Novigrad was a capital city. It mean that as far as you could see the moment you bribed your way inside its walls, the coast and docks and every little hill surrounding the single most important port of the continent, was bustling with life, with action and with filth. Its disgusting reach cast on the shores of an otherwise beautiful and Great Sea, staining the surface water underneath the floating streets and inside the sewers, a drainage system as old as time, with a generously thick blanket of floating oils, trash, shit.
Disease may have lurked there, at the very root of the city, but above, on the clustered surface, the true rotten meat was the division of the people. From the slums filled with naked running children unaware of the danger they were bathing into happily, with parents missing or too hopeless to interfere with their only years of joy, to the high brothels, the castle overlooking it all and the docks of diversity and games and party. Novigrad had it all.
Pickpocketing was on the rise. Thieves and begger waited at each corner that you ought not take, especially at night; because when the sun was up, the torment of the city got fainter, but now that the cold have swept inside their walls and winds bit the necks of all people, even in their molded homes, coming from the east, even more than ever, night brought with itself terrors. Otherwise, common.
Much like the presence of a Witcher.
Two would have drawn attention and since Geralt had already been hired once before by the Lords of the citadel in the center to clear the sewers of Zeugls, monsters known for thriving in the filth Novigrad had plenty of, as soon as he presented his name and stature, mentioning returning for work, they let him and the company inside, without prying questions added. It was the least he could do, to participate to the plan Azaras woke up to.
From entering the city, it was also Geraly who remembered vaguely some streets and that ultimately, all roads led, either nicely or unpleasantly, to the harbor. Oh, the Novigrad harbor...
"This place stinks," Jaskier voiced out everything they were all feeling and considering just how more acute a Witcher's senses were, he imagined it would be reasonable to think he'd be seeing either of the two lovers fainting as decaying flowers in the dead garden. Because Novigrad was a bountiful harbor, which at sunset, when they arrived, would have been a most wonderful view, were it not for the smell of fish, too long seated into the sun, or drunk people barfing their intestines in the sea or behind boxes. Perhaps it were the ships, dozens of sailboats returned from journeys of trade or preparing to depart with tired crews waking up from parties unending, that oozed their sweat and imprinted it on the wood.
Azaras was just a little paler from the smell that had concluded all three of them would look upon anyone and anything in the harbor with a glare. Beyond that, her heart and mind were thrilled to leave aside all worries of what they had to do and how exactly destiny would be playing their roles for them. Uncertainty left her when the auburn sunset shone into her amber eyes and salt peppered her eyelashes with the presence of a calm sea ahead. It was the surreal background of heaven, making the outline of the ships, the people and the docks, get darker until the whole place faded away to march for the piece of beauty beyond the horizon.
And she realized: she has never been this far from the place where she had been born.
It felt like yesterday she could lay in meadows, hair tangled in the grass, dreaming of leaving the lands that bound her to a destiny of someone who did not matter. The fair maiden of Arcapan became a Witcher and now, her destiny was spoken by wolves, threades with her lover's, promising a death worthy of a song, not a life belonging to the brothels.
So perhaps, past her grimace was hidden a smile.
"We can't afford a ship that will be sturdy enough for the travel yet," Geralt was less prone on just admiring the scenery. He didn't see the beauty beyond the fluttering veils in a gentle marine breeze, because he knew with certainty even those waters shining the last rays of the sun, hid underneath them, if not dirt, then surely much bigger monsters. "But we can earn coin enough from offering to clean the sewers. It's been about a year since the last sweep..."
The outline of their plan after barely escaping that weird night of a direct attack was overly simplified to just getting a ship and finding the Oracle because that was where Vesemir would be too, according to Azaras' dreams. But in order to live the trip, they needed a ship which could be operated only with a crew. They were just three, with just about enough coin to buy their horses a stable and them a corner of a bread.
Cities were expensive and thankfully, Geralt knew enough about earning coin from the rich to approximate this would take two weeks before they left the harbor.
"Make it one week," Jaskier announced proudly after Geralt presented his generous conclusion. That time window would have been favorable to await news from the north, where Lambert should have already arrived and studied the Arcapan issue. Either way, the bard puffed his chest like a peacock, "I will definitely earn money in this city."
"Your vanity is misplaced," Geralt cut him off with a deep sigh paired with the roll of his eyes.
Azaras' own eyes moved, by the sake of the discussion, to take notice of the harbor itself, the buildings, the people... Something in her stirred that they did not have two weeks time to spend away.
"How dare you?" Jaskier gasped. "Azaras, tell your husband how much you love my singing!"
