Chapter 15: Two Outcasts
POV: Viktor
Morning light filtered through the forest canopy like honey through cheesecloth, dappling their small camp in patterns that shifted with every breath of wind. Viktor woke to the sound of Geralt moving through his morning routine—checking weapons, examining tracks, performing the kind of methodical preparation that had kept him alive for a century of dangerous mornings.
"I'm going to scout ahead," the Witcher announced, his voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question. "The road splits about a mile from here. I want to know which path offers the least chance of running into trouble."
Viktor nodded, still working the stiffness out of his joints. Three days of sleeping on the ground had reminded him that his enhanced stats didn't come with enhanced comfort, and his back felt like someone had been using it for percussion practice.
Renfri sat by the dying embers of their fire, her posture suggesting someone who hadn't slept well despite her exhaustion. The bandage on her shoulder needed changing, and Viktor could see dark circles under her eyes that spoke of pain and sleepless hours.
"How's the wound?" he asked as Geralt disappeared into the forest with the fluid grace of a predator in his element.
"It'll heal." Renfri's tone suggested she didn't want to discuss it, but she was examining Viktor's hands with the kind of attention that made him self-conscious. "Your blisters are infected."
Viktor looked down at his palms, which were indeed a mess of broken skin and angry red inflammation. Two weeks of brutal training followed by his desperate flight through Blaviken had left his hands looking like raw meat, and he'd been too focused on survival to properly tend them.
"I'll be fine."
"No, you won't. Not without treatment." Renfri moved closer, her green eyes focused on his hands with professional assessment. "Hold still."
She produced a small vial from her pack—some kind of healing salve that smelled of herbs and something sharper, more medicinal. Her touch was surprisingly gentle as she cleaned the wounds, her fingers cool against his fevered skin.
"You saved my life," she said quietly, not looking up from her work. "In Blaviken. You risked everything to keep me alive, and I don't understand why."
Viktor watched her face as she tended his injuries, noting the way her jaw tightened when she concentrated, the fine lines around her eyes that spoke of years spent squinting into hostile sunlight.
"Because you didn't deserve to die for Stregobor's sins."
"I was supposed to die in Blaviken." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact, as if she were discussing the weather. "It was written. Prophesied. The ending to my story. You stole it from me."
There was something in her voice—not quite accusation, but not gratitude either. A kind of hollow confusion that suggested someone whose entire worldview had been built around a single inevitable conclusion.
"Stories can be rewritten."
"Can they?" Renfri's hands stilled on his palms, her gaze finally meeting his. "I spent forty years preparing to die in that marketplace. Every choice I made, every breath I took, it was all leading to that moment. And now..."
She gestured vaguely at the forest around them, at the morning light and the sound of birds beginning their daily chorus.
"Now I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know who I am if I'm not the cursed princess seeking revenge. I don't know how to be anything else."
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. Her entire identity had been forged in the fires of trauma and vengeance, and now that those defining elements were gone, she was adrift.
"You get to choose," he said softly. "For the first time in your life, you get to decide what comes next. Not prophecy, not destiny, 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. "I was five years old when Stregobor marked me for death. Everything I learned after that was about survival, about revenge, about becoming strong enough to face my ending. I never learned how to live."
Viktor wanted to offer her some profound wisdom, some perfect words that would make sense of the impossible situation she found herself in. But he was just a software developer from Earth who'd accidentally rewritten destiny, and profound wisdom wasn't exactly his specialty.
"Nobody knows how to live," he said finally. "That's what makes it terrifying and wonderful and worth doing. You learn as you go, make mistakes, figure things out piece by piece."
Renfri finished bandaging his hands, her movements efficient and professional. But when she looked up at him, there was something different in her eyes—not the hollow confusion of earlier, but a spark of something that might have been curiosity.
"Teach me something," she said suddenly.
"What?"
"Anything. Something that has nothing to do with killing or surviving or getting revenge. Teach me something normal people know."
Viktor racked his brain for skills that would translate to a medieval fantasy world and came up empty. His expertise in software development, video games, and Earth pop culture wasn't exactly applicable to their current situation.
"I'm not sure I know anything normal people know."
"Then I'll teach you something." Renfri stood up and moved to her pack, producing a knife that looked like it had been crafted by someone who understood the aesthetic of violence. "Basic blade work. Everyone should know how to defend themselves."
For the next hour, Renfri guided Viktor through the fundamentals of knife fighting—grip, stance, basic strikes and parries. He was, as expected, absolutely terrible at it. His movements were clumsy, his timing was off, and his form was so bad that Renfri actually winced watching him attempt a simple thrust.
