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In another life, Adri liked to think that she would have been a seamstress. Or maybe a washer. Something mundane, boring, that she could tell her children about by a fire at the end of the day. She’d have a husband with calloused hands laugh as she recalled the misadventure of her afternoon, and they would all be a happy, normal and boring family.
Instead, she was the one with the calloused hands – and she wasn’t laughing.
The basilisk lunged towards her, cutting the sky in two, its webbed wings flapping. It sounded like leather flopping in the wind, and she held her daggers tighter, preparing herself. They were at two strikes on each side. Her ribs were burning, as if someone was pressing hot iron right in between them, but the basilisk had one wing almost entirely trashed.
For now, they were even.
The beast striked. It came beak first, trying to take a chunk of her shoulder off. She leaned back, just enough to feel its fangs rip and tear half of her shawl, before she was pressing both daggers as deep into its neck as she could. She took her right one out, and plunged it back in, stabbing once, twice, five times, muscles burning as the creature shrieked loud enough to deafen her, and started stabbing her right back with its hind legs.
Adri held on, falling onto her back as she tried to stop it from gutting her, the beast’s flailing body falling right onto her, impaling itself on her left dagger.
It abruptly stopped moving.
Usually, beasts of that size took some time to die, so Adri continued stabbing it for a moment, before she realized that underneath the loud ringing in her ears, all she could hear was the furious beating of her heart, and her ragged breath.
She sighed, slipping her daggers out and letting herself lay on the rocky ground. It hurt like hell – everything did – but she was alive, and she had just killed a basilisk that had ambushed her.
The laugh that escaped her was slightly hysterical, and the blood on her teeth didn’t help, but by the gods, it felt great to be alive! She stayed there, face turned to the pale blue sky, crushed under the cooling body of a dead monster and laughed until she couldn’t anymore.
Then came the gruesome task of pushing the body away and slipping from underneath it. It took her some time, and a lot of tries, and by the time she was free, it was clear not all the cooling had been coming off of the cadaver.
She had lost enough blood that the mountain she was standing on was spinning, or maybe it was her, she realized, stopping herself from looking around.
She was pretty sure she had been on a very well hidden road, when the monster had appeared out of nowhere and dived on her. There was no road to be found now, and her internal clock told her the air would start to cool soon. It was dangerous, to be here, alone, so early into the Spring.
It was a risk she had been willing to take, but doing this and doing this while bleeding abundantly were two different things.
At least her pack was still in view, abandoned up the hill she had slid down. There was blood everywhere, and no one could miss her tracks, but she doubted anyone would be looking for it so high up in the Mountains.
Any straggler would have long passed through, leaving Adri the only person crazy enough to come by these basilisk-infested parts. It seemed weird, to have a monster here, so close to the very thing made to kill it. Maybe they hadn’t known, she thought, reaching her pack. The Swallows she had made three days before were still good, and two helped with some of the bleeding but none of the pain.
Eh, usual witcher stuff. She repacked her stuff, tried to redo her shawl, but there was no saving the piece of fabric, and once she had reattached the heavy fur cloak she had lost during the fight, she moved back to the monster, and proceeded to cut off its head and wrap it in the remains of her shawl.
She wasn’t the type to keep trophies, but this one had been a huge bitch, and she felt vindictive.
Plus, it could serve as a peace offering, once she arrived.
If she arrived, murmured her treacherous brain. She poured some swallow down her shirt instead of thinking about it, and moved on.
***
Adri knew, realistically, that even if she hadn’t been made a witcher, her life wouldn’t have been boring and mundane, at least not in the way people here thought of it. Korrath had seen her come to life, the large, unforgiving and deadly desert, full of monsters and manticores. The scariest things there had been the men, and the rare silence.
That desert had taken everything from her, until she had left it, already a witcher, reborn anew. She had never thought of her Grasses as a death of who she had been, but as she climbed up the steep path, her ribs still bleeding and burning, she realized that it had been what had happened.
She had survived her change, but in a way the former Adriya hadn’t.
It was pointless to think back on it now, not when so many decades had come and gone and every single person that had ever known her from before was long dead. Still, she pondered over it, because she had nothing better to do, and it was appropriate considering the job she was currently undertaking.
She had checked on the content of her pack about six thousand times, since she had left the South, and about six thousand more since she had reached the Blue Mountains. Nothing had moved or soured, but it filled her with anxiety to think of it being a possibility.
Everything in there could be remade, but losing time made her sick in the stomach, when so much of it had already been lost.
