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Rhion, The Bloodless (gore warning)
The Council was just about to break the meeting for food and stretches, when the door to the lesser hall was slammed open, iron handle sparking against the stone wall.
One of the newly grassed trainees tumbled in, panting and terrified. Even without a witcher’s nose, Jaskier knew to take over.
“Hey, can you take a deep breath for me?” he coaxed quietly, coming to crouch near the boy. Over the kid’s head, Milena held a scrap of parchment on which she’d scrawled Zenon. Must be his name, bless her. “Zenon, can you take a deep breath for me? You’re almost there, just a few more deep breaths and you can stop thinking about this so much.”
Zenon’s chest heaved, but he tried his best and calmed down surprisingly quickly.
“Now,” Jaskier continued, not giving the kid a chance to panic again, “what happened?”
Zenon froze, looking to Jaskier, and then to everyone else. “There’re people coming up the trail. Lots of them.” He took a fortifying breath. “People in Nilfgaard livery.”
Geralt snarled, and Zenon flinched back, nearly hitting his head on the wall. Jaskier glared at his lover and urged Zenon to his feet, shutting the door behind him just in time for the room to erupt into noise.
After almost a minute of incoherent shouting, Ciri stood on a table and screeched. The room quietened down immediately, and Ciri filled herself with all the courage she could muster. “If there’s really an invasion force on the way, then sitting around arguing isn’t going to do anything helpful.”
The council members, all more than thrice her age (save Jaskier) looked chastised.
“Now, I don’t know anything about strategy, so I’ll leave that to you, but we need to let everyone know so that all of the humans and children and animals are kept away from the fighting as much as possible.” Ciri took a deep breath and jumped off the table. “So, I’m going to go and talk to Jan about it.”
Eskel opened his mouth to protest but Ciri didn’t give him a chance. “Nope! I have a knife, I’ll have Coën with me, I need to learn how to do this at some point, and you have more important things to be doing.”
Eskel shut his mouth, stared at her for a moment, and then smiled. “Growing up on us already, huh?”
Geralt wrapped her in a hug from behind and whispered into her hair, “I believe in you, I trust you, and I’m so proud of you right now. Do good things, Cub.”
Ciri grinned fiercely at the Council and opened the door, waving Coën to follow her. “We need to go see Jan about keeping everyone safe during all this, come on!”
On the other side of the country, Rhion’s eyes snapped open in the dim gloom of his room, fire cold in the hearth. The brand on his collar burned, almost worse than when the Order put it there in the first place.
He reached up to ease his shirt off his shoulder and accidentally brushed his wrist against the angry red scars, but the brief impression of a reaching hand he got in that split second was more than enough.
He laid his palm flat against the circular scorpion-shaped brand, ignored the pain, and dove into the magic anchored to it. At the point he’d almost convinced himself that he’d imagined it, something caught and latched onto his probing thread of chaos.
“Master Rhion? ” The voice wobbled in and out of hearing, so Rhion sent more threads of chaos to stabilise whatever connection the man had managed to create.
“I’m here.”
“Kaer Morhen is about to be under siege and I seek aid, if you would give it. Can you make it here two days hence? ” Barmin said, voice clearly recognisable now.
Rhion’s breath caught, and he felt a familiar coil wake in his chest. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, Master. ” Barmin severed his end of the connection before Rhion could respond, trails of chaos and magic floating away into the aether.
***
Rhion sped up the steps and swung around the corner, bracing to deal with Kaer Morhen’s mages.
The corridor was empty.
Maybe they’d already activated everything? Exceedingly unlikely given that he couldn’t smell any blood, but still more likely than them forgoing the wards entirely.
He shrugged and sliced a hand open, smearing dark blood against the wall. Where most blades would dissolve or rust, this one didn’t. He’d spent several decades working on-and-off to find an alchemical compound that could prevent that, and he now kept all his blades coated in the result, to great success.
The wall glowed, and Rhion pressed his hand harder against the bloody rock, ignoring the small pieces of it that crumbled away. The section of rock swung open, and he stepped into the newly revealed room, scanning the dulled wardstone with a frown. “Why haven’t they been down here?” he asked himself. “This should’ve been one of the first steps.”
He made a mental note to bring it up to his nestlings; if it had been two full days since he got called and the wards still weren’t up then these new mages clearly weren’t as good as their reputations suggested.
Rhion shook off the uncertainty and settled himself in front of the rune ladened menhir, feeling for the pulsing well of magic within it. He’d never learned the specifics of Kaer Morhen’s ward net, but all the Kaers’ wards were based on Morgraig, so he should be able to figure it out.
