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There was something wrong happening.

At first Geralt had avoided the woods, because it felt like that off-ness was concentrated there. The birds and insects had gone quiet at first, and soon after they'd started to flee to the forest's edges. Though autumn had barely begun, in some areas Geralt found trees turning rusty, leaves dying off.

That had been at first, and from there things had gotten wronger.

When Geralt realized what was happening, he went to the woods. He worried it had no longer become an issue of protecting himself until he managed to leave Darrow, but of protecting Darrow potentially from himself.

Whatever corruption existed in the forest, growing and spreading, it affected his body, and his mind. It had twisted itself around the witcher mutations, had expressed them in new ways, or simply more.

And so Geralt was back at his old camp. Hiding, biding time, and keeping a baleful eye on the situation. He ought to do something about it, but what? What could he do, when he didn't even understand what was happening to himself?

He sat beside the fire, hunkered over an evening meal in a foulest mood. His skin was paler than usual, dark veins standing out against the white. All of his senses screamed. He gripped his dinner in hands that had begun to end in blackened, pointed nails, that reminded Geralt too much of Regis. That was the bruxa in him, no doubt, a fact that he wanted to put little thought into, if he could avoid it.

The canines that filled his mouth too much more than they used to, those were likely more attributable to a manticore mutagen.

And the fact that he had made dinner of a squirrel, and had not felt the bother or desire to cook it, that Geralt wanted to put thought into even less.

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He'd hurt Dorian. He could have killed him and he hadn't even realized he was doing it. He wasn't in his right mind.

Bull wasn't sure what was going on, but it was bad, and he feared madness more than anything in the world. He had been over the edge of it before and he could not go back. This time it wouldn't be a nest of Tal Vashoth: it would be people he knew and cared for. He couldn't let that happen.

So he found himself in the woods. Some part of him argued that he should go home, but what if he slept? What if he dreamed like that again? What if he didn't stop this time?

No, maybe this was better for a while, even if Dorian was certain the lyrium might have caused it and had gotten rid of it. Bull wasn't sure he could take that chance.

The scent of wood smoke caught his attention. He ended up following it and he lingered outside the light of it, his good eye reflecting it as he looked at the camp site on the other side.

"Geralt?"

"Unfortunately."

There had been people that had visited Geralt in the last few days. He'd wanted to hide from them, all of them, send them away. Even if, in the end, he did not. A product of too many lectures, over the years, about not isolating himself, about how the people who cared for him could never think ill of what he was.

But the man who approached, Geralt had no intention of sending away. He was no Regis, here to offer a philosophical and kind ear, but Geralt could hope for little better here in Darrow. The Iron Bull, he knew, would not judge him, in this state or any other.

It did not improve his mood, however. He guessed that it was partly simply the instability of the mutations.

"Not sure what's brought you out here." Though Bull's place wasn't far from Geralt's camp, simply closer to the city and further from the woods.

"But you may as well have a seat by the fire. Was about to ... cook."

Eat, he meant. About to eat.

"I'm concerned I'm going to go mad and kill people. I figured not being near so many might be a wiser choice."

He moved closer to the firelight; as the light crept up his body, the heavy shadow behind him was revealed to be his maul - a fossilized dragon claw - balanced on his shoulder. A large jug hung from his other hand. He lifted it.

"Want a drink?"

He'd found the maraas-lok in his trunk. He was pretty sure Geralt was the only other person in Darrow that might be able to handle more than a few shots of it.

"It's going around," Geralt said, dull voice deep with irony. He looked up to meet Bull's eyes and away from the rabbit and squirrel he was now busy skinning completely. Geralt wasn't using a knife to do the work, but hands tipped with impossibly sharp claws.

His face was a greyer shade of pale.

The smell of whatever was in the demijohn at Iron Bull's hip met Geralt's nose, and his nose twitched as he tried to place it. He couldn't, though by the smell it was stronger than a dwarven spirit from Mahakam.

It might not be Regis' mandrake cordial, but it would do, certainly. He was up for being a drunk that night.

