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What does an immortal monster-hunter do when there are no more monsters to hunt?
Anything he pleases, apparently. Eskel has been a carpenter and a goat farmer and a traveling handyman. He spent a decade or so as a hermit and discovered he didn’t like it as much as he’d thought he would. He apprenticed himself to an electrician when people first began to harness lightning, and found the work fascinating but ultimately too finicky. Lambert would have loved it. He trained horses for a while, until the vivid memories of Geralt got too strong and he had to move along again.
These days, he works in a flower shop in the little city at the base of the Blue Mountains that used to be the last village before the trail to Kaer Morhen. Adriane, the owner, is getting old, but she’s still got a good eye for color and composition, and she likes talking to people; there’s a reason her shop prospers. Eskel’s been with her for most of a decade now, because the pay is decent and she lets him rent a little studio above the store for well below market rate. He’s not usually at the front counter - people still flinch from his scars, and it doesn’t help the sales at all - but he finds working in the back room, putting together bouquets and corsages and big displays for weddings and funerals, to be soothing. It’s certainly entirely unlike anything he’s ever done before.
He’ll need to move on sooner or later, once it starts to get a little too obvious that he’s not aging, but he’s thinking maybe he’ll do something else with flowers when he does. Start a greenhouse, perhaps. Sell flowers to flower shops. Might be nice to get his hands in the dirt, to bring things to life instead of cutting them down.
Once Adriane dies or retires, perhaps. He doesn’t think she’ll close the shop - she’s one of the sort who will die in harness - but once she’s gone it will either close or be passed on to whoever her heirs might be, and then Eskel will doubtless be out of a job.
In the meantime, he has his hands full - literally - with unloading deliveries and putting together bouquets, and lugging full buckets of water into the front of the shop, and generally doing all the chores Adriane is getting too frail to handle herself.
And occasionally dealing with people who either get stroppy with the front-counter staff or try to rob the shop, which is what he assumes is happening when he hears someone out front spitting curse words like they’re going out of style.
Eskel puts down his clippers and straightens up, squaring his shoulders - he was a big man back when he hunted monsters, and even in these modern times when people have gotten taller, he’s bulky enough to be intimidating - and strides out into the front. “Is this person bothering you, Miss Adriane,” he starts, in his best low rumble, and then stops dead, mouth hanging open, at the sight of the man on the other side of the counter.
Dark hair receding into a widow’s peak. Sharp, slightly beaky nose. Close-cropped beard. Dark eyes, not bright topaz, but keen for all that. No scars that Eskel can see, but the sort of weathering that suggests a lot of time outdoors. Broad shoulders under a leather jacket that looks a little like a Cat-style gambeson. Just as tall as he used to be, but a little less brutally lean than he was when they all walked the Path.
Lambert.
Impossible.
“No, dear, it’s fine,” Adriane says, putting a hand on Eskel’s arm. Lambert is staring back at him in what starts as indignation and then turns slowly to deep confusion, which on Lambert looks like irritation.
“Who the fuck are you and why do I know you?” he asks bluntly, in the same damn accent Lambert used to have, peasant Kaedweni mixed with the odd lilt of Metinna that he picked up from his Cat he thought they didn’t know existed.
Eskel closes his mouth and swallows. “I’m Eskel,” he rasps. “You’re Lambert.”
“Yeah, no shit, I’ve got a nametag,” Lambert snipes, and then looks down at his jacket, pauses, and looks up again warily. “...No, I don’t,” he says slowly. “So why the absolute hell do you know my name?”
He is Lambert. It’s not just a really, really disconcerting echo - not just the sort of resemblance that happens, sometimes, without any magical interference at all. The appearance, the swearing, the name - it’s too much to set aside.
And against his chest, hidden under his apron and t-shirt, Eskel’s medallion is vibrating very gently, so softly he wouldn’t even notice if he wasn’t paying attention.