She had failed.
That thought stopped her in her fast walking over the little rocks trying their best to make her fall down the steep slope. She had failed, and this wasn’t something she could get a second chance at.
The idea had been simple: find Gaetan, convince him to go see Letho some thousands and thousands of miles away. They both lived a whole world away, by the time she had made her way to the Cat, in more ways than one.
The Cat had sneered and refused to speak to her, and when she had insisted, a blade had been shoved under her chin. It had angered and confused her, a cocktail she didn’t appreciate, and her tongue had grown bitter.
They had both said things they would regret – or maybe Gaetan wouldn’t. It had been on her to keep her calm and try the diplomatic way though, but that had never been her strong suit. She wasn’t Mattia, able to butter up anyone who glanced her way. She wasn’t Letho, commanding people to listen just by the smooth and low tone of her voice.
She was small and skinny and had nothing but her fury to fuel her during most fights. Gaetan wasn’t the most impressively strong looking witcher around, but he still towered over her, and after spending so long on the Path fighting off all sorts of big men looking for a fight, she hadn’t been able to keep her first instinct in check.
They had brawled, in truth. It had started as a screaming match that had grown in volume until Gaetan had gotten his blade out, then Adri had pressed hers against him in return and snarled some taunting remark, and next thing blood was drawn, and names were cursed.
She had done more than failed. She had made sure that Gaetan would never speak to or even think about Letho ever again.
She had ruined her only chance at fixing this. She’d have to tell Letho, the next time she saw him, which was the exact reason she was climbing North instead of starting her way back South, to Toussaint or wherever else he had gone.
Spending the winter in a small hole sleeping the cold off had made her lose a lot of time, and she couldn’t be sure Letho was still where she had left him.
Not that it mattered, because he would behead her the moment she told him what had happened.
It was that thought that made her walk again. Her days were numbered, but they had been for quite some times now. Letho’s reaction or whatever had transpired with Gaetan didn’t matter much. She had to make sure whatever she did now counted. She wanted her last big job to matter.
So she climbed the Blue Mountains in early Spring.
The equinox had come and gone, and she had waited a little bit more, just to make sure she wouldn’t accidentally come across any Wolf, not that she believed any of them to be visiting Kaer Morhen. After all, last she had heard of them, Aiden had convinced Lambert to grab a boat to Skellige and join Berengar and Coën on some small rock they called home.
She didn’t know about Eskel and made it a point to push every single thought about him as far away from the front of her mind as she could. She hoped he was in Toussaint though, far from her.
Somewhere she knew not to go.
Mignole had assured her that no one was seen heading that way anyway, and it had been good enough for Adri. She had a goal, and she wouldn’t let some big hulking back-stabbing witcher stop her from it.
***
She got lost for a few days. She had been preoccupied the last time she had climbed up those mountains, and Berengar had acted as a guide while Adri was praying all the gods that she had ever heard of for Coën to make it to the Keep.
Then, she had gone down taking the straightest path she had found, scaling and falling and rolling and twisting her ankles when she’d had to. Not the best way to remember how to get to her destination.
She remembered her trek in the snow though, when she had gotten lost among the impossibly white snow. A shadow had emerged from all the paleness, Eskel, and they had made their way back together.
It hurt her heart, but it helped her find her way.
***
There was no boot on her back and no shouting, when she crossed the big and crumbling gate this time.
In fact, there was nothing and no one at all.
It spooked her a bit, and she gently put her pack down against a wall, looking around, making herself smaller. She didn’t reach for any weapon, not yet, but held her breath and listened for something, anything.
The place was deserted.
The last time she had been in this courtyard, there had been half a dozen witchers sparring under loud laughs and that unmistakable air of camaraderie that filled the halls of a lived in witcher keep.
Now though, as she picked up her pack and crossed the outer and inner courtyards, she found nothing. No sword on the racks, no laughing witcher, nothing.
She moved towards the large and heavy door, pushed until it opened just wide enough for her to slip in, and had to blink at the darkness inside.
It was cold enough that her breath fanned in a small cloud in front of her face as she quickly approached the empty hearth. No fire meant no one in, which was bad. She was certain Leo and Vesemir were here.
Had something happened? Were they dead?
It didn’t seem possible at all, but neither did an empty keep.
She put her stuff down on the chair she had fallen asleep in, back in another life where she had felt right at home with all of the Wolves, and moved farther in.
