Wrongly have the heads burdened in blissful blindness seen the spring as the cradle of the awakening. When nature blooms in fresher greens and the skies explode in pure blues so bright the sunshine gets lost amongst so very few clouds, that sometimes touch the mountain peaks and other times, they roll down on morning fogs.

If that was the light, then winter was darkness. The sleep of all that was kind and prosperous brought chills from caves, from depths of earth and paved to hymn awake the hills of monsters. Fogs were grey and poisonous, the skies were infinite in coals and lead and through the snows, untamed dunes of iced death, one rider has been separated from his horse.

There were times to fight and there were times to run.

His breath was in his temples. All senses drenched in the stimulation of sharp inhales. Followed by too short exhales, were it not for endurance, fatigue would have washed over the scars the right side of his face carried as the ground would carry forever the marks of roots.

One foot in front of the other, his boots dug into the white nothingness, in a creaking run that if he could stop just for a second, the fine ice on top would no longer be able to stop the snow from swallowing him whole. Though a silver longsword was in his right hand, there was no ponder of looking back, no second of desiring a breath. His amber eyes focused on pulsing the tip and out of the path up.

Once on top, he slid down and his hardened heels finally hit the solid ground of an almost crumbling stone bridge. A tall fortress in ancient ruination, completely lone and still stood before Eskel.

From behind, the chattering sound of wood grew closer. It laughed as it came for him. Each second arrived with another thousand punctures of the snow, a thousand thin legs moving so fast they shivered plates of armory he could only compare to trees from the brief encounter he barely escaped.

As there were good times for running, experience devised for Eskel lessons that there were times too when swords would do him no good, perhaps especially against newer threats. Only fools would dwell in counting on their blade, no matter how sharp, when the enemy shivered frivolity of perfect parry.

The second he took for a proper breath was spent away putting his sword back. He made a run past the frail, once sturdy, bridge. Its columns used to sustain curved ceilings, a tunnel leading into what now, may have looked like the desolation in which the darkness lurked, while in the past, it used to be a heaven, a place of relaxation and of earthly warm waters that unclogged any veins, eased any muscles.

Rivers must have ran cold.

Eskel ran past the entrance pavilion, half collapsed inside. He jumped over the artisan fountains, cracked, dry and home to patches of white on dirty black stone; until he reached the center of a yard, because the ceiling has long been blown to shreds by the strong winds that hurled these sides of the continent.

No moon, no stars. Just the thundering clap of wood on wood, now louder than before. The monsters lurked from quieter snows, to pavements they climbed with speed they stole from clouds stagnant on the sky, forestry of statues.

They were two seconds behind him, he guessed and only those two seconds of thought he had in his advantage before in the flutter of his traveling cloak, Eskel turned around. The bridges of both his palms ignited the air, a fire breathing dragon erupted from them.

Narrowed eyes and deathly glares, Eskel watched with gritted teeth and a locked jaw how the auburn flooded the oddest monsters who have managed to almost get a drop on him by pretending to be trees, back on the road. They have feasted on his horse, leaving him on foot for miles.

His lungs bathed in the newer warmth and the closest of the creatures turning to ash was ointment to the strength. From an angle, these were dolls on fire, marionettes with life and flesh sticking out from a rounded carcass. Their heads used to be just a hanging bush of hair, but that was first to burn and reveal eyes out of orbits, a tunnel tongue for sucking blood.

A true abomination.

The flames died out and struggling bald torches flung their flesh in clothes on fire now, screaming kicking. Not all of them were yet dead, but Eskel imagined it would not be long before these brainless creatures just succumbed to the death in ash, weakly.

From his right, one of the things charged into him. Its burning carcass caught his sleeve in mild fire that the impact with the snowed wall he crashed into, immediately put out.

Eskel did not groan or complain. Survivability was what Witcher did best and staying calm was his proudest skill. There was no exhilaration, no emotions, just an open right hand coming forward.

A light shockwave projected the monster back. Its fire was also put out and when it crashed through the wall and down some collapsed floor, it went with smoke.

"Gah!" These creatures had legs as thin and sharp as a tree's branches, sturdy enough to spear and impale through victims, to cut through meat, to dissect any flesh. While one was tossed away from him, another crawled from behind, on top and its leg reached out and stabbed his thigh.

Blood poured out on snow and grey stone. Eskel looked up into a thirsty tongue's opening twisting out a nightmare face with fallen out eyes dangling like balls in sacks, all hanging from a body that rained sparks over him. And no pain was registered beyond that gasp, he already reached back to twist, to break free, to get his sword again and get the chance to drench the blade in dark blood.

A whistle through the air.

A deaf sound.

