Yetska of Kaedwen

— rumbling agreeably.
“LOTS ROCKS! PRETTY ROCKS!”

— MANSES NOT COME TO THUMP-THUMP HOME. HATTY MANSES PAY THUMP-THUMP
LOTS PRETTY ROCKS TO THROW ROCK AT CART!”
Yetska raised a brow. This was a turn in the road she hadn’t expected.
“So…Hatty manses gave Thump-Thump pretty rocks to attack manses cart?”
Thump-Thump nodded deeply, his throat —

— like she could commiserate with the troll.
“Manses make life hard for Witcherses, too.”
Perhaps she could.
“Did Thump-Thump throw big rock at manses cart?”
The troll scratched his head again, kicking at a mound of dust with its foot.
“THUMP-THUMP THROWDED UGLY ROCK AT MANSES CART, BUT CART —

As Arkan proceeded to overdo the troll-speak, Yetska reached up to wipe some dust from her cheek only to choke back a laugh behind her hand. She slyly cleared her throat, struggling to keep a stern expression.

She nodded slowly, exaggerating the movements of her head as she attempted to look —

- WITCHERSES IN THUMP-THUMP HOME?"

"Witcherses hear rock troll throw big rock at manses cart. Manses very angry. Witcherses no want hurt Thump-Thump, just ask Thump-Thump questions, right?" Yetska said, roughly elbowing Arkan in the side. Subtlety was not a rock troll's forte.

- her ground as she raised her voice, deepened it, and made a rock troll out of herself.
"We Witcherses, not manses! We leave Thump-Thump alone if Thump-Thump answer question!"

The troll stopped dead in its tracks, its massive hand scratching at its splotchy, bald head.
"WITCHERSES? WHY -

- MANSES! MANSES LEAVE THUMP-THUMP HOME NOW!"

Yetska cleared her throat as the troll came into view.
Big. Old. The color of red clay and rusted steel.
"Well, at least its talking," Yetska said with a glance back at Arkan, a knowing smile on her face.
The troll waddled closer, Yetska stood -

- sword. Anything can set off a rock troll," she whispered, her eye suddenly darting to the mouth of a tunnel as a shape appeared, wobbling to and fro as it stumbled its stupid way forward.

"YOUS!" the shape bellowed, the voice a deep roar that sounded choked by gravel.
"BIG ROCK HOLE NOT FOR -

- the Trial of The Grasses, they would be equals. Not in age and experience, but in standing.

Yetska stood tall, chin held high, boots firmly planted on the dusty quarry floor as the rumbling became rhythmic.

𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘥-𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘥...𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘥-𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘥...𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘥-𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘥...

"Be ready, but get your hand away from your -

Yetska nodded, her thumb hooked into her belt as casually as could be. She couldn't help a small grin as it pulled at the corner of her lips. She had told him at least ten times to stop calling her "Ma'am," and he seemed to finally be getting the message. Once he had proven himself in -

"Quiet. Hear that low rumbling? Not far now."

- Witchers felt as deeply as any other soul. The years, the blood, the ostracization, the work, that was what made a Witcher numb.
Arkan was what she once was. Shave thirty-something years off of her life and change a few parts around and no one would tell the difference. Angry and unfocused. -

- drowner's if you paid them enough. They threw out simple hexes at their foes, wore two swords, had cat's eyes.
They were mutated freaks. They are the things simple-minded folk hate until their battlefields fester with rotfiends or an ekhidna harasses their fishing boats.

Yetska knew the truth. -

- Stay out of its reach. You've studied them, remember your training."
She glanced back at him once more, her cat's eye studying that furrowed brow of his.

There was a myth–a helpful one–that told folk that Witchers felt nothing. They would cut a man's throat as soon as they would a -

- anger.
Now that he was what most would consider a man, she could see fresh anger fermenting under his skin like a batch of rotten mead.
"Never said to stand still and watch me get ground into paste," Yetska said with a snort. "By all means, go for the face or the belly on a rock troll. Just...-

Perhaps he didn't know it, but she could hear the frustration on his breaths, the way the leather of his gauntlets tightened and relaxed, how a step would be out of time with the others.
The boy Arkan had been had done far better than expected when it came to tempering the white-hot heat of his -

“If this is a rock troll, let me do the talking. If it comes to fighting…You’ll also let me do that. Is that clear?”

“But ‘stupid’ is relative when it comes to rock trolls. I’ve killed two or three, but only if they attacked me first.”
Yetska’s back straightened as the pair reached the quarry floor. Every sound seemed to ricochet for eternity off the sheer walls, and every moment of silence made the ears ring. —

Even if Witchers age slower, those years of experience add up. She knew the boy couldn’t be expected to know everything, and even so he had arrived at the correct answer—even if the answer was just her educated hunch.
“Very good,” she said, directing a nod back at him over her shoulder. —

“Yes, go on,” Yetska said quietly as they walked, her nose scrunching up here and there, her gaze following unseen paths and scents.
She waited and listened, letting Arkan arrive at the answer with the small nudges.
Unlike most Witchers, Yetska had made it to a human’s middle-age.
—

— track. The dust in and around the quarry was constantly molded by wind and rain, meaning tracks were almost useless in places like this.

“So that means it was likely thrown, and thrown with malicious intent. I got a hunch what it might be.”
She enjoyed playing these games with him, trying to tease the information out of his brain no matter how frustrated he became.
A few steps more and Yetska squatted next to an indecipherable —

— dual swords clink-clanking against her back.
“You ever hear of a griffin dropping a rock that big on someone? A slizzard? They aren’t intelligent enough for that.”
Yetska squeezed through the rotting timbers of an old mining rig, glancing back to make sure Arkan had also made it.
—

— Yetska shuddered at the thought of her own experience with the Trial of The Grasses, casting a sympathetic glance at Arkan’s back when he turned from her.
“And since the boulder was thrown or dropped, that leaves us with few options as to the culprit.”
Yetska walked ahead of him now, her —

— still just a human. Gifted in all of the studies Witchers must master, but still a boy who should have gone through the mutations nearly a decade ago.
That would have given him time to forget them, to let them fade into a jumble of memories as the moment where his childhood ended.
—

— the boy was gifted. A little misguided, but what young man isn’t?
She had understood when she had been told he would be trained and taken on as a Witcher at his rather advanced age, yet had more difficulty understanding why she had been told to take him out on a contract.
To her, he was —

Instead of brushing away the dirt which had given her hands a grey shade, she rubbed the last of it into her palms and between her fingers.
“Mhm,” Yetska nodded, slowly standing to her feet as she let Arkan work through his thoughts.
Even though he had not been through the nightmare of mutations, -

southward, anyway.”
Yetska flicked a few specks of dust onto Arkan’s tunic, right where he had just wiped some away.
“Part of being a Witcher is using that damn noggin,” she said, poking two fingers against the young Witcher’s temple.

“And it was grey when we found it. No moss, no nothin’. Probably hadn’t even seen any rain, either.”
Yetska gestured towards the open maw of the old quarry, hundreds of feet deep and many times that across.
“Therefore, the boulder may have come from here. The cart was only two or so miles —

the powder and letting it slip through fingers that were more callus than anything else.
“They said the boulder that turned their cart into splinters didn’t look like anything else around, right? Said it didn’t belong.”
Yetska pinwheeled her hand around, as if rushing through her own answer.
—