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Old Places Remember.
All of them; the forest, an old battle field, your favorite museum. All of these Old Places have memory; they remember what has happened in them, what happened to them.
For those places where magic and men share space, though, this is doubly true.
You see, Magic is like any other thing; it leaves a mark. Now, this mark is subtle; near unnoticeable, in fact. You see, instead of wearing stone to smoothness, (like tiny hands do) or leaving a stink that will never fully wash away, (like sweat does) or putting a bitter taste on your lips, (like bad memories do) or staining clothes, (like blood is oft to do) Magic never leaves a known mark. You cannot feel it, nor smell it, nor taste it, nor see it. (And only on rare occasions can you hear it, buzzing just out of hearing range, setting your hairs on end.)
Magic is unique in that it becomes a part of whatever it is marking. Instead of becoming a stain, a difference in the pattern of your shirt, it becomes a part of the fabric. Magic weaves itself into the thing it is marking so completely that you’d never know it was ever different.
For The Keep, this means that Magic has woven itself into the stones of every hall and floor, the support beams of the ceiling, the doors and windows. With every mage’s new experiment, every run of the Trials, every newly learned Sign, the idle Magic weaves itself tighter into the pattern of the stones and the memory carved into them; into the Being that is Kaer Morhen.. thing is..
The Keep is an Old Place, and Old Places Remember in strange ways. Beyond the Magic that has made itself a part of the halls, there is simply time. Time has left its own marks and memories, as it is wont to do, and..
The Keep Remembers.
You can see it, feel it, in the smoothed stone of long hallways. Little hands dragged along it so often that the stone withered under the touch; until it became a guide for other small hands. (Big ones too, though they’ll never admit to keeping the habit.)
It can be seen in the worn in foot prints on the training grounds. Thousands of feet have followed the same forms in the same spots for centuries. (Places where grass refuses to grow, where stones are perpetually uneven.)
The corners of the halls’ sharp turns are worn smooth by hands that reach out last second to catch the wall and sling themselves around it without losing momentum. (It’s not just small hands guilty of this; races to the bath are serious competition and everyone is determined to win.)
There are names carved in dark corners by kids that didn’t ever want to forget their friends, who they were, who wanted to mark this place that shaped them. (There’s a particular little corner just off of the baths, hidden away and secret, that houses the name of every witcher that has made it to the medallion ceremony. Many of those names don’t return from their first year but they are remembered. This is where returned medallions come to rest.)
There are foot imprints in the kitchen. In front of the sinks and counters and fireplaces, the stones are dented down from thousands of others on kitchen duty standing in the same places for hours a day, cutting vegetables and cleaning dishes and stirring pots. There are these same imprints by the washing tubs, hours spent knelt down scrubbing blood and monster ichor from stubborn cloth. There are drain lines on the floors from a hundred years of water dripping down from shirt and trousers and sheets strung up to dry, washing away the stone little by little with each drop.
The tabletops run smooth. Worn that way by a thousand supper plates swept on and off, a thousand slapping hands and slammed mugs. Where once you could not sit without fear of a splinter in the stomach, there are now smoothed sides and rounded corners.
There are indentations on the sides of door frames where it is common for a shoulder to press while idle, where fingers catch to keep their owners from toppling over, where hands come to rest while leaning in. There are smoothed indentations from where small hands have reached up and jumped to touch the top of the frame, just to prove they can.
There are imprints along the outer walls where trainees tag the wall before turning to run back, where they press their heads to cool stone and sigh in exhaustion as they’re yelled at to continue. There are racks of old training swords that are unusable because the grip has been worn in so much it is practically molded to the shape of a small hand.
These are all memories etched into the keep walls and floors. The past leaves its marks and The Keep holds most of them in fondness. But tragedy has etched into the halls with the passage of time as well; buried into invisible cracks, it goes mostly unnoticed. You see, tragedy of the past does not always leave these visible marks; sometimes it is like Magic; it seeps into the stones and becomes part of it instead of wearing it away.
Tragedy is what makes places where magic and memory mingle all the more strange. They remember, (as all Old Places do,) but with magic woven into the memories, they don’t stay purely physical. The memory of the hall becomes more than simple stone worn by small hands and time. Old Places Remember, yes, but The Keep..
The Keep is Alive.
Not at first. and not all at once, either.
The First Lost One is alone when he wakes cold on a hard stone floor. No one can see him and he cannot leave. He cannot quite remember what happened to him, but he cannot go to the room he woke in without trembling violently. He is scared and cold and lonely in the vast and quiet stone halls. Unsure of everything, the one thing he is certain of is that he’s terribly lost; he can’t even bring to mind his own name. (It’s Aldris but the Trials made it certain he will never be able to really recall his life of Before, only the jarring After.)
