Witcher Warrior Scholar Spy

“The worst tale, the one that shakes the world,

Isn’t the story of the Heroes.

It isn’t the story of perseverance

Or of success.”

Shen was seated, his feet hanging over the slow-moving edge of the wagon. He watched in silence as the dirt road passed underneath, mere inches from the soles of his shoes. Flicking his gaze up, he watched the distant sand mounds fading away along the horizon. They were in the Wistra Plains, close to Opine. Mere days away. Mere days to finally, finally reconnect with his dearest friends—minus Mara. Shen felt like he was so close he could taste it.

Not literally, of course, because Xolo had thoroughly disintegrated his tongue. Though Shen was decently sure that there were at least two taste buds left. He often had an inkling of flavor when he ate the stew on the trip. It was mostly broth, with stale bread to dunk into it, but on occasion, Shen could feel the warmth and could have sworn he tasted spice. He tried to flick his tongue at the thought.

Instead, he flinched at the movement he was no longer able to perform. Shen had been rather fond of running his tongue across the back of his teeth to stall for time.

Shaking his head, refusing to dwell on his loss, Shen focused his mind on one of the other members of the caravan—a man that Shen had taken to sitting in companionable silence with. The man was tall, with thin limbs and a protruding gut, but he had a kind smile even as he followed the wagon on foot.

Raising a single palm, Shen snapped his fingers and imagined illness, he imagined broken minds—ripped asunder and rebuilt. He created a new plague to infest the man’s brain, which settled into the ridges of his grey matter.

But instead of sickness, magic flowed through his head. It showed the man a picture of Shen, a smile on his face, and a tongue intact.

“Hey, Laurie,” the false Shen said.

The man, Laurie, startled and looked up at Shen, who had previously been mute.

“You can talk then?” he asked, a grin forming on his face even as the false Shen was overlaid atop the actual Shen.

“Sometimes,” the illness said. “It depends. It’s a kind of curse, you could say.”

“To speak?” Laurie tilted his head, confused.

The false Shen and real Shen both shook their heads in unison. “No, to be heard.”

And then, the working snapped away, the magic sapped out of Shen, and the image he’d placed in Laurie’s mind fell away to reveal the same mute man he’d seen before.

“How’d you do that?” Laurie laughed. “I didn’t know you were a mage. Whose Well are you tied to in order to have such a strong illusion?”

Shen quirked a smile and opened his mouth, gesturing with his hand to the emptiness. It was as if he was saying, How can I answer? I’m just a mute.

Laurie gave a snort, half of mirth and half of concern. “Yeah, yeah, keep your secrets, traveler.”

Lifting his hand once more, Shen reached out toward Laurie, snapping his finger and obliterating the illness in Laurie’s mind before it spread. Before it corrupted what it touched. Before it became more than a brief hallucination of a man chatting with his fellow traveler. Before Laurie noticed that no one else had heard Shen speak at all.

Shen has to focus so as not to burn away any extra grey matter within the man’s mind, but such a working was simple to someone as dedicated to magic as Shen. And he’s spent the past week visualizing such a thing and keeping his mind clear of alternate workings that could corrupt his main purpose.

Wells were fickle things—they could be warped into unrecognizable sources of power depending on how agile the mind of the user was. And Shen had been trained in such mental acrobatics by a master. Babel was many things, but incompetent was not one of them. Nor was his second teacher, Alkimika, Shen’s mother. The Scholar who birthed the Spy. Shen knew his mother had wanted to be like Kilkua and Kuala, Warriors fathering Warriors. But when his Inheritance blossomed, it was when Shen had been caught in a lie.

Shen, who was quiet and calm and never to be led astray, had gone deep into the palace catacombs following Olea. He had lost sight of her soon after entering the forbidden halls; she was quick on her feet and running as if she knew every twist. Maybe she did. But Shen hadn’t wanted to follow her, per se; he’d just wanted to catch up. To see why Olea had such a dark look on her face. He wasn’t interested in her secrets, just her thoughts.

This was back before their Inheritances had truly bloomed, before Olea had lost her smile—before Babel took her smile.

Thus, it was still odd. So, Shen had chased after her, his friend.

Were we really friends? Shen wondered to himself, both within and outside of his rumination. Or was that just all in my head?

He wasn’t able to catch up to her due to tripping over the damaged tomb of a War Mage. The bleached skeleton, decorated with etchings Shen had been too terrified to focus on, had been precariously propped up against a stone pillar and, upon being knocked into by a six-year-old, had collapsed upon Shen.

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And, as any six-year-old would, Shen screamed. Piercing the silence with such a thing had caused knights to flood into the catacombs. They were searching time and space for him, but there was no need to waste any workings—Shen had barely made it through the entry halls.

It hadn’t escaped Shen’s notice that Olea wasn’t one of the ones to come searching for the scream.

Shen still remembered awakening his Inheritance, the rush of power that had surged through him. The knights had demanded to know who he was, which was bizarre to Shen, who knew them all on a first-name basis.

Ylga and Orrin were both friends of his mother, had escorted him to playdates with Mara, and had helped him learn the court’s etiquette. Why couldn’t they see it was him?

Why didn’t Shen feel like he was himself?

Catching sight of himself in their armor, he looked odd—his skin dark like Kuala’s and his hair bright as Arkim’s. It was a far cry from the medium coloring Shen usually sported.

