magic & dragons

When the swordsman finally awakens, the Light Dragon senses him immediately. She watches with muted curiosity as he begins to explore her island in the sky. Why had he come to this place? Were all the mortal beings so small? Soon she finds him on the ancient circular landing behind the island’s temple, and watches as the sword in his hand disappears in golden light. She is drawn to him then, called by a voice within: the swordsman must have a sword. Perhaps on the surface, where her sisters call to her, he will find another. Determined, the Light Dragon splits the clouds guarding the island from the world below. The swordsman does not wait; he leaps, surface bound. The Light Dragon follows.

The vast lands below swallow the swordsman whole. There are deep valleys that cut the earth and mountains that pierce the skies. There are churning rivers and yawning bays. There are open plains, marshy swamps, and rolling deserts. He must be out there, somewhere, and across all four corners of Hyrule the Light Dragon searches.

In winding canyons flooded with water, she meets her sister Farosh. Have you seen a swordsman? she asks. Farosh answers: None with valour and courage enough to impress me, sister.

Among rocky crags and cooled lava, in the shadow of a great volcano she meets her sister Dinraal. Have you seen a swordsman? she asks. Dinraal answers: Hyrule has seen many, sister, for blood flows here as easily as water flows to the sea.

Between gentle mountains, as snow feathers down, she meets her sister Naydra. Have you seen a swordsman? she asks. Naydra answers: Yes, he flies as we do, sister. I am sure he will visit you soon.

But he does not. The sorrow the Light Dragon feels at this is powerful and achingly fresh. Against her will, tears well in her eyes. She begs them not to fall; each time they do, they take more of her with them. She tries to hold on, and hold fast, but the tears fall anyway. The Light Dragon forgets why she was crying.

It is not long after this that he finds her. And it was as Naydra said; the swordsman could fly like the dragons, capturing the winds to soar through the sky. He lands softly on her back, his footsteps tickling, almost pleasant. Then he is holding onto her mane, holding very tight; is he worried he might fall? Then she can hear weeping. She hopes he is not unwell.

After some time, the swordsman speaks: “Is that really you, Zelda?”

She does not understand nor does she answer the question.

“Gods… you have the Master Sword. You’ve really had it all this time…”

Then he is moving, light feet padding about her mane. “Sorry, old girl, I’ve gotta take it from you.”

She is just thinking that she likes the gentle weight of him when a blinding pain rips through her head and down the length of her body. She lurches skyward, roaring, but the pain doesn’t stop, and it’s like something is tugging very hard on her head. It is not nice! Whatever it is should let go! It is her fur there! It keeps her warm! Let go! Let go!

The sky suddenly flashes white, and next she knows she is enveloped in clouds of shimmering gold. Calm washes through her and she relaxes, allowing herself to float. The swordsman is still there, murmuring: Hylia help me, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that’d hurt— Are you okay?

Yes, it is all going to be okay. She closes her eyes and recalls the final piece of her memories that had not yet slipped away; she has the sword, which she guarded much as she guarded her island in the sky. How this came to be, and why, is lost to her. But it is no matter. Her purpose is fulfilled. She is at peace.

After this, the swordsman visits her often. He brings her apples cooked in butter, which she eats even though she can’t really taste them, doing so because it seems to make him happy. Then he brings her flowers, threading them into her mane, which she likes for the soft pull of his fingers through her hair. Sometimes he comes to talk, telling stories of the surface, using words she doesn’t understand but enjoys for the sound of his voice. Sometimes he just comes to sit, clinging to her mane, always clinging.

Then, the last time he comes, she is sitting with him on top of the temple on the Great Sky Island, dozing. Her sisters have teased her for this. Sister beloved, what need does a dragon have for sleep? The swordsman sleeps, she has told them, and often sleeps for entire days. It seemed a pleasant activity to try, and she has found it helps her to enjoy the feeling of the sun on her back.

On this final day, she awakens to find the swordsman brushing her mane, running his hands through the strands.

“I have to go soon, Zelda,” he says. “I’ve stalled for a long time. I need to finish what you started.”

He has an apple in his hand, which she obligingly eats. “If I don’t come back, old girl, you know I love you, right? If there’s even a tiny bit of Zelda in there, I want her to know…”

Zelda. She yearns to understand this word. Is that a name? If it was, could it be hers? She does not know how to tell the swordsman this — that she can be his Zelda, if he wants. Instead she pushes her snout into his hand, nuzzling against him.

In response he wraps his arms around her, holding tight. At his back is a noble sword, in a scabbard of blue and gold. Then he lets go, runs a gentle hand across her fur one last time, and departs.

