#and so despite that witcher in general takes a lot of everything from across europe

[hanzajesthanza]

"the michael kandel translation of "the witcher" short story can't hurt you!!"

the michael kandel translation of "the witcher" short story:

[nonbinary-renfri]

Blood and Blue Skies The Witcher Last of Us AU

TW: blood and gore, death, implied/referenced animal death

Europe didn't fair much better than the Americas, when the outbreak hit. It came in the crops and they weren't recalled in time, and just like everywhere else, after people started getting sick all that was left was chaos splattered in gore. Geralt had been trying to build himself a life in a world that wasn't supposed to end. Until it did, suddenly and violently, and he and everyone else had to do their best to survive it.

not necessary to know the Last of Us to read but it does help

Chapter One: The End of the World

Geralt was twenty-four when the world came to an end.

He was on his way back to the stables, having taken his horse out on a long ride into the forest to stretch her legs and get some peace and quiet for himself. Cell service had disappeared along with the sounds of society, but once the ride back brought them close enough for it to return, Geralt’s phone began vibrating insistently. He pulled out the device from the back pocket of his jeans as it buzzed one final time, a bit confounded; he rarely got this many texts. There were multiple from Calanthe, one from Eskel of all people- he hadn’t heard from the other man in almost a year- and one from an unsaved number. Reading the latter, Geralt instantly knew who it was from.

           “It is time to take to the Path.”

           Vesemir. Had to be.

What the hell was that supposed to mean, anyways? The Path didn’t exist. Geralt had already decided that the old man and the rest of his cult friends were insane, believing that the world was set to come to an end like they did. Believing that it was their duty to prepare monster hunters to protect the rest of humanity. But it was always something they were waiting for; they didn’t have a day or a year or even a decade in mind. The end was coming, they said, and we must prepare, despite not knowing when but refusing to be anything but certain all the same.

Geralt had believed it, for a little while. Drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak. He’d grown up being taught that he was one of the chosen to save the world, that everything the elders put them through was for the greater good of humanity. He’d lived it and breathed it, because what else was he to do, a ward of the state since he was three years old, given into Vesemir’s care at the age of five. He’d gone to four different families and raised hell every time, taking his anger at the world out on everything around him. Some of them tried to gently discipline him for his behavior; others were quick to jump at the opportunity to use harsher methods. Eventually, they all got tired of trying and gave up, and the system stopped placing him with new families. He went through two different boys’ homes before his disruptive behavior and aggression had him declared violent and unstable, a problem case who required something different.

Different ended up being a rugged estate in the Swiss Alps, its boundaries lined with a tall stone wall. Geralt gazed out the window as the car drove up the dirt road to the gray stone castle-like building that seemed to meld into the mountain’s face. There were pastures and fields on the other side of the dusty glass, neat rows of green crops in dark dirt and soft-looking grass being grazed on by sheep and cows. There were other buildings scattered across the grounds, some wooden, some stone, and as they got closer to the main house he saw an older boy riding a horse around a circular fenced-in paddock. The boy’s head swiveled in the direction of the car, almost like he knew he was being watched. Suddenly a bit fearful, Geralt looked away from the window and curled back into his seat.

That was the beginning of his first day at Vesemir’s estate, Kaer Morhen, a sanctuary for troubled boys. He’d been determined to get himself thrown out of there as well, but unlike anyone before him, the old man refused to give up. He didn’t try and ignore Geralt’s anger out of existence or attempt to cruelly discipline it out of him, like so many others had done; instead, he provided Geralt with an outlet to channel it into. The day Vesemir took him out into the mountains and along a rocky trail and showed him the cave-like stone hollow full of punching bags and training dummies and a rustic sparring ring was a day that changed his life. The old man showed the eight year-old how to wrap his hands to protect his knuckles and began teaching him how to properly punch and kick and otherwise attack the hanging canvas sandbag, holding it steady for him while providing critique. Geralt took to it like a duck to water, that day and every combat and weapons lesson going forward. He was the best of the boys at sparring, and he threw himself into learning swordplay with a fervor when they got around to that.

