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Rhion looked at Triss and Yennefer, both mages sitting calmly across from him in Triss’ stillroom. “I’ve thought more about the caveats for you two coming to Morgraig’s library.”
Yennefer gestured impatiently for him to continue talking, so he did.
“The first of which,” he stated calmly, “is that neither of you bring guests without gaining permission beforehand.”
“Understandable,” Triss smiled, “it’s your home, after all.”
“Second, that you do not venture into any halls not marked with yellow string. I’ve figured out the fastest way to get from the library to my office, the kitchen, and the easiest place to portal to,” he explained. “Morgraig is larger than it feels from the inside or looks from the outside, and there are things I don’t care for you to see.”
Triss nodded, “Also fair.”
“The third,” Rhion said, “is that nothing from Morgraig leaves Morgraig without my say so.”
“What if we want to study a book?” Yennefer asked, irritated.
“Then you study it at Morgraig or you come and ask me,” Rhion responded calmly. “I’m not going to reject you out of pettiness, if I wanted you to suffer over this, I’d burn it all and invite you to see the ashes.”
Yennefer very suddenly smelled horrified, and Rhion raised an eyebrow. “Which is something I am quite explicitly not doing, Yennefer.”
“Oh.”
“The fourth and final caveat is that while at Morgraig you do not, at any point or for any reason, attempt to use mental magic on me,” he said bluntly. “I may be willing to carefully demonstrate why someday in the future, but please know this is as much for your safety as it is mine.”
“I’m good at mental magic, it’s not dangerous to me in the slightest!” Yennefer protested.
“Not with humans, no,” Rhion agreed. “Maybe even not with most witchers. But beyond the fact that I’m significantly more monster than they are, I also have 18 more eyes than you, and several extra types of vision that your brain isn’t built to process.”
“I’d be fine,” Yen insisted, “What harm could it even do?”
“Migraines, fainting, blindness, madness and hysteria, bleeding in the brain, heightened emotions, instinct transferral, memory loss, loss of identity, loss of access to chaos, oversensitivity of the eyes and ears, adoption of monstrous behaviours, and death,” Rhion listed blankly, staring at the wall. “All of those are consequences I watched happen because mages didn’t listen when I warned them. Don’t join them.”
Yennefer had progressively paled over the course of the list, and even Triss looked concerned at the last one.
“Someone died?”
“An apprentice,” Rhion said quietly, “thought he was being impressive and daring, breaking the rules and taking a jaunt around my mind, but he went too deep and got sucked into a bad place and… died. About a century later it happened again. Different apprentice, same place in my mind, same death.”
Triss shivered; suddenly glad she’d never gotten a taste for that particular brand of magic.
Yennefer looked apprehensive and said, “Checking people’s surface level emotions or their projected thoughts isn’t always something I can control, sometimes it’s too loud and I hear it anyway.”
Rhion smiled at her, not mean, but not quite kind either. “There’s an amulet somewhere in Morgraig that blocks all attempts at mental magic from the wearer. I don’t think passive emotional reads would do much of anything, but I can track it down if having it would feel safer around me,” he offered, quite content with either option.
Yennefer didn’t flounder, she’s much to well-controlled for that. But she did feel rather deeply unsettled. “Why?”
“You’re scared, and I don’t want any more fear in my home than what is entirely unavoidable.”
Triss hummed quietly to fill the silence, Rhion started doing knife tricks, and Yennefer just thought.
How much fear has been in his home, that he goes to such lengths to avoid it?
***
Yennefer and Triss stood in the snowdrifts outside Kaer Morhen’s walls, both starting to feel slightly apprehensive. Rhion appeared from behind the treeline, carrying something under his arm.
“Good, you’re both here,” he said briskly, revealing his cargo to be a detailed oil painting of a stunning castle-keep nestled in front of a waterfall. “This is a painting of Morgraig, it’s in the top end of the Kestrels, bordering on Caingorn.”
Yennefer nodded, raising her hands to open a portal.
“Yennefer?” Rhion said, voice tinged with mischief.
“Yes?”
“I may have forgotten an important detail about Morgraig’s ward scheme,” he said, though he had quite clearly not forgotten.
“Yes?” Yennefer said, much warier.
“Untethered portals aimed for the castle dump you in a lake at the bottom of the mountains.” He grinned nastily at her. “Tethered portals don’t.”
Triss hissed sympathetically, and Yennefer glared at him icily.
“Give me one good reason not to turn you into a slug right now,” she very nearly snarled.
