The Witcher: Elder Blood

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***

A dream fulfilled, opens the door for a new one.

I felt as if I had died after the fall, a kind of 'postmortem' affected me. With many moments from life flying before me, such a conclusion seemed true..... would be. Except, those moments weren't from my life, oh no, they were many lives.

I wasn't a first-person observer, more like an outsider, you know, like putting on virtual reality goggles and being thrown from one recorded moment to the next.

At first, the recordings seemed unrelated. After all, the key person in the narrative was constantly changing. The only thing that was constant was that they were all beautiful girls, and one of them, the very first one, had elf-like ears.

Not that I mind this kind of postmortem, if a god exists, he definitely has taste. Truth be told, when I saw most of these shots, they began to add up into a complete film, like a watched film.

There was a realisation, each of these women is connected to the others and, if you try hard enough, you can trace the order of their lives.

It was interesting to watch only the last of them, her life was filled with many adventures. The others... The word that comes to mind is unhappiness.

And it would seem that I don't care about them, and it would be the same if I didn't recognise the face of the first of them.

Exactly like her, the ethereal beauty who became my great-grandfather's love. The only difference was the ears. I remember that in the painting where they were depicted together, she didn't have elongated ears..... Or were they not painted? That's odd.

Lara Yeager in one life, and Lara Dorene aep Schiadal in another. No, not in the other, one life, different worlds.

An elf woman dying of exhaustion, handed over her newborn daughter before her expected death. The girl was adopted by the Queen of Redania, whose name was Cerro.

It was this girl who became the second girl on the list from the lives viewed, but she wasn't the one we were talking about right now.

The first, Lara was transported to my world, right to the doorstep of my ancestral mansion. There she was noticed by her great-grandfather, who helped the strange girl, not for nothing he was considered one of the best doctors of that time. At least for the next hundred kilometres. Then there's a familiar story I've heard many times from my parents.

I wonder if her stories about the other world, written in many drafts, are true, or if my mind is so crazy before I die.

So many questions. That I was not allowed to indulge.

My return to consciousness triggered my body's biological alerts, the first of which was thirst. My throat was dry, demanding to be moistened.

To my surprise, nothing hurt, even though I remembered approaching the ground. How I managed to survive, I have no idea.

It's okay, I'll get up, open my eyes and.... Where am I? I don't remember there being a fortress around those mountains.

At least, the first impression from the decoration of this room and the material used to create the structure, directly shouted about the correctness of my thoughts.

I glanced at the small table a metre away from the hard bed. There I noticed a lonely mug with water in it. The cool water seemed to revitalise me, giving me strength at once.

- Still a dream,' I sighed with some frustration. - Well, that's not what I need to think about right now.

It had been about half an hour since I'd woken up, and I was fully awake, and still no one had come. So I can go myself, no problem. I thought, but was met with a locked door.

- This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Knock. Knock.

Knocking on the solid wooden door, I waited for the occupants to arrive, or whoever had brought me here. Not the instructor, he'd have called a helicopter to get back to town.

But no one was in a hurry to come, and I wanted to empty my bladder. You bet, just before the jump quenched my thirst, drinking then half a flask of water.

And then I turned towards the bed, under which I noticed....

- No, wait, are you kidding me? A night potty? Seriously, for crying out loud?!

My screams failed to attract anyone, and unwilling to accept this fate, I went to the window.

Still, there's a chance that the distance to the ground won't be too high, and then I can climb out. It's not a big window, but I can get through. That's what I thought at first, until I looked outside.

You know, the view is mesmerising, really, these high mountains all around, and there were forests stretching out, greening them.

- How did I end up in Switzerland? - For some reason I burst into hysterical laughter.

I would love to sit on one of the towers, drinking my favourite wine and listening to another YouTube video, where I would be told about the lore of some warhammera.

No, I'm lying, I'd be wondering where the fuck I'd gone. I can't believe that my unconscious body was transported to another country, and they found an old castle there, in which they stuck me later.

Except I really wanted to go to the loo, so those thoughts aside for now.

Sigh.

All right, potty, potty it is. It's like being in the Middle Ages, for God's sake.

As soon as I was in the mood, and was about to go to the bed to get the damn pot, I heard the sound of the door unlocking. A sturdily built man came in, his long hair slicked back and a beard sprouting on his face, probably shaved recently, but not today. Also, as I could tell from his hair, he hadn't bathed today or yesterday either....

- The guys told me about your appearance, you mages love your teleports,' the dark-haired man shook his head as he looked at me. I didn't understand a word of his speech, or rather, some of the words gave me a flash of understanding, like 'mage', 'teleport' or 'theirs'. I understood the last one most likely because he pointed at me with his hand at that word.