There are a lot of things he has Vesemir to thank for. His life, his skills, even his name. He doesn’t know what his mother originally called him; it’s not like she left his birth certificate with him when she abandoned him in a park. Refusing to speak to anyone led to the first family to adopt him changing his name. He was too young to remember what he used to be called once he stopped hearing it regularly, but he knew that the name they gave him didn’t sound right. Geralt had hated it, refused to answer to it. Vesemir had picked up on that a mere few days after he’d arrived at the homestead and instead of trying to force him to explain why he hadn’t responded to the multiple yells of the name that wasn’t his, had simply said to him, “You don’t like that name, boy, let’s choose you a different one.”

And the old man had begun trying out names as a stony-eyed five year-old stared at him in shock. Vesemir hadn’t seemed to care that Geralt offered no input as to which name he preferred for himself, going through the alphabet and listing off all the names he could think of that started with each letter. He’d gotten into the G’s; “George, Geoffrey, Gweld, Gilbert, Geralt. Hmm, Geralt.” It was the first time he’d repeated a name. The old man waved a hand and said, “Go do your chores, Geralt; I know you heard Hemminks calling you to come help with mucking out the stables.”

He had gone as instructed, speechless enough to not try arguing, and mouthed his new name to himself as he walked down to the stables, trying to keep a bounce out of his step. Hemminks had only yelled at him a bit for being late, arms flailing enthusiastic gestures of indignation into the air. Master Vesemir taking the boy aside himself after witnessing his disobedience had quelled most of the man’s blustering offense.

At dinner that night the old man had called Geralt to the front of the dining hall, introducing him to all the other boys by his new name. He’d returned to his seat and across the table from him the boy a couple years older than him named Eskel who seemed to want to be his friend smiled nervously. “Should I call you Geralt instead of Wolfgang then?”

He’d earned the moniker after biting a trainer and one of the nurses, being likened to the wolf the estate’s school was named after. People always gave him nicknames once they realized that he wouldn’t answer to his legally assigned one; not all of them had been as nice as Wolfgang.

Geralt found he didn’t really care what the other boy called him, and answered his question with a vague shrug. Eskel had sighed quietly, but it looked like he might have been trying not to smile.

It had been strange for a while, everyone calling him a new name, but as time went on it began to feel natural. There wasn’t a bitter tang in his mouth whenever he heard it, like with his previous name. This time, someone had put in the thought and effort to pick a name that they thought seemed to suit him. By the time he was a teenager, he’d managed to forget what his second name had been as well. Over time Eskel had gone from sometimes calling him Wolfgang to the shorter Wolf, but other people didn’t feel the need to give him nicknames anymore.

They had grown up as the years passed, of course, and against Geralt’s wishes he did truly come to consider Eskel a friend. A good friend, in fact; maybe even his best friend. They’d been through blood and shit and pain together and somehow both of them managed to survive long enough to get to the other side.

Because Vesemir’s idyllic estate was too good to be true. A home for troubled boys no one else cared about, that seemed to actually care about their well-being and treat them decently- what else could it be? It was a sticky-sweet honey trap and every one of them that fell into it was caught and would only come to realize it much too late. They’d grown strong on diets of hard labour, good food, combat training, and strange chemicals administered by doctors in the deepest of the keep’s mountainside chambers. None of them really know what they are anymore, especially Geralt, with the experimental trials he’d received that made him even faster and stronger than the others and bleached the color from his hair. Vesemir and his people believed the world would end in fire and blood, and that there would be need of warriors in the aftermath. They had taken it upon themselves to create those warriors, like the generations that had come before them, even if it meant doing terrible things to innocent children. Sometimes it chilled Geralt to look at his father-figure and see a pair of yellow eyes much like his own looking back.

He would always owe Vesemir everything, but it burned inside when he realized that even though the old man was the first to actually give a damn about him, he didn’t love Geralt enough to protect him from the horrors he knew were to come.

Once the boys were old enough and had passed the trials to prove their skills and earn their graduation medallions, they departed from the keep as young men to go and live in the world, to learn to care for what they would supposedly one day protect. It would have been a mistake, the cult letting them loose from its halls of indoctrination, if once they were done cooking it mattered for them to still believe in any of that shit. All that mattered was that they existed somewhere out there, so when the apocalypse finally came they could realize their purpose and give their lives to preserve what was left of humanity.

