The Witcher: Elder Blood

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***

- We got back to the village. People came out from all sides and started asking us questions. They saw a girl in the hands of the headman's son and the body of a dead incubus nearby....

Inside our bedroom, sitting opposite the two remaining inhabitants of my house, I told them about the incident that had happened to me earlier.

- Why did you bring the whole body with you? - Yennifer asked. - Wasn't it just the head that you had to show in town?

- I thought I'd throw it to them, 'Let them burn it,' I thought at the time.

I got home late in the evening and was immediately occupied by two interested girls. Galantea and Jennyfer sat down next to me and demanded a detailed account of what had happened, after the short retelling I had thrown in on my return.

Yennifer had only recently said goodbye to her new assistant - Litta had moved to her home on Skellig. Galanthea was just bored, my story dispelled her boredom slightly.

- What happened next, did she turn out all right? - the bard was asking a couple of times as many questions.

- Yeah, exhaustion, incubus fucked her up. Other than that, she's fine, not an expert, but she should be fine in a couple of days.

- Pfft, those things take life force, I read about them in Arethusa. There was a king once, a succubus used him, and he collapsed, and he wasn't young - his heart gave out.

- So I didn't even think about it when the horned one started to talk to me,' I continued after Yennifer. - In short, I told the peasants about the incubus and gave them a potion to drink the girl with water as soon as she starts to come to her senses, and travelled back to the town. Gave the horse back, you know the rest, went home.

- I could make a great song out of your story. I can directly see people experiencing unforgettable emotions when listening to it. The separation of two lovers by a vile monster. A good wizard comes to the rescue. A gruelling search for the monster's lair in the forest. A battle with a powerful enemy. Victory over the monster and the reunion of loving hearts. Heroic adventure with romance, something that needs tipsy guests at the next feast.

It's at times like this that a girl makes an exaggerated wiggle. And this time she was throwing her arms up, circling the room as if we were surrounded by the very crowd that would hear her song in the future.

Sitting in a cosy atmosphere had become a sort of tradition. Jennyfero and I are always busy doing something, and Galantea doesn't sit idle, and when she's not performing, she's watching the plants in the garden or reading a book. Buying new book copies in the big city is not difficult.

- Galantea... - I cover my eyes with the palm of my hand. - Your last song about my extermination of the rotters didn't ring true at all. There were suddenly twice as many of them, and the peasants could have gone without food for the winter if I hadn't restored all their crops,' I realised that bards often embellish the truth in their songs to make the story seem exciting, but not when it's done to me - it's awkward to listen to. - Do you plan to do the same with this one?

- Eren, it's time to get used to it,' Jennyfer interjected. - And what do you care, are you a frequent guest at the festivities? Only once I was in Arethusa, where no such songs were sung, only melodies played by guest minstrels.

- That's it, you've got it, just leave me alone. Compose your song, - I got up from my seat in the room and went to the window. The lights in the darkening city were beginning to appear behind the glass. - How was your first day with Litta?

- You wouldn't believe it,' the sorceress grinned enigmatically.

- Not good?

- She's doing better than you. More studious, that's for sure, and she and I have common interests... I don't mean feminine... - she adds when she realises what I mean. - ...but healing. She's not so good with alchemy, but she can replace you in the shop.

- Well, don't give me that, I've been doing my job without any problems, haven't I? - I look at Galanthea for support.

- Sure... for the first few days, and after a week I started grumbling about the boring routine. Ha ha ha, come on Eren, now you won't have to brew potions in the morning.

- That's right, you can dump all the chores on two fragile girls. Sounds heroic, don't you think so, Galanthea?

- Oh, it's late, time for bed. I'll leave you two alone,' Snowdrop jumped up on the chair and skipped out of the room, waving goodbye. It didn't take a mind reader to realise that she didn't want to side with Yennifer in the argument, but she had no plans to support me, and she didn't want to make me angry.

- Traitor,' the sorceress said without rancour.

