Night had fallen, the Eternal Fire still burned upon its altars, and two days had passed since the Novigrad massacre. The weather that day had been clear and cloudless.
As Fergus's smithy was preparing to close for the night, Angoulême and Fergus were enjoying a stack of freshly baked pancakes at the table. They had also split off two pieces for Luf, who sat beside them eating as well. He was being treated like an apprentice now.
Victor, meanwhile, was explaining his latest request to Yoana. Their discussion could be heard clearly from here.
Or rather, their disagreement.
Or, more precisely—
Yoana was absolutely furious.
"No, Victor, damn it all. Making it primarily out of dark steel and mixing in dimeritium, fine, the materials aren't the problem. But a two-handed sword five feet four inches long, with a blade a full foot wide?!"
Furious, Yoana raised her hammer and slammed it down onto the anvil with a clang.
"Are you messing with me? Those dimensions make no damn sense! You call that a sword? I can't believe you actually came up with something like this!"
Forgive Yoana. As a daughter of Skellige, she spoke with brutal honesty. To her, the weapon Victor was describing was sheer fantasy, so she gave no thought to sparing her employer's pride and cursed him out directly.
"I'm telling you, swords aren't better just because they're bigger. You have to think about practical use. If you really need an armor-breaking weapon, I can forge you an armor-piercing axe, a warhammer, even a short spear out of the materials you named, and every single one would be better than whatever nonsense you're imagining."
She was angry, and she stood close while she talked, very close. Her face was nearly pressed to his, and her finger jabbed so near his nose it was almost touching him. She was so fierce that with how hard she was crowding him, Victor was starting to struggle for breath.
Oblivious, she kept scolding him.
"And even if I did somehow make this... what did you call it? Some kind of 'dragonslayer' or 'buster sword' monstrosity? Do you have any damn idea how heavy that would be?
This thing wouldn't work in a real fight. The only way to use it would be to lift it straight up over your head and let the sheer weight drop it back down on its own.
Boss, your ideas can be brilliant sometimes, but this one really is beyond reason."
"No, you don't understand. This is a man's dream..." Victor protested weakly, short of breath.
"If a man's dream means doing stupid things, then I refuse to forge a giant piece of junk for you!"
Listening to them bicker, Angoulême smiled.
She was glad to see the captain had let go of the gloom from the night before last. His behavior was back to normal. If anything, he was even more lively than usual now that their departure was approaching.
In truth, he had already returned to normal yesterday.
At Whoreson Junior's poetry gathering, the Dragonborn Bard, despite having to wrap his face in bandages because of his burns, had still made a fresh splash in literary circles under the name of the Masked Poet King. His performance of "With You" had lingered in the air and stunned the whole room.
Even the Nilfgaardian ambassador had expressed interest in hiring the boy as a poetry tutor for his twin daughters, only giving up after learning the poet would soon be leaving Novigrad.
And then today, Victor had come up with another wild new idea—a novel two-handed sword—and promptly driven Yoana up the wall.
It all looked as though he had already put that matter behind him.
That was good.
In Angoulême's eyes, Victor did not even need to feel regret. During her own childhood, too many good people had died in war already.
One more doppler dead now was hardly anything strange.
Besides, the boy had warned him not to transform, yet he had ignored the warning and chosen his own death.
Even after what they had found out later had dramatically changed her impression of Janne, Angoulême still felt unhappy whenever she remembered that he had mimicked her.
The feeling that someone had peered into her life like that was simply too vile.
Then, all at once, an unexpected visitor broke the warmth of the smithy.
The visitor was the eunuch Happen, Sigi Reuven's aide. His plump, pale round face was all smiles, and six men followed behind him.
"Ah, Mister Victor, those really were some rather rare materials. Took me quite a while, but fortunately I didn't fail the task you entrusted to me."
Breaking off his argument with Yoana for the moment, Victor grew serious. He stepped forward to greet Happen and his men, then had them carry the materials into the alchemy room.
Fergus and Yoana had no idea what the eunuch had brought, so they paid it little mind.
But Angoulême knew.
She had been there that day when Victor made his request to the bathhouse owner, and she knew perfectly well what those materials were for.
They were the last missing pieces needed to complete the Grass Draught.
At that thought, the cheerful smile of satisfaction she had worn while eating pancakes vanished completely from the girl's face.
...
Late that night, in Victor's alchemy workshop—
The Grass Draught: the central secret of witchers.
It could mutate an ordinary person, granting them a small measure of spellcasting in the form of Signs, a hardened body, sharpened senses, immunity to most diseases, and resistance to toxins.
Its drawback was sterility.
From the standpoint of birth control, sterility hardly counted as a drawback.
In addition, the mutation changed the pupils, turning them into cat's eyes or serpent's eyes. Combined with an appearance that set them apart from normal people, and all the ignorant rumors spread by fools, the current mood of society was far from friendly toward witchers.
But compared to prolonged youth and a greatly extended lifespan, that hostility was worth nothing at all.
Using albino bruxa tongue, forktail spinal fluid, and manticore poison gland as the base, then adding bryonia, ribleaf, mandrake root, and White Gull, one could prepare the School of the Wolf's Grass Draught.
But of course Victor had no intention of being satisfied with that.
The countless notions he had spun out back in Kaer Morhen, the materials he had researched in the library of Ban Ard, the selfless teachings of Mother Nenneke at the Temple of Melitele, the alchemical knowledge Master Kalkstein had shared with him in Vizima, and Alzur's original manuscript—
Though the manuscript had been lost back in Vizima, he already knew its contents by heart.
