the forest too long; you hardly knew where was safe and where wasn’t.

So, instead, you launch into a list of reasons why the Temple of Melitele is a bad idea. “It’s in the middle of Ellander, right off the main road.”

Geralt is quick to cut in with a response, “Yes; and the Scoia’tael rarely attack along the main roads. And running to Nilfgaardian troops is even less likely; they aren’t stupid enough to march the main roads of Temeria.”

“So, you think,” you say rather bitterly. If there is one thing that you are certain of, it is that you can never guess what Nilfgaard will do. You’d never expected them to attempt to kidnap the child eleven years ago, and yet they had—and they would have succeed had you not deserted.

And they still might succeed, since you left her there, you remind yourself bitterly. Who knows where the girl is now. She could very well be in Nilfgaard. Hell, she could have died in Cintra for all you know.

One thing you do know is that the Witcher’s calm demeanor – usually so comforting – is pushing you over the edge of irritated to downright livid at alarming speed. He sounds so sure of himself it’s maddening. But then again, if the Law of Surprise is real, and his fate is interwoven with the girl’s, perhaps his intuition should be trusted. You, after all, are bound to the Princess of Cintra by guilt rather than by faith.

Yet you cannot bring yourself to trust that Geralt will not lead the two of you stupidly and needlessly into a trap. You’d been on your own for long enough that you’d forgotten what it was like to have to talk to and compromise with other people – to consider other’s opinions. Until recently, whenever you’d wanted to do something, you’d just done it. You’d needed no one, and no one had needed you. But now, as you found yourself hopelessly tangled with the stranger who’d turned up out of nowhere right in your backyard. There was no way around it – the two of you would have to reach some sort of decision – together.

“Why?” you demand, not particularly wanting to hear his reasoning but knowing that you needed to.

“Because,” he responds, still giving no indication that he is anything but collected, “I have a friend there, Mother Nenneke. She’s in charge of the Temple, and she’s never turned me away.”

“And pray tell, Geralt, what help a nun would be in a time of war,” you scoff. “If Niflgaard turns up at the gate, I doubt a gaggle of nuns would be much help.” The idea of being shut up behind stone walls pressed like a weight on your chest, reminding you of your years spent in Nilfgaard – years you would rather forget. Even if it was not the same as being shut up behind the walls of a castle with a king and court of fools, it would still mean being stuck behind stone walls surrounded by other people. Too many eyes and ears; too many who might profit from informing Nilfgaard of the two strange guests.

Geralt actually smiles at your comment despite the fact that you were very much serious and not at all in the mood for hearing jokes, much less making one, “You’d be surprised.”

However, some of your anger evaporates when you see a sudden smile and the flicker of memory in his eyes. You are curious now, what exactly this Mother Nenekke could have done to surprise a Witcher. Your gaze softens a bit and your words lose a bit of their edge, “So these are warmongering nuns?” you ask, eyebrows raised, “I didn’t know that they teach sword fighting and battle strategies at the convent.”

“I once watched Nenneke turn two knights around in their tracks,” Geralt says, another flicker of memory flashing warm in his eyes, “Though she used words, not a sword.”

You have to admit, the woman does sound rather intriguing, and perhaps the Temple wouldn’t be a horrible place to stay. It was unlikely that Nilfgaard would go looking for a Witcher and a former court mage at a temple – perhaps it was not the worst idea. Still, you do not like the idea of travelling to a major city, nor do you trust that everyone within the Temple is as loyal to Nenneke as Geralt seems to think. If there is one thing you learned at Court, it is that people are not to be trusted; especially in places like that.

“Hm,” you must, eyes screwed up in thought, “In theory it seems like a good idea,” you tell him, “But I just don’t see how you can trust that no one there will spill secrets to the Nilfgaardians.”

Of course, you know this is a risk that the two of you must take no matter where you end up. Trust was hard to come by in the best of times, and even more so during times of war. One could never be sure who was on whose side, and how long they would remain an ally.

“Nenneke has no interest in spilling secrets to the people who’d gladly see her goddess burned away in the Eternal Fire,” Geralt says.

You pause, chewing your lip as you consider his words. It made sense enough, you supposed. At least it would give the two of you a destination, which was better than aimlessly wandering the woods. But, before you can voice your thoughts, Geralt is speaking again.

“I also know of someone who is rumored to have headed there – a powerful sorceress.” He looks at you for a moment, eyes focused on your crystal necklace. Of course, the Conclave would have some interest in this whole situation. They had a hand in everything.

“Who is this sorceress?” you ask, sounding much more eager than you’d expected to. It had been years since you’d even allowed yourself to think of your sisters from Aretuza, and you had to know if this was one of them.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg,” the Witcher answers.

“Yenna?” you ask, eyes wide. The last you’d heard of Yennefer; she’d left her job as a court mage in Aedirn to live on her own. It had taken time, but you’d eventually followed her lead. And now, somehow, the two of you ended up tangled in this mess anyway.

“You know her?” the Witcher asks.

You nod slowly, lips twitching up to form the ghost of a smile. “We were at Aretuza together,” you say, “But I’ve not seen her in a lifetime.” You pause for a moment, remembering the headstrong girl you knew at school before continuing, “I just… Yenna at the Temple of Melitele? Are you certain?” It was hard to believe she’d be anywhere where there was someone in charge who was not her.

“Not certain, but the information is from a good source,” the Witcher says with a sideways glance as the two of you pick your way through some especially dense brush.

“Did this source happen to mention why she’s there?” you question, quite dumbfounded by the whole thing. “And did this source give you any reason to believe she will help you?”

“No, they didn’t,” Geralt said with a shrug. “But she’d at the Temple and not tied to any kingdom, which makes her infinitely better than any other mage or sorceress on the Continent.”

You know Geralt didn’t mean it as a dig at you, but you cross you arms anyway, “Right. The rest of them are absolute garbage.”

Geralt stops walking and turn around to face you, blocking your path. “Oh, don’t pout,” he says with a half-smile.

You roll your eyes and take a step to move past him, but he catches your arm to stop you. You turn back to look at him, gnawing at your lower lip. You have no reason to be upset – hell, you’re excited to see your old friend. But there’s a small part of you that worries that the only reason Geralt has paid you any mind at all is because you’ve been the only human contact he’s had in weeks. The comment had brought your anxieties to the surface.

“Just because I don’t do magic,” you say evenly, “Doesn’t mean that I’m incapable.”

Geralt’s expression sobers as he looks down at you, catching your eyes with golden-yellow. “I don’t recall ever insinuating that,” he says in a tone that is somewhere between apologetic and annoyed. You can’t figure out which.

You sigh, frustrated with yourself more than you are frustrated with him. Yennefer was the most talented in your class – she had this way with magic that most of the girls at Aretuza didn’t. There was always this strength in her that you’d envied. And naturally, you’d envied her having been sent to Aedirn rather than Nilfgaard. It took you several years, but you’d eventually realized it didn’t matter much which of the kingdoms you were sent to; they were all pretty shite.

You lower your eyes, staring at the muddy ground as you take a deep breath in and out again before finally flicking your eyes back up to meet the Witcher’s. “A Witcher and two rogue sorceresses,” you say with the slightest bit of humor, “This poor child.”

A small smile breaks out on Geralt’s face, erasing the clouds from his eyes. The world was truly descending into chaos; and despite it all there were reasons to laugh.

“Now, I’m going to need you to picture the Temple as clearly as you possibly can,” you say, quickly turning back to the matter at hand. You are tired of freezing to death out here, and it could take ages to reach Ellander on foot.

Geralt, on the other hand does not look enthused. He even let’s go of your arm and takes a step back. You almost laugh at the sight. Somehow, you don’t expect him to be afraid of anything, but Geralt is clearly afraid now. You cross your arm once more, cocking your head to the side and smirking up at him, “Oh, come on, Geralt,” you say, “It may have been a while, but I certainly still know how to portal.”

Geralt’s face has gone deathly pale, and he only shakes his head, “Not the quality of your portals I’m worried about,” he says, “Just portals in general.”

“Portals,” you laugh, “Portals are your great fear?”

“You say that as if it’s ridiculous!” Geralt responds.

You take a step toward him, shaking your head, “Because it is ridiculous.”

Of course, you know plenty of people do not like portals. You’d been terrified of them initially, but Tissia had broken that fear rather quickly. It was impossible to be a sorceress and have that fear hanging around. Aside from the fact that magic was far too easily sensed and traced, there was no better way to travel. Traversing the Continent could take insurmountable amounts of time, but portals shrink that to a few seconds.

Geralt grumbles something under his breath as you wrap your arms around him, but he wraps his arms around you anyway. For a moment, you just stand with your head resting against his chest, breathing in the scent of him and just enjoying the feeling of being so close to him; enjoying the last few moments of being completely alone with him.

But you can hear his heart beating more quickly than usual, truly unusual for a Witcher. So you take a deep breath and squeeze him a bit tighter. You’d only been to Ellander once, but you gingerly open your mind to reach into his. You can see the stone walls, the bright gardens. You can feel the warmth of the sun on a summer day and smell wood smoke wafting in from the village.

But visions of Ellander and the Temple of Melitele are not the only things his mind reveals. You feel slightly wrong – you shouldn’t be probing his mind – but you know that it is necessary. There’s no way you’d get the both of you safely from this place in the woods and to the Temple without him. But still, you can’t help but smile into his chest as you squeeze your eyes shut and let the magic flow from you, wrapping the two of you in ribbons of shadow and light.

You are smiling because the last string of thoughts that stream from Geralt fill you with warmth despite the stomach-turning speed with which you slip through the universe—

“Fucking hell. She’s lucky I love her.”

* * *

To be continued.

Taglist: @dark-night-sky-99, @pantrashtic, @lilred254, @cilorawr, @blackravena @keithseabrook27, @danielarlington, @jesseswartzwelder@fairytale07 @divaroze, @evyiione, @salmonbutter, @godsaverosemary, @dontforgetthepieh @little-miss-emmalie, @hookahpop @haru-ririchiyo; @unnamedmaincharacter @geeksareunique @lazilyscentedwerewolf @boogeywoogeywoogeywoogeywoogey @alwayshave-faith @stretchkingblog97 @alienemilyyyy @hufflepupperino @curlyhairedandconfused @nikolanna @divineslipcast @p3nny4urth0ught5

#the witcher #the witcher fanfiction #fanfiction #geralt fanfiction #geralt reader insert #geralt x reader #geralt of rivia x reader #story: forest fires #witcher #geralt of rivia #yennefer of vengerberg #reader insert #fic

116 notes · View notes

therealvagabird · 5 years ago

Text

Adan of Attre

A Witcher fanfiction written for/about my dear @doobler as a birthday/Valentine’s Day present. We recently watched the Netflix show together, and I’m a fan of the lore, so I thought he might enjoy a little action-fantasy.

