Cain was vomiting until there was almost nothing left inside him to bring up. Then his body kept trying anyway as it convulsed in great pain.
I had been suffering through this shitty pain for the last eighth hour of the preparations. That was how long we were told we had to wait as our bodies process the teas and herbs. It was poison by another name and we had to wait for it to bring us to our lowest.
Cain felt it sit in his stomach like acid, and crawled into his blood like ice and fire together, and forced wave after wave of violent rejection out of him until his nerves and throat felt bruised from retching.
Each time he bent over the basin beside his cot, another system notification flashed across his vision.
System Notification: You have been poisoned.
I had stopped reacting to it by the second hour, and by the fourth, I hated the message almost as much as the pain. By the eighth hour, I was too far gone to even care.
Every muscle in my body shook uncontrollably. Cold tremors rolled through me so violently my teeth clenched together until my jaw ached. Sweat drenched my tunic and then chilled against my skin, leaving me shivering so hard it hurt. The room around me swam in and out of focus, the walls bending slightly whenever a fresh wave of nausea hit.
Across from me, Callum looked worse than I had ever seen anyone look. I thought he was a cancer patient for a moment.
The red-haired boy had been vomiting almost continuously for hours. At first it had been food, then bile, then thin strings of bitter fluid tinged yellow and green. By now his stomach had nothing left, but his body still convulsed in dry heaves so violent they made his whole frame jerk. His eyes had sunk into their sockets. His face had gone a frightening pale white beneath the flush of fever. His lips looked cracked and bloodless.
I knew I probably didn't look much better myself.
My own rich cocoa-brown skin had gone noticeably lighter, washed out under the strain of poison, sweat, and constant purging. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. My throat burned raw. My stomach had turned into a knot of acid and pain. Even breathing felt wrong, like each inhale had to fight its way through a body that no longer wanted to cooperate.
Vesemir checked on us throughout the night.
He said little. Just making sure we were alive and how far along we were. We couldn't even drink water. He said their would be no point. We wouldn't be able to keep it down.
He moved between the boys with the brisk focus of a man who had done this too many times to waste motion, checking their pupils, pulse, temperature, breathing, listening to the contracting of their lungs, watching for signs the body was weakening too quickly. At one point he pulled back Cain's eyelid and studied the redness creeping into the whites. Later he pressed rough fingers to Callum's throat, counting the pulse there while Coën changed out the basin beside the boy.
Hours passed like that.
Continuous pain and retching. Sweating what little water our bodies had left until the pain of dehydration made it hard to focus let alone move. Then cold shivers took our bodies with uncontrollable shaking.
Then another poisoned wave tearing through our bodies and it started all over again. Then another system notification. Another look from Vesemir growing more severe each time he checked.
Then, when both boys seemed at their weakest, eyes bloodshot, bodies hollowed out, skin clammy and trembling, hearts hammering too fast beneath too little flesh, Vesemir stood and said to Geralt, Coën, and Lambert, "It's time. Take them."
Callum and I didn't have the strength to protest. Not that we would have at this point. All I knew was that I was so tired and weak. And so thirsty I would have killed for a cup of water.
Thats when Geralt lifted me with ease.
Even in that half-poisoned state, Cain noticed how strong the Witcher's arms felt as they slipped under him and pulled him up. His head lolled once against Geralt's shoulder. The room tilted sickeningly. He swallowed hard to keep from vomiting down Geralt's chest and barely managed it. Not that he had anything left to vomit.
Coën carried Callum. The red-haired boy didn't even have the energy for a complaint. His head hung back slightly, mouth parted, breathing shallow, and uneven as Coën carried him down the corridor.
The room they were brought to was colder than Cain expected.
Not cold like the mountain air outside, but cold in the way stone chambers built around death held a chill in their walls, no matter how many lamps burned inside them. It smelled of alcohol used to disinfect the area. A tinge of iron, bitter herbs, burning oil, and the faint sharp sting of chemicals mixed together.
