Azaras' braid, a beautifully simple design from the nordic customs, finally stood sturdy and heavily on her back, promising an endurance for days in a row. A very similar structure had constrained Geralt's cleaner hair now off his face too, after a satisfactory night of letting go completely. Between them remained only the difference of a single tone, a fade from darkness towards light and back again through their features.

Their shoulders kept constant a light touch, still in the presence of the wind howling coldness in this part of the continent at last. Just outside their hiding spot laid their worst tactic ever planned.

"It's all yours," Geralt whispered voice cracked the barrier of their otherwise loud silence. Pupils moved to the corner of his eyes and he looked down on Azaras' face to try and understand just what exactly she was thinking or feeling to see that thing again.

He imagined it was nothing good, the sort of memories that dormant thing brought back to her. Geralt only knew as much as she wished to share, he was not familiar with the restraints, the pressures, the drowning into whatever she endured.

Everything he tried to imagine was an omen trying to whisper to him that he should gift the head of the beast to her himself.

Control was keyed ease; for him, her wish mattered more and Azaras wanted to fight alone.

He understood that judgement. The beast, sleeping in a spiral and shielding its body with armored wings, started this journey for her and it was the passing point to some extent, to mark that she has grown.

All Azaras could think of while she stared at that thing though was how she felt nothing of which she thought she will for so long. So many things have changed since she left Arcapan that she stepped away from Geralt's side and closer to the monster's nest, only to realize she didn't care about it anymore.

Fear.

Azaras had left Arcapan because she was afraid; revenge had been just a comfortable mask to prove her worth and keep her pride intact.

Justice.

That sounded as more of a purpose to her, but would this nightmare creature change in any way that she left behind a brother who shall never walk again? Will the blood she spills ever ask forgiveness?

Geralt watched her hesitation confused. To interfere was not something he wished to do, yet even so, the creak of his gloves came out as a bit too loud in the moment.

For whatever reason, looking at the sleeping monster reminded Azaras of the nights she died. Not just the crushing door, but the bed she was tied to as well, the illusion before blood gave her a scar which sometimes still burned her neck. It made one aspect clear to her, bringing heaviness to the crown of her head and bowing her gaze to the ground.

She did not unclip her sword, she did not put her bow to action. Azaras chose to lower herself down and drag her hand through the dusted surface of the ground. Her thumbs played with the dirt until she recovered a stone. Regular and gray, neither too heavy, nor too light.

The monster was sleeping curled only two steps away from her, yet Azaras got up without a single care in the world for how deadly that thing was. She still remembered the blood, the deadly smells were familiar and so was the color of the scales. She made only one leg take a step back, leaning on it, then threw the rock into the metallic wings.

Hard or not, the hit reverbed a loud noise. The monster puffed, disturbed and awake and from beneath its wings spreading aside and slightly around the intruder, its scrapped and crooked beak shone to light.

Azaras stood before it and embraced every second of the perverted clearness with which she recalled the dripping blood this very thin spilled over her. It got into her eyes, into her hair, just like now, it breathed in her scent.

It was not sentient, but Azaras liked to believe that it remembered her from just how long it took it and its colorless eyes to study her and realize it had to move up, to stand and spread the sharp radius of its wings.

Thrice her size it was as a whole, compared to her. Azaras didn't move just yet. In fact, she didn't even blink. Ichor of her eyes froze somewhere deeper in her being and drawned away the each emotion she first felt.

Alas, when the monster finally stood tall before her, she saw only another danger to the world, not a personal vendetta.

Her slow movement of reaching back for her sword triggered a screech so loud from the beast's open beak that the trees shivered and dropped the few remaining dry, brown leaves to fall. The beak fell down in front of Azaras and she completed her step back, taking the sword out.

One swing down and the head of the beast would have rolled to her mercy, but Geralt understood from her lost second that she wanted more of a fight and less of a simple revenge. He was on the edge, waiting, but in all honesty, there wasn't a single second in which he did not find watching her a blessing.

