WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

004. gamble your life away..

"And you just let her?" Geralt beamed, glowing anger molten into the narrowing of his eyes.

"Have some faith," Eskel sighed, his own cards threaded into his left hand. "She surely is very confident that she will come back victorious and frankly, I am too."

"Do you have doubts of her worth?" Lambert teased the sensitivity Geralt was suddenly showing, much more efficient than Eskel tried before. They all put the pieces together and knew what their friend was trying to hide until Vesemir would be back or they would find out what happened.

Geralt sighed, not certainly defeated, but at least reminded that he did trust her capabilities. What angered him was beyond his control and that she was trying to prove herself constantly, without much of a point to it all. In the end, none could pretend not knowing how important the single drop of pride was in their land of work.

With a fire of conviction, Azaras stumbled over a second interference, this time, following her out of Kaer Morhen. Not recognizing the steps' sound, she turned around and was faced with Jaskier, running to catch up with her.

Frail as he still was, he has been healing nicely and gradually promising a true, fast recovery, at least to the extent that running was made possible for him again and enough vitality has been returned to his body to speak once he caught up with Azaras.

"I'm coming with you," Jaskier announced in a single ragged breath. Bent over his knees momentarily, holding them for support, then straightening up, he flaunted with the clothes he was borrowed by the Witchers, hanging off of him. No matter how hard he tried to make these old materials look a bit more presentable, as something a famous bard as himself would wear, they blended right in still with the dirt on his skin.

"Are you now?" Azaras furrowed down her eyebrows, in doubt Jaskier should have even been allowed to leave Kaer Morhen. There were things at play she was ignoring the implications of. "Didn't you hate me?"

"You?" Jaskier exclaimed, utterly baffled with her assumptions, though perhaps, a few days after the escape from Arcapan, they would have been correct. "I would never. I simply loathe your brother, Azaras."

Jaskier's reply brought her little goal a joy of forgetfulness, beyond the details she blocked out as an old image of her brother that she carried being attributed and attracted to the darkness of hatred. The less she remembered of the note from Geoffrey and the implications that he needed her help before he died, the more likely she was to focus in smaller stakes: on finding Vesemir or, in punctuality, just making up for the weakness she shared. "Alright, then why are you truly coming along?"

"I need soap."

Agreeing with him fully, Azarad did not hold back any fractured beaming of her laughter. It wad so contagious that even Jaskier's cheeks rounded up under his eyes and he hiccuped a continuation to the sudden joke, "And you're paying for it too!"

The trick about bets was especially the missed opportunity and the call for a ransom to be paid. Creyden fell. But from Hengfors itself, bannermen and soldiers followed Janus Korber and waited for their own battle outside its walls.

"How?" Sylvain's shout shook the walls and the Arcapan flags meddled on the heights of their conquer. Raised from the bed he claimed from the past Lord of Creyden, a bed in which the reak of blood still lingered and that iron taste released the king to a much sweeter sleep of victory, Sylvain was fasting his clothes as he stepped through the halls. He did not bother cleaning the chin of blood, much like he did not take any newer clothes.

"How did Hengfors find out about this so fast? We must have a traitor in our ranks-" Sylvain's steps broke their pace and he stopped, angered. "Could it have been Jaskier? We had no word of those we sent after him, Yulis. What if he went to Hengfors, not Kaer Morhen?"