Finn stood on a broad rock jutting from the hill, high enough to see what the condition of the land around them was. It wasn't much. Just layers of trunks and leaves pressing in from every side, dark and tall and endless. Above them, the sun looked tired, dulled by thin bands of cloud.
He checked the compass. The needle pointed straight ahead. Just like how it had since this morning.
"Do you see anything?" someone called from below.
Ciri stood at the base of the rock, her sword strapped across her back, arms folded tight across her chest.
"Just trees," Finn said.
She clicked her tongue. "So nothing."
"If you can't take it anymore, you could always teleport away," Finn said. "With your gift."
Her jaw tightened. "Stop bringing that up," she said, not looking up.
Finn climbed down, his boots scraping against the rock, and they set off again. The compass led them where it pointed, and they followed it without argument.
The forest didn't bother them. Odd little creatures skittered out of the way, insects hummed and flashed briefly before vanishing into the undergrowth. Time stretched long. Steps piled on top of steps as the two continued the search.
Then the compass twitched, no longer pointing forward alone.
Finn stopped.
"What?" Ciri said immediately. "What's wrong? Did you find it?"
"It's close." Finn turned to the right, following the needle. He took a few steps.
Then the compass swung hard in the opposite direction.
He stopped again.
"We're here," he said.
Ciri turned slowly, scanning the trees. Her hand drifted closer to the sword hilt without her noticing. "I don't see anything."
"Because the door isn't open yet." Finn let out a breath.
"No," she said, irritation sharpening her voice. "I mean a building. Or some sign of it. Anything."
"Like I said, this is probably a new world," Finn said. "There are no sentient beings to build the 'buildings' you mentioned. Buildings only show up if someone lives here. Or if a traveler's already been through. Besides, it's only one door point in this world. Maybe there's another that has buildings around it."
Her head snapped back to him. "One door point?"
"Mhm, every world has multiples." Finn dropped his bag onto the ground. "Different doors lead to different worlds." He straightened. "All we can do now is wait."
"And how long do we wait?" Ciri asked.
Finn lifted one shoulder. "No idea."
"…Marvelous," she muttered. She stalked a few steps away, then crouched near a tangle of roots, clearly unhappy about sitting at all. "I distinctly remember you saying we can calculate when it will appear."
"We can," Finn said, sitting against a tree. "I chose not to."
She looked up sharply. "Why?"
"Why would I?" Finn said. "It's a waste of time. It'll open one way or another."
"What if it takes months?"
"Then we move on after a few weeks and find another door."
She stared at him. "Are you serious? This is just your routine, then? You wait until the door opens, enter, walk to another door, then wait again?"
"Of course not," Finn said. "I only do it if I don't know the destination. I usually write down the time the door opens once it actually does." He pulled out his pocket watch. "That way I can plan my travels using the information I have. Where I'll arrive. When doors open. The distance between doors. Of course, my planning expertise can't really be applied here since we'll be going in blind for a while. So, again, we wait. At least until a certain point."
Ciri groaned and hugged her knees. "You make it sound easy."
"And like I said," Finn added, "if you don't like it, you can just teleport away using your gift. I don't mind."
Her jaw clenched. "Stop calling it that."
Finn glanced at her. "Calling it what?"
"A gift." She looked away. "It doesn't feel like one."
Silence lingered.
"How does it even work?" she asked after a moment. "You writing down the time. Different worlds have different times."
"Most worlds are in a similar earth-like condition," Finn said. "Of course, most doesn't mean all of them are like that. If it's not, then I adjust."
"Earth-like?" Ciri raised a brow.
Finn sighed. "I don't want to explain the concept of planets right now." He paused. "Besides, all of this doesn't really matter to you, does it? As I recall, your gift transcends space and time. You can travel to the past and the future."
Her fingers dug into her sleeve. "You say that like it's simple."
"Isn't it?"
"No," she said flatly. "It's barely controllable."
"Have you not studied your gift even a little?"
"I did," she said. "Otherwise I wouldn't be able to jump from world to world." Her voice hardened. "Now I don't have time. I'm always hiding or running. And from what you told me, it's probably better that I haven't explored anything beyond what I need to survive."
"Right…" Finn hummed. He leaned forward and drew a couple of circles in the dirt with his finger.
"What are you doing?" Ciri asked, wary.
"Do you want to hear an explanation or not? About how this all works?"
She hesitated, then nodded once.
He pointed at the circle in the middle. "This is our reality. I call it the multiverse. A multiverse is a very large group of worlds or dimensions or spheres or whatever you want to call them, that are interconnected to each other using the passages I told you about. All of them are running at the same time. Simultaneously. In parallel."
"What?" Ciri said flatly.
Finn exhaled through his nose. "All right. Forget the big words. Think of time like a river. It only flows one way."
She nodded.
"Each world is something floating in that river," he continued. "Different boats, but the same current, traveling at the same speed. They rarely bump into each other, but they're all carried forward together."
"…Go on."
"Every world has different circumstances," Finn said. "Some have magic. Some are more advanced in terms of technology. But their time always moves at the same speed. That's why some worlds are dead, whether it's caused by their inhabitants or something else, while others are still lived in. The dead worlds probably ended long before the living ones reached their current state. Take your world. The elves came from another world, didn't they? And time there and time in your world move in parallel."
"…Yes."