The monster pulled its beak out of the ground angrily. It screamed again.

Azaras ducked under the wind breaking speed at which its right wing came to meet the left. She stayed down while the beast flew, digging first her heels into the ground, then even her sword. The monster was batting its wings until its whole massive body floated off the ground, barely.

She was still before it, now just barely averting her eyes from dust and splinters of trees highly disturbed by the chaos. Azaras needn't hold more than squints to hear the dreadful swings of those blade like wings. When the left came down to cut her off the ground, she met it with the puncture of her sword, forcing the monster instead to rip off a part of itself.

Blood gushed out in rivers and the thing flayed over her head lost and stumbling to the further edge of more trees breaking while the thing hit and held itself on them. It was in pain and it cried. Azaras felt nothing for it in particular.

She stood up, took her sword out anr kicked the fallen wing away. Then she spun around and Geralt could have sworn she grinned through her unexpected shout at the beast, "Come on!"

Every sound, a dare, itched the monster into erratically attacking again. Azaras lowered her stance by instinct, but the madness she committed next was something that made Geralt stand up, against his promise to leave this to her completely and just observe.

Agile, far faster than the slowed monster in pain, Azaras kept herself under the slashes of the still standing sharp wing, cutting away three times, superficially, at the monster's chest.

Then she threw away her sword.

The metal dangled into a tree, nearby Geralt, then fell to the ground, abandoned. Stripped of thoughts grom birth, the monster didn't discern the implications of what just happened and thought it somehow won. The beak descended down on her.

Azaras rolled her shoulders back and raised her hands.

Geralt heard a hit that had him jumping over the bushes faster than that panic of losing her could cripple him to slowness again.

His steos halted when he heard the whimper of the monster, sounding now like a hurt bird. Geralt tilted his head, stunned at the view of the dark creature's putrid tongue jerking in and out of its mouth held open by Azaras' hands.

One palm grabbed the top of the beak by the tip and thumbs dug in so strong the surface cracked and cancelled any such neatness or sharpness. The other hand held down, similarly,  careless of spilling just a few trails of blood from her fingers holding the thing open.

The body of the monster flailed around helplessly. It kicked and turned, but no matter how much it twisted, Azaras held it down and too close to even be in the range of the wings. Geralt stepped back again, feeling the itch of the little scar Azaras once left on his palm.

She was blinded by madness back then, whilst now, she was wearing it as a gift. Madness became knowledge and that was an invisible power to hold into her veins burning up at the same speed with which her expression darkened.

Azaras let out her own scream of concise struggle, while she pulled her hands apart and the beak open past its breaking point. The edges of the monster's mouth tore and blood spurred out in flashes, in stings and throws. The screeches of the thing were not death made noise.

Why did Azaras drop her sword?

Because she had no weapon with her that say either. She only had her hands, drenched in blood that wasn't even entirely hers; she had ther dirt, the broken fingernails that still looked, to the day, crooked, that if she were to care about her status more, she'd have to hide her hands behind her back.

But no. Those hands got stronger through mistakes, pain and everything she would still not wish to change.

Strong enough to rip the beak off the monster's face, skin it off like it had skinned her brother's legs, all while Azaras imagined victoriously she would now have been strong enough to pull herself from under that door.

Blood rained over her head and she accepted it without a flinch, without being forced under that stain by anyone but her own flawed choice system. Her hands let go of the pieces of the monster, falling on both her sides, with the creature itself, finally giving its last slithers of reflex and then dying still.

Geralt picked up her sword and awaited her with it for when she turned around. It was an unexpected turn, but he knew rage couldn't be questioned. Better than anyone else, he knew he lived a life in which if he did not take pleasure in what he did, day to day and hour by hour, than he'd just lose his mind and any sense of self.

Carnage was salvation for their kind.

The only danger stood in the fear during their breaks from violence, the moments like when Azaras turned around and stood before Geralt holding her breath.

