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Dying is less painful than he expected. One moment, he’s reaching for the device (releasing Juno—) and the other he’s—Cancelled is a good way of phrasing it. Like the Animus. One moment he’s Desmond Miles, the other moment his mind shucks his body and is—Someone else. Ezio, if he’s lucky, but he’s not picky. His ancestors are, as a rule, a lively bunch.
Did he die, then? That was the deal on offer if he followed things. Die and save the world. Nice and simple.
Very few things are simple, in his experience. Every now and again—typically late at night, when his mind was trying and failing to internalise the hurricane of weird shit that happened to be his life—Desmond wondered about how all this will end. What if his soul abused the system too much, and the Powers That Be decided to fuck with him a little? Would be fair enough, on balance. Desmond never properly bought into the genetic memory narrative. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, etcetera. If he were the head of Abstrego’s marketing department, he might not have been comfortable with biting the bullet and calling it magic. Maybe the market analysts had a meeting about it and decided that rendering genetic memories in three dimensions appealed to the customer base more than fucking around with soul magic.
His current circumstances give some weight to his vague speculations about the final destination of rogue souls. He’s felt this particular sequence of sensations hundreds of times. Recorporation. Cool. When he finished settling into whatever body he’s haunting, he takes a curious look around and—
Vaults to the right, burying a blade to the hilt into the eye of a monster. Human-shaped monster, yeah, but—
The monster’s friend screams something, half fury and half shock. Desmond is not listening, because the other man-monster radiates the same corrupt red as the first. What is even—Who are these people? The only man to shine a red this bloody was Garnier in Altair’s time, and he imported prisoners to torture—
Instinct saves him. He throws himself into a rolling fall avoiding a fire-ball by inches, which, okay, and comes close enough to sweep the legs of the stranger, burying a blade into his nape as he’s falling.
Alright. He exhales a long, bracing breath. Take stock. What’s going on?
He’s in a stone tower and thank Jesus for that. Fighting in close quarters was definitely the way to go, here. A castle, in all likelihood, or a fort of some sort, what with all the stone. Judging by the sound of clashing steel and screaming coming from the window, there is a battle going on. Did the two guys he had killed try to summon help? Funny.
Why the robes though? He frowns at his body thoughtfully. Why the Assassin’s garb? Thus far, he only visited ancestors, magic or not. Well, who is he possessing now? His lineage might be wacky but not that wacky. He probably would have spotted literal balls of fire being slung around casually. So, why is he dressed in Assassin robes, knives and all? Old-timey robes, too, and blades that he could have sworn were designed by—
A chilling scream cuts through the din, followed by a bellow of rage. A kid. A kid was hurt, possibly for the last time. He chases away all thoughts of blades and wizards, pushes his hood down and vaults out of the window, up the ledge and to the roof. What is—
“What the fuck.” He looks closer. Blinks, and shakes his head. Nope, those are children. Seventy or so, some barely out of puberty. And they’re fighting a no-shit mob, with pitchforks and everything. There are armoured fighters there, yeah, but also guys swinging around scythes and axes and—He sighs. “Goddamn it.”
The thing is, he can’t do much in terms of fighting. Some kids are—enhanced in some way, and all the grownups defending them are. Desmond continues scaling around the roofs, trusting his Eagle Vision to fill in the blanks. The kids shine a bright, healthy gold. The men defending them—with their lives, increasingly—run the spectrum between interest-white and ally-blue. Most of the attackers barely register on his senses, frankly. They’re overwhelming them with numbers, yeah, but it’s clear that the warriors would have torn them to shreds if A. They didn’t have kids to protect and B. If eight men and two women weren’t throwing magical spells at them from afar.