One arrow came through the edge of the socket of a soggy eye and down the neck of the monster. The tongue fell limp and it left mucus on Eskel's cheek while he pulled his leg through the cut, out of the capture and rolled out of the way of the falling corpse.

He only had time to spare for two glimpses, one at the three more arrows that got fired, three more precise kisses if death on the fuming exposed skulls of these monsters, and the other following their source and seeing movement on the flimsy top of an already hallowed wall.

On it, climbed a monster.

From below it, reached out the gashed in abomination Eskel had just sent down before being hurt. The wound bled out drops of color in the lack of chromatic the cold night held. Though this vengeful beast came for him, instincts kicked in to warn of another danger, much closer.

Eskel stepped aside, bent forward and in the spin around, on the light tip of his feet, his sword unleashed the silver lining and slashed one impaling leg right off the monster, cowardly trying to have him from the back. The cut went through so violently, the strength shattered a whole curve of the fountain beside. Ripped from all elongated motivation, the alit creature fell with its chin to the concrete, sounding pain into its skull, for it has bitten off its own tongue before Eskel's sword even cut through that wicked skull.

His boot rolled the thing over and away when the collapse of the wall sent boulders in a game of destroying more of the floor, until a humid instance of light shed upon the caverns hidden beneath. The monster which had climbed for his unexpected help from above had fallen so hard, it set off a chain of destruction and the figure Eskel now vaguely recognized was carried closer in red and cold white.

Azaras' left arm slid her bow off of the shoulder with a shrug, sneaked in the rough landing her knees sustained with a bend. Her right hand sheathed the sword and a flick of two fingers captured the end bloodstained marks of one of her last three arrows. She got up and the arrow flew, from the back of the monster's head, out through the mouth and mistakenly coming for Eskel's throat. 

He leant to the side and the arrow passed by him in the last second, bouncing off the wall, far behind. It clicked on the ground by the music of Azaras' sigh. "I saved your life," she declared in a single breath towards the man whose interest laid on many question which did not look in the prospect yet to be answered.

Eskel's guard perked up. Azaras turned around just in time to drop her bow and captured in both her hands the very tip of the last leg attempting to come through her neck into her heart. The monster that fell was still holding on, clawed to some bricks, some stones and boulders, much like the others, with an intelligent fright of finding death into themselves. 

Her nose twitched and glare deepened around her yellow gaze trapped in darkness. Azaras hands held back the force of the initial impact, but the push of the monster was beginning to slip her grip, the spike was coming closer and with it, the monster pressed down to help itself off the edge of another, this time, fatal fall.

The second its head came out in view, Eskel was beside Azaras. In a reverse grip in his left hand, the silver cut off the leg then quickly bashed in the monster's face, so when it fell, he would be sure it would not get back up. Azaras stumbled back and in her moment of a relieved breath, he had never been gladder to see a familiar face he previously prayed never to cross paths with again.

Though grinning, shared satisfaction was not an option. "There's still a lot for you to learn," he noted instead.

"Fuck off," Azaras eyes rolled the moment they opened. She did not regret joining the fight, but she sure knew how to make it seem like she did. "I had that under control."

"Sure you did," barely interested in bringing a true voice to his words, Eskel tilted his head for a better glance at her eyes. He did not remember them being as bright as his. 

"These things travel in larger groups," Azaras noted, bowing over to pick her dropped bow and blow the snow off of it with rapid brushes of her hand. Eskel saw the medallion around her neck, hanging low. With his sword still out and stained in trails of blood, forever flowing back to the mother of all, the dirt behind all stones, he growled by pushing the tip through the chain loop and making Azaras freeze there.

"Why are you wearing Geralt's medallion?"

Azaras looked down at his sword, close to just taking away the beating of her heart. His defensiveness came as no surprise to her though.

Through her silence, Eskel let her straighten up. The tip of his sword twisted masterfully under her chin, "Where's Geralt?"

It broke her heart what the apathy implied between them just then. "I was about to ask you the same thing," Azaras admitted with bitter taste on her dry lips, redder from the bites of frost, "but I think it's rather obvious now that you will be useless to me. You don't know either."

Vagueness carried them from blunted threats to a walk scattered with their scents as concealed behind as they could. They covered their trail for hours, before rejoining the discussion by the dead murmur of a frozen river. Eskel bandaged a half healed wound from the battle and hissed along his first questions in shape of statements. "I haven't seen that monster species before."