Read below, or on my WordPress.

It is never a simple thing when a witcher enters a town. No matter how innocuous the circumstance, or unobtrusive the individual, trouble is want to crop up.

Few saw the figure enter the hamlet, which sat on the eastern side of the Angra river, near to the conflux where the frontier fort of Glevitzingen lay. It was a slow afternoon after a long, hot day, and the traveler came in a hood, shrouded in the fading light of evening, and in the company of a caravan. Traders from Zerrikania, who were exotic enough company to attract the attention of the local farmers, looking to see if they couldn’t buy some matchless trinket with but a portion of their life’s savings. The witcher, who rode no horse and whose legs were tired from long hours traded between sitting restless in the back of a covered cart or walking alongside to try and alleviate some boredom, left the itinerant merchants to their trade and headed towards a thatched building that looked sure to be the local tavern.

It was a nice town, for some backwater of Lyria, which seemed to enjoy a modicum of peace and wealth despite its minor status at the edge of the inhospitable eastern wilderness, by virtue of its position near to the Angra-Yaruga crossings. The houses, though rough and worn, with thatch roofs and no windows, were decorated here and there by paintings of earthen pigments, or charms of dried wildflowers that hung from the rafter-beams. Men, women, and children were all washed more than the average yeo-person thanks to having the river nearby, even if peasants were loath to go near running water often.

The witcher, unnoticed and hidden behind their loam-brown traveling cloak, made their way into the bar. Candles set their soft glow over several of the tables, and a good number of the locals were enjoying drinks and simple meals at the end of their working week. Maybe one or two spared the monster hunter a glance, but he was quick, and drifted over to place a handful of coppers on the bar in plain few of the maid.

“Rivian, if you have it.” The witcher spared a smile, and the woman gasped as she spied, for a moment, cat’s eyes beneath the weather-beaten hood.

Walking to the back of the building, constructed more like a longhouse on account of the rustic architecture, the traveler found one table yet unclaimed, and sat turned away from the rest of the room, throwing their cloak from their shoulders over the back of their chair. A flick of the fingers, a muttered syllable, and the disregarded candle on the table sprung to life as if by mere nature.

The hunter took out a bound scroll and unrolled it into a map that sprawled across their side of the table. Here they were at the Yaruga at last. The Northern Kingdoms. Once he managed to find a good boat downriver, he would be in Cintra in no time at all.

A smile cracked the slayer’s face – a rare sight for his kind. It all felt so familiar. It’d been some time since he’d returned westward, after a good several years of travel across Zerrikania; but with the riches he’d managed to acquire it would be a welcome reprieve to set up in Cintra and scout just where the best contracts were along the western coast.

He was just rolling up the map, satisfied, when a rich mug of lambic was set down in front of him.

“Thank you.” He nodded with unerring politeness to the serving maid, who was dark haired and full-cheeked. A picture of rustic beauty. Her own head nodded like a pinecone shaking on the branch, and she hurried off before he could even spare a tip for the quick service.

They did indeed have Rivian kriek, though. Perhaps this place wasn’t as bad as the tracts of wetland that surrounded it made it seem.

Of course, it is not the lot of a witcher to enjoy contentedness for long.

“Hail, killer.” A voice both rough and sharp sounded from over the monster hunter’s shoulder, before the bulk of a human form swung around and sat itself opposite the traveler. Some laborer clad in faded yellow and muddy brown.

“Hail.” And the witcher could see a flash of surprise in the other man’s eyes. Indeed where the town local was a wide and gruff man perhaps into his thirties, with a face like an old apple and hair like straw, the inhuman knight was a picture of incongruous youth. A mop of darkest brown hair topped a pale, olive-toned face, almost cherubic with its wide eyes and scattering of freckles. Those eyes were most unsettling, as their size along with the darkness of their sockets made the bright, viper-like mutation of the witcher that much more prominent. There were but a handful of signs on that otherwise pristine face as to the wanderer’s line of work: a raking of scars back along their left temple, one deep scar that ran from under their right ear just to the dimple of their cheek, and a harsh texture to the skin on the same side of their neck, spiderwebbed with the ravages of some untold injury.

The leathery local snapped from the momentary unnerving and stared back into the witcher’s unnatural eyes with daring disdain, “Folks ‘round here forget I ain’t like the rest of them farmers and fisherwomen. You know I was a soldier in the Lyrian guard once?”

“Mm?” the mutant nodded in feigned interest.

“And when I was a soldier, I saw quite a few things. I recognize things,” He glared, “Two blades, strange amulet – but I had to see the eyes.”

It was true, and plain for most to see, though the pair of swords on the witcher’s back were of a lighter type than most. The amulet, of bright silver, was cast in the form of a snarling lion’s head, crowned with a small set of horns, and flanked by bat’s wings.

“Where you from, creature?” the yokel hissed.

“Name’s Adan of Attre.” The witcher leaned back in his chair.

“You don’ look it.”

“It’s just a name,” he shrugged, “Headed back that way, though. Been a while in Zerrikania.”

“Yer not welcome ‘ere in Rosecross,” the gruff man spat, “Maybe time to start turnin’ back some o’ them traders if they bring in types like you. We don’ need more trouble ‘ere. Yer not stayin’.”

“Alright.” Adan sighed, straightening up a little, eyes heavy-lidded and unamused, “This has gone on long enough.”

The witcher passed a hand in front of the churl’s face, their fingers performing an intricate dance for but a second.

“You’re going to go tip the barmaid and throw yourself out.” Adan spoke

“Y-yeah, I—” the man arose from his seat, eyes looking confused and glazed like that of a regretful drunk, “Yeah I’ll just be leavin’.” He stumbled across the tavern, clutching at his temple as he fished in his pocket, pulling out a few coppers to toss onto the bar before heading for the door. The witcher went back to his beer.

“Ay!” another voice, harsh and reedy, rang out after the loud scrape of a chair across the floorboards, “I fuckin’ saw that! Hexer! You’re a damned witch!”

Adan turned in his chair to spy another of the villagers having risen from their table, finger pointed, and birdlike face contorted in rage. There was a hush that passed over the room as all attention turned to the confrontation in the making, before mutters of angered agreement began filtering towards the witcher.

Kicking back his chair, Adan got to his feet, stance squared and hand going to the hilt of his steel blade. Threats weren’t his preference, but a threat that ended a fight was better than a fight starting at all.

The townsfolk, incensed as they were, seemed taken aback at the sight of the witcher that now stood before him. As before, it was maybe that they were distracted by his elfin features, but there was more to it than that. In many ways, the itinerant warrior resembled a noble or merchant more than a bloodthirsty vagrant. They wore a waistcoat of layered dark leather and forest green cloth, trimmed with brass and dotted with many sharp studs that suggested brigandine splint beneath. A high collar guarded their throat, and their feet and wrists were protected by flexible splinted boots and bracers, while a chain shirt peaked from the edges of their short sleeves. Together with a strange assortment of patinated golden trinkets upon their fingers and wrists, a jewel in their ear, and a yellow sash about their waist held in place by one of many pouch-laden belts, they were a strange and exotic sight compared even to the finer knights who sometimes rode in from Glevitzingen or Rivia.

Before all hell could break loose, Adan felt the sudden weight of a hand on his shoulder, as a man stepped beside him. It took all his willpower to stifle the instinctual urge to incapacitate the interloper before they could show themselves as a threat or not, but the witcher stayed his hand.

“Sorry, sorry!” the new arrival stammered in a hoarse tone, “I’ll see to this one. Don’t need to ruin a good evening’s drinks!” he eyed the group, and Adan regarded the man, finding him rather aged in years but with a well-kempt beard and sharp eyes, “Back to dinner with you!” he snapped then, and in the same instant began pushing Adan towards the door by the shoulder, walking just behind.

“Let’s get you somewhere safer,” the local savior whispered to the monster slayer, “No need for bloodshed. We must talk.”

Adan didn’t bother with a word in edgewise until the door of the inn was slammed behind them.

Turning, the witcher took in a full assessment of his would-be rescuer. As he’d spied before, they appeared to be a local man, with simple yet well-made garments typical to an ealdorman or elder freeman, dyed a dark blue. A swept-back shock of grey hair was kept tight under a flat, brimless cloth hat, and their beard was neat-trimmed beneath a long nose, keen eyes, and bushy brows in turn. They were not a large man, having the hunch of old age, but their face looked far from wizened, and their hands seemed quick and restless where they cupped them in front of their belt.

“I’m not sure how things would have gone in there, but thanks all the same,” Adan shrugged, a tired smile on his face, “Better than leaving your village with a lot of grief.”

“Yes, yes, master witcher,” the man nodded his head, “My apologies, but tempers have been running hot in our otherwise sleepy hamlet of late. Not several months back we had trouble with some petty bandits, and now, well—” he seemed nervous and apologetic, though not prone towards panic, “Needless to say the young men don’t always know what’s good for them.”

There was a pause then, before the man started and extended his hand, bowing his head again, “Ah, apologies. My name is Wieslaw; senior clerk of this town of Rosecross.”

The witcher shook the clerk’s hand, “Adan of Attre.”

“You headed home, then?” Wieslaw asked, sweeping eyebrow raised in genuine curiosity.

“It’s just a name,” The witcher shrugged, “But yes, my road’s towards Cintra. Or river, that is. I just came in with the caravans from Zerrikania.”

“Ah, you look it.” The local mused with a smile, “Strange and exotic land. Normally we’re quite happy when the merchants come through, but, well – life has been hard of late and hospitality runs dry in such times. What finery, though. You’re not—?”

“I assume you have need of a witcher.” Adan stopped him before he wasted his flattery. Moreso than others of his kind, Adan was aware of how the peculiarities of his appearance could throw more – common sorts. Though he had the same physical prowess as any witcher, he was stuck with a rather “pretty” face, and even with the height gained from his mutations so many decades ago, he was not the tallest monster slayer. More than that, his mother had been Zerrikanian, though he himself had been born in Cintra, and his training likewise had been undertaken back East with the School of the Manticore. These all combined to make it so Adan never quite looked “in place” save with the most eclectic crowds. “Adan of Attre” referred to just a prominent point at the start of his witcher’s Path.