“Alrighty,” he says, eying the wizards and witches. They’re not quite as red as the two guys he just killed, but they’re up there with Borgia. Opportunistic evil, probably. Fair enough. Now, how to do this? He has the high ground now, but he only has one clean drop-kill, and then he’s going to be surrounded by angry wizards. Unless—
“Bingo,” he mutters, hands falling on the pouches that came over with him for whatever reason. “Let’s see how you handle this—”
You can kill wizards, Desmond learns, if you arrange matters in your favour. In this case, this means first distracting them with bombs. They will clear the smoke, no problem, but it will take them two-some heartbeats. Desmond needs less than half that time to line up a clear line of sight and shoot them in the head.
Thank the Lord for Leonardo, he thinks, vaulting over the roofs to avoid the magical projectiles. His pistol designs are unparalleled for the time, in terms of accuracy and practicality. He would have been toast if he had the more primitive pistols that took forever to reload. These wizards were no joke. Desmond only got two before they cottoned onto his rough location and switched targets. They can’t track him like they can the other warriors—he’s seen a ball of magic swerve and detonate a man not three minutes ago—but they compensated for that by flinging around some seriously overpowered magic.
Alright, he thinks, having jumped through a hole in the roof, found a conveniently placed window, and secured a fresh line of sight. Now her. She looks like she might be in charge.
He snipes five before they figure out a magical shield that will stop a bullet. By that time, the part of the castle Desmond was using for cover was mostly rubble. He tries his luck with throwing knives. Bad move. They bounce off the shield and signal his position. Cursing, he falls into a rather undignified Leap of Faith, just in time. The explosion behind him would have vaporised them. Alright, so he’s running out of tricks—
They can’t aim for shit, though, he concludes, about a minute later. They probably don’t need to—those attacks are spread enough to take out anything standing still. Desmond doesn’t stay still, and he is perfectly willing to exploit their recklessness. Manipulating friendly fire was fair game.
That’s what you get for not fighting in formation, he thinks. Wizards who can’t keep their heads in the game don’t get to complain when they kill each other by mistake. Case in point, Desmond only has surface-level damage and one nasty burn, and he’s killed six—He throws himself to the side, twisting and lashing out with a knife—Seven wizards. That’s a lot of dead wizards. Add in the two who summoned him, that makes nine—
A force of air—magic—picks him up and slams him to the wall. Breath escapes his lungs, vision whiting out. He barely feels his body when it spills to the ground. Shock, probably. What’s the point of cataloguing every injury when you get to this point? Fair’s fair, probably. It’s not like he particularly wants to stay—
His imminent execution is interrupted by seven snarling, burly men covered in blood. The woman dies with a sword through her throat and the last wizard—Is that a portal—
“Wow,” he says. He can speak? That’s a good sign. Means his lungs, spine and ribs aren’t pulped. It also means that, since death isn’t imminent, taking stock of his rescuers could be useful.
Up close, he doesn’t see a hint of dispassionate white. The men round his way, chests heaving, eyes wild. Well, he says wild. He can’t quite make out their expressions with how enthusiastically blue they read on Eagle Vision. What he can make out is the general build and make of them. Gigantic, hulking bruiser is the first, second and third impression. If you take a soccer hooligan, cut him with viking, lumberjack and power-lifter, and then spend a few hundred years carefully breeding for biggest and meanest, you could probably get here.
“Wow,” he repeats. His vision is going, so he’ll probably pass out. Magic. Right.
He wakes up, which is nice. He’s in a bed, bound up with rough bandages. Linen? Rough, hand-spun linen, by the feel of it. Okay—
Sitting up takes some doing, but he manages. He’s in healing chambers of some sort. They are distressingly empty, considering the battle he witnessed. Maybe this is a supplementary chamber? Maybe they have more wounded recovering somewhere else? Here’s hoping, hey? Surely they have more than two injured?
Now. Standing up.
He’s just managed to manoeuvre himself into an approximation of a standing position when three men march inside. Huh. Nice to know that his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him; they really do look like that. Man, they built them fierce in this world. And—Are their eyes yellow? He squints. Yeah. Proper yellow, slitted eyes. Werewolves? Werecats? Is that a thing? The evidence is pretty unambiguous.
