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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.
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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Bull hit a smaller tree nearby, making the whole thing shiver and sending leaves falling. He grunted as he sat up, a little dazed after that one.
He huffed another laugh. "That was a good one," he rumbled in the dark.
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He kept watching, waiting for any potential sneak attack.
Geralt breathed in and out, evenly, but shallowly, the way that a cat might while scenting prey, seeing a chipmunk in the yard. The campsite smelled like adrenaline, like rushing blood, and something particular to the Iron Bull that Geralt could only liken to draconid pheromones.
He made an odd noise in the back of his throat, began to will himself calm.
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He could smell the witcher, maybe not as well as Geralt could smell him, but he wasn't unaware of the other man's excitement and adrenaline. The Bull just sat there, relaxing and breathing, allowing himself to come down from the rush of a good fight. Now he wondered what it'd be like to fight Geralt sober.
They might have to try it.
Bull waited until Geralt's heartbeat sounded calmer and he got up slowly to shuffle back toward the fire pit.
"You gonna light that again?"
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"Mm," he murmured, and gave a snap of his fingers. The campfire flared back to life again, crackling merrily and smelling like maple smoke as it had been minutes before.
"Just .. gimme a minute. Got to come down."
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He held Geralt's gaze and gently gripped the back of the witcher's neck. Instead of a full blown headbutt, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against Geralt's, the gesture downright affectionate. He went so far as to close his eye, expressing trust.
A smirk tugged his mouth. "Taarsidath-an halsaam."
Bull chuckled quietly and squeezed Geralt's neck before he released him and stepped back. He gave the witcher his space and sank down by the fire, settling once more with his left leg outstretched.
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But the Bull's eyes slid closed, an expression of trust, like a huge grey puma. Geralt breathed out slowly, calmly.
He watched the other man pull away with baffled curiosity on his face once again. He didn't speak or understand any of the language that Bull spoke, only that it reminded him of some of the tongues used in Ofier.
"Vaer'trouv, tierth."
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"What'd that mean?"
He figured if he asked for a translation he was opening himself up to have to offer the same, and that was fine. He was deep enough into the maraas-lok to be willing to attempt to translate Qunlat.
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"It means -- sort of -- good fight, wild boar. Don't know the word for bull in the Elder Speech. Or dragon. Bet Ciri would know."
But Ciri wasn't in Darrow. Geralt hiccuped again, before making his way closer to the fire, and looking for the jug of alcohol again. He would have a few more swigs, before -- hopefully -- a restful sleep.
"Language of the elves. We call them the Elder Folk. So their tongue's the Elder Speech."
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He caught himself on his hands, bracing his weight to help keep his balance.
"Mmm, Taarsidath-an halsaam roughly translates to... I will bring myself sexual pleasure later while thinking about this with great respect. Qunlat is hard to do straight translations for."
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"You're not even dicking me around, are you?" he asked. But then, bubbling up from somewhere that seemed to be forgotten utterly when he was sober, Geralt gave an honest laugh.
It wasn't the worst compliment he'd ever been given, frankly. It sounded much more reverential, and much less asinine, but such a thing wouldn't have been strange to hear out of Lambert's mouth.
Followed but an, "but ugh, don't fall in love with me."
Geralt felt boneless and exhausted, now that the adrenaline was fleeing his system, thanks to a witcher metabolism.
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Dorian probably would have hit him by now. He missed the mage, wished he was here even though he knew he would try to be wildly inappropriate with him. He huffed a laugh.
"I think we'll be alright," he rumbled. His own body calmed down and Bull finally gave in to gravity and flopped onto his back with a quiet grunt.
He stuck his left leg in Geralt's general direction.
"Hey, you got the dexterity to get this thing off right now?"
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He stood and knelt by Bull's leg, giving the brace a strange, lingering look, before unbuckling it and pulling it off.
He set it down, careful and reverential, with his swords and other valuables.
"They're mostly extinct, where I come from. Not necessarily because of witchers. We don't kill dragons, they seldom hurt anyone. Not the sentient ones. Draconids are another story, although those are also disappearing. It's the irony of the trade. The better we do our work, the faster we put ourselves out of it."
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Which made that whole rumor about dragon blood even stronger.
"Thank you." Bull flexed his leg after the brace was off, breathing through the discomfort. If Dorian was here, he'd be tutting and insisting on ice or a heat pad, or just trying to ease the pan himself. Bull had given up on protesting long ago.
"The Chargers got a lot of jobs monster hunting. The corrupted ones were the worst. Fucking demons."
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He missed her, too often, even now.
"Gotta revere something, guess dragons is a place to go."
