WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

008. lesser evils..

The elf took the first step back. Full of disbelief he was hateful in his final stare towards the Witcher, "You set me up!"

"Terdaich, I did not," Geralt approach and were it not for how conveniently Terdaich's cloak got trapped in a nail sicking out of the fence, he wouldn't have reached him in time.

"You sided with the evil witch, Geralt," the elf cried out. "You promised I won't get mixed up in any messes that will endanger the little ones."

"Witch? What witch?"

"The monsters, Geralt," Terdaich pulled his louder voice, back down to the whispers tainted in the fear of being so close to danger. Ever so often he looked back at Azaras, who didn't seem even close to peaceful yet. "The monsters were made through old blood magic," he voiced the final conclusion. Terdaich's right hand came out and pointed back at Azarad "And she is made by that blasphemy too."

Azaras heard the words, she read his lips and fixed the truth, but a general worry was not what she felt allowed to exude. Something else happened behind her eyes, another imagine played in her mind, something she didn't remember before. From the nights she was tied to a bed...

The first flash of a world painted red had her stumble back. She no longer heard what Geralt was trying ro convince Terdaich about, she couldn't even see them properly outside of the compelling touch she remembered. It smelled of iron, this hand that pressed down on her forehead.

"Never let them find me," it echoed in her mind. Hue of red turned deadly yellow and for the first time, the entirety of her green fell to the maddening stare of an angered wolf.

Geralt barely just took hold of Terdaich when he heard the beginning of what he could not control. It did not make sense. It was unfair. But being torn between a choice forced him to act fast. He let go of the elf and turned around.

His hands captured Azaras' right wrist and held out a barrier between her sword and the elf's head. For the first time, he looked into her eyes and saw the terror which he once saw in Vesemir's, back when he was still too young to understand what he will become and what he will endure to look just as close to a monster as him.

Azaras did not hold back, not even for his sake, which was a shock Geralt barely escaped with his hands in place. She put on brute force, in an imaginable rage, as if Terdaich, nothing but a harmless commoner, was the monster she had been so vengeful in hunting.

It hurt him almost as much as it hurt her that after he ducked under her hit, he came so close, his hand was able to wrap around her neck and tighten out the air. Even with that, she didn't calm down, so Geralt lifted Azaras off the ground and pinned her back down with the force necessary to knock that sword from her hand.

She now started clawing away, absolutely insane, not even looking at him, but just at the elf. Obviously, the latter, frightened, backed away to run, but in a last moment of desperation, holding her down and not understanding... or just not wanting to, Geralt looked back at his acquaintance.

"Terdaich, what's happening to her?"

The elf stopped, at a somewhat safe distance. , "You think I will help you after she tried to kill me?"

"Tell me what do I do, damn it!"

"Kill the monster," Terdaich yelled back.

And Geralt had her. One knee was on her right wrist, his hands were around her neck and just a little tighter, he would feel her spine. A single decision away from breaking her and not even a nerve of his body allowed him to make that reasonable call.

Black magic were the words Terdaich used, but Geralt only thought of the last of it, which left room for the obvious: any spell has a loophole.

"Just tell me what's happening to her and how I can fix it," he asked again, a nuance more desperate. "I'm holding her down, just get closer...," Geralt hesitated for a moment. He had to look down, into the unrecognizable rage of the one he cared for, into the heartbreaking grip he had on her, imagining what bruises it would leave and seeing how his cut was bleeding on her neck. "Please, Terdaich."