Eskel shakes his head. “I,” he says, and runs out of words that won’t sound utterly insane. ‘You might be the reincarnation of my youngest brother-in-arms and I’ve missed you for going on a millennium now’ is not the sort of thing he can say aloud in this cozy little flower shop. Adriane would think he’d lost his mind. Maybe he has.
“We used to know each other, a long time ago,” he says at last.
“I feel like I’d remember that,” Lambert says dubiously.
Eskel shakes his head again. “I - it’s - hard to explain,” he says, flailing internally for coherence. “Maybe after you buy your flowers we could, uh, go grab a drink and I’ll try?”
Lambert eyes him warily for a long moment, then nods sharply. “Fine. I got places to be today, but - six o’clock, at the Goose and Crown.”
Eskel nods back. “Six o’clock,” he agrees, and retreats into the back to have a very quiet breakdown where nobody but the newly-delivered roses can see.
Because if Lambert is back - who else might be, as well?
Six o’clock finds Eskel sitting at a table in a back corner of the Goose and Crown, nursing a mug of beer and watching the door like a cat at a mousehole, wondering if Lambert is even going to show.
It’s six-oh-five when the door opens and Lambert comes in followed by a lean, handsome man with shoulder-length, curly dark hair, warm brown skin, and bright green eyes. They both glance around the room, and then Lambert jerks his chin at Eskel and they come over to take the seats across from him. Lambert gives his companion a questioning sort of look, one eyebrow raised. His companion looks Eskel over carefully.
“Nope, sorry, love,” he says to Lambert. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
Lambert raises that eyebrow at Eskel. “You gonna claim you know him?”
“No,” Eskel says blankly. “I don’t.” He hesitates, frowning, and then adds slowly, “If I had to guess, though, his name is Aiden.”
Lambert’s companion’s jaw drops. Lambert’s eyes narrow.
“You are a really fucking weird stalker,” he says. “What do you want? You try to blackmail me and I’ll break your fucking face.”
Eskel shakes his head hastily. “No, I - fuck. I’m making a hash of this. I’m not a stalker. I’m a witcher.”
“Hate to break it to you, fucker, but witchers are extinct,” Lambert says, and starts to get up. “C’mon, kitten, we’re leaving.”
“Wait,” Eskel says desperately. “I can prove it.”
“Uh-huh,” Lambert sneers. “Whatcha gonna do, pull a silver sword outta your ass?”
“No,” Eskel says, casting around for a proof that won’t be as attention-getting as a Sign. “Uh - watch my eyes.”
Lambert raises a skeptical eyebrow, but he and Aiden both lean in to look a little more closely.
Eskel concentrates, and narrows his pupils carefully to thin slits, as skinny as they’ll go.
“Holy fuck,” Lambert says, sitting down hard.
“How the hell,” Aiden agrees, staring.
Carefully, Eskel fishes his medallion out from under his shirt. “I’m a witcher,” he repeats, as they both eye it in confusion. “Of the School of the Wolf. The last of us, as far as I know.”
“Okaaaay,” Lambert says, drawing the vowel out dubiously. “The freaky eye thing is pretty convincing, I gotta admit. Still doesn’t mean you’re not a stalker, though. What’s you being a witcher have to do with you knowing our names? Or me thinking I fucking know you, which, for the record, I do not.”
Eskel takes a deep breath. “Let me start at…well, a beginning,” he says carefully. “It probably isn’t going to make much sense for a little while.”
“Yeah, because everything else about this is just crystal fucking clear,” Lambert drawls. “Go on, then.”
“Hang on,” Aiden says, and gets up to go over to the bar, coming back with two more mugs of beer. “I think this is a story I’m going to want a drink for,” he explains, handing one to Lambert.
“Quite possibly,” Eskel agrees. He takes a deep breath. “So. Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries, this skinny little wildcat of a boy got dragged kicking and screaming and biting up the Trail to Kaer Morhen to be made a witcher.”
“Made?” Aiden asks. “I thought it was a - a born thing, like having Chaos.”