Geralt sighed and moved closer to the fire, closer to the heat. He propped his leg up near it and held his hands out to it.
"Want me to do something for that leg? I have a willow bark tea, some valerian."
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Bull knew that move intimately. More than once Krem or someone else had warned him that he was going to burn himself doing that, but having a damp rag over his leg and keeping it close to the heat always felt like sweet relief - the closest he could get outside a hot bath or letting a mage at it.
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He reached for his leather rucksack, searching for the tisane that would help.
"Shattered femur. Healed off. Wasn't a great chapter in my life."
Finding the packet of powder, leaves and roots, he dumped it into a copper cup and set it on the ashes at the very edge of the fire to boil.
"It's only magic if you consider a strong working knowledge of pharmacopoeia to be magic. Part of the training, at least a little bit. Had a good tutor once too."
The thought of Nenneke gave him a brief ache.
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Bull appreciated the mages that had healed him in the past, but a lifetime of learning to be unnerved by magic and being vulnerable while it was being used on him was still uncomfortable.
And to be fair, Bull didn't even like submitting to regular healers. Stitches had always needed to track him down.
"It's taken a while to re-learn the names of plants here, and some things that I had to work with in Thedas don't even exist. But I think Dorian has seeds to plant."
Bull looked down at his leg and absently flexed his foot.
"Got hit hard in a fight. Stitches did what he could, but something didn't heal right. Happened after I lost the eye. Still my weak side." He held up his left hand, revealing that the very tips of his fourth and fifth fingers, cut off at the third knuckle.
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Geralt reconsidered, narrowing his eyes at Bull in thought. He shook the little copper cup with a stick of green wood. It was starting to form little bubbles in the water.
"Maybe not you, but a human. Got a story to share about the eye?"
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Bull knew damn well that Geralt probably wasn't the kind of guy that forgot a face. Especially not the face of a man that showed up in full armor and a maul the size of Smash. Never mind the work Krem had actually done on the kelpie itself.
But it was a good preface.
"I was with another mercenary group, Fisher's Bleeders, and we were in a border town on the edge of the Tevinter Imperium, just killing time between jobs, spending money in every place of ill repute we could find. I walk into a tavern and find a Tribune and group of Tevinter soldiers surrounding this kid they had pinned on the floor, trying to strip him."
Bull could imagine what would have happened to Krem once the soldiers discovered his secret. He hadn't known about it at the time, but it hadn't mattered to him.
"Qunari have a long-standing dislike of Vints in general, so I grabbed one of the soldiers by the arm and slammed him into a wall, and the fight broke out from there. I lost sight of the Tribune, busy killing or downing the other soldiers. Next thing I know I'm turning and a mace slams into the side of my head. No time to think about it, no time to worry about it. Grabbed the mace in one hand and the Tribune in the other, killed him."
He huffed a laugh. "Poor Krem. He's from Tevinter too; when he was in the army they'd been training him to go to Seheron, where he'd be facing Qunari. And he's shaken, looking at this half-mauled monster who's asking him if he's okay."
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As soon as the liquid in the cup began to boil, Geralt pulled it off the heat with a glove and poured it through a filter cloth into a tin mug.
He passed the liquid to Bull. It smelled strongly of anise and sweet wormwood.
"That's about when the screaming and vomiting starts, normally." Geralt sounded knowing. That Krem hadn't panicked and ran made him unusual.
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He accepted the mug and held it for a moment, just getting used to the smell.
"Burned up the warrant that I found on the Tribune, too. He deserved as fresh a start as I could give him."
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"Yeah, he did."
Geralt sounded thoughtful, and confident. He was an exceedingly good judge of character. It was, mostly, due to the mutations -- Geralt could sense and smell things that he never consciously picked up. Nevertheless, they left an impression.
"He's a good kid."
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"He's a pain in my ass," Bull said, sounding downright fond. "And a good second. When I broke off from the Bleeders, I brought him and a handful of others with me. He became my lieutenant, made sure I wasn't too much of a hard ass, and kept the rest of the Chargers in line if I had to take care of things elsewhere."
Bull eyed the jug of liquor, but he resisted the urge to dig back into it. He'd see how he did for the night.
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"Had one of those, too. Mine was coming up on his fifth century, though. And a vampire. Someone to make sure I wasn't too much of a hard-ass. Apologize for me when I was. Keep an eye on everyone, keep them safe when I had to ... take care of things."
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But that was for the best.
Bull watched Geralt start to slow down, eyelids fluttering. A smile tugged the corner of his mouth.
"Crawl into your nest, Geralt. I'll make sure the fire doesn't go out."
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