Two metal tables waited in the middle of the room. Flat, iron-edged, reinforced things made for restraint rather than comfort.
Along one wall stood several alchemical worktables covered in glassware, knives, forceps, bowls of dried herbs, thick ceramic jars, syringes, tubing, and rows of vials filled with liquids of different colors, deep crimson, smoky green, cloudy amber, pale silver, blue so dark it looked almost black.
I then saw the druid woman too. She stood in the corner at first, hood shadowing her face. Then as Geralt laid Cain onto the table and Coën placed Callum on the other next to him, she stepped closer and pushed her hood back.
Cain's breath caught despite everything.
She was elven. Beautiful in a way that felt almost unreal even through the fog of pain. Long black hair fell in a dark silk curtain around her shoulders. Her features were fine and severe, all elegant lines and cold stillness. Her eyes were amber, clear, luminous, and utterly unsympathetic, though not empty.
She did not look at the Witchers first. She looked at the boys. Then she took a ceramic bowl from the table, poured something into a cup, and came to Cain first.
"Drink child," she said. Her voice was low and smooth.
I could barely lift my head. Geralt helped me just enough to swallow. The liquid was bitter beyond reason. It tasted like rot, metal, and crushed bark steeped in venom.
Callum drank his a second later and gagged so violently that Coën had to clamp a hand over the back of his neck to keep him from twisting off the table.
Within seconds I felt my limbs go heavy and numb. Then terrifyingly unresponsive.
The druid put a hand briefly on his forehead and then, unexpectedly, brushed her fingers once through his hair tenderly.
"Drink, children," she said. "It will help." Her hand moved to Callum's head as well, gentler than her expression.
Then, quieter, almost to herself, "I am sorry for what you both are about to go through. Half elven or not, you two are still of our kind."
That's when a new notification flashed across Cains eyes.
System Notification: You have been paralyzed through poison.
Warning: Your health is low.
But I ignored it, I had bigger problems now.
That's when the straps came next.
Leather buckles pulled tight across wrists, ankles, chest, waist, thighs. The boys were bound to the metal tables with the kind of security meant for something stronger than children.
I tested my body instinctively, but nothing happened. I could move my eyes. Barely my head. That was it.
I looked toward Callum. Even half-dead, Callum somehow found the strength to force a weak, ugly smile.
I smirked back as best I could. Then the druid stepped away and said, "Witchers. Let's get this over with." The disdain in her voice was impossible to miss.
Vesemir nodded once. Geralt and Coën moved first, bringing over the vials and large glass reservoirs connected to long needles and tubing. Lambert passed instruments where needed, his face grim in a way Cain had almost never seen before.
The first needles went in. Cain's body jerked uselessly against the straps the moment the metal punched into his veins. And the elixirs began to flow into his body.
At first the sensation was only cold, and then hot. Then both at once in ways my brain couldn't make sense of. It felt like liquid fire being injected directly into my blood.
My veins burned. Not metaphorically. It truly felt as though each vessel in my body had been packed full of molten metal and lit from the inside. The burning sensation ran up my arms, into my chest, down through my stomach, into my legs, into my neck and skull.
I screamed. As did Callum. The numbing poison from before burned out of usefulness almost immediately.
There was no mercy in it. Only strap-cut wrists, arched spines, and the raw sound of children screaming until their throats tore.
I watched as the giant vials emptied slowly into my body. The hours passed by slowly enough that time lost all meaning.
My body convulsed so violently the leather straps creaked. Foam and saliva spilled from the corners of my mouth. Sweat burst from every inch of me until my hair was plastered to my face and neck. My stomach cramped. Even my bowels released against my own will in sheer reflexive surrender to the pain.
I wasn't even humiliated, the pain was all that matter since I wanted to escape it. Surviving the next second mattered.
Another notification flashed through the blur.
System Notification: You are severely poisoned. Health is below 20%.
I couldn't even think enough to be angry at it. My entire world was the table. The restraints tearing into my flesh. The burning blood in my veins. I even tasted blood in my mouth where I had bitten through the inside of his cheek.
