#crevan

After the bad ending, if Ciri doesn't come out of the tower, Geralt goes to kill the last witch. It's almost a suicide mission as he's quite careless and resigned.

I know Avallac’h isn’t always the most sympathetic character but - I have been replaying TW3 and found a note from him about Kiera’s magic lamp that hurts.

The note itself is fairly short and simple. It relays that after much research, he’s been able to confirm that the lamp does indeed show the last moments of long-gone individuals. However, when he tried to use it to see Lara Dorren’s end there was nothing. No further research is necessary.

And god, let’s just think about that for a minute.

First there’s the note itself.

It’s short and sweet, almost bland. It’s easy for the player to skim over it with mild interest and move on.

But Avallac’h? Avallac’h is not short and sweet. The man rambles and is prone to flowery turns of phrase. He always has some new insight and likes to have the final say. He’s meticulous and impressed with his own intelligence.

So this note? It’s out of character. It’s brevity reads like a man moved by centuries of practice and discipline. Experiment = notes. Every time. Without exception. Even when the experiment is about you. Even when it's hard.

And this would be hard. Avallac’h has gone ages without knowing exactly what happened to Lara. No one does. Even Avallac’h, who was intimately involved in the real-time events, wasn’t there. It’s not a legend to him, it’s a question that has haunted him for more than a century. How did they hurt her? What parts of the legend are true? What did I do wrong?

Did she say my name?

Or did she say…his name.

Could I have done something more?

These feelings had to have been dug up as soon as he learned about the lamp’s existence. In that moment, he wasn’t Avallac’h but Crevan. A younger man, angry, in-love, grieving. He can’t help but to search for the lamp, telling himself it’s important research, but in reality - he just needs to know.

He makes himself test it first, he is, after all, a man of science. And he has enough self awareness to know that if it does work, if he does see Lara, he won’t be in his best frame of mind to record the lamp’s effects.

So he tests for weeks. Watching death after death; swimming in the last word’s of strangers. He coats the lamp in strange powers and pokes at its spellwork until he understands every minutia of its structure.

And then he’s out of excuses. There’s nothing more to do but then try.

Eredin is closing in, so he coats himself in protective spells, exhausting his reserves of sulfur and sapphire power. It’s the middle of the night when he gets there, when he sits on the hill where she died.

Do you think he could do it right away? I don’t. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to see, but he knows it will be violent. And - he’s been preparing for this for months but - he’s not ready. She betrayed him but…he loved her, once. It’s not the kind of thing you’re ever really ready for.

Finally, when the sun is rising and he’s losing the strength to hold his protective spells for much longer, he takes a deep breath and turns it on, quickly, before he can stop himself again. He squeezes his eyes shut, gritting his teeth and waiting to hear her voice, one last time.

There’s nothing.

For all he wasn’t ready, that has to hit him like a punch in the gut. He doesn’t get one more chance to see her; he’ll never know.

So he stumbles back to his laboratory and writes that note, and with his shaking hands he can’t get out more than the bare minimum. But he writes it anyway, because that’s what you do. When you experiment, you document.

"A fair-haired elf with a triangular face and huge, almond-shaped eyes was sitting on a round stone beyond the bird cherry shrub. He played on, nimbly running his lips over the pipes. Although he could see Ciri and Kelpie–although he was looking at them–he didn’t stop playing."

Andrzej Sapkowski

It's the witch's ball 🔮

SHIP PLAYLIST: CIRI + AVALLAC’H [listen here]