A convoy rode to Kaer Morhen a full moon before Geralt and Azaras arrival. Hengfors League's most prominent figures from the capital of that federation, two men with their last name Korber, bravely took on the high paths and every single legend and story they have heard, to meet with the old wolf dwelling in the ruination of what was once a great school.
"We don't meddle with war," Vesemir greeted them over an empty table. The cutting of their shackled armour pierced all lack of noise that the fireplace punctured barely. Cold nipped at everyone's red cheeks and the Korber brothers seemed unusually unbothered, such that they even bravely agreed to leave the five men they took with them outside, in the yard.
Aslan Korber, oldest amongst the two, both owners snowed over features in deep wrinkles, has been staring for a while at the tree of medallions, glassy blue eyes reflecting ghosts he could not see and memories he did not have. His brother, Janus Korber, sniffed his blocked nostrils careless of Vesemir defensive.
"We'll be paying you enough to last a life time."
"I'm sure you can find men who can do it for cheaper," Vesemir twisted his words, narrowed his eyes and knew he will be getting exactly the answers he is looking for.
"We don't need men, we need a Witcher!" Far more irascible, it seemed, Janus pointed out the desperation Vesemir wished to see.
Aslan sighed, dreaming of a way to avert his gaze from all the deaths imprinted on the medallions and marks of fallen Witchers. As much snow was on an evergreen tree on top of mountains, so was this graveyard hanging from a dead stump of a once great tree. "There used to be so many of you."
The perks of living too long and remembering too much had Vesemir look between the Korber brothers and remember a day, back in time, when they were hardly taller than his knee, clunging to his cape in the first long winter they have seen. Heading for a political party in Vespaden, they encountered a lot of problems by the river banks, across the plains. Vesemir saved their convoy back then and escorted them to the party himself, earning a generous reward and it seemed, the print on these boys' minds forever too.
"Which is why we cannot spare anyone for games of thrones, when there are so many monsters yet to kill. Kingdoms come and go, fortresses fall, others rise..."
"You are here to make sure there are still people to foolishly fight those wars," Aslan hummed an ironic smile, speaking over the end of Vesemir's analogy. They all looked older now.
"What if there were monsters in the enemy's army?" Janus insisted, quietly.
"I would tell you then, there are many things a human mind sees falsely when they are afraid of shitting their pants in battle," with a cutting voice, Vesemir replied ever so unshakeable from his neutral state. Earning one too many glares, he sighed out a more decent, rather than bitter, explanation, "Monsters can't be tamed to be pets. They don't think like you and I, they just have one purpose and that is to kill. Though it sounds like they're designed for war, trust me, unleashed, they would kill whoever stands in their path, ally or foe, makes no difference."
"Barefield was wiped clean," Janus visibly paled having to say that. He was the one who, in a ride up north, discovered the massacre. "Men of the watch towers said there have been monster movement more than usual and we wanted to warn our neighbors to close their gates at night. What I saw there still haunts me."
"Sheep slaughtered, walls bathed in blood, empty fortress," Aslan lowered his gaze to the table. "No life left behind."
"So we decided to do what's human and warn our neighbors, only no other kingdom or keep in the league has been affected," Janus face turned grim. "You can say whatever you want about wars, but no one kingdom is blown out of existence overnight, in the heart of our league, without being noticed."
Aslan placed his hand heavily over his brother's boney knuckles turned white. "We had no answer for this madness until we reached Arcapan. A smaller kingdom-"
"I know Arcapan," Vesemir interrupted, suddenly on the edge of interest, on the very peak of his senses.
"Right," Janus nodded, thoughtful. "You, Witchers used to trade with it, before they had that plague and..."
"We all stepped aside," Vesemir agreed.
"Well," Janus sighed, "something must have happened to them during that plague. Something wicked."
"What makes you say that?"
"We were already scared," Aslan admitted, knowing damn well even the Witcher was aware of how their high northern settlements were perhaps the closest to superstitions and legends. "We had brought our mage, Notger Dewstock, with us."
Janus did not release the Witcher from the end of his gaze, "You know Dewstock?"
"Of course I know Dewstock, he's been serving Hengfors long before you lads. And?" Vesemir pestered Aslan to continue remembering what was paling him further by the second. "What happened?"
Aslan was as frozen as a statue glazed with ice; his shivering soul echoed past the dangling metals of the tree and into the memory he saw vividly recalled while he told the tale. They had just stepped that night on Arcapan's land, a portion of forest going around the keep by a generous mile. The forest had turned just a few hooves back into an unusually quiet place to be.
"Maybe we should turn back," Janus had given his idea away with nonchalance. "It's not like we have kept in touch with then since the plague stroke these lands. They may already be dead from different causes."
