abraxaslogs | WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

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WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

Welcome to The Free Cities! The portal exits outside the capital city of Cadens. The first impression of the city is its sheer size. It sprawls out across the landscape like a great hulking beast at rest. The wall that encircles it barely contains it, the buildings of Cadens practically bulging against its restraint.

The air here seems thicker somehow, tinged with a scent that’s acrid and smoky. Smog hangs high over the city, belched out by smokestacks that tower over the industrial district. The desert stretches out behind it, dotted with towers and dust clouds that disappear into the horizon. Multiple gates lead inside and each is staffed by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms that wave a steady stream of people through without appearing to pay much attention. People are coming and going almost all of the time, to and from the outposts and areas of activity around the city proper. It’s difficult to tell just what’s out there beyond the impression of tall metal structures and a great deal of labor. Wagons carrying travelers to Libertas and Aquila roll out from the Travel Post outside the city wall.

Anyone who can sense magic will notice a much lower concentration here. No one will be stopped or questioned at the gate, even if the soldiers seem to take note of the fugitives from Thorne.

The activity and sheer number of citizens can be overwhelming. It’s crowded and loud and feels constantly in motion with everyone talking and yelling over each other. It’s easy to get swept up in the ever-moving throng or find oneself ducking into the mouth of a narrow alley just to breathe.

Anyone who’s willing to make their way to the northern part of the city and Portham Hall will find Prime Minister Marlo Reiner available to receive them.

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[ Her look is met with one that suggests he's not even going to acknowledge it. She has enough of his curiosity, that's all. He hasn't bumped into too many from Thorne, beyond the small handful he sought out. People scattered; the city's big. Geralt tends to keep to himself on top of that.

He hums, a vague dismissive sound. They are, and he doesn't like it. Doesn't want to be. His goal is always to be away from here, with Ciri and Jaskier, when the rumblings begin. ] Doubt they'll stay that way for long. And unlike you, we're still marked.

[ Or so he assumes. Perhaps the guests have been marked, too, by whatever magic has allowed Thorne to track them. For the prisoners, they all bear it. It means he prefers being here, amongst those who are least likely to grant Thorne any concessions. He doesn't trust any military power—but they're good at keeping people they don't want out. He's still searching for a mage that can help: either to remove the mark altogether, or at least mask it. ]

[Clearly she's dealing with the dark and brooding type here, which she supposes she can get behind. She imagines it's easy to go one of two ways when one has spent an unreasonable amount of time locked up against one's will-- aching with loneliness and desperate for human conversation, like her, or stoic and silent, like this guy. But he is talking to her, which is something.]

You'd be surprised. Some places can stay reclusive and neutral for literal centuries, just rotting away by themselves in the dark, sliding ever forward toward complete and utter irrelevance. And honestly, fuck that.

[Been there, done that. Now it's time for something else. Literally anything else, even if the thrum and buzz of conversation in this little dive of a tavern sits oddly against her senses, the kind of human distraction she's never really had to deal with before. Even if she gets so overwhelmed by the sheer crush of life on the streets outside that she finds herself ducking into random shops and buildings just to catch her breath sometimes. She may miss the chilly silence of the Tomb on occasion, but it's a fleeting thing. She doesn't truly ever want to go back to the site of all her girlhood misery. To the big, black secrets and lies and death the Tomb had kept close to itself for so very long.]

But what do you mean, marked? You mean like those signs they gave us? I think we all have those.

[Because again, she ought to have been paying just a touch more attention back there in Thorne.]

[ His eyebrows raise. ] Sounds personal.

[ She isn't wrong; he just doesn't believe Solvunn is one of those places. The mages opened these particular doors for a reason. They interfered, for a reason. And if the mages believed that Solvunn would harbour what are effectively political prisoners, from one of the most powerful nations here, then the land can't be as neutral as it's claimed. Certainly not obscure or irrelevant. It means Solvunn is waiting.

He studies her. She doesn't know? He'd assumed word spread rapidly in that castle. Maybe not. It's possible his perception was skewed, given his point of contact was Jaskier and Sam. Two people who put their nose everywhere. ]

Thorne placed a magic signature on all prisoners. In case we ran.