“You’d miss,” Rhion returned. “And then lose out on Morgraig.”
Yennefer spat several quite vicious insults at him, and then took a deep breath and raised her hands again, imagining a person-sized tunnel stretching from here to the Kestrel Mountains, and the castle from the painting. “Vonde Gwethill.”
A shimmering portal swirled open a foot in front of her, and Yennefer braced for a drain that… never came.
“Melitele’s tits it actually was that easy,” she whispered to herself, barely noticing as Rhion stepped through it and back.
“Everything’s clear, you won’t be stepping off the edge of a cliff when you go through,” Rhion said cheerfully, then withdrew an amulet from a hidden pocket. “The blocker amulet, if you’d like.”
Yennefer stared at him, but slowly moved a hand to take it. “Can I change my mind about it?”
“Of course,” Rhion said, confused. “It’s for your comfort, not mine.”
Yennefer stared at him a moment longer, trying to puzzle him out, but stepped through the portal instead.
Rhion gestured at Triss to go first, and she smiled back before disappearing into the portal. He waved to the wall-guard closest to him and stepped through as well.
***
Morgraig was as bright as it always was; snow, reflecting off snow, reflecting off snow, reflecting off snow. The dark grey mountain and the castle itself provided calm relief from the near-painful intensity. Yennefer and Triss had both started picking their way down towards the bridge, so Rhion whistled sharply to get their attention, and gestured to the portal. It took a moment for the message to get through, and then Yennefer closed it with a snap.
He caught up to them with little trouble, being both faster and stronger than both of them, and also having lived here for his entire life. “Enjoying the view?”
“Rhion, this is beautiful,” Triss murmured, taking in the valley in all its glory.
“How much snow is there in summer?” Yen asked idly.
“Where Morgraig is? None,” Rhion replied. “The mountain peaks stay snowy all year though.”
There was silence for a while, and then Rhion abruptly drew a knife and shouldered past his guests. “Stay quiet.”
There was a tense pause, and then Rhion dropped over the edge of the path, and a loud squealing ricocheted around the valley.
“Keep walking down the path,” Rhion called, “I’ll meet you at the bridge!”
The two women looked at each other and decided to follow his advice.
When they arrived at the bridge, Rhion was leaning against its wall, watching the river rush under him.
“Rhion?”
He startled slightly, but smiled. “Right, let’s go.” He hefted something that had been laying at his feet, and Yennefer very quickly identified it as a wild boar.
“When did you manage that, exactly?”
“Remind me why you think I walked off a 20ft drop, again?” Rhion responded lightly, boar now settled across his shoulders.
The walk up to Morgraig was otherwise quite pleasant, as far as Triss was concerned. It was quiet and pretty, and she was about to get her hands on an entire new library! Having clearance from The Council for the two of them to spend a full week here was pretty nice, too.
Right as they arrived at the gates, Yennefer spotted something off to the side. “Rhion, what’s on that side of the castle?”
Rhion’s face went horribly blank for barely a split second. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Shit,” Yennefer said, more to herself than anything. “I won’t ask.”
“Appreciated.”
Rhion pushed the gate open enough for the three of them (and the boar) to get in, and pulled it shut behind them. “Welcome to Morgraig.” It wasn’t a particularly grand introduction, but the castle loomed quite enough on its own.
After a brief bit of exploration and being shown to their rooms (which, as Rhion promised, had a selection of weather appropriate clothing options for while they were here), they got to see the library in all its glory.
Upon first entrance it seemed slightly small, but once Yennefer had thought to send up a few magelights everything changed. The library was massive, especially for somewhere of this size.
“I moved all the books out of the studies and stillrooms and private chambers a few decades ago,” Rhion said offhandedly, picking a slim volume off one of the closest shelves to the door and settling into a plush chair, shooting a spark of Igni into the hearth to light the fire, already laid. “They’re all grouped and labelled by where they came from and who they belonged to along the very back bank of shelves. The one I just picked from has all the non-magical books, so ignore it unless you need a dictionary.”
“Dictionary?” Yennefer asked, already scanning a shelf to check for anything recognisable.
“This library was last updated four centuries ago,” Rhion said. “Some of these books are written in languages that aren’t used much anymore.”
“Like the one you were talking to Ciri in?” Triss said, only half paying attention.
“Yes, that would probably count.”
“What is that language, actually?” Yennefer asked, flicking through a book about runes, written in fairly legible (if grammatically unreliable) Redanian.