Aesthetic pleasure aside, their scowls and body language are anything but subtle. The tall—hah—man in the middle looks like snacks on the hearts of the unworthy, and his two friends aren’t precisely balls of fluff. Switching to Eagle Vision is both a relief and a headache. Having a confirmation that, yes, they still shine a bright, unambiguous blue is nice, but it causes some commotion as well. Their scowls intensify, and they break in—gibberish.
Fair enough. Why would alien werewolves speak English? That would be silly. That said, a few other epithets can be ascribed to the alien werewolves. Jumpy would be one. Traumatized. Suspicious. Yeah. Desmond might be well and truly used to being pulled this way and that by forces he doesn’t understand, much less control, but they don’t seem quite as sanguine. To say nothing of the fact that Desmond might know that he’s not from around here, but they probably don’t. As far as they know, Desmond might be a fellow werewolf. He has the eyes, sort of. So.
Best start pacifying protocols, in short. Wonderful, yes. Correct conclusion, well done. How does one pacify a pack of werewolves? Even if he knew what to say, he wouldn’t have a way to say it. Christ.
Alright, step one—establish the baseline. For the sake of procedure, he cycles through all the languages he knows. English, Italian, Arabic. Then, for kicks, he throws in Chinese, old Egyptian and old Greek. It doesn’t get him anywhere, but his audience does look a little impressed. Finally, he concludes they’re up-to-speed on the linguistic gulf between them and goes back to the basics. He places a hand on his chest and says “Desmond.”
The guy in front nods. “Lieran,” he growls, in a tone usually found in vertebrates with fangs and claws. Man. Desmond would have paid his monthly salary to hear this man’s audiobooks. Something sweet, with a cynical twist. Tasteful erotica, on the outside.
“Varin,” the guy on the left says, lips pressed together in a forbidding line. Talk about overkill.
The last guy is the youngest and looks the least murderous. That’s something, maybe. “Vesimir.”
He puts on his most winning smile. “Hi,” he says. “So, this is awkward.”
With one thing and another, Desmond developed an ear for languages. The main language spoken is comprehensible, in that it’s spoken by humanoids with roughly analogous biology to his. He can vocalise all the sounds they make, which is an excellent starting point. His running theory is that he’s in a parallel dimension of some sort. Magic is commonplace, but so is linen, vaguely medieval tech and kind-of-sort-of European cultural trappings.
The reception is warmer than he expected, too. They—correctly—credit the elimination of the wizards to him, and appreciate the contribution. They’re less pleased about him killing the two wizards who summoned him, but they don’t make a big fuss about it. If he’s not very wrong, most of them are quietly relieved they’re gone.
The fact that buys him the most social capital, however, is that he’s good with kids, and the adults are outnumbered fifty-nine to seven.
Learning all their names is a lost cause, but he doesn’t need to, not for the very basic caretaking he spends a week doing. He checks up on them, cuddles the youngest ones in quiet corners and breaks up fights between the teenagers. They’re traumatized, the poor things and Desmond ran a cheap bar in a seedy part of New York. He knows how to approach trauma. Meaning, he shepherds them this way or that, leaving the seven adults to deal with the literal mountains of corpses. Yeah. Bleak.
“Mevi, stop harassing—” What is his name again? Gerald? Gavin? “Gary. Come on, both of you with me—”
They are good kids, though. Animalistic as anything—he twigged onto the fact that they communicate with scent as easily as anything vocalised—but that hardly counts against them. Werewolves are people too. Give them something to do, and they’re happy as anything. Thinking about why they’re so comfortable with instruction makes his stomach hurt, so he doesn’t. Instead, he makes sure he is at his most calm, learns their language as quickly as he is able, and clucks at them in any language that he pleases, otherwise.
“Today we learn how to use that lovely sourdough starter we have been cultivating—”
When two weeks go by, Desmond figures out two important things. First, werewolves are, by nature or brainwashing, highly hierarchical. Now that most of their command structure has been killed, they have no idea what to do. The second realisation, nipping the heels of the first, is that the adults appear to want to stay here.
