Chapter 17: The Prophet's Duel - Part 2
POV: Viktor
Timer check: 60 seconds remaining.
Geralt's attack pattern evolving.
Warning: Multiple overlapping strikes detected.
Viktor felt sweat stinging his eyes as Geralt's assault intensified, the Witcher's movements becoming more complex, more unpredictable. What had started as testing strikes was evolving into something approaching genuine combat, and Viktor's supernatural foresight was beginning to strain under the pressure.
Horizontal slash followed by Aard blast, arriving in 4.2 seconds.
Duck slash, roll left to avoid telekinetic wave.
But...
Secondary feint detected—true attack comes from blind spot.
3.8 seconds overlap window.
Viktor's enhanced perception was showing him too much information, predictions layering on top of each other in a cascade of possibilities that made his head spin. Geralt wasn't just attacking faster—he was attacking smarter, incorporating feints within feints, strikes that created openings for other strikes, combinations that tested the very limits of what Viktor's Temporal Sense could process.
He threw himself sideways to avoid the horizontal slash, rolled left as the Aard blast cracked the ground where he'd been standing, and came up just in time to see Geralt's true attack—a thrust from his blind spot that his overloaded precognition had almost missed entirely.
Viktor twisted desperately, feeling steel part the air inches from his ribs, and stumbled as his foot caught on a tree root. For one heart-stopping moment, his perfect evasion pattern faltered, and he found himself off-balance and vulnerable.
"STOP!" Renfri's voice cut across the clearing like a blade. "You're killing him!"
But Geralt wasn't stopping. If anything, the Witcher seemed to take Viktor's stumble as confirmation that he was finally approaching his limits. The next attack came faster, harder, with the kind of surgical precision that spoke of someone deciding that subtlety was no longer required.
Spinning strike targeting multiple vectors.
System struggling to calculate optimal evasion.
45 seconds remaining.
Warning: Prediction accuracy declining.
Viktor could feel his supernatural advantage degrading as Temporal Sense approached its time limit. His foresight was becoming less precise, his enhanced reflexes slowing by crucial microseconds. Geralt's amber eyes had taken on the calculating gleam of a predator who'd figured out his prey's trick and was preparing to exploit its weaknesses.
Complex attack sequence beginning.
Seven-strike combination.
Multiple overlapping vectors.
Error: Cannot process all possibilities.
30 seconds remaining.
Viktor dodged the first strike by pure instinct, his body moving before his mind fully processed the danger. The second nearly took his head off, close enough that he could smell the sword oil on the blade. The third—
He was going to die. The realization hit him like ice water as he watched Geralt's blade carve through the air in patterns too complex for his failing precognition to track. In thirty seconds, when Temporal Sense ended, he would be just another failed experiment in a forest clearing, another would-be prophet who'd overestimated his abilities.
But as Viktor rolled away from another strike that would have opened his throat, as he felt the wind from Geralt's blade part his hair, something crystallized in his mind. Not strategy or tactics or desperate improvisation, but understanding.
"I didn't save Renfri to prove I'm strong!" The words tore from his throat as he threw himself under a swing that would have split him in half. "I did it because choosing the 'lesser evil' is still choosing EVIL!"
Geralt's rhythm faltered—just for a moment, just for a heartbeat—but enough for Viktor to see the confusion in those amber eyes.
"Stregobor wanted you to be the Butcher! He NEEDED you to kill her to prove his prophecy right! I made you choose BETTER!"
The words hit Geralt like an Aard blast to the soul. Viktor watched the Witcher's perfect combat form crumble as the implications of what Viktor was saying penetrated the combat haze. The sword that had been carving deadly patterns through the air slowed, stopped, hung motionless as Geralt processed words that reframed everything he thought he understood about Blaviken.
Timer: 15 seconds remaining.
10.
5.
TEMPORAL SENSE DEACTIVATED
Viktor's enhanced perception cut out like someone had flipped a switch, leaving him stumbling through normal time with normal reflexes. His legs, pushed beyond endurance for two full minutes, simply gave out beneath him.
He collapsed in the forest clearing, his vision graying around the edges, his lungs burning as they fought for air that tasted of sweat and fear and the metallic tang of near-death. Above him, Geralt's sword hung frozen, its point just inches from Viktor's throat.
