Chapter 126: Hunt's Scouts Intensify
POV: Adam
Sleep became luxury we couldn't afford.
The Hunt scouts arrived nightly—never at the same location, never in the same numbers, never with enough force to require the strike team's full commitment. Just enough to wake us, to force response, to ensure no one rested properly.
"Third night in a row." Lambert's exhaustion showed despite witcher endurance. "They're doing this deliberately."
"Of course they're doing it deliberately." Geralt's response carried equal fatigue. "Classic siege warfare—weaken defenders before the assault. They're winning without committing anything significant."
The Navigation Device showed the pattern clearly: probing attacks across Skellige, each testing different aspects of our defense. Response times. Coordination capability. Force dispositions. The Hunt was learning our capabilities while we exhausted ourselves revealing them.
[ Status: Combat Fatigue (Moderate) ]
[ Sleep Deficit: Accumulating ]
[ MP Recovery: 85% efficiency (exhaustion penalty) ]
"We need to change our approach." I studied the device's readings, tracking tonight's likely manifestation points. "Reactive defense is killing us slowly."
"Alternative being?"
"Patrol rotation instead of strike team response. Early warning systems using the device's predictions. Accepting some successful scouting while managing engagements strategically." The words felt like surrender even as I spoke them. "Perfect defense is impossible. We optimize for survivability instead."
"That means letting some scouts through."
"That means not burning ourselves out before the real battle starts."
—Scene Break—
POV: Ciri
The major incursion came on the eighth night.
Five Hunt riders manifesting simultaneously at a fishing village—not probing this time but attacking. Ice spreading across buildings, civilians screaming, the Hunt's signature terror tactics designed to break morale before bodies.
The strike team portaled in within minutes.
Combat was immediate and brutal. These scouts weren't the Level 35 riders we'd faced in previous encounters—they moved faster, hit harder, coordinated better. Level 42 according to Adam's instincts, veterans of countless dimensional raids.
"FORMATION!" Geralt's command cut through chaos. "Triangle defense, protect the civilians!"
The witchers anchored their positions—Geralt left, Lambert right, Eskel center. Adam's elements created barriers while Ciri's phasing disrupted the riders' coordination. Skellige warriors held the flanks, their silver-coated weapons drawing spectral blood.
One rider broke through.
Its ice blade found a Skellige warrior named Torsten—young man, first campaign, had volunteered because his father died in the first Hunt assault. The spectral weapon pierced chest armor like paper, and Torsten's scream joined the night's cacophony.
Through the soulbond, she felt Adam's fury crystallize into action.
—Scene Break—
POV: Adam
Three elements answered simultaneously.
Earth rose beneath the rider who'd killed Torsten, unbalancing its spectral mount. Water flash-froze around its weapon arm, locking the ice blade in place. Air compressed into a battering ram that drove it backward into the stone wall behind.
"TOGETHER!" I felt Ciri's presence through our bond, her Elder Blood ready to contribute.
She phased behind the rider as my elements held it pinned. Her touch burned against its spectral essence—not physical contact but dimensional overlap, Elder Blood scorching what shouldn't exist in this reality.
The rider screamed in frequencies that hurt to hear. Its form destabilized, coherence failing, and for a moment, something almost like fear crossed its inhuman features.
Then I drove an ice spear through its chest, and it dissolved into frost and memory.
[ Hunt Scout: Destroyed ]
[ XP Gained: 150 (Elite Combat) ]
[ Remaining Scouts: 4 ]
The battle continued—twenty minutes of brutal fighting that left two more Skellige warriors wounded and the village's fishing fleet destroyed. But four scouts fell, and the fifth retreated through a hastily opened rift rather than face our combined assault.
Victory, by any reasonable measure.
But Torsten was still dead.
—Scene Break—
POV: Geralt
The captured scout provided intelligence before dissolving.
Ciri's Elder Blood created connection to the Hunt's dimensional network—brief, unstable, but sufficient to extract fragments of knowledge from the wounded rider's fading consciousness.
"Fifty riders in the main assault. Eredin leads personally. Four simultaneous strikes as the device predicted." Her voice came distant, eyes unfocused as she processed information no normal mind could access. "They're stronger than before—recovering from our last battle took months, but they've spent that time improving. Better weapons. Better tactics. Better understanding of how to counter your elements."
"Specific countermeasures?"
"They know about the soulbond. Plan to separate you during combat, force Adam to choose between protecting me and protecting the battle line." Her eyes refocused, meeting mine. "They're terrified of him, Geralt. What he did to Eredin last time—wounded the Hunt King, something no one's accomplished in centuries. They're building their entire strategy around neutralizing him first."
"Then we don't let them neutralize him."
"Then we need to be better than their plans. And right now, we're exhausted, they're fresh, and we've got twelve days before everything we've built gets tested."
[ XP Gained: 400 (Combat, Intelligence) ]
[ Level 49: 50% toward Level 50 ]
[ Hunt Intelligence: Updated (Enhanced threat level) ]
—Scene Break—
POV: Adam
Torsten's funeral followed Skellige tradition—pyre on the cliffs, ashes scattered to the sea, name sung into the wind so the ancestors would know him.
His father had died defending Kaer Trolde during the first Hunt assault. Now the son had died defending a fishing village during reconnaissance. Two generations extinguished because the Hunt wanted Ciri and I stood between them and her.
"This isn't your fault." Her voice through our bond.
"I gave the orders. I chose which targets to respond to. If I'd been faster, smarter, more powerful—"
"He chose his path, same as his father. Same as all of them." Warmth flowed through our connection. "Honor his sacrifice by fighting effectively. Not by drowning in guilt that helps no one."
The logic was sound. The emotion didn't care about logic.
But she was right—guilt that paralyzed served neither the dead nor the living. Torsten deserved better than my self-recrimination. He deserved victory over the enemies who'd killed him.
"Twelve days." I spoke aloud for the first time since the pyre was lit. "Twelve days to rest, train, and prepare."
"Then what?"
"Then we give the Hunt a reason to fear us."
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
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