Forgot to post this on both accounts...my bad guys.
"Ciri?"
Though Yennefer's words the night before had soundly chastised him, Geralt didn't feel the stress of everything really fall away until he woke the next morning and walked into the foyer, confused by the smell that had roused him. There before him, plain as day, Ciri was placing breakfast on the table and Eskel was sitting with his boots up, gesturing at Geralt in a salute with a bottle of wine already in hand.
"There's the wolf, finally decided to get up huh?" Eskel ribbed, grinning wide.
Ciri was beaming when she looked up and saw him, running over and jumping on him before he barely had time to brace. He was grinning too, wrapping her up in a hug and spinning her around once before setting her down.
"I found him finally, waist deep in muck hunting rotfiends," Ciri said, pointing at Eskel. "We both smelled like death so we took an extra day to clean up before coming out. Figured Yennefer would appreciate it."
"I love you rotfiend guts or no," Yennefer said, appearing in the doorway with nothing short of delight radiating from her features. She wrapped Ciri up in a hug before pulling away. "After all, I wouldn't have chosen to become part of a family of Witchers if I couldn't handle everything that comes with it."
Geralt snorted. "Yen, even when I was sick off elixirs you forced me to take a cold bath because I'd been hunting a Zeugal in the garbage."
"And you felt a lot better afterwards," she said primly, taking an apple from the table and turning to look at him with one eyebrow raised. "The cold cleared your head and even if you hadn't smelled like the combined sewers of Temeria would you really have wanted to wake up covered in mud and blood twelve hours later?"
Geralt rolled his eyes and Yennefer took a bite of her apple, tossing her hair as she moved around the table to take Eskel's sword off of it and lean it against the chair instead. "I thought not."
Eskel took a long drink of the wine while he eyed Yennefer, protectively drawing his sword into his lap. Geralt shook his head and hid his smile, moving around the table to greet Eskel as well. His brother got up and clapped him on the back as they hugged, setting the wine on the table.
"Good to see you. Both of you," Geralt said, looking between Eskel and Ciri.
"And you, though I do have to ask what has the white wolf so cornered that he needs two lowly Witchers to back him up? Has retirement softened you that much?" Eskel teased, sitting again and propping his feet on the chair. Yennefer shot him a disapproving look but he ignored her.
"The only reason you don't have an obnoxious reputation and fifteen titles to go with it is because you don't have a bard that insisted on following you around," Geralt said, crossing his arms and pointing at Eskel. "And Ciri is easily as good as both of us. But I'd like to see any Witcher handle an acre-wide centipede nest by himself and live to tell about it."
Ciri grimaced. "Well. Looks like my training is going to come full circle then. First time we met I was about to become dinner for one of those things."
"Yeah, I remember. Then you spent the rest of our time in Brokilon bossing me around," Geralt said, smiling. He would remember that journey clearly for the rest of his life.
"Yes, well, I was a princess," Ciri said, smirking a little and settling in the chair across from Eskel.
"And now you're a Witcher, funny how things change."
"Says the retired Wolf of Rivia," Eskel said snidely over his wine.
Geralt shot him a look. "You going to just keep cycling through my titles or have you had enough? I avoided finding Lambert for this very reason."
"No, you avoided finding Lambert because you didn't want his sorceress tagging along. She clashes too much with your sorceress."
Yennefer had returned, holding Teya and her morning bottle and she shot Eskel another look.
Ciri, however, suddenly stood, looking wide-eyed at Yennefer with the baby in her arms.
"Yennefer-"
"This is Teya," Yennefer said, reading Ciri's shock and turning so she could see the little girl. "Her mother passed giving birth to her so we are caring for her until her father returns. Word was sent to him but it will be some time before he can get back from the Toussaint border."
"I see," Ciri said softly, observing the baby feed and then looking up at Yennefer with a spark of concern in her eyes. She glanced at Geralt but he shook his head.
We've already been through this, he tried to convey.
"So, centipedes, what do we need to do to prepare?" Eskel said. "I've heard the southern species out here gets bigger than the ones in Brokilon."
"All you need to do to prepare is get the veritable arsenal of bombs out of the wine cellar," Yennefer said, sitting at the table and crossing her legs while she adjusted Teya to burp. She fixed Geralt with a pointed expression.
"I had some time to kill waiting for Ciri to find you," Geralt defended.
Eskel chuckled. "Well then. Seems all we need is to head over and inspect the area. See what approach we want to take. Ciri and I rested at the inn where we cleaned up before heading over so unless she's tired from blinking us all over the world I can go whenever."