But something interesting happened during their sparring sessions. Viktor's Premonition Sense, that passive ability that had saved his life multiple times, began to activate during Renfri's attacks. He couldn't predict them with the precision of Temporal Sense, but he could feel the strikes coming a split second before they landed, allowing him to dodge or block with surprising effectiveness.
"You're a terrible fighter," Renfri observed after Viktor successfully evaded her fifteenth consecutive attack. "But you see it coming. That's... useful."
"Useful how?"
"In a real fight, seeing the attack coming is half the battle. If you can master the basics—if you can turn prediction into proper technique—you might actually be dangerous."
There was something in her voice that hadn't been there before—respect, maybe, or at least recognition that Viktor was more than just the bumbling prophet who'd accidentally saved her life. It was a small thing, but it felt significant.
They were still practicing when Geralt returned, his expression suggesting someone who'd discovered information he wasn't entirely happy about.
"Road's clear for now," the Witcher reported, settling into the kind of relaxed crouch that suggested he was prepared to move quickly if necessary. "But there are signs of recent bandit activity. We'll want to avoid the main routes."
Viktor nodded, then decided to ask the question that had been building in his mind since their exile from Blaviken.
"What am I?"
Geralt's amber eyes studied him with the kind of attention usually reserved for particularly interesting monsters.
"I was hoping you'd tell me."
"Stregobor called me a chronomancer. What does that mean?"
The temperature in the clearing seemed to drop several degrees. Geralt's hand didn't move toward his sword, but Viktor caught the subtle shift in his posture that suggested the Witcher was reassessing threat levels.
"Time magic," Geralt said quietly. "Practitioners who could manipulate the flow of time itself. See the future, change the past, step outside the normal progression of moments."
"That sounds... powerful."
"It was. Too powerful. After the Conjunction of the Spheres, when the first mages began experimenting with chronomancy, they nearly tore the Continent apart. Timelines colliding, paradoxes spawning monsters, entire cities aging decades in minutes or trapped in temporal loops."
Viktor felt ice water in his veins as he realized the implications of what Geralt was saying.
"They banned it."
"More than banned it. They hunted down every practitioner they could find. Made it punishable by death just to possess chronomantic knowledge. The few who escaped went into hiding so deep that most people think the art died out entirely."
Viktor activated Success Rate Analysis, needing to know if his newfound knowledge had just made him a target for execution.
"Success Rate Analysis: Will Geralt kill me for being a chronomancer?"
[MANA DECREASED: 95 → 65]
[SUCCESS RATE: 15% - WITCHER'S CODE FORBIDS KILLING HUMANS WITHOUT CONTRACT]
[PRIMARY FACTORS: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, LACK OF HOSTILE INTENT, RECENT ALLIANCE]
[SECONDARY FACTORS: LEGAL COMPLICATIONS, UNCERTAIN JURISDICTION, PERSONAL CURIOSITY]
[NOTE: RISK INCREASES SIGNIFICANTLY IF SUBJECT DEMONSTRATES DANGEROUS TEMPORAL MANIPULATION]
Fifteen percent. Not great odds, but better than Viktor had feared. The Witcher's professional code was apparently stronger than his concern about dangerous magic users.
"You're not going to try to kill me, are you?"
"Not unless you give me reason to." Geralt's tone was matter-of-fact, the voice of someone discussing practical concerns rather than making threats. "Witchers hunt monsters, not people. Even people with dangerous abilities."
"What if the authorities decide I'm too dangerous to live?"
"Then we'll deal with that when it happens."
The casual way Geralt said "we" sent a warm flutter through Viktor's chest. Not "you'll deal with it" or "that's your problem," but "we." As if the three of them were a unit now, bound together by shared exile and mutual dependence.
"So I'm a time wizard," Viktor said, trying to inject some humor into the conversation. "At least I'm not boring."
To his surprise, Renfri actually laughed—a real laugh, not the bitter sound he'd heard from her before. It was warm and genuine and entirely unexpected, transforming her face from something carved from ice into something almost radiant.
Even Geralt's perpetual glare softened slightly, his mouth twitching in what might have been the beginning of a smile.
For a moment, sitting in that forest clearing with two of the most dangerous people on the Continent, Viktor felt something he hadn't experienced since arriving in this world: he felt like he belonged somewhere.
It was a dangerous feeling in a dangerous world, but Viktor found himself reluctant to let it go.
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