Geralt was eighteen when he climbed down from the mountains, legally his own man. By the time he was twenty, he’d seen enough of the world to conclude that the elders and the rest of them were chock full of shit. That was the last year he’d returned to the estate for the winter; he decided to stay away after Lambert had refused to close his mouth during Christmas Eve dinner and Geralt let himself get roped into the argument that had started about the morality of turning children into weapons via experimentation. And, having a bit too much alcohol in his blood from what was supposed to be a cheerful evening, he had actually spoken his mind for once.

           The rest of the humanity derides prophecies. Tell anyone out there you’re a warrior chosen to save mankind and they’ll laugh you out of the room and probably suggest you see a therapist. This whole thing is a doomsday cult and it’s ridiculous that anyone would still believe in this bullshit, especially once they’ve actually spent time in modern society. Monsters from fairy tales don’t exist in the real world; they’re just a story humans tell, a distraction so people can pretend they’re not the real evil. It’s too complicated out there, too vast, for any one group of people to say they’ll be able to save everyone. And it’s arrogant to think it could be us.

The stunned looks from the others almost made up for the awkward silences and angry glares he was on the receiving end of for the rest of the winter. But after that he’d decided to walk like he had talked that night; he was leaving all this bullshit behind and going to try and be a normal person and find his place in this world. He would not follow the purpose that had been decreed to and then beaten into him, but figure out what the path he could make for himself was. And that meant spending his winters elsewhere.

He floated around for a while after that, taking various jobs. Did some minimum wage stuff- retail was not his strong suit, he was bad at making nice with customers, but he made a surprisingly good waiter and found dishwashing duties to be a sometimes-soothing task. When he tired of that he tried his hand at construction work and demolition, which was therapeutic, and then logging for a bit, which was very good exercise, and eventually drifted towards using his skills for bounty hunting. After not even a month of that he decided he would rather keep far away from the police. He moved on to be a nightclub bouncer for a little while, then a bodyguard briefly. Again, the company that job brought didn’t suit him and the next place that ended up hiring him was a stable in a mid-sized town near Hamburg that, like every other place that had given him a job, was impressed by how he worded his childhood experience on his resume. They leased space to clients to board their horses, their fees covering feed and care for the animals as well. Geralt found it to be his favorite job out of all those he had tried so far; he had always loved working with the horses on the estate and hadn’t realized how much he had missed spending time with the animals.

In a stroke of luck he’d heard through the stable’s grapevine that one of their regular customers was moving overseas and selling their horse on short notice, for a fraction of what it would’ve been worth otherwise. He got the phone number for the seller and only hesitated a little bit before calling and offering to buy the horse. Years of squirreling away his paychecks finally felt like they were worth it as he ran a hand over the satin-sleek flank of a gorgeous paint mare, her coat a splattered pattern of sepia and white. For once in his life, he started to put down some of his own roots. He had a horse and an admittedly kind of shitty apartment and not much else, but it was something. It was a beginning.

He met Calanthe Riannon because she was a customer at the stables. She had a beautiful purebred stallion that she would occasionally bring to train using their equipment, another service they offered. Sometimes she would request to have her horse brushed down for her after she was done riding and the stable employees would always play rock, paper, scissors for the chance to spend time up close with such a magnificent animal.

The first round Geralt won, he worked the stallion over with efficiency but also kind hands and gentle words and the occasional apple slice snuck to him out of his apron pocket. He was giving the horse’s glossy chestnut coat a second brushing down, murmuring softly to him, when he heard someone enter the room. Glancing over, he saw Calanthe lean against the wall by the doorframe. She’d watched him all the while as he finished caring for her horse, not saying a word. As Geralt turned to leave, she’d finally spoken, but only to ask for his name. Her expression didn’t reveal whether that was a good or a bad sign.

After that, every time Calanthe came to ride she requested for Geralt to tend to her horse afterwards. More often than not she’d show up to watch part of the process, never saying much, but always seeming to be appraising him.