Eskel shakes his head. “It was a process, a thing done to us,” he says. “It was…unpleasant.” Which is a hell of an understatement. “Most of those who became witchers were orphans, or were given up as payment for a witcher’s work. The little spitfire in question, his father gave him to a witcher after the witcher saved his life.”
“Well that’s…fucking awful,” Lambert says slowly. “Guess you filled out well, though.”
Eskel shakes his head. “The boy wasn’t me. I was already a full witcher by then, with a couple of years on the Path under my belt.”
“Oh. Huh.” Lambert takes a drink of his beer. “Okay. Go on.”
Eskel nods. “The boy survived the training, and the Trials, and became a witcher. Which was rare; the death rate was obscenely high. He was the last witcher trained and mutated by the School of the Wolf, actually. The year after he…graduated might be the best word, the School was sacked, and the recipes for making more witchers were lost.”
Lambert and Aiden nod in entertaining unison.
“He survived the Path,” Eskel says softly. “Which was rare, and got rarer as the years went on. He was a brilliant alchemist, a polyglot, and one of the best swordsmen our School ever trained.” He smiles wryly. “He was also short-tempered, with a slightly nasty sense of humor, and a fairly ruthless moral code; he learned new languages mostly so he could swear in them, and he hated being a witcher. Hated nearly everything about the School that had forced him to become one. But he was loyal as sunrise, and would go to hell and back for those who had earned his trust.” Eskel shrugs. “He was my forever-youngest brother, and he was dear to me.”
“You keep saying ‘was’,” Lambert points out. “He’s dead, then?”
Eskel nods. “He survived…a hell of a lot of shit. Battles, hunts. Took up with a Cat witcher; I was never sure whether they were friends or lovers, but my brother was devoted to him. Went a bit berserk when the Cat was killed. Took up with a sorceress later, for a while. But eventually old age caught up with him.”
“But not with you?” Aiden asks, frowning.
Eskel sighs. “Not with me. I’m not sure why. The best guess anyone’s ever had is that during a particularly nasty battle, I took what ought to have been a death-wound. I’ve always had more Chaos than most witchers; if I hadn’t become a witcher, I ought to have been a mage. It…woke, I suppose, is the best way to put it. I lived. And I’ve kept living since then, without aging.” He closes his eyes for a moment in ancient grief. “Unlike my brothers.”
“Huh,” Lambert says. “Well, that sucks.”
Eskel chuckles, opening his eyes. “Yes. It does.”
“So there’s a point to you telling us all about your youngest brother, I’m guessing,” Aiden says, hauling the conversation back on track. “He sounds like someone I woulda liked.”
Eskel nods and takes a deep breath. “His name was Lambert.”
Lambert rears back, eyes wide. “You’re shitting me.”
Eskel shakes his head. “He looked like you. He talked like you. And given that you know me…”
“You think I’m him,” Lambert says, wild-eyed. “Fuck. Fuck no, that’s - that is too fucking weird, I’m not - this is some bullshit. No. I’m not your brother.” He shoves away from the table. “Come on, kitten, we’re out of here.”
Aiden nods to Eskel and follows Lambert out of the bar.
Eskel sighs and takes a deep drink of his beer. That could have gone better, but he’s honestly not sure how.
Four days later, Adriane pokes her head into the back of the shop and says, “That charming young man is asking for you.”
Eskel comes out, puzzled, to find Lambert lurking next to the gardenias. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days; the bags under his eyes are dark and worrisome. “The fuck did you do?” he asks as soon as he sees Eskel.
“Nothing,” Eskel says blankly. “Why, what’s happened?”
“I’ve been having fucking dreams is what’s happened,” Lambert snarls. “Dreams about being a witcher. Monsters, and mud, and fucking misery. And Aiden’s been having the same fucking dreams, near enough. What the hell.”
Eskel winces. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…do anything, as far as I know.”
“Uh-huh,” Lambert sneers. “Sure you didn’t.”
“I swear it on - on my medallion,” Eskel says, a little desperately.
