Chapter 13: BROTHERS IN ARMS
Stone dust coated my hands, my clothes, everything.
Vesemir had decided the eastern curtain wall needed repairs before the next heavy snow, and apparently "needed repairs" translated to "complete reconstruction of a thirty-foot section that had been crumbling since before I was born in either of my lives."
"Mortar," he called down from atop the scaffolding.
I hoisted another bucket—the fourth this hour—and climbed the makeshift ladder with muscles that had stopped complaining somewhere around bucket number twelve yesterday. The work was simple in principle and brutal in execution: clear debris, prepare stone, mix mortar, fit blocks, repeat until the wall stopped threatening to collapse.
"You're getting better at this," Vesemir observed, taking the bucket without looking. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, spreading mortar across a seating stone. "First day, you dropped three buckets."
"First day, I hadn't figured out the ladder was missing a rung."
"The ladder's been missing that rung for forty years. Lambert broke it trying to prove he could climb one-handed."
That sounds exactly like Lambert.
I settled onto the scaffolding beside Vesemir, watching him work. The old Witcher moved with an economy of motion that came from doing the same tasks for centuries—no wasted effort, no hesitation, just smooth repetition that turned manual labor into something almost meditative.
"Did you build this wall originally?"
"Rebuilt it. Twice." He fitted a stone into place, checked the alignment, made a minute adjustment. "First time was after the pogrom. Second was after a griffin decided the tower made a good nest. We convinced it otherwise."
The pogrom. I knew about that from meta-knowledge—the mob that had stormed Kaer Morhen, killed most of the Witchers, destroyed the mutagens that created new ones. Vesemir was one of the few survivors, left to maintain a dying fortress for a dying breed.
"Must be hard," I said carefully. "Watching the keep fall apart. Knowing there won't be new Witchers to maintain it."
Vesemir's hands paused. For a moment, something ancient and tired flickered behind his eyes.
"Everything falls apart eventually. The question is what you do in the meantime." He resumed working, voice steady. "I trained boys who became legends. Watched them ride out and sometimes not come back. Lost count of the funerals I've conducted in the courtyard." He glanced at me, expression unreadable. "But I also watched Geralt bring Ciri here. Watched Lambert and Eskel become the men they are. Watched you crawl out of the earth and decide to help instead of destroy."
"How did you know I had that choice?"
"Because everyone does." He set another stone. "The question is never what we're made for. It's what we make of ourselves."
The words settled into my chest like stones into mortar. I thought about the memory fragment—the elven architects arguing about protection and destruction, about choices left to unknown future consciousness.
They didn't know who would wake up in their weapon. But Vesemir's right. The choice was always mine.
We worked in silence for another hour. By the time we finished the day's section, my arms felt like they'd been replaced with lead weights and my back had developed opinions about manual labor that it expressed through sharp, insistent pain.
But the wall was stronger than it had been this morning. And something else felt stronger too.
[RELATIONSHIP UPDATE: VESEMIR +5]
Lambert found me three nights later.
I'd claimed a spot near the smaller hearth in the secondary hall—the one the Witchers used when they wanted to drink without Vesemir's disapproving presence. The fire had burned low, and I was nursing a cup of something that might have been mead if mead had decided to become aggressive.
"Basement boy."
Lambert dropped into the chair across from me, a bottle in one hand and an expression I didn't recognize. The sharp edges were gone, smoothed away by alcohol or exhaustion or something else entirely.
"Lambert."
"Couldn't sleep." He took a long drink from the bottle, then offered it my way. "You?"
"Thinking too much."
"That's a problem around here." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "This place does that. Too quiet. Too much time to remember things you'd rather forget."
I accepted the bottle. The liquid burned going down—stronger than the mead, with a bitter undertone that suggested Lambert hadn't raided the good supplies.
"What are you trying to forget?"
The question came out before I could stop it. Lambert's eyes narrowed for a moment, and I expected the usual deflection—a sharp comment, a change of subject, the walls snapping back into place.
Instead, he stared into the dying fire.
"I didn't choose this. Being a Witcher." His voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it. "My father gave me away. Law of Surprise, except he knew exactly what he was doing. Got rid of an unwanted son and called it destiny."
I knew this from meta-knowledge. But hearing him say it...
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm better at killing monsters than I ever would have been at... whatever he wanted." Lambert took the bottle back, drank deep. "But sometimes I wonder what the other life would have looked like. The one where I got to choose."
I thought about my own situation. Dying on a Vermont highway, waking in an ancient body, discovering I'd been designed for a purpose I hadn't asked for.
"I understand that more than you know," I said carefully. "Waking up without a past. Without a choice about what I am. Just... existing in something someone else made."
Lambert's eyes found mine. For a moment, the masks were down—both of us, just two people shaped by forces beyond their control.
"At least you got to start fresh." He smiled, but it was worn thin. "No father's ghost whispering that you were never wanted."
"No. Just an entire body full of instincts I'm still learning to trust."
