Bellows winded the yard. Cackles of deserted dummies torn in trainings shattered the sounds of silence against wooden walls and stones with holes covered by frozen snow. They all creaked.

Amidst the chaos, blood splattered in thin drops and trails on the snow under Lambert's boots. That splash of color caught Azaras' attention from the greyness shadowed by a flying beast above them. The sense of Geralt's wit of reaction caught the meaning of a sight behind the amber of Eskel's eyes.

He was holding Lambert as still as possible, against a pillar, toward the open area which used to harbor pigs when the Witcher business thrived off of coffers filled with coins. Now, those stalls were empty, reaking only of an old, cold dirt that sucked on Lambert's gritted anger, got drunk off his struggle to remain silent. The man was grasping his fingers digging into a slash over his whole shoulder.

They were hiding.

Clouded and blurred only by the low storm staring above, a winged beast was circling closer to Kaer Morhen's taller towers. One of them has been knocked off by the claws of the creature, reaking flesh and dripping soaked fur, feather and scales, hence the sound which brought Geralt and Azaras to the battle already started and already decided as well.

Too little had Azaras noticed before Geralt had decided for them both to let the sword speak dances of desth later.

Without turning back and getting the attention of that beast all on themselves, he'd have to roll instead with what he knew was happening. Eskel was on the right track, dropping flammable oils in a puddle in the middle of the yard that has already been attacked once. Lambert got hurt, but the trap was set and all they had to do was not mess it up for him.

A flutter of wings thundered in the skies.

There was only one hiding place close to Geralt and Azarad in the yard and that was under the wide podium built to reach the laddered ramp, to the west side of the fortress. Usually, there would be barrels stored there, but now, the pallot was as empty as their kitchen and between each plank, a generous space would make them visible to any human eye. Luckily, they were hiding from a monster.

That draconian variation brought only shame to the species it belonged to, for it lacked intelligence, almost as dubiously as its carnal nature doubled its wings' strength and overall appetite for raw meat. It started diving when Geralt pulled Azaras after him.

They slid under the pallot, turned side to side and that was the second when Azaras ignored the quake of the ground under the landing of the monster and looked up at wood so close to her face and chest that her blood boiled beyond the coldness of the frozen soil she laid on. Her breath hitched in her throat. The familiar feeling curated her into widening her eyes and instinctively twitching towards the exit, anywhere on her side or upwards, anywhere but there.

Geralt held Azaras' hand tighter, a prominent action which got her eyes to turn to him while her body suddenly paralyzed.

He had almost forgotten about the last time she has been "crushed" and forced in such enclosed spaces, but neither did he think there was any other choice better for them to take when the fanning breath of the draconian started melting snow aroune, sniffing. Fortunately for them both, her small period of lacking voice has gifted them with a code to share, wordlessly, made out of signs that caught meaning just for them. Without any sound, so, they could communicate and he could calm her down, the best he could.

"Hide. No. Move." Geralt signed, leaving behind minimal creaks. The monster stomped the yard and raised the oil up to its knees.

Azaras could not move even an inch to answer, until she saw no one else but Geralt. Then, from her intently watch of him, she raised her left hand and signed just one word, "Plan?"

Despite the expectancy in her gaze, feeling her still at last allowed Geralt the single moment of peace that he may yet be safe to look around and above the top of his head and find her answer. From between the claws of the monster and its thick scaled thighs, he glanced at Eskel.

Both Eskel and Lambert were holding each other statuesque, behind a pillar. From his position though, with a clearer vision through the brazed night, Geralt recognized their own categorized language, as Witchers, their very own glossary of signs.

Geralt turned back to Azaras.

The raise of his hand kicked his elbow against the silver sword deserted by his side and from the handle, the movement threw the blade into one of the sustaining legs of their hiding spot.

In a perfectly quiet night, the vibration of silver crashing and cutting deeply into wood felt like an explosion of its own to the meticulous monster, hoping to hear its prey, rather than seeing it.

"Fuck," Lambert gasped out in a half ironic laugh, much shadowed by Geralt's own eyes closing. The monster let out an inhumane, loud screech, which would make a human year bleed on spot.

Azaras let go of Geralt and pressed both her hands, at the sound of the monstrosity and promise of violence, against the wood so close to her face. Her eyes were tightly shut all of a sudden, grasping in a sharp, too short inhale.

The monster already knew where they were hiding and just one of its legs pressed down on the pallot. The wood was putrid, it was giving in fast. A shout stuck in Azaras' throat, but with wide open eyes, she still refused to let it out. Letting go would mean allowing the memories in, allowing herself to feel such desperation that had pushed her to break her nails in an attempt to crawl.