Ciri shook her head. "I'm fine. It's not so taxing when you're blinking for convenience instead of running for your life. And I will admit that Aveloch's training helped quite a bit."
"Alright," Geralt said, getting up. "It's settled then. Let me change and we'll go."
A short beat later and Geralt was dressed in his manticore armor, slipping a freshly oiled blade into his sheath and allowing himself a moment to savor the sensation. It felt good to be going out again. On his way out to meet Ciri and Eskel by the stables Yennefer caught his wrist and stopped him in the doorway. She pulled him down and gave him a long kiss.
"Be careful, my wolf," she said, brushing his beard with her knuckles and pressing another kiss to his jaw before letting him go. "I want all of you back in one piece, understand?"
He nodded, smiling at her and reaching up to pick a bloom of honeysuckle from the vine that grew across the door-frame. He brushed her hair back behind one ear and pinned it with the flower, bending to kiss her once more. "I have the best Witchers in any dimension with me, we'll be fine."
Eskel gave a long, low whistle, sitting back in the saddle. Scorpion snorted and tossed his head, but he stayed rock still."That's a lot of damage."
Geralt hummed in the back of his throat, his brow furrowed as they surveyed the landscape from the top of a hill where some of the centipede repellent was still active. He'd gone out to look at the hunting ground before, but the centipedes had mad things worse in the interim. Festering limbs from unfortunate wildlife and even a few horses stank in the afternoon sun and the dark stain of thousands of crushed grapes turned the ground tacky and rough. It was like a festering wound in the earth, and the centipedes still rose and churned the dirt like feeding maggots.
"They must be nesting, why else would there be so many in one place?" Ciri observed, her arms crossed as she thought from her spot on Kelpie's back.
"They are probably nesting," Geralt agreed. "Which means that we will have to be even more careful. Males of this variety get territorial around breeding season, and when the breeding is done they are protective of the eggs. The females are twice as bad." He narrowed his eyes, looking for an identifying mark before one of the massive insects poked its head up and then lunged, smearing an unfortunate rabbit across the field before dragging it down in its pincers. "There. That was a male. The longer mandibles give it away—they use them to spar for mates."
"And that's a female I'll bet," Eskel said, nodding his head towards another that had just ventured above ground and was making its way towards the entrance of a different burrow. "Poison barbs on her back good for defending young."
"The males have poison too, they just spit it at you," Geralt said dryly. He'd been hit in the face with it before and it stung like acid.
"Okay, so they have range and burrowing capability," Ciri said. "But this scent seems to warn them away."
"Only as long as there isn't a threat. Dousing ourselves in it isn't going to do much good. They will fight back the second they realize we aren't what we smell like."
"Then we start with bombs. Create a perimeter, corner them in the middle, use our combined Yrden to trap them and then go to town," Eskel said. "They will go the opposite way of an explosion, so if we can detonate everything at once that should contain the threat."
"And fry most of the eggs," Ciri added.
"Two birds, one explosion," Eskel said, nodding.
"Sounds like a plan. We can have the knights watching the perimeter drop torches on the explosives we lay. Anything in between should detonate by chain reaction. We just have to make sure we are in the middle and ready to trap what we need to to take care of this. There will be dozens of them. Eskel, I'll brew up some white lightning. Ciri, you'll want to rely on your blink to get around them."
"I'm sure we can handle this," Ciri said, clicking her tongue and turning Kelpie down the ridge. "I'll go and tell our allies the plan. Eskel, you lay the bombs while Geralt brews the lightning."
"Yes ma'am," Eskel saluted teasingly, tapping Scorpion with his heels. Geralt smiled and shook his head, turning Roach last and trotting to a nearby grove where he could make a fire and brew in peace.
Two hours later and they all met by the stream running just North of Geralt's grove. He was kneeling with glass bottles held in the water, rapidly cooling and curing his and Eskel's potions. He got up when Ciri and Eskel approached, tossing Eskel his bottle.
"We set to go?"
"Let me add some oil to my blade and then yes," Ciri said, unsheathing her sword and kneeling to buff it with a rag soaked in poison. Geralt and Eskel both drank their potions and knelt with her, waiting for them to kick in.
Just as the sun was beginning to sink towards the evening all three Witchers were ready. They stood on the fringe of the field, swords drawn, bodies tense. Geralt raised a hand, waiting for the right moment. Ciri stepped one foot forward and gave a confident nod. He dropped his hand and all at once explosions rocked the perimeter, fire and ash and rocks shooting skyward one after the other in a massive ring. High-pitched screeching from wounded centipedes filled the air and a frantic rumbling scatter followed as they fled away from the source of the pain. The fire burned hot at the Witchers' backs as they advanced.