"What have you got?"

"Maraas-lok," he answered. "It'll put some chest on your chest."

With a quiet grunt, Bull set the maul down on the other side of the fire before he moved closer. He eased down, left leg stretched out and the brace reflecting the firelight. He was close to Geralt, close enough at least that they could pass the jug back and forth. He worked the cork out and offered Geralt the first drink.

And as he did, he looked closely at the witcher.

"What happened to you?" Those claws wouldn't be out of place on Bull. But he remembered Geralt looking... mostly human.

Geralt thought that he could perhaps use some chest on his chest; he'd always felt too drawn and sinewy, though Yennefer had never complained, not about that and not about the scars.

He watched the fire glitter off of Iron Bull's metal brace, almost in a trance for a heartbeat, before finishing up with the animals and skewering them to roast on a makeshift turnspit over the fire. Normally, Geralt preferred stew to roast, but he didn't have a pot ready -- he'd been about prepared to simply eat the animals raw, had even wanted to.

It happened, from time to time. He would even indulge in raw liver some nights while on the Path. But not so powerfully.

"Something evil is happening in the forest. It's focused on a place called Cabeswater. That's all I know. Whatever it is, it's destabilized the mutations. Changed the way they're being expressed."

He couldn't remember if he'd told Iron Bull about the mutations. If not, it didn't matter now, he supposed. He took the demijohn and tipped it back, taking a long swig.

It burned his throat on the way down. It was almost pleasant.

Bull nodded some, accepting that something bad was happening. Of course it was. He knew that. Seeing the red lyrium had solidified the notion that it was something at least somewhat outside himself messing with the normal state of things.

He rubbed his forehead.

"I've had bad dreams for as long as I can remember. Got worse after Seheron, worse after the Chargers were wiped out. But I could handle it. I had the Qun. Here?" He shook his head and he accepted the bottle when Geralt passed it over.

He took a long drink and growled at the burn. Good.

"Here I have madness licking at my mind and none of my people."

Geralt gave the Bull a look of deep sympathy, as much at any rate as his eyes -- viper-like, thin slits in the close firelight -- could convey. He'd been having the dreams too, though not so bad as it seemed it was occurring in others. Maybe that, too, was an attribute of the mutations.

But he was tired, of dreaming about Ciri, dead. Of the Naglfar overhead and the White Frost and destruction.

Something occurred to Geralt.

He leaned closer to Bull, nose nearly in the pit of the man's arm, and inhaled deeply.

"But you're not having any physical manifestations?"

Bull lifted his eyebrow when Geralt leaned in close - very close - and sniffed him. He stayed still for it eyeing the man.

"No," he answered slowly. "You expecting there to be any?"

He remembered Geralt talking about his mutations, though he'd been vague on the method of how all that had been accomplished. Bull just remembered the part where very few actually survived the process.

Geralt lingered, a little too close. He wasn't attracted to men, not in particular, but there was something to be said in general for the pheromones of a full grown, sentient creature. He would be lying also, of course, if he claimed he'd never shared a prostitute with Dandelion.

He shook his head and, with knit brows, moved away again. He held a hand out for the booze. He liked it.

"Thought you might be ... not like me, but. Though you might be some kind of a hybrid. But you were born this way, maybe that's the difference. The Decoctions of the Grasses open our bodies up to change. We can administer mutagens throughout life."

Edited 2017-09-24 03:54 (UTC)

Bull was silent for a moment after Geralt leaned away, just listening and weighing the thought that sprang to mind.

"There's rumors," he said at last, "that the tamassrans found a way to infuse dragon blood into Qunari bloodlines. We come from a people called the Kossith, but all told we don't bear much resemblance to them now."

He took another drink from the jug, let the burn linger.

"We revere dragons. See them as the embodiment of raw, natural power. We follow the Qun to harness that rawness in ourselves... to make us what we are. We are told from birth that we will become savage, mindless without it."

