ḞƗЯSт LФЅт ⅋ ḞƗЯSт FФЦИↁ

Ooooooh! So you’re a—a musician, huh? Fun! We love music here! Is it all, uh…all lute, or do you play something people with taste like, too?

"Excuse me, I will have you know that this lute was gifted to me by none other than Filavandrel, King of the Elves." The bard chirped back at the man with a rather annoyed huff. He had no idea where he was, he had no idea how he got there. There was a portal, and men chasing him, and that was about all he remembered before making his quick escape through the swirling well of reality itself.

Save the harp—which sounds familiar-ish—nobody’s ever heard of those other instruments before. But it’s cute that he’s using his little planet’s local noisemakers creatively!

The Grandmaster drapes his arm over the lute-liker’s shoulder, casually, entirely too familiar, and begins steering the little knot of them—the Grandmaster, Topaz, him, the odd handful of hangers-on—deeper into the palace.

“Oh, all seven of them, huh? That’s—that’s so funny, that’s one of those things you find a lot in these, uh. These younger cultures! Commonalities of numbers. Lots of sevens, threes, ones. All prime numbers. Very fun! Tell me, sweetheart, is your, uh…musical repertoire as…,” the Grandmaster pauses, looking behind the pair of them to find his assistant. “Topaz, what’s a nice way to way ‘hick’?”

“Why. It’s already heard you say that.”

“Yeah, I know. But for next time.”

“…country?”

“No, not—well, yes, but that’s not the part I mean. More like….”

“Quaint.”

The Grandmaster turns from his latest potential acquisition with a chuckle, fixing the collar of his golden robe as he reenters negotiations with the scrapper—leaving the man’s question unanswered. One doesn’t need to understand the words being said (more grunted, really) to see that negotiations aren’t going well. The Grandmaster reaches up and scratches the inside of his ear, nodding along with the argument being presented until he isn’t, until he waves an impatient hand to cut off whatever assertion has been made and starts arguing back. The back and forth lasts a while before the Grandmaster, in frustration, holds a hand up to stop the scrapper and turns over his shoulder to the woman nearby: short, broad, and impassive, a golden scepter taller than the woman herself grasped on one hand.

“Topaz,” he says, gesturing to the scrapper as if to say do something about this. Topaz shrugs, moves to hand him the scepter in her hand—and the scrapper abruptly changes his mind just as the Grandmaster begins to reach for it. There’s some more back and forth before the Grandmaster switches back to a language the Witcher can understand.

“—Cats! It’s like trying to teach an amoeba algebra. Settle an argument for me, wouldja? Are you a…Topaz!” The woman looks at the back of the Grandmaster’s head, even though he doesn’t look at her. “Topaz, how would you translate that?”

The woman smirks, glancing once at the fresh meat before answering. “Incubator.”

He struggles again against his restraints, trying to work himself free but he's stuck fast. It would seem that for now, he'll have to just play along. Not knowing where he is and not getting an answer further complicate things. It would do no good to him if he found the portal has transported him to another world, a likelihood that seems all the more probably the more he silently observes.

Until the bright fool is spinning around and asking him a question about whether or not he considers himself to be an incubator.

Eyes widen for a moment, then narrow, and then he raises a brow as he looks from one being to another, and then settles his gaze back on the leader.

“No, see—if you’re an incubator, you, ah. You leave here. For a farm. Where you’ll spend the rest of your long, miserable life chained up and, uh. Incubating! But if you’re not an incubator…you stay here. Where you’ll spend the last gasps of your short, miserable life bleeding out in my arena. —Oh! Or maybe winning your freedom, there’s that. Doubt that, but, uh. There’s that all the same.” The Grandmaster announces it airily, tone skeptical.

Slowly, the Grandmaster leans forward, planting his hands on his thighs. His head is still above Geralt’s, but they’re much closer in height this way, especially with the benefit of the Grandmaster’s little stage.

Oh, look! It’s another, uh, another little backwater one! How cute. I just love it when one of the low-tech planets sends me a little present. You a lover—or a fighter?

This. This is exactly why Geralt hated portal travel. The potential to arrive somewhere entirely not intended to be, the chance of losing a limb or two, or having one's very being or existence rewritten or erased. While none of that had happened to him before, he knew it would only be a matter of time.

The events of falling through the portal were all still a blur, and somehow he had wound up in front of someone who's fashion sense could rival the offensiveness of his poetic companion's. Like an overdressed wizard trying to hard to impress and show that he was, in fact, a wizard. It reminded him terribly of Stregobor.

"Let me go and you'll find out."

The Witcher stared up at the man before him with pure defiance and challenge in his cat-like yellow eyes. His words were growled out between gritted teeth as he fought against his restraints. By the looks of this strange sorcerer who held him now, he was of importance. By the sounds of him, he thought himself above everyone else. He'd dealt with the likes before. He doubted the other man was just going to let him go like that.

The man spoke of backwater planets, and Geralt wondered just how far from the Continent he'd been taken.

The Grandmaster turns from his latest potential acquisition with a chuckle, fixing the collar of his golden robe as he reenters negotiations with the scrapper—leaving the man’s question unanswered. One doesn’t need to understand the words being said (more grunted, really) to see that negotiations aren’t going well. The Grandmaster reaches up and scratches the inside of his ear, nodding along with the argument being presented until he isn’t, until he waves an impatient hand to cut off whatever assertion has been made and starts arguing back. The back and forth lasts a while before the Grandmaster, in frustration, holds a hand up to stop the scrapper and turns over his shoulder to the woman nearby: short, broad, and impassive, a golden scepter taller than the woman herself grasped on one hand.

“Topaz,” he says, gesturing to the scrapper as if to say do something about this. Topaz shrugs, moves to hand him the scepter in her hand—and the scrapper abruptly changes his mind just as the Grandmaster begins to reach for it. There’s some more back and forth before the Grandmaster switches back to a language the Witcher can understand.

“—Cats! It’s like trying to teach an amoeba algebra. Settle an argument for me, wouldja? Are you a…Topaz!” The woman looks at the back of the Grandmaster’s head, even though he doesn’t look at her. “Topaz, how would you translate that?”

The woman smirks, glancing once at the fresh meat before answering. “Incubator.”