The magic surged, waves of it skittering over the stone and around the room. It pressed against his mind, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he acquiesced, shivering as it poked and prodded at his thoughts.
Faint memories of apprentice mages collapsing in screaming agony echoed in his mind, but he firmly shoved them back in their box and focused on what he wanted to communicate.
Protection.
Safety.
Love for his Nestlings and their families.
Kinship to all the witchers, in Kaer Morhen and beyond.
Vicious anger at those that would dare attack them outside of war.
Fierce possessiveness that said this keep is mine, these people are mine, and sitting idly by is not an option.
The anger curled within him flared, and the wards echoed back with heat of their own.
“Good, ” Rhion thought, and pulled memories of Morgraig’s wards activating; encapsulating the entire castle in a shimmery blue sphere, unbreachable by man or magic. He showed the single unwarded doorway deep under the castle, how it was left open so the castle could launch secret attacks, should they wish.
The wards hummed, retreating from his mind. The etched runes started to glow white and Rhion grinned, unsheathing a large knife and dragging it harshly across one arm. Black blood sprayed everywhere, but he ignored it, instead cupping his other hand to collect the thicker reddish-brown blood as it dripped from the veins buried deeper inside him.
Once the first drips spilled out of his hand he shifted, dumping the liquid onto the wardstone. Pulled by gravity and magic, it spread into the ridges and grooves of the carved runes, tinting the white glow pink. The blood absorbed into the rock and the light darkened into a proper red, getting brighter and brighter. A strange buzzing-humming started up too, getting louder as the light got more intense.
Rhion closed his eyes and covered his ears in preparation, crouching in one corner with his face almost buried in the cool stone.
The buzzing-humming got louder and the light brighter, even through his closed eyes.
Eventually, the magic reached a peak, flashing so bright even his well shielded vision was overwhelmed and buzzing strong enough he could feel the vibration in his bones.
In the calm darkness that followed, Rhion blinked away the dark spots from his peripheral eyes and waited for his ears to stop ringing. When everything seemed to be back in order, he stood and retrieved his dropped knife.
Instinctively, he brushed a hand across the wardstone as he passed, pushing gratefulness and care to the forefront of his mind. It may have been his imagination, but the stone warmed slightly beneath his palm in response.
He left the room after a final sweep, door sealing itself out of existence when he swung it shut. After a moment’s thought, he set course for the catacombs’ exit closest to the great hall, where the Council could likely be found.
He absently noted that the door between the catacombs and Kaer needed to be oiled as he rotated it, switching eyes as he entered the corridor. The oil lamps weren’t nearly as bright as outside would be, but it was still enough to warrant standard vision, rather than that more suited to the dark.
He turned a few corners and jogged up several sets of stairs before being spat out one corridor off from the great hall’s entrance. He turned to the hall but paused when greeted by the sight of the entire Council clustered around a window, smelling distinctly of shock and confusion.
“Vesemir?”
Vesemir turned, affection fluttering at his scent. “Attir,” he said, gesturing to the window, “do you know what this is?”
Rhion stepped up to the window closest to him and looked out. “What are you referring to?” he asked after a moment. “Everything looks as it should be.”
“Yes, apart from the very obvious magical dome surrounding us,” Yennefer snapped. “Now is not the time for jokes.”
Rhion stared back calmly. “The dome is meant to be there, and I am” — he smiled politely, but his eyes were cold — “ever so curious to know why you didn’t bother to activate it yourself.”
Triss sprinted up the corridor, almost bashing into a wall before she could stop herself. “What the fuck is that?” she panted, gesturing at the windows.
“We were just getting there,” Jaskier said, patting her on the shoulder. “Rhion seems to know more than us.”
Triss looked at Rhion expectantly, matching Yennefer’s glare and the others’ curiosity.
Suddenly, he felt very wrong-footed. “They’re Kaer Morhen’s wards, you should be in charge of them,” he said.
“Kaer Morhen’s wards failed a century ago,” Vesemir pointed out.
Rhion gave him a flat look. “Net wards don’t break unless you destroy the wardstone that anchors them. Given that I just saw it perfectly whole and the wards are very visibly active, I think it’s no stretch to say whoever said that was wrong.”
“Net wards are a myth,” Triss said, brows furrowing.
“Net wards are a Lost Art, actually,” Yennefer corrected. “But regardless, you’re not a mage, you shouldn’t have been able to do much of anything to a ward scheme.”
