In a world of monsters, there is much which passes into the land of humanity without ever once having deserved to be seen as anything more than a heartless action. Wars, violence, injustice; humans eat humans almost as much as any of the dark creatures born from earth's bellows just to clean its surface and claim it for their own gore feast.
To a world of monsters, what is one more evil soul, but just a teardrop in an ocean? Unnoticed it falls.
One of Yulis' scarlet skeletal hands brushed through Sylvain's hair, fixed his crown, while the other, hinged and forever connected, rubbed his inner thigh, sore and tired. Embedded in the northern king's sighs of relief from the massage, Yulis too seemed to hum along a perverse pleasure.
"Your Highness," his poisoned voice dripped hope into Sylvain's closed eyes, slithering in through minuscule gaps, right into his skull, amongst his best of thoughts. They've almost all been currupted. "You cannot go to war with an empty stomach."
To that nudge of reality, Sylvain opened his eyes. There was one big price for his legs and it was a bloody burden to know of and carry after he had signed away all villagers of Arcapan to a selection of the lambs to slaughter. Now, his new legs were prune and grey, so cold not even the bucket of steaming water and the message could get blood bumping through them as they should. He could walk, slow and in pain, but considering the orders coming from Nilfgaard, orders of war, he was not fit to carry armor, not fit yet to ride a horse.
"I need more time," he whispered, staring at the black cloth he had thrown over a mirror that should have reflected him, sitting before it. Instead it was just a fluttering shadow, dancing by the winter breeze freezing away the open window frame in little, round icicles.
"You need more nerve," Yulis correcred him. His poisoned hands left Sylvain entirely, stepping around his chair and the bucket of warm water. The tip of his boots hit the bucket and the water raised over the edge in waves, kicked over to the carpets on the floor of his room, to which, after so long, he was able to return at last, instead of sleeping in a below decent tower. "You know what happens if you don't man up and follow the instructions of the spell I have spilled precious blood for," voicing his reminder threat, Yulis took out a needle-like dagger from his sleeve and pocked Sylvain's knee.
He felt nothing, not even a gentle sting. Yulis' smile darkened, seeing realization of submission return to this childish king. Everyone had something to earn from this game of conquest they all secretly plaid and making prideful rulers rolls around following his instructions were the sweet rewards outside of a well played deal for Yulis.
"It would be such a shame to waste Nilfgaard's kindness because of cowardice-"
"I'm not a coward!" Sylvain shouted. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair. Hurried, though he barely felt the legs anymore, he took the souls of his feet out of the warm water, back onto the towel besides his shoes.
"There are two perfectly good prisoners in Arcapan's dungeons who can fuel you for at least a month. After that, you will have prisoners from keeps which would have fallen by your sword, my king," Yulis tone always twirled dangerously steeped from mockery, into honeycomb compliments, twisted words only a mage could craft to speak around the true meaning of his thoughts, behind his cruel red eyes. "And Arcapan will bleed no more. What say you?"
Sylvain bowed his head halfway through the conversation, busying himself slowly to tidying his boots back on on senseless feet. Though green greed exceeded brighter than the summers so far away from them still, he refused to have personal servants. Truth be told, even if he wished to have some, there were so few people left in Arcapan after the sacrifices made for his legs by Yulis that the whole of them could be counted on the hands of just the people in that room.
It was a long silence until he decided to lift his gaze back up to his mage and right hand. When he did, the doors' opening found him on the edge of his chair. All ruckus brought in an unexpected guest, throwing him to his knees, spread across the floors, tied and oozing of shit and dirt he had been living into. Reeking or in leprosy, Geoffrey will forever be marked as recognizable to Sylvain, who, in vanity, had awaited and expected the senses to return to his knight.
Which is why he offered him the chance of beginning him for forgiveness, proving his allegiance once more.
"Leave us," Sylvain striaghted back up against his chair and with eyes forever naturally pondering on Geoffrey, he cleared the room, even of his trust Yulis. The mage had left hesistant; he orchestrated the capturing of the knight with a kind heart, just to keep him away from the corruption seeded into Sylvain's very essence. He did not risk to trust the goodness of one person.
But, staying would have went against the Blood Sorcerer's very task there. Nilfgaard and his order needed him to pamper this king, no matter the methods, for how long they did. Their little puppet with a crown.