All of that accumulation flowed through his mind in this moment.
Just as he had done in the laboratory at Kaer Morhen, he worked busily, steadily, methodically, and with absolute care.
Victor completed a preliminarily improved version of the Grass Draught.
A few small adjustments had been made to it.
He had added a neutralizing agent to slightly lessen the pain of mutation, along with a binding agent to reduce the chances of rejection.
Barring any surprises, according to the alchemy apprentice's theoretical estimates, this new green Grass Draught had a success rate of as much as forty percent.
A revolutionary breakthrough.
But to confirm that, at least five people would need to drink it. Two would need to survive, and those survivors could not display obvious deformities or mental derangement. Only then could this version be tentatively judged a successful improvement.
It was not as though Victor had never tested medicine on himself before.
He himself had been Test Subject Number One for Megatron, and only after personally experiencing Megatron's unrivaled potency had he taken it to Mother Nenneke for sale.
But now, looking at the bowl of jade-green liquid in his hand, Victor could only give a bitter smile and abandon the idea.
A trial where failure meant death was no joke.
How deep would someone's despair have to be, how utterly cornered and helpless, for them to snatch up this incomplete Grass Draught, drink it, and believe it would succeed?
If it failed, death would be the better outcome.
Far more likely, the result would be worse than death.
There was so much delicious food in the world, and so many pretty girls besides. He was living just fine. Why would he suddenly decide to lose his mind?
He casually set the bowl down.
"Stop! Vic, did you forget what you promised me?"
The one shouting at him was Angoulême. She stepped out of the kitchen carrying a cup of warm milk.
"Hey, don't get the wrong idea." Victor raised his hands in surrender. One look at her expression was enough for the captain to know exactly what his troupe member was thinking. She had obviously assumed he was about to get reckless and rush things.
"I'm not planning to drink it. The success rate isn't good enough. Even in the best-case scenario, it's only around half."
Seeing the open look on Victor's face, Angoulême realized she had misunderstood and relaxed.
"That's good. Aren't you always telling me how amazing your family alchemy is? Then don't go drinking some sketchy potion. I'm still counting on my unbeatable protector."
Grinning, Victor lifted the bowl of green liquid.
"Come on, don't talk about it like it's some vile brew. This is the School of the Wolf's secret, never-passed-down-to-outsiders miracle medicine.
Ever since the great mage Alzur created it, this single draught has been the starting point: a stronger body, extraordinary senses, near-immunity to poison and disease.
Drink it, and even if you started as an ordinary person, you'd still have a thirty percent chance of becoming superhuman. Doesn't that sound amazing?"
"Come talk to me again when you're completely certain! And if you're not drinking it, why did you make it in the first place?"
"I couldn't help wanting to make it and see.
You know, the Grass Draughts of different schools have different effects. The School of the Griffin strengthens the power of Signs, the School of the Cat speeds up reflexes, and the School of the Bear focuses more obviously on physical enhancement.
The School of the Wolf claims to be balanced and stable, but that makes it feel a little lacking in character. Or maybe its real specialty is just having a higher success rate?
...No wonder our school's specialties are sword oils and bombs. Those crafts don't depend on talent."
At that point the boy burst into laughter at his own expense.
He was laughing so happily that he did not notice the regular knocking coming from the door leading to the smithy until he saw the girl's face had turned deathly pale.
His expression darkened.
Victor drew the Sword of Prometheus.
He opened the door.
Luf was kneeling on the floor. The instant the door opened, he slammed his head down in a full kowtow, striking the ground with a heavy bang.
When he raised his head, his eyes were bright.
There was unshakable resolve in them.
...
"No... Luf actually ran off? How could this happen? Weren't we good enough to him?" Fergus shouted in displeasure back in the smithy.
Yoana did not look any happier. Luf was from the same homeland as she was, and over the past several days she had taken pretty good care of him. She had not expected him to run away without a word, leaving behind only a note thanking them for their care during this time.
Fortunately, after checking carefully, they found nothing missing.
At least Luf had enough conscience not to take a few parting gifts with him on the way out.
He had only taken the wages he had earned while apprenticing there.
Meanwhile, in Victor's alchemy workshop, Angoulême stood beside the wooden wall and gave a wry smile.
"The soundproofing really is terrible. You could hear everything perfectly clearly."
"You told me that already. It's my fault for not taking it seriously." The boy looked perfectly calm as he busied himself with bottles and jars.
The girl hesitated. "Vic... so you really... are you sure you really want to help him?"
The alchemy apprentice looked up.
"It's not that I want to help him. You do. I didn't want to kill anyone with my own hands, so I let you decide whether to kill him or hear out his story. Didn't I?
If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have listened to a single reason. I'd have killed him on the spot. The first thing I cared about was that he'd actually been eavesdropping on us.
And besides, I have no interest whatsoever in his story. Luf was a slave sold into Novigrad. I could come up with seventeen or eighteen miserable stories without even trying—stories so wretched they'd ruin my mood.
But since you didn't kill him, since you chose to hear him out, and after hearing him out you asked me whether I could help him...
Then I'll help him.
A story that even you accepted must be a moving one."
Victor left Angoulême with nothing to say.
All she could do was let out a sigh.
"Fine. If Luf really has left, then that's the choice he made."
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