“Oh yes, of course. Well, you see we have a new plague upon us of late that little but one of your talents could fix,” Wieslaw moved along, and then continued without waiting further at an expectant glance from Adan, “A fiend; a monster of the foulest sort has been harassing the road leading from Rosecross to the Angra fording. We know not whence it came – perhaps up from the Solveigi Pass or down from the mountains, but it has devoured soldiers and travelers alike and made any routine crossing of the river a bloody peril. By sheer grace has it not taken to assailing our village outright, but I fear if it has its way for much longer it might become so bold.”

“A fiend?” Adan pried, “Have you seen the creature?”

“Unfortunately so.” Wieslaw shuddered, “I accompanied an envoy of troops from Glevitzingen to scout the beast’s territory. I tell you, when we saw that thing coming up the riverbank, not one of us tarried, but I did manage to get a good look at it,” he plucked at his silver moustache, “Tall as a house and with the head of a ram. Mangy, rust-colored hide. Body like a – bear, or a bull. Three eyes.”

“Ram’s head? No antlers?” the witcher asked further, “How big could you say exactly?”

“Large.” Wieslaw gave emphasis.

“Cabin or barn?”

The man shook his head, before rubbing at his chin, “Perhaps not so big as a barn? It could fill a barn, for sure. And yes, ram’s head. Three eyes. Curled horns.”

“Sounds like a chort.” Adan mused, his golden slit-eyes darting to the ground, “Could be worse. Certainly not good, though. You’re in a bad way if that thing decides to push into human lands any further.”

Leaning in, the clerk’s face contained an equal mix of respectful awe and desperate pleading.

“So will you slay the beast?”

“Of course,” Adan shrugged, “You would pay me, I assume?”

The man nodded like a shaft of wheat in a stiff breeze, “Oh, yes. I cannot promise you quite so much. We only have so much wealth to spare, as a small hamlet. But I have been setting aside funds for just such a purpose, and if you would perform th—”

“Yes, yes,” the witcher waved a ring-laden hand, “If you stiff me that’s your problem. Just give me whatever information you can about the chort’s territory and habits, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

It wouldn’t do for him to say he’d kill the creature even for free. That wasn’t a good expectation or precedent to set for his guild, but it was the truth. Pay was good. It was necessary. Adan burned when he was shorted his fair due, and there were times when even he – amenable far more than most raised in the witcher keeps – could lose his temper at the prejudices of ungrateful people. At the end of the day, though, it was not in his nature to leave common folk at the mercy of a monster.

Wieslaw provided the details of just where along the Angra’s eastern bank the chort had been spotted most often, and the specifics of its aggressions. As with most of its kind, the lesser fiend was an opportunistic hunter. It seemed it had figured out that by attacking parties as they forded the river, it had a much easier time of things. Prey – peasant, soldier, or livestock – could be pinned up against the riverside and dispatched with ease, while anything that gave the chort trouble could be knocked into the waters and drowned before it caused the monster too much trouble. While the beast wasn’t always on the prowl, its attacks had become frequent enough to strike terror into travelers the province around and divert a lot of valuable trade away from the area.

Adan mused on how one monster finding a convenient spot for hunting could cause such trouble for so many people.

“One more thing,” the witcher brought up, right as the two men were set to part ways, “You don’t happen to know of any mistletoe that grows around here?”

As the day was growing long, and light had long since faded, the monster slayer first went back to the caravan. He didn’t expect to get much sleep, but it wouldn’t do to hunt a fiend in the middle of the night after a full day of travel, even with his enhanced biology. It was often the case that the mutant’s dreams were fitful, and his nights restless, and so the chort-hunting contract was a good excuse to pry himself out of his sleeping roll in the very earliest hours of the morning rather than lay in a sweat-drenched half-sleep.

The air was cool in those hours when the sky was darkest blue, just before the first beams of sunlight touched at the edge of the night. Adan realized it was maybe later in the year than his calendar had suggested. It was hard, in the hot and wild wildernesses of Zerrikania and Hakland, to keep track of the exact cycles of the seasons sometimes, but he kicked himself that he might have arrived in the Northern Kingdoms nearer to the end of summer. Witchers in temperate lands holed up in the winter, and if he didn’t make haste to Cintra soon then his window for good contracts would be getting narrower and narrower.

Adan pushed those concerns from his mind for the time being, focusing on his current hunt, and the landscape around him. The Angra guarded his right flank, and while thick scrublands dominated the countryside, his path was easy enough so long as he kept to the gravel flats nearer to the riverbank. It was a couple hours into his excursion, when the sky was turning a shade of deep sapphire, that the witcher found what he was looking for. True enough, the local clerk had been right about his chances of finding wild mistletoe.

The green tufts hung from the branches of a hunched oak, and their pale, still-young berries were picked out by the hunter’s augmented sight even from many yards away. A quick detour into the brush, some climbing, and the student of the Manticore school had the last ingredient he needed for the task at hand.

He set out his alchemical traveling-kit. Last night, courtesy of the nice compliment of tools the caravanners kept on hand, he’d been able to assemble a few Devil’s Puffballs. While the bomblets were a key part of his plan, he’d been missing the mistletoe he needed to finish fortifying the relict oil poison for his blade. His journeys in the exotic East had seen him build up quite a stockpile of rare ingredients perfect for all the chemical applications of a witcher, but mistletoe had not been among then. Now, with just a little bit of preparation, he was able to make one bottle of fine relict oil – the bane of chorts, fiends, and fouler things.

It was just a matter of finding the beast.

Chorts, for all their wild savagery, were no easier to locate that any other animal. They could move with a subtlety that belied their terrible size, though there were always certain markers that could be tracked. The first noticeable spoor was in some mud-sand that lay right in front of Adan’s path down the riverside – not just the heavy, clawed prints, but some fur that had been rubbed off on a driftwood log stuck in the mire. Further on, nestled among some half-flattened bushes, a boulder had the telltale scratches of a hefty beast rubbing its horns. The smell of the relict monster was overpowering around these spots, and the markings looked not more than a day old. If Adan had to guess, the chort would return to the area as part of its morning rounds, marking out a wider and wider radius of territory for as long as it went unchallenged, searching for suitable meals.

It was possible he could just wait until the creature drew near enough to track it, but the witcher didn’t have the time nor patience to dally. Besides, he had a much better tool at his disposal.

The hunter pulled a small vial from one of the many pouches about his person, containing a selection of dried herbs suspended in oil, and stoppered with wax. Adan scouted the area for the best place to set his trap – the field was a broad stretch of beach, a mix of gravel and wetted sand, tapering into scrub-brush before the forest proper started. To the south, a bend in the river was marked by a ridge of moss-covered boulders, while a little northward a few stray willows hung over the edge of the rushing waters.

With trained aim, Adan hurled the small vial over towards the willows, shattering the glass at the base of one trunk. Not a moment later, a smell like death began wafting along the breeze. The mix of herbs and extracts was more than a simple stink-bomb, but a facsimile of the scents most common to gory battlefields and slaughterhouses.

Nothing in the way of drowners or other necrophages seemed to be living along this stretch of the riverbank – perhaps scared away by the territorial chort – and so it was Adan’s hope that his bait would attract the monster he was here for.

Sitting back on a low, flat rock near to the boulder ridge, Adan rested his legs as his wide, yellow eyes watched all about the forest-line with catlike intent. He drew his silver sword, and with a spare cloth he set about wiping the blade down with a healthy coating of the fresh relict oil, waiting.

Alone by the flowing waters of the Angra, a scarred yet youthful figure clad in brigandine and forest green waited for their prey.

When the chort approached, there was no mistaking it. The rumbling, crushing tread that carved a single-minded path through the forest brush. Snuffling like a cross between a boar and a bear, accompanied by the powerful stench of fiendish musk, wet and tannic. Without taking his eyes from the rustling branches of the darkened glade near to the willows, Adan reached down to something that hung around his neck, a little lower than his Manticore amulet.

A set of pipes, like those of a pan flute, though thicker and carved out of the fingerbones of a rock troll. Adan put the instrument to his lips and began a slow, high tune, as if evoking the call of a strange and eldritch falcon.

At once, a tearing roar came from the far edge of the trees, and the witcher watched without breaking from his song as the chort emerged near to the baited willows.

It was indeed as tall as a house, and yet the ease with which the creature moved such massive bulk made its appearance seem almost unreal, like a nightmare that defied natural expectations. Even to a witcher, the primal ferocity of the chort was not to be disregarded. Its head was like that of a ram, though its fangs and squatted bulk were more akin to those of a monstrous ape. Tremendous, spiraled horns flanked its elongated skull like a dark crown, and from the center of its broad forehead peered its baleful third eye. Its fur was the color of dried blood, and along its back and about its face the hair grew thicker, mottled with a pale grey color. The monster’s hide hung loose on its bulging muscles, giving the creature a lumpen, grotesque appearance.

Adan continued the piercing tune on his pipes and watched as all three eyes of the chort locked on him with a wrathful gaze. The elfin witcher finished the final trill to his song and pocketed the pipes as the monster roared again in unbridled rage.

Silver was drawn, and the beast charged.

All of Adan’s senses were focused on the stampeding form of the relict monster, his muscles tensed and waiting for the exact moment to leap aside. To the eyes of a bystander, it would have taken the chort mere moments to lunge across the short stretch of riverside, but in the razor-sharp perception of the witcher the attack almost stretched across minutes.

In a blur of motion, Adan’s free hand flew from his side, sending a Devil’s Puffball right at the third eye of the chort not a second sooner than when it made its final, clawing lope towards the man. The bomblet burst across the face of the monster with an echoing crack, spreading its toxic charge into the eyes and nostrils of the beast. Adan leapt to the side, away from the river, as the monstrosity tumbled past him in howling agony, ramming with its full force straight into the boulder not a yard behind where the witcher had stood.

Not wanting to waste the opening, Adan’s fingers twitched an intricate dance as he made the sign of Axii. The chort’s eyes glazed for an instant – the sheer rage of the beast was more than enough to power through the simple mind-numbing illusion of the witcher, but the moment of hesitation that it brought to the already stunned beast gave Adan time to pull one more Puffball from his belt and cast it straight into the left eye of the dazed monster.

As the toxic spores and shards of bombshell filled its eye socket, the chort reeled back with a shrieking cry that threatened to burst the witcher’s eardrums. The lesser fiend’s face was coated in irritating poison, and a trickle of blood ran down its flat forehead from where it had rammed into the unyielding boulder without any coordination. In a near blind fury, its one good eye fixed on Adan with endless hate, the monster hurled itself towards the witcher.

