On Spikeroog Island, in the fight among women that broke out at the Brokvar ancestral home, the wild girl lost badly. Her cheeks suffered Sparrowhawk's utterly merciless abuse.
Then, when they returned to Svorlag village, Angoulême stopped in surprise before the notice board, because even though not much time had passed, a fresh notice had already been pinned up.
...
Starving and Freezing
To everyone reading this board, since I have no better food to give them, I can only feed my little ones pancakes made from acorn flour. They've been lying on straw for three days now, their stomachs are growling terribly, their illness is getting worse, and they cry day and night. Even if you insist on seeing them for free and taking no payment, at least...
, Mrs. Simon
...
When they returned to the jarl's longhouse, Cerys had learned her lesson. This time she dragged Angoulême inside with her and refused to give her any chance to loaf around.
Thanks to Beyond the Veil, Sparrowhawk easily persuaded the druid Hjort to cooperate with their plan.
From there, Angoulême took the lead. The four of them worked out the sequence of the operation, and when they burst into Udalryk's bedroom, he was in the middle of carving at his own arm with a knife.
Cerys spoke out clearly. "My honored lord, if I have understood this correctly, are you performing sacrifices to please these so-called gods?"
"How... how did you know that?" Udalryk said.
All the more certain now, Cerys turned her head and shot Angoulême a fierce glare. She could accept the girl's cautious reasoning for verifying everything first, but she was still furious. The answer had been in her hands all along, and yet she had cruelly let her waste several days on a wild goose chase!
"Honored Lord Udalryk, here is a book titled Beyond the Veil. I hope you will read these pages and then tell me what you think after finishing them!"
With encouragement in his eyes, the druid watched as Udalryk stretched out a trembling hand. But just as his fingers were about to touch the cover, he suddenly lashed out and knocked the book flying across the room. "No! I cannot read it! The spirit is stirring. It has warned me that if I read such blasphemous things, it will bring punishment down upon all of us!"
Cerys let out a sigh, growing irritated. She dearly hoped they would not need to resort to force for the exorcism.
In truth, once they had Hjort's help, they had quickly contacted the captain of Clan Brokvar's personal guard, who was also deeply worried by the lord's unstable state. After some discussion, he promised that the armed men would temporarily refrain from interfering.
In other words, they really could have forced the issue. Even tying the lord down and driving the spirit out by brute force was possible, but that would have been too rough.
Sparrowhawk wanted her help to earn sincere gratitude, then turn that into support for her own claim to the throne. Making the man lose all face would not be a good way to win him over.
Fortunately, once the book was brought out, her dear sister Angoulême abruptly stopped slacking off and became active and eager.
She brought over a plate that held feverfew, rosemary, sage, tomato leaves, green tea, valerian oil, and some strange liquid, then lit it with a flame.
This was a witcher-specific blend of calming incense, able to ease mental exhaustion, reduce stress, and effectively lessen many symptoms caused by incursions of beings from beyond the sphere. As Udalryk inhaled the scent, the terror on his face visibly began to fade.
Then the girl shot a look at the druid. Hjort understood at once, stepped forward, and hung a piece of blue chalcedony around the lord's neck. At the same time, he gently pressed down on Udalryk's shoulders from behind, limiting his movements.
The gemstone chalcedony could lessen regret, depression, and sorrow, weaken nightmares and fear of the dark, and reduce the assault of negative energies such as black sorcery.
Then Angoulême opened the pack she had brought inside. It was filled with several oil lamps. The three sisters split up the work and hung the lamps, once lit, in every corner of the room. Udalryk, dazed and sluggish, seemed to want to object, but the calming fragrance made him equally unwilling to resist.
In no time, they had lit the whole room as bright as day.
"Right now it's dusk, when day and night trade places, the best possible hour to begin an exorcism," the wild girl said calmly.
After handing the exorcism invocations to the druid and Sparrowhawk, she began drawing a pentagram on the floor. Once candles had been lit at every point, Hjort soothed the half-dazed Udalryk into sitting in the center of the circle.
Up to this point, everything was going according to plan. Events were developing exactly as Angoulême had predicted beforehand, and Cerys's confidence in her dear sister rose sharply. So she looked toward the princess of Clan Heymaey. "The rest is in your hands."
The battle priestess nodded, lifted her flail, and took the Specter Oil Angoulême handed her, then carefully coated the weapon with it.
According to Angoulême, once the prayers began, the hym would be forced out of Udalryk's body, and with the surrounding firelight covering every angle, it would have nowhere to hide.