Eskel's voice called across the yard, "Now!"

The monster's head turned around towards him.

Igni.

First Eskel's flame, then Lambert and Geralt's too were cast into the oil puddle that the monster very much bathed into fully up until then, with all its twists and turns, stomps and slithers. It wasn't just any ordinary oil that Eskel threw in there the second Lambert was almost chewed on by the attack from the pitch black sky. This oil was the product of a classic Witcher alchemical compound.

In contact with their fleshed out flames, the oil did not just spread the fire, but it expanded itself into particles, burnt into the monster's skin and exploded inside of it.

One last moment of silence hummed before blood and guts errupted from the monster's legs, to its belly and up its spine to the wings and base of throat. Bones shattered and dug the crater into the ground.

It was in that single breath of quiet that Geralt moved upwards under their pannel and curved his body to the side, blocking all the blood from reaching Azaras. His concern made him act fast, for he looked down on her knowing this was not the most ideal situation to find herself into. 

Unexpectedly, forgotten by the White Wolf, the leg on top of their fragile hiding spot disintegrated into a rain of lukewarm crimson, of spurs of red falling over their skin, a wave they couldn't have stopped even if they wanted.

Geralt's presence disappeared from her side, according to what Azarad thought she was experiencing. The drops began drowning her by dropping into her palms, slipping through her fingers and turning her sight red.

Eskel was confused. How could any of them know why a scream lit the yard into a grave and dug it into despair, when they have, apparently, won?

That guttural scream broke Geralt's heart for he had no time to react, but to his echo.

Azaras' renewed heart did not exist to withhold the panic at which it beat. It must have thought it was handling the equivalent of dying itself just then.

Drenched in red, no matter who or what she pushed aside, Azaras crawled from under the pallot. Her knees slipped on the monster's remains. Her necklance swung more as a rope of death than a mark of duty and even the feeling of Geralt's hand on her back felt like a spike threatening her.

"Don't touch me!" She rasped back.

Voices echoed to her ears, clogged in the emotion of what felt as a heaviness behind her nose, expanding tears out of her eyes already bleeding the dark blood, hardly her own.

She stumbled only three steps away from the gruesome scene's marks.

"What the...?" Lambert watched and observed. He was half annoyed by his own pain already when this unexpected event spices the wounds in the wrong way for him. "A Witcher scared of blood, tsk! What kind of fucking joke is this...?" Eskel held him back from that point.

But it did not matter: his voice did not reach Azaras. Louder than any environment, her own fall onto the snow was a suffocated noise. She looked at her hands and the blood there, mostly dried. It was not the red which frightened her. Many more shades have gloved far above her wrists before, with no such thing as a shiver causing to her heart.

It was the wood which stuck to her retine, remaining in her mind. When her knees dug into clean snow, corrupting it, she stared down and saw the ghost of Sylvain's almost-corpse, halved and cold.

Same shivers blew through the new army Nilfgaard made of Arcapan's spite. Howling winds from Creyden mountains they have conquered ushered towards the city with the same name. A great fortress, unprepared for a blunt war, about to fall that very night under siege, laid bare before them, vulnerable even to the reflection it held into the plates of armor.

For three days, they have been preparing this fight and for once, the utter silence was a standing ovation to the hymn of nature, rejoicing the horizon of certain victory. Upon their unnoticed arrival, out of the mountain passes, Sylvain had sent the first few men to cut off Creyden's ability to alert or call for aid any neighbors as the big Lan Exeter. Yesterday, they have cut their access to supplies, locked them from inside and killed every single person who tried to climb out of the fortress.

Now, the night's massacre was promised to begin with an arrow knocked on the king's bow and fired at one of the many guards the city's lords have posted on the walls as a way to calm the masses. This was the furthest Sylvain stepped away from Arcapan since he had been born and the freedom of a new world came with the unspeakable pleasure of knowing inside those walls were people shivering with fear of him and his army.

Power was intoxicating in all ways and the moment he knocked back the arrow, his inhale confirmed nothing, not even love, could have gifted him as much satisfaction as the thrills of the conquest. Death and blood, no matter how stained, returned undying glory... Oh, how fitted the horrors all started to seemed to Sylvain.

Before his eyes, Creyden was quiet. No flames shone on top of their scared walls and Yulis' conjured fogs were blankets thrown over the infantry and siege weapons, waiting to be used, waiting for Sylvain's glorious start of a holy war, to which Nilfgaard dressed every soldier, provided so much even the king wore metals from the south, in a way a northerner would.

