Chapter 14: The Outcasts
POV: Viktor
"All of you. Out."
Caldemeyn's words carried the weight of absolute authority, cutting through the marketplace's aftermath like a blade through silk. The alderman stood in the center of the blood-stained cobblestones, his daughter clutched protectively against his side, and his face showing the kind of grim determination that belonged to a man who'd just watched his world nearly collapse.
"I don't care what you did or why you did it," he continued, his gaze sweeping across Viktor, Geralt, and Renfri with equal disfavor. "I don't care about prophecies or destinies or whatever grand purpose brought you here. What I care about is that my town turned into a battlefield, my people were threatened, and my daughter was used as a pawn in someone else's game."
Viktor tried to stand, his legs still shaky from the aftereffects of Temporal Sense. Marilka looked at him with something that might have been gratitude, but her father's expression suggested that gratitude wouldn't be enough to overcome the practical concerns of governing a traumatized populace.
"But the girl saved—" someone in the crowd started to protest.
"The girl is alive because this man—" Caldemeyn gestured toward Viktor "—took it upon himself to involve her in magical politics that should never have touched this town. Intentions don't change consequences."
Geralt nodded slowly, the gesture of someone who understood the mathematics of leadership. "How long do we have?"
"Gone by dawn. All three of you. And don't come back."
Viktor wanted to argue, wanted to explain that he'd saved lives, that he'd prevented a massacre. But looking around the marketplace—at the covered bodies, the frightened faces, the blood that would take days to scrub clean—he realized that Caldemeyn was right. Good intentions or not, Viktor's presence had brought violence to people who deserved better.
"I understand," Geralt said quietly. He helped Renfri adjust her makeshift bandage, the princess still too pale but stable enough to travel. "We'll be gone within the hour."
As the crowd dispersed, Viktor found himself part of an unlikely trio: a legendary Witcher, a cursed princess, and whatever the hell he was supposed to be. The "mad prophet" who'd somehow dodged death for two straight minutes and lived to tell the tale.
"Guess I'm the Butcher's sidekick now," Viktor muttered, testing his legs and finding them marginally more cooperative than they'd been moments before.
Geralt shot him a look that might have been amusement. "I'm not the Butcher."
"Right. Sorry. Guess I'm Geralt's sidekick now."
"You're not my sidekick either."
"Then what am I?"
The Witcher considered this for a moment, his amber eyes studying Viktor with the kind of attention usually reserved for particularly interesting specimens.
"I have no idea."
They gathered what few possessions they had—which, in Viktor's case, consisted of one remaining mana potion and the clothes on his back—and left Blaviken through the same gates Viktor had entered just days before. The guards watched them go with obvious relief, and Viktor caught more than one whispered prayer of thanks that the dangerous strangers were finally leaving.
The road beyond Blaviken stretched into forest that looked exactly like every other forest Viktor had seen in this world: ancient, vast, and filled with things that wanted to eat him. They walked in silence, three people who had nothing in common except the shared experience of having their lives irrevocably altered in the space of a few hours.
Geralt led, his posture suggesting someone who was accustomed to solitary travel but not necessarily happy about it. His medallion had stopped vibrating around Viktor, but the Witcher's attention still occasionally drifted to his unexpected companions as if he were trying to solve a puzzle that didn't have all its pieces.
Renfri walked in the middle, her steps careful but steady despite the blood loss. She moved like someone who was still processing the fact that she was alive, her green eyes holding a kind of hollow confusion that spoke of plans abandoned and purposes left unfulfilled. The silver brooch from Viktor's visions was still pinned to her cloak, catching the afternoon sunlight like captured tears.
Viktor brought up the rear, his system interface providing a steady stream of information that he was trying to process without looking completely insane.
[CURRENT STATISTICS:]
[STRENGTH: 1.9 - ABOVE AVERAGE HUMAN]
[STAMINA: 10.0 - ENHANCED HUMAN]
[AGILITY: 3.7 - SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCED]
[MAGIC: 1.5 - MINOR SUPERNATURAL ABILITIES]
[HEALTH: 19/19]
[MANA: 25/100]
[SYSTEM POINTS: 865]
He was stronger now, faster, more durable than he'd been when this nightmare started. Not enough to match a Witcher or a trained warrior, but enough to be something more than a liability. The achievements had boosted his capabilities significantly, though Viktor suspected he was still closer to "enhanced human" than "legendary hero."
As the hours passed and Blaviken disappeared behind them, Viktor found himself studying his companions and trying to understand the dynamics of their newly formed group. Geralt seemed to be treating their exile as a temporary inconvenience, his attention focused on practical concerns like finding shelter and avoiding bandits. But there was something else in his demeanor—a tension that spoke of someone grappling with philosophical questions that had no easy answers.