“Explain,” he says, marshalling his best werewolf dialect. “Enemy come again. Only eight warrior left. All die, second time.”
Lieran sends him a persecuted look. Persecuted, in this case, would look wrathful and blood-mad to the uninitiated, but Desmond has been calibrating. He spits out a sequence of fast-paced words that he translates to this is our home and we have nowhere to go.
He nods, trying to bring up a sense of encouraging, gentle peace. He’s had some success with that. It’s probably one of the reasons they let him stay. They’re all so high-strung, it probably feels good to have a calm guy around.
“Allies? Other—” Um. “Group? Pack?”
Lieran shakes his head and hesitates. The second head-shake is less confident. Bingo.
“Maybe friend more good than alone.”
He’s not wrong. He might not be the brightest guy around, but he read enough fairy tales to know what a pitchfork-mob means, especially if they attack a remote castle full of werewolves. If they don’t have Christians here, they have something similar. If you have people, you will have organised religion. The fact that the mob had wizards and witches on their side complicates that paradigm some, but not that much. Once you get to the pitchfork stage, you cut your losses and skedaddle. Them’s the rules.
Lieran bares his teeth at him. Desmond stopped being alarmed by things like that days ago. It’s just how they express frustration. Something—something—King—something—cats—something—something—mountains—
He really needs to learn more of this language.
“Not stay in spot,” he says. “Not safe. Change spot. Enemy not know.” Christ, talk about a basic strategy. “Children not safe. Must leave.”
Learning the language is greatly helped by the fact that he has any number of traumatized little helpers, chomping at the bit to have something useful to do.
Poor bugs. The lack of clear leadership must be weighing on them even more than their adult counterparts. It’s obvious in how they flock around Desmond, the only adult who seems to have a clear idea of what to do.
“Lamb,” he calls, summoning one of his personal favourites; a surly boy of twelve, half out of his mind with anxiety and bereft of a single coping mechanism. Desmond, who has over his various lifetimes taught many a nervous wreck, knew just what to do about it. Give the boy clear instructions, make sure he has enough responsibility to feel useful and be liberal with skinship. “Did your group finish? With—” Damn and blast. “Thing for moving.”
“Cart,” the child barks, scowling up at him with his arms crossed. “Two days more. We—A wheel broke.”
Bless. Since he’s in charge of the project—one of his better ideas—the kid was dead-set on being responsible for the good and the bad. On the other hand, life had taught him that admitting to mistakes leads to pain. So, they get this wonderfully indirect speech.
“Well done,” he says, nodding. “Take time if need, but make good. Better break here then on road.”
Lamb’s scowl intensifies and he shifts, eyes boring a hole in the ground.
“Think of a—” Um. “Good thing. As pay. I give if I can.” He ruffles the kid’s hair, evades the snapping teeth, taps him on the nose, and moves on. “Abby, did you learn about water bags—”
“We aren’t leaving.”
Ah. Desmond looks up at the man. Barmin, he’s pretty sure he’s called.
“Fine, stay,” he says. “Not care. We leave.”
The man’s expression tightens further, shoulders tensing. Desmond, who has been tracking his progress from blue to white to copper, isn’t surprised. This has been building for a while and, really, it was inevitable. Once the shock faded, the question of leadership would be raised. Among werewolves maniacally devoted to hierarchy, such disputes are probably not resolved with debate or, God forbid, a democratic vote.
Barmin is a werewolf, with that said. Meaning that he lashes out at a speed Desmond wouldn’t be able to match if he tried. Unfortunately for him, Desmond has been waiting for this and he has Eagle Vision. He started moving before he so much as swung, redirecting the arm that, to Barmin’s credit, aimed to catch him, not kill him, and rolls away. The man snarls and makes some sort of gesture—
A very strange sensation happens. Desmond falters, his mind growing slow, but Eagle Vision flaring to life—
Energy rushes into his body, making hairs stand on end, spine arching back—
A ghostly impression of Ezio appears, which, okay—Magic—Desmond cast magic—
Barmin’s shout is cut short. Well, that can happen when a ghost stabs a ghost-knife into your shoulder. That’s probably alarming on some level.