This conversation was starting to bore me. If we kept talking about the shop that Jennyfer had originally asked for, I was going to get my brains blown out. I wanted to rest until next week. And then we can go with Hen to the vampire world. And we can look for new ones at a measured pace in the future.

- Come here, 'fragile girl,' I grabbed the sorceress sitting in the chair and carried her towards the bed. - Let's help each other relax... what? - she crossed her arms, lying beneath me.

- Wash yourself first, knight in shining armour - the saviour of poor girls from the clutches of monsters. But without shining armour, without a horse, you're not a knight,' she got up from the bed, threw off her dress with a light movement, then took off her low-heeled shoes. All that was left was her black lace underwear. The girl lay back down under my gaze. - Well, I'm waiting, but not for long - I may fall asleep.

- If you fall asleep, I'll wake you up,' I leave the room.

- You can be a little more romantic! - I hear a shout in the back.

***

'I was sitting alone on a bench in the garden behind the house.... - 'Now I'll practice changing shape,' ... and practised Earth magic.

All my attention was drawn to the small elongated mound in the ground and the clods of compacted earth lying next to it.

Elemental sources of Chaos - natural elements, considered the basic way to get energy for sorcery. It's the base, it's where all mages of this world start. At the academy, new students focus on one of two elements: Earth or Water. Air is too difficult, and fire is too dangerous.

I paid almost all my attention to Water in the academy, having decided then to finish first one element to a high level of control. Detmold, on the other hand, was trying to master Earth. That's not to say we didn't train the others. Not at all, we even practised a couple of spells based on Air and drew Fire energy under the supervision of a mentor. But the emphasis was on one. Though it's worth considering here that I was also picking up control of my own energy.

Me and other Origins, of course, thanks to the innate source, can rely on the internal reserve, which has a neutral colouring, and therefore suitable for use in any spell, just need to change the neutral colouring to the necessary for the spell. Because of the colour change, it has to be trained separately from the other elements. While other spellcasters use neutral energy only in special spells based on it, the Sources have to learn to convert neutral energy into other energies if they want to use it in elemental magic, which makes up the majority of known spells.

This is not the case with elemental sources, their structure cannot be changed so easily. Most spells have their own nuance in energy, in addition to the distinctly elemental spells: fireballs, stalagmite projectile, freeze and water control, there are also many spells categorised. For example, telekinesis is categorised as Air, and polymorphism is one of the more difficult spells in the Earth category. Spells that don't fit the four elements are added to the Fifth Element category - the quintessence of magic.

The Fifth Element can be thought of as the neutral energy of Chaos, the original. It is often believed that magicians draw the Fifth Element from the stars. This belief has arisen among sorcerers because of the amount of such energy in nature. There is too little of it. And the stars are too far away from us, hence this belief.

The spells in the Fifth Element category are no harder to learn than the others. Teleportation, Mind Magic, Magical Portals, Divination, and others. The first three can be learnt at the academy, except that Mind Magic requires sufficient talent, which, fortunately, I personally possess.

But it's hard to get enough Fifth Element energy from the world. It takes me as much of that energy to travel to another world as it would take a spellcaster to travel through a dozen ordinary Magical Portals. Each Source has a huge reserve of neutral energy by warlock standards, self-healing energy, it should be noted.

I once had a conversation with the Rector about the portals between worlds, which were once used by the elves. Such portals are considered the closest to my way of travelling. Then I remembered Lara Dorren's notes written to her in my homeworld: she had mentioned that elves travelled between worlds, and that, if nothing had changed, some elves still roamed the worlds available to them, with portals between them. Hela mentioned to me in that conversation that if a wizard wanted to use such portals, he would have to spend hundreds of years learning magic, or have a great talent - which would allow him to learn magic faster - to be able to gather enough Fifth Element energy to open an interworld portal and maintain it. An average Source would take at most half of the total energy. I'm spending a fifth of it right now, assuming that opening pre-made portals and mine are equal in cost.