Oh, it's personal alright.

[She says, darkly. Personal, and complicated, because Drearburh may have been a putrid, filth-strewn, silent insane asylum of a place, but it's still a part of her. For better or worse.

She's momentarily distracted from offering any further reply when the barmaid makes her return, slides Gideon's drink her way with another of those professionally friendly smiles, and Gideon thanks her expansively with a wink. She looks back toward Geralt only when they're alone once again, her stein of ale sitting untouched upon the table, for the moment.]

What were you saying, a magical signature?

[A fact she may well ought to have known, something that - perhaps - most others had been aware of. But she and Harrow had sunk swiftly into old and unhelpful ways, keeping largely to themselves, Harrow looking for answers in stuffy old tomes and Gideon either watching over her or throwing herself bodily into sword practice. She'd missed so much of what had been going on-- she's determined not to allow that to happen again.]

I heard that you guys were locked up because you were the wrong sort, whatever that means. Some kind of mistake? I thought they meant just people they couldn't use or something, but if they put some sort of magical tracer on you, that kinda puts a different spin on it.

[ While her thoughts spin and she flirts with the barmaid, Geralt drinks. He doesn't ask for details; it isn't his business, even if he tucks the bits of information she's revealing all on her own—quietly putting together a picture of the woman in front of him. ]

He was afraid. [ It's the first time he's used he; normally, he speaks of Thorne as a whole. Ambrose holds a high position, but in a court like that? A cog in the wheel at best. A large cog, but still a cog. But from what Jon has told him, only Ambrose knows anything about each of them. Which means he was afraid of something he saw, something he thought he understood. They were mistakes, but not in the way that she's thinking. ]

They tethered all of us to the Singularity. Must've seen some use. [ Of what kind, he doesn't know. A resource? To feed the Singularity's power? That girl had disappeared for a week, and then the mages had come bursting through. Geralt's yet to speak to her. If she's even here. He intends to find her in the Horizon if he can. ]

[His assessment of the situation makes sense to her, and slowly she nods. Reaches for her ale at last and takes an almost-tentative sip. The taste isn't precisely good, but it remains an improvement on the watered-down vinegar of the sacramental wine she had once pilfered and sickened herself on back in Drearburh. Most things, in fact, were an improvement on that. Whilst she sips, her brow furrows, and she thinks this new (to her at least) information through.]

I wonder what the shady bastard saw to make him afraid. Like, I thought maybe he was just pissed off because he'd brought in some people who didn't have whatever it is that me and his other honoured guests were meant to have, you know? But we all went to that Horizon place, so it isn't that. He didn't just kill any of you or throw you back into that fountain-void, which - by the way - was creepy as hell. I wonder if it has anything to do with the destruction of the Singularity.

[It's the opposite of what Thorne wanted to do with the thing, after all.]

But then why send you in there at all?

[She sighs, and slumps a little further down onto her elbows.]

If things could start making sense around here at any point, that'd be just great.

[ No. It certainly isn't that. There's still the issue of Cirilla, though. He knows, if Ambrose understood what she really is, he'd never put her in the dungeon with everyone else nor with the guests. He'd have taken her immediately. So what Ambrose knows is limited.

Presumably. Most of what he's concluded are assumptions, drawn from too little information.

Not that it matters right now. He didn't come here to make sense of things. Probably, there is no sense to any of it beyond nations vying for power, believing in their own half-cobbled theories, thinking they understand what can't be understood, so they can tell themselves and their people war is imminent. That it will be worth the bodies. Jon has told him Ambrose truly believes in the destruction of the world, and Geralt's not surprised to hear it. There's nothing more dangerous than men who believe they're serving some greater purpose. ]

Perhaps he hopes one day to walk the Horizon himself. [ He eyes her for a moment. Seeing as she hardly knows what's going on, he's suddenly curious why she's here, too. Or did she just close her eyes and step through a door? ] Why have you come this way?

