WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

[abraxasmods]

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.

Comments

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

[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.

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

[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.]

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

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.]

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

[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.]

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

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.

[gynvael]

[ 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. ]

[frontlinetitties]

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.

[gynvael]

[ 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?

[frontlinetitties]

[He blinks at her a couple of times with that faraway look on his face, and she stares back blankly a moment, not quite sure how to read that expression on him. She simply hasn't known enough people in her life - really known, rather than observed from a distance, or skirted around deliberately whilst knowing her presence is unwanted - to have anything so sophisticated as the ability to read vague expressions. But there's something there, she thinks. Some feeling, or the lack of it, or--

--or it's nothing. The distant expression slips away as he makes a comment that seems kiiinda dismissive after she's just dropped her big bo-hoo story on him, or at least a fraction of it. But she realises - swift, and sure - that she hadn't been expecting sympathy. Wouldn't have known what to do with it had he offered it. Instead there's his question, one that feels loaded and heavy, but she's extending an answer before she's even thought it through.]

We can't go home again.

[There's something final in the way she says it, a stony kind of certainty. She hasn't asked Harrow what she wants, whether she wants to return to their own solar system to take up her place as God's hand and gesture, to do whatever it is that the King Undying required them to do. But there's no going back to the tomb.

In a lighter, altogether less graveyard tone, she says--]

Besides, why would I wanna go back to that when I could stay here for the booze and the babes?

[gynvael]

[ Sympathy is just not where his strength lies, in either giving or receiving. It always feels empty. He hums, taking her answer at face value. The truth is, his thoughts of going home have been distant, too. He wants it, but he doesn't know how it'll work, if it can work. Practically speaking, they're stuck in this world now. Most of his focus has been on keeping Ciri out of harm's way while they sort out how to handle what's happening.

He gives a snort, his attention coming back down towards her. ] That's one way to look at it.

[ Whatever she's said to him, it appears to not have entirely left his mind. He needs a walk more than a drink. Besides, he only meant to stay for one or two. He's got work to find, and so he rises from his seat without much ceremony, dropping a few final coins on the table to pay for his drink. Perhaps it's a bit abrupt, perhaps not. Geralt doesn't think twice about it one way or the other. ]

If you want to add blades to that list, you know where to find me.

[frontlinetitties]

[It is a touch abrupt, the way he stands all of a sudden, coins dropping down onto the table with a bright hard clink that somehow sounds as final as her earlier words had done. Did she say something to piss him off? Or is he just like this? Fuck if she knows, and he's already turning away from her before she can work it out.

The invitation remains though, extended once again before he vanishes into the sweaty crowd in this packed-in little dive.]

Yeah, I'll do that. Blades sets off my list pretty well. And hey-- thanks for the drink!

[She calls again, before he's gone, and someone else is already moving in to ask if his now-abandoned seat is taken.]