“Forin. It was the official language of Caingorn before they became part of the Hengfors League.” Rhion hummed. “Closest thing I have to a native language, I guess.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Yennefer asked, looking up from her book. “Your native language is based on where you’re born and where your parents are from.”
Rhion smirked. “Well in that case, my native language would be Laith aen Undod.”
“Where were you born, Rhion?” Triss asked tentatively.
“Morgraig.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “It’s not like I have much to compare it to, and it’s much better without the mages.”
“Yes, when you get bored of being in a massive castle by yourself you come and bother us,” Yennefer snarked, though it lacked her usual edge.
“I never said I was alone,” Rhion snapped back playfully. His mood died when realised exactly what he’d just said.
Yennefer and Triss both stopped what they were doing and stared at their host.
“Fuck. Any chance of you ignoring that?”
Yennefer raised an eyebrow, not bothering with a verbal rejection.
“Fuck, okay,” Rhion groaned, banging his book against his head a few times. “This information doesn’t leave Morgraig unless I say it does, okay?”
Triss went to object, but Rhion stared at her flatly, eyes blinking individually, until she shut her mouth again.
“Good. If this gets out, if mages find out, it would be exceedingly fucking bad,” Rhion muttered, standing up. “To be clear, the only reason I’m telling you, is so you don’t run crying to your Warlord that I’m keeping secrets. Understood?”
Yennefer and Triss both nodded mutely, and Rhion beckoned them to follow, turning off the yellow-stringed corridors almost immediately.
They walked for much farther and longer than either mage expected, and down an astonishing number of stairs.
Eventually, there was a door.
Rhion stopped. “Once you go in, you will hear the full story behind them. You will not leave until I am done talking.”
He pushed the door open and entered first, leaving them to make their decisions.
They walked in together.
The room was somehow both dimmer and brighter than Yennefer had expected, but Rhion sent a burst of Igni at the ceiling, lighting several oil lamps and dousing the room in light.
Triss recoiled and Yennefer stared, uncomprehending.
“These,” Rhion said, gesturing to the five coffins, “Are my brothers.”
“Gods, are they alive?” Triss whispered; hands clenched.
“Always will be, same as me,” Rhion said, easing into a chair in the corner of the room. “We can’t die.”
“That’s impossible,” Yennefer said immediately.
Rhion drew his knife and offered the handle to her. “Stab me somewhere nasty.”
Triss was vehemently shaking her head, but after careful consideration, Yennefer took the blade and buried it in his gut, angling up and through his heart.
“Good aim,” Rhion said. “Again.”
Yennefer pulled the blade out and promptly hissed in pain as acidic black blood splashed her arm.
Rhion paused. “Might be safer if I did the stabbing, I’ll treat that after we’re done here.”
Yennefer handed the knife back, willing her hand to still its trembling.
Rhion turned halfway into a wall and drew the blade across his throat unflinchingly, waiting for the sprays of black to end before turning back.
“If you don’t believe it’s a deep enough cut, I’m happy to show you how I can thread a necklace up my esophagus through the slash mark,” he offered blandly.
Triss paled. “How-”
“Our mutagens were different,” Rhion said, looking at his sleeping brothers. “Stronger, changed us more. But they were more dangerous to us, too.” He ran a finger down the glass front on the closest coffin, hand hovering over a face so like his own, and yet almost unrecognisable. “My brothers all lost their minds, one by one. These five only remain with me for lack of another option.”
Yennefer swallowed heavily at that implication.
“If it gets out that there are immortal fighters in Morgraig, the castle will be destroyed and every power on the continent will scramble to find the formula amongst the rubble. My brothers will be broken from their spelled sleeps, and they will torture and kill and terrorise everything in their path until they are stopped.” Rhion’s eyes were dark with memory. “And my brothers cannot be killed, not permanently stopped as would be safest.”
Triss covered her mouth and shook, tears rolling down her face.
“You still call them your brothers,” Yennefer said, face carefully unreadable.
“What else am I to call them?”
“Their names would be a start,” Yennefer said.
Rhion closed his eyes, bone-deep weariness settling on him like a blanket. “They have none. They all fell to the mutagens before they could be given one for the path.” He traced a hand over his throat, and Yennefer realised quite suddenly that the deep slice had knitted itself back together and was now barely half its original length.
Triss clearly noticed as well, producing some quite startling crude Temerian phrases in her shock.
Rhion barely noticed, lost in his reverie as he was. “They have nothing left of themselves but me, and I have nothing left of my childhood joy but this.”