"Mmm," Geralt said, and moved to spin the turnspit over the fire. The fat was already crackling. It smelled gorgeous, and Geralt kept himself from simply taking them off and starting in on his meal immediately.

"Thought that was what I was picking up. Draconid. Maybe the rumors were truer than you imagined. Maybe not."

Geralt shifted in his seat, leaned back against the trunk of the maple tree overhead.

"Manticore," he said, "For strength, and resistance to poison. Bruxa, for their magic. Forktail, a type of wyvern. Who knows why, they've got a lot of mean qualities. Those were the basics, the ones they administered to all the boys in the Wolf School."

Edited 2017-09-24 04:10 (UTC)

"If the tamassrans did manage it, no one knows how. We don't trust mages. Being born one under the Qun doesn't lead to a great life."

But there had to have have been some way. Bull wasn't sure he liked the notion of confirming that rumor, as Geralt just had. He huffed a quiet laugh. There wasn't a lot of humor in it.

"These are dragon horns," he said, gesturing at his head. "Cole pointed that out not long after we met. There's a lot of variation among the Qunari, though. I think the tamassrans must have started breeding for horns that grew closer to the head at some point. Not a lot like mine out there."

Geralt agreed. They were dragon horns, long and proud. Not just the antlers of a forktail or the curling ram's horns of a wyvern, but a proper head of pointed, magnificent dragon horns. Geralt had only seen a few dragons in his life. Aside from the two golden dragons he'd met, Saskia and Three Jackdaws, he had presumed they'd basically been extinct from shortly after Vesemir's early days. Far before Geralt had ever started witchering.

"They're beautiful," he said honestly. He wasn't flirting, not particularly. Only observing what, to Geralt, seemed patently to be a fact.

"Eh, they suit me. Apparently some of the tamassrans took a liking to them, or my size. Got selected to breed a few times before and during Seheron. I'm sure they were mildly disappointed I didn't go into the army. I've always been big, even for a Qunari. And I like hitting things."

He really liked hitting things. He'd been wanting to kill something since getting to Darrow. He'd had his chance a few times, but it wasn't quite the same as the constant exposure he'd had with the Chargers, or with the Inquisition.

Geralt gave the meat another turn, and the held a hand out to Bull for the demijohn of liquor.

"Selected?"

That was a way to put it. Geralt arched a flat eyebrow at the Bull. It was not, maybe, any of his damn business, but he was already feeling booze-warm and there was nothing to occupy him out in the forest except his own rancid thoughts that night.

Maybe he should have expected that. Bull passed the jug and settled in to attempt to explain. "The Qunari don't live like... really anyone else in Thedas, as far as I know. We don't live like humans do, especially. We don't have families, we don't marry, we don't even really pair off. Children are raised by tamassrans, not by the people that bred and birthed them."

He understood, now, how clinical and perhaps cold that sounded, but it was the life Bull knew.

"Anyway, since we don't do the whole... mate and have children thing, the tamassrans select people with favorable traits, or ones who have traits they think would pair well together, and... you do it."

Geralt gave an unfunny snort at you do it.

He took a few more swigs of the alcohol, before deciding it might be enough by the time it made it into his system totally. He passed back to Bull and shook his head.

"Sounds like the dryads. They live in their own society, only interact with humans rarely. They'll entice or kidnap human and elf men into their encampments, breed with the ones they deem worthy. Children are always female, and they join the community. They were always ... disappointed I couldn't be of any help."

They'd considered Gwynbleidd to be ideal stock. Geralt was healthy, strong, and more importantly, possessed an ideal combnation of capacity for violence and absolute honor.

Edited 2017-09-24 04:46 (UTC)

He snorted a laugh. "Now I'm just picturing a bunch of tree-ladies trying to talk your pants off."

Nothing like the dryads he and the Chargers had encountered. Probably far fewer demonic squirrels.

"No enticing or kidnapping on our end. Just conversion. And even when humans or elves did convert to the Qun, we called them Viddathari. There's no inter-breeding. I'm not sure there can be."