"Or they may not," Aslan had gallantly reminded him. "Just because they haven't been having gentle years, that doesn't mean they are not our responsibility, as part of the League."
There was a certain thickness to the air, in the lack of movement, in the stillness of the winds themselves, the further they descended into the valley. But they hadn't succeeded to go too long inside Arcapan's territory that Dewstock fell off his horse and they stopped too.
Aslan left his saddle first, leaving holding the scared horses to Janus. On the moist ground, Dewstock was shivering and briskly convulsing, mumbling a gibberish which left Aslan uneasy, but not enough to not touch his most trusted consultant and old friend.
"Drank too much before we left?" Janus tried to joke an assumption, because over his brother's shoulder, he did not glance at much of their mage. Aslan fell back, and pushing into his heels, he crawled away from Dewstock, until his back hit Janus' knees.
That was when Janus too saw the dreadful image, unnatural and monstrous.
Dewstock's eyes were clogged red. Moving so fast, they started bending towards the side of his skull. And he was bleeding. Oh, the gashing rivers of death rolled from his mouth, from his nose. All the blood, for all had left him in no time, got sucked into the soil without a single trace.
"Next, his horse died too, the same way, pissing and shitting blood until there was no single drop left in it," Janus cut the story short. Aslan has been more affected than him, clearly, having touched Dewstock having heard the distinguished word devil leaving the prune lips hovered by the eternity of nothingness beyond.
"We turned back immediately," Janus continued.
"So you want me to go to Arcapan?" Vesemir tried to conclude the mess he had been explained, feeling the faintest of shivers get trapped in the back of his head. Honestly, there was no way for him to rule out it was too big of a coincidence Azaras, the woman who reminded him of darker pasts, was from Arcapan too, a center now for violence unlike any other.
"You have misunderstood us, Vesemir," Aslan sighed, as a tired old man would. "War is our world. Never would I have set off from my home, to come to yours, in hopes of convincing you out of your duties and creed, just to join my path. We're not here to put you under a banner and frankly, we are not even hoping to start a battle before we know what we are up against."
"There is a legend though," Janus nodded, eager to finally reach their question, something Vesemir seemed now to be ready to hear. "About an Oracle that lives beyond the horizon of the Great Sea."
"Everyone knows the legend."
"We know it's true now," Aslan's tears sprung out of his eyes with the smile wide on his face. He clung to hope as for dear life, "The Oracle left inscriptions on temple walls, on sacred rocks, all which speak of Blood Sorcerers..."
"And if anyone knows how to defeat this enemy," Janus completed his brother's words, "they sure lay beyond the sea."
Vesemir finally understood why they have come all this way, with hopes and dreams of help. The Great Sea was many things but not peaceful, a land almost as vile as the one they could walk on. "I would need a ship."
"We're giving you a crew as well, Witcher."
Vesemir hesitated for only as long as it took him to remember how his youth lit a spark of choice in his heart, itching for the adventure, for the myths he made with his own hands, by his own arms. "How much were you paying me again?"
Behind, he left a fortress empty that Eskel had found surrounded by conjured foes, hoping to strain out the oldest of them all, when it fact, there was no one left. So Eskel took it upon himself to protect the walls, the doors, each entry, until he could rest a night and clear the lands himself. He had no time to even take those breaths of worry about Vesemir when the pounding on the doors announced Geralt and Azaras' arrival to Kaer Morhen too.
And all of a sudden, all paths have crossed there in fate, because by the back entrance Eskel left unguarded on the behalf of avalanches and abundance of snow, Lambert strode in, tired and gasping, interrupting any sort of conversation the other three tried to have on regards of the missing Witcher.
His boots loudly came to a stop and he burst into laughter of the drunker kind, "So it is true then!" Lambert was watched by everyone at how he pointed at Azaras' eyes, "The Man Killer really joined our ranks."
"Man Killer?"
"Oh, yeah, old man," Lambert continued walking towards their table, looking at Geralt while he sat to Azaras' left. "Your woman here ripped a guy's balls straight off. Fucking diabolical." He laughed his sigh of relaxation into finally sitting down the tired bones and sore muscles, "But don't get me wrong, lass, I still hate you. Used to love that town, now they fucking hate Witchers."
"You're welcome, that town was damn filthy."
"Anyhow!" Lambert spoke much louder than Azaras, covering her voice at the table. "Where's Vesemir? Need to check his eyes, cause he surely lost sight by how many monsters have dared cross on our lands."
"Vesemir's gone," Eskel replied with the drainage drop that settled down even Lambert's antics, to comply to a morbid silence, to a somber seriousness and cold welcome home.
The shared what they knew, declared what they did not and from the certainty of an Order of Blood Sorcerers creating monsters everywhere as they spoke, to the possibility that Vesemir's disappearance may be a direct affront, they reached just about enough of a conclusion to leave the privacy of the sturdier walls at dawn. Before any decisions could be taken, the lands had to be cleaned first around them.
