Azaras was hurried to leave through the front gate as soon as the sunrise settled a frozen, cloudless morning to shine upon Kaer Morhen's desolated view. When the bright light casts over the fortress, all its missing pieces on the outer walls suddenly seem sadder to be seen so clearly; the home of the Witchers was scarred out there, where the fireplace did not give off as much benevolence as it did inside.
The doors opened before Azaras got to them and Geralt stepped through, weary and covered in snow. White frost fell in place amongst his similar locks of hair and each line of snow felt at home to braze his shoulders, stick to the armor, the cloak and his gloves.
Suspicious, Geralt ended up closing the door and tilting his head at Azaras, who too expected to be questioned for just how much of her gear she was wearing. Behind her, hanging of tight and careful straps, wrapped over her own cloak for the long road, were her bow, her quiever of arrows, stacked and her single sword. Her blouse was tied to the very bottom of neck once more and the plates have been fastened over her chest to her waist. In her pouch, the one potion she still had from Eskel was hiding, next to the purple pebble she moved beside it.
"You're going somewhere," Geralt pointed out in a calm mannerism, blocking though Azaras way out.
She smiled immediately, unashamed to stepping closer until her right hand hooked its fingers on the hem of Geralt's trousers. It was so much easier to make him move aside from that point of control. "I made a bet."
"A bet?" He insisted a little longer, lingering closer to the urge of looking down at her hand. It was a relief to see her smile, forget all about the incident with the monster in the yard.
"I made a bet with Lambert." Her correction of the same phrase dawned Geralt to remaining permanently still and refusing to move completely away from the door. He was not going to raise his hand and stop that massive gate from opening again, but he needed far more detail to what seemed like a bad idea.
Under his glare, Azaras sighed, "I felt ashamed after the scene I caused from the monster attack and one thing led to another, now I have to prove to Lambert that I am up to the work involved with being a Witcher. Meaning that I will go out, make his monthly winnings in a day and be back before tomorrow's distgusting dinner."
Surprisingly Witchers were not good cooks, despite how often they had to fend for themselves on the roads. Part of the blame could be taken by their overall resistance to feeling any of their needs, as for rest, hunger or even thirst. A glossary of details about Witcher, encapsulated by their very religion for the coin, the only reward.
Lambert was at the table, still rolling his bandage shoulder back and forth, easing the reticence of his muscles. A game of cards happened on the surface between him and Eskel, when Geralt appeared beside, a hand on Lambert's collar. He pulled him from the game and dropped him back on his seat just ti get his attention.
Factually, Lambert expect a prompt reaction from him so without even anything more than a grunt, he already knew what Geralt wished to say, and answered ahead. "She was being miserable, lover boy. So I did the nice thing of reminding her there is nothing that makes a Witcher feel worthy again quite like earning coin off of what we do best as killers."
A crooked grin bellowed amused into his laughter, scratching on Geralt's very tensed nerves. "It may have turned into a little bet, since she's quite the prideful woman apparently," Lambert scooped his not so njmb hand into his trousers and dropped next on the table, beside his cards, Azaras' medallion.
Eskel too, though seeing his creation there, seemed calm. "She said she'll come back for it when she'd done her side of the bet," Lambert shrugged and let his hand leave the metal, return to the cards of the game.
"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?"
"That is not possible," Yulis shook his head. "We will find out traitor after we deal with the army outside our gates. I advice that we show no weakness and clear the city while they are still waiting for an answer-"
"We are going to intercept and protect our conquer," Sylvain, on a high of the blood he feasted into, decided already, loud enough on his order that his guards nodded and hurried ahead to gather the army and support the claim.
"That is not part of Nilfgaard's plan, Syl-"
Yulis reached to grab Sylvain's arm, but in a burst of instinct, Sylvain felt the approach as a breeze and caught Yulis' crimson own arm by the wrist, holding tighter by the centimetre of raisinf his chin. "Nilfgaard wanted another conquer. If we leave now, this is not our city anymore. Watch it, mage."
Janus Korber was, however, on the road to Creyden for a few days now, not to attack or aid in any way, but instead to support and prepare for any possible violence in the future. The men he brought with himself were a tenth of those Hengfors had allocated to aiding all of the League's allies in the North. Vesemir answered their plea, but with no way of knowing how the Witcher's adventure was sailing, they had to take the matter into their own hands as a secretive second plan to prevent the worst.
Unfortunately, the worst had already happened and Janus walked his men before the ashes of yet another fortress which fell into the abyss of the winter nights. Smoke was still rising gently in black swirls from windows, from towers and homes, the cackle of metal from behind the walls was giving away, each second, that there were people inside.
He could have turned back.
He should have turned back.
But a morbid curiosity had them all wait on their horseback patience, until the gates of Creyden opened and the first banners, two of them, one and the same, came to the light of a clear day reflecting itself on fields of snow, walked and drained in sorrow and sweat. The ground glowed and creaked under the marching feet of an unusual army.
The banners, for Sylvain had changed them, were what was once Arcapan, now morphed into the alliance it defined. Their symbolism was unfamiliar to Janus at first, were he not bright enough to recognize the armors and take out the details which did not fit.
He remembered Arcapan with ease and recognized the boy walking in front of his black armored soldier too. Only... Janus thought Sylvain, Arcapan's only son, had been crippled by a monster, almost two years past.
"Sylvain of Arcapan," Janus stirred his horse foreward, "it is odd we meet this way after so long, son."
Sylvain's features were as cold and stark as stones on a mountain, gazing down over a valley passively scheming when should it tremor its next avalanche or fall. "How are you doing? How is your old man?" Janus insisted still, coming well about several feet, away from his man and in the distance between him and the boy's army.
