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“Rhion!” Ciri called excitedly, racing down the passage and leaping at him.
Rhion caught her easily, swinging her in a circle before placing her back on the floor. “Ciri! How are you?”
“I’m good!” Ciri said excitedly, grabbing his wrist and dragging him along with her. “My apprenticeship is going well. Jask, Sasha, and Milena are working to teach me about how the Northern Courts work in actual detail now.”
“Really? That’s exciting,” Rhion responded.
“It is! And Aunt Triss has been teaching me minor healing spells, and Aunt Yen has been teaching me how to portal, it’s so cool!”
“That’s exciting, being able to portal will give you so many opportunities,” Rhion said, winking.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Rhion whispered, eyes darting around furtively, “think of the geese.”
Ciri’s eyes widened, and Rhion glanced back to see Coën looking horrified and Rache glaring at him like there was no tomorrow. He grinned.
“Oh! And Aunt Yen is finally letting me do things without her in the room, so I can actually show you things now!”
“Well, I’m meant to be training with the nestlings in an hour or so, but until then I’m at your mercy.”
Ciri beamed at him and grabbed his wrist, dragging him off towards the herb garden.
***
The two settled happily on the bench, with Coën and Rache standing close by.
“So,” Rhion said, “tell me about what you’ve been learning.”
“So many things, Rhion!” Ciri gushed. “There’s an Earth spell that Yen and Triss taught me, it makes roots grow to defend you!”
“That sounds very impressive, can you show me?”
Ciri frowned. “I could try, but I’m not very good at keeping it small, and herb plants are kind of fragile.”
Rhion nodded understandingly. “That makes sense, it’s good to be aware of things like that.”
Ciri grinned at him. “There is something I can show you, if you’ll let me cast it?”
Rhion grinned right back, “Absolutely! As long as it’s not-” Rhion felt magic slip through him, and the world fell away.
Rhion blinked, eyes opening one by one to a winter-bright sky. “What the-”
Something launched at him, and the brief flash of white-blonde was only barely enough for him to let the attack land.
The attack in question left him with a wolf cub on his chest, looking absolutely thrilled with itself.
”Rhion! Rhion!” Ciri said. ”Isn’t this so cool?”
“It sure is,” Rhion agreed, “I didn’t even know shapeshifting was an option for mages!”
Ciri laughed, bright and happy. “No silly, look at where we are!” She bounded off him, into the snow.
Rhion pushed up to his palms, and looked around. “Teleportation, then,” he said warmly.
His eyes settled on the looming mass of stone in the distance, and froze. “Ciri.”
Ciri turned back to him, oblivious. “That castle’s so pretty, Rhion!”
Rhion stared at her, horror dawning. “Ciri, where are we?”
Ciri cocked her head. ”Isn’t it obvious to you? We’re in your mind.”
Rhion was on his feet in an instant, inky tendrils scooping Ciri up as he started running.
”Rhion!” Ciri yelped, ”Why are we running?”
“Quiet,” Rhion snapped, tone biting and harsh. “I’ll explain when we’re safe.”
Ciri noticed the tense line of his shoulders, and decided she could wait for whatever explanation he had to give. Instead, she took the time to look at him further.
He looked very similar to what she’d seen through the portal several months prior, when Ivar had been taken from Wolvenberg. He had membranous wings like most draconids, the top, bony ridge lined with sharp, hooked spines; claws like a Katakan; and talons on his feet like a griffin.
There were glowing blue lines across his upper back, but they were interrupted by his wings so she couldn’t make out what they depicted.
His veins ran like lace across his skin, mapping across a torso that was otherwise smooth and pale; entirely free from the freckles, wrinkles, moles, and scars she found commonplace on others.
His hair was up, bound back in the sort of pretty, complicated twist she wouldn’t have thought out of place on Milena or Aunt Yen.
The blackness that held her was cold and smooth, and felt rather like she was being held in a harness made of stone, rather than a living limb. If she couldn’t have seen where the tendrils stemmed from Rhion’s back, she may well have thought they were something else, entirely unliving.
***
Rhion slowed as he arrived at the gates of the massive castle in his mind, only turning to his charge once they were past them. “Alright, we’re safe for now.”
He considered letting Ciri down but decided against it. He did not want to find out how quickly she could find trouble in his mind.
”Can I ask questions now?” Ciri confirmed. Rhion nodded. ”Good. What’s the big deal?”