“Ezio?!”
The ghost twists his way. It’s—
“Prophet,” the ghost says. The ghost. The ghost—
The silence in the courtyard is thick enough to be bottled up. Dozens of eyes, young and old, are staring at him—at the standoff, more likely—but Desmond doesn’t care because—Ezio is here, somehow—
“Are you real?”
Ghost-Ezio shrugs. “I’m sure I couldn’t speculate.” He’s growing more insubstantial by the moment. Desmond’s heart wails. No—He’s talking to Ezio. In his wildest dreams, he didn’t hope he would ever get to talk to his—To whatever complicated knot of roles Ezio played in his life. Idol, maybe. Father-figure and friend and mentor and Mentor—“Calm, Prophet. I will come when you call. For now, calm and grow. I will not harm you.”
“No—No, please—”
“We are always with you. You are not alone.”
Ezio disappears and Desmond stumbles, head spinning, heart whimpering. What—
“—Desmond?”
He blinks. Barmin backed up a dozen steps, and is holding his bleeding shoulder closed, surrounded by the older wolflings. Gary, Lamb and Abby materialized and are staring up a him with, for once, unmistakable worry.
“You smell wrong,” Lamb says, voice tight. “Why would your own—make you sad?”
That was probably a word for magic. He opens his mouth and closes it. A part of him wants to cry. A big part. “I could not do this before,” he says with numb lips. “That was my—” What? “Father,” he settles on. Best not complicate matters for the children. “He die a long time ago.”
“Oh.”
The boys look even more uncomfortable. He picked up that they’re a pack of orphans, via death or abandonment, so the issue of dead fathers is a complicated one.
“I not think I get to see him,” he says. “Maybe not real, though. Maybe my dream. My wish.”
The boys go through variations of noncommittal gestures. “Your —, your rules,” Abby says. “Memory of father to help is nice, though.”
Desmond chokes down an avalanche of heartbreak. When all is said and done, Desmond comes by his abandonment issues fairly. You are not alone. Jesus Christ.
“Not bad,” he forces out. “Not even a little bad. Just—Not know I can. Not know I am—Not human.”
Lamb makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. He’s very good at those. “You? Human? Please.”
“Word for what you are is Mage,” Gary says quietly. “Man who has magic. Power.”
Bless. And he can’t even argue it because he cast a real, no-nonsense spell. What a time to be alive.
“Thank you,” he says, because it’s important to acknowledge the kids’ efforts, and Gary is a fantastic language instructor, patient and clear and one of the calmest wolflings he has. “Mage. Good to know.”
Casting magic spells is exausting business, it turns out. After the initial rush of energy brought on by adrenaline and hyperemotionality, he finds a quiet corner and an overworked pair of wolflings to nap with. He wakes up to scarf down a cubic meter of protein and carbs, exchanges his rested wolflings for another pair, and goes right back to bed.
“Right,” he says, once he wakes up for good, some forty-eight hours post-fight. “We are clear on plan, yes? Children come with me for sure. You can come or stay, as you want. Yes?”
Lieran nods, adding in a grunt. “We will come. Kaer Morhen is not home anymore.”
“Also,” Vesimir adds, voice a Witcher-version of dry, meaning a little quieter and a lot hoarser, “you don’t know where to go.”
Hah. He shifts into Eagle Vision and grins up at him. “I know friends and foes,” he says. “Goal is easy. Find most blue, avoid any red.” He shrugs. “Friends are blue, enemies are red, valuables are white. Boom, easy.”
“That is not how—” Vesimir breaks off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We go to Blue Mountains. A fellow cat — winters there. With the —”
A fellow werewolf, probably. Cat werewolf, Jesus Christ. Werecats. Do they have werecoyotes? Werequines? “What is the second thing,” he asks. “Aen-something.”
