"Dream," a voice commanded, threading away a brain of red lines, twisted around a crooked stick as black as the night. Around this cloaked person, shadows danced and from their bloodstained hands the color spoiled the otherwise clean whiteness of the thread the fingers moved. "Dream," Yulis repeated, "for dreams are fate made eternal. Dream eternally, as dream's paths ofted get tangled, lost." He sat in the a pool of blood, coming from under his robe's darkness, spreading about him in a perfect circle not even a skillful master's hand could have drawn out on a flat map.

From above, the Sorcerer was just a black spot in a mass of crimson. His eyes reflected the unnatural glow of all the power the bloodshed has granted him. "Dream so heavily, your little dreams. Hear my voice, carried wind. Dream so deeply, yourself number, rest your weary heads down on hallow earth. Dream..."

The wind was howling, rolling from caves of the mountains of Vellhad, changing only too little as they washed over the armies preparing in Hengfors, in tents awaiting allies to rally against an unknown evil. They all yawned, weary, and even Aslan's heart fell a few beats behind.

The wind did not stop there, for it travelled still, across the land, past even the Kestrel Mountains, going around the city of Vespaden and turning right, itching the storm of the small, ignored village in the midst of Kaedwen plains. Snow galed. The blizzard covered the streets thickly and snuffed out every and each party in the town. Everything was quiet and everyone was alseep.

Somewhere in Azaras' sleep, the heavy breaths and slow heartbeats of Geralt's turned into the inhales and exhales of a sea pulsuing its waves. From the wet, cold shore, unfriendly and grey, creamed in the thickness a fog. With closed eyes, Azaras felt conspicuously weary, undeniably lost and the tick of Geralt's heard sounded in her temples as the banging of her own.

Opening her eyes dissipated the village. Instead it was just her, the sea and the weight of her own short breaths puffing in the run feet carried her in. She dreamt this before so it was easier to notice the sea has drawn closer: water slipped inside her shoes and the sand, wet, stuck to her pants.

Why am I running? As soon as wordlessly she asked herself, the wind fell still. It flanked her like a wall and pushed into her chest all the power to get the air out of her lungs. Drenched, Azaras shivered to the ground, her right hand over her chest. The knees dug into the sand and the sea roared until the foam rolled further pinching cold.

Only the water was not entirely the clearness that would seem blue in tales, in stories, or grey in the midst of a storm. This sea was red and its touch was the sort of cold which burned.

Azaras look down at it, paying no mind to the missing scent. She held her hand tightly over the medallion's roung outline, sharply pressuring her skin. With that anchoring feeling, her eyes scanner around as well: ahead was nothing, to her right was fog.

Alas it was the growl that made twist in the sand, turn around and pull her left knee under her raised hips. Her hands turned to the left side, searching for a knife, a weapon she had obviously forgotten, but through wet strands of her hair, her eyes looked into a mirrored color. The wollf was there, threatening her with sharped, bared teeth.

Her wolf's features, unchanged darkness, scrunched in an animals territorial anger. Azaras' own head was slightly bowed, looking down at the animal unmoving, but capable of tearing her throat out, now that she was unarmed.

Once again, she felt no fear, surprisingly, considering the posture she found herself into. "Why would you hurt me?" A whisper, frail, falled off her cold lips and got lost in the avalanche of sounds. As peaceful as the scenery may have been to the lone, so it was loud.

It was so loud hearing her own thoughts was a challenge she barely passed through the realizations such as 'this wolf has never once hurted me, but has instead been a guide'.

"Why am I running?" This time out loud, she asked again.

Under a second, the wolf's mouth opened. Its teeth clapped closed just a centimetre before clipping her nose off. Even so, Azaras did not flinch away; all she did was blink and post her eyes to stare far behind the wolf.

"What are we running from?" The change in her words calmed the anger of the animal and it too sat down, in front of her. To leave more room for her observation, the wolf laid its head down, on its paws, into the sand, waiting for the sea to wash its side.

Into the relaxed swirl of gold in Azaras' eyes reflected the blur of the fog, still omnipresent. She tried to listen for the sont across the sea, the one she had heart the full version of from Jaskier not so long ago, but instead wind spoke back to her in a long, skin-crawling moan.