Adan of Attre dodged once more, calling upon every ounce of agility he had gained from countless years of grueling training. Though the chort attacked with all the speed and power of a rockslide, the mutant warrior was as a gadfly, staying just out of reach no matter how the beast tried to pin him. While Adan was tough far beyond mortal men, he wore no heavy armor, and did not depend on the strength of his magical shields. Any slipup would spell a bloody end for the agile fighter. Instead, he bided his time, allowing the blinding spores to work their way on the chort, and darting in at every choice opening the flailing monster offered. The silvered blade of the witcher, slicked down with oil refined to kill anything of the chort’s eldritch ilk, stung like fire at the creature’s mangy hide, its estoc-like design suited to inflicting deep wounds from quick stabs and slashes.

But not every opening was so clean, and while Adan did his best to not allow himself to be pinned, the beast still had some cunning to it.

At one point, the hunter dodged, and again the chort leapt past, though this time right into the shallow waters of the river’s edge. By now, the spores of the Devil’s Puffballs had infested the monster’s eyes and nostrils, but it seemed the momentary reprieve that the dive into the cool, flowing waters of the Angra provided was enough for the beast. It spun, and before Adan could asses its next move the fiend raked its arm through the water, splashing a wall of froth in front of the witcher’s vision. Mere water, but in that same instant the chort had spied Adan and used the momentary distraction to close the gap. Out of the plume of droplets charged the terror, and its horned head swept to the side, catching the witcher and sending him flying like a straw doll.

Adan almost blacked out when he hit the ground, but his blood was running just a little too hot, and the mud of the riverside was just soft enough that he retained consciousness. Acting on pure instinct, the witcher pulled himself upright, sword at the ready, all senses whirling to re-center themselves before the monster could finish the job.

He thrust forward his hand, trusting in fate alone, for his body wasn’t fast enough, and he worshipped no gods. The sign of Aard was made, and it burst with a ferocious whirlwind right into the face of the stampeding chort. In that moment, as the beast’s final charge was knocked ever-so off course, Adan whirled with blade in hand, and passed it through the throat of the monster.

The force of the strike almost dislocated the witcher’s shoulder as the last estocada landed. With gurgling, bleating, roaring abandon the chort stumbled and skidded along the gravel of the riverbank. By the time its body came to a halt, it was already dead, its blood running out like a tributary stream into the waters of the Angra.

Adan dropped to a knee, willing himself to endure the pain in his chest and sword arm for just long enough that he could turn and check that the monster lay slain. Satisfied, he bowed his head, and took a deep breath.

In a few moments, pain turned to soreness, and once the witcher had steadied his breathing, he took a healthy swig of Swallow. The potion’s numbing, medicinal sensation filled him, and with a huff Adan brought himself to stand.

Messy towards the end, but a satisfactory hunt, considering the danger posed by any chort.

There was something about the feeling after a fight ended. The slowing of one’s bodily rhythms, the change in how one perceived the smell of blood. Like the feelings of shame that could sometimes come after a night of passion, the triumphant victory of warrior over monster changed to just a man standing beside a hulking corpse.

No use in dwelling on it. Adan shook the fog from his mind. He drew forth his hunting knife and marched towards the creature’s body.

Some quick work of the blade and Adan had the center eye of a chort, which he wrapped and hung at his waist. Taking but a moment more, he gathered some of the beast’s blood for alchemical purposes and left the rest of the body for the scavengers. A superficial wash in the river, clothes and all, and the witcher set off with somewhat beleaguered stride back downstream, to Rosecross.

Nobody hassled the monster slayer when he returned to the hamlet, and he was fortunate to find that the caravan master had heeded his request from the prior evening and not yet moved the convoy along to ford the Angra. Like a half-seen specter in the waxing morning, the cloaked form of the witcher made its way to the high-roofed longhouse that was the village’s main repository, as told by Wieslaw. Inside, the clerk sat at a simple desk set apart from the open floor, where barrels of grain and bundles of goat hides were piled for accounting.

The grey-haired man’s eyes went wide at the sight of the witcher in his doorway.

“Mister Adan! Di—” he jumped as a leather sack landed with a wet thud on his desk, and he eyed the parcel with fearful curiosity.

“Eye of a chort. It dries out better than you’d expect,” Adan said, “Some people like to hang them as charms, you know, but I just thought it would be fine as proof.”

“By Melitele—” Wieslaw shook his head, gaze locked on the grim package, “The stories do not lie about your order, witcher. In-credible.” The man looked up and seemed to start at the strange mutant, who still waited by his desk, “Ah, yes, but your pay!”

Stooping down, the senior clerk pulled out a small chest of hardwood and produced a simple iron key, undoing the lock that hung from its front. From within he pulled forth three cylindrical parchment parcels and handed them to the witcher as he stood up from his chair.

“One hundred fifty ducats, for the slaying of that monster which plagued Rosecross, and the east bank of the Angra.” He said, almost as if he imagined himself a lord awarding an honored knight.

“Hundred fifty?” Adan looked over the rolls of coins, “Fair price, considering everything,” he smiled then, never not a surreal sight on the face of a witcher, “Too often jobs like this have much messier endings, for unnecessary reasons.”

“Well,” Wieslaw bowed his head, “I am glad you are satisfied.”

“And you.” The witcher turned then, without a second work of goodbye, leaving the clerk standing alone. Adan never cared much for drawing out the conclusion of a job.

Within the hour the witcher had rejoined the Zerrikanian caravan, and the line of carts was off again in the direction of the river crossing. He made sure to count his payment before they reached the ferry to Glevitzingen, just on the off chance one couldn’t trust in the virtue of country folk these days. All the gold was accounted for, and Adan rested easy, taking it as ample consolation for the throbbing pain in his ribs.

The ferry across the Angra was a simple and sturdy thing, if a little slow. A great log raft tied with ship-ropes to either end of the river. It was not the widest crossing, and the ferry had enough space for two full carts at a time, but with six-some carts in the procession, and a few extra horses, the transfer would take a while.

Adan took in the fresh breeze as his ferry was drawn across the river, leaning against the side of the merchant cart.

“You’re one o’ them witchers, ain’t ya?” one of the soldiers aboard the raft asked. He was a weather-beaten man with drooping eyes, clad in a few pieces of simple iron armor and a faded cream-yellow tabard that might have represented the colors of Lyria.

“Yeah?” the monster slayer replied.

“Rare thing – saw one o’ you not a season ago. I said: ‘if only ‘ed been by a little sooner or later, ‘ed ‘ave been good for either them bandits or the fiend.’ But then you showed up an’ solved the latter, as fate’d ‘ave it.” The soldier mused.

“Another witcher?” Adan raised an eyebrow, “You remember what he looked like?” The witcher orders waxed and waned with many factors, but never were their members commonplace, and it was an interesting stroke that two would have passed through such a backwater village on unrelated business within so short a timeframe.

“Yeah, you lot are ‘ard to forget. Tall, older armor, two swords, white hair,” he rubbed at his pale, stubbled chin, “One eye. Funny, y’know, had ye not both them weird eyes an’ blades, the both of ye’d not look more different.”

“Hmm.” Adan pursed his lips. Lest the other warrior had broken north or south, maybe destiny would conspire for the student of the Manticore School to run into this other witcher. It could be a welcome thing. He’d not had the company of one of his own kind, let alone from the Western schools, or some time.

But that would be just one diversion on the long Path he had ahead of him. Still laden with reagents of far Zerrikania, one hundred and fifty ducats richer, and with a fine arrival into the Northern Kingdoms, Adan of Attre now contended with that most terrible enemy of any witcher – optimism. With a burgeoning hope, and a hungry eye, Adan turned his thoughts to the Yaruga, to the boat he might find at Glevitzingen, and the long sail to Cintra.

#fantasy #short story #witcher #witchersona #fanfiction

34 notes · View notes

queen-calanthe-of-cintra-moved · 5 years ago

Note

Oh shit you are right. I forgot about that scene. The more we watch the show the more confusing it is. Do you know old Ciri is then by episode 8?

She is still 12! (unless her birthday happened while she was in the woods or something). You were completely right about the two weeks. Or at least something very very similar. Because Nilfgaard's advance is very fast, and Sodden is where they go after Cintra.

Which only arises more questions about the timeline, however. How on earth did Ciri get to Brokilon, which is on the other side of the Yaruga River (which you can only cross through Sodden) and back to Riverdell (where Yurga and his wife live, south of Sodden) in only two weeks?!

Continuity is overrated or Ciri is supersonic

#well #she's the daughter of sonic the hedgehog #it only makes sense #she sneezes and suddenly she's in brokilon #woops #replies #timeline clues #ciri #cirilla of cintra #the witcher

14 notes · View notes

knightofaedirn-archived · 5 years ago

Text

(Starter for @ofvergen) Seeking higher ground was always the sound strategy in uncertain times. That was what the lord who’d raised Torben all those years back had always said, at least. Even if this gem of wisdom had only ever been spoken when the Dyfne river flooded in the spring and left both rich and poor at the mercy of nature. Nevertheless, this gem of wisdom had been taken to heart by the Knight.

The highest ground, at least in all of Aedirn, was of course Upper Aedirn. It was right there in the name after all. What better place would there be than the rocky hills on the banks of the Pontar, in the city of Vergen? It was for this reason the knight had ridden out from the capital not a week past. In search of someone, anyone, who could restore some semblance of order to Aedirn.

Gossip on the road, both eavesdropped at inns and from the occasional merchant in passing. It had been Scoia'tael that murdered the king. Another claimed it had been the work of witchers. The most outlandish of them had made the claim it had been Niilfgaardians. The mere thought of it was dismissed just as swiftly as it had been heard by Torben. The Black Ones had learned their lesson after two defeats at the hands of the north. Surely they would never attempt to cross the Yaruga. It would end the same as before.

Whoever, or whatever it had been to end the king of Aedirn, all Torben knew was that chaos was ensuing. A scramble for the throne by anyone with enough power and influence to seat their chosen ruler. Such a power struggle would eventually turn bloody. Which meant any noble with a hefty enough pocketbook would scoop up any stray soldier with steel and a horse, knight or not.

Which meant it was once again the road for Torben. The difference this time was that a clear destination was in mind. That stone city on the banks of the Pontar. Yet even there, strange gossip had been spoken. About a dragonslayer championing the cause of the common folk. As well as the rumor of a Kaedweni host massing on the opposite side of the river. Certainly worth something seeing with his own eyes, in both regards.