'Good, now we need to take Earth energy and move on to spells..... I'll create stalagmites,' I turn the human earth figures back into crumbly earth.

Up until this point I had been practising direct control of the earth, taking control of the energy in it. All of today's earth energy manipulations have long been mastered by me at the academy. They can be considered a warm-up. The training itself will be in the creation of spells.

- What are you doing, digging in the beds? - Galanthea in a joking manner inquired. She came out of the back entrance with her cloak thrown over her house dress, and slowly made her way towards me.

- Decided to practice my magic. Gotta keep myself busy.

Galanthea sat down next to me on the bench, a look of interest in her from what was happening. She had been shopping for new clothes an hour ago, and was probably looking for something to do when she got back.

- I'll see how you're doing. Jennyfer and Litta bore me with their chatter. They can't decide which of the two of them is better at healing.

With a chuckle at her words, I reply, 'And you've decided to retaliate by boring me... by talking,' and then I decide to stop the training for a while.

- You're being mean. Yennifer is a bad influence on you,' she leans over to me and rests her head on my shoulder. We continue to sit in the calming atmosphere. - Tomorrow you're going with the old warlock to the world with vampires?

- Yeah. He made me a headband to block mental magic. So don't worry, the vampires won't be able to catch me by surprise,' I always felt calm when I was alone with Galanthea.

There was an aura of serenity about that girl. And when she played, she could easily convey the right mood to the listener, especially when she sang a song with her exquisite voice.

- I don't doubt you; danger is always late for your instincts,' Galanthea said, taking my hand and running it over the small scar I'd received in my world from a rock-climbing accident.

She knew about my foresight. I shared a lot with her in general, considering her a close friend. If I hadn't started hitting on Yennifer, she'd probably be the girl who shared my bed every day.

- I wish I could put your confidence in Yennifer's mind, the number of times she's told me about the dangers of travelling. It was worth it just once to have a strong adversary in them.

- Don't blame her for worrying, Eren. Anxiety is a sign of affection. Affection goes hand in hand with love. Anxiety is worth appreciating. Even if it sometimes feels like a lack of confidence in you.

I knew what Ian was worried about. If that vampire had wanted to kill me and I hadn't used Quen beforehand, maybe the adventure could have ended that day. Unlike physical danger, you can't dodge mental magic with foresight. But I learn from my mistakes.

After a pause descended again, Galantea continued: - Sometimes, hearing mention of the Prophecy of Itlina, doubts creep up on me as to whether you are not the one destined to save the people, to transport them all to a new world.

- Ah, the prophecy. The main interpretation is of prior wars, epidemics, the complete decline of the elven race and a return to barbarism... which is compared to life on Skellig - and I wasn't kidding about that last one. The book I read about the prophecies in the academy, specifically the chapter on Itlina, made just such a comparison. - The rector is sceptical of it. I, in turn. - I'm reminded of the visions I saw of Jennyfer the first time I saw her, long before I met her in person. - I don't know. If the initial events of the prophecy had begun, maybe I would have believed it.

- I believe in it,' the girl whispered. - But I wish it were otherwise. New wars, bloody wars, the final fall of the elves, dark times - I don't want to witness such terrible horrors.

- So, what, you're worried about possible chaos on the continent? - We can expect widespread warfare.

Resources are running out: mines are running out, forests are being cut down, and as the forests shrink, so do the animal populations, which means hides, not just meat. And people, on the contrary, tend to increase in number. Plus the ambitions of monarchs can become at any moment the key to another war. And here the ban on direct interference in politics by warlocks will play a cruel trick.

I know little of the future from my visions. Just bits and pieces. Sometimes, however, you can make a picture out of bits and pieces. Recent visions of a certain Ciri have made it clear that there will be a war in the future. I don't know how big it will be. I don't know the dates. And the age of Jennyfer and Geralt in those visions didn't make the time frame shorter. The former looked only a little older there, and the latter witch, looked older there, but by how much? Hard to say, maybe fifty years, maybe under a hundred.