“The activation requirement is a certain amount of blood that contains chaos but no magic,” Rhion said drily. “Witcher blood works perfectly well for it.”
Triss’ eyes widened. “It’s blood magic? ”
“All net wards are blood magic.”
“How do you know all this?” Ciri asked, moving closer. “I thought Lost Arts were… well lost.”
“A Lost Art is one with no living practitioners,” Yennefer recited distractedly, staring at Rhion. “He can’t make net wards, so he doesn’t truly count as a practitioner, irrespective of how much he knows.”
“What does the dome do?” Geralt bit out.
“Nothing goes in, nothing comes out,” Rhion said simply, “for as long as it can sustain itself. That time lengthens if it gets hit with magical attacks or there’s been a lot of magic within the warded space.”
“How long do we have?” Artek rumbled.
“Hard to say,” Rhion murmured, glancing at the dome. “I don’t know how much magic’s been done here, but bigger spells have more impact since they generate more latent chaos for the net to catch.”
“Would portals count as a big spell?” Yennefer asked amusedly, “because if so, those wards will likely last a while.” She smirked. “A long while.”
Stefan and Jaskier snickered, and Rhion hummed consideringly. “Are these portals tethered or untethered? Because that makes a significant difference regarding latent magic quantities.”
The group stared at him blankly for several moments, making him sigh.
“Another Lost Art, I suppose,” he said, frustration clear. “That one, at least, I can teach you the technique for. I watched the apprentices learn.”
Something gleamed, deep in Yennefer’s eyes. “Let’s deal with the invasion first and foremost, and then we can discuss what you know of magic.”
Rhion nodded silently, half wishing to escape the entire situation. “There’s a hole in the sphere down in the catacombs, if you want to set up ambushes or trap the forest.”
Treyse and Ivar shared a grin at that, and Stefan looked intrigued. Eskel looked concerned. “Will Nilfgaard find it?” he asked.
“No, but even if they did it wouldn’t matter,” Rhion smirked. “They have no chance of actually getting to it, even with mages.”
Rennes tilted his head. “The one that opens onto the cliff?”
“No, the one that splits off from the hot springs vents,” Rhion said. “Even if they get up through the waterfall, they couldn’t climb for long enough to make it through the tunnel, and the steam would quite possibly boil them alive.”
Vesemir winced. “That actually might be a challenge for some here.” He glanced at Artek and Merten. “The Bears will almost all be too large and heavy, and the Manticores aren’t particularly trained to climb.”
Merten shrugged. “I don’t know what the exact dangers are here, but we’re generally not so fond of long climbs.”
“Slippery,” chorused Rennes, Vesemir, Rhion, and Eskel.
Rhion looked appraisingly at Eskel. “I didn’t expect any of your age to have known about that one.”
Eskel shrugged, but his scent tempered with satisfaction. “I went exploring when I got benched from training.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Vesemir glowered, “that all those times I pulled you from training for injury or sickness, you just went off and did even more dangerous things? Without supervision? ”
“Yes?” Eskel said sheepishly.
Vesemir growled at him in irritation, and Rhion and Jaskier shared an amused look.
Keldar eyed the wolves and coughed to gain attention. “Might it be better to get back to planning our response to the siege?”
“I thought sieges needed more soldiers than that,” Ciri said, peering through the window.
“People look smaller the higher up from them you are, An’Eit Veth,” Rhion said quietly, looking out over her head. “That’s more soldiers than there are witchers.”
Ciri turned to stare at him, and he stared back. “Why do you call me that?” she asked eventually.
“Because it’s what you are,” he responded, brow furrowing. “You are a Lady of the Source.”
“But-” she huffed, “but you don’t use titles for anyone else, why only me?”
Rhion’s face smoothed. “Well, Jaskier likes me well enough that it would be disrespectful to be properly formal,” he began. “Witchers actively dislike titles for the most part, and they pose no threat to me, so I need not grovel in fear,” he continued. “While I technically live in the Wolflands, I live quite isolated so I do not fear being struck down for lawbreaking, irrespective of the fact that your father would find me rather unkillable. And I have no great love of mages, and do not honour them unless they earn it.”
“That all makes sense,” Ciri said after a few moments’ thought. “But why do you do it with me?”
“Sources are rare, and you are a strong one amongst them,” Rhion said plainly. “Though should you prefer I use a different mode of address you need only say.”
“I want you to call me Ciri and treat me like you do them,” Ciri said firmly.
Rhion grinned at her, relaxing from court-perfect posture back to a fluid combat stance. “Then Ciri it is!”
