(no subject)

[worstsin]

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.

Comments

[worstsin]

Geralt blinked slowly.

"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."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull huffed a laugh. "Could do worse than a boar," he said. "If you remember dragon, you can use that. Ataashi." Bull drew out the word and he nearly fell backward.

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."

[worstsin]

Geralt choked on the swig he was taking of the maaras-lok and put the jug aside, coughing and wiping at his mouth.

"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.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Pretty sure the last time I said that was to a dragon we'd just killed," Bull said with a lazy grin. "And I definitely meant it. Dragons."

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?"

[worstsin]

"Yeah," Geralt said, despite having just drank even more. He meant it, though. Even drunk, he could sober himself fast enough and to the point to hunt a gharkain, when he'd needed to.

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."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Dragons disappeared for a while, or they seemed to. The Divine in the south declared it the Dragon Age when all of a sudden they seemed to come back. Not just dragons and drakes, but high dragons - females old enough to breed. They go on rampages before holing up and nesting. My people think of dragons as the embodiment of raw, natural power. There are no gods in the Qun, but we revere dragons."

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."

[worstsin]

Geralt thought it strange, to revere dragons, but it wasn't. There were cults or every kind, especially at the edges of the civilized world. Likely, he only had the consideration because Geralt did not revere anything. He and Nenneke had gone through conversation about it far too many times, when he was younger.

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."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"If it doesn't involve magic, yes. Got experience with that?" he asked when he noticed Geralt propping one of his own legs up closer to the fire, closer to the heat.

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.

[worstsin]

Geralt gave a slow, reserved nod. It had been a very long time since anyone had asked. Possibly because they either knew, or they were too unobservant to notice.

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.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"No, not the same. Nothing green and glowing is about to touch my leg."

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.

[worstsin]

"Not very good with healing spells anyway. Usually just use potions on myself. They work a hell of a lot faster and better. Would kill you, though."

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?"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"You remember Krem? My lieutenant that helped us out with the kelpie?"

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."

[worstsin]

"Yeah." Geralt's head dipped once, chin meeting his chest tiredly. He'd been introduced as Cremisius, but Geralt remembered the man. Short but not small, young in the face, able to make quick work of a kelpie when given the opportunity.

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.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull shook his head. "Krem was in shock, couldn't even move for a minute, could barely give me his name. I would've carried him out of there if I didn't think he'd start trying to fight me. Put his sword back in his hands and we walked out together. Brought him back to the Bleeders camp and offered him a job."

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."

[worstsin]

Geralt, not wanting to waste, gathered up the herbal mush left in the cheesecloth and pressed it into a ball before downing it. He followed it with a last drag off of the Bull's Qunari liquor. There would be plenty analgesic effect left in the grounds.

"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."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull snorted a quiet laugh when Geralt just ate the remains of the grounds. Well, that was one way to do it. He sipped his drink.

"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.

[worstsin]

Geralt's face grew low-lidded, sleepy, almost warm. It was pink from the alcohol, painfully visible on a complexion without pigment. His lashes fluttered over his strange eyes.

"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."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Good to have around. Voice of reason. Think I scared the shit out of him a few times on jobs."

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."

[worstsin]

Geralt gave a snort at the care, as if he didn't need it, which wasn't entirely true. Bull was right, however. He felt flushed and cozy and his limbs were beginning to drag, even with his strange physiology. Bull's face gave a swim on the other side of the fire.

Standing from his spot on his log near the fire, he reached into the thick pile of blankets and skins he used for sleeping at camp. Geralt picked two of the largest out of the mess and tossed them to Bull.

He didn't have to ask if Bull would sleep; he wouldn't. He'd made that clear, confessing to Geralt about his dreams and his traumatic wake-up.

Geralt, for his worth, appreciated the chance to have someone watching over his rest.

He shuffled the bed around until it was, in fact, very close to a nest, before sitting himself down slowly in it, with a slightly stiff leg.

"There's food in the lockbox." So the bears didn't get it. "There are books in the rucksack."

Despite appearances, Geralt was an avid reader. It helped that he needed no reading light, only an elbow to prop up on, late into the night.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Want a bedtime story?" he teased, voice warm. Bull knew how it felt to be exhausted, and he knew the relief that came when someone trusted was nearby to keep watch, or to otherwise ensure a quiet night.

Bull could do that. He didn't think he would sleep tonight, as tired as he was, so he could make sure that Geralt got the chance. He glanced toward the rucksack, taking note of where it was. He'd probably get into the books to keep his mind busy.

He should text Dorian to let him know he was alright, that he was staying out tonight to help someone else. And maybe for himself.

[worstsin]

"No," Geralt said, but it was over the softest chuckle. He was becoming accustomed to the other man's personality; it could be almost charming, and Geralt was not easily charmed, as bitter as he'd been made by life.

"Though it might be nice to hear one in a voice that's not a trained tenor, for once."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull's grin could be heard in his voice.

"I'll tell you one in Qunlat. If you don't understand the language, you won't be tempted to try to stay up to hear the end."

He almost never had any reason to speak his native tongue, and maybe it would only be in his own voice but hearing it out loud for a while might bring him comfort, too.

Maybe he would just recite the parts of the Qun that he knew. Might bring a different kind of comfort.

"Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra."