The Witcher: Elder Blood

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***

My poor head was beginning to swell with the amount of information that had been pouring into my brain over the past week. Right now, it was busy learning the Universal Language. Although, I'm spending more time on the alphabet, as the speech is not very different from what I know, but the alphabet already looks like Glagolitic, which at first glance looks like different scribbles. Why am I learning this language? As if to say, it became a necessity after my conversation with Vesemir. That was the name of the man I met after waking up in the fortress.

Not that I didn't realise the strangeness of my survival after falling from a great height, but it was still hard to believe that you were now in another world. That's exactly what happened to me - I found myself in another world. It was clear at once, not because of the different language used in this fortress, different languages can meet even in the same country, nothing like that here. Not even because of the fortress, built among high mountains, thus hidden from prying eyes, in which I am now. The first sign of a hit was Vesemir's eyes. At first I thought: lenses, cool, I'd like them. But, as it turned out later, they were not lenses, but a mutation. There were other people in the fortress, called witches, which also pricked my mind, because I remembered about them from my great-grandmother's drafts.

Different, though similar language. Other eyes, cat-like, as I learnt later from Vesemir's story, they allowed me to see better in the dark, and protected me from bright lights. And the place itself, as if I had been snatched from the hospital and decided to demand a ransom. But the scepticism that had remained at that moment was immediately shattered when Vesemir showed me the trick.

But what the hell was a trick, the man literally used magic. A yellowish shield appeared around him, a sphere I'd say. And as soon as I hit it, I was thrown a couple of metres away - not a pleasant sensation.

That's when the acceptance phase came. I gave up on everything that had happened, and sat on Vesemir's ears, as the only witch with knowledge of the Elder Speech, which is what they call the Elven language in this world, although my knowledge of the alphabet failed me, I'll have to re-learn it too. Thus began to pass day by day while I learnt the Common Language, thanks to Vesemir's help and the alphabet kindly offered to me.

But these days were not only about learning, I had to eat something, and I couldn't sit on the witches' necks, and I wouldn't. I'm not a hunter, but I can fish, and that's what I did in the morning, until I catch something, and then I went back to Caer Morhen - that was the name of the fortress, where I had to live.

Besides the witch, I got to meet some kids, some teenagers, but not many, just two guys. One was twelve, and the other two years older. The older one had a bad temper, he was often rude to everyone, he didn't want to talk to me at all, but when I started to learn more and more information about these witches, his behaviour became clear to me.

It so happens that children are given to witches by their parents, and not all of these children are happy about this fate, that is, to become a witch. In the past it was not so expressed, witches were feared, but tried not to speak in their direction. Still, these skilful men were the best warriors when it came to killing monsters. They could kill humans just as well.

While the servants' fear remained, the monsters became fewer and fewer. This was taken advantage of by certain individuals who had gathered an army of fanatics under their command, which had attacked the fortress just a few years ago. It does not take a genius to calculate the future prospects of witches: dislike from the common people, and therefore there will be difficulties in earning money.

But that's not the point. For now, my head is occupied with the study of the language. At least I don't have to learn it from scratch, but I get help from Vesemir. Sometimes I get help from the kids, who've been taught well here.

Oh, that's right. I forgot to tell you the most important thing. How I ended up in the other world. Vesemir came to my rescue again, he knows a lot. So, it turns out, there is such an anomaly, if you can call it that, as the conjugation of spheres. It is because of it that there are monsters in this world, and also humans and elves.... They all came into this world through portals.

Vesemir believes that I also fell through some kind of portal and ended up here. I was lucky with the three young witches who saw my appearance, or I would have drowned in the water. That would have been quite a hit.

- Hey, Eren, you can already tell the difference between the word 'dung' and 'drowning,' a child's voice came from behind me.

Just remember... Here came that very trio. Lambert, the most talkative of them all, likes to play pranks on everyone.

- If I'm not mistaken, 'dung' is the same as your name, punk.

- What's that? Dummy, my name is Lambert! Lam-bert.

He started repeating the syllables while Eskel, standing behind him, covered his face with his hand and started wiggling it.

- He's laughing at you, calm down already,' Geralt interjected, deciding to stop this circus.

- Pfft, a joke is supposed to be funny.

- Is that what you're telling us? - Eskel grinned.

I'm tired of listening to their bickering, but I'm a little busy here:

- So why are you here? You're supposed to be training right now.

Lambert stopped arguing, having immediately remembered the purpose of their arrival:

- That's right, we're having a training session on the pendulum, do you want to try it?

It was interesting, the day before yesterday I told them what I did in my previous life. Then they told me about their training, which was quite dangerous.

I put aside the scribbled sheet along with the dictionary, and turned back to the trio:

- Why not give it a try. Come on, at least I'll get a look at your training.

As we walked towards the pendulum, Heralt turned to me:

- What are you going to do? - Seeing my questioning look, the guy added specifics, -Well, will you go somewhere after you learn the language?

