It was the 23rd of March. A week had passed since those etchings had been burned into his hand, and not a day passed without those events playing through Kozin's mind.

They had returned to An Skellig to rejoin with Arda and Theila. It didn't take a sharp eye to see that the black-haired witcher was even more quiet and stony than usual. Where there should have been words of greeting and heartwarming reunion, there were none. Kozin couldn't help but feel the sorceress's gaze follow him as he passed wordlessly by the women, trailed by the voice of Arda happily welcoming Oslan.

For the rest of the evening, he sat by the dock, watching the sun sink into the distance. The fishermen pulling their catches onto shore largely ignored the brooding witcher. His silent vigil masked the tempest of conflicting emotions swirling around in his head. One moment, he was placated as he came up with strategies to beat Gaunter. The next moment, his thoughts wailed despairingly that Kozin had doomed himself.

For a while, the docks were empty. Everything was still, except for the occasional cloud of smoke that puffed against the darkening air. Then Kozin heard sharp heels hitting the pier. He didn't turn, instead taking another deep pull from the pipe. Over the bitterness of perique, he caught the sharp sweetness of freesia.

The heels stopped just short of where he was. Kozin could practically hear the gears turning in Theila's head as she struggled with how to break the silence. Kozin wasn't blind to what she had come here for.

After blowing a stream of smoke out, he said, "I'm fine."

"I don't think you are."

Kozin felt a jab of irritation. Sometimes her protectiveness got a little too overbearing. "Stop reading my mind."

"I don't even need to." The rope that ran from post to post creaked from the sorceress's weight as she sat down. Kozin finally turned to her. Theila was sitting on the rope at an angle, her legs tilted as though she were riding sidesaddle on a horse. An arm rested delicately over a post. She was staring over the water. "Don't worry. I'll be out of your hair soon enough. I need to head back." She sighed, and continued, "Tell me you have some good news about Andryk that I can bring back to him."

Kozin looked down at the wet planks of the pier. "He'll be back soon." If the grandmaster had been here, he would've heard the lie in Kozin's voice. The end of March was drawing near, and things were looking more and more bleak.

His distress was not lost on the sorceress. "Do you want to talk?" Theila offered.

"No."

"About something else. Anything else. Just to get your mind off of things."

This time, he didn't turn down the offer. But Kozin didn't know if that was even possible. Never had he stopped thinking about what was to come. "Sure," he said.

"So what shall we discuss?"

"I don't know," Kozin grumbled before sticking the end of his pipe back into his mouth. "Just… tell me about you."

"Me?"

"I don't know much about you," Kozin realized. Ironic, considering all the years he'd known her. "Where do you go when you're not wintering at the island?"

"Various things," Theila said, reclining more heavily onto the post as she began. "I teach, I research, I consult. All things that probably seem very dull to you."

"You teach?"

"Yes, every fall at Vintrica, a school of sorcery up in the Dragon Mountains. It's my alma mater, you could say."

Of course Theila had gone to a school of sorcery—anyone connected to the Source who never learned how to handle it were doomed to madness. He'd never heard of Vintrica before, but then again how could he have? "What do you teach?"

"Elementalism. Specifically, weather-related magic."

"That does sound boring."

"I could conjure up a bolt of lightning from the heavens right now to strike you."

"Sky's clear."

"Won't stop me."

Kozin chuckled. Their little conversation was working—he was beginning to feel the heavy cloud of dread break apart. "So what's it like? Going through a school of sorcery?"

"Much more tame than being in a witcher school, I can tell you that," Theila said with a tinkling laugh. "And much more diverse. In your guild, you learn how to be a witcher, and that's it. Schools of sorcery are structured around different practices. Many girls simply choose to have a well-rounded education and get an adequate scope of all practices. They'll become your typical sorceresses and go on to serve as political advisors. Then there are some who continue to pursue certain practices in greater detail and become Magi."

"And what did you do?"

"Well, after my apprenticeship, I became a certified Magus of Alchemy. I went on to be an apothecary auditor—now I bet you didn't know that kind of thing existed."