“Eit alber mena, I thought you were joking when you said he could change that much,” Vesemir cursed, eyes wide.
Ivar snickered, “He taught us politics, Vesemir, what the fuck did you expect?”
“What? ” Jaskier asked, voice almost poisonously sweet. “Rhion taught you politics, did he?”
Rhion kept his face carefully blank. “I did, yes.”
“Then what the hell were you doing in Oxenfurt?”
“Learning,” Rhion said slowly. “Etiquette is slow to change, but it does change.”
Jaskier threw his hands into the air in frustration. “No, I meant all those class discussions where you asked questions that you clearly must have known the answers to.”
“Oh.” Rhion shrugged. “The quiet pair that sat behind me would whisper to each other when they were confused, but neither of them ever asked any questions, so I started asking for them.”
“I-” Jaskier blinked. “Well, I can’t be mad at you for that, it’s sweet.”
Rhion just shrugged again.
Artek interrupted the lull in conversation with a single grunted word. “Nilfgaard.”
“Yes,” Geralt said, “Nilfgaard. Eskel, since you apparently know the way out of the wards, you’re in charge of ambushes and traps. I want them gone, so I’m giving you free range.”
Eskel nodded and ambled off with Ivar, Guxart, Merten, and Stefan hot on his heels.
“Well, since Triss and I will not be attempting whatever hellish escape route it takes to leave right now, I’m going to steal Rhion away from all of you and see what he knows,” Yennefer said, smiling broadly. She reached out a hand for Rhion’s wrist, but he dodged.
“It’s rude to invade people’s personal space like that,” Rhion said, teacher voice in full force.
Yennefer froze, and then glared at him. “You didn’t do that to Jaskier when he grabbed you.”
“Jaskier is a lot less dangerous than you, Lady Yennefer of Vengerberg, Left Hand of the White Wolf, Chief Mage of the Wolflands,” Rhion said sardonically.
“What is your problem?” Yennefer spat, shoulders tense. “What did I do to you?”
“Do you know what the Mages that made us did?” Rhion laughed bitterly, scent souring. “They got put through one trial, when they were old enough to know what was happening,” he said, gesturing to the Witchers around him.
“Geralt went through twice, actually,” Yennefer corrected.
“And I went through annually!” Rhion roared. “For a hundred FUCKING YEARS!” Yennefer flinched as his fist lashed towards the wall, but he stopped it at the last second, hovering over the rock.
He closed his eyes and breathed for a beat, tension draining from his body. “I do not have good experiences with mages, particularly with mental magic,” Rhion said slowly, voice blank. “I know I am not as pleasant to mages as I am to others, but that will change if you prove to be as different as Vesemir has led me to believe.”
Yennefer stared at him, and then, slowly, nodded once.
“Why would they give you so many?” Triss asked quietly.
“Because if they hadn’t, I’d likely have died.” It came out blunter than Rhion had intended, but it was true. “After my initial mutations, I needed an increasingly weaker version of them every year as I grew to keep all my development and systems working properly. If I’d not been weaned off them as I was, the instability could have lost me to the mutagens, if not physically killed me.”
Triss looked horrified, and Ciri looked…
Ciri looked like a scared child who didn’t know what to do.
Shit.
Rhion shook his head to dislodge any stuck anger and cleared his mind. “That all said, I’d be happy to discuss what I was taught of magic theory and show you the wardstone, since I can’t show you the portalling until the wards are back down.”
Triss tilted her head in confusion, but Yennefer took the olive branch seamlessly, “of course, let’s stop by the kitchens on the way, I’d like some tea if nothing else.”
When the three of them had made it a fair way down the next corridor, Rhion put up a hand to pause, and listened.
“Papa, what was that?” Ciri’s voice trembled but stayed otherwise firm.
“I don’t know, Cub,” Geralt rumbled, “but sometimes when people are scared or hurt, they get angry to cover it all up.”
“Like…like Uncle Lambert? Before Milena came?”
“Yes,” Geralt said quietly, “exactly like Lambert.”
There was nothing after that except the rustle of fabric and Ciri’s quiet sobbing.
***
“There is no way that it’s that easy,” Yennefer said, pacing the length of her office. “There’s no way that learning to keep a portal open without spending chaos is- is- is- just visualisation! It’s too simple!”
Rhion smiled a little. “There are other ways for if you don’t think in images, but imagining the portal on each side is connected by a tube apparently stops much of the energy wastage. They’ll still take effort, but it should be more efficient. Definitely more pleasant to use tethered ones.”
“How so?” Triss asked, quill poised to take notes.
