@ormir location: Eterna, Castle (forgot the name). notes: I failed to produce a Lostlands starter and I won't subject Ormir to a thread in Werewolf Village.
Flames danced before Torsten's mind's eye. He saw the many-headed dragon and her rides, the High King in her claws. Torsten felt the acid eating away at his nerves, his bones, and how his own body had been made to betray him with a single strike from that woman's sword. She'd commended him for what came next, there in the snow Torsten severed the limb and let it fall to the ground before the acid would take the rest of him. He was The Sword, and if his arm would not fulfill its duty - if it betrayed him in the heat of battle - then the witcher was left with no other choice if there was even a chance he might have saved the King.
In the end, the woman named Aethelryth spared his life, commented on the handprint over his heart, and left.
Torsten saw her now and again, he'd catch sight of the stalwart woman as if she were watching him through the window and he saw her in dreams of places he'd never been. Moments of quiet relief and blatant happiness, moments that Torsten had never known. Not since childhood, and the dreams of her were anything but those that belonged to a youth.
He saw her lose an arm just as he had, watched her crumble as her leg was taken as well. There was blood, so much blood. Violent screams of unending conflict, dragons that fell only to rise again. He fought in glittering mithril, a streak of silver and power enthralled in the shadows of an anti-mana.
That was all that was familiar to him, violence came easy to the witcher.
In his dreamscape, he turned toward an ogre as it swung its great club down upon him, and with a sudden jolt, he awoke. Torsten pulled a sword stored between the mattress out from where it lay and raised it into the dark, a quivering beacon of quicksilver that captured the moonlight streaming through the ornate, Lysaran windows. The fire was low, nothing but dull embers through the witching hour. Torsten peered through the dark, and observed each of the shadows as his breathing steadied - he was confident that they were alone.
Torsten looked toward the prince he'd fallen asleep holding, grateful that Eldar had not swapped with Afshin and left in the night - or stabbed Torsten while he slept.
The events of the last few months had given him a great deal to think about. Here he slept in a castle enshrined in magic, a witcher at the heart of abominations. The High King was taken, and now a storm giant's inscription sat upon Torsten's chest. A keep of his former brethren still shrouded in so much mystery. There had been arches there, it was for witchers - spellbreakers - the translation had called them, but was traveled by druids alike. That alone spoke of its age. It was in the First Age when the druids were hunted to near-extinction with Iskaldrik. Not sent to the mines, but killed. Their sacred sites were destroyed, and their magic was thoroughly broken.
Into the air of the castle Torsten wandered, some paces to clear his steps before he ended up on one of the balconies of the wing that the Queen had been gracious enough to gift the hand and the heir. Torsten saw it differently, this way they were close, not quite prisoners... but also not quite free.
"A sleepless night for the raven feeder," Torsten commented as he looked over his shoulder, aware only after a few moments that the balcony was not as empty as the witcher had initially perceived. It had been his hope that these... Witches and artificers might be able to craft something to compensate for the limb he'd lost, but nothing mystical took to the witcher's form. He had a prosthesis, but it was nothing but fiberglass and weight that impeded his balance when he tried to fix a shield to it. "for the Kingsguard as well." His King slept soundly, that was what mattered, that was what Torsten told himself.
