Castoff: Family (ch. 19) (Patreon)

It was an odd sight, Guts had to admit as he gazed up at half of a ship that was perfectly posed directly on top of a mountain. The air felt thin to him, telling him that they were rather far up. The other half of the ship was at the bottom of some ocean, just off an island that Guts couldn't be bothered to remember the name of. Geralt and Yennefer had found what remained of the ship that some wizard had used to leave that island, only to get caught up in a storm.

When they returned to shore, explaining what had happened, the tension between them was extremely evident based on their pinched expressions. Triss wasn't much better. Ciri was doing her absolute best to move things along, but it was only a matter of time before something had to give. Guts was personally hoping they held out until after Casca had her mind restored. Then it wouldn't be his problem.

From there, Yennefer opened a portal and now here they stood. At the top of some mountain.

"Brrrr…" Casca muttered, grabbing his cloak and wrapping herself in it to ward off the chill. In response, Guts unhooked his cloak entirely, letting her warm herself while he was exposed to the sharp cold. Casca seemed to enjoy the added warmth, so he didn't mind it.

"This Djinn. What were you hunting it down for, Yen?" Geralt questioned, glancing at Yennefer, who scowled in his general direction .

"Nothing of importance," she replied, her tone borderline scathing. Ciri winced at that, sparing the two a glance before she sighed, releasing a cloud of fog. Then she caught his gaze and pointedly looked away from him. As if the silent treatment was somehow supposed to be a punishment.

The truth didn't change just because you didn't like what you heard. Her plan to be the witch queen of the bigoted North was stupidity at its finest. She didn't have to like it. The truth didn't care if you liked it or not.

Swallowing a sigh of his own, he began to trudge upward towards the ship with Casca in tow. All the while, Geralt and Yennefer began to bicker. "You know the dangers of a Djinn better than anyone. Me included. You wouldn't be hunting for it unless it was important."

"Priorities change. As you so have adequately proven," Yennefer rebuked, her tone colder than the mountain itself. Guts rolled his eyes up to the sky, seeing that the sun was in a different position. They had traveled a long way, it would seem. With all the teleporting, it felt like they had traveled every corner of this realm, and between all of the reunions and revelations… it had already been a long day.

If he had to listen to them sort of their relationship problems, it would be longer still.

"I lost my memories. All of them. It was only dumb luck that I stumbled across Kaer Morhen. And Triss," Geralt argued, his voice even but his tone betrayed his annoyance.

"None of whom saw fit to mention my existence, it would seem." There was some definite bitterness there. Thank fuck they had left Triss and Puck behind. Guts didn't know if he had it in him to suffer through that.

"They thought you were dead. That's what happens when you vanish off the face of the planet from everyone you know," Geralt, at the very least, wasn't taking it sitting down. Guts was missing a lot of context behind the conversation but the gist of it seemed to be that Geralt and Triss fucked while Geralt had memory loss. Guts had seen that excuse used before by soldiers when their woman at home found out about their proclivities on the march, but it seemed to actually be true in Geralt's case. Or he was good at sticking to a story. "They only knew I was alive when I showed up with hellhounds on my tail."

"I see. So, not only was my best friend fucking you behind my back, she also vastly underestimated me," Yennefer replied, her tone cutting. Guts recognized it, even if he had little experience with it. It was the tone of a woman that decided whatever you had to say was wrong and she was going to take it as an insult, so your best bet was to stop digging your grave. "Do save your excuses, Geralt. I have grown weary of hearing them."

Perfect. If he had to listen to any more of that, he was going to start swinging.

Geralt was obviously less than pleased with how the conversation ended, but there was an easy distraction when they reached the ship itself. Guts hadn't seen the half at the bottom of an ocean, but now he saw how clean the cut was on the ship. A cut that couldn't have been made with a saw or blade. It was difficult to tell how old it was, but the ocean water that had been pulled with it froze the ship into place with thick icicles hanging off of it. Getting up to it was tricky, but simple enough.

Reaching the deck, Guts quickly delved deeper into the ship, mostly to avoid the sniping between Yennefer and Geralt that had started up again. The ship was well stocked, but he didn't see any people. Either they had been in the back half of the ship… or they had survived the journey, and most likely died on the climb down. Everyone except for Amos var Ypsis, Guts learned when he found a body underneath a bookshelf.

Given that he was clutching half of a seal, Guts was confident in his guess despite the fact that the man's head had been crushed. Breaking some stiff fingers, Guts pried the seal from the corpse. "What wish did you make?" Guts wondered, reminded of the potential consequences of failure. A wish made in a panic -- 'get us away from here, as far as possible?' The Djinn fulfilled the wish, but it extracted its vengeance all the same.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Casca was ripping up sheets and sacks to make another cloak for herself. A lump formed in his throat, his mind leaping to the worst case scenarios. Was it really worth the risk? Was he being selfish to try to bring her back? Would Casca want this?