Eskel and Geralt split ways, leaving Ciri in the center. They cast Yrden together just as the first males came bursting up, spitting venom and flailing wildly. They seized in the trap of purple magic but were far from neutralized, so Ciri blinked in close and cut both down with a figure-eight sweep of her sword.
Everything after that was a blur. Geralt cut low, Eskel high, pirouetting towards and then away from each other as they guarded each others blind spots with a deadly efficiency. Flashes of Yrden, a crash of Aard, and then a wave of Igni beat the beasts back, limiting their ability to cut and pierce with their mandibles and razor-fringed legs. Ciri stepped in and out of time with a terrifying grace, leaving a blur of green and the spill of viscera all over the field.
Even so, the fight was fraught with difficulty. Geralt narrowly avoided spit poison several times and a few minutes in Eskel suffered a harsh blow to his left leg when one of the centipedes flailed in its death throw hard enough to slam him onto his back. Geralt had ducked and rolled beneath two others to leap over Eskel and block the killing blow with his sword, stepping around and bending to yank him up in one fluid motion before blocking again.
The fight went on longer than any had fully anticipated. The infestation was absolutely massive and the explosives had not done as much damage as Geralt had hoped. The end did seem to be in sight when a particularly enraged female burst so harshly through the ground that it knocked Geralt on his back and the wind clean out of him. He jarred hard enough that his sword went skittering away and he tensed, arching his back as he tried to breathe.
"Geralt!" Eskel called, hacking hard at his current foe and leaping over another, beheading it with a clean sweep before hitting, rolling, and continuing to run to his brother's side. Ciri was there before he could be, taking on the young queen herself, slicing half her face off with an upward arch of silver. With a new target to focus on, the queen let Geralt be, turning instead on Ciri.
Seeing that Geralt was still having trouble breathing and worried about broken ribs, Eskel grabbed Geralt's armor and pulled him backwards, dragging him to a safer spot. Geralt shook his head, gripping Eskel's wrist.
"-fine, I'm fine," he finally managed to gasp out, getting up with Eskel's help. "Go, get the male guard on the left. I'll help Ciri with the queen," Geralt said, gesturing towards the three males that had stirred up the ground closer to Eskel. He took off at a sprint, defending Ciri last minute from a barb shot arrowlike from the queen's ruined face.
"I've got her back, keep her distracted," Ciri said, flitting around before tensing to blink.
"Ciri, wait!" Geralt cried, seeing a fourth guard rearing up behind the queen. If Ciri blinked now, the male would connect with her in mid strike.
It was too late.
Ciri disappeared in a flash, the guard shot ahead, and Geralt had no time to do anything except hurl a blast of Aard in their direction to try and break the attack before it could connect. He was only partially successful, and the arm he'd thrown up left his entire left side vulnerable.
The queen struck, hitting him hard in the side with her head. He was knocked backwards and watched the end of the moment from his place on the ground, once again trying to breathe though this time it was like his lung was stuck rather than empty. He flipped himself over in a rush of adrenaline and stepped nimbly over the queen's backlash attack, this time planting his sword square through her head and driving it into the ground. Pinned, she writhed, dislodging Eskel from the place he'd taken just to her right, defending Ciri's fallen position. With a quick flash of his silver sword the fight was over.
Geralt wasted no time rushing to Ciri, gripping her arm and looking over her with wide eyes, shaking her slightly. "Ciri, Ciri can you hear me?" he asked frantically, pulling his gloves off with his teeth so he could feel for a pulse. He ignored the foul taste of centipede blood that was now in his mouth, too relieved to feel his daughter's pulse under his fingers. She groaned and lifted her head, huffing a disappointed sigh as she gripped Geralt's forearm and sat up. "You both finished the fight without me, didn't you?"
Eskel came over and planted his sword at his side, wiping a smearing of gore and venom off his face and onto his sleeve. "Don't worry, I think at least half of these were your work," he assured.
Geralt, relieved it was over and Ciri was alright, plopped back to sit in the dirt, rubbing his face with his hand. "Yennefer is going to kill me."
"She'll get over it," Eskel snorted. "Just have Ciri tell the story, right swallow?" Eskel teased, nudging Ciri with his boot. Ciri did not laugh. Her eyes were wide, fixed on something in Geralt's side.
"Geralt?" she whispered, her eyes darting up to his face. Geralt frowned, looking first at her and then down. For a moment the shock kept him from feeling anything, then a penetrating pain shot through his entire torso as his fingers came away bloody.
One of the queen's venomous mandibles was protruding from his side.