Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

The fact that Arun was a witcher never mattered much to them; they could’ve been a blacksmith, or a farmer, or an artisan of some kind and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Blood stained their clothes, their hands, their weapons. They didn’t enjoy it, they didn’t dislike it. It was a job.

It never occurred to them that such apathy was probably because of them being a witcher.

Silver for monsters, steel for humans, poisoned blades for the others. Arun took contracts for either, as their mentors had taught them. It wasn’t a witcher’s job to judge. It wasn’t a witcher’s job to take sides. They killed, they took the coin, and they survived. That was all. That was the job.

They’d learned it in Gorthur Gvaed, like everyone else. They were to be lethal and efficient. The best killing was to be accomplished with one strike. That was the reason they were given fangs upon graduation — twin swords, that could be soaked in venom. Killing wasn’t personal; death was quick.

Vipers were like any other witcher, and unlike any other witcher. They were meant for a broader scope—the most important mission. They were meant to kill, they were meant to hunt, and they were meant to wait.

“What are we waiting for?” Arun had once asked out loud. Ivar the founder gave the speech every winter, but he was never specific about that part.

“The sign of a greater good,” he’d told them, staring them down with that evil eye of his, the ugly scars shiny and tight as they flexed with the displeasure of being interrupted.

“That isn’t much of an answer,” Arun had muttered back.

Ivar had frowned harder, his viper pupils getting thinner. “You’ll know when you see it, little Viper.”

The school was burned down a few years later, no sign of a greater good on the horizon, Nilfgaard spreading their influence through the northern territories like a strange plague. Arun had arrived at the spiraled tower just on time to see a soldier kill the last survivor of their clutch; Arun stabbed him in the neck with both fangs. They tore the medallion from their own neck, left, and never looked behind.

They travelled east, past the Nilfgaardian war lines, past the starving Metinna countryside, until the Amell mountains loomed over their head.

They took contracts on monsters, humans, elves. They made a few enemies and no friends.

*

Arun was sure their mentors would have never agreed, but Najm looked like the sign they were looking for, among the blue-violet flowers, blooming Nazair nobility who had left the greenhouse to make beauty with his own hands instead. He was always stained with clay and paint whenever Arun met him, smiling and bright in front of his shop, always kind. A sign of a greater good.

The fact that Arun was a witcher never mattered much to them—but they could see themselves as something else, thanks to Najm. They could’ve become a blacksmith, a farmer, or an artisan of some kind. Clay and paint would stain their clothes, their hands, their tools. They would enjoy it, for Najm, who saw art and beauty in everything. It never occurred to them that witchers could feel emotions like that.

But despite his ability with clay and pottery, Najim was nobility—dangerous, for his name and his line, despite his disinterest in the family matters. A Viper was sent for him—it wasn’t a witcher’s job to judge, it wasn’t a witcher’s job to take sides. They killed, they took the coin, and they survived. That was all. That was the job.

Arun murdered a fellow witcher in the middle of Neunreuth’s market place and they did it free of charge under Najm’s pale eyes; they stabbed him in the neck with the fangs that they still hid under their shirt. They tore the clay-stained apron that Najm had gifted them, left, and never looked back.

They took contracts on monsters, humans, elves. Witchers were full of enemies these days, and nobody was their friend. They travelled north, past the Amell mountains, past the Yaruga, past the Pontar, until their legs couldn’t carry them and the stench of swamp made them forget about the sweet smell of Nazair’s flowers.

The fact that they were still a witcher didn’t matter to them. They didn’t enjoy it, they didn’t dislike it: it was a job. It never occurred to them that such apathy was probably because they’d lost everything that mattered.

*

“You’re a witcher, aren’t you?”

The bard was taller, so much taller than them, with dark skin and coily locks piled on his head, dressed in a bright green doublet, and acted like he couldn’t recognize danger if it bit him in the arse.

Arun looked up from their cup of gull-spiked ale, tightening their viper-thin pupils so they were evident even in the dim light—a dead giveaway of their nature and a warning rolled in one.

“You are, aren’t you?” the bard kept going, sitting down on the chair opposite, the small and thin stringed instrument hanging off his shoulder looking even smaller against his ridiculously large frame, like a toy. “I’ve never met one before! My dad’s cousin knows a couple, but he also knows a lot of people. Maybe you know some of his witcher friends, I bet y’all flock together now that it’s so few of you—”

“I don’t know any other witcher,” Arun snapped, and then bit their tongue when they saw him smile.