The Light Dragon Zelda returns to the sky, unmoved. He has left her before, and always returns.

It was supposed to be an easy contract. 

A ship had gone missing, and after a short investigation, Eskel finds that sirens were to blame. They’re dangerous creatures, yes, but the particulars of this contract had all been in Eskel's favor. Their nest was built right at the edge of the cliffside — should have been easy enough to stun them and let them fall to their deaths on the beach below, or to shoot them out of the air with a crossbow. Burn the nest and it's a day's work done well. 

But he hadn't counted on an ekhidna returning to find her nestmates dead and her eggs smashed. He’s bent over the nest, dousing the remnants with oil, when he hears the screech: high and mournful and hair-raising in its grief. Before he knows it, he’s hurtling into the sky, wrestling a furious ekhidna who drags him through the air with an iron grip around his throat. 

Eskel’s choking — the air is getting thinner and thinner and he can feel the bones in his neck creak with the pressure. It’s instinct to cast Igni, but this high his flames sputter, out of control — sparking red and blue and way too close to his face — 

It's enough. The ekhidna lets him go, shrieking with pain as her feathers catch fire. Eskel’s free to take in a huge, gasping breath, but then he’s falling, plunging straight to his death the same way he executed the rest of the sirens. 

He makes the sign in a split-second — Aard, to push himself over the ocean rather than over the solid beach. It’s a miscalculation. Eskel sends himself careening right over the wreckage of the ship. He barely manages to get a Quen up in time, but it’s sloppy work — it shatters the second he makes impact and —

“You’ll not stay for a drink?” 

Dettlaff stops at the threshold of Orianna’s bedroom in her Beauclair estate, and turns back to look at her latest thrall. “You know I dislike imbibing,” he says impassively, as he surveys the man slumped in the cage. “This one’s older than your usual. Why?” 

In truth, the man hardly looks appetizing at all. Orianna typically prefers a younger vintage — sweet and light, almost fruity, as she had once described it to him — but her current captive is definitely mature, the meat on him tough-looking and sinewy. And yet he’s emaciated, all but drained from Orianna’s overindulgence, the creature’s weak, pitiful heart beating sluggishly in his chest to circulate what little amount of blood Orianna has left to him. 

“This specimen is unique,” Orianna says, unlocking the cage and stepping inside to cradle the human’s face. Already heavily damaged from Orianna’s claws, Dettlaf notes with derision; she’s never been able to control herself or her transformations when inebriated. “His blood is… fizzy on the tongue, and that balance between sweet and bitter…” She sighs dramatically, her fangs lengthening in preparation to feed. The thrall tries to expose his neck for Orianna, but all he manages is a pathetic jerk, lacking the strength to even raise his own head. 

Orianna at least has the decency to support the human's neck for him; she cups his nape gently, and noses into the juncture between neck and shoulder where a mass of scars reveals the extent of her intemperance. "Eskel, darling," she murmurs into the man's ear. "We've a guest. Why don't you offer him some refreshments?" 

Eskel's eyes snap open and flick towards Dettlaff— and Dettlaff's next breath catches in his throat. They're a lovely, arresting shade of amber, but more than that, the pupils expand almost immediately into large, shiny discs the moment he and Dettlaf lock gazes, and the sweet scent of arousal begins to flood the room. 

"Please," Eskel croaks. "I want — please." He shifts feebly on the floor of his cage, presenting the other side of his neck and staring speakingly right at Dettlaff. "Please." 

"He begs so pretty, Dettlaff," Orianna purrs. "Won't you indulge, even just this once? He wants you so badly." 

Dettlaff never could resist being wanted, despite knowing that the desire was a result of Orianna's compulsion. He's beside Eskel in a flash, sinking his fangs into warm flesh and — oh. Orianna was right. Eskel's blood is effervescent, tingly on Dettlaff's lips, the rich, coppery taste of it even more intoxicating when Dettlaff's senses are overwhelmed with the heady smell of Eskel's precome and the soft huffs of his panting. 

Orianna smirks. "Always so sensitive," she croons, and then she's feeding as well. Eskel moans brokenly, twitching in Dettlaff's grip, and suddenly the sharp smell of semen joins the rest of it. 

Dettlaff pulls back, stunned. Eskel's face is slack now, and his trembling thighs are covered in his own spend. 

"Th-thank you, ma'am," he says, when Orianna finishes. "Thank you, sir." 

"Absolutely delectable," Orianna pronounces, wiping delicately at her mouth. "You've earned your rest." 

Eskel falls asleep as soon as he's given permission, and Orianna ushers Dettlaffout of the cell without even bothering to clean up the mess. She talks some more about the vintage, something about witchers and chaos and mutagens flavoring the blood, but all Dettlaff can think of is Eskel. 