'I still can't believe I didn't remember those rare moments from the guidebook at first. It wasn't until the moment I revisited Caer Morhen,' memory can fail, especially for such vague things. But from my memories of the visions, I could surmise that Jennyfer and Geralt would somehow become a couple in the future.... A troubled couple. And Jennyfer would start training the very same Ciri for a while, in addition to training the girl in witchcraft. - 'But most likely I was given a glimpse of a different future, one I've partially changed.'

Why did such thoughts come into my head? That the vision I saw was of a future where I wasn't? Such thoughts came because of Ciri herself. If she is a possessor of the Elder Blood, then why in those visions she was not trained by me, since I am familiar with witches and Jennyfer? Why do I not appear anywhere in the visions, even though Ciri was often seen among the wizards in the company of a witch or Yen? Ian and Geralt's relationship can still be speculated that we might have broken up in the future. Relationships are like that, not always permanent.

These are the questions that led me to three possible answers: the first - I died.... everything happens in life; the second - I will finally leave this world in the future, having parted with Ian - otherwise I would have taken her with me; the third - I am not in that future.

- One thing is enmity, petty clashes, it is difficult to do without them, sometimes even impossible, - after a long silence, in which each of us was in his own thoughts, Galanthea continued the dialogue. - But if the prophecy starts to come true, as you said, there will be chaos. The end of the world... I know a wizard who rescues girls from the clutches of monsters, I'm sure he will save me and take me to another world with him.

- Snowdrop, I may be badly influenced by Yennifer, but you're influenced by noblemen's holidays. How many times can you call me the saviour of girls, I've only saved one.

- And me?

- That's right. I apologise. So, I'm quickly returning to the previous topic. - You can't expect the end of the world. I know a little for possible events, after which the world dies - by world I meant the planet. - When the sun goes out and when the world is iced over for a while. The latter, by the way, can be a consequence of the former, but in that case it will freeze forever. We won't live to see the first one, most likely the human race won't live to see the first one, because it's been going on for so long. The second is possible. but first we have to face the cold seriously... and then wait for tens of centuries, maybe more.

- Can the sun go out? - Galantea exclaimed in surprise. - But how can you know that? After all, your world is normal, you said so yourself, and how can you know about such a thing without seeing it?

- You know. let's sit down one day, get Ian, I'll talk briefly about space - the world beyond our planet. Let's just skip the subject for now. Why did I bring it up in the first place? You're right, sudden end of the world, magical cataclysm, there's been one... - mentioning the Conjunction of the Spheres. - I'll save you and Ian and the others at the same time, though! - I raise my right index finger up. - As Ian told me, I'm not a knight, so I'll have to pay,' I slip my hand under Galanthea's cloak and run my left hand down the girl's back, stopping at her arse and pinching it lightly.

- Eren,' she smiles slyly. - Be careful what you wish for,' she places her palm on my cheek in response and, slowly bringing her face close to mine, bestows a light kiss on my lips. - I'll spend the night with you, and then you can deal with Yennifer. Do you want it?

- Ahem, it was a joke,' I pull away awkwardly. - A bad one.

- I know it was. But your desire to grope me isn't. Oh-h-h, - Galanthea stretched her back and stretched her arms up, from which my gaze stopped on her breasts under the thin dress: it was cold outside, and she was wearing only a cloak, besides the thin dress, which didn't cover the front - her nipples, hardened from the cold, were protruding. - Keep practising, I won't disturb you, I'm getting cold. I'll be waiting for your story about the sun and the cosmos one of these days, don't forget.

As I saw the figure leaving, I couldn't help but swear: 'Why did I decide to touch her? I just got horny... and Ian's busy for at least an hour. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.'

Eventually I managed to finish the training session after all. Towards the end I summoned and shot three stalagmites at the same time, the Stone Spike spell into the ground. And practised Magnet, or Elgan's Theory, named after the spell's creator - magnetises a metal object so that it attracts all metal from the surrounding area. Both spells are related to the element of Earth.