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1262, Vengerberg
Yennefer's POV:
Yennefer sat in her plush, opulent mansion, a delicate, crystal glass of exquisite Evoluce wine in her hand. She was, once again, reading the weathered, leather-bound journal of the man who she strongly believed to be the infamous Black Mage.
It had been several years now since she had first acquired it, and she had already read it from cover to cover multiple times, yet there was something about it, something inexplicable, that would always bring her back to its cryptic, fascinating pages.
Perhaps, she mused, it was a desperate, lingering hope that maybe, just maybe, one day she would finally find the one tiny, overlooked detail, the one hidden clue, that would finally help her track the elusive man down.
Or perhaps, she thought with a pang of self-loathing, it was just the foolishness of a powerful, desperate woman who had no other viable options left to her.
No matter what it was, she still found a strange, compelling purpose in continuing to read it every now and again.
She remembered, with a familiar ache in her heart, when she and Geralt had tried to track the man down together, with very little success, before eventually, inevitably, splitting off after another one of their fiery, passionate arguments.
Her heart still ached a little whenever she thought about him.
"It's at least a good read, I hope?" a calm, unfamiliar voice suddenly said from across the room, startling Yennefer so badly that she shot up from her seat, the expensive wine sloshing dangerously in her glass.
A half-formed, deadly spell was already crackling at her fingertips by the time she looked up and saw the man who had spoken.
He was sitting casually, almost lazily, in a chair that looked remarkably, almost magically, similar to the one she had just vacated.
"How bold you must be," Yennefer said, her voice a low, dangerous purr as she glared at the unexpected intruder, "to break into a sorceress's house, and then so foolishly, so brazenly, announce your presence. What is it that gives you such reckless bravery, stranger? And I suggest you speak quickly, for you will find that I have very, very little patience for uninvited guests."
The man, however, didn't seem put off in the slightest that he was being threatened by one of the most powerful and famously short-tempered sorceresses on the entire continent. He just looked at her, an amused, almost placid expression on his handsome face.
"Oh, I just came to pick up a little bit of my property," the man said calmly, "a piece of property that you seem to have… acquired, shall we say."
This caused Yennefer to glare even harder at him, her violet eyes narrowing. "I have stolen nothing from you," she spat, her mind racing. "So, now it would be best for you to leave, before that very small amount of patience I told you about wears completely out."
She wondered, with a growing sense of unease, how this man had managed to so silently, so effortlessly, get past the powerful, complex protections she had placed on her house.
He must be a sorcerer himself, and most likely, a very powerful one. Could he be trying to kill her, perhaps? An assassination attempt? But from who? What king, what rival mage, had finally ordered her head?
"I didn't say you stole it," the man corrected her gently, "only that you had acquired it. And you do, most definitely, have it. In fact," he added, a small smile playing on his lips, "unless my eyes are starting to go in my old age, you were just reading it right now." As he spoke, he gestured with his hand, and the journal, which had fallen to the floor when she'd jumped up, flew into his waiting hands.
He opened it, with a familiar ease, to the exact page Yennefer was sure she had just been reading.
"Hmm," he mused, his green eyes scanning the page. "I see you were reading the part where I was… messing around with the Witcher mutagens. I did have some modest success with that, you know. I managed to raise the survival odds for the Trial of the Grasses from a measly one in ten, to a much more respectable six or seven out of every ten children who underwent the process. Not a complete, resounding success, mind you, but I had become… busy, with other, more pressing things at the time, as I am sure you already know from reading my notes." The man gently closed the book and looked up at her, his expression serene.
It didn't take another second for Yennefer to understand, with a sudden, shocking clarity, just who, exactly, she was talking to.
"You're… you're the Black Mage?" she asked, her voice a hushed whisper, though she already, with a certainty that made her heart pound, knew the answer.
The man just nodded once. "My friends call me Harry," he told her, his voice still calm, "and I'd ask that you call me that as well. I'd also appreciate it if you didn't let that particular name get around too much. It causes… complications."
Yennefer knew his real name already, of course. Geralt had told her about his strange encounter with the man named Harry, the one who could turn into a dragon, years ago.
But it was… nice, to have the confirmation directly from the source himself.
"Have you… have you come just for your book then?" Yennefer asked, her mind racing, wondering if he had possibly found out that she had been actively looking for him, trying to track him down.
"Aye, that's the main reason," he confirmed. "Though I do find it incredibly curious that it ended up in your hands, of all the people in this entire world. Could you perhaps tell me how, exactly, you acquired my book?" Harry asked, though Yennefer got the distinct, almost certain feeling that he was only asking out of a sense of polite formality, that he probably already knew the answer.
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