If there was one person not being tormented with these nights stomed dreams, then that surely was Jaskier, the bard with wool stuffed into his ears from the knowledge that he cannot sleep anymore if anyone snored in the same room with him. He did not know Azaras enough to guess how she was in bed and though he took the sheets under the window, on something which used to be a table now turned to a child's bed, Jaskier did not take any chances of hearing Witcher snores from the "lovers".

He guessed their relationship as soon as he saw the way Geralt looked at Azaras, the first time Jaskier met her too; it was pleasant to be right. Less pleasant was his restlessness. Tossing and turning, freezing under his thin blanket, covered in thinner clothes. Jaskier could not fall alseep, no matter how hard he tried.

Eventually, in about the middle of the night, he decided to pull those things from his ears and perhaps hear out the storm outdoors, for inspiration to bring such boredom he'd simply fall asleep. Instead, as soon as one wool was plucked from his right ear, he jumped and fell off his though bed.

From outside came a monstrous screech.

Frozen in fear, looking at the covered window from over the edge of his bed, Jaskier removed the woolf from his left ear as well. Even clearer, he heard the sound of torn flesh. It had a distinctive noise, that terrible death: wet, but unpleasant, a shiver between cutting raw meet for cooking and breaking a bone in a fall.

Only it was a clearly monstrous sound outside, so loud it stopped the storm.

Bone cracking. A yelp.

Jaskier crawled as fast and silent as he could, not turning his back on the window, until he reached the bed in which Azaras and Geralt slept. He looked over, saw them embraced, but only appreciated on which side Geraly slept, for at least of him, he knew he was a light sleeper. Jaskier realized their door may not have been locked when he got off the floor, whole body still bent forward, to keep his head low.

By the time his hand came down on Geralt's arm and shook, he was already trembling, desperate. Any creak of the accommodation they were given made him despair that a monster will find them there. The panic only grew. Geralt was not waking up.

The White Wolf too was tucked safely into a dream from which only a madman or a fool would turn away. He was neither of those things, especially not in a haze of warmth, of tint brought to his cheeks strained from a laughter. Swarms of lights blurred together, then cleared up in distinctive colors, blended, until they spearated between blinks and revealed to him the liveliness of a party, of a dance in the midst of which his freeze lit the match to the true fireworks of joy.

Azaras twirled in front of him and laughed at just how lost her partner was, a fool to watch helplessly. Geralt was amazed, not necessarily by how she rolled her golden eyes, or how beautiful, yet unclear the place they were at was, but at just how beautiful and calm she could be looking again. She was wearing a dress he hadn't seen her wear before, of a yellow not as bright as the sun's, but surely as delicate as that of a sunflower's petals.

It layered only the same colors, vest over blouse and skirt she could lift and reveal white puffs, not too uncomfortable. In the low of her cleavage shone the medallion, her own, pridefully gracing her neck, much like an open coat blessed her shoulder, shielded them from the cold. The sleeves were only tight around her wrists and the only speck of a different color wad a deep amber embroidery, a homage to the beauty of her eyes still.

"Did you truly forget the steps already?" Smiling widely, Azaras shook her heavy hair, let down, back over her shoulders, then clasped both her hands at once down on Geralt's. The contact woke him. He gazed at himself and realized he was clean, wearing much better clothes, with far less heaviness, less armour. A feeling washed over him: there was nothing to be worried about which would require a sword. Not tonight.

So he dared play along, with something he was uncertain about understanding. All he knew was the feeling of Azaras hands, joined with his, drawing closer. Somehow, the dance came naturally back to him and they joined in with a whole atmosphere of dancing people. He could not see any of their faces, not that he wanted to anyhow.

Then Geralt noticed Azaras looking down, staring absently. "I cannot be that bad of a dancer."

"You're not," she shook her head pitifully, not yet looking upwards. Her steps fell to a stop and he had to follow. Geralt just noticed: it was joy all around, but no music at all.

"What's wrong then?" Big enough to just hold both her hands in his right, Geralt's left hand found its home on her shoulder. She leant into his touch, grazed her cheek over the roughness of the knuckles and sighed.

"I know what I want," Azaras murmured. The words which followed got recalled from Geralt's memories, faraway and confused, for he thought he heard her say every single thing to him, in whispers between kisses he held as sacred as the religion to the coin, for he would pray to her lips and worship her body more than he has ever desired riches, payment or profit. "I want to embrace you so long, I shall start smelling of you. I want to see your smile when no one but me is looking and hold it dear to my heart. And I wish to stand by you, for you're the presence which had given me peace out of the torment of being either alone or just ignored. You make me feel seen, that I exist and I have a purpose..."