Silence stretched between us. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the keep, a door creaked in the wind.
"You're not terrible company, basement boy." Lambert stood, leaving the bottle on the table between us. "Don't make me regret saying that."
He walked away before I could respond. I sat with the fire and the bottle and the weight of shared understanding until the flames died to embers.
[RELATIONSHIP UPDATE: LAMBERT +5]
Eskel's invitation came the next morning.
"Perimeter check," he said, appearing beside me at breakfast with the silent approach that seemed standard for Witchers. "Could use company."
I recognized it for what it was—not a need for assistance, but an offer of time. The perimeter check was a two-hour walk around the keep's outer boundaries, checking for monster activity, structural damage, anything that might threaten the fortress.
We walked for thirty minutes before either of us spoke.
The forest pressed close around the old paths, winter having stripped the trees to silver skeletons. Our breath misted in the cold air, and I found myself appreciating the small pleasures I'd learned to notice since transmigrating—the crunch of frozen ground underfoot, the clarity of mountain air, the simple satisfaction of moving through a world that didn't exist where I came from.
Hot showers. Good coffee. Those were luxuries in that other life. Here, the luxury is just surviving long enough to see another sunrise.
"You're thinking loudly," Eskel said.
I glanced at him. "Didn't know that was possible."
"It isn't." The scarred side of his face pulled into something that might have been a smile. "But you carry tension in your shoulders when something's bothering you. You've been doing it for days."
Perceptive bastard.
"Just processing things. This life is... a lot to take in."
Eskel nodded, accepting the half-truth without pressing. We continued walking, noting a spot where rockfall had partially blocked a secondary path, marking it for later clearing.
"You're carrying something heavy," he said finally. "Something you haven't told the others."
My stride faltered. "What makes you say that?"
"Because I've been carrying heavy things for a century." His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "Recognize the signs. The way you look at Ciri sometimes—like you know something you can't say. The way you train twice as hard as anyone asks. The way you always position yourself between her and the nearest exit."
Damn. I thought I was being subtle.
"I'm not going to hurt her." The words came out firmer than I intended.
"I know." Eskel stopped walking, turning to face me directly. "If I thought you were a threat, we wouldn't be having this conversation." He held my gaze for a long moment. "You don't have to tell me what it is. Just know that we've all got our weight. And sometimes, sharing the load makes it lighter."
The offer hung in the air between us. I could tell him—tell him about the memory fragment, about the choice between protection and destruction, about the fears that woke me in the night.
But not yet. Not when the truth was still settling into shape.
"Thank you," I said instead. "When I'm ready to talk about it... you'll be one of the first."
Eskel nodded once, apparently satisfied with the answer. We resumed walking, and the silence that followed felt different than before—not empty, but full of understanding that didn't require words.
[RELATIONSHIP UPDATE: ESKEL +5]
That evening, we gathered around the main hearth.
All of us—Vesemir in his chair by the fire, Geralt leaning against the wall with his characteristic economy of space, Lambert sprawled across two seats because he couldn't do anything simply, Eskel in his usual corner where he could see every entrance, and me.
Ciri had retired early, exhausted from another day of training that hadn't quite produced the results anyone wanted. But the rest of us lingered, passing bottles and stories as the fire painted shadows on ancient stone.
"—and that's when the cockatrice decided the best defensive strategy was to shit on Lambert's head," Eskel was saying.
"That was ONE TIME—"
"Three times," Geralt corrected without looking up. "I was there for two of them."
"The second one doesn't count. I was already covered in ichor."
"That makes it worse, not better."
Laughter echoed off the walls—real laughter, the kind that came from years of shared history and the comfortable cruelty of people who genuinely loved each other.
I found myself joining in, the sound strange in my own ears. When had laughter started feeling natural again?
Since waking up in that dusty chamber. Since crawling toward a light I couldn't see. Since deciding to survive.
Vesemir's terrible cooking sat heavy in my stomach—mystery stew again, and I'd made the mistake of asking about ingredients exactly once. His flat "Don't ask" had become a running joke, invoked whenever anyone questioned anything in the kitchen.
"You're grinning like an idiot," Lambert observed.
"Just thinking about how much better this is than eating endrega for dinner."
The others exchanged glances. I'd mentioned my first days underground only in passing, but they knew enough to understand the reference.
"Please tell me you didn't actually eat endrega," Lambert said.
"I found rations eventually." I took a long drink. "But it was a close thing."
More laughter. More stories. The fire burned low, and eventually even Lambert stopped competing for who could tell the most embarrassing tale.
In the quiet that followed, I looked around the room at the people who had become my family. Vesemir, ancient and patient, carrying the weight of a dying order. Geralt, protective and guarded, watching over a daughter who wasn't his by blood but was his in every way that mattered. Lambert, sharp-edged and soft-hearted, hiding pain behind sarcasm. Eskel, steady and perceptive, offering understanding without demanding explanations.
Home, I thought. This is what home feels like.
The realization settled into my chest like a stone finding its place in a rebuilt wall.
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