"These worlds make up what I call the 'now' multiverse, The present." Finn said, pointing to the surrounding circles. "These others are past multiverses, and the future multiverses. I can't travel to those. They aren't conventionally connected."
He looked at her. "But you can."
She went still. "Most of the time I don't do that on purpose."
"I know."
Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know all this?"
"I read books," Finn said simply. "I spent a year in your world, studying what I could."
"A year?" she asked. "Where?"
"Kovir. Your world was my first. Well, first lived in world anyway." He smiled faintly. "It was about… four years ago, I think."
"Four years?" Ciri frowned. "I was at Kaer Morhen then. How old are you now?"
"Eighteen."
She scoffed. "No, you're not."
Finn chuckled. "I look older, I know. Travels do that."
"You left your world when you were fourteen," she said. "Voluntarily."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"My world was boring, nothing else really." He shrugged. "It was a chance encounter. One day I found a portal in the woods near my home. Got lost for a few months, jumping from passageways to passageways, dead worlds after dead worlds. Then I reached your world. I studied what I could. Compared what I knew towards everything, knowledge that I picked up from my own world and yours, and combined it to get to the conclusion that I got. Using that, I went home. Stayed a few months." He looked away. "Then I left again. Never regretted it."
Ciri stared at the grass. "It must be nice."
"It has its ups and downs," Finn said.
He looked at the sky, branches swaying in the breeze. "Ciri. I know your story. Your life." He hesitated. "I don't want to keep acting around you, acting like I don't know anything, so I'll just say it."
Ciri looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"There are worlds," he said, "where other worlds exist as stories. Fiction."
Her gaze snapped to him.
"You exist as a story in one of them, in my world." Finn said. "You were one of the main characters."
The silence pressed in on the two of them.
"…What?" Ciri said quietly.
"I know, right? Maybe I'll find a world where there's a story about me one day." Finn continued, "If the story is accurate, then I know what happens to you in the next few years. I don't really get it myself. Perhaps it's just the nature of the infiniteness of the multiverse that fictional stories in a world actually exist somewhere in other worlds. Or perhaps it is something tied to the belief of some strong core worlds that spawns these fictional worlds into existence."
Her expression hardened instantly. "And you think I'd want to hear that?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "It might change your fate if you know it. Might make it worse. Might make it better. Depends on your choices based on it."
She frowned. "From the sound of it, you aren't in the story. So that means you already have changed it one way or another. By being here. With me."
"Ciri—"
"If you know something," she cut in, "either tell me. Or stop pretending you're doing me a kindness by not telling me anything. I've had enough of that, if you actually know my life story so far."
"…Fair point," he said. "Fine. It's going to be a long story though."
—
A long pause came after Finn had finished telling all the stories. He left no stone unturned. He told the story from beginning to end, the end that he knew anyway. By the time he had finished, it had turned dark once again, and a fire had been lit for the two of them.
"So… even my story doesn't have a concrete ending." she muttered. "This… 'Video Game', you make the ending of the story on your own, correct? Based on your decisions?"
Finn hummed.
"Then what ending did you get while playing it?" she asked.
Finn chuckled. "Which one would you prefer?"
Ciri stared at him. "You didn't answer my question."
"Well I've never truly played it. Just read summaries of it. When I returned from your world, once I knew that the fictional worlds that are popular in my world actually exist in the multiverse, I just began to gather all I know about every fictional story in my world. I studied your world especially, since I've been there first before I even knew how all this functioned." Finn said. "Maybe if I go back one day I'll try it out."
Ciri sighed. "It feels strange… a stranger telling my life story so vividly, even my life story that hasn't happened yet…"
"Well, some of them probably won't happen anymore now with you knowing about it." Finn said.
"Hmm… I'd very much want to be a witcher some day, and it seems like I somehow succeeded in your story." Ciri murmured. "The freedom that comes with it… How I longed for that."
Finn simply smiled at her words. "You sure are taking it quite easily. You didn't even doubt me, it doesn't seem that you're not disgusted either."
Ciri laughed. "Why would I be disgusted?"
"It is your life story." Finn chuckled. "If I were in your position, I would think that I am a stalker."
Ciri smiled. "It is quite weird. Still, I've met worse men and women in my life, as you know."
Finn hummed. "Even though I have travelled for years already, there's still a lot of things that I don't know. I mean, what is the difference between worlds that are very different from another to worlds that are the same with slight changes, or an added factor in its evolution, that significantly changes how the world is shaped. Does that count as an alternate universe or timeline, or a world that I can visit with just the doors? So far, I have not encountered those kinds of worlds, so I'm leaning to the theory that those worlds are an alternate version of one of the worlds that are connected to each other, so I can't visit it. Still… some things might change in the future…"
Ciri stared at Finn with a blank expression. "I have no idea what you have just said."
Finn merely chuckles at the response. "Sorry. It's been a few weeks since I've spoken to someone. I often go on tangents, don't mind it."
It was then that a portal suddenly appeared near them. The crackles of the spatial anomaly lit up the place, and it extinguished the fire that the two of them had made effortlessly.
"Well, it looks like it's faster than I thought." Finn said, already standing up and grabbing his bag. He checked on the time using his pocket watch, and made sure to remember it. Ciri also stood up, preparing herself for travel.
"It really is a portal…" Ciri muttered.
"Then shall we go?" Finn said.
Ciri merely nodded. The two of them entered the portal simultaneously, leaving this world as it were, alive but empty.