The kitchen was empty, but there was fresh food everywhere, and the coals underneath the pot were still red and hot. Someone had cooked recently, at least.
Moving on to the stairs, she pondered over what to do, but she had never seen any of the others’ quarters, so she went down, towards the working rooms. She’d check the library and laboratories, and if nothing came of it, the hot springs. She wasn’t keen on seeing anyone naked and floating in the deliciously hot waters, but if that was how she finally learned of what had happened here, then so be it.
Going down the steps determinedly and silently, she found the library’s door opened, and several candles burning inside. No sign of anyone though. She peeked at the open volumes that had been left at a table. Treaties and scrolls on remedies. She frowned, but nothing jumped out at her.
Someone was clearly hurt though.
She left the room untouched, and stalked down the long and dark hallway towards the laboratory. It was the room she had spent the most time in, pouring over formulas and writing down theories with Vesemir. It had been fun and challenging.
It was the reason she was here now.
Opening the door was a silent process, and once it was done she could only stand on the doorstep, stunned.
There was a witcher inside, and something else.
Something half dead that met her gaze and held, its lips moving, no sound coming out.
She knew that thing – recognized him, but it was all wrong. The papers thrown everywhere, the scent of death and agony hanging in the air, the hunched over witcher that was muttering under his breath, the mutated man chained to the table who kept on moving his mouth at her with eyes that pleaded for a quick death.
Intellectually, she knew what had happened, but her mind refused to accept it.
Vesemir would have never.
She stepped in, looking away from the poor and half-lost soul, and watched the witcher jump and turn to look at her with a horrified expression on his face.
“You need to help me fix this,” he said. “You have to.”
***
Forcing Vesemir to sit down was pointless and hopeless, and Adri couldn’t bear the way Leo’s eyes were following her. She managed to drag the oldest witcher out of the room, keeping the door ajar in case they needed to hear something – though the chains around Leo’s wrists and ankles were as thick as Adri’s forearms and he looked like a strong gust of wind would snap him in half.
“What the fuck!” she screamed.
She had aimed for some sort of comforting but harsh word, something to make her sound like she would get the situation under control if he please told her what the fuck was happening. Alas, the diplomacy hadn’t made its way to her system yet.
Vesemir showed his teeth. He looked half crazed and eaten alive by guilt, and when he reached out to grip her by the shoulders, the desperation was a heavy presence by their side.
“I tried to give him the Grasses I… You have to help.”
“That’s not the Grasses,” she snapped, shouldering him away as she stabbed a finger towards the laboratory and whatever was the thing that had been Leo. “I have the Grasses, I brought them here for him!”
“He couldn’t wait,” he replied, wetting his lips. “He couldn’t…”
Then he broke down into sobs, and all Adri could do was hold him up – and she failed that too, guiding him to their knees instead.
Her stomach turned. She could see Leo’s legs from the opening of the door, and he wasn’t moving. His skin looked gray, his veins black and fighting the toxicity.
He was dying, had been for a while now, and Adri had just walked straight into the middle of the fast approaching closure of the tragedy.
She’d been warned that she was too sentimental for her own good and had seen the results of it. She’d fought the Empire, the Manticor and half of the surviving Vipers, just to rebuild her school.
It wasn’t the right decision to make, but as Vesemir sobbed and held her tight enough that it hurt, forcing the words out to tell her what, exactly, had been done to Leo, she decided to help.
Not only to fix, but to finish what had so obviously been butchered.
It wasn’t the right decision to make for a lone witcher in the middle of nowhere with two crazy people who couldn’t help themselves, but it was the only one she could live with.
“I’ll help,” she said, patting his back. Then louder, for Leo to hear, “I’ll make him better, I promise.”
***
She started by making a fire and forcing Vesemir to eat everything she could get her hands on without having to cook. Bread, some smoked meat, a few oranges and one pitiful salad that he chewed under her severe frown.
Then she sat down in front of him, and tried to understand what had happened.
Leo wanted to be a witcher, and couldn’t wait much longer. They were all afforded something he didn’t have: time. It had started to run out, and Leo, desperate. Vesemir had done what he could. He was certain it would work, he remembered, but something worse than death had happened. The Grasses had failed, and Leo hadn’t died.
Now here they were. Leo was barely alive, and Adri had promised that she would fix it just as the old Wolf had run out of ideas.
“You need to show me exactly what you did. Each step, each thought, each micro movement.”
“Of course.”
“Who was the sorceress?”
He looked away, but they both knew magic was needed and Vesemir couldn’t have done it himself.