What was I thinking at that moment? Simple, I'm being played, that's for sure. Especially given the man's strange way of speaking, as if he was purposely twisting familiar words. Apparently, the instructor decided to point out in such a way that it is not necessary to show off unnecessarily, and to climb above your head. Maybe his parents even told him to do it. I love pranking guys. No.

Okay, I can do that, too:

- Ni anira- ned siria-!

I wanted to make fun of him as well, deciding to speak in 'elven', who knew he was so proficient and understood my words.

- Mae,' he looked at me with his arms crossed over his chest, shook his head as if to point to the pot under the bed, and walked out the door.

- No, I'll give you a good time, I'll give you a good time....

***

The last few years had been difficult for Vesemir. He had been most affected by the witches' extermination, when his Wolf School, and not only his, as he learnt later, had been attacked.

Almost all the witches present in Cairn Morghen at the time had died in that battle, leaving only him and one other fellow witch who, unfortunately for Vesemir and the surviving young witches, had not returned from the march that winter.

As the last trained witch in Cairn Morghen realised, it was too early for them to leave their fortress. Two other senior witches who were not in the fortress at the time agreed.

The common people and not only, too much exposed to propaganda about the witches, and could themselves be a sleepy monster hunter. Of course, there is always the possibility that he died in the fight with the monster, but for some reason in the first option believed more.

Despite the problems he faced, he was able to cope, and continue to train the younger generation of witches. Together with two other witches, whose names were Simon and Mateusz, they tried to teach a dozen young guys who had passed the Trial of Herbs.

Only one of the younger generation was over the age of fourteen. His name was Berengar, and he was not happy with his fate, and because of the extermination of witches, he despised witches even more. However, he continued to do his job, helping with the younger ones, which Vesemir was happy about.

Besides him, there were three others who stood out, each with a different temperament, but all learning the witchcraft quickly.

Vesemir didn't know if they were each so talented, or if what had happened to the older witches had influenced them. The main thing was that there was almost no problem with them, except for Lambert, but the latter was more of a brute, constantly stirring up verbal conflict with the other young men, when it came to work, Lambert still tried to keep up with the others.

Heralt and Eskel were calmer, except that the latter, succumbed constantly to Lambert's provocations, causing the former to have to intervene in conflicts.

The others were not so skilful, but it was not a problem, not everyone can immediately prove themselves in this profession. Most witches did not live long, and skilful too, so in addition to personal qualities, you had to have some luck, or luck.

Each of the older witches, took on one of the duties of training the younger ones. Vesemir, as the most experienced of them, talked about the varieties of monsters, their weaknesses and strengths. He even tried to enlighten the boys in more worldly matters.

They lived like that for a few years, hunting and fishing. Vesemir sometimes went to neighbouring villages to trade skins for grain. People were not happy with the witch doctor, but he was also in a bad mood, so no one made him angry.

One day, some fool decided that since witches were killed, there was no reason to fear them. A severed arm put his courage back where it came from.

Showing such cruelty in public was not the best idea, but Vesemir was not a holy man, nor was any other witch. But these were matters of the past, now they were able to get used to this kind of life when they became too few.

For now, the young men continued their training, spending their days practising with their sword, studying an encyclopaedia on monsters and running around the forest, also trying to find some critters for lunch.

On one such day, the restless trio dragged a strange man into Cairn Morhen. He was wearing baggy clothes. Along with him, they brought a bundle containing a lot of cloth whose purpose Vesemir never understood.

The man was unconscious, so once the witch doctor had listened to their story, he carried him to one of the many rooms upstairs, where he shut him in.

The stranger quickly regained consciousness, not even a full day later. Which Vesemir recognised thanks to the screams he heard from the room allocated to the stranger.

The first meeting with the awakened man was a little strange for the witch doctor. Still, he had never met a human mage who knew the Elder Speech, but did not understand the Universal Language.

It was later, when the stranger had cleaned himself up and they were able to talk, albeit with difficulty. Vesemir was not a good speaker of the Elder Speech, and the stranger understood almost nothing in the Common. After an hour, they were able to learn about each other.

There were more oddities. Of course, Vesemir wasn't some kemet who didn't study history, and he was well aware of the Conjunction of Spheres, which entailed travelling between worlds. He had not expected to personally meet such a traveller, and it was stranger still how Eren, that was the stranger's name, was able to be transported to their world.

When the Conjugation of Spheres takes place, a peculiar anomaly in space appears, which gives off echoes of magic for a long time. There was no such anomaly at the place where Eren had travelled.