The sound of Callum on the table beside me, screaming, choking, crying out, then screaming again. Sent a whole other pain through me. Not physical but mental. He was my friend, my borther and he was suffering so much.
Cain heard Vesemir's voice cut through once.
"Hold him steady."
Then the druid's voice, colder. "They're at the point. Bring the mutagens."
Cain saw light spill across the floor. Alchemical circles beneath them.
The druid's hands glowed faintly, magic and power moving through her fingers in a controlled, eerie radiance. Symbols inscribed beneath the tables lit up one by one in pale, shifting bands of white-green light.
Geralt and Coën changed the tubes. With new bigger vials full of thicker liquids that were darker. Then within seconds the mutagens entered their blood without warning.
Cain's whole world shattered. There was no better way to think of it. Every nerve in his body ignited. The earlier pain had been agony, but this was annihilation.
I felt it all so much. It felt as my his skeleton had been ripped open and refilled with venom. My muscles seized so hard I thought they were tearing free from the bone. My spine arched until something in my back popped. My lungs forgot how to breathe from the pain. My heart pounded so violently it felt ready to burst through my ribs.
I screamed so loud and hard, until nothing came out but ragged air and torn sound. Blood began to spill from the corners of my eyes.
I dimly saw the same happening to Callum.
His body thrashed so hard the metal table rattled. Blood ran from his nostrils. His lips had split. His face was so pale it looked almost corpse-like except for the terrible flush of fever and the unnatural violence of his convulsions.
Geralt looked at the druid and asked, "Is this normal?"
The druid didn't stop channeling.
"It was expected," she said sharply. "They're of elven descent. Their bodies resist poison and toxin more aggressively. Whoever wrote those notes accounted for that. Now stop asking foolish questions and hold them. I must focus."
Then, colder still: "We have several hours of this. Pray they don't go mad."
Several hours passed as things only became worse. A day and a half of torment.
I had lost all ability to measure time. I had blacked out again and again only to return to pain each time like surfacing into a sea of knives. Sometimes I woke to the sensation of new injections. Sometimes to violent cold, of my body shaking so hard my teeth clicked like castanets. And sometimes to heat so severe I thought I was burning alive from the inside.
I even hallucinated. At one point he thought the ceiling had melted into the night sky of the alley where I first woke. At another point I saw his old room from his first life, except the walls were made of raw flesh and the poster on the wall dripped blood instead of ink.
I saw Geralt's face become a wolf skull. Then the druid's amber eyes multiply into dozens. I saw Callum as a corpse and then as a child and then as something bright and impossible made of fire and green glass in a white snowstorm.
I heard voices that were not in the room. I heard my own. Sometimes I thought I had died and was waking up in hell. Sometimes I wished that was true, because at least hell would have meant the process was over. But it still kept going.
By the end of the second day, I had felt something change. The pain did not vanish, but it shifted.
Cain felt it in a way he couldn't have described to anyone who had not lived through it. The agony was still there, but beneath it something else had begun, something invasive, intelligent, vast. His body was no longer simply rejecting. It was adapting. Failing in places, surviving in others, rewriting itself through violence.
Then the system responded.
System Notification: Your body has undergone a great change. You have undergone the Trial of the Grasses Ver. 2
Effect: Half-Elf → Half-Elf (Mutated)
Even through the pain, Cain's mind caught on that.
Version 2? But there was no time to think about it. Another notification slammed into place.
System Notification: Your mind and body have been awakened to the Chaos of the universe.
Effect: Due to your elven heritage and Witcher mutations, you have unlocked a high affinity for magic and gained the Mana attribute.
Cain's eyes widened weakly. Chaos, Mana. Wait I have magic now! That's when another line appeared beneath it.
Bonus Effect: Conditions have been met.
Bloodline Trait Found: Elder Blood [Sealed]
For one impossible instant, Cain forgot the pain.
Wait, Elder Blood? What the hell, but how is that possible? The question barely formed before the next cascade of windows hit him.