Geralt still managed to learn a bit about her over the next few months, though. She told him that she was a businesswoman, that her company worked in shipping and trade, and he quickly discovered that she often spoke with a scathing wit that often rode the knife’s edge of hurtful. Her attitude as she shared that she was a widow of over a decade was impartial, but love revealed cracks in her shell when she spoke of her daughter, the pride and joy of her heart, who was growing into a fine young woman.

He didn’t share much about himself in return besides that he doesn’t have any family and he enjoys getting to work with horses, but something he’d done must have made Calanthe consider him trustworthy because one day as he was guiding her horse into the trailer to travel back to his own stable, she looked at him over the stallion’s back and asked him if he would like to start giving her daughter riding lessons.

Pavetta was a lovely girl, if a bit timid, and Geralt found himself surprisingly enjoying instructing her on horseback riding. He was still giving her lessons after nearly a year, somehow, so he supposed he might actually be a decent instructor, too. Teaching people to ride horses. He wouldn’t mind making that the calling of this new rooted life. A life where his coworkers compliment his dedication to the consistency of his dye job and customers ask where he gets his crazy colored contacts. Sometimes he tells people that his hair or eyes are natural and they either laugh it off as a joke or actually believe him, saying something along the lines of dude, that’s bonkers, the world is a wild place, but either way he would usually come out the other side of the interaction feeling like a person that belonged, who could maybe have good things.

          And then it happened. The end of the world.

Eskel’s text said to contact him and included coordinates, presumably his location. Calanthe’s messages asked if Geralt was alright, offered him a safe place to stay at her estate as well as provided the address, and warned him to stay far away from her and her family if he was bitten. He wasn’t sure what that meant, yet.

Riding back towards town, he could smell the smoke and the blood on the wind before he could see it. As they grew closer and the screams and howls Geralt had already been able to hear became more audible, the horse beneath him began to grow skittish, nickering shrilly and twisting against her reins, nostrils flaring.

“Shhh, Rosie,” Geralt soothed, running his palm over the side of the mare’s neck.

They turned around a bend in the road and he could finally see the buildings at the bottom of the hill. Dark gray pillars billowed every so often into the sky, the cloudiness they created muting the late afternoon sun. The sounds and scents that drifted to Geralt’s senses were horrifying; blood, viscera, spilled gasoline, gunpowder, burning flesh, fear fear FEAR, and something he couldn’t identify that smelled earthy like mushrooms but also inexplicably wrong.

He spurred Rosie on faster and arrived with clattering hoofs into chaos. Flames licked up the side of a building from the crumpled shell of a wrecked car. People, some of them bleeding, all of them terrified, desperately ran past him. Geralt tried to weave through them but it was difficult, and after the third time his horse snorted because of someone bouncing off her side, he gave up on following the main street and turned into a side alley. Making it to another wider road that had fewer screaming, fleeing people, Geralt guided his mare onto it. For lack of a better plan, he decided to head to his apartment. He had supplies there he’d never wanted to or really thought he’d actually need, but they’d be helpful now.

The street was quickly almost eerily deserted, and Geralt found himself feeling anxious and on edge. A feeling that was soon justified, as his ears picked up the squealing of tires far in advance of the arrival of the out-of-control bus. That didn’t stop him from feeling hunted as it roared down the road after him, slowly but surely catching up; Rosie was galloping her hardest, flanks heaving beneath his legs, but whoever was driving the thing behind them had slammed the pedal to the metal. It was right on their heels, barely an arm’s length away from killing them, when the tires howled on the asphalt and the bus swerved off the road, going through a parking lot and colliding with a large truck before careening away, unbalanced. Eventually it skidded to a stop, landing on its side in front of an office building. His mare spooked badly at the commotion, stuttering to a stop and rearing up in fear so suddenly she nearly bucked him off. Geralt was struggling to stay in the saddle and get his horse back under control, trying to get her to stop dancing in circles, when they began to clamber out of the bus.

Screeching, groaning, and howling, they were shaped like human people. Yet there was no intelligence in their bloodshot eyes and to Geralt’s sensitive nose they stank of rot and fungus; not dead but sick, infested, no longer really alive.