“I have someone,” she added when Vesemir didn’t move, “but it’ll be a while before he can come.”
If he ever did, but she kept that to herself. Alvin hadn’t given her any sign that he was still alive since she had left him with the White Wolf. It stung a little, but it could have been worse. At least he was still alive, as far as she knew, and living in decadent comfort.
He had promised he’d be there for her when she’d need to make new witchers, and she hadn’t had any reason to doubt that for now.
“It doesn't matter much,” he sighed. “She owed me an old favor and disappeared the second it was paid off. Things ended badly with her and Geralt and…”
Adri must have grimaced too hard, because he cut himself off. She hadn’t put her cowl on, leaving her face naked, and hadn’t considered it to be a bad idea up until now.
Too late.
“It always seems to end badly with you wolves,” she couldn’t help but comment.
It worked. Vesemir had a lopsided smile as he scratched at the back of his neck.
“What can I say? We can’t help but break hearts.”
She rolled her eyes, but it made her smile too.
“I found a basilisk on my way here, it was way too close to the Keep.”
That got him to straighten up and suddenly look more focused. Good. She needed him out of the keep and back to himself by the time he came back. A hunt was always a good thing for witchers.
“How close?”
“Just a few days, but I got lost a lot.”
He frowned and seemed to chew on that information, his amber eyes staying on hers. They reminded her of someone else’s gaze, but she pushed that away, towards the dark place in her chest where she kept all thoughts about men. She didn’t have time for this. She had a goal.
“You want me out so you can take a look at what happened without me hovering.”
“Basically, but I’m polite enough to use a euphemism.”
“Mmh.” His eyes got more focused, and when he took a deep breath, it was like a brand new man was standing in front of her.
Even when she had met him for the first time, he hadn’t seemed so tall and hard and serious.
She shivered. This was the old wolf Mignole had told her about. Looking at him now, she understood how he had survived this long.
“I will leave and hunt for three days—“
“Five.”
“I will leave and hunt for five days. When I come back, Leo will still be alive.”
“I’m not killing him.”
“You say that now…”
It was too late to regret her choices anyway.
***
Adri disagreed a little with the mutagenic route Vesemir had taken — but it might have been the original formula, she couldn’t know without asking. She had based hers on the manticor one she had created, and some old texts that had been left for her when the Vipers’ alchemist had decided to betray her and pretty much everyone else.
It wasn’t where the problem had happened though. Clearly, the magical side of things had gone wrong, and whoever the sorceress was, she had made a mess and had dipped before the dust had started to settle.
Leo, for his part, followed her with his eyes, his cracked lips moving. No sound came out, and whenever Adri met his eyes — black from eyelid to eyelid, with bright yellow irises and oval pupils — she couldn’t help her gut reaction.
She didn’t let it show, at least she hoped she didn’t, but whenever she caught sight of those monstrous eyes, her instinct screamed at her to fight or flight. It wasn’t sure which one was the best solution yet.
“Leo, can you hear me?”
As he had done all previous time, his lips shuddered but no sound came out.
“Blink twice if you understand.”
His eyes moved when she did, but nothing else happened.
His skin was still gray, his veins as black as if he’d drown about four potions, and when she pressed the back of her hand against his forehead, he was cold to the touch.
She found some blankets in the bedrooms upstairs, and piled two of them on top of him before she made him drink some soup she had prepared. He swallowed it with no problem, but she didn’t dare try solid foods. She should have asked Vesemir about it before kicking him out, but it was too late now.
Once that was taken care of, and she didn’t have anything else to busy herself with, she took a stool by his side, sat down, and tried to come up with something other than wait for Alvin to hopefully show up.
Vipers were master potion makers. There had to be something she could try. Vesemir had kept notes of what he had done to help, each entry in his journal growing more and more desperate. He had given it his all, but she could see some gaps.
It looked like Leo was slowly being killed by the toxicity levels of his blood. Maybe some sort of modified White Honey would help.
It wasn’t much, but it was better than staying here, trying not to shiver in disgust at those eerie eyes.
***
No amount of Superior White Honey helped, but the troll decoction she managed to find turned his eyes less yellow – under a certain light.
When she didn’t blink for a while.
Maybe she was just trying to convince herself.
***
On the fifth day, Vesemir strode inside the laboratory with monster blood on his boots, and worry all over his posture. He looked at Adri, standing close to the door as she had done when she had arrived.
She shook her head.