Proud and tall, standing on his very own, hard re-earned feet, a shine burned on the metal of his crown when Sylvain narrowed his eyes and realized they held a blur. He released the arrow, a torched tip flying though the night, unprepared.

He missed.

The arrow flied far past his chosen target, stopping not even in a wall, but simply hitting it and falling over in put out fire and ash, blown into the wind. All horns blew anyhow, even from the failure which widened Sylvain's eyes.

Below his stand, on a higher ground and posted rock, the army came alive and the conjured fog dissipated at the hooks of the stairs clicking to the tall walls. The war began, a distant cry with a shock by which Sylvain turned his head to Yulis, permanently on his side.

"Do not fret too much, your Highness," the mage sheepishly smile. Outside the confinement of the Arcapan keep they left behind, the hood has lowered further down the features of the man, such that Yulis began looking darker, with just the specks of red, two points staring out from an inner nothingness and void. "If anyone asks, I will tell them your aim was heroically true. The people need their king to be an example."

"I never missed before," Sylvain reached out to take another arrow, attempt to help the army fighting a battle he too itched for.

"Your body has went through many changes, let it rest before you judge its performance," Yulis' poisoned his way once more to building hesitation over Sylvain's good will. "Let the soldiers do their job, they do not need your bow..." Sylvain had already started lowering the arrow back into the quiver stashed by his side, hanging from his belt. "They will need your thirst for blood though."

"It's a thirst for power," Sylvain corrected Yulis at last, looking back towards the city. From afar, a war was nothing but a masterpiece getting painted in real time, by the buzz of a swarm of lesser souls, clashing in the godly final dance which lets only the worthy survive. There was no greater end and Yulis was right: they did not require help either. Only the weak do. "You showed me the way, Yulis, blood is power."

If they did not plan to help, then they descended as soon as the conversation ended, taking the quiet walk off the side of the mountain, towards the doors of another city which would welcome them into chaos. Each step led closer to the exhilarating art happening, to the sounding songs of pain shredding the peaceful night to a faraway dream. Sylvain had forgotten there had ever been a time when his feet did not feel the ground so freely, when his path were rivers and his hands were stones.

Their hands now thredded joined behind his back, his hunger raged roars of rapid heartbeats and ran his veins cold.

Colder still was the bucket of water that washed over Azaras. Lambert watched her gasp for air, finally standing from her trance in which she had been frozen, unreachable and seemingly too fragile to interrupt. Now, ice washed away the thickness of the blood over her and replaced it fast in the wind with frost that made her jaw cackle her teeth over her mouth opening to protest or curse.

Lambert may not have been the warmest fellow, nor the kindest when he was holding patches of his skin from falling out, but he did recognize Azaras as one of their own, for a while already, before that piece of metal hung around her neck. He was the type to bow his ear to rumors, to pay attention to what the common folk said and it was easy to follow on a Witcher that stood out from the usual. Geralt's white hair was distinctive, Azaras' had her gender as a way of turning heads naturally in the filth of the world.

Though expected to meet an outline of her rage from the wake of the ice dropped on her head, Azaras stopped herself from advancing towards Lambert, mainly because, by holding herself, the cold calmed her spirit and she realized just how out of control she turned from... nothing at all. Shame was a leash that whipped her to stand quietly, retort to only gentle glares, of a wolf without teeth.

Lambert raised his chin, surprised by her reaction, but he did not provoke the woman further. He never claimed to understand her kind, even though the way to her heart was certainly the easiest to tell, even as he turned his back and left.

"What was that," Azaras murmured, knowing Geralt by the rhythm of his steps approaching her, "about not letting them see me cry?"

She felt weakness creep into her veins, pinch out her soul and pluck it bare of any of those things she learn to hold as armour. But what she felt was transmitted as quite the polar opposite, at least to Jaskier. Woke by the loudness of the night, he witness the horror from a window, almost vomitted at the blood, then saw Sylvain's sister once more as the humane enchantress he approached in a bar.

He also glanced at an emotion he never quite remembered to have missed before. Geralt sought a touch, a contact and a comfort with Azaras, out there, in the night's dead-prone air. Whatever cruelty Jaskier felt in the Witchers, suddenly eased away and disappeared, replaced back by the feelings of hope he once had to see another side of these brute killers, the side worth making songs about, worth telling the story of to entire halls.

chapter dedicated to Jackieshalom

author's note:    i may have dropped so many foreshadowing moments in this chapter BUT bro, did it hurt to have azaras' ptsd trigger like that.. like nO, bby, trauma does not make you weak, and trust me, the witchers are NOT judging okayyy