He’d not been turned by the pair of guards, dwarves they were, when he reached the city. Once he’d both swore he’d come from the south, as well as swore he ‘wasn’t under the yoke of some ploughing noble’ After that, well, everything had gone relatively smoothly. Except for that after stabling his horse, he hadn’t a clue where to go looking for this dragonslayer. Or someone that knew them. Or someone who swore they knew them, with the truth of it only knowing them through the distant relation of a friend of a friend, who swore their third cousin knew them.

Which left the knight standing there, on the main thoroughfare, with a dumbfounded look plastered across his face. All that gave proof he wasn’t some lost merchant from Termeria was the steel plate he’d worn the entire journey, and the shield slung across his back painted in with the tricolors of Aedirn.

#rp

3 notes · View notes

garmonboziasworld · 3 years ago

Text

So, we are heading into the books. If you don't want any spoilers for the books/show regarding the politics or the war then you better turn around now. The first half of this chapter is a retelling of the meeting of the North's leaders at Fort Hagge. Here's an image of the meeting from the 'Thronebreaker' game:

(From right to left we have Foltest, Henselt, Demawend, Meve, some guy with a paper and probably Vizimir)

Chapter 12: Tension

~1267~

It was very late in the evening, almost night, when King Vizimir had her summoned to his working chambers. She hasted through the corridors. His request seemed urgent. She politely greeted the few soldiers on night watch who guarded the palace. As she reached the king’s office, the door was already open and faint light was shining into the hallway. She stepped into the doorframe and caught sight of King Vizimir sitting at his desk. Lost in thoughts, staring at the blank wooden surface in front of him.

“Your Majesty?”

“Mari.” He looked up and asked her in with a wave of his hand. “Close the door and sit down.”

She did as she was told, sitting down opposite of him. His face looked tired and stressed. He leaned against his carved chair, his flexed arm resting on the armrest and his fingers played with the golden and imposing rings around them. His green eyes rested on her. That’s all he did for a few moments. Looking at her without a word. She knew he didn’t want her to start talking. This was a meeting he wanted. He was just preparing, figuring out his words.

“You know I trust you.”

“I know, Sire.”

“Good.” He put down his arm onto the arm rest and kept his eyes fixed on her. Again, he paused. He took his time before he continued speaking. “I attended a secret meeting at Hagge with the other rulers of the North. Just us. They didn't want their advisors or court mages to attempt the meeting. They don't trust them, since most of them were members of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers or the Chapter. They pursue their own goals. But you were never part of that, so I fill you in.”

“The Brotherhood and the Chapter was dissolved after Sodden Hill.”

“And you think they will leave it at that? You're not naive, Mari. They will most likely call another organisation into being.”

“In any case, meeting up secretly does not do any good. If the sorcerers find out, and they most probably will, they will feel offended by being left out.”

Vizimir frowned. “We don't need manipulative mages who tell us what to do so they can get one step closer to fulfilling their personal needs. No offense.”

“None taken, your Majesty.”

“I value your opinion. So I want to hear it about what we discussed. And be honest.”

“I'm always honest to you, your Majesty.”

He shifted in his chair, took off his crown and ran his bejewelled fingers through his dark‑blonde hair. “We talked about our future moves. As you know already, a second war with Nilfgaard is inevitable. But we also face the internal threat of those elven rebels.”

“The Scoia'tael.”

“Whatever they're called,” he waved off.

“They are mainly active in Kaedwen, no need to worry about them yet, your Grace.”

“Maybe we do. They are moving fast, Foltest reported that they are already in Temeria, their activities are getting more frequent and more violent. It's only a matter of time until they reach Redania as well.”

“We cannot fight a war at two fronts, your Majesty.”

“I know. We know. We discussed it, thought about the advantages and disadvantages of who to attack first. Or who to attack at all. I said we should attack Nilfgaard first. That we shouldn’t wait for them to attack first. But Henselt had a different opinion. He thinks they won’t cross the Yaruga. It would take too much time to let those huge armies cross the bridge. And even if they did, Emhyr doesn’t have the supply routes to provide for his army.”

“After the first war, Nilfgaard, or to be more precise it was Emhyr, had all his officers executed or thrown into prison who failed at Sodden Hill. I presume he has young, loyal officers now. Capable ones. Who learned from the mistakes of the former marshals.”

“Most likely.”

“So you want to launch an attack, Henselt doesn’t. What about the rest?”

“Meve supported my proposal. That we shouldn’t wait. Because if we don’t, if we let Nilfgaard sit and wait in the South, they will just wait for the right moment to attack us after the Scoia’tael have finished us. Because that’s war. A war inside. A civil war. And Nilfgaard is just waiting …”

“Time is not on our side.”

“No. The Scoia’tael are terrorising people, paralyzing the economy. Henselt and Foltest are determined to wipe out the elves in the next six months.”

“I understand the threat they represent, your Grace, but a war with non-humans will only upset the mages. Since they are somewhat considered non-human themselves.”

“We cannot have regards for the mages. Not in this situation. We will start a military operation against them, the non-humans. Not only against the Scoia’tael, but also against Mahakam and the Brokilon.”

“And what about Nilfgaard, your Grace?”

“We will strike against Nilfgaard as well. We cannot allow them to cross the Yaruga. Or to further spread the nilfgaardian word. Saying that the people living in occupied villages and cities are living a much better and wealthier life. Their money is slowly replacing ours, their manufacturers are flooding our markets with cheap goods. They promise privileges to the guilds. If we don’t stop this, we will face even more riots, fall into nilfgaardian economic aid.”

“Nilfgaard is looking north and waits. It observes. They wait for the people to start turmoil on their own. Unsecure times make the people start thinking strange thoughts. That’s also the reason why there are so many fanatic priests and preachers all of a sudden.”

“Telling lies and seeding nonsense in their heads. One more reason to stop all of this at once. We take care of the non-humans and Crach an Craite will attack the nilfgaardian coast.”

Mari remembered Crach an Craite, the Jarl of Skellige. And the nephew of Eist Tuirseach. The former Jarl of Skellige and the King of Cintra who bravely led the defense against Nilfgaard in the Battle of Marnadal during the first northern war. And where he was killed by the Nilfgaardians.

“He didn’t sign the peace treaty with Nilfgaard. And he is not leaving the nilfgaardian coast alone. He is constantly attacking their settlements and forts at the coast of the provinces. When Nilfgaard killed Eist and Calanthe, he swore a blood oath of vengeance.

Vizimir nodded. “Combined with our other military strategies, it will be a demonstration of our power. But that’s not all of it.”

“What else, your Grace?”

“Cintra.”

“Cintra?” Mari looked at her king, a questioning expression on her face. “What is the matter with Cintra?”

“We want to take it from Nilfgaard. Cintra will become a symbol. Just like Sodden. With the support from Skellige and our armies attacking we will snatch it out of Nilfgaard’s hand.”

“Your majesty, I strongly disagree.” Mari straightened up in her chair. “Attacking Cintra will put the North in the role of the aggressor. And by that you will break the peace treaty. The guilds, the aristocrats, the merchants, they will all balk at it. And don’t forget the mages. The peace treaty was the work of Vilgefortz of Roggeveen. He will not support war. Not him or any other mage since he was head of the Chapter. Or still is if they have another organisation built up.”

“I know. I told them, too. But the others didn’t want to listen. Vilgefortz and the other mages are powerful enough already, gaining more and more power every day. Pursuing their own plans, plans we don’t even know what they are about. But they expect us to consider them. Which we won’t. Not anymore.”

“I strongly advise not to attack Cintra.”

“You are not here for advice, Mari.” He rudely reprimanded her. “This is something between the northern rulers. We agreed on doing this without influence from outside, so I don’t need you to advise me. I just need you to listen.”

She lowered her head. A sign of apologising and understanding. “Very well, Sire.”

“And besides, we will not launch an attack, we will provoke them. Stage a provocation at the borders. Nilfgaard will take the role as aggressor, so even Vilgefortz and his chapter will support our attack. And all the refugees and emigrants from Cintra will join us, ready to get their land back, they are eager to fight.”

“So let’s say you get Cintra back. Then what? Make it a vassal state? To Redania? Or Temeria? Foltest has already claimed Brugge and Sodden, is eager to get Verden as well. Giving him Cintra will only make him too powerful and influential. He may even expand further south.”

“No, no vassal state. Cintra has to be free. A protectorate of the Northern Realms. A bastion in the North. At least, that’s what we want it to be. But we came to the conclusion that the Cintrans will never accept becoming a protectorate. As you might have heard, there are rumours regarding the Lion Cub of Cintra.”

“Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon. Calanthe’s granddaughter, Pavetta’s child and thus the rightful heir to the Cintran throne. The rumours say she survived the massacre of Cintra.”

“Which is exactly why Foltest is looking for her. I know he does. He knows that Cintra will not accept him as the ruler as long as there is a legit heir to the throne. If he or any other northern ruler insist on the cintran throne, the cintran armies will turn against him, under a nilfgaardian banner. Blood is thicker than water, but you can always win a crown through marriage.”

“You are not indicating that Foltest is searching for Cirilla just to marry her and to gain legit rule over Cintra?”

“That is exactly what I am indicating. He denied it vehemently, but I know his spies are searching everywhere for her. And not only the temerian Intel. Someone else as well. I entrusted Dijkstra with the task to find out who. He reported to me, a man named Rience is looking for Cirilla. Ever heard of him?”

Mari tried not to tell him by her body language that she was upset. But not with him. If it was true and Foltest’s spies were looking for Cirilla, why didn’t Vernon mention it? She always filled him in on anything and he obviously didn’t. If she knew he was in Vizima tonight she’d go there immediately after her meeting with the King and ask him all the questions running through her head right now.

“No, your Grace. I never heard of him.”

“Hm. Well, the other rulers never heard of him as well. At least that’s what they say. True or not, that leaves only one possibility.”

“Emhyr. He is also looking for her. The emperor is not married after all. And although he already conquered Cintra and made it one of his provinces, he holds it as the role of the aggressor, and by marrying Cirilla he would become the ruler by right.”

“And that would be anything else but good for the North. Emhyr must not get her. In fact, no one must. We couldn’t figure out to whom she will be married to. All of the possible candidates do not fit the interests of the northern policy.”

“What are you saying, your Majesty?”

“… The child has to die.”

“When did you plan on telling me?”

“Tell you what?”

Mari didn’t answer his counterquestion. She sat on the end of his bed and silently watched him as he undressed. He unfolded his chaperon and put it aside with utmost care and accuracy. After still not responding to his question by the time he pulled his linen shirt over his head, he turned towards her. And he looked into an expecting pair of grey eyes.