***
“His eyes are different,” murmured Vesemir later that night.
There was only one candle burning in the room, and Adri was tired enough that her sight was blurring.
“I don’t know if it’s the troll decoction or just hope tricking my mind.”
“No, they are,” he said, approaching Leo.
Adri joined him. His pupils were round now. She was pretty certain it hadn’t been the case before.
She turned to look at Vesemir, who was already looking back at her. Her heart gave a painful lurch, something she hadn’t given herself permission to feel since making her own witcher: hope, maybe even some joy.
“Holy shit,” she murmured, thinking back on her own process.
Ruva had been slightly younger than Leo was, but still far from a child. She had taken it into consideration while measuring out the mutagens. It had been one of the harder parts, actually, the one where the risk of failure had been the greatest. Too little of something wouldn’t change anything, but adding just a bit of anything could change the outcome in catastrophic proportions.
“It’s troll mutagen,” she said, jumping away from the table to get back to Vesemir’s notes.
She flipped through the papers and scrolls, looking for the original formula. She had been certain the magic component had fucked everything, but maybe it just needed a little boost. After all, something must have gone right, for Leo to survive for a few weeks.
Vesemir was speaking somewhere to her right, she knew he was, but she couldn’t hear him – couldn’t focus on anything else as she found his formula, and went through her own calculation. The ratios were good, for a teenager. How much had Leo weighed at the time of consuming the Grasses?
Way more than now, she thought, looking over her shoulder at him.
“I have a potential solution,” she said, eyes going to Vesemir, “but it’s going to sound crazy.”
“Will it work?”
“I think so.”
His lips disappeared into a thin line, but he gave a nod.
***
It got worse before it got better.
Way worse.
Leo started convulsing, then blood started running out of his mouth in a steady flow while Vesemir was screaming in her ears and she was trying to force more troll mutagen down his throat.
It wasn’t pretty, but by the time the blood flow and the convulsions stopped, Leo was still breathing, and Adri’s hands were shaking with the adrenaline pulsing through her veins.
This was worse than any fight against any monster – human or otherwise.
“I think,” she breathed when it was clear Leo was now sleeping whatever had happened off, “that he might get better.”
His veins were visibly pulsating under his ashen skin and his eyes were moving rapidly underneath his eyelids, but he was breathing normally.
“I’ll stay with him tonight,” was the only reply Vesemir gave her.
***
The screaming started the next morning. Adri heard it all the way from the stairs on the first floor. It twisted her stomach in a painful knot of memory. Few things had ever hurt as much as the Grasses. She had been half dead at the time too, so she could only imagine what Leo was currently going through.
Screaming was good though. it meant he was alive, and his body was going through the natural process.
Maybe it would be alright.
***
In between fighting Gaetan with her bare hands – they had both thrown their weapons down the second things had gotten real – and deciding to stay North for the winter and join Kaer Morhen as soon as the weather let her, Adri had spent about two weeks drifting like a ghost. She had been aimless, empty and hopeless.
Somehow, she had put all of her hopes for the future in Gaetan and Letho getting back together. It was stupid, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She had missed her agreed upon meeting with Mattia and, hopefully, the others Vipers just for this. She had said goodbye to the South for it.
She had trekked through the world by Eskel's side once more just for that, and she had nothing to show for it. Just a few cuts and bruises, and a bitter taste that wouldn’t leave her mouth.
Helping Vesemir make Leo a witcher had been part of the agenda, but she had lost sight of it and let despair win, just for a while.
She didn’t think she would again, as she watched Leo wake up, blink his wolf-amber eyes against the flames of the candles, and smile at Vesemir.
“It worked?” he asked, voice too weak, too shaky.
Vesemir clearly couldn’t answer, not with all the emotions going through his face. Instead, Adri stepped up until Leo’s eyes snapped to her.
She smiled. “It worked.”
Leo laughed as Vesemir harshly threw himself at him to hug him close.
***
“What will you do now?” asked Vesemir when he found her sitting in the mid-afternoon on a half collapsed wall.
Her feet were dangling over the edge as she watched the mountains on the horizons, the sun warming her back. It felt good. Calming. So familiar yet so different than how the sun had beat down on her in her keep.
“I have a message to deliver that will get me either killed or further ostracized,” she said with a sigh.
Vesemir didn’t say anything as he took a seat by her side, mirroring her position. He did groan though, as he bent the knees, and after he was sitting and looked at the drop between their feet and the ground, hundreds of meters below.
