WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

001. absence of light..

"I think we know enough," Jaskier gasped in pure distress. He may have been given blankets and warmer, yet disgusting, drinks to get his blood bumping, but every second he breathed, he found it harder to believe he escaped the nightmare which was Arcapan, only to arrive at the Witchers Geoffrey counted on and hear his friend talk such nonsense... for a woman, of all things.

"Arcapan allied with Nilfgaard," Geraly started repeating, calmly, the facts they knew. "War is none of our business. King Sylvain is creating an uprising in the North and he doesn't like us. He had also allied, through Nilfgaard, with one of the members of the Blood Sorcerers Order I encountered with Azaras as well."

"Blood Sorcerers which we can count as monsters," Eskel pointed out, just as diplomatic.

"Who we don't know for sure how to face or kill without getting involved in political affairs," Geralt concluded with the cross of his arms over his chest.

"Bollocks!" Jaskier shouted, voice sore and throat hurting. He sounded more as a wounded kitten than a man covered in dirt.

"Who else would have sent conjured monsters on our land but those sons of bitches who should just be grateful plague didn't kill them all?" More vocal, as always, Lambert made it his job to point out the personal tints into their business; grudges were unfinished business in need of finality to him.

"A couple of monsters we already killed," Geralt dimissed, "hardly the end of the world." Attention of his words returned to Eskel, "Most importantly, though, we are not gettinf paid in this case to interfere. It's not our duty to do so unless we earn profit of it."

"People are dying-!"

Over Jaskier's plea, coming from the fresh fear of almost having died as well, Geralt continued, "However, we do have a duty towards our mentor. We need to focus on finding Vesemir."

Azaras focus got lost from the dying ambers of her eyes. When the tears came, certain and hot, she did not feel them brazing her cheeks. In fact, she hasn't been feeling anything at all, which was perhaps one of the most terrifying states to find herself into; in the tear between her hectic, worrying thoughts and the stillness of her heart, she was finding panic unlike any other.

It became impossible for her to tell just how much time it passed in that room she found herself into, or even how long it took her to realize her heart felt safer still, hiding in a kitchen, deserted and out of use, just for the sake of habit. A howling wind went through furnaces as whistling as the sky itself exhaling all the time, annoyed.

"Don't let them see you cry."

Azaras' hands promptly raised to wipe her tears away, even though, in an instant, she also recognzied it was Geralt's voice who joined her in the dark of that room.

"You can cry in front of me, but don't let the others see it," he rephrased his initial statement at the pace of a careful approach. Azaras sat, with her legs crossed over the other, on the frail, old and creaking table, whose past usage had rusted away in permanent stains it will carry until it is turned to splinters.

There wasn't room to sit next to her and before the characteristic of a Witcher to see in the dark fairly well kicked in, to his attention, Geralt simply walked to stand before her. Azaras dropped her hands back to her lap and through a quietness which he never once considered a good sign in her, he sighed again, "You may not want to talk about this, but I am-"

Azaras' forehead bumped down on the middle his chest.

She leant there, her whole being shivering against Geralt, but she let not a single whimper to bring voice to her cry. Ultimately, an unspeakable heartache froze Geralt's arms in an incapacity to react as he wished and felt it was most normal too. Thankfully though, he did not have time to turn the feelings Azaras helped him experience again to rage and need for vengeance; no one should ever have the power to make her crumble as if she didn't rip a monster open with her bare hands, as if she wasn't one of a kind.