They still had some awareness, it seemed, as one spotted him and fell into a crouch, screaming his way. It sprinted down the side of the bus, leaping into the air as it reached the edge. Maybe it would’ve actually landed on Rosie if she hadn’t skittered away, kicking out wildly at the creature. Geralt, his concentration slipping in his shock at whatever the fuck that just was, was finally thrown from the saddle. He landed back-first onto concrete, breath knocked clean from his lungs, and the thing that looked like it used to be person lunged towards him. It was on top of him in an instant, hands clawing and teeth gnashing, but even breathless Geralt was more than a match for one mindless attacker. He wrestled the thing’s jaws away from his flesh and managed to flip them so he was the one on top of it. Pinning it facedown with his knees, his legs held its arms and torso in place as he took its skull between his palms, breaking its neck with a vicious twist. The creature went limp beneath him, the last remnants of its human life draining away.

Rosie’s screaming yanked Geralt’s attention back to her. More of the things had jumped down at them from the bus; one had managed to climb onto her already and as her panicked stepping took her closer to the wrecked vehicle, another leapt onto her back. Others continued to claw their way out of the bus through open or broken windows. Several more were advancing into the street towards Geralt, crouched low and snarling. A third flung itself at the mare and Geralt hated the noises she was making as they bit and scratched at her. He could see the whites of her eyes and smell her blood as it spilled onto the street, but the only weapons he had were his hands and some of the only information he had as to what was the fuck was happening was Calanthe’s warning about bites. So he dug his fingernails into his palms hard enough to make himself bleed, and then he turned and ran. He hadn’t known if he could still cry, after they’d dripped chemicals into his eyes to change them. As heat flooded them and blurred his vision and sobs caught in his throat alongside ragged gasps of air, he learned that yes, he could.

Eventually Geralt made it back to his apartment building, covered in blood and bruises and carrying a fire axe with its blade coated in a layer of gore on top of the manufactured-red metal. The landlady lunged at him out of her office by the stairwell in the entranceway and he buried the axeblade in her trachea, watching the light fade from misted eyes as her breathing gurgled to a stop. He got up to his dingy one-bedroom without any further trouble, not even getting attacked as he fumbled the keys outside the door. Once inside he locked it behind him, and then shoved the heavy oaken bookshelf that had come with the place in front of the door as well. Feeling as secure as he was likely to, Geralt started to go about his business.

Taking the axe into the kitchen, he rinsed the blood from the blade, rubbing it over with a washcloth. Once it was clean he inspected the edge- slightly dull, which was an easy fix, with only one small nick in the blade, likely from catching on bone. Carrying it into the bedroom with him, Geralt placed the weapon on the duvet. He then pulled a heavy locked trunk out of the closet and hauled it onto the bed, leaving it there while he moved back to retrieve a pair of brown leather bags from one of the closet’s upper shelves. Unbuckling the flaps, he started packing. One of the bags was soon filled with his sturdiest clothes and a pair of comfortable hiking boots tucked in the very bottom, as well as plenty of socks. Retrieving his first aid kit from the nightstand, he added it to the bag and then grabbed both pieces of luggage, carrying them into the kitchen. The second satchel was soon full of non-perishable foods that traveled well, like trail mix and protein bars and beef jerky, with a few canned goods in there as well. Geralt also put a couple of potatoes and onions into a paper bag that he tucked away into a corner. He also slid his store-bought set of salt and pepper grinders into the bag, happy that he’d kept the caps to them so the slim cylinders were still resealable.

Satisfied with his packing so far, he went into the bathroom to take a quick shower and change out of his bloodstained clothes, having left a clean outfit aside with just that in mind. Geralt went back into the kitchen, carry his travel toiletry kit out with him to pack, along with his razor, toothbrush and toothpaste, and stick of deodorant. After he had found a pocket on the inside of the clothes bag to tuck them into, he moved around the kitchen making himself a hearty sandwich from the leftover perishable ingredients in his fridge. A towel was twisted around his hair, keeping the wet strands off his fresh clothes while simultaneously helping to squeeze it dry.

