Young Wolves, part three! also known as now they wolves forrealnow also on AO3!!! exciting!!! check

Young Wolves, part three! also known as now they wolves forrealnow also on AO3!!! exciting!!! check it out!!fic and warnings under the cut as usualCW: mention of deathThe first year after the Trial of the Grasses is simultaneously the worst and the best of many young witchers’ lives. It is everything they’ve looked forward to as novices, and the thrill of experimenting with their newly heightened senses, strength and speed doesn’t wear off for a long while. But that exciting time is simultaneously full of lingering misery. From Geralt’s age group, three more die during that first year. Boys who were thought to have made it succumb to the slow effects of witcher mutations, wasting away over the span of months. That hits them harder than any immediate death during the Trial.The young witchers are moved from their cramped quarters onto a higher floor of the keep- no longer are they crammed together, eight boys to a small room, but instead, two witchers share the same sized space. The halls seem to echo even louder than they used to. Geralt and Eskel get roomed together, and cling to each other, becoming near inseparable. They balance each other out, and compliment each other’s skills and personalities, both in the training yard and outside it. Geralt bounces back from the Trials with unprecedented speed and vigour, and excels in swordplay. Eskel is quickly found to have a strong magical ability, and masters the signs far ahead of the rest of his group. It’s not uncommon to find them paired off during training, Geralt swinging his new, sharp witcher sword at Eskel, with his body faintly glimmering with the gold of Quen.When winter grudgingly gives way to spring, the remaining young witchers are finally given their medallions. They’re unactivated at that point, not yet attuned to the magical energies of the world, but they’re still a point of pride, recognition for the young witchers. The medallion is a witcher’s near-inseparable companion, so they need to get used to them even before their activation.The actual giving of the medallions is done with as much ceremony as witchers ever do: Geralt stands in the main hall in a row with all the rest of his group, Eskel on his right side, Kerrik on his left, and Master Oswald goes down the line, slipping a medallion over every boy’s head, silent and serious. No one stands on ceremony, and witchers and novices pass by them, at most giving a congratulatory nod or an admiring look, and the clang and bustle of training carries up from the courtyard. When the deceivingly delicate silver chain is slipped over Geralt’s head, he closes his eyes and focuses.The medallion doesn’t tremble, and Geralt knows it wouldn’t for years yet, not before he underwent the Trial of the Medallion and activated it. The silver alloy lays heavy against his sternum, hanging in a too-long chain on his too-thin neck, and Geralt imagines what it would be like to feel it tremble. He tries to focus all his senses, to pretend to detect even the slightest movement, because he knows that could make the difference between life and death for a witcher. All the boys around him have similar expressions of concentration on their faces, some studying the snarling wolf head closely, others trying to reach out with their senses. In time they will have to learn to sense their medallions as an extension of their bodies and react to it’s movements instinctively, but for now, it is a thrill. A recognition of status. Of survival. -- source link

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