"If it's not a breed of monster, then I don't know much about it," Kozin joked. "What did you do? Regulate apothecaries?"

"Well…" the sorceress replied slowly as she thought. "You could say that. I traveled to apothecaries and alchemist's shops all across Kovir and Redania to inspect their wares. Whether intentional or by mistake, wrong ingredients get stocked and sold under false names. A lot of ingredients—especially leafy plants and dusts—look exceedingly similar. You could see how the shopkeeper of a small apothecary in a no-name village, with limited alchemy knowhow, could mix them up. Other apothecaries in larger areas tend to sell wrong ingredients fraudulently to cut corners. Some ingredients are so indistinct that it takes magic to tell them apart, which is why a sorcerer or sorceress is usually required for the job.

"Most of the time, the work was drab—sorting through boxes and cubbies of dried herbs, mushrooms, animal blood, saps, monster parts, and everything else to make you lose your enthusiasm for lunch. The really exciting, though unfortunate, moments on the job were when you stumbled upon illegal wares. Now, as you can imagine, the owners aren't about to stick their illicitly gathered human or elf parts in the same storehouse as their usual ones. I've seen all kinds of hiding methods, from the cliché under-the-floorboard compartment to off-site caches to even the use of spells to try and disguise them. Of course, no matter how faint the trail, it's always easy to find if you know what to look for. Usually the biggest indicator was the look of fleeting panic on the shopkeeper's face when I stepped through the door."

Kozin quietly puffed on his pipe, having gone through a second chamber-full of perique. He told himself he needed to slow down or he'd find himself with an empty leaf pouch—a fate worse than death. Very few places sold perique, and the few places that did stock it did not price it lightly.

"How long ago was this?" Kozin asked.

Theila flashed him a grin. "Is this another attempt at finding my age?" she wondered with an air of laughter in her voice. "You'll have to forgive me, but I'm not about to give that away, my dear. But I will divulge that this was before I met your grandmaster."

"Before?"

"I know it might seem like it, and it indeed does feel that way, but I didn't know Undevar my entire life," Theila said.

"How did you meet him?"

Theila remained silent and turned her gaze out towards the water. Her olive eyes clouded, and it seemed to Kozin that she was dredging up memories that had been still for longer than he could imagine.

"I don't like talking about it, Kozin," she began carefully. "And I don't want you to hear about it. It would give you the wrong impression of your grandmaster. He was a very different man then. He wasn't true to himself, as he is now." She looked back to him and resumed her casual, reclined position.

"I can tell you about how I came to Skellige," she offered, maneuvering around the original question before Kozin had a chance to insist on it again. "At some point, I finally decided that I wasn't going to sift through the dusty backrooms of apothecaries for the rest of my extended life. I returned to Vintrica to become a Magus of Elementalism. One thing I'd noticed through my travels was the ruin brought on by drought. I wanted to study weather patterns and find a way to lessen drought in some areas without damaging their climates. Nature is very unrelenting, but it is very delicate at the same time."

"Like some sorceresses," Kozin cut in.

Again, she laughed. "Very much," Theila replied. "And then, as fate would have it, I was brought to Skellige. There is a place, dangerously west of the islands, that was important to my research—Sansira's Spire."

"I've heard of it," Kozin recalled. Back at the guild, he'd been told it was a tall spire of jagged rock surrounded by miles of open ocean. A never-ending thunderstorm crashed over the spire, churning the water into angry waves and threatening any nearing vessel with torrents of lightning.

"Do you know the story behind it?" Theila asked. Kozin gave a single shake of his head. "There's a little bit of variation between the songs the skalds sing and the folklore that's told around fires, but generally the story is this—a phoenix named Sansira defied the will of the sea gods and chose to lay her eggs on the tip of their sacred spire. Despite their warnings, she did it because it was the highest point in Skellige, the closest to the sun. To punish her defiance, the sea gods cursed the spire with an eternal storm so that the eggs would never be able to touch sunlight and hatch, and so that Sansira would never be able to return to them."

"Cheerful," Kozin replied sarcastically. "I can imagine parents telling this to their children as they're tucking them in. What sweet dreams they must have."