“It feels less bumpy. I don’t specifically know why but I’m sure you two can have a cheerful debate over it someday,” Rhion said lightly. “I’m fairly certain there’s a book on it in Morgraig’s library though, I’ll check for you.”
Triss dropped her quill, eyes wide and hungry as she stared at Rhion. “Morgraig?”
“Castle Morgraig, the seat of the original Order of Witchers.”
Yennefer whistled under her breath. “How long ago was that library last updated?”
“Well, if the Order was around for that long, then the library…” Rhion muttered, running the numbers through his head, “400 years ago, give or take.”
Triss’ eyes widened further, and she sat up straight. “Can I see it?”
“What?”
“Can I see the library?” she repeated.
Rhion went to deny her but paused. “I-” he stopped and thought some more, about what it would mean and what could go wrong and what the benefits were and all the other tiny factors that were relevant to his decision.
“With conditions, yes.”
Triss clapped excitedly, standing up to hug him, but pulling herself back at the last second. “Thank you, ” she said seriously. “I don’t know how much you know of us mages outside of what you lived through, but the mages from back then used wards we don’t understand anymore, so when they died all the libraries were lost, locked behind the wards. Having one library is not only so much more than we have already, but if we can reverse engineer the wards from books we find in there, we could get them all back.”
Rhion swallowed and nodded. “I need to think more about how to word the conditions, but I should have them done by the time the siege has ended.”
Triss nodded gratefully and returned to her seat.
Yennefer glanced at her, and decided a distraction might be useful. “Rhion, Jaskier said that he went to thank Jan for finding you a room so late at night on that first day you arrived, but Jan said he hadn’t done anything of the sort. Care to explain?”
Rhion snorted, “Ah, that. I can’t relax if I’m near lots of people I can’t see, so sleeping in a keep full of witchers is… not worth attempting.”
“Did you go back to Morgraig for the night and then return before any of us woke up, then?”
“No! ” Rhion looked disgusted. “I went up to the roof.”
“You slept on the roof? ” Triss asked incredulously.
“Not technically, but I rested.”
“How long can you go without sleep, since you seem to be so bad at it?” Yennefer blurted out, then winced when she realised she’d said it aloud.
“Depends,” Rhion said, drumming his fingers against his thigh, “be more specific.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, how long can I go without sleep until what?” Rhion explained. “Until I start to feel tired? Until I start hallucinating? Until I can’t fight? Until I stop being able to move? Until it kills me? There are lots of ways to interpret the question.”
“Do you know the answers to all of those?” Yennefer asked, slightly hesitant. She didn’t normally feel this uncertain, but Rhion seemed to have a gift for throwing her off-balance.
“All except the last one, yes. And I have a definite answer about how long I can go and not die, but it’s almost definitely not my maximum.” Rhion said easily.
Triss stared at him, puzzled. “Why-” she paused, then tried again, “why do you seem so wary about us, but are also so willing to give us such personal information?”
Rhion stared hard at the bookshelves behind Yennefer’s desk and leant back in his chair. “I don’t entirely know, but it probably has something to do with being able to choose whether or not to tell people things. There’s no freedom in people knowing things about you that you had no say in.”
“Well that’s one thing you share with the other witchers, I guess,” Triss muttered.
***
The Council stood on the battlements together with Triss and Rhion, watching the much-reduced Nilfgaardian forces begin to limp their way back down the mountain.
“That felt much less dramatic than I expected,” Livi said, thinking over the past three weeks. “I did almost the exact same job as usual.”
“Letho said the kitchen has struggled over the last week to make edible meals with what they had in storage,” Ivar offered. “Hence the ‘weird ass combinations and increasingly questionable bread’ to use his words.”
Jaskier wrinkled his nose, and Ciri snickered.
“It’s over now, at the least,” Keldar said.
“And we don’t ever have to eat any of those meals again,” Stefan added triumphantly.
“Manticores were fine,” Merten said brightly, “we just covered up all the problems with hot sauce.”
They stared contentedly at the mid-morning view, Rhion eventually breaking the silence.
“I promised the mages I’d show them how to wrangle the wards, would any of you care to join?”
“I think I’ll stay up here,” Jaskier said. “It’s warm and pretty.”
“Eskel has a meeting in half a glass with Jan, so we’re both out,” Livi said, pouting slightly. “I’d have liked to see it if I could.”
“Well, I want to see,” Ciri declared, pushing off the parapet and moving closer to Triss.
“I don’t care much either way, so I’ll give you all your space,” Artek said, seconded by Treyse, Rennes, and Stefan.