“Out there is too dangerous for conversations,” Rhion said seriously, gesturing outside the walls. “Inside has its threats too, so you’re staying in this courtyard until we’re out, okay?”
”But-” Ciri started, eyes fierce.
“No, Ciri.” Rhion shut her down immediately. “I understand that this only happened because you didn’t let me finish, but I do not let people in my mind.”
Confusion coloured Ciri’s expression, odd as it appeared in her current form. ”Why? It’s so beautiful.”
Rhion let his false humanity drop, a quiet snarl reverberating across the stone walls. “The surface is pretty,” he agreed, voice relaxing back down into its natural low growl. “But underneath it’s not.”
As if giving him the chance to make a point, Rhion’s black gaze shot to the wall behind Ciri, as something emerged over the top of it. He dropped Ciri’s small body to the dirt and launched at the thing, claws flashing in the bright sunlight as its head came entirely off. Both parts fell backwards over the wall again, and Ciri could just make out the muffled thump of them hitting the ground.
Ciri backed into the opposite wall, and Rhion touched back down, face still uncomfortably blank. “There are two rules here,” he said, eyes drilling into hers. “Follow my instructions, and do not ever, under any circumstances try to use your magic. Is that clear?”
Ciri’s ears were pinned flat to her head, but she nodded. ”Yes, that’s clear. Can I ask why no magic?”
“You’d be drawing on my chaos, which humans aren’t equipped to handle,” Rhion said. “Last two that tried died for it, you becoming the third would cause problems.”
Ciri’s entire tiny form locked up. ”People died?”
“Yes” Rhion said. “They deserved it.”
Ciri nodded once, and crept forwards. ”How do I get us out?”
Rhion ran the back of a hand down her spine. “You don’t. We have to wait for you to exhaust your reserves and cancel the spell automatically, or for Yennefer to join us and break it from the inside.”
Ciri’s muzzle scrunched. ”Won’t that hurt?”
“I expect so,” Rhion agreed calmly. “but I’ve had worse.”
“Are you sure?” Ciri ventured. ”Aunt Yen told me how badly wrong mind magic can go.”
“Right now, the biggest danger here is me,” Rhion pointed out dryly.
”Oh.”
Rhion glanced at the sky and hummed pensively. “I think it would be best for me to meditate until something changes. Feel free to roam the courtyard, but you won’t be able to get beyond.”
Ciri glanced at the heavy doors blocking all the exits and drooped slightly. “Alright.”
Rhion knelt in the centre of the courtyard and began to methodically relax his muscles. Slowly, so slowly, the tension drained out of him, and his awareness of the space around him began to drift.
He sunk deeper into himself, and felt his awareness of his mindscape return. The surrounding mountains were full of monsters as they were originally, ready to attack. The castle itself was full of memories, the nicer ones shelved in the library and offices, the nastier ones roving around as people.
His more dangerous instincts and chaos had thankfully remained asleep where they were locked under the keep. He could feel Ciri as well, a bright thread of Otherness, and could trace it all the way to the edge of his mind, where an invisible dome now passed through it, preventing her from leaving.
Time passed by in a haze, until his meditation was interrupted by something slipping through his shields. The magic was a familiar purple, and he could feel it following Ciri’s thread even as he rose back into awareness.
The lines of Yennefer’s body were tense, even as Ciri bounced around her excitedly.
“Yennefer, just who I need,” Rhion said, forgoing pleasantries. “Take Ciri and go.”
“Rhion, I-” Yennefer started, but he cut her off.
“We can talk about this once you get her out of here.”
“Okay,” Yennefer said after a moment, “but it’s going to take time to extricate the spell from her so I can end it.”
Rhion shook his head. “Don’t bother, just-”
“You want me to brute force it?” Yennefer asked incredulously. “Do you know what that will do to you!?”
“Yes,” Rhion ground out. “It won’t be the first time.”
Yennefer stared at him suspiciously for a few more moments, and then cursed under her breath. “Fine.”
She gathered Ciri in her arms, and began to draw power.
“Wait!” Rhion snapped. “You won’t be able to access your chaos, you need to use mine.”
Yennefer froze, suddenly aware of how empty the world felt around her.
“But you said that was dangerous!” Ciri burst out.
“It is,” Rhion acknowledged, “but I’ve done this before, and I trust Yennefer’s experience with power sharing much more than I do yours.”