Being now closer, he could distinguish scarier details than the maturity of Sylvain. He carried himself with a crown, accompanied by a cloaked mage with a disturbing, bowed presence.
"Dead."
Janus shivered long before Sylvain replied. Crows circled far above in the clear skies, ravens hungry did not dare descent upon the city of Creyden still.
"Well, then," Janus gulped dryly and still hoped for a settlement. "I will have spoken now with Creyden's Lord-"
"You are speaking with him," Sylvain interrupted. He raised his chin. The dark curls of his hair erupted in a glass crimson, Janus noticed it was not a bread, but blood in old coagulation, draped over the boy's chin. "Lord of Arcapan, of Barefield, of Creyden... There's no need for all those titles, you may just address me as who I am and that is the King of the North."
Janus remained silent for as long as his lungs did not struggle and his laugh did not catch the valley on fire with a field of snow trembling beneath his horse's unsettled state. The animal was panicking and the master did not understand from its hectic moves that there were times to turn back and there were times when... it was too late to.
To be laughed at was enough to push the cold blood running in Sylvain's veins to a rush of rage, no frozen heart could have known better than his. He raised his hand, gloved in dark leather so the fingers did not freeze off and broke on the paths he led his army down on through the mountains. A Northerner's habit died hard, just as his spite to live through the long winter.
Sylvain's hand turned into a fist and several archers which have showed themselves behind their king and up the walls of Creyden, released in a two beat a thousand arrows on an unprepared army.
Janus had only as much time as to have his horse raise on its two back legs. He held himself on the saddle and when the horse settled down, pierced by three arrows on the chest fast enough to bring him down, the Lord of Hengfors too was impaled by ten dirty tips, ten stickingnout of him and turning his lights dark and body still.
While he hit the ground, the valley filled with screams. Horses, scared, were dying, armors fell over bones and broken necks slashed open by arrows; legs were lost, some lost their arms, long before anyone could raise their swords and fight back the mercilessly affront of the king.
Sylvain's fist opened and the arrows stopped raining over the remaining tens of men, all charging forward, in the blindness of adrenaline. They could have ran away already, chosen their own lives over this impossible gamble against a much stronger enemy. If anyone turned away from the battle, Yulis would have killed them too still, but Sylvain found it amusing to just focus on the charge he led himself.
Arcapan steel was a sort of sweet metal he taste out of each neck first kissed by blade, then embraced his forever thirsty throat.
Before the doors of Creyden, a second bloodbath marked the earth and drawn in closer to the mage's power, keeping the trails of scarlet falling into its robe. The door that stood before Azaras was that of the first town a walkable distance away from Kaer Morhen. Sylvain and her used to think they'd leave to see the world only in maps, so there it was, the map of roads in her head, helping her explore and ultimately, prove her worth with a permanent drive.
"How are Witchers supposed to win money here, Jaskier?" She asked, once more, that after a lengthy road, the beginning of the sunset caught them taking the bard's lead into the bar.
Jaskier learnt that Azaras was far less similar to Geralt than he initially thought, because they road has hardly made use of his skill to improvise and carry discussions on his own, and even more, the songs he hummed were familiar to her and she was unashamed to point it out and laugh along.
Easily said, he had been compelled to share what little he learnt from the White Wolf, and take Azaras' side in the bet he too witnessed that morning. Only to her direct question he just laughed and carried on quickly, in an undulating line, towards the bar.
"Are you looking to earn an easy coin, pretty girl?" A crooked grin of a man whose eavesdropping bypassed the alcoholism followed Azaras from the door to the same bar. "Why aren't you looking at me... are you deaf too?"
A thousand threat have passed her mind behind a passive face, tired already by the wolf of men she got so used to facing, once out of spite and twice out of need.
"Oy!" Jaskier shouted at the man, loud enough to cover all the noise in the bar. "Don't you see who you are talking with here?" He asked, dubiously serious and full of pride. "Azaras is a Witcher!"
She tried not to widen her eyes much, in case Jaskier had a plan other than pretend she wasn't capable of scaring the scum of the continent away from her side.
"There are no female Witchers," that man immediately puffed.
"Well, you are nagging one now, filth," Azaras turned her head around towards him, just enough for out of the shadow of her black hair, framing her face as it had fallen out of her braid, just her grin stood out. It was one of those maddening smile, a warning of their own.
"Bullshit!" Another vouce shouted over the crowd of the bar, starting a whole ruckus of protest, of jokes and laughter. Azaras was feeling unwelcomed, if not infuriated too, but Jaskier smiled, because he anticipated the joke which followed.
"I bet 5 coins I am stronger than this Witcher then!"
"Make it 10," Jaskier replied in a jolly shout when Azaras began turning away from the bar. She froze and looked confused at him, while he simply continued over the newly returned silence, "And you may try."
"Shouldn't I make money out of killing monsters?" Azarad whispered to Jaskier while the ruckus resumed in mutters on taking the challenge and accepting the bet.
"Lambert said earning coin as a Witcher and I don't think any of them would pass on this opportunity in a bar filled with disrespect," Jaskier shrugged. "Come on then, make a name for yourself..."
"To buy you some soap," she smiled, this time truer. At least until her nose scrunched in an impromptu sniff, "This outlaw lifestyle doesn't suit you, because you really do smell."
Azaras turned around before facing Jaskier's gasp or shock. Her amber gaze turned to the men eager to test their strength, unprepared perhaps to get lost with wounded egos. She rolled up her sleeves.
chapter dedicated to -WitchAlex (always the first to vote on a chapter)