[She eyes him back as he observes her, immune and unperturbed. Having been observed her whole life from beneath gazes of what she had taken for naked hostility which had actually transpired to be flinching terror, it's hard to feel much of anything when someone else's eyes are on her now. She shrugs though with an affected kind of indifference when he poses his question, and moves to take another sip of the watery ale. She doesn't know shit about anything, never has. Won't pretend that anything has changed, but there'd been no sense staying in a place that had proved itself to be duplicitous as hell, and any place that claimed reclusive neutrality smacks too much of the bleak, dead pit she'd spent her life attempting to flee from.

But under and around all of that, shot through any other logic she could apply, there had been the issue of choice. Of having one open up to her, after a lifetime of clawing and scrabbling after any crumb of autonomy she could find for herself. Maybe it'll transpire to be a choice she regrets right down to the very bones of herself, or maybe it won't-- but it's a choice she made, and it matters.

But ultimately she's a teenaged tearaway, which translates to fuck making herself vulnerable for some guy she's only just met, so as her stein hits the table she offers a watered-down version of the truth.]

Thorne's motives are obviously shady as fuck or there wouldn't be so much secrecy. And any place that claims neutrality is only ever being half-way honest. Even if they never get involved with this Singularity bullshit they'll have their own goals and motives, just like anyone else. This place though, they're pretty straightforward in their approach. Here's this thing that seems strange and hostile to them, and they don't understand it, so best to just blow the shit out of it, right? I'm not saying I agree with that stance, or that these guys won't end up being just as shitty and secretive as anyone else, but for now they seem the least complicated of the lot. It's a good enough position to start from. I can't tell you how fucking done I am with secrets and lies.

[ She grants him more of an answer than he expects. He's used to people playing it close to their chests—same as he does—and she looks the sort who might do so. He listens without comment, beyond a noncommittal hum. He hasn't any desire to get involved in destroying the Singularity, nor does he have one in saving it. Or preserving it. Or the politics between the nations. He wants to know what will get them home, will put Cirilla back where she belongs and out of this mess, and right now that remains to be seen.

Though his thoughts still linger on whether or not its true, if its presence is obstructing Ciri's magic somehow. If it's also protecting her from the Wild Hunt at the same time by doing so. What happens when it's lifted? If it can be lifted? Ciri seems adamant that there is no other of their selves. That they are simply taken out of the Continent, at the wrong times, and placed together here, while the world back home continues to converge. So what that means for returning, what awaits them, he can't even begin to guess. ]

We can agree on that. [ Secrets and lies, they tire him, too. It's what he means when he says he doesn't want to be caught up in this, would prefer if none of this has touched him at all. But here they are. He's aware, despite what he says, that he can only navigate around the brewing tensions for so long. He just isn't looking forward to when he finds himself in the midst of it. And he certainly isn't keen to advertise his position, whether he holds one or not. ] I'm only interested in a drink. And a sword.

[ Well. Two swords. He means to get one for Ciri, too. ]

You've got your priorities all wrong, my guy. It should have been sword, then drink.

[She says, but her tone lacks anything that could be considered serious reproach. There's the bright coruscation of interest in her gold-coin eyes when he makes mention of the sword though, and it has her fractionally leaning in closer on her elbows. The buzz and thrum of the tavern melts down into quiet background noise as they hit upon a topic dear to her own heart. Her gaze once again rakes assessing over his countenance, and her earlier opinion of 'stoic and seasoned warrior' is only further cemented in her ideas of him.

A sword is the first thing she'd gone out in search of once her head had stopped spinning over the strange means of their arrival here, the shock of being whole and unharmed and separate quieting down. She doesn't have anything special, not yet, just some shitty old two-hander that has seen better days and clearly hadn't been treated with the loving care it deserved, but it's a sword. She feels better, more herself, just knowing it's in her possession.]

I guess I got a head start on you though, because of that whole bullshit honoured guests thing. And I'm in the market for something fancier once I've got the cash together.

[Which...may take longer than she'd like. This whole being paid for one's services rather than having them expected of you is still new to her, and for the moment she's carrying the financial burden of two people on her admittedly strong shoulders. It feels a touch like being thrown into bizarro world, when her skills are more sought after than Harrow's. But this feels like a small matter when compared with--]

What's your preference? I like a two-hander, but I'm alright with a rapier I guess.