“Ha! Made you talk.”

Arun smiled back, unamused, baring all their teeth. “Very clever. Now piss off.”

The bard did not piss off. The bard shrugged, sang a few songs for the dwindling crowd, bought two mugs of ale and sat down next to Arun again. When the witcher got up to leave, he also got up and followed them outside.

Arun ignored him, and kept walking.

*

Apparently the bard’s name was Niv and his father was a dwarf—not a regular dwarf though, he didn’t make moonshine (well, not only that) and he wasn’t a blacksmith or a miner; he was an adventurer, and he’d killed a lot of monsters. See, there were too few witchers to take care of the few drowners that were in the area, so he’d taken over the job.

They knew because Niv kept following them around even if Arun had finally given in and told him their name, and had yelled at him to get the fuck off. Niv hadn’t seemed phazed, and had just started telling them about the story of his life, which involved his dwarven adoptive father fighting monsters a lot.

Arun wasn’t sure why they hadn’t stuck him with one of his fangs and be done with it, yet. Niv had been stuck to them for a week now — Niv and his pet boar — and didn’t seem like they were going anywhere.

“You have no idea how glad I am to have met an actual witcher. Dad will be so impressed.”

“Do you need a monster killed?” Arun asked, despite themselves. They wouldn’t have turned down a contract, even if Niv was annoying them to hell and back.

“Oh! No. I mean, I keep telling dad that the crows near the lake aren’t normal and that there’s something in the forest there, even if nobody died yet — but no. Dad thinks there are no witchers anymore. He hasn’t seen any after the Kaedweni school has been destroyed.”

Arun didn’t comment. Kaer Morhen, Gorthur Gvaed, Stygga — gone. No more witchers. It might have been as well as true.

“I always wanted to prove him wrong,” Niv continued. “He’s usually right about stuff, you know? But this one thing—I knew he was wrong.”

“Well, you were right. Witchers still exist.” Arun huffed. “Doesn’t explain why you’re still bothering me.”

Niv played a cheerful chord on that weird instrument of his. “Isn’t it obvious? I want to write songs about witchers. So people know that you’re still around and you’re still fighting monsters!”

“Do you want to write songs about me?”

“Well, yes. You’re the only witcher I know, after all.”

“You don’t know me,” Arun replied. “I don’t want songs written about me.”

“Well, I don’t have to make them about you, if you really don’t want me to, but I don’t know anything about witchers—I can’t write about things I don’t know anything about.”

Arun gave him a look. They’d argued about Niv’s songs before, how far from the truth they tended to stray.

Niv smiled. “You know what I mean! I don’t make up things from thin air, I’m not a mage.”

“Mages don’t make things from thin air, either,” Arun begrudgingly admitted.

*

A year. That was the deal: Niv would follow Arun around for a year, taking as many notes as he could in order to write a cycle of songs about witchers, and then they would’ve gone on their separate ways. Niv would pull his weight, helping Arun with their luggage and negotiating payment with the aldermen, and Arun would tell him things about witchers. It seemed like a fairly effortless exchange—except Arun hadn’t considered how many questions Niv had about witchers and monsters and everything. Most of his knowledge seemed to come from his father.

“My father says,” he would start, multiple times a day, “that witchers carry a magic medallion as a symbol of their profession, and its shape it’s different from school to school—is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see yours?”

“I don’t carry one.”

“You just said—”

“I know. I don’t, though.”

“Oh. Does it mean you didn’t have a school?”

“Of course I had a school. Witchers are made, we don’t grow under cabbages.”

“Which school are you from?”

Arun hesitated. “A dead one.”

Niv’s voice went quiet. “What happened?”

“They killed everyone. Nobody left to teach. Nobody left to learn.”

Niv made an upset grimace. He seemed to get upset a lot about things that Arun considered factual, which sort of made them upset, which in turn made them think about Najm, for some reason—maybe because Arun had made him upset a lot too; they hadn’t understood why back then, either, which had only made them both even more upset at each other. Arun hadn’t liked it, but they also hadn’t known how to stop the whole thing from happening.

Niv had that kind of upset face a lot. Witchers didn’t have emotions? Upset face. Witchers went through the Trials when they were twelve? Upset face. Witchers drank poisonous things to enhance their bodies? Upset face.

Dead witchers? Upset face.

Arun really wanted him to stop doing that. “Why are you asking me these things if you don’t want to hear about them?” they snapped.