Renfri was harder to read. She moved with mechanical precision, following Geralt's lead without complaint or comment. But Viktor caught her touching the brooch occasionally, her fingers tracing the intricate metalwork like a talisman against uncertainty.
"She doesn't know what to do now," Viktor realized. "Her whole life was built around revenge. Now that Stregobor's gone and she's alive... what's left?"
They made camp as the sun began to set, finding a clearing that offered some protection from the wind and a clear view of the surrounding forest. Geralt built a fire with the efficiency of long practice, while Renfri sat on a fallen log and stared into the growing flames with the expression of someone seeing visions in the dancing light.
Viktor settled against a tree and tried to meditate, hoping to regenerate some of his depleted MP. But concentration was difficult when his mind kept returning to the events in the marketplace, analyzing what had gone right and what could have gone catastrophically wrong.
"How did you do it?"
Renfri's voice cut through the evening silence, startling Viktor out of his attempted meditation. The princess was looking at him directly for the first time since leaving Blaviken, her green eyes reflecting the firelight.
"Do what?"
"Survive. For two minutes, you danced around a toxin-enhanced Witcher like you could see every move before he made it. That's not normal human ability."
Viktor glanced at Geralt, who was sharpening his silver sword with methodical precision but clearly listening to every word.
"I see things sometimes. Possible futures. Glimpses of what might happen."
"Prophecy."
"Not exactly. More like... enhanced pattern recognition."
It wasn't entirely a lie. The system did provide enhanced pattern recognition, just not in the way normal people would understand it.
"And you saw Blaviken? You knew what would happen?"
"I knew what was supposed to happen. What I saw in my... visions... was a marketplace painted red. A princess dead for revenge that would accomplish nothing. A Witcher earning a title that would haunt him for the rest of his life."
Geralt's sharpening stone paused for just a moment before resuming its rhythmic motion.
"So you decided to change it," Renfri said. It wasn't a question.
"I decided to try. I didn't know if it would work."
"It worked." Renfri's hand drifted to her shoulder, where the bandage covered Geralt's strike. "I'm alive when I should be dead. Stregobor is disgraced instead of vindicated. The child is safe instead of traumatized."
She was quiet for a long moment, staring into the fire as if searching for answers in the flames.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
The question hung in the air like smoke, and Viktor realized that Renfri wasn't just asking him—she was asking the universe itself. For forty years, her life had been defined by a single purpose: revenge against the man who'd destroyed her childhood. Now that purpose was gone, and she was adrift in a world that had no place for cursed princesses with nothing left to curse.
"Live," Viktor said finally. "For the first time in your life, you get to choose what comes next. Not Stregobor, not prophecy, not the weight of the past. You."
"I don't know how."
The admission was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of decades of pain and confusion. Viktor felt his heart clench with sympathy for this woman who'd been turned into a weapon before she was old enough to understand what that meant.
"Nobody knows how. That's what makes it interesting."
Viktor tried to lighten the mood by sharing the story of his first day in this world—the drowner that had killed itself, his "legendary" victory through sheer incompetence, the absolute absurdity of starting his hero's journey by accidentally drowning a monster.
For the first time since Blaviken, Renfri's lips twitched in something that might have been the beginning of a smile. Even Geralt's glare seemed to soften slightly, though the Witcher's expression remained carefully neutral.
As the fire burned lower and the forest settled into its nighttime rhythm, Viktor felt something he hadn't experienced since arriving in this world: a sense of belonging. Not to destiny or prophecy or some grand cosmic plan, but to this small group of outcasts who'd found each other in the aftermath of tragedy.
Viktor's meditation finally started working, his MP regenerating at the standard 5% per hour. As exhaustion began to claim him, he felt himself toppling sideways toward the ground.
Renfri caught him before he hit the dirt, her hands surprisingly gentle as she guided him into a more comfortable position. The gesture was small, practical, the kind of thing anyone might do for a travel companion.
But it was also the first time in weeks that someone had touched Viktor with anything approaching care.
Geralt watched this interaction without comment, but Viktor caught something in the Witcher's amber eyes that might have been approval. Or maybe just recognition that their strange little group was developing its own dynamics.
As sleep claimed him, Viktor's last coherent thought was wonder at how dramatically his life had changed. A week ago, he'd been a nobody from Earth, dying alone in his apartment. Now he was an exile from Blaviken, traveling with a legendary Witcher and a princess who should have been dead.
It wasn't the life he'd planned, but it was beginning to feel like the life he was meant to have.
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