Lambert’s eyes narrow. “Your medallion,” he says. “Lemme see it.”
Eskel blinks, shrugs, and fishes his medallion out. Lambert’s hand flashes out to touch it -
And Lambert collapses like a cut-stringed puppet.
Eskel catches him before he can crack his head on the floor, and stands there with Lambert cradled in his arms for a long, baffled moment. Adriane comes bustling over with a worried look on her face. “Did he faint? Bring him into the back and get him some water, lad.”
Eskel carries Lambert into the back and sets him down gently on a counter, taking off his medallion - Lambert is still clinging to it with a death grip - and going to get some water. Lambert wakes with a gasp as Eskel returns to his side.
“Motherfuck,” he rasps. And then he looks up at Eskel, blinks repeatedly, and adds, “Well, hell, you goatfucking bastard, you haven’t aged a day.” Then he shakes his head vigorously and adds, “Damn that is fucking weird. For the record, getting an extra few centuries of memories crammed into my head hurts like a bear.”
Eskel puts down the glass of water and wraps his arms around Lambert, burying his face against his little brother’s shoulder and clinging. Lambert flails for a moment, then gingerly puts his arms around Eskel and pats his back.
“I missed you,” Eskel mumbles.
“I had no fucking clue you existed,” Lambert replies. Eskel snorts. “But…I’m glad to see you again,” Lambert adds, more quietly. “Always thought somethin’ was missing. Now I know what.”
“Missing?” Eskel asks, letting go at last and taking his medallion back in exchange for the glass of water.
“Sure.” Lambert takes a deep breath. “This life, my shitstain of a father got reported for beating the crap outta me an’ my mother and got his ass thrown in the slammer, and we ended up moving in next door to a single father with two kids a bit older’n me. Adoptive, both of ‘em. Redheads, but not related. Both of ‘em fucking weird about horses; one’s a large-animal vet and the other keeps a boarding stable, these days. They pretty much adopted me - call me ‘little brother’ an’ give me shit an’ watch my back.”
Eskel nods, a lump of hope stuck in his throat, making it hard to breathe.
Lambert nods back. “Gweld and Geralt,” he says quietly.
Eskel manages a shaky breath, feeling rather like he might fall over. “And you - did you find Voltehre?”
Lambert’s face blossoms into a brilliant smile. “My mum, she got approved for foster care. Brought home that gangly dipshit when I was nine. He’s my brother now.”
Eskel grins. “Good. I’m glad.”
“Yeah, me too. Even more now, gods damn.” Lambert hops off the counter, glancing around. “Flowers? Really?”
“They don’t usually try to eat my face,” Eskel points out mildly. “And what do you do?”
“Yeah, okay, good point. And I’m an electrician, which also doesn’t involve getting my damn face bitten off. What time d’you get off work?”
“Four,” Eskel says warily. “Why?”
“Because if I have to deal with having this shit crammed into my head, so do the rest of the fuckers,” Lambert says with a wicked grin. “An’ you oughta have your brothers back. Even if we’re not witchers anymore.”
“And if they don’t want to?” Eskel checks. “I didn’t mean to do this to you, but now that I know -”
“Nah, look, I told you. We always knew something was missing. Gweld an’ Geralt had a joint imaginary friend until they got to be too old to talk about it, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t actually forget, just started keeping their mouths shut. Every time we’d go do something together, we’d miscount: me an’ Gweld an’ Geralt an’ Voltehre was four, and we’d always plan for five. Every godsdamned time. And anyway you need to come let Aiden touch your fucking medallion, the dreams are fucking awful.”
Eskel winces. “Right. Sorry. He is your Cat, then?”
“Yeah, he’s my Cat.” Lambert grins ruefully. “Gonna have to tell him I went on a murder spree to avenge him.”
“Will he be…distressed by that?” Eskel asks.
Lambert snorts. “Nah. He’s a Cat. I’m gonna get laid tonight.”
Eskel puts a hand over his eyes and shakes with silent laughter.