As for fighting the creature, that was the work of a battle priestess blessed by Freya. Svani smiled brightly at the task. "Then hurry up and begin. My flail is already itching for a fight."
After checking the details one last time and confirming that nothing was amiss, the girl followed Victor's written instructions and lit the second bottle of liquid he had given her, the exorcism incense.
As the smoke spread and the druid and Cerys began chanting the opening exorcism prayer, Udalryk suddenly started trembling and struggling violently.
He howled and moaned, loudly confessing his sin. "No! Aki, I truly didn't see you! I swear it wasn't on purpose, I really didn't see you fall into the sea!"
The instant she saw that, Angoulême did not hesitate. With a wooden staff wrapped in ivy and broom branches, she struck the lord across the back again and again.
Under the steady rhythm of the blows, Udalryk gradually calmed down.
Then Angoulême closed her eyes and opened her Eagle-Eye Vision.
"Svani, behind you!" she shouted.
The next instant, the flail came down without mercy, smashing hard into the hym's tall, black shadow-body. The flashing light was Freya's blessing, and the sizzling smoke came from the Specter Oil's added bite.
With a sharp hiss, the hym vanished without a trace.
The wild girl knew it had only slipped into an astral crack, waiting for a chance to attack again or crawl back into Udalryk's body. At that point, what they were testing against one another was patience. She said nothing. She simply kept thrashing the lord with the warding staff, while the druid and Sparrowhawk continued reciting the exorcism invocation without pause.
An hour later, Angoulême shouted again. "Behind me!"
The merciless flail struck once more and scattered the hym again.
Naturally, a creature from beyond the sphere would not submit so easily, so the battle continued, and continued, and continued, from dusk until the bells of midnight.
When the first stroke of midnight rang out, Svani's flail struck the hym again. This time, it could no longer shrink back into the crack, and it could not return to Udalryk's body. With a shrill scream, it melted into the void.
...
Time passed...
In one of the houses at Marlin Coast on Undvik.
The boy opened his eyes and muttered, "...An unfamiliar, no, wait, a familiar ceiling."
He recognized that he had been brought back to the same house where he had stayed on the first day he landed.
But the moment he woke up, he realized that the person clutching his left hand and sleeping beside him was Vigi, while the one holding his right hand and resting in his chair was Folan. Being trapped between men on both sides was enough to ruin anyone's mood. It almost made him want to pass out again.
"Gentlemen, could the two of you kindly let go of my hands?" His body still felt weak and sore, so Victor decided to remind his caretakers with words instead.
Seeing that the Dragonborn was awake, Folan let go at once and broke into a delighted grin. "You're finally up. I'll go tell Hjalmar, then get some food and drink ready!" With that, he rose and left the room.
Vigi also woke up, but there was not the slightest smile on his face.
He shuffled backward on his knees a few steps, then bowed his head with a heavy thump in solemn respect. "Captain, thank you for saving my life. And also, you're truly far too powerful. When I saw the ice giant and the ground covered in siren corpses, I, Vigi Tordarroch, knew that for the rest of my life I would take pride in having followed the Dovahkiin!"
"Tch. You're my man, so just do your job properly from now on. Besides, thanks to your effort, I found the giant's weak point. So don't make it sound so dramatic. If you thank me this seriously, I'll start thinking you're about to leave me." Victor tossed it out as a joke, then noticed the scoundrel's expression was dead serious.
In a low voice, he said, "...I'm sorry, captain. I can't keep following you from now on."
Blinking, Victor stared at him in surprise. Then a thought struck him. Just the trip alone from the forge back to Marlin Coast would have taken days. "Wait. How many days was I out?"
"Today is the seventh day since you collapsed at the forge," Vigi said.
Victor had known from the start that after overusing his potions and burning through his body that way, he would need a long rest afterward, but he had not expected it to take this long.
"Looks like I missed quite a lot... Tell me everything that's happened in detail."
Closing his eyes, the boy pinched the bridge of his nose.
"The day you collapsed, I woke up not long after. I guessed you'd probably want materials from the giant's body, so I talked it over with the thirty-some men left from the expedition and had the monster brought down the mountain and preserved in the cold."
"Mmm... good work. A monster that strong has to have something useful on it. What happened after that?"
"On the way back, I went to find Harald Houndsnout..." Vigi's voice sounded a little sad.
"Oh? Was he unhappy? What did he say?"
"He saw the giant's corpse from a distance and told me there was no longer any such man as Harald in this world, that the broken ship was his coffin, then he drove me away."
Victor thought it over for a moment, then understood. "...And that's why you're leaving me?"