A string was still attached to every gesture Sylvain made, left alone in his room with Geoffrey, who in weakness, barely gathered himself and his ragged clothes to kneel properly before his "king". Cried were his cheeks, for veins of clearness brazed clearly ridges of dirt and ash, but his eyes were shadowed over by a hair in which Sylvain did not remember ever losing his hands into no more.
In fact, if there was a love once, Sylvain felt there was nothing left to feel for his mere subject. All he desired was the defeat of Geoffrey's morals, as if the saints loss would be proof he too was not too far from joining a normal world; a world in which, in their home, young boys can be skinned alive.
"Have you come apologize to me at last?" Sylvain tempered with their quietness. The wind fluttered just a little louder over the drape tossed over the mirror and it was there where Geoffrey's attention went first.
"I want to know why first," he spoke. There was nothing but darkness where there should have been a reflection of their realest existence. He though he looked degraded, penible, dead in the truest sense of the state, like he had just crawled from the grave, but Geoffrey hoped at least that even at his lowest point, he did not seem as monstrously cold as Sylvain.
Where had the boy gone? Where was he buried and where should he lay his flowers to pay homage to the man he once loved, the one he would have laid down his sword, put down his plates and titles earned through hard work, just to be with, in their little dream house, downstream?
He would have built it with his own hands, but his lover was gone. He did not recognize the one who, in blasphemy, took his name and face.
Geoffrey raised his eyes at last, meeting this crowned stranger, "Why did you need your legs back, Sylvain? Even crippled, you were loved..."
"Love is not enough," Sylvain answered immediately, without a blink. Before he continued, he listened carefully to the sound of shackles around the hands of someone he was superior to, in ever way. Then, he decided to tell him a story from a memory they both had.
"My sister used to bake bread, you know? Not because she had nothing better to do, or because she was required to learn to do so, but because she used to hide in the kitchens from our mother when she was a child. She learnt the craft from a kind man who kept her secret and after she grew in spite, she continued baking bread, as some sort of peasant, just to anger our parents. Because she was doing nothing wrong, while doing everything they did not wish for her to do."
Of course, Geoffrey remembered vividly Sylvain's sister, like he remembered the old him. A part of his kindness died with his sister's image and now, his heart ached... for he knew, she was alive and just away.
"The thing is, mother, to try and cut her happiness away, make her quit," Sylvain took a deep breath, "instructed evergone in the castle to not eat the bread of the princess. So she took all that food outside instead. The people of Arcapan didn't just love Azaras, they adored her. Our father would go out to salute them and even several steps behind him, she'd still get more attention." Ghostly, Sylvain's dream-like smile grew rigid, then shattered away completely, into... anger.
"Yet she died. If love was so powerful, she would have lived forever..."
Geoffrey could understand sorrow. He too had buried a father, lived in loneliness, but never once had he claimed anyone was anything above the death they all owed to this continent they've been born on. Life was a miracle indebted with a return to the dirt.
He could not watch the madness no longer, so he blurted out, eyes shinning in hope, "Azaras is alive!"
Sylvain stared at him longingly, a while of seldom emotion, finally punctured into a wrenching, short laugh. "Do not mock me, when you have come here to beg..."
"No, I mean it, Sylvain," Geoffrey found the hope of dragging on his knees one step closer. Chains dangled again, "The bard, Jaskier, he met Azaras in-"
"Jaskier again?" Sylvain's fuse blew in purest rage, such that both fists crashed down on the armrests of his chair and Geoffrey could have sword he heard cracks, rather than creaks.
But he did not lose hope and spoke over the king of the north, "Did you not hear me? Azaras is alive!"
"Do not speak her name!"
From a shout, Sylvain sprung to his feet. The knees gave in, behind the trousers into paleness and knelt him to a fall, right after his first step closer to Geoffrey, a step that would have had him be the cruel king who once more punishes by his fist. That very hand he raised, in a fall grapped instead the dark cloth over the mirror, taking it down with him.
Even on all fours, Sylvain's legs barely held his weight. From every limb, he was shaking, his every sense was whimpering and deep inside... there was a hunger.
A broken mirror was revealed to Geoffrey and what he had seen shocked him so much he had even forgotten he was there to steal some time for Jaskier being helped out of the prison by the allies who had helped him try and send a message to the Witchers before. When he gazed into that shattered mirror, a web of intricate and terrifying design, Jaskier was already concealed on a horse, feeling the nip of frost, the pats of good luck from the smuggler who pushed a note into his hand and just some scrambling water and bread under his nose.
No, Geoffrey forgot about everything, just to shiver.
