Try, Please Try For Me

Well, Fuck

By all accounts Geralt of Rivia is a simple man, thank you very much.

His life consists of money and monsters, seldom both at the same time.

He's a witcher, one of those selected to join the School of the Wolf as a child. The life of a witcher is not one of happiness. You see more of the evil in the world than the good most times, when you're a mutant.

But Geralt has never known anything different, so being a witcher is fine by him, he's perfectly content to walk the path until he slows and then dies.

But just because Geralt has simple wishes for his life doesn't mean that he can't have nice things. He likes a good Temerian rye. He enjoys peace and quiet. He likes to sleep outside on starry nights. He likes to enjoy a good fuck now and then. He likes to spend time with his fellow wolves.

It was early in the season, just barely through the thaw of spring. Normally at this time of year Geralt would be out killing hoards of ghouls in some backwater town for coin that was hardly worth the effort of the job, but Vesemir had requested that they stay at Kaer Morhen a little later this year.

There was a war raging along the border, and he didn't want them getting too caught up in it. It was some petty human squabble, a disagreement over a worthless speck of land or something else that Geralt considered equally as pointless to fight over.

Normally something like this didn't concern them. And at first this battle was just like all the others. Geralt would walk the path like normal, while his contracts became significantly shittier. He always managed to pull through in the end.

But then a witcher from the Cat school had done something incomprehensibly stupid.

He got involved.

And the humans had retaliated. And soon enough the entire school of the Cat had taken it personally enough to join in.

After the witcher vow of neutrality was broken and the humans took notice it was only a matter of time before other schools started getting dragged into the conflict. Everything was basically a shitstorm after that.

And so Geralt lingers in the now far too empty hall of the deteriorating keep alongside his brothers, trying to stave off boredom.

It's actually quite a pleasant evening, all things considered. They have venison from Lambert's hunting trip that morning, white gull that they've been saving for a special occasion (and now was as good a time to get drunk as any), and Geralt finds himself in such good spirits that he doesn't even mind losing to Eskel repeatedly in gwent.

Or course something has to come and ruin it.

Geralt is just processing an absolutely devastating turn from Eskel when Vesemir strolls into the hall.

Lambert raises an eyebrow when the man sits down in the chair next to Eskel but says nothing.

Vesemir has an air about him tonight and Geralt can tell he's here to talk to them about something. The old witcher sits in silence and waits for them to finish their game.

Geralt finds himself going over the things that he and his brothers had done over the winter that might earn them a scolding.

Sure he and Lambert had stolen Lil' Bleater one time, but no goats had been harmed in the process and he'd been returned to Eskell eventually. Maybe the old man had found out about the stash of aged white gull that he and Eskel had hoarded and hidden under the floor in the old laboratory and was upset that they kept it for themselves. Yeah that was probably it, Geralt thinks.

To no one's surprise Eskel wins the game.

Vesemir clears his throat while Geralt is shuffling his deck for the next round.