That afternoon, he climbs into Lambert’s battered work truck and lets Lambert bring him back to the little house he and Aiden share on the outskirts of the city. Getting Aiden’s memories of his previous life goes rather better: they have him take a couple of painkillers and lie down before Eskel hands over his medallion, and Aiden opens his eyes after a few minutes of unconsciousness to say, “Fucking hell that’s weird.”
Then he gets up and hugs Eskel, hard, before pouncing on Lambert and kissing him so ravenously that Eskel wonders if he should go sit out in the backyard for a while.
“So!” Aiden says, once he resurfaces and is draped over Lambert only a little obscenely. “Now what? We gonna get the rest of your brothers back, love?”
“We…probably shouldn’t,” Eskel says. He’s been thinking about it since Lambert left the shop that afternoon. Giving Aiden his memories back was one thing; he’d already seen the medallion, and was having the dreams. But anyone else…
“What the fuck, I thought we covered this already?” Lambert asks, scowling.
Eskel swallows. “I lost you all once,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if I can bear to do it again, in only a few decades.”
Lambert opens his mouth, frowns, and closes it again. “Okay, that’s a halfway decent argument,” he says slowly. “But.” He raises two fingers. “First off, we have no idea if this is fucking transmissible. Now that me an’ Aiden know, is it gonna rub off? And if so, better to get it all out of the way at once.”
Eskel winces and nods.
“And secondly - two heads are better than one. Six heads oughta be a lot better than three. Get us all thinking about how to not leave you all by your fucking lonesome for another godsdamned millennium, Melitele wept, how you have not gone completely insane I do not know.”
Eskel grimaces. “I did, for a bit. It turned out not to be very entertaining after a few years.”
“Yeah, see, this is exactly what I mean, you fucking martyr. So what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna go get Gweld and Geralt and Voltehre in on this, and then we’re going to go looking for Geralt’s fucking sorceress - and Ciri, if she’s even been born yet, because otherwise Geralt will pout - and with a little fucking luck, we’ll be able to come up with something. Planning this reincarnation shit, maybe, so we come back within a couple of decades instead of centuries. Or giving us all whatever that fucking mage ritual is so we stick around. There’s options, fuckwit.”
“I think you’ve been out-argued,” Aiden says, sounding very amused. “Also I’m on Lambert’s side, so you’re outnumbered, too.”
Eskel sighs. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you,” he says to Lambert. “Alright. We can give them the option. But I won’t be flashing my medallion around until they agree.”
Lambert wrinkles his nose. “Alright, yeah, that’s probably - oh my gods.”
“What?” Eskel and Aiden chorus.
Lambert puts a hand over his face. “Holy shit, I am going to get to give those idiots so much crap for this - Aiden. Aiden, you’ve seen them shirtless. What sort of tattoo do my idiot older brothers have?”
Aiden starts to grin. “They’ve got -” the grin turns to snickering. “They’ve got -” the snickering to full-blown laughter. “Wolf’s heads!” he gets out through his guffaws.
“Right here,” Lambert agrees, tapping his sternum with a wicked grin. “Said they were drawn to ‘em. Hell, Eskel, they might remember even if you’d never shown up.”
Eskel can’t suppress his grin. “Geralt always was a bit dramatic.”
“‘A bit’,” Lambert snorts. “Yeah, like Zerrikania’s a bit sandy.” He peels Aiden off of himself. “Lemme go get outta my work gear, kitten. You call Gweld an’ Voltehre, tell ‘em we’re meeting at Geralt’s for dinner.”
“Are you going to tell Geralt?” Eskel asks.
“Nah, we’ll pick up pizza on the way,” Lambert says, and goes trotting up the stairs. Aiden snickers.
“We do this regularly,” he tells Eskel. “Geralt’s gotten used to it. It keeps him from holing up and not talking to anyone but horses for weeks.”
Eskel snorts, because yeah, that…that sounds a lot like Geralt.