After he finished making and then eating his sandwich, Geralt unwound his hair from the towel and ran through it a couple of times with a hairbrush, yanking through the tangles with a lack of gentleness that would’ve made any observer wince at the sound it made. He finished and the white strands hung limply, still damp enough to clump together and appear stringy. The brush then went into the bag with the rest of his essential hygienic belongings. Going to one of the kitchen cabinets, Geralt pulled out a package of brownie brittle and opened it, crunching into a piece sullenly. Three meticulously nibbled out-of-existence pieces later, he admitted to himself that he was stalling. He thought about leaving the brownie brittle in the kitchen but decided to bring it with him, setting it down on the nightstand in the bedroom instead. Finally, he turned to the chest on top of the comforter.

Taking ahold of the lock, he keyed in the combination. It clicked open and he unhooked it, undoing the other two metal clasps and swinging the top of the trunk open. Inside was a collection of interesting objects, the most prominent being a long sword in a sheathe, its flat circular pommel etched with a wolf, and a black, thick-padded motorcycle jacket with numerous metal studs spaced evenly across the arms. There was a jumble of other weaponry, survival gear, and even a good number of dog-eared books. Geralt pulled out the leather jacket and unzipped an inside pocket, retrieving a chain with a disk-shaped pendant hanging from it that looked like a silver coin. It was embossed with the silhouette of a wolf. Absentmindedly dropping the leather jacket back into the trunk, Geralt cradled the necklace in his palm for a second, running his thumb over the raised metal of the design, before moving to fasten it around his neck. The pendant settled against his chest, a cool circle that slowly warmed against his skin as it sat nestled, visible in the space created by his unbuttoned black Henley.

Next he pulled the sword out and dug out a whetstone and cleaning kit from the trunk as well. Snagging the axe off the bed as an afterthought, Geralt then headed into the living room to spread things out on the coffee table. Taking a seat on the couch, he began meticulously making sure his sword was properly cleaned and sharpened, carefully testing the edge with his thumb. Once he was satisfied and had slid it back into its hard leather sheath, Geralt wiped his hands on a rag and relaxed a bit into the cushions, glancing towards the window. The sky outside was sunset orange and the sight of it caused Geralt to pause. He looked around his apartment, the furniture bathed softly in dimming amber light, and a thought came to his mind. Should he spend the night here? Get up in the morning and cook himself breakfast in the kitchen one last time, make some fried eggs and then hard boil the rest of the carton for the road? Sleep one more night in the bed that he had actually been able to consider his own for a while?

Geralt had spent his adult life trying to come back from a childhood of being told he couldn’t want things. It was the little luxuries that were the easiest to allow himself in the time he’d spent away; food cooked how he liked it, packets of brownie brittle, a memory foam mattress. In a world where very little actually wanted him dead, indulgence was low-risk. Now, it might be stupid enough to get him killed.

           Just like his childhood memories said it should be.

He didn’t think he was being stupid wanting to spend the night here, though. The building was relatively quiet around him and he had the one entrance into his apartment sufficiently blocked off; if anything did try to get in, he’d hear it long before it managed to get the door open. A good night’s sleep was probably about to become a rarity, so he might as well do his best to get something close to one in while he could. And eating healthily was likely to get a lot harder, too; he should use what he had while he had it, since the perishable foods would just rot in the kitchen anyways if no one used them soon.

Decision made, he concentrated on properly cleaning and sharpening the axe blade. The nick was deep enough that he could only make it a bit shallower in one evening; it would take another few rounds with the whetstone to wear it away completely.

Blinking, Geralt suddenly realized how dark it was becoming in the apartment. His night vision was good enough that he hadn’t accidentally cut a finger off, but there were no streetlights shining in his window, no lights from other houses. The electronic clock on the tv stand wasn’t emitting its soft glow. Of course the power was out.

Going to the closet, Geralt dug out a package of battery-powered candles he had seen on clearance and picked up on a whim. He went around the apartment, turning them on and placing one in every room. It would be enough light for him to see what he was doing, but hopefully not bright enough to attract anything or anyone’s attention. Just to be safe, Geralt went to the window to close the shades. He took a moment to look at the world outside.

With the town’s electricity dead, the only light pollution left came from the fires burning here and there. The smoke blocked some of the sky out, but where it was clear the stars glimmered through brightly. Geralt could see the constellation Orion, the three stars making up his belt rising above the buildings. The star for his sword shone brightly at his side. Geralt looked away and closed the drapes.