Azaras didn't either, but she also owned far less care over the matter. She have Eskel one faint shrug, not even lifting her eyes from the shine of her sword, which she cleaned the best she could. "You'll see far more jobs coming up with winter." By the way she had told him briefly on the road of the Blood Sorcerers, a reminiscing into how good it felt to be beside someone that owned at least a gram of her trust, Azaras considered those quiet words enough

"Tsk," Eskel shook his head and heavy locks of hair framed over his forehead. He looked away, "Whatever do you mean that Geralt's missing, anyway?"

"I woke up and he wasn't there, but I was wearing this..." Azaras balanced the flat of her sword on her knees and touched the free hand up, so that the wolf school's medallion weight on her palm, brazed by dirt, cold and roughness. She stared rather blankly ahead, not truly at Eskel, but neither at anything else, "He barely ever takes it off. He wouldn't have just left and gave it to me."

Though he agreed, Eskel calculated a gentle poke into the terrain he did not understand beyond the divesting worry it conjured in him, "Perhaps you don't know him so well, my lady."

Azaras had to bite her tongue to not bark back just how well she knew Geralt and how much her whole being ached every day since she woke up before the Great Sea. No amount of monster blood could drown away the rage she felt, for she had a troublesome feeling, so deep that she was certain. "I know he is out there, thinking that I am dead," she admitted through the glare sharp enough to suffice showing Eskel how grateful he had to be for her priorities last order.

"Dead?" The more he learnt about this woman, the less he seemed to understand about her. He felt though, this time, he shouldn't pester; only it was a silent night about and those shiver out curiosities. "Does that have anything to do with the fact you seem more of a Witcher than last I saw you?"

Perhaps the most attentive to details, he noticed plenty that night. Azaras got faster, stronger, her senses grew as acute as the brightness of her eyes, now constant, rather than passively missing in free greens. Her feminine ways blocked some paths to mastery of certain things, but she was more agile than any of them, heavy wolves.

"It was a lie," Azaras murmured her faintest smile while Eskel remembered to blink out of his gaze over her. 

"Hmm?"

She proudly stared into his eyes and shared pity; her hands joined, slender fingers interlocking as wrists rested too, over her sword, on her knees. "Witchers don't feel less. They feel more." Azaras took a deep breath, acknowledging the torture of her soul, a pain so carnal that it killed her twice over knowing Geralt was having it too, the longer it took her to find him again. "In fact," her head bowed, "I think we feel too much..."

"So it's easier to feel nothing at all," Eskel completed her thought, nodding off a long blink. The silence dawned on brisk winds, merciless to frail skin like Azaras' red-spotted cheeks. Eskel's own face was almost always numb; there was no grace left in him to be sensitive.

"These Blood Sorcerers..."

"We didn't find out too much about them," Azaras admitted as soon as he brought it up. After solitarily following the illusion and dream of a wolf for so long, talking to a real ally unloaded the whole of her burden at once, such that her eyelids felt heavier. "They use sacrifices to conjure mutations and have full control over them. They may also be doing this for Nilfgaard."

Eskel's mouth closed shut, grimly.

"Will there be a new war?" Azaras let the smallest trail of fear bloom into her voice. Eskel's silence snuff it out with a guilty answer in its own, so cruel she shook her head. Several dry strands of her hair ruptured away from the heavy braid of black on her back. "It doesn't matter," Azaras looked away. "I only need to find Geralt."

"I remember last time we met, you had a different goal." Eskel's smiles were mature, if not even melancholic, because they hid depths of decades oversaturated in hardships. Azaras had, like all people in this world, a distinctive, predictable feature to her choices: she enjoyed the safety of one purpose.

Anything beyond, was simply too terrifying to consider. How could she sleep, she wondered, if her mind allowed thoughts of her death, of her nature, of her lost home and lover all at once? She'd go mad.

"Perhaps I would have been able to help you hunt a monster if you asked that of me now," Eskel sighed away from warmth, swirling back into staring away, down at the frozen river, absent and blunt. "But Witchers don't cross paths often. Were it not for you finding me with some luck, I would have never even known something might have happened to Geralt. I know he must think of us as some family, but truth is... we are absent to each other most of the time."

And you regret it, Azaras wished she could point out. 

Instead, she sighed. Before her gaze could lower, she thought she saw a familiar low movement to her right. It was her sign of moving on, no matter how much she would have enjoyed feeling safe for a little while longer, beside someone who knew more than her. 

"Would Vesemir be able to help me find him?" Azaras asked, getting up.

Eskel followed her abrupt choice of movement with wise eyes. A second ago, he would have been certain she'd rather sleep in the night in their small, uncomfortable camp, from how tired she seemed. "You found me. What makes you think you won't be able to track down Geralt on your own too?"

"Because I found you when I was certain I would be finding him tonight."

chapter dedicated to Kattegats-Queen