An hour later, he discovers he can’t make himself get out of Aiden’s car. He’s sitting there staring at the porch of Geralt’s bungalow - staring at his brothers, at Gweld and Geralt sitting together on the porch swing, heads bent close together, looking like something out of one of his more wistful daydreams. Geralt is still a redhead, his hair a few shades darker than Gweld’s fire-bright mop, and looks both younger and older than Eskel has ever seen him, somehow. Happier and healthier, too. There are no scars anywhere that Eskel can see. And Gweld - Gweld who he hasn’t seen in so long that he’d almost forgotten the shape of his face - Gweld throws back his head and laughs and it’s like Eskel has fallen through time, back to when he was young and unscarred and still thought he and his brothers would be together forever.
“Come on,” Lambert says, surprisingly gently, as he hauls the car door open. “You can’t sit in here all night.”
“I could,” Eskel argues, even as he unlatches his seatbelt and carefully climbs out of the car.
“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t get any pizza,” Lambert points out, and herds Eskel up the stairs onto the porch. Gweld and Geralt stand up, moving in easy unison, and give Eskel twin confused looks that turn, slowly, into something very like recognition. Geralt has green eyes. Gweld’s are a brilliant blue. Eskel remembers those eyes, from back before the Grasses changed them all.
“I know you,” Geralt whispers.
“You’re - you’re him,” Gweld adds. “Our third brother! We made you up!”
“Right on the identity, wrong on the fictional nature, come on, inside, the pizza’s getting cold,” Lambert says briskly. “We’ll explain over dinner. Voltehre here yet?”
“Yes,” the man in question says, opening the house door. “I ran in to take a leak - holy shit, hi, why do you look familiar?”
“Pizza first, explanations on a full stomach, come on, I had a long fuckin’ day,” Lambert recites, chivvying them all into the house. There’s a big battered wooden table in the kitchen, and they settle around it. There are just enough chairs for all of them - and one extra that Geralt brings over, which fits just perfectly in the remaining space.
There’s a brief commotion over passing out plates and napkins and slices of pizza, and then Gweld takes a big bite of his veggie slice, puts the rest of it down, swallows, and says, “Right. Explanations can start anytime, little Lam, because my childhood imaginary friend is eating pepperoni pizza at Geralt’s table and I am real fucking confused right now.”
“This is Eskel,” Lambert says, and Eskel watches Gweld and Geralt both reel in their seats. Voltehre just cocks his head in confusion, though. Well, Eskel knew him least well of all the former Wolves at this table, due to him dying so young. “He’s a witcher,” Lambert continues. “And apparently, reincarnation is a thing, and so were we.”
“Blunt,” Aiden observes with a sigh.
“Witchers are either extinct or mythical,” Voltehre objects. “The existing literature on them is muddled, but they definitely died out, if they ever existed, at least a thousand years ago.”
Eskel takes a deep breath, pushes back a little from the table, and casts Quen.
There’s a long pause while everyone stares at him. Finally Voltehre leans over to knock his knuckles against the golden shield, and sits back again wide-eyed and boggled.
Eskel drops the Quen and summons a little lick of Igni instead, letting the tiny flame dance over his knuckles. Gweld, with the air of someone trying a rather dangerous experiment, tears a strip off his napkin and leans over to touch it to the flame. It burns to ash immediately.
“Huh,” Gweld says, sitting back.
“Eyes,” Geralt says softly, watching Eskel with a wondering expression. “Look at his eyes.”
Eskel obligingly narrows his pupils to slits for a few moments before letting them relax.
“...I sit corrected,” Voltehre says. “Witchers are evidently real. I have so many questions and this isn’t even my area of study but I could get such a good paper out of this, holy shit.”
Eskel blinks. “A paper?”
“Yes! For starters, how the hell did witchers make swords out of silver that could hold up to heavy use? It’s not possible with modern technology - that much silver is far too soft to make an effective weapon -”
“Voltehre is a nerd,” Lambert puts in dryly, reaching over to cover Voltehre’s mouth with one hand. “Eat your pizza, and let Eskel eat his.” And then he yanks his hand away with a grimace. “And don’t lick me, you horrible little gremlin -”
“Taller than you,” Voltehre sing-songs. Lambert rolls his eyes emphatically.