He is alone for nearly two full years before he is joined by The Second. At first, he is unsure of the other boy. When the mages take him down to the room that makes The First tremble and cold to the bones, he cannot help but want to protect him. When the screaming has passed, an echo of his own vague memories, and The Second slips from his body the way The Fist had, The First decides he cannot let anyone wander lonely and cold as he has been the past few years. (And so, The First becomes a protector.)
They leave the room, both trembling and sick of the screams echoing through their very souls. They swear together that, since they can remember nothing else, they will remember each other and any other boy that passes the halls. (The First tells The Second that his name is Haylen, so they do not forget why they are still around, even if they’re not who they used to be, not really.) The Second settles into the stone walls and floors, and he is no longer alone, they have each other. (And so, too, The Second becomes a protector.)
It is together that they help The Third settle into the halls. Tell him his name to help him remember, hold him close and keep the cold at bay because he can’t stand it. (The Third’s name is Silas.)
Three becomes five becomes seven, (Udolf, Warrick, Mitchell, Sterling) but The eighth boy to lay on the stone does not slip from his body like the others have. The Eighth wakes. His chest still rises and his heart still beats, albeit slower; The Eighth wakes as the First Witcher and the first word off his lips is his own name; whispered in his ear by a half dozen young voices echoed in the screams he will forever remember but want to forget. (His name is Oswin and The First Seven remember his name well; even if he is not a Lost One, he is still of Kaer Morhen. He is still a protector, if in a different way.)
The later rounds of trainee witchers come in groups, a dozen boys at a time. When they go under the trials, if they slip from the world of the living, they follow the soothing whispers and calloused hands of boys past. They lay into the stones themselves, take on protecting the others; like the Lost Ones before them. (The rooms still cause violent trembling but now it is not entirely of fear.)
Over time, The Lost Ones lose the individuality that had separated them. (Their faces become indistinguishable from one another; little noses and eyes blur together, their bodies all have the same small, calloused hands and skinned knees and hoarse throats.) Slowly, they become a mass of consciousness, their names whispered through the cracks of the keep stones and half blurred faces disappearing around abandoned corners. They seep into The Keep, (the magic in the stones), etching themselves into the backs of the stone walls until eventually...
They are Kaer Morhen.
When they realize they are an entity, connected to the halls they will forever roam, (and the Magic that has been pulsing around them, woven into the walls with time just as they are with tragedy,) they make it their mission to protect those in their halls. They remember what the training was like, they remember what the Path is supposed to be like. (They remember the Trials where they met their ends, they hear their same screams echoed in other boys’ throats every year.)
With the kind of determination that can only be achieved by the aching souls of ten year olds and old magic, they plan. They cannot protect on the Path, they know this. They are not strong enough, tied to the halls as they are, but during the wintertime..
In the wintertime, when many a Witcher return to Kaer Morhen (and there’s always gaps in the returnees, always those who left and will never return) to rest their poor bodies and minds away from the words and stone alike hurled at them, the old halls are not as cold or biting as they might have been; even when the fires are burning low.
The storms are not as loud, despite the enhanced witcher hearing. The wind does not howl angrily through every cracked door and crooked stone. Instead, The Lost Ones whisper through the halls; whisper names into ears and bring nearly forgotten brothers’ faces to mind and brush hair from boys’ foreheads like a long lost friend. (That’s what they are, lost.. That’s almost all they can be anymore.)((Though now they are determined to be Home, a place no one will ever be truly lost again.))
The springs never grow truly dirty, and they’re always refreshing. No matter the amount of dirt and sweat that pours off tired shoulders and calloused hands, the waters are alway refreshing and crisp. (The waters help wash away the blood on their hands long after it’s already gone.)
When Witchers stumble in secluded halls, eyes burning with tears and grief heavy in their limbs, the keep walls protect them from prying eyes. The Medallions of lost Witchers are placed in that little room with names carved into every inch of the walls where they’ll be remembered. That is how they bring those that will never return back home. (The Lost Ones cannot help on the Path, cannot protect from how Witchers live, but they can make and protect their Home.)
Of course, that’s all before the warlord’s reign. When other Witchers come to the keep, they are welcomed in warm, bright halls. They are Witchers, after all, and kaer Morhen protects their own. With the influx of magic, new Trials, other Witcher schools, The keep becomes more rich in magic and memory. The Keep grows inside, becoming more than simply a place to remember and be remembered, now it is what it wanted to be; a home to all Witchers. (While The Lost Ones make more space for the newcomers, they cannot help but feel restless with the change they know is approaching.)
**
When the first human comes and swears her sword to the White Wolf, The Keep is wary. They have seen a few female warriors in the Cat Witchers, but this human is still very much not a Witcher. She fits easily into the flow, though, and she holds no ill will towards them. The Keep watches her, to make sure they have not been mistaken. She is not as fast as the witchers, nor as strong, but she is just as fierce.
The Keep decides that she is not a witcher, but she is near enough. She calls the halls a place to sleep and rest, and so they welcome her. Soon enough, it becomes home. Her name is Zofia, The Keep comes to learn, and she is as much a protector as any other in the halls. (And when they hear her tell the story of her sister, Anna, they remember her as they remember every other Lost One. She is etched into the backs of stones, her name whispered on the wind.)