In the hues of a blueish winter night, with howling winds blowing inside the room, he looked into the mirror and saw monstrous legs, twisted and twitching, growing into a deformed and wounded spine, sitting and shivering in the same position as a king who, by illusion, looked all the same, while he had turned a monster.
"Devil...," Geoffrey gasped his whisper. With wide eyes, he moved back, and tried to drag himself away. "Devil!"
"I should have never given you another chance, you liar," Sylvain mumbled to himself through the fright which overtook Geoffrey. Before he could even put some proper distance between them, Sylvain reached out his hand grabbed the fallen knight's ankle.
Only his fingers did not stop on his skin; even without nails, the dug through and grasp directly his bone, earning blood crawling screams from Geoffrey who expected darkness, expected death, just not in this manner, not in this way. He knew Sylvain had been lost, but he never imagined he allowed Yulis to turn him in the very thing which doomed him to a chair.
A soul's whose only true desire was blood.
Azaras's breath hitched and picked up intensity, twitching her awake from a nightmare painted red, covered in mirror shards and all the signs she had seen far too many monsters to ever hope of prettier dreams. Her golden eyes opened to a ceiling warmed by the dances of a single candle's flame, welcoming her to the bed from which, on her back, she had instinctively reached to the chair on her right, towards her vest's pocket.
An uneasy feeling lingered in her heart, calming down slower than usual after the night terror. No such emotions had any chance of sticking around as soon as Geralt's heavy back caught awareness and he turned around, waving the mattress of their bed and stirring creaky concerns.
His eyes were heavy, sleepy, but he still batted his eyelashes in hopes of being awake enough to murmur on his lowest tone, she was privileged to hear every so often. "A bad dream?"
Azaras nodded. Her throat began healing to the point when, where necessary, she could whisper words. But while Geralt could not always have his face so close to hers to hear, she learnt to value silence, even signs the fooled around find meanings of, which would matter just for them, in their language.
Since this time, there was something for her to say, she turned around, to face him, coming closer to the sleepyhead whose dreams may be stirres back into utter relaxations, were her soothing voice whispers take too long. Geralt was so calm when night properly kissed his temples with dreams.
"It wasn't all bad though," Azaras admitted in her thinnest voice, the only tone she could afford yet, at least for a while. "Before the nightmare... I had a normal dream, neither good or bad."
Geralt felt like Azaras was telling him a tale. His blinks got longer, her very face hooded in the warmth of fire, gently tugged him into comfort.
The nightmare has been dreadfully showing her what she thought was a perverted joke of how she remembered her brother, covered in blood, yet before that... "The wolf returned," she smiled faintly.
"What wolf?" Geralt's voice was rough around the edges, demanding in the most amusing way possible, as if, to some extent, half numb, he was beginning to feel jealous of an illusion visiting her at night.
"The one I saw before the night I died, the one whi led me to Eskel, then to Maria... I saw it walk down a very familiar path this time," thoughtful, Azaras paused for a while. In front of her, Geralt seemed to be disappointed with the shortness of the tale. "Geralt?"
The inquisitive presence of his name opened his eyes once more, "Hmm?"
"I want to learn how to be a proper Witcher."
It took him a few heavy breaths to understand the seriousness of her faint voice, to preceive the meaning of what made her so somber in the dead of night and finally open the ambers of his gaze clearer more awake. "You do?"
Azaras nodded, watching him think about it with a clear expression she finally understood more than half as much as she needed. "I can't teach you everything myself...," Geralt admitted. Seeing as she silently agreed with that, he sighed in rolled thoughts, "You want to go back to Kaer Morhen?"
"Only if you want to as well," Azaras reminded him of their vow. "You are not my prisoner, just as I am not yours, even if we are bound to each other now. I am telling you this wish of mine not as a decision, but more as away to ask you about what you think is best."
She was well aware Vesemir had not been too warm with her presence before, but times changed and so did her. Geralt was pondering on the same things, adding on top every single misadventure that could have been avoided were she to know more. Azaras, in his unfiltered evaluation, was a fierce warrior, but a just like brute force was not all which made a knight, neither were these fighting skills the only ones a Witcher needed to survive.
To survive, Geralt echoed that thought in particular.
It made him give Azaras a nod. "Kaer Morhen it is then," he confirmed and finally released of impartiality, his heart was alit in glee from knowing she was going to share with him one more thing he held so sacred: the physical home.
chapter dedicated to Kolinda007