There was more than one reason why Guts was glad Puck wasn't here. He would be able to sense the doubt in Guts. Sense his fear and uncertainty.

Guts forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out, standing up to stop Casca from breaking her teeth on a frozen potato. He knew Casca. He had to believe that this was what she would want. "I found the seal," Guts announced, leading Casca back up onto the deck, the potato still clutched in her hands as she beat it against  every available surface.

That caught Yennefer's attention, "And Amos?"

"Dead," Guts answered, handing it to her. Her lips tugged down into a frown, accepting the other half of the seal and producing the one that Geralt had found at the bottom of the ocean. She placed them together and Guts looked at the symbol on top of it -- it looked vaguely familiar to him, he thought with some discomfort.

It was different from the Brand on his neck, but not so dissimilar.

"How unfortunate," Yennefer said, sounding ambivalent and unsurprised. "That complicates things. It would seem that Amos var Ypsis didn't complete his three wishes, meaning that we cannot bind the Djinn. It can only possess one master, in life or death, at a time. Meaning that we will need to be… creative." Yennefer explained, walking up to the top deck of the ship. "I can summon the Djinn using this as a catalyst. You, however, will need to beat the Djinn into submission until I can capture it."

Ciri immediately looked a great deal more nervous, "That's… it's one thing to bind it, but doing it like that… the Djinn is going to make the worst interpretation of the wish that it can." She said the words, glancing at him.

Restore Casca's body and mind to how she was after Griffith's rescue but before the Eclipse. If he was going to be an arse about it, how would he twist that wish? Would it inflict the memories of what happened on her again?

Restore Casca's body and mind to how she was after Griffith's rescue but before the Eclipse while erasing the memories of the Eclipse? That felt… solid. Concise and simple. Even if it took the worst interpretation, it wasn't anything that couldn't be resolved with a simple conversation. And how his heart ached to have a conversation with her again.

"It'll be fine," Guts dismissed, glancing at Ciri. "Keep her safe," he asked, and despite the tension between them, Ciri nodded. Leaving him and Geralt to face the Djinn. They traded a small nod while Guts drew Dragonslayer and Geralt his silver sword.

"Very well. I shall begin," Yennefer stated before she started to intone words of magic. Guts felt a stir in the air but it wasn't the air itself. He didn't know how to describe the sensation other than power, which seemed to radiate from Yennefer, the two halves of the seal slamming together. It didn't take long for the signs of whatever she was doing to start having an effect. The first thing that Guts noticed was the smell of ozone -- the smell of lightning.

A second later, he felt a hum on his skin, and that was his warning to move because a split second later, the mast to the ship was reduced to splitters when a massive lightning bolt slammed into it. Shards of frozen wood slammed into him, but he positioned Dragonslayer to take the worst of it. The mast itself began to fall and he sprung into action, leaping towards it and running up it as it fell. It gave him a point of vantage to see what he was fighting.

The Djinn was more of a cloud of fog than flesh and blood. Lightning crackled in and around it, two eyes that flowed within the stormy gray fog but that seemed to be the extent of its face. Its eyes darted up as Guts felt something catch the mast that he ran on. Just before it was flung to the side with incredible force, Guts flung Dragonslayer forward as he jumped off of it. Just as he expected, a powerful bolt of lightning was flung at him, but it was drawn to the spinning Dragonslayer instead.

Guts didn't buy into the stock that lightning was somehow magical or the instrument of the gods' will. He had seen plenty of it. Enough to get an idea of the rules it followed -- it tended to strike something rather than hit flat ground, and it preferred to strike metal. Guts learned that by various fools waving a sword in the air during a storm getting struck.

The lightning bolt slammed into Dragonslayer, but the blade was too heavy and dense to be easily thrown off its target. The blade spun through the air while Geralt surged forward. Using the distraction, he threw down a purple magic circle, and for his efforts, he caught a bolt of lightning to his chest. He was saved by a shimmering golden aura shattering, revealing that he was fine.

The Djinn, less so when Dragonslayer skewered it, the magic circle preventing its escape. The blade punched through the center of it, and while there was no splash of gore or blood, Guts knew that the Djinn was injured. The creature roared wordlessly, a howl of agony that made the ship vibrate hard enough that the ice cracked dangerously. He landed on the ship's deck, seeing the mast as it was flung down the mountain. Slamming his crossbow in place on his prosthetic, he began to fire arrows at the Djinn.

"Silver or magic," Geralt called out when the arrows started to pass through when the purple circle was shattered. The Djinn hummed with power, the scent of ozone appearing again. Guts flung two throwing knives and a moment later, two blasts of lightning struck them, sending them flying off into the air. Geralt took point, his silver blade lashing out in a dizzying display of swordsmanship. It was something very different than his own, Guts noted, pulling Dragonslayer from the deck.