Geralt and Lambert left with the first hour of just the faintest fogged light and left behind in the training yard Eskel and Azaras, resuming what they once started briefly in a forest, after fighting off some fire dolls.
"Thinking about it," Eskel leant back against the pillar supporting his shoulder. After a while of just making sure Azaras could remember the signs she needed to make, there wasn't much left for him to do but observe and stop her from accidentally destroying more of their courtyard, already on the borderline of ruination. "Didn't I tell you, you would be finding Geralt on your own just fine?"
Azaras huffed a little smile, though struggle puffed her lungs and movements. Something felt wrong and even beyond that guttural emotion, she had questions of her own that she had waited a long time to ask more than just Geralt. So she paused her tries on sigils, much more prone to success at last, with the right instructions in her mind, and turned to Eskel, "Do your dreams ever become reality?"
"I am far too tired to have any dreams," he admitted, not giving too much importance to her seriousness or his answer. In fact, he was on the verge on insisting that she keep trying on the signs she barely learnt, before she forgets how to get used to them.
"What if I can see the dreams when I'm awake?"
"What do you mean?"
Murmurs of interest and fright, what usually would be described as a familiar tingle of an ancient magic, the sweetest of sensation someone knowledgeable could tell, blew away with screeches of monsters and scared horses, raising crows from trees, not too far away. The gates burst open and assuming the worst, a nature they ultimately all shared, Eskel and Azaras ran to meet intruders, pleasantly faced with someone they knew, but simply did not expect back so soon.
Geralt dragged himself inside, carrying an almost limp thin figure.
"Jaskier?" Azaras recognized the bard by mistake, for she didn't even realize she learnt his name for life until Geralt gave her a nod. She approached at once and took the burden of the half dead man from the Witcher. Jaskier tiredly leant all his weight on her shoulder, groaning in pain.
Her and Eskel both looked at Geralt for explanations and though he itched to go out and help Lambert as soon as possible, he gritted his teeth. He knew he had to explain dropping an supposed friend almost dead in their home. "He came riding in this state towards our paths. Nilfgaard soldiers were hiding in our lower ruins, waiting for him."
"Nilfgaard?" Eskel exclaimed. The world has truly gone mad, he must have thought. "What in the Hell are they doing this far North hunting a bard?"
Azaras tried to pay attention, however, once Jaskier felt the faint scent of lavender off of her skin, he started articulating words that took away not just her mind but also the color from her skin. His lips spoke things that Azaras never knew she did not wish to hear, they brazed her very soul in terror and widened brave gold eyes in ghostly paleness of the weak.
"Azaras?" Geralt noticed her becoming just as faint as Jaskier in a matter of seconds. He assumed it was some sickness, getting passed between them so he pulled the bard off of her.
The rumble of a paper was passed between Jaskier and Azaras' hand and she was left holding her fists tightly over what she now was scared to see.
"God damn it!" Enraged at how helpless he was in the situation, Geralt shouted through locked jaw. "Would any of you speak properly already?"
Azaras did not hear a single sound but the hammering hinge of her own heart, not comfortable beating so fast through the heats and colds of emotion. Hallow on the inside, she looked down at her hand opening on the piece of paper.
She felt her knees buckle under knowledge of the words.
And no matter how enraged Geralt was by the situation, seeing Azaras so lost calmed every deadly storm in him and settled him to free one hand from Jaskier and press it on her arm. That contact flinched her awake and she finally cried, the numb quake of her voice.
"Sylvain."
"Who?" Eskel asked.
"What about him?" Geralt pestered, hoping he could get more than just one word from her.
Azaras had to search rapidly for the home she found in Geralt's eyes, because just his hand, was suddenly not enough support for her to lean against when the whole world of nightmares tried to take away her breath.
"Sylvain," she repeated, clear enough for the very name to cause Jaskier to shiver. "He did this all."
From high on the mountain, where the treason knelt the brave, the graves of soldier were laid bare down by Lambert's sword, only for the blood trail to fall silent, to the Arcapan's empty halls. Few were left behind, many have left long ago, taking the roads of the mountains, riding blackness into night, soldier by soldier, spear by spear.
For the first time since forever, Sylvain saw what laid beyond his home, not from a tower, but from a saddle. And under his crown, everything looked fitter, even dreaming of the violence he led down the road. Many would die, many would perish, and he will have to kill them all.
chapter dedicated to gravegirls
author's note: so damn, end of "season two" hitting hard right now :') HALF reunion over and i think now would be a perfect time to ask what y'all think of this story so far...
ALSO, if you were to chose, which chapter title did you like the most until now?