“What do you want to hear from me?”

“What you have been doing lately.”

“You know what I’ve been doing.”

He walked over to the water basin and splashed some water into his face before he dipped his head into the water and quickly came up again.

“I know you were out there, fulfilling a task King Foltest entrusted you with. But I don’t know what you did exactly.”

“Does it matter?” he asked as he grabbed his towel and dried his wet face and hair.

“Did you find her?”

“Mari, what are you-“

“Cirilla, Vernon. I’m talking about Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, the heir to the cintran throne. I know she is wanted by some people, one of them is your king.”

He lowered the towel and placed it over the back of a chair. “Who told you?”

“You weren’t.”

Roche sighed and stroked his face. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Foltest didn’t want anyone to know, especially not one of the-”

He stopped speaking, but she knew how the sentence would end.

“One of the mages.”

Judging his silence, she was right.

“Well,” she stated and lowered her gaze to her hands folded in her lap. “At least King Vizimir still trusts me.”

“I trust you too.”

“Then tell me if it’s true that Foltest is looking for the cintran princess just so he can marry her. To acquire the cintran crown and throne.”

“He didn’t tell me. And that’s the truth. But why should he marry her anyway? He has a relationship with the Baroness La Valette.”

“It’s very romantic of you to think that people do not sacrifice their private happiness for political reasons.”

He sighed and sat down next to her on the bed. “The king is very happy with her. He wouldn’t sacrifice that.”

“I know how happy they are. You don’t have to be outstandingly intelligent to tell that her two younger children Anaïs and Boussy are not the Baron’s children but Foltest's. But still. He’d put the cintran throne over her and his bastards.”

“We don’t have to talk about something which is not going to happen anyway. Because Cirilla is dead.”

Mari looked up to him. “How do you know? Are you sure?”

“We received undeniable evidences that she died three years ago in a refugee camp in Angren. Diphtheria. She is dead.”

“I see …” If she was dead, she needed to inform King Vizimir about it. But how? If she told him, he would ask her how she found out about that. And she couldn’t simply tell him that she received the news from the temerian Intel. “Who knows about this?”

“Not sure. But the news are spreading. Foltest had a messenger, his name was Aplegatt, sent to King Demavend to deliver a message. He informed him about the death of Cirilla. And about something else. Apparently the mages and sorcerers are having a gathering on Thanedd Island. We don’t know why, but the King advised caution.”

“If the messenger is on his way to Demavend then he will come to Tretogor as well.”

“Do you know anything about it? The assembly on Thanedd Island?”

“No.” Mari shook her head. “I have never been part of any mage or sorcerer organisation like the Brotherhood or the Chapter. I never cared for the goals and intentions of the mages. I cared for the North and its kings. That’s why they always left me out when it comes to such matters. Whatever they plan or what they want to discuss at their assembly, they know they couldn’t count on me.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

She nodded and looked at him. “I’ll let you rest now.”

He leaned over to her and gave her a gentle kiss. “What if I don’t want to rest?”

“You should.”

“I should apologise to you.”

“And you think your looks and charm will help you doing so?”

“When did they not?”

She cupped his cheeks and kissed him. Soft and loving. “You don’t need to apologise to me. You need to rest. You were gone for a while. You must be exhausted.”

“At least stay the night.”

“King Vizimir requested my appearance very late in the evening these days. I cannot risk not being there.”

“I hate your rationalism.”

“One day you’ll thank me for it.”

“I doubt that.” He watched her face and softly stroked over her hair. “There is something else I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Vernon.”

“Foltest appointed me as commander.”

Now she watched his face. But he wasn’t joking, he was serious.

“He is building an elite unit to hunt down the Scoia’tael in Temeria. He announced me its commander. I am officially the commander of the temerian Special Forces.”

She placed her hands on his cheeks and gave him a passionate kiss. “That’s great news, Vernon. I’m proud of you.”

“I know, it’s just … I am nervous. Commanding a Special Forces unit is different to what I did before. I will have responsibility for others now. I will have to command instead of just follow. And the Scoia’tael are hard to hunt down, hard to defeat. Maybe I won't live up to King Foltest's expectations.

“You will. He trusts you. Probably more than anyone else around him. That’s why he is giving you this opportunity. He gave you power in a world where you felt small and powerless. This is your chance to prove yourself.”

“It is. He gave me all the freedom I need to build up this unit. I will recruit the man myself. Because I don’t want anyone from the army or the military. They should fight in the war.”

“Then where do you want to get your man from?”

“From the same place the king got me from. The place where the people live who don’t have anything left to lose anymore. Who’d do everything to get out of their misery.”

“In the streets of Vizima.”

“The streets, the taverns, the dungeon. I know where I can find the ruthlessness and boldness needed to fight those elven terrorists.”

“They are said to be ruthless themselves.”

“You’re worried about me?”

“Of course I am. Whoever falls into their hands, dies. At least that's what they say.”

He gave her one of his confident, bold smiles. “Another good reason to stay with me tonight.”

With a smile on her face, she shook her head. But he didn't give in to her that easily.

"Come on, you can be rational again from tomorrow."

While she eyed him like a piece of art, she realised he was right. His wet hair being a mess on his head, dripping onto his skin. Those brown eyes with the intensity of a wildfire. Burning every little piece of her. Leaving nothing but pure love for him. She leaned into him and kissed him. In a way that told him everything he needed to know.

"I hate your irrationalism," she breathed against his lips.

A soft and quiet chuckle escaped his throat.

"One day you'll thank me for it."

"I do not doubt that."

#own work #fanfic #also on ao3 #archive of our own #ao3 #vernon roche #original character #vernon roche x oc #the witcher

0 notes

aenwoedbeannaa · 5 years ago

Text

Toe-To-Toe | Geralt of Rivia x Reader

Summary: Life as a Nilfgaardian in the Northern Realms is not exactly wonderful. In fact, it’s dreadfully boring – at least until a Witcher shows up, responding to a message left on the local notice board.

Word Count: 4,111

Warnings: Smut with, like, a dash of plot. Mostly just #DaddyGeralt vibes. (I’m going to hell lol.)

A/N: This one-shot is based off one of these writing prompts. If you like my work, check out my masterlist for more!

You hate everything north of the Yaruga. Except, of course, the steady stream of your father’s money that he feels guilty enough to provide you with. He’d been sent to this gods-forsaken hold by Emperor Ehmyr two years ago now, and in those past two years, it’s been nothing but a bore. The populace is rude, and just about everything else is dull – not to mention the weather, which is shite.

So, naturally, you are intrigued when you notice a man with two swords slung over his back heading up the winding path leading to the estate the Emperor oh so kindly provided your father with when he informed him of his new position as the baron of this dump of a hold in Velen. You are not particularly fond of it, even if it is objectively beautiful.

You watch from the window as the stranger approaches, eyes fixed on the two swords slung over his back. You don’t even need him to draw close enough to see his eyes to confirm that he is a Witcher. The peasants around here are lucky if they own one sword, let alone two. The only people on the Continent who walk around with two swords like that are Witchers; or so you assume. You’ve only ever read about them in books and heard stories of their exploits sung in ballads.

And this is no ordinary Witcher. You’ve heard the ballads about this one – the one with the long white hair that rides a mare and carries two swords on his back and walks with a confident swagger. Oh, you know who he is straight away.

* * *

“Geralt of Rivia,” you eye the man up and down as you stand blocking the entrance to your family home.

If he’s curious to know how you know who he is, he doesn’t show it. More likely than not, he knows all about the bard, Jaskier, who has made quite a name for the both of them, singing about their exploits across the Continent. The man just nods in acknowledgement.

You study the Witcher for a moment longer, eyeing the yellowed parchment in his hand. You know everything that goes on in this town, so you happen to know that the piece of paper he is holding has been tacked to the village notice board for at least a month; unlike the numerous Imperial notices that the villagers tend to rip from the weathered wood within a day or two of them being posted.

“So, going toe-to-toe with the big bad then, are you?” you ask with a smirk.

The white haired Witcher, to your surprise, returns a sort of half-smile, raising his arm to wave the water-damaged paper in front of you, “If you still intend to pay the reward, I suppose I am.”

Your father posted the contract before he set off on some Imperial business you didn’t deign to ask him about because the villagers had been bugging him about a couple of ghoul nests in the area. No surprise that they were there – there seemed to be no shortage of bodies turning up left and right thanks to the bloody war. More seems more likely than not that even after the Witcher dispatches the creatures, new nests will crop up within months; but you’d prefer not to have a hoard of angry villagers on your tail.

So, you push open the door, talking over your shoulder as you walk into the large hall, trusting that the Witcher will follow you inside. “My father posted the contract a month ago,” you inform him, “Left a bag of coin for me to give to whoever takes care of the ghoul nests north of town.”

When you turn around to face the Witcher, you find his yellow eyes set on you, as if he’s studying you or something. You’re not sure whether to be amused, offended, or flattered, but you don’t have much time to think on it before he speaks again.

“So happens I took care of the ghoul nests already,” he speaks in a deep and gravely voice quite unlike any other you’ve heard.

“Hmm,” you muse, studying him for a moment and realizing for the first time that his black leathers are smeared in places with fresh blood, “That ghoul blood or human?”

The Witcher smiles impishly, shrugging, “Smells like ghoul blood to me.”

You raise your eyebrows, taking several steps toward him. “I don’t have superhuman senses, Master Witcher.”

He cocks his head to the side, looking down at you, “Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

You are silent for a moment, though you are not actually concerned. The Witcher seems trustworthy enough, and you were fairly certain that if there’d been some sort of slaughter in the wilds around the village, you’d have already heard complaints about it. After all, with Father gone, you were the only one here for the villagers from across the hold to complain to.

“Fine,” you finally say. “You do smell of a thousand deaths.” That much is true. From your position only a few inches in front of him, you have to admit he does not smell particularly good. You’d witnessed more than one death, and human blood smelled more metallic than anything – it took a while for them to smell quite like this.

“What a lovely compliment,” he says with a slight laugh.

“It wasn’t a compliment,” you say matter-of-factly. The Witcher does not respond.

“I’ll get your coin,” you tell him, “And have the servants draw you a bath.”

The Witcher seems to be intrigued; at least the expression on his face leads you to believe so. The suggestion had been a serious one. You are enjoying the banter with this stranger, and you aren’t in a hurry for him to leave. It grows awfully boring here, especially with your father gone. You are alone with the servants and guards, which is not necessarily the greatest of company. The servants dislike you, no matter than you treat them respectfully enough. The guards, on the other hand, like you a bit too much – as if you would be interested in some hired guard from the Northern Realms.