[ There's a faintest tilt to his lips at that. She isn't wrong. Except he can't pick up just any plain cheap sword. Or. He could but it would never match what he's used to carrying. He already isn't familiar with all the creatures in this sphere; he isn't about to hunt them with a blade not up to standard. Jaskier's dagger will do while he's in the city until he can scrape together enough to get proper one forged—find a smith who's capable.

He settles a little easier, when she leans forward with a spark in her eyes. When they leave the topic of this world's politics and innerworkings behind. (It's so unusual to be looking at not only a woman with the eyes of a Witcher, but a woman who nearly behaves like one, too. She isn't one, obviously; could never be one—but some instinctive part of him can't stop trying to see something that isn't there.) ]

Mm. [ His gaze flicks briefly to the weapon she has on her, then back to her face. Thorne really did lean into their welcomed guests, didn't they? ] Not one or the other. It's—

[ He indicates a length with his hands that, if she knows her swords, is too short to be a longsword but too long to be an arming sword. Both and neither all at once: a two-handed grip with what's closer to a one-handed blade. A Witcher's sword. ] It can be either, depending on the fight.

[Her interest only sparks hotter when he extends his hands in a gesture she quickly realises is meant to suggest a sword's length, and she runs through her knowledge of blades in an attempt to place it. It can be either, he says, and already she thinks such a blade would be better for a cavalier than the flimsy whisper of a rapier. She gets why such a light and delicate sword had been chosen now, given who's arms were - in the end, after - intended to hold it. But when compared to her beloved two-hander it seems such a silly, ornamental thing.

The diktat of tradition can go fuck itself now they're far from home, and when even back at Canaan House her cover had been well and truly blown. But that doesn't mean she isn't intrigued to hear about his blade. The possibilities it presents, if she and Harrow ever return to the Dominicus system. There's a sudden dampness at the creases of her palms, just thinking about it.]

I'd fucking love to go up against an opponent with a sword like that. You know, get a feel for the technique. Do you think you're gonna be able to get one like it here?

[Maybe she'll get lucky and he'll offer to show her how it's wielded.]

[ She seems to recognize what he means, which leaves him wondering exactly who she is, what she's trained in. What she does. Knowledge of swords to a degree isn't uncommon in his world, but—he's still curious. And especially curious about how skilled she might be.

There's a small pause. He thinks he can read what she's asking. This isn't something he usually does—speak of his swordsmanship—not because the techniques of a Witcher are some sort of secret but because he doesn't go around displaying what he can do. There are times in towns where he leaves his swords on Roach altogether, keeps them both tucked away instead of sheathed on his back. Attention's never worth it. He draws enough of it by walking through the door as it is.

But she's been straightforward with him from the start. He tips his head before he finally answers. ]

Here? Soon enough. [ Shouldn't be long. It depends, partly, on how receptive the people here are to Jaskier's music, but he suspects Jaskier will do well for himself. He always does. (Annoyingly.) ] But I always have one on the other side.

[ Provided the Horizon is a place she enters. Or can enter. Was she there when they were brought into it? It's simple for him, to return, but he knows for others—like Kay—the concentration required is...a small barrier. Or a very large one. ]

[Soon enough has her face splitting on a wide grin, because unlike him she has no compunctions about carrying her sword wherever she goes, nor about being seen wielding it. She's sure the other eight Houses must have been able to flaunt themselves at their stuffy show duels all the time, if her experience in Canaan House was anything to go by. For her there had ever been the rheumy eye of Marshall Crux, or Aiglamene's stony tutelage, along with the reems of monstrous dead and the occasional swish of dark skirts when Harrowhark deigned to spy on her. Getting to practice with new people, getting to see someone fight who she feels fairly sure won't be bound by regal rules and stuffy practices fills her with an uncommon delight. Her drink goes forgotten for the moment, so swept up in thought of it is she.

But then he mentions the other side, and there's a small crinkle of her brow until his meaning snaps into place for her, quick and sharp.]

Ohhhh, that place!

[That place, where she'd also be able to feel the solid, sparkling weight of her own two-hander again, the cold pleasure of pure Ninth House steel pressed once again against her calloused palms. Something in her face visibly brightens at the thought.]