***
When the little cub arrives, The Lost Ones are very nearly frightened. In an instant, The Keep itself bends to protect this tiny thing that has been brought into their halls. They know that the White Wolf, the Witcher that commands the others, is good and kind but so are many within the walls, and they have become jaded. (Vesemir holds names like they do, written in hidden journals instead of walls. And even if his memory cannot recall faces, he still remembers, but he is growing old and time-weary.)
The Lost Ones have been listening to echos of their own screams for years, but these cries are different. They are not wordless from the pain of the mind and body being rewritten, but wordless simply because this small cub does not yet know words. These cries are answered with big sturdy hands and small invisible ones alike. (The Keep becomes all the more protective. They can feel the magic in her; They know she will be strong and loved. They will make sure she always has a home to remember.)
**
When Jan arrives, The Keep is distrusting.
The halls are darker, colder, than they have been to anyone in years. The Keep does not want to share themselves with this human man. He is not a Witcher and will not be a Witcher. This man cannot see their haven, cannot see the safety they have built for Witchers to protect them from humans that hurl words and stones with the same ill intent; from the humans that ask for help and then chase them out of town.
The Keep listens as this human pleas for the Wolf’s help. They watch as he learns their halls, watch as this human man drops the tension in his shoulders and readily falls to his knees to embrace a little human girl that had been slung over one Viper Witcher’s shoulder without fear. The Keep decides, as the man lays down a plea to serve the White Wolf, that this human is not harmful. This human that does not hurl stones or words at the Witchers is not an outsider, but another protector. (The staff he hires arrive to chilly halls, but they are soon warm.)
**
The mages arrive to cold halls. The Lost Ones are still wary of mages. (It is mages that created the trials, that set their bodies to tear themselves apart and left them to scream themselves deaf, left them to die on cold stone without an ounce of remorse.)
But, when the red haired sorceress creates the potion that tests the taker’s ability to withstand the trials, The Lost Ones decide that she is, perhaps, not so bad. (Her name is Triss, and she is the first mage The Keep remembers with fondness.) Over time, The Keep halls slowly grow warm for the magic users. (These mages do not experiment on the children of the keep, nor do they go poking around in places they should stay out of. They protect The Cub and defend the Witchers, they are welcomed as protectors.)
**
When the Bard arrives, The Keep can see already that he is scared, why he is scared, and they remember when they were of the same mindset. They remember fearing The sure death That would befall them inside the keep‘s walls. (before they were the walls.) The halls are perhaps a bit cool, but mostly they are perfectly normal. There is nothing unusual about the halls as he passes through. (They can see when one needs to be protected, and they can see the potential he holds.)
He grows accustomed to The Keep quickly. He is soon one of the protectors of the Witchers of Kaer Morhen and The Keep decides he is welcome. He is home, as the other protectors are. (The Keep protects the Witchers from physical threat as their home, The Staff protect the Witchers from psychological distance as humans that regularly interact with them, The Bard protects them from outside human’s insufferably inaccurate notions with his songs.)
**
The Keep’s halls are cold and dark when the consort train rolls through. The halls refuse to warm for all but one of the terrified little women that roam them. (They can see the ill intent hidden under pretty gowns and elaborate braids and fake smiles, these women are not protectors.)
The Keep’s halls turn downright frigid after the bard is stabbed. If Eskel hadn’t kicked every one of them out, (all but the one with flame in her eye and steel in her spine, the one that swore to The Wolf and loves the prickliest of the bunch) The Lost Ones would have driven them out with cold hands and whispered words in the dead of night. (The Keep protects those inside, defends them, and they will never allow an ill-intentioned human to stay in the keep without being frozen to the bone and eager to leave.)
After the noblewomen all have left, (all but their newest human protector,) The Keep is warm. As she adjusts to the new environment, The Keep protects her in small ways. The training hall is always pleasantly cool while she learns to make her deceptively soft hands calloused,(but still gentle,) while she falls ever more in love with her favorite prickly little cantankerous wolf, and she never pricks her fingers while she teaches The Cub how to sew. (Her name is Melina, and she may not protect all the Witchers, but she protects one, and that is enough.)
**
It took centuries of magic and tragedy and time, but there are no longer gaps in the lines of Witchers returning from the Path. There are still the echoing screams of the Trials, but they are now every three years, and there are less new Lost Ones to remember.
The Keep, Kaer Morhen, the Lost Ones, are no longer the only ones protecting the Witchers. (Protecting each other.) They have humans that love the Witchers to back them up now. and mages that do not experiment on children. and Witchers are no longer have to be quite so ruthless all the time. (Now, they can afford to be softer, to be more happy than angry.) The Lost Ones are no longer the lost, intangible protectors they’ve been for centuries; they are Kaer Morhen now.
They are Home.