Bull was quite certain there were young Qunari out there somewhere that shared his bloodline, but he had never met them. And he was positive he hadn't ever impregnated any of the women he'd been with - he was pretty sure he would have noticed if there was a little Qunari-looking kid in the middle of Orlais with a human mother.

Krem sure as hell would.

"I miss it," he admitted quietly. "I've been off-balance since I got here and this... this bullshit corruption and the tease of madness is not helping. I'd have submitted myself for re-education by now if there were any other Ben-Hassrath here."

The dryads had been human once themselves, and so to Geralt their ability to interbreed made sense, like asses and horses. The elves, that was a trickier thing. Elves and humans could interbreed, half-elves were more common than elves themselves. Ciri herself was a quadroon, descended from Lara Dorren and the Elder Blood. But why could it happen?

We are superior, witcher. Unlike your race, we were created. We didn't evolve from something lesser.

Geralt caught himself drifting. He took the meat off the fire and let it cool. It was enticing, the outside crisp. He'd coated it with salted oil, and he'd stuffed the cavities with fragrant herbs.

He'd done a lot of herb-picking lately.

"Re-education?" Geralt couldn't keep the snap judgment out of his voice, though he wished he had.

Edited 2017-09-24 05:06 (UTC)

The judgment in Geralt's voice didn't make Bull flinch. He shrugged one heavy shoulder.

"Under the Qun, every one and every thing has a purpose. Know a thing's name, know it's purpose. Our society works because everyone does their jobs. But sometimes it's not that easy. Nothing ever is. The Ben-Hassrath have ways of guiding people back to the path. And if they can't." He shrugged. Bull had never made excuses for his people and he wasn't about to start now.

"Seheron was a sack of cats. The recommended tour of duty was two years and even then the burn out level was high. I was there for eight. And there came a day when I woke up and I couldn't think of a single damn reason to keep doing my job. So I turned myself in. I wanted them to fix me."

It was a harsh way of life, without choice. But Geralt realized that he truly had no room to cast aspersions. He'd been swept into nothing larger than a guild. Even at its height, there had never been more than a hundred heads at Kaer Morhen, witchers, trainees, alchemists and sorcerers. It was no society. But the rigidity remained.

"Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes, all you have is a purpose. You spend your whole life convincing yourself that it's enough."

And if it's not, you simply don't survive. Momentary doubts killed witchers.

Bull looked over at Geralt, wondering if the witcher really did understand. So few humans seemed to grasp the idea, or so few seemed willing to.

"I understood my place in the world and it felt right. Doubt shattered that. I couldn't live like that. I didn't want to. More than that... I went mad. Went into the jungle, risked the lives of the men that followed me, and slaughered every Tal Vashoth in sight. By the time they found me with back up, I was surrounded by bodies and blood. I needed them to fix me or to kill me."

Bull sighed and took a longer drink from his jug. He should slow down. It would hit him eventually.

"Feeling that now."

"And you were afraid of dying. So you had them fix you. Because we all are."

Geralt lifted his head and gave the Bull a slow, yellow gaze.

"I've known for a very long time that I was going to die in a cave stinking of carcasses, by some griffin or another horror. But I have a purpose. One day, the world may very well be lying in ruin, but I'll carry on killing monsters in the ruins of that world until one kills me."

For whatever reason, he thought of Kaer Morhen's disused laboratory, of the table and the straps and lines of dusty demijohns filled with mutagenic poisons.

"I don't know if it was being afraid of dying as much as it was being afraid of losing control. If I was going mad, I'd be a danger to everyone, not just bandits and enemy soldiers."

Bull shrugged his heavy shoulders. Losing control had always been more terrifying than dying. He knew what he had in him.

He looked at Geralt and a faint smile tugged his mouth. "You'd probably do well under the Qun. Too smart to be Beresaad, but the tamasrans would figure out what you were suited for. Maybe spying, maybe just farming or some craft."

But he knew if they got Geralt as an adult they wouldn't be able or willing to ignore his useful history.