“Does this message need to be delivered soon? I could use the help of someone else around.”
Adri turned to face him, raising an eyebrow, but his eyes were still lost on the drop beneath.
“You want me to stay?”
“This wouldn’t be the first time you did, and I’d like to repay the debt I owe you.”
“By making me work for you?”
That made him grin as he finally turned to face her. It was like a punch in the throat, how similar his eyes were to Eskel’s. Same color. Almost the same depth.
Eskel had never looked at her like Vesemir currently was though. There had never been so much pride and gratitude.
She looked away, swallowing back the memories.
“Believe it or not, nothing happening in Toussaint stays there,” he said while she kept her eyes turned to her hands on her lap. “I was told you were eager to start a new school. I also know my Wolves’ point of view on that.”
“So what, you’re offering me the experience?”
“I’m offering you a School,” he said, grabbing her gaze once more, “at least for a little while.”
She had to swallow around the unspeakable thing lodged in her throat several times before she could answer.
“I’m no Wolf.”
“I know.”
“I… I can’t.”
“Why not?”
It was such a simple question, asked in such a gentle tone. There was no accusation in Vesemir’s face or voice. No attack, despite the fact that Adri felt herself bristle at it. She bit back her first instinct to bite back – Vesemir was no Viper, after all, and he was genuinely asking.
Why not?
Why couldn’t she stay?
She closed her lips around the words she had half formed, and took the time to ponder over it while Vesemir simply held her gaze.
She couldn’t stay because she didn’t belong, and most of the rest of the school would freak out and hate her (some even more than was already the case) if they ever knew what had been done here.
She couldn’t stay because her goal was to reform the Viper School, not the Wolf. She wanted to create a family for herself again, a place where she belonged, a place made for her.
She couldn’t stay, because what else was she supposed to do? People didn’t open their home for her unless it was to help someone else. She had been welcomed here the first time because she had needed to speak to Lambert. She had been allowed to stay at the White Wolf’s estate because Letho had needed it and she wouldn’t leave him there alone. Hells, she had been kicked out both times.
She couldn’t stay here, just like she couldn’t stay anywhere. There was no place in the world for her. A woman witcher who had brought on the end of her School and was now trying to rebuild upon its ashes – who would want her?
But looking deep into Vesemir’s eyes, she could see, plain as day, that he would. He did.
She didn’t understand it, but she couldn’t help herself.
She nodded, until her voice wouldn’t betray her.
“Okay. I’ll stay for a while.”
“Thank you.” He clasped her shoulder, before looking back down at the ground with a grimace. “There are a lot of walls I’m hoping to get you and Leo to rebuild.”
She forced the amused smile on her face. “Are we only good for masonry?”
“Leo is also good for cooking, and you can perfect his alchemical knowledge.”
This time, it was easy to roll her eyes and chuckle. “I feel like I’m being used.”
“That’s because you are.”
***
Being a Wolf involved less napping than being a Viper but a lot more of physical labor. It was nice, in a weird way. While she struggled with carpentry, she didn’t have to think about anything other than the task at hand. In the afternoon, she sparred with both Leo and Vesemir, humbled to see such an old witcher able to pull such moves. At night, they each read in silence in the main room.
Something was missing, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was the vastness of the Keep compared to their meager number. Maybe it was the sound of the wind howling through all the cracks and holes in the walls and roof.
Maybe it was because the last time she had been here, there had been four more witchers, and one of them had been an absolute giant with a booming voice and eyes that never strayed too far from her.
The answer came to her on an early summer afternoon. Leo and Vesemir were in the shade, moving fallen blocks of courtyard into a neater pile while Adri cut some wood in the first sunlit square of grass she had found.
She started humming under her breath, and things fell into place. This was the missing piece, she thought, smiling as her voice grew louder.
Vesemir and Leo stopped their discussion to listen, but she didn’t mind. It was such a simple thing, something that felt as natural as cleaning her blades after a fight or brewing a few potions before a big job. She had sung with everyone before the massacre had started, in the desert. She had sung with Ruva on their last job together.
In fact, she had sung to her while she had fought to survive the Grasses.
It was a tradition she wanted to pursue, she thought. Singing with her School, around a fire or while they did manual labor and hauled rocks around.
Then Leo started humming the same melody as her, and she stopped what she was doing to look at him, who hadn’t even stopped moving big rocks around. She had been naive, she suddenly realized, hadn’t thought big enough. Why would she rebuild the Viper School, when so far she had only made a Manticor and a Wolf.