[TEMPORAL SENSE DEACTIVATED]
[MANA: 0/100]
[MENTAL STRAIN: SEVERE]
[VISION ACCURACY REDUCED: 15% FOR 36 HOURS]
The Witcher stood like a statue of interrupted violence, his face cycling through expressions too complex to catalog. Confusion, understanding, something that might have been respect, and underneath it all, the kind of existential vertigo that came from having your worldview fundamentally challenged.
"You're not a fighter," Geralt said quietly, his sword slowly lowering to point at the ground rather than Viktor's throat. "But you see... everything. Blaviken makes sense now."
The Witcher sheathed his blade in one fluid motion and knelt beside Viktor, offering his hand with surprising gentleness.
"Can you stand?"
Viktor took the offered hand and let Geralt pull him to his feet, his legs still shaky but functional. Around them, the forest clearing looked like a battleground—gouged earth, splintered trees, the scent of ozone from multiple Aard blasts.
"How do you feel?" Renfri appeared at his side, her hands checking him for injuries with professional efficiency. Her green eyes were wide with concern, and Viktor realized she'd been genuinely afraid for his life.
"Like I just danced with death for two minutes and somehow didn't step on her toes."
Renfri's laugh was warm and genuine, transforming her face from worried to radiant. Even Geralt's perpetual glare seemed to soften, his mouth twitching in what might have been the beginning of a smile.
"I hid from you like Marilka in her cellar," Viktor continued, settling onto a fallen log before his legs could give out again. "Coward's victory. The finest kind."
This time even Geralt chuckled—a sound so rare that both Viktor and Renfri turned to stare at him in amazement.
"Strategic withdrawal," the Witcher corrected. "There's a difference."
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: WITCHER'S EQUAL (NON-COMBAT)]
[Earned respect of legendary Witcher through non-combat skills]
[REWARDS: +0.4 AGILITY, +0.3 MAGIC, 150 SYSTEM POINTS]
[STATS UPDATED]
[STRENGTH: 1.9 (NO CHANGE)]
[STAMINA: 10.0 (100 MP)]
[AGILITY: 3.7 → 4.1]
[MAGIC: 1.5 → 1.8]
[SYSTEM POINTS: 800 → 950]
Viktor watched the notifications scroll past and felt something that wasn't quite triumph but wasn't defeat either. He'd survived. More than that, he'd apparently earned something approaching respect from one of the most dangerous individuals on the Continent.
"What you said," Geralt continued, settling into his usual crouch. "About choosing better instead of lesser evil. Where did that come from?"
"Experience. Mistakes. Watching people make choices that destroyed them because they thought those were the only choices available."
Viktor thought about Earth, about all the times he'd seen people trapped by false dilemmas, convinced that their only options were variations of terrible. About how many tragedies could be prevented if people just... tried harder to find a third option.
"The lesser evil is still evil. It's just evil that's easier to live with. But if you can find a way to choose something that isn't evil at all..."
"Then you choose that instead," Renfri finished, her voice thoughtful. "Even if it's harder. Even if it's more dangerous."
"Especially then. Because the world has enough evil already. It could use more people choosing to be better."
Viktor looked between his companions—a mutated monster hunter who'd spent a century trying to choose the right path in an amoral world, and a cursed princess who'd been shaped into a weapon before she was old enough to understand what that meant. Both of them searching for purpose, for meaning, for some way to be more than what the world had tried to make them.
"We're really doing this," he said aloud, the realization hitting him like a physical force. "The Outcast Trio. Gods help the Continent."
Geralt stood up, brushing dirt from his leather pants, his expression unreadable but no longer hostile.
"Come on. We still have miles to cover before dark, and I'd rather not spend another night listening to you both snore."
"I don't snore," Viktor protested, falling into step behind the Witcher.
"You absolutely snore," Renfri added, her tone playful. "Like a dragon with a head cold."
As they walked deeper into the forest, Viktor felt something settling into place—not just in their group dynamic, but in his understanding of his place in this world. He wasn't a hero in the traditional sense. He couldn't swing a sword or cast devastating spells or inspire armies with his presence.
But he could see possibilities that others missed. He could find third options when everyone else was trapped by false dilemmas. He could help people choose better instead of lesser evil.
It wasn't the power he'd dreamed of as a child reading fantasy novels, but it was the power he actually needed.
And maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.
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