The rest of the evening was spent sorting through the other weapons in the trunk, determining which ones were coming with him and which out of those would need maintenance. When he got hungry enough, he started a pot of rice on the stove, feeling grateful for the apartment’s gas stove as the burner flared to life despite the power outage. Going to the fridge, Geralt pulled out a bag of fresh green beans, opening and closing the door as quickly as he could to keep the cold in. He set up a steamer on another burner, turning it on when the rice was about halfway done. Once the water was boiling and fogging up the glass lid, Geralt dumped in a Ziploc bag full of frozen dumplings he’d gotten from the freezer and left them to steam. He tossed the green beans in a pan with olive oil and salt.

His timing was a little off and not everything was done at the same time. Geralt snacked on the beans while he waited for the rest of his food to finish cooking. Once it had, he plated himself up a mound of rice and a pile of dumplings alongside the remaining vegetables. The final touch was a small bowl filled with soy sauce and a splash of it onto the rice for flavor. Geralt relished the hot food right in front of him that wafted the scents of ginger and pork and salt and tucked in to eat. For just a moment, he was able to see the illusion of an evening like any other, hunger roaring in his stomach from a long day at work and a skipped lunch rather than a tiring slog through and over corpses as his commute home. But the palms of his hands stung and his shoulders ached like they’d used to after a shift at the logging mill and that job was long in the past for him now.

Eventually Geralt finished his dinner and moved on autopilot to the kitchen sink, handwashing his plate and the pots and pans he’d cooked in. He stared at the dishes in the drainer, clean and slowly drip-drying like they were expecting to be put away in the morning, like the world wasn’t in pieces outside his window and Geralt didn’t have blood freshly staining his hands. Retreating back to the bedroom, he sat on the edge of the mattress and ate more brownie brittle, eyes gazing unfocused at the wall and jaw working a bit too hard as he chewed the dry dessert to dust.

Dammit, this wasn’t making him feel any better. All he was doing was thinking about everything he was about to lose.

Struck with the need for something productive to do, Geralt pulled out his phone. The battery was low but not dead yet, though it didn’t seem like the cell towers in the area were doing anything anymore so it was practically useless anyways, but he could still see the texts he’d already received. He pulled up the message from Eskel, squinting at the string of coordinates. The internet wouldn’t be able to help him now, so he’d have to figure this out the old-fashioned way. Standing up, he began rummaging through the trunk again and pulled out a bundle of paper maps, folded tight and bound into a stack with rubber bands. Geralt removed the bindings and shuffled through the papers, looking for and eventually finding the map of Europe that came with latitude and longitude lines printed onto it. Spreading the map out on the bed where he’d previously sat, Geralt found himself in want of more light. He pulled a metal LED flashlight out from where it had rolled to the back of the nightstand’s drawer, making a mental note to pack it to take with him as well. With a beam of light and a focused gaze, he began to find his way to Eskel’s location.

When he figured it out, Geralt huffed in frustration. Switzerland. Of course. Not directly in the mountains at least, but still too close to their childhood home for comfort. And definitely too far away to be his next destination.

His local maps weren’t buried in the old chest from his past so Geralt returned to the living room to retrieve them off the bookshelf blocking the front door. After some searching he found the street name that matched Calanthe’s address and traced out a couple of alternative routes there from his apartment with different colored highlighters. He couldn’t help but hope for a smooth ride there but he wouldn’t be surprised to encounter obstacles that would lead to a change in his plans, considering how much of a mess getting to his apartment had been.

Over the next hour or two, Geralt puttered between going about his home and looking through his belongings to make sure he had everything he wanted to take with him packed, peering over the routes drawn on the map and mumbling street names to himself, and putting sharp edges on the variety of knives he had decided to bring. Eventually, though, he had run out of reasonable things to pack and sharpened all the blades that needed it. Giving the map one last critical look, Geralt decided it was time for him to go to bed. He got his toothbrush and toothpaste out of his bag, brushed his teeth in the bathroom, moved the trunk to his bedroom floor, and stripped off his shirt before crawling between the covers. Lying in bed with his eyes closed, he kept his breathing slow and deep until he finally managed to drift off into a light sleep, haunted by uneasy dreams.