You expect him to say something about taking the coin and being on his way but, for whatever reason, he did not. He just nodded gruffly, eyes scanning the empty entrance hall, do doubt wondering what servants you were speaking of, as there were none here.

Catching his searching eyes, you cross you arms over your chest and look at him, “I don’t need servants trailing after me all day.” It was true enough. Of course, you are accustomed to life as a noblewoman, but one thing you did not enjoy was being tailed by servants at all hours of the day. You were perfectly capable of dressing yourself in the morning, thank you very much. “But they’ll come if I call,” you add hastily.

“Hmm,” the Witcher says, as if he is musing over something. When he doesn’t follow up with anything, you look at him curiously.

“What?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, “Going to let me in on those mysterious thoughts?”

“Am I supposed to keep you informed on my mysterious thoughts when I do not even know your name?” He smirks, amber eyes locking on yours.

You ignore the heat creeping into your cheeks and answer quickly, “You never asked.”

“Then I suppose I am asking now,” he says. You are sure that you are blushing now, thanks to the look Geralt has fixed on you. It is hard to describe, really, but there is a slight glimmer in his yellow eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Y/N Aep Hedhal,” you respond. Your name would, among many circles, cause as stir. With so many Nilfgaardian noble families vying for power, those who are successful in that endeavor are looked to with a mixture of adoration and jealousy. But if the Witcher knows anything of your family, his cool and even expression does not give it away.

He nods, repeating your name as if tasting it on his lips adding, “From Nilfgaard?”

“How’d you guess?”

“The guards outside, for one,” he responds easily, “Your last name for another, and even without those two, your accent would be enough for anyone to guess.”

You laugh, somewhat bitterly. Your accent did indeed mark you as other here. Even when you were out in public without guards, servants, or other nobility, your accent gave it away nearly immediately. You thought, of course, about adopting the Nordlings’ way of speaking, but you couldn’t quite bring yourself to do it. You did not intend to stay here and changing your way of speaking would only make it seem as if you did.

“Brilliant deductive reasoning skills,” you quip.

“Necessary skill for a Witcher,” he says casually. “Have to deduce what monsters people have me chasing after.”

“Ah, I see,” for a moment, you feel uneasy.

Perhaps he was only engaging in this conversation for that purpose. You were, after all, seen as a monster by most of the people here. What’s more, it might even be true. You had no idea who occupied this land before Emhyr cleared them away to provide your father with this grand estate. And, you could not deny that very often, the bodies found in fields and on the sides of the road were victims of violence perpetrated by your fellow Nilfgaardians.

“And have you found a monster?” you ask.

The Witcher studies you for a moment longer before finally answering, “Don’t believe I have.”

You hold back the sigh of relief you had the strong urge to release and speak instead, “Interesting... Thought everyone here hates Nilfgaardians.”

“I’m a Witcher,” he says, “We don’t take sides.”

“Ah yes, I’ve read about that,” you muse, “Apolitical monster slayers.” You not your head toward the man, “Honestly thought that part was made up.”

“Out of all the things that book probably said about us, that is the part you thought was made up?” You are slightly caught off guard by the fact that he seemed genuinely interested in your answer. Not many people seemed to be interested in your opinions; even when your father was away on business and the responsibility of responding to issues in the hold fell to you. Oftentimes, they’d be in the great hall, standing in front of you as you sat in the plush chair in the center of the room, but they would be looking past you all together, looking to the guards at your sides. Typical.

“Does that surprise you?” you ask, eyebrows raised. “I’ve never known anyone who didn’t take sides, especially during wartime.”

“In my experience,” he says slowly – thoughtfully, as if he is carefully weighing every word, “Two warring nations care little about their people’s wellbeing. If they did, they certainly wouldn’t send their youth out to kill and be killed for the sake of redrawing some lines on a map.”

You realize you are nodding in agreement only after your head is already moving, quickly responding, “Well, Master Witcher. It seems like you do take sides after all.” He looks back at you, eyebrows knitted together in vague confusion before you continue, “You’re right next to me with all of the other cynics.”

“Next to you, Lady Aep Hedhal?” You swear he’s inched closer to you, but you cannot be sure it isn’t just your own wishful thinking. “I’d be honored.”

Well, perhaps it wasn’t in your head. Unsure of how to respond to his words, you fumble for a moment before finally settling on the easiest response, “Oh, Lady Aep Hedhal is my mother, Master Witcher. Call me Y/N.”

“If you call me Geralt, Lady Aep Hedhal.”

“Fine.”

It seems as if there is an invisible thread linking the two of you together becoming more and more taught as the conversation continues. Loose strands of you hair flutter as he breathes out. You could easily close that small distance by rolling up onto your toes, and if you were to tilt your head…

But that smell, it is impossible to ignore. As much as you’d like to tangle a hand in his long white hair, you’d rather not come away smelling of ghouls’ blood. And besides, you enjoy keeping men on a string – like a cat with a mouse. It’s a game for you; to see how far you can push it before they cave in. And, well, most of them do.

So, you take a step back, taking care not to wipe the small smile from your lips. “Your bath, Master Witcher, just down that hallway, the last door on the right. I’ll send someone in after you.” After studying his soiled clothes for a moment more, you add, “I’ll have some clothes sent for you as well, so the servants wash those.”

The Witcher holds up his hands, about to protest, but you silence him with a hand, “You will stay for dinner, won’t you? With father gone and mum still in Nilfgaard with my siblings, dinners are dreadfully lonely.” You blink up at him all doe-eyed, the way that you’ve learned most men cannot resist.

“Of course, Lady Aep Hedhal,” he says, “A feast for cynics.”

* * *

“So, you tend to business while your father is away?” the Witcher asks before taking a sip of wine.

You nod, taking a sip from your own goblet as the servants clear away the empty plates, “Someone’s got to,” you say. “Parents got dreadfully unlucky; four children and not one of them a boy.” Your voice is dripping with sarcasm, betraying your displeasure with the way of the world.

“Why are your mother and sisters still in Nilfgaard?”

You hate to admit it, but you are basking in the glow of his attention. It is rare that anyone asks you any question that doesn’t involve lowering their property taxes or trying their very clearly much more successful neighbor as a witch. Though, the wine is probably also a contributing factor in why the words seem to fall from your lips so easily.

“My youngest sister is sick, wouldn’t have been good for her to travel. And mum didn’t want to come, anyway. ‘Supposed to be a temporary position,” you explain, unable to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at that last bit.

“Not so temporary?”

You laugh, shaking your head as a rueful smile plays on your lips, “Two years now, and no sign of anything changing.”

You see Geralt’s expression soften to something akin to pity, and you immediately narrow your eyes at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” you snap. “I don’t need anyone’s pity,” you say, waving an arm to indicate the grand room you’re sitting in, “I mean, look at this shit.”

Geralt glances around the room and laughs, “I suppose it is a decent setup.”

The décor is simple enough, much different from when you arrived. You’d taken the liberty to remove most of the gaudy, ridiculous décor and replace it with equally expensive but simpler ones. You aren’t quite sure where they put the boar’s head that used to hang in there, but you are nevertheless glad that it’s gone.

“Thanks,” you say, draining your glass, “Had to spend the illustrious Emperor Emhyr’s money somehow.”

He smirks, eyes settling on you, “Fancy décor and pretty dresses.”

This time, you do blush. Of course, he isn’t wrong. One of the few things you like more in the Northern Realms are the clothes. There is no shortage of fancy silk and gauze, linens, chiffons, and lace for you to buy. And the colors—you can find such lovely colors here, like the dark navy silk you’re wearing now.

“Geralt,” you drawl, “I had no idea you had an eye for fashion, especially since you didn’t bother to put on the doublet I sent you.” Not that you really care – the shirt he’s wearing is white linen and the loose tie at the middle leaves a good deal of his chest exposed. It is not a bad view, you have to admit.

“I hate doublets,” he insists, shaking his head. “Can’t stand them.”

You raise an eyebrow, shaking your head. You can’t say you’re surprised. You highly doubt that Witchers ever have much occasion to wear fancy clothes. Even you can’t be bothered to wear a full corset. You don’t like wearing anything that requires help getting in or out of.

Silence settles over the two of you for a moment before Geralt turns to look out one of the large windows. You are surprised to see that the sun has set and the only thing you can see out the window is a smattering of stars. It must be quite late.

“It’s late, Lady Aep Hedhal,” he says, “I should probably be on my way, wouldn’t want to keep you awake.”

You look at him, eyes alight, “Oh, I didn’t know how much you cared about my bedtime, daddy.”

The moment the words leave your mouth, his eyes widen, and you swear that they’ve dilated slightly. You grin to yourself – who knew it would only take one word to disarm the Witcher. He has that look on his face – one you are quite familiar with from several of the guards and townsmen alike.

“But, since you are,” you speak slowly, taking advantage of the moment, you stand up, letting your dress rustle about as you take a few steps around the table, dragging your hand along the backs of each chair until you reach the Witcher’s. “Maybe daddy could tuck me in?”

It takes all of two heartbeats for Geralt to stand up, pushing the chair off to the side as he turns to face you, eyes drinking in your form as you blink up at him. “Gladly, princess.”

Your breath hitches in your throat as he places one hand at the side of your face, letting the other slide over your shoulder and down your back, coming to rest firmly on your waist, pulling you flush against him. You shiver at the feeling, nerves on fire as you look up at him towering over you. You would very much like to kiss him, but you’ll wait for him. The game of cat and mouse was fun, but now that you’re held flush against him, you fully intend to let Geralt take it from here, especially after the way he looked at you as he said princess.

He presses his forehead against yours, talking slow steps, backing you toward the oaken wall, the hand on your face sliding down ever so slightly so that his fingers are on your neck, raising goosebumps on your skin. All the while, he speaks in those slow, deliberate sentences, “I cannot guarantee, though, Princess,” his fingers press slightly harder into the soft skin of your neck, making you bite your lip in anticipation, “That you will sleep very much.”

He finishes his sentence at the exact moment you feel the wall behind you, and it takes all of your self-control not to melt right there. You heart races as his amber eyes lock on yours for a seemingly endless amount of time as he pins you there against the wall.

Finally, you break the silence, biting your lip and looking up at him with wide eyes, words sounding innocent as possible, “Why not, daddy?”

That seems to finally snap his resolve. He presses his body against yours, pinning you more tightly against the wall. “I’ll show you why not, Princess,” he growls, finally capturing your lips in a hungry kiss.