System Notification: Conditions have been met. Several new abilities and traits have been gained.
Trait Acquired: Cold Blooded (Rare)
Effect: You remain calm in high-stress situations and have high resistance to mental, psychic, and corruptive influences.
Ability Acquired: Poison Resistance Lv. 3 (Common)
Effect: High resistance to toxins, poisons, and potion strain. Improves tolerance and beneficial adaptation.
Ability Acquired: Mind's Eye Lv. 1 (Common)
Effect: Perceive the world with heightened clarity. Identify weak points in living and non-living targets. Grants a 10% increase in attack efficiency.
Mind's Eye increased from Lv. 1 → Lv. 4
Reason: Wisdom Attribute threshold met.
Mind's Eye Lv. 4 (Common)
Effect: Perceive the world with heightened clarity. Identify weak points in living and non-living targets. Grants a 15% increase in attack efficiency.
Cain could barely process anything before the next came.
System Notification: Rare Ranked Quest: Trial of the Grasses — Complete
Rewards Received: +3 to All Attributes. 1 Rare Equipment Chest. 1 New Skill & New Ability
New Skill Acquired: Limit Break Lv. 1 (Common)
Effect: For 60 seconds, all Attributes increase by 10.
Bonus Effect: The lower your health and the greater your debuff state is, the stronger the increase becomes. Maximum Increase: +15 to all Attributes.
New Ability Acquired:Charm Resistance Lv. 10 (Legendary) — MAX
Effect: Full resistance to magical charm effects. Instantly detects influence attempts.
My vision blurred as my body still felt as if it had been ripped apart and sewn back together with fire and pain. But somehow the pain was… manageable now. The pain was no where near gone just manageable now.
I turned my head weakly toward Callum. The other boy looked like utter hell.
His face was hollow and blood-smeared. His body was drenched in sweat, streaked with vomit, blood, and filth. His eyes, when they opened briefly, were no longer fully human. The emerald green remained, but now the pupils had the striking cat slit's which were unmistakable the same as a Witcher's.
And despite how terrible he looked, Callum gave me the faintest smug smile. Before he passed out.
I smirked weakly in return. Stubborn bastard, I thought.
Then darkness took me too.
The two boys went still as the became unconscious. The druid let the glow fade from her hands and stepped first to Callum.
She lifted one eyelid, studying the eye beneath. Then she moved to Cain and did the same. When she spoke, her voice was quieter now.
"They've both begun accepting the mutagenic elixirs and the mutation has taken affect, very quickly from what I can see. They've passed the initial phase."
Vesemir exhaled slowly.
"That's good."
He looked older in that moment than Cain had ever seen him.
"Now they'll sleep for a few days. But their not out of the woods yet. Fevers. Cold sweats and convulsions, as their metabolisms change hard and fast from the mutations."
Geralt looked from one boy to the other. "They're lucky," he said. "Only two days to clear the first phase."
The druid did not look impressed by the word lucky.
"I will remain until they wake," she said. "If they wake."
Vesemir inclined his head. "Our thanks again, Druid Aiag."
She cut him a look as cold as ice. "Don't thank me. I'm here to ensure one of those boys survives out of a debt. Otherwise I would never assist you Witchers in this barbaric process."
Geralt frowned slightly. "Which one?"
Aiag settled into a chair near the tables and crossed her legs, her expression sharpening into open disdain.
"That is none of your business, Witcher. After the trial of Dreams we will never meet again."
Lambert snorted softly. "Bit cold for someone helping."
Aiag didn't even turn her head toward him. "Then count yourselves fortunate I'm helping at all."
Eskel said nothing, and Coën rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. And then all four Witchers went still at once.
Their medallions had begun to vibrate faintly. Not with the warning tremor of a nearby monster or from the druid. But from something stranger. All of them looked back to the two unconscious boys strapped to the tables.
Aiag noticed too, as her amber eyes narrowed towards the boys. Then, very quietly, more to herself than anyone else, she whispered, "It cannot be…"
Vesemir's expression widened slightly. What do we have here?