I didn't think of that. I haven't been back since the first time. It was weird there, you know? But I'd so be down to get a look at your sword.

[ Apparently, all he needed to do to break through her wariness was bring up swords. Who knew? Geralt can't help but feel some mild amusement at it, not in the sense that it's strange or unusual. Just. Unexpected, maybe. In a not entirely unwelcome way.

Weird is a succinct manner of describing it. ] I'm not keen on it, either. But it has its uses.

[ It is, at the moment, his only method of keeping in touch with Yen. Provided she will enter, provided she can enter. He's still waiting. Trying not to think about it much, or let it concern him, given he can't do a fucking thing about it, whatever's going on in Thorne. He can go in to give this woman a demonstration, though. He's been locked up too long without a sword in his grip. A part of him feels a bit rusty—out of use. ]

Gates are open. You'll know by the white wolf outside.

[ Absolutely no explanation comes in regards to the presence of this wolf or what it means. ]

[Her face goes momentarily blank in the wake of his description, aureate eyes turned vacuous and unknowing. He says white wolf with all the breezy confidence in the world, like this is something anyone would be able to identify on sight. She's heard of wolves, she thinks, from stories. Believes they're a mammal and so likely have fur, which in this instance must therefore be white. But no animals had lived in the stark and vertical crack drilled down into the planet's core where Drearburh had been not so much erected as burrowed. Nothing save those that crawled in the dark, many legged, seldom seen. She'd beheld fish at Canaan House, and the wheeling flight of birds. Had devoured meat she'd been unable to name. But wolves?]

Yeeaaah. White wolf. Got it.

[She says, strangely unwilling to admit that she has not, in fact, got it at all. Takes a swig from her drink to hide the onset of her uncertainty. Looking out for a white furry creature she has never before lain eyes on seems, to her, as though it will do.]

[ An extra long moment passes as Geralt stares right back. He can tell there's something going on, but he can't grasp what it might be, why she has that look in her eyes as though he's told her to keep a lookout for a pink feathered dragon. It simply doesn't occur to him that someone hasn't ever seen a damn wolf in their life.

Hm. ]

Not fond of wolves?

[ He senses that isn't it; it's just the only thing he can think of to ask—though if she really won't say what's going on, he isn't going to press. She'll find her way around one way or another. The keep isn't difficult to spot at a distance, either. ]

It's not that.

[She says, and the look she gives him is long and slanted with consideration. This is dumb. There's no reason to be embarrassed. But there's already so much that the other people here seem to hold in common, knowledge that feels alien and distant to her, whilst so much of what she considers mundane and run of the mill has been met with raised brows of surprise. Sometimes it feels exhausting.

In the end she shrugs, casual. Like it's nothing.]

I've just never seen one before. We didn't have those back on the Ninth. We didn't have much of anything that wasn't long dead, or had one rheumatic foot in the grave already. It's called House of the Locked Tomb for a reason. The whole place is a fucking mausoleum.

[And she reaches to take a swig of her drink, still with that forced airiness. She knows it means nothing to him, a stranger from some distant solar system. But it's hard to forget the way the other House representatives had clearly perceived them. Shadow cultists. Creepy fucking weirdos who have made a grave their home.]

[ His brows draw together. He thinks of Julie, who's told him her world is devoid of animals, too. Fallen in a great plague that struck. Maybe that's what's happened here—long ago enough that its people sealed itself in what she calls a tomb and rebuilt there. It's an image that's hard to conjure in his mind: the Continent is not forgiving, but a lack of those living is not one of its problems.

He doesn't hide the question in his gaze, but he leaves them unasked. It isn't important, in the end. And not a story to pry out of someone he's spoken to for hardly an hour.

Instead, he considers. If she's never seen a wolf, he doubts she's seen the mountains or the snow. ] Then look for the bones past the gates.

[ The dead are universal. ]

[This gets a laugh from her. It's a quick, staccato sound and yet one that's coloured by genuine mirth. The tender yellow light from the dimmed lamps dotted around the tavern illuminate her grin, making it seem to spark.]