"Yes. The disaster on Undvik isn't over. Many monsters still roam the island. Undvik needs me, and Clan Tordarroch needs me, so I've decided to stay here and work for the land's restoration.
Captain! Please forgive me, I cannot keep following you!"
Vigi bowed deeply again, because he truly felt guilty.
The wind carried the snow and gave a low mournful cry.
The boy pulled his legs up, thought for a moment, then sat upright.
"Lift your head, Vigi! You have nothing to feel sorry or ashamed for, because I'm proud of you! You've made the right choice. Angoulême must have already told you what the Phantom Troupe stands for!"
"...To travel the world, uphold justice, punish evil, and defend the innocent!"
Vigi lifted his head, his eyes full of emotion now that he had won his captain's understanding.
"Vigi Tordarroch, as captain of the Phantom Troupe, I hereby appoint you chief of the Undvik branch. Your mission is to bring prosperity and life back to this island. Do you accept?"
Two lines of tears streamed down the scoundrel's face as he lowered his head once more. "At your command!"
It was a genuinely moving scene. If Vigi had been a woman, the boy would no doubt have presented him with a handkerchief like a gentleman, gentle and refined.
Sadly, he was a man.
So the boy got to his feet and kicked him flat. "You damn fool! I'm not dead yet, so stop acting like this is some final farewell.
Come on, let's go eat.
Tonight we'll carve up the giant, enchant your gear, and celebrate your promotion. I've got to set you up with some good things for protection."
...
The giant-slaying party had a strong sense of loyalty. As long as the Dovahkiin had not awakened, they refused to leave. But now that the boy had finally recovered, this became their final night on Undvik.
Having survived disaster and now standing on the edge of parting, more than thirty of them held a great feast at the Old Port Tavern. After tonight, the only ones staying on the island would be Vigi and seven of Clan Tordarroch's old retainers. They would keep watch at Marlin Coast and wait for the returning islanders to come home.
As the focus of the feast, the Dragonborn naturally became the man all the warriors wanted to toast. Relying on his hangover remedy, Victor barely managed to escape intact, but Vigi was trapped inside. By the look of it, he would not be getting out of the tavern tonight, so Victor would have to dissect the giant himself.
Crunching through the snow on his way back to the alchemy workshop, Victor held the broken fragments of the Hornwall horn in his hand. He had asked Hjalmar to give them to him because he wanted to see if he could transfer the horn's magical effect into an accessory and leave it to Vigi.
When he reached the cauldron, finally alone after defeating the giant, the screws holding him together all seemed to loosen at once. The alchemist dropped to the floor, then lay down flat.
Though he had spoken beautifully a little while ago when Vigi made his confession, people were not made of stone. Feelings did not vanish so easily, and he had no idea when they would meet again.
With a faint sadness in his heart, he reflected on every gain and loss from this journey to slay the giant, from its calm beginning to its blazing finish.
And then, during the enchantment work, the Wheel of Truth bloomed just as expected.
[Name: Clan Tordarroch Armor, Vigi]
[Type: Armor]
[Quality: Fine]
[Defense: Strong]
[Traits: Brimming Power, Iron Guard]
[Remark: Please do not stand in front of siege ballistae! And try not to stand in front of giants either! Thank you.]
...
[Name: Dawn Sword]
[Type: Weapon]
[Quality: Fine]
[Attack: Strong]
[Trait: Beast's Might]
[Enchantment: Illumination Coating]
[Remark: This blade has tasted giant's blood.]
...
[Name: Conch of Urialla Harbor]
[Type: Accessory]
[Quality: Epic]
[Effect: Blow it, and sirens will fall from the sky]
[Trait: Defense and speed bonus]
[Enchantment: Hornwall Roar]
[Remark: Why don't you ask the magic conch?]
...
The next day, the Thousand Sunny returned to Marlin Coast as scheduled. Victor left both the ship and the crew to Vigi. After all, as captain he had always been mostly decorative. Without someone else to handle the actual running of things, he could barely manage it, and in any case it was far easier to sail back to Kaer Trolde aboard Hjalmar's longship.
Besides, his state of mind had turned rather relaxed now, because every goal he had come to the isles for had already been achieved. The pirate Hammond had been eliminated, his alchemy had advanced noticeably, he had successfully played out the role of the Dragonborn, and he had borrowed Clan Tordarroch's forging tools.
Barring any other surprises, the return to Kaer Trolde would be the grand finale, the curtain rising on the King's Gambit as Skellige welcomed its new king.
Before boarding, there was nothing left to say, everything that mattered had already been said the day before. So the boy simply embraced the scoundrel.
"Stay alive. Until we meet again."
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters //[email protected]/Razeil0810