“I said I’d be down to help Leocadie brew this afternoon so I can’t either,” Merten said, shrugging.
“Everyone else is coming?” Triss asked, and getting no argument, began walking briskly towards the stairs.
“How far do you think she’ll get before she realises she doesn’t know where she’s going?” Ivar murmured to Vesemir. “Assuming Attir doesn’t point it out beforehand.”
Rhion, a little ways in front of the pair, turned back to wink at them, then kept walking.
Vesemir groaned, “Sometimes I feel like I’m the mature one.”
Ivar grinned, fangs glinting in the sunlight. “I’m older than you.”
“So’s Attir, and he’s being as mature as milk, right now,” Vesemir retorted.
It took until they got to the great hall for Triss to realise, at which point Rhion very graciously took over. He showed them the entrance closest to the great hall, and where the rune to unlock it was etched in the grout at about hip level.
Since this door was only wide enough for one person, everyone got to test out the rune and go through themselves, Rhion going last.
As it turned out, the mages were not impressed by the total darkness, but Triss did comment that, “Only four of your eyes are glowing?”
“Can one of you make a light for the walk, or do you want me to Igni?”
Yennefer made a disparaging noise and then there was a bright purple ball of magelight hovering at her shoulder.
Rhion winced, switching eyes as quickly as he could. “I’m happy to just lead you all there, but any of you that can sense magic might want to keep a feeler out, it’s the easiest way to find the wardroom by far.”
He started off down a corridor, the group following behind him. “Now, to answer your question, Triss, different eyes do different things. I have one set that’s primed for low-light conditions, and one set for properly dark conditions, so those are the ones that glow like cats’ eyes.”
He turned down a corner, Ciri speeding up to walk beside him. “So what do the others do?” she asked.
“Well, the two sets closest to my nose and the two at my temples are all fairly normal human vision as far as I can tell, though my vision is better. I have one set that can see heat, one that makes certain substances glow, and one that I really don’t know how to explain,” he listed, pointing out each set in turn.
“What about the ones in the middle? The really small ones?” Ciri asked.
“Oh, those have dwimmerglosse,” Rhion said easily.
Yennefer’s magelight flickered with her shock, and Rhion paused, turning to check on her.
“Everything alright?”
“You have magesight?” Yennefer asked incredulously. “Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
“Not particularly, no. It’s probably more common in monsters than mages, though.”
“Why does that matter?” Yennefer asked. “You’re not a monster.”
Rhion raised an eyebrow. “Not technichally, but I’m a damn lot closer to them than I am to mages.”
Yennefer frowned, but didn’t say anything more, so Rhion went back to walking.
After only a few minutes, Ivar called for a halt, and pointed at a blank wall. “That’s the door.”
Rhion glanced at the two mages and Ciri, all of whom were pointing focused stares at the wall.
“I can’t feel anything,” Triss said after a minute.
“Yes, because there’s nothing there,” Yennefer agreed. “There’s no readings, no spells, no anything.”
“I feel like I should be able to sense something, but I can’t,” Ciri said with a pout.
“Alright, since this door is unlocked by blood that is chaotic but non-magical, Ivar do you care to test your theory?”
Ivar grinned viciously, pulling a blade and slicing his hand open without blinking. Rhion grabbed his wrist and pulled it up to rest against the wall.
A moment later, a thin rectangle shaped line of light appeared around Ivar’s palm, and Rhion grinned. “Now you push.”
Ivar pushed forwards and his part of the wall swung inwards, revealing a room with a glowing red rock protruding from the centre of the floor.
Geralt whistled under his breath, smelling his mages’ shock and excitement.
Rhion glanced around the room and winced. “I… shouldn’t activate Kaer Morhen’s wards again unless and until this room gets a sterilisation enchantment.”
“Why?” Triss asked, dragging her gaze away from the wardstone.
Rhion gestured at the floor and walls, now riddled with small pockmarks in some places. “I melted the floor.”
“Hm,” Geralt said, crouching to rub at one of the pockmarks. His hand came away covered in small pieces of rock.
Ciri bounded over, eyes wide. “Your blood actually melts things? I thought that was a joke!”
Rhion smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Some days I wish it was, but unfortunately the blood you see is very much acidic,” he said, gesturing to his pitch-dark veins.
“What happens now?” Vesemir asked from the door.
“Oh!” Rhion said, “it’s probably safest if I deactivate the wards, and then walk everyone through how it works.” He plopped onto the floor in front of the wardstone once more and reached for its well of power.