Now bones--

[She says, and she gives him a fingergun gesture with both hands, one after the next in quick succession.]

--bones I can do.

[One does not spend the entirety of one's life interred within the House of the Ninth and learn nothing of bones. Not even someone who had despised every moment she'd been forced to spend in that place right down to the very centre of herself.]

[ His eyebrows go up. There's amusement on his face, but now it's his turn to also take on a vaguely blank expression. He has never seen this gesture before, hasn't any fucking idea what it means, but the mention of bones apparently has brightened her up. He'll take it. ]

I've been in tombs. Never been in an entire place that was only that.

[ How do they sustain themselves? He supposes people find a way, somehow. It's not as if the Blue Mountains are an especially gentle environment. Kaer Morhen is scattered with the dead and old wounds and shattered walls. But it's home, still, to him, in a way no other place has been. ]

Lucky you.

[She says with a sigh, and mostly means it. For better or for worse, Drearburh is in her right down to the - haha - bones, but that doesn't mean she's looking at it now that it's behind her through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. She reaches again for her drink as the deep, chill caverns of the Ninth open up to her in her minds eye, the bruise-coloured darkness she'd lived her life within, the sensation of being dislocated from time and all meaning.

Nav is a Niner name, she's more Ninth than she ever thought she'd claim to be, and still she wouldn't wish that cold, decaying place on anyone. What was it that mayonnaise-looking bastard Silas had said? It was never really meant to be a place that sustained life at all.]

It fucking sucks. But the one thing we had in plentiful supply was bones.

[ Lucky. Apparently. He's starting to learn the Continent is more plentiful in places where others aren't. How many, he wonders, would rather be here than return home to worlds of bone and death?

Perhaps not as many as it might appear. There are still those they've left behind. ]

How long has it been that way?

[ Is that simply how she grew up? Inside a tomb? It isn't the same for him, but Kaer Morhen is as much a cemetery as it is a home. It's how he grew up, too. She's the first he's met, outside of his own kind, who speaks so casually of being surrounded by the dead. There's something familiar about that. ]

Since always.

[She says it with a casual shrug, like it hadn't been the very bane of her existence since she'd been old enough to think coherent thoughts. In childhood Drearburh and been terrifying, awful. The stuff of fucking nightmares. It never really got much better, if she was entirely honest with herself.]

My mom just dropped in one day, right down the middle of the central shaft in a dragchute and a shitty old haz suit. It was out of power by the time she landed, which obviously meant she was fucked. It'd all been sucked away by a biocontainer she'd been carrying, inside of which was newborn me. No one knows where she came from, either. Which - you've gotta admit - is cool and mysterious as hell. Or you know, would have been if she hadn't gone and died, and left me stuck in that tomb with a bunch of decaying old nuns.

[Her tone is devoid of bitterness as she stares down into the amber liquid in front of her; these are old hurts, their colours faded and bleached away like bones left out in the sun too long. She still knows the size and shape of them, but they're not raw, not something she can't easily look upon.]

A bunch of the old nun-adepts managed to call back her ghost, but she just screamed Gideon! at them, three times. Then fled. So they guessed Gideon must be yours truly. I got taken on as like, the tiniest bondswoman ever. And that's where I stayed, though not for lack of trying to get the hell out.

[ Geralt blinks once, twice. There are those, he's come to learn, who have few reservations sharing to strangers. Gideon appears to be one of them. He normally has little problem with this; he prefers to listen rather than talk, and so long as his company doesn't expect much out of him in return, it suits him fine. But this is...

More. It almost feels like a story he could've told himself. Except his mother had chosen to leave him. He can't decide if that makes it better or not. That he remembers Visenna, remembers believing he could be...something else, once. Probably doesn't make a difference. It is what it is. Maybe, once, he'd thought knowing her reasons would change things for him. He's realized it doesn't.

His expression is contemplative, before he appears to put aside whatever it is that's lingering on his mind. ]

Sometimes you get dropped on a path you didn't ask for. [ He sets his mug down on the table. It's hard to tell if he's still referring to Gideon or himself. Maybe both. He studies her. ] Would you rather stay here?

WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

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