If he's subjected to even a single day more of Orianna's gluttony, Eskel will die. 

Unacceptable. 

Eskel wakes up surrounded by a crowd of arguing mages.

It's the sound that hits him first: a deluge of screaming voices that rends his ears, all over a backdrop of a thousand sheets of paper crinkling together, and thundering drums that are out of sync. Then the rest of the sensation catches up with his brain — perfumes, too many of them, the scratchy sheets too rough on his skin, leather cuffs too tight at his wrists and his ankles and pain, in his parched throat, in his empty stomach, along his arms and legs where Master Hieronymus had stabbed him with needles, everywhere , and Eskel opens his eyes and he isn’t in Kaer Morhen —

“Calm yourself, boy,” a woman says commandingly, and the novelty of a woman's voice shocks him into obedience.

"— waste of a perfectly good specimen — is the boy awake?" one of the mages demands, breaking off from the argument and hurrying to Eskel's bedside.

"Quite," the woman says acidly. "He is also unwashed, unfed, and severely dehydrated. If this is how you treat your subjects, I've little hope for any success in your future experiments."

Experiments. More mutations. Eskel doesn’t hear anything after that, just more yelling as he cringes away from the approaching mages. It won’t do him any good, but he still finds himself begging no more mutagens and please, I don’t want this and wasn’t twice enough?

But everyone ignores him — a fatherless, motherless little boy’s pleas aren’t worth anything, and Eskel thinks hysterically that surviving the Grasses twice was already a miracle — there won’t be another one to save him now. The mages can’t touch him. If they touch him — if he lets them touch him — he will die.

A golden dome blooms around Eskel’s cot, impenetrable even to these mages. For a single, strained moment, absolute silence descends upon the room, save for the hum of Eskel’s magic in the air. It’s a Quen shield, stronger than what Eskel could cast before — proof that the last mutations had been enough . Maybe they won’t need a third round? Maybe Eskel is enough as he is now, maybe if Eskel keeps this up, shows them he can be good, the mages won’t give him another set of mutagens —

But the arguing erupts again, just as abruptly.

“— twice mutated, he said, what an incredible opportunity —”

“—rather not deal with the lot, we ought to send him back right where he came from —”

“—wasn’t supposed to happen, they were meant to make witchers, not this bastardized excuse of a Source! We ought to kill him before he becomes a bigger problem —”

“Sources only become a problem if they are insufficiently trained.” The woman’s voice again. The lone woman’s voice. “Gentlemen, if you have no confidence in Ban Ard’s curriculum, then perhaps you ought to let me handle this case myself.”

Ban Ard?! “W-wait,” Eskel croaks, trying to push himself up. “Is this — where am I?”

No one seems to hear him. The mages keep shouting, and every word out of their mouths stokes the fear building inside Eskel’s gut.

“Wha— what are you going to do to me?!”

Keira takes one look at the rain, pouring down from the sky in torrents, and sighs. The roads will be impassable for days, and she daren’t open a portal; it’s been less than a week since she managed to shake off the most determined of the witch hunters and the paranoia from being hunted has not abated in the slightest. At least she still has a room in the inn. It’s tiny, and the straw mattress provided is the furthest thing from the featherbed she used to have in Vizima, but it’s warm and dry.

After days of slogging through the bogs of Velen on foot, drenched and shivering and up to her ankles in mud, being warm and dry is a luxury that Keira won’t ever take for granted again.

There’s stew in the dining hall, but not much else; the war has brought nothing but misfortune to everyone in the North, and the peasants in little backwater villages like Midcopse always end up suffering the most. The innkeeper’s wife brings Keira a portion of the stew for supper, and she dithers by the door on her way out.

Keira sighs. “Is there a problem?” she asks sharply.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but you’ve got the look of a wise woman about you,” the woman says hesitantly.

That gets Keira’s hackles rising. She didn’t think her wanted posters have circulated this deep into the countryside, but these days one can never be too fucking paranoid.

“It’s only, well, the young ‘uns are getting sick and we’ve no idea why,” the woman forges on, twisting her hands in her apron anxiously. “We’ve tried giving them broth and such, but the witch hunters took our herbalist and there’s been no one to care for our sick since — we won’t tell ‘em you’re here, ma’am, you can take the herbalist’s hut and garden and we won’t tell no one a witch is living there, just — please.” She takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “Please, help my son.”

Well. It’s not like she has anything better to do with her time, and Velen is as good a place to hide as any. Might even be better, really — Keira Metz, court sorceress of kings, living in a bog as some sort of washed-up hedgewitch? Unthinkable.