I wish I knew the answer to that myself. I know very little about this world. It's hard for me to imagine what I would do in this world if I hadn't fallen in with the witches. By the way, witches are good warriors, I can't compare with them, even after ten years of training, but you can learn a lot.

- I don't know, if Vesemir lets me train with you, I can stay here. I don't know anyone in this world anyway.

- Train with us? - Lambert interjected with a nasty grin. - Can you handle it?

Well, that's an interesting question. Witches are trained from childhood, even before passing the Trial of Herbs, a process that causes mutations in the body, from which many witch candidates die. But this is not the end, there were other stages, such as the Test Again, from which already mutated: bone marrow, hormones and the eyeball itself, giving it a cat-like appearance.

After the mutations have passed, the enhanced children begin full training, and here I wonder if I can cope with this training.

- We'll see if I can't handle it. The main thing is to try, it's definitely worth a try.

We got to the pendulum to talk about the complexity of witch training, from which I learnt about another stage - the Medallion Test, where you had to activate your medallion in the Circle of Elements. The three of them had yet to pass the final stage, but I had no doubt that they would succeed.

It wasn't blind faith, it just so happened that I had matched what I had seen in my dreams while travelling. In many of the leads related to the white-haired swordswoman, it was Geralt who often appeared. Yes, that same little boy of ten. And a couple of times the remaining two were encountered. All this led me astray, if what I saw is not a delusion of my imagination, then it turns out that I had a chance to see the future.... And the past. Wait, maybe I know the present? I'll have to look into that.

Thinking took me out of reality, so I didn't immediately realise how the three of us had reached the pendulum. It was an interesting exercise machine, which consisted of several poles attached to a rotating structure at the top, and at the bottom there was a bridge to walk on, dodging parallel to the poles.

- Let's go, - Lambert pointed with his hand at the ladders to the simulator, and he went to start the mechanism together with Eskel, while Heralt, who was standing next to him, gave advice:

- Take your time. Our mentors told us - first get used to it, then do better.

He shouldn't worry, it's not such a difficult test for a grown man who doesn't neglect sports. It's all about flexibility and timing.

I stood at the beginning of the bridge, counting the time it took to move the pole from the edge to the middle. It was different for everyone, you can't run all of them at once. Here we go.

One. Two. Jump forward. First pole's gone. Once we landed on the bridge, we had to count down again. One. Two short steps forwards, so as not to accidentally fall off, it's not a big bridge after all. Definitely meant for children, teenagers at most.

No difficulties with the pendulum - finished with it after ten seconds.

- Not bad for the first time, - Vesemir came to us and clapped his hands, - But it would be better if one of them showed us the correct training with the pendulum. Lambert, take the sword.

- Hey, why me?' the boy exclaimed, but quickly shrugged himself off and went to the practice swords.

Lambert went upstairs, there he started the 'proper' training, as Vesemir said. Seeing the guy's first actions, I immediately realised why my walkthrough wasn't quite the same.

Lambert wasn't just advancing through the pendulums. Every time the pillars approached the middle, he would make swings with his sword, striking the blunted blade against them. Thus, upon reaching the end of the bridge, he managed to touch each pillar without falling. The time taken was only a few seconds longer.

- Impressive. They told me about the other machines, so this is just entry level?

- Yeah, it's usually for ages 12 and under. Coordination training. If Lambert hadn't been so lazy, he could have passed this pendulum with his eyes closed, like Geralt,' Vesemir was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at Eskel, who had taken Lambert's place on the pendulum, 'Do you want to train too?

- What else is left, it's dangerous to live here, - I grin at my own words, dangerous is not the right word. - But... Do you teach anyone but witches?

The man lowered his gaze. He took in his hand the amulet resting on his neck, in which he stared intently.

- There will be no more witches, Eren. You're looking at the last generation now,' his gaze shifted to me. - Come on, there's no point in wasting time on these simulators now, you've got a lot to learn without them. After your story about your past life, I realised one thing, you have a fit body, your coordination and flexibility should be fine too. So let's skip this stage, some of the exercises you told me about, like parkour....

- Parkour,' I corrected him. - It's more of a way of moving, though. You could call it a workout.

- Training or not, it doesn't matter, your physical parameters are enough to train with a sword. That's where we'll start.

- Straight to swordsmanship? - That surprised me a little.

Vesemir smiled at my words, taking a wooden sword from the counter, he threw it into my hands.

- It's too early for that, you have to learn the stances and movement with the sword. When you learn how to move properly, we'll move on to defensive stances.

It won't be boring now, except I'm sensing there won't be much in the way of jokes. I was convinced of that by the end of the day, when I went through the introductory lesson, where Vesemir was hammering the correct movement in combat, sometimes literally, when I did something wrong, thus getting a wooden sword on one of the body parts.