A fight was on the brim of starting and it didn't look too bright for Jaskier, teasing a torching fire. Luckily for the men, Azaras finally beat her grimace with a truer, relaxed smile, which frankly, took them off guard.
Geralt followed her gesture of pointed a bit further to her left, where most noise was centered. "It's a party," she explained at first briefly, before deciding to further enlighten the men. "A party in a big and new-looking house with windows towards the sea, such that their front stairs are still clean. It's the house of someone rich."
Indeed, that building wad unlike the others and not just because of the people posted at the entrance or the several suits and skirts, fine people, climbing those cleaner stairs, inside, all laughter and joy, with a thin, tall glass in their hands.
"Every guest enters with servants and by the etiquette they are presenting themselves with, this party is a common accurance at this location."
"So?"
"So," Azaras threw the repetition back at Geralt, "we don't need to make coins. We need to make a friend who already has them."
"Have you met Geralt?" Jaskier placrd his hands on his waist and sighed. "It's a miracle someone like you would even want to kiss someone like him. He's so unfriendly."
Just a few more drops and the bard would reach the point of no return when he'd lose a tooth.
But Azaras stiffened a laugh, amused. In line for entrance, a line going back in a darker alley, was a woman wearing a yellow dress. She did not stand out in riches, but she had the dark hair which Azaras too could copy the aspect of. So there was her wicked smile, "Then don't let the Witcher do a woman's job."
From the statement being spoken to actually wearing the yellow dress passed only a few crucial hours that have dimmed the sunset away from bruise to night. Azaras mirror to getting herself ready to look presentable enough to sway a richman's heart was Geralt, who looked down at her with the gaze loving a ghost.
The dress looked identical in every way to what he had seen in his dream. Had I really not proven anything to her yet? Did I really change nothing?
Then, his eyes focused back on how Azaras fidgeted to pull the collar of the quote to cover the scar revealed by how she took off the necklace. She placed the metal in Geralt's gloved hand and closed it for him.
"Why are you covering that up?"
His demanding questioning reminded Azarad just how much both of them enjoyed what that bump meant on her skin: for her, it was power and worth, for him, it was remembrance and respect.
"Men don't like women with scars," she voiced exactly what she had been thought, recalling the shaky voice of her proud mother. When Geralt wanted to protest she smiled away those dark thoughts, "Stupid men, I mean. You obviously have taste."
He did not wish her good luck for he did not believe she needed any sort of divine guidance to succeed at something which came naturally to her the night she stole his heart too. Azaras never returned that stolen emotion, nor did Geralt ever ask for it back. The moment she joined the party, Azaras left the meaning of her eyes intriguing color behind and entered the little portion of her mind which took her pack to the false safety of the years spent in a castle.
Everything returned to her much faster than she expected. All the little polite smiles, the bows, the nods, the greetings and the constant fighting of the urge to stomp over the brutes of men. A sun in the making entered the party of perverted lords by the sea, walking in the dream Sylvain was thinking of, to feel less of the passing time of torment.
He was in chains, aching from hunger such that a day ago, a decade by how he felt it, he started scratching the skin off his arms, peeling it off with impossible ease. The chain around his neck was scratching, bruising and the clothes were starting to itch, uncomfortable.
Tied to a tree, away from the entrance to the caves and into the cold, Sylvain's only comfort, apart from the feelings he should have had but did not experience any louder than the excruciating hunger, was the thought of Arcapan. In the dance of his eyes growing paler, more empty than the cold which brazed his crownless, bowed head loosing hairs to the wind, ever pebble on the ground was an image of the collection he had returned to the river.
He missed it such that his fingertips carassed the dirt and clung to the distant, blurred memories of a childhood cut short. Close to his hand was his right knee, which he grabbed in the puerile hope of feeling something. But the hunger drained those legs rigid. He needed blood so strongly new senses clouded the memories of light, of summer days by the river and of a home he should have never wished to leave.
Sylvain could hear the blood bumping in all his soldier's veins. He could hear their bone's drumming and his own freezing cold interior cracking. No longer was his mind in any way to home, but rather returned to his accomplishments: the armies he slayed, the taste of victory. It made him realize just then: Nilfgaard betrayed him, much like Geoffrey.
And the chains may yet not be that strong.
Lambert had reached a desolate ground of the keep of Arcapan, after a slow and patient ride, with plenty of stops that may or may not have filled his pockets with a good old profit he never denied. Weary have been his steps since entering the land, because no matter how hard he pulled his horse to follow, the animal refused to enter the borders. It was also the medallion which confirmed the fears of the north regarding this insignificant kingdom, ever vibrating under his plate and shirt, against his skin, panicking of the corrupted air.
Barely breathable was that atmosphere, but the whole town was empty.