Azaras sniffed, full of emotion. Her being braced an aura of greens and blues, which danced by the silver of a moon, hidden somewhere and curiously watching how Geralt's heart ached from a familiarity to strangeness. He remembered things that did not happen. "So what do you want, Geralt? Do you wish to look for the undoing of the spell we made by mistake from being in love?"

No, he wished to shout, but couldn't. He watched helplessly how Azaras slipped away from him and leant down, over the generously wide edge of a ship.

"Has the future been clearer lately...," her eyes were clouded by doubtful tears. She was afraid, for some reason he did not know and it hurt, for every second of her happiness, since they met, was a reason for him to feel again. To feel. Geralt did not know what happened, what made her doubt him, if this was just a projection of his fear that she would not know just how twisted he was, on his knees every night, praying for her love. That adoration was a wild, but silent fire. How couldn't she know?

"...because if you desire to break the bond," Azaras continued. I would never, Geralt wanted to shout once more. He wanted to admit, from the top of his lungs that the binding spell was something he directed, a cowardly move, which went unnoticed; because he knew what they were doing, that steamed night, yet he did not say anything about it.

"....to step back," Azaras' cheeks were brazed with tears and yet Geralt was frozen, unable to move even just to stop those crystals into joining the sea that silently allowed the ship to sail too. "I am compelled to follow your desire, for it is you I love, but do not push the blade in the last second, just kill me gently and slow."

Everything was happening fast and escalating certainly to violence for Jaskier. What he feared most came true and he heard steps. With both his hands, he shook Geralt hard enough to turn him away from Azaras and have him lay on his back. The bed creaked and the Witcher was not yet awake. He was just grunting, glaring, in his sleep, breathing so slow that in panic, Jaskier even considered him dead.

And the steps drew in. A monster stomped towards their door.

Jaskier contemplated hiding under the bed, but instead, in a spur of courage not even he knew where it came from, he walked around the bed and grabbed Azaras's collar. With all his strength, knowing the door was behind him now, he pulled her up and got ready to drop her head back down to hopefully shake her awake.

Jaskier did not get the chance to drop her down because Azaras eyes opened wide open. The door was broken down, sent flying over their bed so that in her instinctive confusion, Azaras took Jaskier's hands off of her just to pull him in the bed, dropping him flat besides Geralt. A mutanted, odd combination of many monsters unleashed its warcry and a dozen more echoed over the town.

Yulis sighed out in his cave. All the blood around him dried into the stones beneath as a permanent mark of red poison on the ground, where history will know dark magic was performed.

Well done, it was not his voice which spoke into his head. Destiny needs a nudge into the right direction every once in a while, my brother.

"When will this mission be over?" Exhausted and shaking, Yulis' hands gripped his knees, his shoulders trembled and his jaw cackled and crunched his teeth, captiously. "I miss the halls, the books... Where is our glory and since when do we allow the scum of the earth to kill one of our own, steal our work and live?"

Aren't nightmares enough of a punishment? Isn't knowing the tragedy ahead satisfactory... Do not stray yourself from the faith, Yulis. The long war has begun and it will last forever, this voice's words transcended enough pride to lift Yulis' chin up. His bleeding eyes were weaker, he was drained after the spell such that even his face looked closer to that of a skeleton, nothing but a skull, whose skin will soon decay.

As we speak, Hengfors are rallying the armies of the League. But they will not find you or the boy king, but an army of monsters. Their end will give us power and after them, the coast will fall... Remain in the mountains. Do not advance any further until you hear from me again.

"Sylvain is growing hungry," Yulis sighed. Were it his choice, he would have place that greedy filth in a chain and turned him fully into the monster living in the depths of his soul that he brought out gradually. "He won't like the order of staying put."

Remind him of his misery then, the voice granted, at last, a reason for Yulis to grin. Pain returned a glimpse of his youth. Let him starve and feel the humiliation. That's how a monster should live.

author's note:    this chapter comes with a few special aesthetics i have made to get inspired to write this chapter + the map of the witcher world i have used as a constant reference so far for this book (i know i should have posted this sooner, my bad)

- azaras -

- geralt -

- sylvain -

- yulis -

- map -