“Aen Seidhe. Eldar,” Gary whispers. “Elves. Immortal people with pointy ears. Hate humans. Are okay with us. Okay-ish.”
He nods, because why not? If you live with werewolves, you can’t complain when they’re friends with the Unseelie Court. “Good plan,” he says. “They hate humans. Humans hate you.” Well. “Hate us. Sounds like per-fect friend. Very re-li-a-ble.”
Vesimir stomps off, having had enough of Desmond-style problem-solving, but Lieran summons a small smile, which, for him, means he’s fit to float from euphoria. Huh. He must like these Elves. Or werecats.
“Gezras will understand,” he says. “His school was destroyed by humans too.”
Ugh. Systematic persecution, then? Sounds rough.
“Gary, petal, come explain about different groups of you. You have wolves and cats, what else?” And how many of them haven’t been the targets of genocide?
Well, why not, Desmond thinks, sometime later, as he’s mechanically helping the kids pack up what they need into wooden crates, which will later go in the carts. Why not have were-vipers, were-griffins, were-bears and were-manticores. It’s some sort of bizarre magical ritual or something, and no rule says it has to be a canine or feline. Why not a viper or bear?
Werebear, Jesus Christ. Werebear. Sounds like a type of candy.
New world, new rules, Miles. Keep your head in the game. If anything, the sheer wackadoo quality of all this is putting his problems in perspective. So he can summon ghosts. They have viper lycanthropes. What does that even look like? Do they turn into a snake during the full moon? Is it a big snake? A feisty snake? Do they have comically large fangs?
Actually, that sounds cool—
“After, I draw you a map,” Abby says. “To know where we go. Humans are—” The scowl would probably look more convincing if the boy wasn’t A. Fifteen and B. Visibly, tangibly terrified of humans. They all try to hide it, the little idiots, but Desmond knows about trauma and pain. He can sniff out overcompensation at a thousand paces. “They do not like us. King — is worst of all. His soldiers destroy —.” He stops and adds, in a more instructive tone. “Castle of Cat —.”
Huh. Government-sanctioned mass-extinction, then? Classy.
“Good plan,” he says. “Also, write me days, yes?” How does he say phases of the moon? “Um. How the moon looks?” The boy looks at him like he lost his entire mind. “We time our trip after your wolf shift. After moon is no longer whole.”
Abby blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, blinks again and bursts into laughter.
“Well, how I know,” he says, balling his hands on his hips. “You say wolf this, wolf that, and your eyes yellow.”
“We are Witchers,” Lieran says. He’s grinning, the nightmare. His other friends are, too. Even Barmin lurking in the back looks supremely entertained, and the less said about the kids the better. Figures it would take him making a fool of himself to get here. He’d mind more if seeing a smile on their solemn, twitchy faces didn’t make his chest warm. “We are humans who are changed by magic. The mages take us and change us. We are mutants. Monsters made to fight other monsters.”
Desmond blinks. “Not talk about yourself like that,” he says, more or less on automatic. “Not monsters. Wolves.” But not werewolves. Not for the first time since this little lesson started, Desmond considers that human given lupine traits by magic fits every definition of werewolf he knows. “Ho-no-ra-ble warriors.”
Lieran snorts. “Not the point. Werewolves are cursed beasts. Dangerous.”
Oh, so there are werewolves, you just aren’t it? Jesus.
“Witchers are not human but not beast,” Gary whispers. “Like Elves. Sort of like Mages, only Mages are—” He makes a vague gesture. “They are humans only more human. We are humans only less.”
Propaganda. So much propaganda everywhere, it makes Desmond want to write a book about depersonification and methods of control. His Assassin roots scream at him to wander off for a few years and deal with whoever is spreading such disgusting lies.
Maybe he will, too. When the kids are settled with the Elves.
“Humans are people and you are people and Elves are people.” And, why not throw in these dangerous werewolves too? He’s hardly going to take their words for it when they are so cavalier about their own personhood. “And if humans say no, they are less person. Not you.”