Your lips part for him almost immediately, allowing him access that he fully takes advantage of, tongue exploring your mouth as you whimper into the kiss, lost in how good this all feels. With the men from here – the guards, the occasional traveler – it has always just been a diversion. This is the first time in quite a long time that you’ve ever actually felt anything.

The Witcher pulls away, leaving you gasping for more. He stops for a moment, grinning just centimeters from your lips. You grip at his shirt, his shoulder, trying to draw him closer so that you can kiss him again, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he just laughs silently, cocking his head to the side. “You’re an eager little one, aren’t you Princess?”

Your only response comes out much softer than you intended. You aren’t used to being this, well, charmed by anyone. “Y-yes,” you whisper, “I do.”

Geralt breathes deeply, as if memorizing your scent, and hums appreciatively before pressing his lips to your neck.

You sigh, tipping your head back to give him better access, and he takes full advantage of it. His lips trace across your neck, gently sucking and licking at the skin there drawing several moans from you. You grasp at his shirt, clawing at his chest with both hands, vaguely aware that you are trying to rip the thin material from his chest.

He obliges, pulling back to pull the material over his head, tossing it behind him. You grin appreciatively as you drink in his form. Strong muscles and a body full of scars that somehow look good on him. You bite your lip before wrapping his arms around his neck, burying your face in his neck, tasting the skin there. He grunts appreciatively, gathering the silk of your dress and pulling it up using firm but gentle fingers. You are all too happy to allow him.

His hand snakes up under your dress, traveling higher and higher, leaving you breathing heavily, wanting more. For a moment, you pull away to look at him, eyes silently begging him to move his hand just a little higher. And, much to your delight, he does exactly that.

He snakes his hand up underneath the thin material covering your core, fingers gliding easily thanks to the wet heat pooled there. “You are eager, Princess,” he whispers, letting his fingers ghost over your clit – his touch so feather light it only stokes the flames, doing nothing to abate them. Until finally, he looks you in the eyes as he drags a calloused finger from your entrance to your clit, moving over the bundle of nerves in small circles – first slow and then faster, applying more pressure as your eyes roll back in your head, his name spilling from your lips.

Your breath hitches in your throat as he works you with his skillful fingers, massaging your clit just the right way so as to keep you like putty in his hands, legs bucking beneath you as he holds you upright, firmly against the wall – begging him for more but earning only a smirk as he continues to tease you.

“Open your eyes,” he demands in that intoxicating baritone. You never listen to anyone, but something about the way he says it has you snapping your eyes open immediately.

His amber eyes fix on yours as he toys with your clit, a smirk on his lips. You whimper, trying in vain to move your hips against his hand, but he has you locked right where you are.

“I bet you want to come,” he breathes, leaning down to nibble your ear.

You can only whimper in response as he flicks his tongue over the sensitive skin of your earlobe. His breath his warm on your neck as he speaks again, “Don’t you want to come, little Princess?”

You not emphatically, finally able to make your mouth form somewhat coherent words, “Y-yes…,” you breathe, “Please.”

“Please, what?” He growls in your ear as his fingers continue to rub slow circles that have you seeing stars.

“Please, daddy.”

He grunts in approval, lips moving to your neck, as he begins to work his fingers faster, flooding you with so much pleasure your body can hardly keep up. Between his fingers working over your clit and the soft kisses and licks he is placing all over your neck, you let out a desperate mewling sound as you come undone, hips bucking against his fingers as your knees buckle beneath you.

You would have fallen, but his reflexes are fast as lightning, and he catches you with one arm around your waist, holding you upright as your body slackens and you slump against his chest, breathing heavily.

Geralt slowly moves to brush back a few strands of your hair, moving his mouth up to whisper in your ear, “Oh, we’re going to have fun tonight, Princess.”

#geralt of rivia x reader #geralt of rivia #female reader #geralt smut #the witcher #geralt of rivia smut #geralt x reader smut #fanfiction #the witcher fanfiction #geralt of rivia fanfiction #oneshots #geralt of rivia oneshot #the witcher oneshot #geralt oneshot #writing prompt #writing prompt response

75 notes · View notes

bard-llama · 4 years ago

Text

The Wolf’s First Nature (Chapter 3)

Read Previous Chapters on AO3

Summary: Mousesack meets Geralt when they are both 8 years old, in the Druid Circle in Skellige. Somehow, this affects the entire rest of Mousesack's life.

So, turned out, people on the continent expected everyone to have a continent name. Mousesack didn’t understand what was so hard to pronounce about his name – just two syllables, combining two words the continent definitely used! – but after experiencing inventive butchering in each of the first three towns he visited, he decided enough was enough. So the next village he came across, he used a continent name, Ermion. It was somehow so much easier for the continentals to pronounce. Mousesack was not impressed.

On his way to Toussaint – across the continent, so maybe not the best choice for his start, but oh well – he stopped in every village and asked if they had any magic users. Mousesack didn’t have a way to search for Geralt, but he could start his research on magic. He could start learning how other magic users thought about magic.

That was how he met Visenna. She was a druid, but she traveled as a healer, and Mousesack ran into her when he was crossing the Yaruga river at Sodden Hill. She had been summoned to heal a townsperson’s broken leg and had just finished up when Mousesack rode into town, asking about magic users.

He waited outside the building the gatekeeper had indicated, and when a woman with long red hair emerged, Mousesack rose and smiled. “Hello! My name is Ermion. If you have time, I’d like to ask you a few questions about magic.”

Her eyebrow rose, but she nodded to him. “I am Visenna. I must head back towards Mayena, but if you care to accompany me on the road, you may ask any questions you wish.”

Mousesack grinned. “That would be wonderful. I’m from the druid circle in Skellige and I’m trying to understand magic from the perspective of all magic users.”

Visenna chuckled. “What an unusual area of study. But I don’t know that I will be able to tell you much. I’m from the druid circle in Mayena. We would be delighted to host one of our Islander cousins.”

Mousesack’s smile turned awkward. He was still a druid, and he had no intention of hiding that. But he wasn’t really sure how other druids would react to his current standing with Skellige’s circle – namely, that he had essentially been outcast, even if it was mostly of his own volition. But it might be valuable to learn if these continental druids were any different.

Besides, “Mayena?” Mousesack asked. “I had a friend, years ago, who was from the circle in Mayena. I don’t suppose you happened to know Geralt?”

There was an odd hitch in Visenna’s movement, but she tucked her supplies into the saddlebag on her roan mare and mounted quickly. “Geralt? No, I’m afraid not, sorry.”

Mousesack’s lips twisted as he mounted his own steed. “I suppose it was a longshot. But maybe someone in your circle will remember him!”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose.” Visenna rode just far enough in front of him that Mousesack couldn’t see her expression, but her voice sounded oddly tight. Had Mousesack somehow offended her by asking?

If so, she never told him how, and her posture seemed to ease as they turned to other topics of conversation. Mousesack knew the basics of herb healing – druids learned about all plants – but he knew very little about magical healing.

“How does it work?”

Visenna frowned and tried to explain. “Magic is energy. So healing another is like – like feeling which energies are out of alignments and working to put them back. It’s hard to explain.”

“Hmm, I think maybe I get it? But how can you see the energy. Isn’t magic invisible?”

Visenna shook her head. “You can learn to see it in people, you just have to let magic guide your hands. I don’t know if I can explain it better than that, but I can show you how to try when we get to Mayena, if you like.”

“Please!” Mousesack nodded eagerly. “I want to learn everything about magic. I can’t understand why so many people don’t.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes we are content with the world we are given. And sometimes we thirst for something that we must find ourselves.”

“Hmm,” Mousesack hummed. He was indeed searching for something he could only find himself. Some one he could only find himself.

I’m looking for you, Geralt. So you have to be all right. You have to be.

––

No one in Mayena was willing to talk about Geralt. Not a single person, and at least some of them must have been here a decade ago when Geralt was. But no one would talk.

Mousesack didn’t like it. He also didn’t like the way the Mayena Circle elders looked down their nose at the idea of a traveling druid doing research.

“Don’t worry,” Visenna told him.They were in Visenna’s hut, and Mousesack was pacing in front of her. “They don’t like that I travel either, but they also wouldn’t have anyone to pick up their trade supplies along the Riverdell if I didn’t.”

“I just don’t understand why people think our connection to nature is so limited!” Mousesack threw his hands in the air. “There’s no reason to think distance affects our connection at all! And the limitations on magic! What’s the point of having it if we’re never allowed to use it!?” He sighed and looked at Visenna. “At least as a healer, no one doubts the need for your magic.”

“So become a healer, too.” She offered. “Come, I will teach you.” She offered her hand, palm up, to her. Mousesack just stared and she rolled her eyes. “Take my hand. Hold it between yours and focus. Let’s find out if you can see the energy in people.”

“Just...focus?” He asked dubiously, but he dropped into the seat across from her at the table and cupped her hand.

“Take a deep breath and close your eyes. And then just – feel.” Visenna said.

Mousesack inhaled, wondering what it meant to feel. Feel what? He could feel the weight of her hand in his, rough with calluses from grinding remedies. He could feel the still air in the hut, the way his stomach grumbled silently, the slight ache in his neck from the tension in his shoulders. He breathed in deeply again, consciously relaxing his muscles, trying to feel further, though he wasn’t sure for what. He could feel the slight slickness on Visenna’s palm where she had sweat, the pressure of her thumb resting against the back of his, the warmth of her skin against his. He focused on that heat, and almost imagined that he could see it, even with his eyes closed. It was like a thin layer of pink and purple mist that moved from her hand to his and back again.

Mousesack gasped. “What is that!?”

“Magic.” Visenna’s voice carried a laugh.

“Magic,” he breathed in awe. The pink and purple mist actually looked – familiar, almost? Mousesack wished he could remember where from. “It’s beautiful.”

Visenna laughed aloud. “It is. But most importantly, it lets us heal by finding areas that are out of resonance. Then you push your magic into it to boost the body’s natural healing response. If you like, you can accompany me to my next patient and I can show you in practice.”

Mousesack opened his eyes with some reluctance, almost missing the pink and purple mist. “You would let me apprentice with you? Even though I know nothing about it?”

“Everyone must start somewhere. How can you know it if no one ever teaches you.” Visenna withdrew her hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Accompany me for the next season. I travel around the area, serving as healer to the different villages in the area. Learn the basics and see if you’re interested in more.”

He smiled widely. “Thank you. I would love that.”

#my fics #mousesack #visenna #families of choice series #geralt of rivia

2 notes · View notes