Yennefer raised an eyebrow, and Rhion moved to stand, several tendrils snaking out from his waist to wrap around the bare skin of her forearms and collarbone. He pulled forth his chaos and coiled it tight, winding through him like a spring.
“Yennefer,” Rhion instructed, voice overlayed with the power he fought to contain, “begin.”
Yennefer felt the chaos nudging at her, and carefully let it into her, spinning it into something useable. Sweat dampened her hair as the power she held grew and grew and grew. When she felt she had enough, she nodded to Rhion.
He took a deep breath and covered both mages in a dome of writhing black. He wasn’t sure that it was necessary, but he didn’t want to worry about any of his defenses lashing out at them.
“Let me go first,” he called. “I want the most dangerous things out of the way before you try and escape.”
A muffled noise of acceptance echoed from within the dome.
Rhion grinned, and let his hold on his coiled chaos go lax. The tension released, and suddenly almost all his focus was on holding the dome steady as his chaos began to shred his mind.
The pain was intense. Certainly not the worst he’d felt, but harsh enough that his awareness of the world was lapsing.
“Yennefer, GO!” It was louder than he’d intended, but as Yennefer tore through the last layers of protection in his mind like wet paper, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
He felt it when she finally managed to pull herself and Ciri from the jaws of his mind, and finally allowed himself to sag. The dome unravelled, black strands lashing out frantically as the pain overtook him and he collapsed onto the cobbles.
***
Rhion blinked into awareness, and promptly shut his eyes again. Someone had moved him while he was out, so at least he didn’t wake up to the sun in his face. The darkness of the room was soothing to his head, but it meant he had no clue how long he’d been out for.
He was pleased to find no physical damage on him, and after a brief moment of consideration, sunk into meditation to begin the long process of fixing his mindscape.
***
Repairing his shields consumed all of his focus, and so while Rhion was distantly aware that people were periodically entering and leaving whatever room he had been stashed in, it remained background knowledge, rather than something that he might be expected to respond to.
When his mind was finally back in order, by Rhion’s guess it had only been eight or nine days, which seemed perfectly reasonable.
He pulled back out of his meditation slower than he normally would in order to give his senses enough time to remember what was background information and what was not.
The first time he had to stay under for so long he had come back up too fast and it was awful. His brain had processed absolutely nothing as background noise, so he’d ended up able to hear the deer chewing grass several leagues away, sense the chaos of the monsters in the caves on the other side of the mountains, feel the air pressure on his skin, and see every single dust mote in the air. It had taken a while for his mind to start filtering properly again, but the pain had been so all encompassing that he really wasn’t sure how long it had taken.
Coming back after being under so long took hours if he wanted to stay comfortable, but Rhion’s patience was long-practised.
He blinked cautiously and was relieved to find that, while the room was bright with sunlight, his eyes did not hurt and he couldn’t hear anything from beyond the window.
There was no one in the room with him, but a single witcher outside the door. He pulled away the furs someone had tucked around him and rolled to his feet. He dropped into the stance he’d been taught in his youth and ran through his combat forms. First at half speed, and then again and again, slowing each time. When he was as slow as he could stomach, he ran through them three times, and then began to speed up again. He got faster and faster, sailing past half-speed as he threw himself into the steps and twists and lunges that helped his training outweigh his instincts.
He was panting by the time he’d finished. Unusual, but also unsurprising after more than a week of complete stillness.
Food would help with that, he thought, and within fifteen minutes he had retrieved the basket from Morgraig he kept for situations like this.
He dug in, fish bones crunching beneath his teeth and scraping at his throat. The frequent sips of watered elderflower wine paired nicely with his candied oranges and dried plums. He’d even remembered to add a spoon for the cherry jam.
After a half hour of voracious eating, he wiped his hands, stood up, and opened the door.
The witcher next to it startled hard.
“Which way is the privy?” Rhion asked calmly.
The man pointed wordlessly to one end of the hallway.
“Thank you,” Rhion said, and loped off to do his business.
***
When Rhion returned, the guard was gone.
He pushed open the door, and came face to face with an unexpectedly furious Yennefer.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she hissed.
Rhion blinked at her. “Depends on who you ask.”
Evidently, that was the wrong thing to say.
“Are you fucking serious?” she snarled. “You’ve been in a coma for almost ten fucking days and you’re joking about it?”
“I was meditating,” Rhion corrected.
