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I dream of sailing away one day... Only water and sky all around. The salt foam splashes me, the wind tugs my hair in an utterly male caress. And I'm alone ... among the strange and hostile elements. Solitude amid a sea of strangeness. |  | |
| - Lytta to Geralt, Season of Storms | |||
Astrid Lyttneyd Ásgeirrfinnbjornsdottir, better known as Lytta Neyd or Coral (for the color of her favorite lipstick) was a sorceress and one of the fourteen mages who fell during the Battle of Sodden Hill.
Biography
She was from the Skellige Isles but soon shortened her name to just Lytta Neyd due to her long, hard to pronounce name. Like a true Skelliger, she loved the sea and knew a good deal about different types of boats.
In 1245, she made her way to Kerack under orders to try and get the witcher Geralt to help with a problem and decided the best way to do this was to have the witcher thrown in jail under false accusations, for her to anonymously bail him out, and he'd then seek her out for it. Thus she met with Kerack's king, Belohun, and while the king allowed her to stay and act as an advisor to him for the duration, he originally had a problem with one of her well known skills: she made a living by creating magical concoctions to prevent and/or abort pregnancies. While this was fine across most of the continent, it was considered immoral to Belohun, who believed a woman busy with children wouldn't stray from home.
After back and forth, the king soon revealed his real reason: he was taking a new, young wife soon and he wanted to have an heir with her and so didn't want her having access to these concoctions. After Lytta agreed to not sell any to his betrothed she was allowed to continue her practice. She then brought up one more thing for the king: that Geralt had embezzled funds from the royal purse. Falling for the misinformation, the king summarily had the visiting witcher thrown into jail shortly after his arrival.
Four days later, Lytta was then furiously approached by the witcher after she'd bailed him out and he learned she was the reason he was both thrown in jail and released. As they talked, she tried to seduce Geralt but he did his best to ignore it and instead pretended to look like he was interested in her assistant, Mozaïk, before leaving. Mad and feeling humiliated, Lytta took out her anger by casting a spell that flipped Mozaïk's left hand 180 degrees so her palm was facing up.[1]
The next day she was once again approached by Geralt, who had run into Mozaïk and saw what she'd done to the girl's hand. However, things soon took a different turn and Geralt found himself in Lytta's bed and staying with her for another four days.
Sometime after the Summer Solstice, she decided to help Geralt find out what became of his swords and performed hydromancy. However, when Geralt initially concentrated, his thoughts drifted off and the first vision was of Yennefer, must to Lytta's chagrin, before changing focus and showing visions near Fort Ravelin, a woman standing on a tree limb, and the Borsody Auction House, before switching to a vision of a hill. However, she realized this last vision wasn't for Geralt but instead directed at her. A few days later she then informed Geralt he was being "asked" to go to those that'd sent Lytta to talk to him in the first place: the mages at Castle Rissberg. There, one of her former lovers, Algernon Guincamp (better known as Pinety) wrote to keep in touch with Lytta and informed her about Geralt's arrival, who Pinety didn't much care for.
By mid to late July, Geralt returned from his trip but for Lytta their short-term romance had lost its passion and she sent him away to wait a couple days, making it clear things were over between them. That same day she was visited by Pinety, who'd dropped in to say goodbye.
Sodden Hill
Whilst observing the obelisk at Sodden Hill commemorating the fourteen sorcerers and sorceresses that fell in the battle there, Geralt discovers that Lytta Neyd was among the casualties. He reminisced about the time she once denounced him to King Belohun of Kerack, who promptly threw the witcher in the city's dungeon for a week. Upon his release, the witcher headed over to Lytta home in the city to find out what had motivated her to do such a thing and inexplicably found himself in the beautiful sorceress' bed for another week.
When she later visited Kaer Morhen, fellow sorceress Triss Merigold recounted the tragic events of the Battle of Sodden Hill to the witchers, describing how Coral was left as nothing more than a "trunk with no arms and no legs which was screaming so horrifically".[2]
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Lytta is mentioned a few times in the game, particularly, her handiwork is cited in both The Soldier Statuette and The Nobleman Statuette quests. For the first quest, she compressed an Oxenfurt nobleman who was courting her for his wandering eye. In the second quest, other figurine is revealed to be a Nilfgaardian soldier whom Lytta imprisoned during the Battle of Sodden Hill.
Geralt can find both these figurines during his travels in Novigrad and can bring them to Triss for decompressing anytime before Battle Preparations. Lytta is also mentioned during "The King is Dead – Long Live the King," if Geralt speaks to the Skelliger widows in Crach's feast hall. He'll remark the Isles haven't produced any sorceresses of note, prompting Yen to mention Neyd.
Notes
- She was a natural redhead, but while that hair color typically meant freckles, she didn't have any, having magically removed hers.
- She had a tattoo of an angelfish on her hip, the only indicator of her true age, as by 1245 angelfish had become synonymous of one being ostentatious rather than their original meaning of a coveted, rare artifact.
Gallery
