Of Women and Wolves

Learning Curves

***A.N***

Hi there, this is short-ish chapter. Kind of like filler but I will put a warning here for spoilers.

*SPOILERS* for some of you who may not have played the games or read the books. Fianna's powers are very similar to Ciri's in the games and her true power has not been revealed within the show. So if you want to wait for the reveal with the show, I will mark the small spoilers with *** so it is not ruined for you. This chapter is to explain Fianna's abilities and how she has trained and developed them in the two years since the events in Temeria.

for those of you who do decide to read ahead, if anything I explain about her abilities is unclear, just drop me a comment or a message so I can clear things up. I struggled with how to describe some things so let me know and I'll explain further.

Be Warned and enjoy :) 

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The sun was setting on another snowy day in Kovir, Fianna was sat on the front step of a small cottage located at the foot of the Dragon Mountains. She watched the sun as it set in an array of fiery oranges and luscious pinks, for the past eight months she had taken this time of day to clear her head and meditate. A year after the events in Temeria, Fianna received a letter from Triss Merigold, she offered to train Fianna privately for a few months.

Triss explained that she had some time to recover from an injury in defence of King Foltest and the Brotherhood were allowing her to return home before returning to her post. This allowed Fianna the opportunity to train her power without any interference from The Brotherhood of Sorcerers, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Though she nor Geralt were overly fond of separating for such a long period of time, they both knew that it was needed. She had set out the next day in the direction of Kovir, winter had been approaching so they had been heading for Kaer Morhen anyway so it only took three weeks of travel to arrive in Lan Exeter, she met Triss in a tavern and from there they portaled to this cabin.

Eight months of intense magical training that completely drained her every day was difficult but Fianna and Triss were blown away by her progress. The progress that she had made and the things they had discovered were groundbreaking.

Triss theorized that because Lara Dorren was genetically engineered to possess the power she did, these powers passed down in her bloodline. When Fianna was further changed by the mutagens used in the Witcher trials, it corrupted an already rare and unstable gene.

Through copious amounts of trials and dangerous experimentation, they concluded that Fianna's life force was incompatible with almost all other living things. Her energy was so concentrated and dense that it overpowered the cells in other living things. Triss reckoned that she could be most compatible with other Witchers but Fianna was not willing to use her brothers as test subjects.

With this discovery, the two women were able to develop a better plan to train her. Efficiency was key, eight months is not an awful lot of time to train in the art of chaos so they needed to focus and squeeze every bit of opportunity that they could.

Triss was a slave-driver when it came to research and experimentation so they had found out quite a few important things.

Fianna could, in fact, create portals. They were stable and safe for use but a wholly awful experience to travel through one. Roughly three to four times more disorienting than a mage's portal.

Her ability to teleport or 'blink' as they had taken to calling it was relatively easy to perfect but she was unable to take passengers. Longer distances still drained her energy faster but that was just a case of practice. Like a muscle, the more you use it the bigger it gets.

*** SPOILERS FOR CIRI'S POWER ***

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Jumping to other worlds and times... not advisable. It could be done and she was able to survive the jumps but it almost left her in a coma the first time she did a round trip. Zero out of ten, would not recommend.

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*** SPOILER END***

Triss tried to tutor her in the art of healing. It did not go well... at all. She could heal herself using magic extraordinarily fast, other people? Not so much. The subtle and gentle power that is needed to heal other humans is tricky, you have to gently coax the body into accepting your energy or 'chaos' to help the wound heal. Fianna just can not lower her energy output enough to not overload the body she is healing.

One very positive outcome of all of her training was her ability to sense chaos around her. She still had her medallion but it was more of an accessory now. It was almost like she had unlocked a sixth sense, she could not 'see' the magic exactly but she could feel it in her bones.

Due to this she had become highly skilled at breaking curses or hexes. Not in the traditional way that mages would be able to unravel a curse like tangled threads. Fianna had innate talent for finding the one 'thread' holding a curse together and with the abundance of raw power she possessed she could cut it loose easily.

It was coming to the end of her time with Triss and she could not feel more grateful towards the Sorceress. The two women had developed a surprisingly solid friendship over the last eight months or so. Though she would miss her new friend, Triss had duties that lay with the Brotherhood and Fianna was eager to don her armour once more and find Geralt.

She had one week left with Triss to restock and settle any outstanding business or contracts she had in Kovir then she would set out on the Path once more. She would spend this week revising all she had learned under Triss' tutelage and refine the new ways she had developed to use her Signs in combat.

Since she now had better control over her chaos, Fianna had found ways to evolve her Signs. How to maximise damage with minimal output and increase their effectiveness. Her favourite new trick was concentrating the flames of her Ingi into one continuous stream of fire, hot enough to melt some armours. The surface area within her Yyrden trap was expanded and strengthened to twice the power of her old one and the force of her Aard was beyond impressive.

Fianna was looking forward to continue experimenting with her Signs and developing her other abilities but she was eager to hit the road in search of Geralt. She could not wait to see him after so long and show him what she had learned. This feeling was one she had not had since they were children learning how to cast Signs for the first time with Mother Nenneke.

The day that she had to leave Triss came with haste, not one to stand on ceremony, Fianna checked her bags, hugged the red-haired Sorceress and mounted Rolo. She set back out on the path after eight months to find her lover.

She just didn't think it would take so fucking long...