No grave held Geoffrey's name, someone Jaskier mentioned would have died by the hands of the mad king. There were no witnesses or marks of spells visible and provable around. The keep was not yet spoiled by thieves though, so tapestries hanged heavily and indeed, they proved the Nilfgaardian Empire had a hand in this.
"Filthy southerners," Lambert cursed and spit in front of such symbols. His hatred delved somewhere superficial, unlike everyone else in the North who simply despised the games of wars, because Southerners were part of the reason Witchers have been degraded by the world. There were times, times Vesemir lived through just a little, when the world was more permissive with their kind, for they understood there was little to no choice they had to their nature. In fact, they knew that if a Witcher stood before them, he was the product of a poor family, dead or not ready to raise a child; so for him, the only noble option was to get sold away to Kaer Morhen, undergo inhuman trials and help rid the continent of monsters that have lived there longer than any of them.
That was until, the likes of Nikfgaard came from the south, where monsters were mere stories or even myths to the luckier ignorants, and spread rumors, seeded doubt. Witchers kill tens of innocents to get one monsters, they said. With their every poke, more rumors came out: heartless, emotionless, human-looking monsters, thieves.
A woman's wail held in woe echoed from above, distracting Lambert from his hateful glare to notice spiralling stairs climbing upwards in a tower, at the very end of the keep, such that any further, it would have been tossed in exile, to the delve of mountains. He held no opinions as to what was up there, nor was he scared to follow the odd sound.
"Please, don't take it from me...!" The voice got clearer, and older, despite its natural vibration to the guttural sounds. Lambert came to a room, high in the tower, locked with a chain he could easily break. In a moment of lucidity, he decided instead to stare through the small window of the door, inside the dirty chamber.
It was a prison, he quickly noticed. Even if there was a little window, for through it came enough light for him to see, there was no escape from there, not for the shivering woman laid in the room.
He squinted his attention. Her fingers had been cut, one eyes has been carved out. Old age brazed her hair pale and her skin tormented by wrinkles and dirt. But there was something to her eyes... a green.
"Don't take my eye from me, Sylvain!" She cried out, so loud that if there were any birds in those parts, they'd fly away. But birds knew to stay away, for animals were smarter.
Men were obviously beneath them, even with their carnation of impulses and predictable behavior. Azaras counted on each and every one of the flaws of men she prosecuted all she could in her life, until she got the man of the party where she wanted him... to his private chambers.
Azaras was facing the table by the open window, whose curtains of fine lining draped as the smoke he had been inhaling. In a generous and far more welcoming than she had expected room, Navees had collected any and all items from his ships that he had found worthy of his bestowing. Gold, jewelry, exotic additions from the deserts that Azaras didn't even know the usage of have been presented to her by the shorter man with a kinder smile thab she hoped. She was ready to do about anything to get her ship, from harmless flirt to murder by the blade tucked to her leg, in a belt she strapped on under the long dress.
Navees proved to be quite the charming companion that when she offered to pour them both a drink, still intoxicated from their dance downstairs, refused to sit and wait and approached the appealing, covered back of the lady with long and free dark hair.
"Fair sun gifted from the skies," he addressed her suave. Navees' accent stumbled on nuances Azaras had never heard before. Then, his hand touched the small of her back, assertive and her lips gaped air nearly, behijd her shoulder. "What has brought such blessing upon me, temptation for my heart to sins?"
Though she was good at faking smiles, there was no acting invented yet to her skills to conceal what her steady hands were showing. Ultimately, she was entirely passive to his sweet words and closeness, such that she poured their drinks without spilling a single drop under Navees' burshes on her back, almost massaging the muscles he felt tensed. "I thought you like me," Azaras hoped to keep the conversation going, return the man to his bed where he was weakest.
"That is no lie, fair sun," Navees breathed in her scent and Azaras felt him distancing with a step. "I would have adored your every inch for a fool would be the one to deny your mystery's compulsion, but your heart belongs to another. Isn't that right?"
Azaras's hands slid off the glasses and she turned around, just halfway, without them. Navees was facing her with a sad smile, longing, a hand over his chest to feel connected to his heart's sorrow. Her own features betrayed no clear emotion to these sight, "What makes you say that, Navees?"
"I have my ways," he answered with a sigh and Azaras finally turned around. "Though now I wake in jealousy that there is not way for me to sway you closer. I know, because your eyes hold gold which belongs to loyalty. And it makes my poor heart wonder, what made your loyal soul so desperate as to accept these events? You do not strike me for a whore..."
