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She has no idea how Fringilla found her.
Though, ultimately, it’s not that surprising that the other mage did find her, considering the rumors Yennefer has been hearing about Nilfgaard and their tactics. She’s callous and cruel, sure, but Nilfgaard is – something else. Some of the things she’s heard make her skin crawl still, months after.
Fringilla’s too-bright eyes and manic grin make her skin crawl, too.
“Join us,” Fringilla says, “join us, and you can have everything you’ve ever wanted.”
For a split second, her mind flashes to the last several years, to trying to restore a womb she knows will never be returned to her. She’d known even before now, but it cuts no less deep to think it now.
And then, she sees Geralt. And Istredd, though he’s – well, he’s himself. She sees Jaskier, and Lambert and Eskel and Vesemir and –
She tips her head up, chin high, and looks at Fringilla like she’s shit on the leather boots she’s wearing. “No.”
Fringilla’s smile twists into something less manic but no less frightening. “Yennefer,” she says, condescending. Yennefer’s neck prickles. “You can’t run forever.”
“I’ve been doing just fine til now,” Yennefer retorts. “And I’d rather like to keep trying, but thank you for the deeply unwelcome offer. Now, go back to your – fuck, what do you call him again? White Flame Dancing on the Barrows of His Enemies. What a pompous name for a coward who fancies himself an Emperor.”
“Do not,” Fringilla hisses, “disrespect the White Flame.”
Really, Yennefer should know better by now. Provoking religious zealots never gets anyone anywhere except fucked sideways, but she’s tired and pissed off and Fringilla is a sore reminder of everything she could have been – even if she doesn’t want it, not anymore. “You’ve sold your life and soul to a monster and a fraud, Fringilla.”
She just manages to catch the way Fringilla’s face twists in abject rage before she’s being knocked backwards by a powerful wave of magic. There’s no chance to get up, to defend herself; Fringilla steps forward and looms over her, eyes dark and entire body crackling with power, power she shouldn’t have, power she doesn’t deserve.
“And you’ve sold yours to a filthy Witcher,” Fringilla snarls, and then there’s a cloud of black, black and lightning, and it covers Yennefer like a funeral shroud.
Her last thought is, Oh, I’m going to die, and then the world goes black and she knows no more.
The problem with all of that was, of course, that Yennefer didn’t die.
By all rights, she should have. She has no name for what Fringilla did, but she knows enough about Chaos to understand that it should have killed her instantly.
She wakes in the same place she lost consciousness, the sun too-bright above her. She blinks up at the blue, blue sky, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. She’s not dead.
She’s…not dead?
She sits up and looks around. The woods are innocuous and plain, trees a little sparse this close to the river, the usual rustle of animals in the brush all around her. Her head aches, and it feels like she has a sunburn all over her body. Looking down, she finds that her clothes are intact, but her skin is – well.
There are scars up and down her arms now, likely elsewhere as well considering the low-grade pain, that look like the spidery fractal of snowflakes. Lightning strike scars, but instead of red or white, they’re black. She shifts her arms around and watches as the scars move exactly as they should, still with nothing but the minor, irritating burn of a day spent in the sun with no protection.
Standing takes a bit of effort, but nothing she can’t handle. Once she’s steady on her feet, she looks around and considers.
Fringilla likely left after the attack, rightly assuming Yennefer dead.
But Yennefer isn’t dead, and now she’s not quite sure what to do with herself, because she should be. She should absolutely be dead, and what, exactly, does one do with the realization that a one-hundred percent fatal attack slid off of them like oil on water? A glance at her arms makes her reconsider that metaphor. Like water on slightly wet paint, maybe; something left changed, but not as much as you’d expect.
Jaskier would have something better to describe it, she’s sure.
She blinks.
Why does that make her feel like she’s missing something?
She should be dead, but she isn’t. Jaskier. She should be dead, and Jaskier….
Geralt.
The wish.
Her hand trembles as she raises it, and for a split second she’s terrified that whatever Fringilla’s attack did, it took her Chaos away; but then she breathes, and the portal opens up as easy as ever. She steps through it into a safehouse, grabs a journal and a quill, and goes to her laboratory.
Four days later, she’s no closer to understanding what happened.
But she’s certain that whatever it was, it has to do with Geralt’s wish. There’s no other explanation.
He had made the wish to save her life. She doesn’t know how he worded it, and it’s highly unlikely he will ever tell her. So, she knows just enough to make an educated guess that somehow, the djinn twisted the wish into –
Into what?
An immortality curse?
It could be possible, she supposes. Though it would be a bit odd, considering that she’s a mage, and she’s functionally immortal anyway. Not indestructible, mind, but very hard to kill, all things considered. She’ll never age like humans, either, not even like elves don’t age. She will remain looking exactly as she does, right now, until she deigns to try and change it, or tires of being alive, or is successfully killed.
Somehow, though, she thinks that last one won’t ever happen.
Fringilla should have killed her.
The lightning strike scars have remained black, like the depths of the ocean, devoid of all light. And feeling, as well, both in the sense that she feels very much like she’s losing grasp of her feelings when she contemplates the color too hard, and because there isn’t any sensation when she traces along the spidering pattern. Not even if she cuts herself open.
She spends another three days trying to puzzle it, or anything, out. Every test she can think of, she tries, even if it realistically has nothing to do with this and won’t tell her anything. Some, she runs twice or three times. There are potions and divination techniques and rituals and absolutely nothing comes of it.
No matter what she does, there’s nothing. Just the scars, the looming knowledge that she should be worm food and isn’t, and the ever-present pull in what she assumes is in Geralt’s direction.
With no choices left, she changes into a dress that will conceal her new marks, and opens a portal.
Istredd is as smug as ever, but willing to help.
And then Geralt shows up, and it turns into an absolute mess. She doesn’t know what happened, but as soon as Istredd had mentioned Stregobor, Geralt had shut off.
Stregobor is a leech, a coward, and a monster, but not any more than half the aldermen Geralt takes money from on the Path, that she's aware of. She doesn’t understand.
She thinks Istredd might, and knows that he won’t tell her. He’s having too much fun.
The dragon hunt happens.
Yennefer spends several weeks in a remote cottage somewhere in Toussaint, deep into the best wine she could mind-control out of the nearest vineyard.
When she’s done moping, she jumps back into finding out what, exactly, this wish of Geralt’s entails.
Istredd and Stregobor are helping, which is both a boon and a bane. Istredd is smug and horny, and Stregobor is arrogant and patronizing.
But they’re damn good mages, and three weeks into some very intensive work – during which Yennefer ends up having to come clean about Fringilla’s attack, and the scars it left all over her body – they figure it out.
It’s not just Yennefer that the wish has ensnared.
It’s all of them.
Everyone Geralt loves is now tangled up in his destiny, like so many strings on a broken loom. They can’t die until Geralt does. They can’t die. They can’t die.
And, with some further digging – painful digging, Yennefer might add – Stregobor manages to confirm all of her worst fears about that.
Fuck.