It was a style that was designed to take full advantage of his inhuman strength and speed. He had seen the bones of the style with Ciri's swordsmanship, but now he was seeing it in the hands of a master. It wasn't meant to be used by regular humans. That much was clear. That, and it was effective, as seen when the Djinn roared at the blows. Geralt made a sign, a shimmering shield of energy protecting him from another blast of lightning, and the distraction was enough to let Guts close in.

He intended to give Geralt a moment to put down another one of those circles, but when he lashed out at the Djinn, he felt contact. Which shouldn't be possible -- Dragonslayer was a massive slab of steel and it wasn't magical in nature. However, the creature recoiled more from his blows than it did Geralt's. The why could be dealt with later, instead Guts focused on pressing the attack. He slashed at the Djinn, driving it to the bow of the ship. A low growl echoed in the air, and on instinct, he slammed Dragonslayer into the wood and ducked behind it.

A split second later, a massive surge of lightning lashed out in every single direction. Geralt was pushed back, his shield protecting him as far as Guts could tell. The sound that ripped through the air reminded Guts of the sound Rosine made when she raced by him -- an explosion of some kind that left his ears ringing.

A massive shifting under his feet told Guts something was happening -- but what he didn't expect for it to be was the ship rising up from the top of the mountain. There was a fatal crack as the ice lost its grip on the ship which shuddered and groaned underneath the invisible force that lifted it into the air. When the barrage of lightning was done, he ripped the blade free to find that Dragonslayer was red hot and scorched. Ignoring the searing pain in his palm, Guts raced forward towards the Djinn as he shouted out, "Ciri! Get ready to get us out of here! It's going to drop us!"

"I only need a little more time!" Yennefer yelled out. Maybe they should have brought Triss with them. Surely it would have been better to have two witches than one. Even if they were in the middle of the most mundane catfight that Guts had seen.

Easier said than done, Guts reflected. The Djinn reminded him of an Apostle, which made the fight feel familiar to him. The flow of it was the same -- the monster thinking it was untouchable because it sold its soul for power, and he was just a human. Then when they tasted the edge of Dragonslayer, that attitude started to change. But, it was when they felt like they were in danger that they became their most dangerous. It was why Guts preferred ambushes where he could.

The Djinn felt like it was trapped, because it was. Whatever Yennefer was doing stopped it from fleeing, and lightning wasn't doing much. But dropping them off a mountain probably would. And it only had eyes for him because it charged up another blast of lightning as he darted forward. He had to end this now, before things got more out of hand. Meaning…

Dragonslayer thrust forward, a bolt of lightning impacted the tip of the blade and Guts' world became fire. A change in tactics. It expected him to dodge and block by now. What it wouldn't be prepared for was for him to take the hit in exchange for dealing damage to it. Guts didn't know what to compare it to as he pierced the Djinn, skewering it to the bow of the ship as lightning arced across his body. He had been burned with fire and acid, he had been cut, stabbed, his bones shattered, and more -- but nothing like this.

It felt like his body was vibrating yet perfectly still, his lungs unable to even breathe. He couldn't tell if the shock had lasted a second or a minute. What he did feel was a burning sensation, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. That, and the stench of cooked meat and burnt hair.

Then, as soon as it began, it was over and Guts collapsed to his knees, legs giving out from underneath him involuntary. The Djinn was in some kind of bubble, Dragonslayer still punched through the center of it, and it was lashing out at the bubble. Guts took a moment to gather himself, steam rising off of his body. He was alive. That much he was sure of. Everything else, though… he let out a breath and steam erupted from his mouth, his heart pounding at his ribs. He was only distantly aware of Ciri appearing beside him, saying something but the words sounded distant.

"-Okay?!" Ciri started to shout and his hearing was starting to come back. That was good. It would be a pain to lose it again. Guts managed to nod his head, every muscle feeling torn and overstressed. He was at his limit. A fine thing that he was used to ignoring that. His limbs fought against his control, but he forced himself to stand all the same, Ciri holding her hands out to catch him if he fell.

"Phew!" Guts heard, and he glanced over at Casca. He thought the words might have been directed at him, but his heart sank like a stone.

They weren't directed at him.

They were directed to the Djinn.

"Phew ah beby," Casca exclaimed, placing her hands on her stomach. Guts tried to speak, but his tongue was clumsy and stupid. He managed a grunt at best. The others were so focused on him, they completely ignored Casca's approach. He tried to take a step forward, only for his leg to give out from underneath him.

Then, without any warning, the Djinn was gone. And he took Gut's heart with it. He looked at Casca, whose brow was shifting into one of confusion, her hands grasping for something that wasn't there so she started to look around for it. Then her gaze landed on him.

Vacant. Her gaze was still vacant.