“Hang on a moment,” Gweld says slowly. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘so were we’?”
Lambert has chosen that moment to take a bite of pizza, so it’s Aiden who says, “Evidently, all of us had former lives as witchers.”
Eskel nods. “You four were Wolves, as I am,” he says quietly. “Aiden was a Cat, and I never met him, but he was Lambert’s then, too.”
“Us?” Voltehre asks, startled.
“Us,” Geralt says, soft and almost sad. “That’s - I dream, sometimes.”
“The white-hair dreams?” Gweld asks, frowning. Geralt nods.
“White-hair dreams?” Eskel asks.
Geralt shrugs. “I have white hair, and I wear armor, and I have a horse named Roach. And I fight monsters. There’s…there’s a man who sings, and a woman with purple eyes, and a little girl with blonde hair. And Gweld, and Lambert. And you.”
“Not me?” Voltehre asks, tilting his head curiously.
Eskel winces. “You died young.”
“Huh. Not uncommon, back then,” Voltehre says, shrugging. “I mean, the common misconception that everyone died at thirty is a misconception, because averages don’t work like that - what am I saying, you already know all of this.”
Eskel nods. “There is,” he says, hesitates, and takes a deep breath. “There is a way to give you your memories of your first lives. I triggered it by accident with Lambert, and slightly more on purpose with Aiden. It would probably work for all of you. But…your life was short, and your death was bad,” he tells Voltehre gently. “You might not want your memories back. I’m not sure I would, in your place.”
“How short are we talking? And how bad?” Voltehre asks practically. Lambert makes a soft, miserable sound and reaches over to take Voltehre’s hand, knuckles white from the strength of his grip.
“You died at eighteen, slain by a cyclops,” Eskel tells Voltehre.
Voltehre takes a bite of pizza and chews slowly, thinking that over; he doesn’t object at all to Lambert’s clinging. “Yeah, that sounds awful,” he says, once he’s swallowed. “And I was going to say it might be worth it for the first-hand knowledge of how life worked back then, but I can’t exactly cite ‘memories restored by witcher magic’ or whatever is going on here. Or at least I’ve never seen a citation style for that in any of the guides. So yeah, unless it turns out I need ‘em, I think I’ll skip the whole thing, if you don’t mind. Lambert can remember for us both.”
“Sensible,” Aiden says. “Probably keep Lambert from having a nervous breakdown, too.”
“Fuck you,” Lambert mutters.
“I want them,” Geralt says. “I want to know more than just the dreams.”
“Me, too,” Gweld agrees. “I want to know my not-imaginary brother again.”
“After dinner, then,” Aiden says practically. “You’ll want painkillers, and to be lying down. And you’ll want to stay out of the room until we’re done, so you don’t get ‘em triggered by accident, Voltehre.”
Voltehre nods. “I can do the dishes,” he offers.
An hour later, Eskel takes his medallion back from Gweld’s shaking fingers, tucks it back under his shirt, and stands there looking at his brothers as they stare at him.
And then he is the center of a three-person embrace that knocks him back against the wall, Geralt and Gweld clinging to him so hard they might leave bruises. He wraps his arms around them both and holds on, feeling tears prick at the corner of his eyes. Lambert joins the embrace after a moment, worming his way between Geralt and Gweld and tucking his head under Eskel’s chin like an insistent cat. Voltehre comes in from the kitchen and leans against the wall beside Aiden, who is watching the scene with rather misty eyes.
There are still so many things to figure out: why, and how, and what they can do to make sure it doesn’t take another thousand years for Eskel to find them again. But for right now, this is a perfect moment, here with his long-lost brothers in his arms, hale and healthy and whole.
What does an immortal monster-hunter do when there are no more monsters to hunt?
He finds his family, and makes a new life beside them.