There was only one Gryphon left in the world, she knew, and had heard some rumors about Bears. With enough dedication, she was certain she could make those mutagens.
Why stop at one type of witcher? Why not make a School for everyone?
And that idea, once it had made its way into her mind, planted its claw, and didn’t leave her alone for even one second.
***
“When will I leave for the Path?”
Adri stopped right by the kitchen’s entrance and held her breath.
She remembered doing that in the past, after having woken up in a seemingly empty Keep. Everyone had been inside that kitchen instead, fighting about her presence here. That was when she had decided to run away, and as she stood in the same exact spot, the bitter memory waking up some things she preferred not to be reminded about, Vesemir answered Leo’s question in the worst way possible.
“You can’t.”
It was the wrong thing to say, she didn’t need to see Leo’s face to know that, and she stepped inside the room to save this before anyone started screaming.
“Leo,” she said, meeting his light amber eyes just as he was preparing to say something back that would hurt.
His eyes were the same color as every other wolf, but just on this side of honey gold. He didn’t even seem like a Witcher, if she was honest. He had some facial scarring, sure, but that had been there before. Maybe it was all the time spent with her in the courtyard. Maybe it was just because he’d had time to live his childhood and blossom into whatever he had wanted to become, unlike the rest of them.
He wasn’t as charming as Mattia was, but there definitely was some spec of humanity still clinging to him that had died in every witcher she had ever come across.
He waited for her to speak, his lower lip trembling in rage. Vesemir was staring a hole in her face – she had taken the bad habit of not always wearing her shawl, especially at the end of the day. Had she finally learned to trust them, she wondered.
One thing was sure, she had learned how to speak to them.
“Before Vesemir’s words are misinterpreted, I want to clarify what he’s saying.”
The older witcher started muttering something, but she ignored him. She knew exactly what she was doing.
“A witcher usually trains for almost two decades, by the time they finally go on the Path. Even if you’ve been training for a few years, it was all before the Grasses. You need to get used to your new reflexes, and you need to train with potions more.”
Leo blinked, looked at Vesemir, who blinked too, before turning back to her.
“Alright,” he said, the anger disappearing from his very being.
And when Adri turned to Vesemir, he simply patted her shoulder with a rueful smile, before asking if she was ready to eat.
***
The library at Kaer Morhen had become quite extensive, thanks to Coën and Berengar’s efforts. The two were traveling all over the world, amassing knowledge that they came to drop once every three years, according to Vesemir. Adri was lucky that she had missed them by only one year.
She poured over the scrolls they had brought whenever she could, looking for as much knowledge about other witchers schools as she could, and when her eyes got too tired or she needed to see the sky, she’d find Vesemir and ask him enough questions that it started to make him question her.
They rebuilt the walls all around the inner courtyard during the day, moving on to the roof as the summer started coming to an end. The days were getting shorter, but Adri’s mood had finally stabilized. She felt good, here with those two Wolves. Purposeful.
She could almost forget her terrible failure with Gaetan.
Then all of this joy and calm routine came to a screeching end with the first hint of autumnal wind.
The equinox had come and gone, and the sky was grayer and grayer each day, but Adri and Leo had a roof to fix before the rain became too heavy, and they took that goal seriously. They worked until night was dark enough that they almost needed a Cat potion, and went down to the kitchen in a good mood. Leo was telling her about his journey up the Blue Mountains, the very first time he had come to Kaer Morhen, as they walked.
Vesemir was already there, looking down at a piece of parchment. He looked up when they entered the room, and moved out of the way so they could grab the food. It wasn’t until they had both sat down and started to eat, that the oldest witcher spoke.
“Mignole is ill.”
Adri jumped as if she’d been electrified. Her spoon clattered when she let go of it.
“What?!”
“She sent me a letter,” he said, his voice lower than usual. “I reached out, when you first told me about her, that she remembered me that she…” He cleared his throat, before looking up, first at Adri, then at Leo, then Adri again. “Humans are fragile. It might be my last chance to see her. I need to… I need to go.”
“We’re coming with you,” she replied without even having to think about it.
For a second, the two other witchers simply gaped at her.
“Who is Mignole, exactly?” asked Leo in the brief silence.
“A friend,” Adri and Vesemir replied at the same time.
That got him to relax his shoulders, Adri could see it from all the way on the other side of the room. With one last look at his parchment, Vesemir sighed and joined them, grabbing a bottle of Gull he kept on hand as he passed it.
