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It's time for the annual Tree Toss Festival, when all of the Witchers have to go out and bring home the largest tree trunk they can then throw it across an empty field. Whoever gets farthest with the largest log wins. It's a huge deal and one of the only "festivals" that Witchers did even before this warlord nonsense when they were all just athletic sacks of sadness. It’s a Bear tradition that transferred to Kaer Morhen after one of the Cranes heard some Bears grumbling in the hot springs about how the other schools couldn’t compare to them in strength. When challenged, the Bear said they could prove they were stronger by trouncing all the others in their competition.
There's more alcohol than the entire court of Aedirn consumes in a year. The human warriors have a much lighter version first thing and then get absolutely wasted (except Zofia, who spends the day gathering ammunition and running the various betting pools. Every time, the others swear they won't get drunk this year because of how long that story haunted them. One dare later, there's always another story).
Once the mages arrived, they invented spells to weigh the logs and track the exact distance thrown and there's a mathematical formula based on those two factors for determining the precise winner. Each year, one mage or another is cheerfully accused of tweaking the formula in exchange for extremely rare monster parts and every other mage is called in to review their work because "it’s unknown how far the corruption has spread."
All the Witchers step up their strength training a few months before. And they're Witchers, so it's not like they were slacking before or have much room to improve. And this is in spite of the fact that one of the Bears usually wins the overall contest anyway, as that's their school's thing (one year a Crane won and no one has any idea how it happened but the Cranes have never let anyone forget it).
In preparation, some of the Cats take mages out with them in advance to measure trees and the Bears always find monster trees somehow (there's a theory that they pour potions on preselected trees hidden away and that's how they find them. Triss has not commented on this one way or another).
It's been unanimously agreed that Geralt doesn't count since he would always win anyways due to his extra mutagens, since dubbed "cheating." However, he does throw the first log to give the others "something to aspire to", followed by the previous year’s winner. The rest isn't so formalized and there are mini competitions amongst each school, the trainers, year mates, and various other combinations in each bracket.
No one has any reason to expect this year to be any different, except that there will now be musical accompaniment and probably ballads created on the spot to commemorate the brawls curtesy of the songbird. This assumption is however smashed when up steps Eskel. His tree is respectable but nothing that out of the ordinary.
When Eskel throws, his log lands halfway in the no-man's-land between Geralt and last year's winner.
Accusations of cheating begin to fly and everyone starts to round on the mages when they notice Eskel's dumbstruck face and the very strong scent of shock. And yes, he does the politics and can act a little, but nothing like this in front of his fellow Witchers.
At this point, the humans start howling with laughter and are rolling on the ground. Drunkenly, the story emerges: sex with Witchers benefits the human comparably weaker partner and they get a boost to health, strength, healing, refraction time, and longevity. Guess there truly is something special about the White Wolf after all. Then the humans start bickering about what this means for the bet. It's way earlier than anyone predicted and no one thought it would be a Witcher that finally clued them in. Plus, they had to explain it to the Witchers and mages, so does that even count? Eventually, the consensus is that the bet is invalidated and Zofia promises to return everyone's coin.
(Later, Geralt gets banished from his own enormous bed for telling Jaskier that he thought "he just got even better at sex through practice" in reference to his improved refractory time and demonstrated strength in bed. He's quickly readmitted though when Jaskier takes pity due to both Eskel and Geralt turning into piles of blissful mush because they know now that he can actually stay with them long term.)
A week after, there are twelve new human lovers brought in from towns outside and more on the way. Apparently, some Witchers had humans they just so happened to always visit while on patrol despite how “nothing was happening" between them. the Witchers are moving with their usual efficiency and intensity now that they know they won't be losing their loves in a short period of time, but can actually make lives together.