WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

002. the snake pit..

Bone cracking wails and torn sounds echoed from the depths of Arcapan up to any cornerstone above the catacombs. Snake hisses accompanied the screams of pure despair in an off tune orchestra. Chords crept in the unmaking of bones and somewhere, through all that ruckus, a river hushed a chant.

The dark world turned red, not for the flames as high as the ceiling, burning away the small beings of the earth and raining ash over the rituals. A thousand dead insects and worms joined instead the scarlet river which bloomed towards the pit.

Jaskier thought he had, at last, reached hell. Though last colorful memories were of a swirling danced, hazed in blissful colors by one of the most fulfilling wines his lips had ever tasted, now the four walls closed in on him and on a forever thirst and hunger. Any liquids drenching from the ceiling so low he too had to hunch to stand, were too slow in their fall to be drinkable. They fell before him and the door as draped he did not wish to touch. 

Screams have been going on for days. Or were them weeks, he wondered. 

It felt like an eternity since he woke up in the dark, with no memories of how he got there, no knowledge as to where that place even was. Though he too had joined the chorus of the wails, his throat had now grown to dry. If he wasn't already dead, Jaskier was sure he's end will be anon.

Geoffrey paced in front of the locked doors of the palace. He was inside, restless to the orders they have all received: the councilmen, the guards and a handful of loyal subjects, in Sylvain's vision, were instructed to stay inside the keep's most mortified construction. They had plentiness, peace and comfort, but no allowance to go out until their King so kindly agrees. 

And the King had not been seen since the order, away in some secret corner with the mage from Nilfgaard. Oh, how Geoffrey's skin turned to goosebumps at the mere thought of that ghoulish presence, lurking and placing lies in the mind of one he once loved.

There was also the matter of bodies. A few nights back, a fellow knight swore he heard the front doors open, from the outside, and filled with curiosity, Geoffrey investigated enough to see trails of blood, signs of fights. 

Something strange was happening in Arcapan. Fireplaces warmed the halls, but the air was thick, there was only silence. Recently, all windows have been shut too, in barricades of woods they'd only ever use in midst of storms. In all that ruckus, only he cared to ask the question; no one could see the madness as well as he who saw the evergreen kindness before.

Though it was hard to admit it, alas, Sylvain had changed. Looking at him scared Geoffrey for a while and the second the mage insinuated there ever being a way to restore the King his legs, whatever darkness seeded in the king's mind from sorrow, grew into something far more dangerous.

"It's not possible," Geoffrey had insisted that very night, before the decisions had been made and all orders had been passed. He used to be able to bend Sylvain towards the right paths, by slightly risking his life against a fresher rage, yet that night was nothing but venom where once dripped honey. It was pain. "My father taught me how all magic demands a price to be paid and to grow your legs back, your Highness, that sounds like a dark magic with a dark sacrifice to it."

"Do I look like I cannot afford paying the price?" Sylvain's raspy voice replied. His neck was locked into the bow of his head heavy with a crown and a desire slowly winning him over. Pondering on the ground, his eyes slowly reached to look at where his legs used to be, where now was nothing but the margin of a chair. 

To Geoffrey, Sylvain sounded like his mother, willing to throw away an entire fortune. It was not money which worried the knight, but the possibility of a higher implication. "Even if the price turns out to be in flesh?"