Niv startled. “I want to hear about them! I wouldn’t ask otherwise—”

“You’re upset,” Arun noted, angrier than he meant to sound. “Why are you upset?”

Niv seemed to get angry at that, too. “Are you really asking me if I find the idea of a genocide upsetting?”

“Witchers die all the time. That’s what we do.”

“You just told me that everyone in your school was killed. That’s very different from just dying!”

Arun shrugged. “Witchers always get killed. By people, by monsters, by other witchers. They don’t just die peacefully in their beds. That’s what happens to people. What happened to my school—just more efficient, that’s all.” In hindsight, Ivar would’ve liked it. Efficient, lethal. Not personal. A rightful way to go, for the school of the Viper.

Niv gritted his teeth. “Witchers are people, too. Is this a human-inhuman thing? Some shitstains don’t think that elves are people either. My mom was an elf, do you think I’m not a person?”

“I’m just a witcher, I don’t know what a person is,” Arun snapped. “I was just told that I wasn’t.”

Niv opened his mouth to say something else but nothing came out for a long time. “I’m sorry.”

Arun frowned. “I was the one upsetting you. Shouldn’t I apologize?”

The bard slowly shook his head. “You shouldn’t apologize for things that happened to you.”

“You’re as infuriating as Najm was,” Arun muttered.

“Who’s Najm?”

Oh. They didn’t think they’d said it loud enough for him to hear. “He’s—He was—”

Something suddenly clicked, and Arun’s throat felt tight. “I think he thought I was a person.”

Niv’s smile was thin and stretched out, but seemed genuine. “A sensible guy.”

*

Six months later, winter was upon them.

They huddled around the fire, so close that their bedrolls were about to catch on fire.

Niv swore. “Why are we still in fucking Temeria and not somewhere warmer?”

“I thought you were Kaedweni. Aren’t you used to winter?”

“I am, but I have a house and it is warm and cosy all year long. I didn’t think we were going to walk the Path in the middle of fucking Yule. We could’ve gone to Toussaint or Nazair.”

“Toussaint is a pain in the ass. All the useless knights give me a headache and they all think they can do my job better than me,” Arun muttered, wrapping themselves tighter in their fur-lined cloak. “I killed a guy in Nazair.”

“What?”

“I mean, I killed guys a bit everywhere on the continent,” Arun amended. “But the Nazair guy wasn’t for a contract, and he was a witcher, and I sort of did it in the middle of a marketplace so everyone saw me.”

“I thought witchers killed monsters.”

Ah. “Cats also take contracts on humans,” they edged. “Vipers take contracts on anything and anyone.”

Niv seemed to mull it over. “You’re a Viper, aren’t you?”

“I used to be. I killed monsters, humans and non-humans, if you’re asking,” Arun said, cutting the chase. They learned in the past months that Niv was very proud of his non-human family, both the adoptive and biological one and was very sensitive about it.

Niv didn’t say anything for a long time and Arun felt like they did that way in Neunreuth’s market place.

“Right,” the bard said, finally. “It’s late. We should go to sleep.”

Arun started fussing with the bedroll, wondering if they were going to wake up alone in the morning— and Niv almost made them jump out of their skin when he lay down next to him, very warm and very close, and wrapped an arm around their waist.

“Tell me about the guy you killed in Nazair,” he murmured. Arun could feel his eyelashes against the back of their neck.

“It was another Viper,” they murmured, swallowing thickly. “I saw him walk across the marketplace, right towards—towards the mark, and I knew he was going for the kill. I was wearing a knife under my shirt so I killed him first. It was market day—everyone saw me.”

“Did you know him?” Niv’s voice grumbled against his spine.

Arun hesitated. “Yes.”

“Do you regret killing him?”

“No.” Arun closed their eyes. “He was going to hurt Najm. Vipers were meant to wait for a sign of a greater good, but the school burned before it came to us. I went looking for it by myself—it was Najm for me.”

“Is Najm still alive?”

“Yes. But I couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t have understood. He thought me a person.”

“People do terrible things all the time.”

“I know, I kill for them for a living.” Arun closed their eyes. “It’s easier to blame monsters for it.”

“You witchers really aren’t like the stories I’ve heard.” Niv’s voice sounded strange.

Arun turned around to look at him. “Will you stop writing songs about us?” Will you leave me?

Niv’s face looked soft in the light of the fireplace. He smiled and shook his head. “Go to sleep, Arun.”