"It's just a story, Kozin—another instrument to teach Skellige's youth to respect the gods. It wasn't their power that caused the storm. It's magic—a set of runes engrained into the side of the rock by an ancient druid for whatever reason."

"Well thanks for ruining the story for me."

"Don't tell me you believe in that stuff—the wrath of the sea gods and all that."

"Couldn't give less of a shit," he grunted.

Something creaked. Both looked over to see a straggling fisherman tying back the sail to a small boat. His back was to them. A protective scarf was tied to his head, though the sun had long since set.

Immediately, Theila lost interest and looked back over the water. "Anyway," she continued, "that's when I met your grandmaster. Niyette—the woman who had been my mistress during my apprenticeship—and I were situated in Kaer Trolde during our stay. We needed a witcher to guide us to Sansira's Spire. As you can imagine, we were met with no short amount of rejection. The seas to the west of Skellige are dangerous enough without needing to sail headfirst into a cursed, eternal storm. Not only that, but… well, Bear was very different back then. They held to very patriarchal values, mixed with just a dash of charming misogyny. Our very existence as educated women seemed to offend them. Then, finally, one witcher agreed to help us." The sorceress's lips tweaked into a small smile. "At that time, I never would have thought that anything would come of it. My feelings for that boy were far from romantic."

"Boy?" Kozin echoed. It seemed wrong to call Undevar something like that. To Kozin, it was hard to attribute youth to the grandmaster.

"To me, that was what he seemed like. Undevar was in his sixties when we met. I was in my nineties."

Now that was something Kozin didn't expect to hear. He took the pipe from his mouth. "So…" The rest of his words failed to show.

Theila shook her head. "I think I've said far too much," she laughed. The sorceress stood and smoothed the dress around her thighs. "It's getting late. I should go. Knowing him, he might even try and leave the island." Her hands stilled by her side. "Funny how that island's become like a prison for him. He had his heart set on becoming grandmaster for as long as I can recall, but I wonder if he misses the days when we used to…" She stopped herself and looked down with an embarrassed smile. Despite the pristineness preserved by her glamor, Kozin spied the weariness of time on her face.

With a sharp clearing of her throat, Theila washed the wistfulness from her face and looked up. "I should go," she repeated. "Good night, Kozin. Bring Andryk home, okay? I trust you'll be able to do it."

Kozin listened to the gentle thumps of her heels fade from the dock. The chamber of his pipe and the ashen dust within were cold. Slowly, he turned the pipe over and watched the trails of dust drift away in the weak night breeze. Perhaps it was time to turn in and wrestle with the prospect of sleep.

But the night wasn't over. Someone cleared their throat loudly, obnoxiously.

Kozin glanced over without turning his head. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the lone fisherman. Something about him looked… familiar. It made Kozin turn his head.

"I thought she'd never leave!" the lone fisherman exclaimed, whipping the scarf from his head and throwing it into the water over his shoulder. Kozin scowled and turned away as Gaunter moseyed over to him. "You ought to be careful of that one, Kozin. Don't you know sorceresses are conniving, scheming little she-devils? Underneath all that glamor is something truly terrifying. That vixen is no different. I wonder how many skeletons she's got in that oversized closet of hers?" A course chuckle rumbled from his throat as he crossed his arms.

"I know of one, and let me tell you—that skeleton's going to come rattling back out. Oh, the madness people resort to for love." Kozin noticed the Bear medallion still hung around Gaunter's neck. Hate pulsed through him.

"Why are you here?"

"Just here to check up on you, dear friend. Only a week until the big day, and I want to make sure you're still up for the challenge. We said this would be fair, after all." He smiled at Kozin. "And I intend to keep my word."

"Leave me alone."

"Careful what you ask for," Gaunter warned, slipping a hand out to wag his finger. "You might get exactly what you want. Be wary of the skeleton, my friend."

"What is that supposed to—?" Kozin looked around. He was alone on the dock.

What kind of man would forsake his name?

What kind of man puts his faith in a game?

What kind of man only wants to bleed?

Everybody knows that the man is me

"The Man is Me"—The Spiritual Machines