"I...," she lost her words, suddenly so aware of what just happened. Azaras looked around, their scenery had turned red.

"Does it feel better now?" Geralt's calm brought her back to an anchored presence. He approached, passive to the violence and handed her the sword she dropped.

There was no lie in it, her eyes were clearer now that her vengeful drive diminished. "Yes," her admission, pristine similarly to the little scarlet rivers enveloping the hilt of the sword she took back.

Perhaps if there was anyone else he'd watch drawing in exhilaration from inflicting pain, Geralt would feel the Witcher itch of putting out the fire of a possible monster. Azaras was no monster to him and no matter how stained, she was too important now to let go.

Only his adoration was not voice and eyes could only translate so many words. This time, acceptance was enough to relief the woman of any shame she might have felt to being watched murder and release the past. What mattered to the future was exactly what was missing though.

Uncertainty in where their paths led next, of where they will go or whether or not they will be together still, after all their vows have been fulfilled and no new ones have soundly been taken. Change and the unknkwn go hand in hand with the leader of worlds, the one who makes kingdoms come undone, succumb, just like he could make them rise from the ash and win against all odds.

All Sylvain's mirrors have been covered from a carnal fear. He hadn't slept in two nights in a row, he hadn't gone out in the sun either. The moon was his friend because the night was not judgemental. As full of shadows as him, he found himself belonging, even pale, to the darkness and its silence.

Walking felt odd after two years of laying and sitting around, of praying for reprieve or begging to be able to do more. Even the sanctfied position of kneeling he was now grateful to have regained because his knees dug in the beated dirt of his sister's grave, while the moon hid in a cloud and the night whistled a last reminder of winter to the hardened snow.

Yellowed skin turned pink, then red, then pruner, while Sylvain had brushed the ice off Azaras' stone carved name in sacrament of silence. His fist blew out all steam in the snow before his knees, they dug down and grabbed that skin which grew for him in blood and pain.

"A magic unlike any other," he raised his eyes to her gravestone. Speaking to the dead seemed to his father as degrading, but after all he had seen, Sylvain knew it was a hope with roots in reality. "Maybe, one day, I will have Nilfgaard's deeper favors and they'll also find a way to bring you back to me."

His heavy head bowed again. The crown he scarcely took off laid beside himself, between the grave of his sister and that of his brother. Below this graveyard were the caverns and the dungeons in which he loved to think he felt the tortured blood flow of his enemies.

"You'd be so proud of me." The moon shivered a ghostly blue hue over Sylvain's dream-like grin of shadow. "I cleansed this town, reclaimed our history. We are conquerors now, Azaras, we're no longer counting on the help and benevolence of others. Only few remained, but those that survived the trials are strong and soon, Nilfgaard will send their armies of allies and we'll be the strongest in the North. One by one, every door that closed in our hour of need will be blown to shreds and those who greedily turned us away will beg for mercy."

Sylvain's head raised, his eyes closed and he almost moaned, feeling the glory wash over his skin. He was hungry for more.

But in that ectasy, he remembered the broken state of his heart and his head bowed once more, looking down at the dirt, below which he knew it would be her body, joint with the nature and the continent itself. "It turns out love was not for either of us, sister. Geoffrey betrayed me and I know how you felt when that filthy Witcher left you."

By his bare knowledge, for Azaras used to be private about who stole her heart so tremendously once, she should have been married already when she died, were it not for her denying every single suitor. She had turned away lords, princes, heroes alike.

Sylvain was sure now that he'll never be able to love again either. "But don't you worry in your deepest sleep now," he lowered his head until his forehead brushed the iced snow covered in marks of his praying to her grave. "I will make them pay. Geoffrey will regret breaking my heart and the Witchers... well, their time will soon be up."

He hugged the ground which separated him from the strong image he held of his older sister. His heart beat in fear of being weaker, so he forced himself to be strong at any time, but not there, not before her sacrifice which spared him and made it all possible for Arcapan's rise in history.

chapter dedicated to grndelwald