It felt weaker now, but still much stronger than Rhion had expected. He pushed feelings to the front of his mind; of victory, and safety, and care.
The wardstone glowed brighter, so Rhion sent forth a memory of watching Morgraig’s dome dissolve away in the breeze, its job complete.
The wardstone hummed in his mind and then vanished, glow slowly darkening away to nothing. Just dull, unassuming rock once more.
He settled himself, then turned to his onlookers. “The basic premise of net wards like this, is that there are tiny runes inscribed all over the Kaer and grounds, and they catch and hold tiny amounts of latent chaos,” he explained. “When you activate the ward, the dome expands outwards from the wardstone, and sustains itself by using those bits of energy caught by the runes. If the energy in the runes runs out, the ward fails. Make sense?”
Everyone nodded, and he smiled approvingly. “Excellent. You turn on net wards by finding the wardstone and connecting to the chaos energy that it has pooled and saying ‘pretty please will you protect me’.”
Ivar snorted, and Rhion shot him a mildly disapproving glance.
“You think I’m joking, but I’m not. It comes into your mind, and you project what you want it to do to the forefront of your thoughts.” He glanced at Yennefer for a moment. “And doing it with words doesn’t work right. You have to use emotions, instincts, or memories to communicate what you need from it. Once it understands, the stone will glow white.”
“Is it like the house-spirits from tales of old? You feed it and ask it nicely and it will do your chores for you?” Keldar suggested.
Rhion grinned. “Exactly like that, well done.”
Keldar preened, chin tilting up and back straightening beneath the praise.
“Keldar is completely right, you have to feed it. And net wards, by and large, feed on blood. Most will do in a pinch, but magical or otherwise chaotic blood tends to give the biggest boost.” He gestured to the runes inscribed along the stone. “Start dripping blood over it, and keep going until all the runes are covered, at which point the white glow will turn red. If it’s pink you either need more blood, or stronger blood.”
He cleared his throat, then continued. “From there, it will start getting brighter and brighter, and a buzzing noise should start. You can leave the room if you have to, but don’t close the door. Eventually it will reach a peak, which feels more or less like flashbang. Then the ward rapidly expands into the sphere you saw earlier. To turn it back off you, once again, ask nicely.”
Yennefer hummed consideringly and brushed a hand across the stone. “Shouldn’t there be blood everywhere, since there’s so much involved?”
“I only needed about a cupped palmful to cover this size of stone, but it gets absorbed to power the initial activation,” Rhion said, “so it doesn’t particularly matter how much there is.”
“If the blood gets absorbed by the stone, how is yours still here dissolving the floor?” Triss asked, looking up from where she had crouched to inspect a wall.
“It will only accept something’s ‘lifeblood’ as tribute, and since the acid blood is a defence mechanism that hides my actually important blood and veins, it doesn’t count.”
“You have two kinds of blood?” Ciri asked. “How does that work?”
“I’ll show you when we’re standing on dirt, for the floors’ sake.” Rhion promised solemnly.
“Deal,” Ciri agreed.
***
“We’re on grass now!” Ciri said, having dragged Rhion out to the training yard as soon as she possibly could. “You have to show me!”
Rhion laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “Alright, alright. Stand behind me, I don’t want your papa after me because I accidentally dissolved you.”
Ciri ducked securely behind him, and he once again withdrew a long knife. “This is going to look really dramatic, but I promise I’ll be fine, alright?”
Ciri nodded determinedly and Rhion dragged the knife down the inside of his forearm, smooth and deep. Black blood arced high out of the wound, splashing to the ground and hissing when it hit. He twisted his arm, and a fresh fountain spilled forth. He shifted and turned his arm until all the veins in it were grey, and the black had slowed to trickle, dripping from his fingers.
“Alright Ciri, air should be free of unexpected acid-blood rain now,” Rhion said cheerfully, digging a few fingers into the wound and prying the sides apart to keep it from sealing over. “I’m not gonna make you stick your fingers in my arm, don’t worry,” he joked, seeing her disgusted expression. “And watch your feet, dissolving your shoes is also bad.”
Ciri froze, foot hovering over a little puddle of his blood. “Maybe we should do this away from where the biggest puddles are.”
“Sensible,” he agreed, shuffling back several feet so Ciri could get a proper look at his arm. “Now, if you look along one side of the cut, can you see how there are little black circles towards the top bit?”
Ciri nodded, trying to breath through her mouth to escape the nausea she felt.