It wasn’t until they were looking at Shen-yet-not with pity and escorting him out of the catacombs that Alkimika found him, fury and resignation warring with her features. The two knights were shocked when they looked back down to see Shen in his original face. Alkimika had gripped Shen’s shoulders, a tight smile on her face.

“Honey, let’s go. We’ve got places to be, hmm?”

Shen had simply nodded and waved to Ylga and Orring, unsure of what had happened. The knights were dazed when they waved back. And, for the first time, Shen heard the whispers following him.

“He’s the Spy, the knights confirmed his Inheritance.”

Shen’s mother never asked why he was in the catacombs. And for once, he was grateful for her distraction. Shen wasn’t really sure how he would answer his mother.

Prior to that day, Shen had never told a lie, not one of such importance. He’d never understood what it meant to spin untruths. But as his Inheritance awakened within him, he saw new paths to getting what he desired.

At the time, Shen hadn’t considered it, but as an adult, he knew why Babel had grown so twisted. Babel was a street rat, an illegitimate child of the previous Witcher—a man no one had wanted to know. He had used his Inheritance in the only way such a person could. Viciously and with no abandon.

A grimace on his face, Shen waved for Laurie to sit on the wagon with him, but the man just grabbed his stomach and gave a boisterous laugh.

“No, no, I need to walk off this gut before my wife sees me.”

Shen let a smile spread across his face and nodded.

It wasn’t true, but Laurie wouldn’t know that. He wouldn’t know that the moment the man stepped away, Shen would be consumed with thoughts of all the things he still has to accomplish. That Shen was forming a task list. It included things such as getting to the Grotto as soon as possible and deciding if they needed to hunt down Olea first. Though Shen knew Kuala would be against it, he also knew that the Witcher was the only one with the magical capacity to hold together a new Illustra.

Illustra. An Artifact of Time. A way to fight the Doom. A light in the dark.

It was little more than a ball of magic, not technically aligned with Krohnic at all due to the Grotto being a naturally occurring source of Time. One day, the Grotto could become a true Well; it could grow and manifest a Godling. It had before.

But such things were slain quickly and with brutal efficiency. Godlings rampage for decades before their birth-madness eases. And a Godling of Time? Of Space and Light? That would set back New Archonia generations. In a way, sapping the Grotto of its power was doing the world a favor. It set back the formation of a Well by another few centuries while also saving Contraria. It was a scenario in which everyone won.

Shen sighed, the rattling wheels of the wagon hiding the exhale—but it existed despite this.

At the end of the day, Shen knew, at some point, they would have to find Olea. Olea, who didn’t want to be found. With Shen’s Inheritance, he could send a bird to her at any point—but he respected her desire to disappear. He understood it, even if he didn’t agree with it.

Olea, Shen thought resolutely, I can only give you so much time. Make good use of it.

Ahead of him, he could see Opine. It was on the edge of the horizon, so far away it was barely a bump, but it still stuck up from the flat plains around it. The city was still days away. Shen felt so close, yet so far from where he wanted to be. He had to remind himself that the horizon was showing he was making progress. His journey was nearly halfway done. He was so close that his heart was aching with want. For his family who guided him, for his friends who awaited him, for his people, trapped outside of time. He wanted them all.

Shen remembered how deeply Alkimika had wanted him to be the Scholar, how she wished to share the tricks of her Inheritance with him. She had wanted to pass on everything she’d learned from her predecessors—and everything she’d discovered herself. But it was not to be. Arkim was the Scholar. That spark in Alkimika never dimmed, though. She had taught both Shen and Arkim with gusto. And, after several of Shen’s sessions with Babel, she had fought with the Spy time and time again on Shen’s behalf. Alkimika had tried to guide their education in the most engaging of ways, from adding intrigue to court relations to creating scavenger hunts from the clues history could provide. Several times, Shen’s mother had to remind Sierre what it meant to raise a Scholar. That it wasn’t as simple as her other children. That Arkim would remember. Sierre couldn’t teach Arkim as she taught Olea.

Though Olea’s lessons with Sierre were a different matter entirely. Shen still remembered the aftermath of one of Olea’s lessons. He had been with Babel, learning about the proper way to navigate a brothel—at nine, it wasn’t as appropriate as Babel insisted it was, but there was nothing Shen could do about it now—when Sierre had stormed in.

She hadn’t paused, hadn’t taken a breath, hadn’t even acknowledged Shen was present, before she raised her palm and sent arrows of ice at Babel, piercing his flesh and sticking him to the wall.

The man had barely flinched.

“Hello, Sierre,” he’d said, in that cold way he said everything. Though Shen had seen something flash in his gaze, he couldn’t place it.

“You animal,” Sierre had hissed. She’d been about to continue when she finally caught sight of Shen and said, “Shen, go play with Arkim. I need a word.”

As Shen had rushed out, he’d overheard a single word.

“Olea—”

Whatever terror he’d felt ramped up tenfold. A raging Witcher could destroy the castle. But a raging mother? That could be the fall of Contraria as a whole.

Grimacing at the memory, Shen shook himself out of his head. Briefly, he worried he’d infected himself with his madness, bringing forth only the worst of his memories. So, he crafted a new working, one that would burn out any madness from his mind.

One that would rip his mind asunder and forge it anew. Better. Built for plague.