Azaras made a step forward and he remained put, only following her curious eyes and her silence. That silence, he contemplated and interrupted all the same, "The has been a blessing I wish to repay, so voice your wish, fair sun, without the threats strapped to your thigh, and I may yet see if it is in my power to gift to you what you seek so full of desire."
She opened her mouth but he brought a finger up, narrowing his brown eyes, dared. Navees showed a smaller smile, "Perhaps, I should guess... a ship with a crew ready to sail at sunrise?"
Azaras eyes widened with attention and her defensiveness sparked through a dangerous approach Navees let happen with a chuckle. She may have grabbed his collar, threatening his neck with a strong grasp, but he enjoyed it and could therefore look up into her golden eyes proudly. "You are the second woman that came to me today asking for the same thing."
It was not too hard coming to terms, not as much as it was tough explaining to Geralt and Jaskier that she had solved everything in a way they will enjoy. However, Geralt's world crumbled at the scent of lilac in the air, then the sight of purple eyes.
Azaras bubbled joy through her voice, "Yennefer!"
The witch was on the ship Navees has granted Azaras the location of in the harbor. She wore her dark furs, her expensively taste in dresses with the pride she also use to give direction to the crew. Everyone around her frozen when Azaras ran onto the ship.
"Someone's happy to see me," Yennefer did not seem nearly as surprised as she should have been, according to Geralt's distant observations. He followed quite reluctant and slow onto the ship as well.
Azaras held one of Yennefer's hands, shaking it, "You saved my life. People who don't know they exist are easier to control." By the last sentence Yennefer too remembered the words she had given Azaras to help her look in the mirror.
Oh, this witch was an omen of war. She spoke of it last they met too and Geralt's only worry was that she was tangled into personal gains they should not stain their journey with. Mages were not to be trusted, especially not these days, no matter how beloved.
"Well, I still died," Azaras laughed carefully, "but at least a far less horrible death."
"That sounds like a story worth telling...," Yennefer trailed off. She held Azaras' hand but stared back at Geralt, then even at Jaskier too. She seemed shocked by the numbers, as if she was expecting fewer people, maybe just one Witcher.
Azaras, far less knowledgeable with the witch's antics, was quick to dismiss anything and everything, "Navees told me we might be looking for the same thing, so do you mind three more added to your crew?"
"Hold on," Geralt's armour cackled in the rush of his steps. He came beside Azaras and Yennefer took her hand of the woman immediately. Geralt didn't stare into the violet eyes, but instead into the stars. "We can't go with her."
"Give us a second," Azaras promptly apologized to the witch, then took Geralt a few steps back, besides Jaskier. The bard was feeling lost, immersed into a mass of people who not all looked too friendly. Yennefer's ship had a crew intimidating, as much as her. "Alright, tell me why," Azaras whispered then to Geralt.
"You don't know Yennefer like I do," he hoped the shortness would suffice.
"Navees confirmed this is the only ship available for at least another month and we need to leave as soon as possible," Azaras was willing to hear him out, as long as he also understood the urgency.
"I don't like that she is here too," Geralt admitted. "Why is she looking for the Oracle? Why-?"
"They why doesn't matter," Azaras joined her hand with his. "Remember how you told me that? It's not the Witcher way, or something like that...," her sigh came deeply, constructing a faint smile. "You do know Yennefer better than me, but what her plans are won't affect ours. Destiny led us here for a reason."
"That's what I fear," Geralt bowed his hesd in a defeated frown after the case of her gentle slices of joy, given to him so generously, have left him considerate to something beyond this inexplicable fear.
Jaskier saw them conflicted and to speed up their choice, he interrupted by stepping forward, "Do I get a say in this?"
"No." Both Azaras and Geralt agreed at the same time on that. They did not know the bard had seen the wat Yennefer looked for a while so curiously, just when Geralt lowered his forehead and Azaras met it with hers.
"And if anything happens," Azaras whispered, this time so quiet that even with the creaks of the ship and the loud promises of the wind, only Geralt could hear her. "We will be together. We will fight side by side."
First he sighed.
For a while, Azaras considered that would be Geralt's only answer.
But unexpectedly, as he opened his eyes, tired as they were, he voiced, "Alright. Together."
Because their love started from the purest form of war no human has ever signed their name to fight. Against loneliness, sometimes, souls fight longer than towards death and if it's destiny, whose fangs turn the pieces on the board, then its fangs are merciless to make bonds so rare.
The harbor froze over night with blown clouds rolling from in-land. A snowflake got lost from the storms, it blew across the city and landed on this ship, after dancing with the sails. It tangled in Geralt's hair, where it melted.
author's note: act iii doneee
gosh, this one took soo long..
& i swear the headcanon i have for navees pls- y'all ain't ready for the dark drama in act iv