She wasn't there. She-

Guts heard the sound of clapping coming from behind him. He looked over to see an unfamiliar face -- an average looking man with a shaved head, and thin scruff around his jaw. He wasn't handsome nor ugly. His clothing was simple -- yellows and blues, that seemed to suit him. He probably wouldn't look out of place in any tavern or inn. Here, now, he stuck out like a sore thumb as he sat on the edge of the ship, holding the Djinn with two fingers while he politely clapped with the other.

Every single hair stood on end, and he ripped Dragonslayer out of the bow and used it to push himself up.

"Who are you," Guys growled, everyone on guard. Yennefer had mystic energy swirling around her hands, but her face was bloodless. Geralt and Ciri had their blades out, but they were every bit as cautious. A hand from Ciri was the only thing stopping Casca from charging the man to take the Djinn from his fingers. Guts wasn't a fool. He understood the implications quite well.

They just didn't matter to him. Not now. Not when he was so close.

"The name is Gaunter O'Dimm, Struggler. A fine purveyor of things of interest and your lady love just tried to nick something that belonged to me," Gaunter informed, his tone decidedly friendly with an easy smile on his face.

Guts' heart clenched. What? "The wish -- she didn't use-" he started to argue, but he was silenced with a finger. It was instinctual. The same way it has been when Gambino has told him to shut up as a kid.

"All words are gibberish, Struggler. There's only one true language and a little bit of it's been branded on your neck," he informed. He was being friendly. Amusement danced in his eyes, but everything about him put Guts at unease -- his presence, his mannerisms… "Words are important, but a wish is something that comes from the heart. However -- I do understand that she had no intentions of claiming what is mine. She was ignorant of the crime. Thus, it does seem a bit petty to punish her for it… not to mention that it would interfere with another pact made."

What? Guts' jaw clenched and his grip tightened on Dragonslayer. "What are you?" He growled the words out, knowing that this was no mere man. He felt it deep in his gut. He had no idea what he was talking about -- any of it. Maybe he would learn, maybe he wouldn't but what mattered right now was knowing what he was dealing with. He was dangerous, that was clear enough by the Djinn clutched between two fingers like a marble.

"I am but a humble merchant, dear Struggler. Of whose wares might be of interest to you," Gaunter stated, before he looked up at the marble in his hands. "This one here reached into my pocket. A desperate little thing," he mused before he squeezed down.

The marble shattered, sending out a wave of… something that Guts felt travel through him. Fine mist emerged from the broken marble that then faded into nothingness. Along with the Djinn. Guts glanced at Yennefer, hoping that she would have a portal ready, only to see that she was frozen stiff. The mystical energy around her hands similarly so. Ciri and Geralt looked at Gaunter with their swords drawn, but they were unmoving.

"Figured that would give us a little bit of privacy," Gaunter informed, hopping off of the ship edge and striding towards him. The Djinn was dead. He did more than just freeze the others, it was as if he had paused time. No. That was exactly what happened.

Guts didn't know what he was, but Gaunter was powerful. Extremely powerful. "What pact could you be talking about? I never entered into any pact with you," Guts growled, his mind racing. Casca had managed to pry herself from Ciri's unyielding grip, and she was none too pleased with him when he stopped her from approaching Gaunter. What could he possibly be talking about? Could he…?

"Ah, I see you suspect already. But no, it is not what you think. You never made a deal with me. Neither you, or dear Casca here," he answered, a smile in his voice. "You are correct in your assumption -- I am the one that brought you to this Sphere. I am the one that undid what those foul Apostles and Godhand inflicted upon you. Well, except for the Brand. That, I'm afraid, is beyond even my power." Gaunter explained, holding his hands out wide as if he were expecting a thank you. He would be kept waiting.

That answered that question, Guts supposed. It merely left him with a far more pressing one. "Why?" He asked, standing taller with his lips pressed into a thin line.

"Because of a deal made," Gaunter answered, as if it should be obvious. That much was, but what wasn't was who could have made such a deal? "You wouldn't think so, but you're quite similar in nature. For years, he taxed himself protecting her from every vile creature that goes bump in the night -- well past the point that it should have killed him, his strength spent. Even then, it wasn't enough and he knew he had to turn to you to help protect her -- but when he found you? A man that hadn't eaten or slept in days, exhausted from constant battles, more bones broken than not, and poison on top of that? No. He knew you had reached the end of your strength as well."

Guts' heart went still in his chest. No. That wasn't possible.

Gaunter smiled. It was a mockery of a kind one. "Indeed. There are many types of love in this world, Struggler. Some might say that a mother's love is the purest of them all, but I would argue otherwise. There are many things that taint that love -- expectations, desires, ego, and more. No, I say it is the opposite." He continued and Guts already knew what he was going to say before he said it. All the same, the words were a punch to the stomach, driving the air from his lungs.

"After all, what love is more blind than the love a child has for his parents?"