“You weren’t breathing, Rhion. If Geralt hadn’t heard your heartbeat we would’ve thought you were dead!”
Rhion stared at her blankly. “I can’t die, you know that.”
Yennefer glared at him. “You know what I meant.”
“I don’t, actually.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Rhion-”
Triss interrupted, from her chair in the corner. “Yen doesn’t like not knowing things.”
“O-kay?”
Triss looked at him pensively. “You actually don’t get it, do you?”
“No,” Rhion said, “I really, actually, don’t.”
“Dammit” Yennefer muttered, shoulders slumping. “You’re… important.”
“Thank you?” Rhion said.
“I don’t… I don’t want you to die, okay?” She eventually rushed out.
Rhion tilted his head in confusion. “I… won’t?”
Triss smiled slightly. “Yen was scared that you were seriously hurt,” she explained. “So was I, for that matter.”
“But…” Rhion started, bewildered. “Why?”
“Because I care about you, you idiot!” Yennefer burst out, and then promptly blushed scarlet.
Rhion, for all that he was undoubtedly an apex predator, looked rather like a startled deer. “What?”
“We care about you,” Triss repeated calmly. She, at least, had seen this situation before. “We want you to be okay, and it’s distressing when you aren’t.”
“I was okay, though,” Rhion said. “I was perfectly fine.”
“You let me tear your mind to shreds,” Yennefer said quietly, salt overwhelming her previously unfamiliar scent. “And then went unresponsive. I- I thought it was my fault.”
Rhion stared at her, unblinking.
“I thought I broke you.”
The door flew open before he could respond, and a short body slammed into him from behind.
“Rhion!”
The tension eased, and Rhion turned as best he could to look down at Ciri. “Hello,”
He noted the tear tracks on her cheeks, and the citrus-bright relief that poured off her in waves.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, tears beginning anew, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know,” Rhion said, nodding at Jaskier over her head. “I’m not angry with you.”
“You should be,” Ciri muttered unhappily, “I did something you weren’t okay with, and it hurt you.”
“Did you know I wasn’t okay with it?”
“No,” Ciri sniffed
“Would you have done it if you did know?”
“Of course not!”
“Then it was a mistake,” Rhion said firmly. “A dangerous mistake, yes, but the person in danger was you, not me.” He smiled and patted her head lightly. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Ciri gave him a watery smile in return. “I’m still sorry.”
Rhion sighed and crouched down. “I forgive you. Just tell me what you’re going to do before you do it from now on, okay?”
Ciri nodded frantically, and Rhion patted her head again.
“For future reference,” Triss said after a brief pause, “is this normal?”
Rhion looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t seem stressed that you were out for over a week,” Triss explained. “A length of time which would be dangerous for anyone else I’ve ever treated.”
Rhion froze. “Anyone else?”
Triss nodded. “Yes. Evidently I need more information if I’m going to be your physician.”
“You won’t be,” Rhion said flatly.
Triss rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, of course I won’t be, but on the off chance-”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. There will be no just in case, there will be no off chance, you are not my physician and you never will be,” Rhion snapped.
Triss recoiled. “I know you don’t trust mages, but…”
Rhion let out a harsh breath. “It has nothing to do with how I feel about mages, Triss.”
“Then why-”
“I’m immortal,” Rhion said simply. “It would be a waste.” He glanced at Ciri, and didn’t say anything more.
Jaskier picked up on it and tapped Ciri’s shoulder. “Now that we’ve seen that Rhion’s back to normal, we should get back to your lessons.”
Ciri looked to Rhion, who nodded once, and held a hand out to Jaskier. “Alright, back to lessons.”
Jaskier took it, and led her away without another word.
“What was that about?” Yennefer asked, now seeming mostly composed.
“Magical healing leaves me worse off than my natural healing,” Rhion said.
“I find that hard to believe,” Triss said. “Magical healing can do a lot.”
“Your healing would leave me with scar tissue,” he said bluntly. “That I would then need to remove.”
“All healing leaves scars,” Triss said. “Yours are just internal, since your skin is designed to be broken.”
“The mages checked,” Rhion said, “I heal faster than scar tissue can generate.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” she complained.
Rhion smiled wryly. “You know, that is not the first time I’ve heard that.”
Triss threw a cushion at him.
Yennefer snickered, and Rhion smiled slightly.
There would be more questions, but they’d understand in time.