Once around the table with them, he served himself a generous drink, and took a sip, putting his letter down in front of them.
The message was brief and it was clear Mignole’s hand had shook as she had written it.
“Alright,” said Leo, frowning as his eyes went from the letter, up to Vesemir. “So your friend is very sick.”
“We’re going to Oxenfurt,” said Adri with no hesitation.
Vesemir, who had been about to bring his cup to his lips once more, paused and searched her face.
“We might not be there on time.”
“And winter is fast approaching, so we should leave as soon as we can.”
That got him to scoff, and put his cup back down.
“Damn, I understand all I’ve heard about you now,” he muttered, before grabbing the letter and rolling it up. “So, we’re leaving for Oxenfurt, and then what?”
“And then we sneak up to her study, and see how she is, like I’ve always done. The trickiest part will be to move quickly as a group of three without any mount.”
“Let me worry about that. We get to her, then what?”
Adri frowned. She didn’t understand his need to question her so much, but she wasn’t about to let that stop the plan that had already formed in her mind, clear as day.
In fact, the plan was getting clearer as she answered him.
“Then we let you two catch up some, and we start looking for some work. The way down won’t be very lucrative, not this time of year, and I know we talked about more training, but if Leo is with me, monster chasing shouldn’t be too bad.”
That idea seemed to really please Leo, who got a sparkle in his eyes.
“Will you be spending the winter in Oxenfurt, then?” pushed Vesemir.
There was something calculating in his eyes, but she answered truthfully.
“If that’s what it takes for Leo to survive his first year on the Path, yes. I should be able to hold on for the first month and a half.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” he said, and that was the end of the conversation.
They left the Keep three days later, with all the windows boarded up and the doors firmly closed. The alchemy lab had been protected by enough traps and enchantments that the entire building would blow up before anyone could get their hands on its content, and they had taken all the food they could carry, and more.
It went by quickly, all things considered. Vesemir was a silent path companion, but he was experienced enough to make up for Leo’s lack.
Leo, for his part, was doing way better than he had any right to do. Sure, he had trained for a few years, but so far Adri hadn’t really understood why the other wolves had insisted that he was a Wolf Witcher just like them.
Now, she slightly got it. He had knowledge and the right reflexes, he was just still getting used to his new abilities as someone who had taken the Grasses recently. It should have been harder for him, but he was clearly taking to it like a duck to water.
He even survived their first encounter against a monster they had found the tracks of and trailed.
Then, they arrived in Oxenfurt.
Adri did as she always did. She changed her cowl for her most colorful shawl, wore her cloak so it hid her armor, and tried to always stay far enough from the other two witchers that she didn’t look like she knew them, while still keeping them in her line of sight.
She had explained as briefly as she could that she couldn’t be seen, or worse caught, in a city, and the others hadn’t asked why. She was glad for it, though she wondered if they knew the cause already. From their conversation, it had seemed to her that they both hadn’t left Kaer Morhen in a few years, but also that the others would bring them news from all over the world.
She found Mignole’s house unchanged from the outside, and abandoned the wolves outside to go first, slipping inside using the same window she had always used.
Inside, she found the old woman sleeping in her bed, looking paler than usual. Adri looked around, sniffed at the bottle of tonic on the bedside table, but she didn’t find anything strange.
Vesemir basically ran inside once she had opened the door, clearly already aware of where the bedroom was. Leo entered slower, staying in the entrance with Adri for a moment.
“Maybe…”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s give them a moment.”
Outside, Adri knew exactly where to find work. She sent Leo towards the monster hunts while she focused on the usual spot for human contracts. There were a lot of women who were completely okay with having their father or husband murdered, sometimes even a brother, as long as the assassin was a woman too.
She wouldn’t tell the others about those jobs, probably.
She did tell Vesemir about Leo’s first monster kill by himself, after he had made the rookie mistake of walking forward by himself and had saved it by not only surviving but taking care of the problem with a devastating blow to the neck.
And even later, after Mignole got better under Vesemir’s care and the help of some good old human-safe alchemy, no one really said anything when Adri announced she had to go South, and Leo decided to go with her.
Vesemir hugged her and patted her back, telling her to bring herself and Leo back in one piece, and that was that.
***
Adri had never imagined herself being a leader of anything, but as she got Leo through his first year on the Path, defying tradition, she focused more on her idea of making a School for everyone.
Then she went looking for Ruva, because she was certain the two youngest witchers in the world had a lot to say to each other.