“Those are my topside veins, the black ones. And here, there are little-” Rhion cut himself off, glancing at Ciri in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Little more ick-ed than I expected to be,” she panted, shutting her eyes tightly.
“Fuck, of course. I’ll get my arm out of the way so you can’t see it and we can go back inside, and-”
“No,” Ciri cut him off.
“…No?”
“No,” she repeated. “I’ll need to know how to do this eventually, seeing people hurt up close and personal. May as well start getting used to it now,” she said grimly.
“Would it help for me to walk you through like I did witcher trainees?” Rhion asked hesitantly.
Ciri opened her eyes and stared at him. “I thought you taught politics?”
“I did, but I taught other things too. Having the fastest healing times generally meant I was the demonstration for how to treat injuries,” Rhion said, keeping track of Ciri’s scent. The bitterness of disgust had lessened but not left. “Let’s start with getting used to the smell. Most humanoid blood has something in it that makes it smell like metal, and my acid-blood smells sharp, a bit like vinegar. Can you smell those two things?”
Ciri took a deep breath, and then another, and then another. “I think so? It burns a bit to breathe it in, but otherwise it smells like any other blood.”
“Good, well done,” he said, grinning internally as he watched her spine straighten. “Now, blood is a part of life. Everyone here has it, and while it mostly should stay inside the body, there are lots of reasons it might not, yes?”
“Yes,” said Ciri, sounding much less pained than a minute ago.
“Good. Seeing someone injured is scary, but it’s a lot scarier for them than it is for you. There are exceptions to that, but it’s a good baseline to have.” Rhion said, flexing his still buried fingers in his arm to stop them from getting stuck there by his damned healing. “So if you’re on the outside, what you need to do is get your initial reaction out of the way, and then go and help.”
“Like what’s happening now?” Ciri asked, bitter scent getting even fainter. “I had a bad reaction, and now I’m getting it out enough that I can keep going.”
“Exactly! Thinking you can see a wound up close and be fine and finding out that you really can’t is actually fairly common,” Rhion said, letting Ciri take a minute to herself. “Witcher training starts off focusing more on what you need to do, and less on the how exactly to do it.”
Ciri snorted and darted a glance at his arm. “I think I’d be less distressed if you hadn’t stuck your fingers halfway through your arm,” she said drily.
“This is not halfway through my arm, Ciri. You can’t even see the bone!”
Ciri rolled her eyes dramatically and giggled.
Rhion grinned back, tilting his head slightly. “You don’t smell like distress anymore; would you like to try again? There’s not much blood left.”
Ciri steeled herself and nodded, turning to stare at the arm. There was, indeed, much less blood now. Rhion’s fingers were still in the wound and wiggling occasionally, but otherwise it looked remarkably… tame.
“Can you show me the thing from before?” asked Ciri, swallowing her fear and breathing deep.
Rhion nodded, and pulled back slowly, fingers peeling one side of the wound open. He gave Ciri a moment to calibrate, then repeated his earlier statement, “so you saw the little black circles last time, can you find them again?”
Ciri swallowed and looked at the raw flesh in front of her, searching for the little spots she remembered. “Yes! I see them!” she cheered, “they’re veins, right?”
“They are, well remembered! There are also red circles, though they’re much less obvious. They’re a fair bit deeper in but see if you can find one.”
Ciri squinted, pulling the arm up so she could see it under the sunlight. The flesh itself wasn’t one solid colour, so finding tiny rings of red was even harder than she’d expected it to be. It took almost five minutes of turning Rhion’s arm this way and that to catch the light at different angles, but eventually she did it. “Aha!” she shrieked proudly, “there’s one right next to your finger!”
Rhion glanced down for a minute, and then grinned at her. “Excellent job, Ciri! I’d ruffle your hair, but” — he pulled his fingers out of his arm with a wet squelch — “I think that would force you to wash it in the next twenty minutes, so I won’t.”
Ciri snickered, bouncing on her toes in excitement. “Did I really do as good as the trainees my age?”
“Oh, no,” Rhion laughed, and Ciri’s heart sank. “We didn’t even go near this until they were grassed and had all their senses under control. No use wasting the time when they’ll have to relearn it all anyway.”
Ciri’s eyes widened. “This is for Grassed trainees?”
Rhion nodded. “Yes, and you proved yourself as capable and competent as the best of them, Ciri. You’re strong now, and you will get stronger still.”
Ciri looked at him in something close to awe for a moment, and then grinned fiercely. “I’m going to be strong enough to protect everyone!”
Rhion smiled warmly, “I’m sure you will.”
And somehow, she knew he meant it.