Tremors of laughter carried through the snow bristled on winds, from side to side and in high and low swirls. The cold were sharp icicles, turning prune skin paler than the snow, so pale it bruised and became wounded victim of the storm. It was no weather for travellers in the night, no time to let the full moon guide from beyond clouds guiding snow dunes into waves.

When the winter came, it reached all continent as a godly presence. It demanded its chill to be felt, it needed everyone to ache through it. These were the times when the land seemed to be shunning them all away.

On shore of the land of Nazair, with the Marnadal Stair behind and the Great Sea ahead, howls of storm clashed with the angered depths beneath the rock hill. There, on the very edge, laid the ripple through the infinite nothingness.

Nazair used to be a great kingdom in its whole, but now, down south, their very capital was cirppled, siege after siege, in merciless Nilfgaardian conquer, so the land grew tired. It turned dead and quiet. From Amell Mountains to the to the borders of the Nilfgaardian Empire, the lonely lands were unmarked graveyard, to which even the weather got worse than it should have been.

The ripple was a doorway, unseen to those who did not know to look past the ruin of a castle overlooking the sea. Learnt to glance beyond, one would be able to see the splinters of candle lights, to smell a scent that was not seaweed, frozen and salted below, or the dry grass dying somewhere under the creaking snow.

Inside, ruin was no more.

Cobwebs decorated yet each corner, each solid stone, but the roof was sturdy, the floors did not creak for they have been drenched in decorated carpets, walked by so few feet. The table which met whoever entered was prepared for three and everything else one would see inside of the refuge, three would be still.

Only there was just one being, one true stained soul to walk the halls, to climb the stairs or descend in a loop of waiting. That was the hardest hour of a sorcerer's life, to wait for the unchangeable fate.

They stepped down to the table, looked upon it in disgust, then raised their hooded head up, towards the wall to the sea. There, a stained glass round window shaded a red flower over them.

"I know you're here. A voice unable to be placed in neither spectrums of identity murmured out of this transcended sorcerer's body. Behind them, from the tundra of death, from the shadows themselves stepped out the uninvited guests, much awaited. "Geralt of Rivia and my failed creation."

They prayed to the rosa above, until their gaze lowered to the fragments of red light it shed.

"Show me your hands!" Geralt demanded.

What could be read off their bodies, without looking, the nameless sorcerer voiced, "Long have you travelled the distance it was written for you to make. Weary are your bodies, yet so full of hatred. Or your medallion is shivering, Geralt, you must guess what that means."

They knew, hence why the silver sword shone from the White Wolf's grasp, while Azaras had one arrow on her bow, ready. The place they have entered was stenched with the presence of monsters.

"Of course you have guessed," the sorcerer murmured, finally beginning to turn around.

"Your hands!" Geralt demanded again. Two days, hundreds of mage homes checked and each time, their only guidance was what Yennefer had given them, a feature they should look for in the guilty, that of gloves of blood, permanence on skin.

Every so often his eyes focused on Azaras' beside him, slightly behind. They had much to fear for having at last discovered the right place, the right monster to kill, starting and ending with her. Only in the sincerity of last night had they shared those worrying thoughts, when the storm forced them to stop, place the blankets over Roach and crawl altogether underneath the fur Geralt carried for the rougher days.

The air they breathed underneath was that of each other, the sounds of heartbeat were nuzzled and blended into one. But most importantly, it was familiar how for warmth their hands joined as the bricks of a bridge, finally put together in the right place.

With her forehead against his, with his shoulder resting down on her arm and their eyes fighting not to lose focus from the stares of a thousand words, Azaras was the one whose lips moved first.

"I dream of wolves," she admitted. "One wolf, really. Dark furred. He waits for me in the forest, each night and is frightened until he meets me."

"Hmm," Geralt sounded, to let her know he was happily drowning in her words. He called for her eyes back to him.

"Tomorrow is a full moon," Azaras lips shivered and Geralt released only one of his hands to tug their cover, to pull her closer. She continued either way, because in that utter darkness, with the storm outside, the excuse to be so close their chests breathed together was a relief. "I fear something bad might happened."

"I won't let anything bad happen to you."

"Then how will I know nothing bad will happen to you?" Azaras did not let his slow words lingered without being followed. The wind howled and Geralt's freed right hand now dug its fingertipsz to feel the goosebumps of her skin. "You're not the only one who doesn't want loss. If they control me again and I hurt you..."

"You won't," Geralt interrupted her with a blunt reassurance. For what his voice lacked, his eyes made up.

Azaras' hand emerged from the space within them and lingered on his face instead. She touched him with care, like they were still a festival passion, an unexpected home found and equally deserted, now reunited. Her hand acted like his skin was not rough or brazed with scars, it treated it with gentleness and hesitation.

There were many words she looked to have had desired to say, because deep down, she feared the wolf was an omen of sin about to be paid. But instead of valiantly speaking on movements of lips, she promised another language, over the Witcher's cheek, for which her head raised from the ground they covered in anything to ease the cold.

Geralt had moved his head to the side then, almost instantly, for he too desired much, yet feared speaking of it. Unknowingly he must have realized most things he talks of are taken for irony by life. Giving up on the kiss would have been torture, selling away the tighteness of their embrace could as well be Hell.

But on her skin he found that night the comfort, the home and the relief which seemed so normal, so sacred, the very barrier of dirtt sanctification itself. While on the skin of the sorcerer, now he discovered everything which threatened the good times with pain.

Sleeves hanged to the elbows of the sorcerer, while the finally turned around, proudly showing the red stains of decades of blood rituals. "What I cannot understand, however, is...," the tiles they walked on, beneath the carpet were soaked in blood that with the raise of the hands of the maker called itself back. Serpents seemed to be travelling underneath their feet and Azaras nudged Geralt to watch his step.

"I gave you power, I took you from nothingness and made you a weapon, made you important," the sorcerer stepped forward once and their red eyes pierced through the shadow of their hood, slithering terror into Azaras. She remembered that face at last and her heart beat faster. "Yet you betray me still. Don't you see? If I never fixed you, you would have remained a nobody. It's me you have to thank for even meeting dear Geralt again."

The sorcerer took a deep breath and the candles got sucked in through that air, lowering their tips, trying to come undone. "It's a vicious circle. I've warned Nilfgaardians of how much working with the descendants of apes will ruin their plans. Much wiser would it be to simply... make more monsters Witcher are not ready to kill."

A growl.

Azaras spun around and her first silver-pointed arrow flew in the head of a deformed Bruxa. In that bat form, its fangs should not have been this big, its wings should have been less furred, less spikes; either way, it collapsed to the ground which became a raising forest of blood trails in a second. The candles went out with a sucked in breath from the sorcerer.

Igni.

A stream of fire came from Geralt's palm and burned away at the ceiling made out of swarms of several cross breeded monsters. Some small, some big, they all hissed and shivered and by the grace of the auburn shades, Azaras started shooting away her arrows. Geralt had another target, the one he knew only he could fight against, the one he wished the most to end.

He dreaded people thinking knowledge made them any greater than the others; no amount of intelligence should lessen the value of life, no good lessons should have its conclusion be that sacrifices always had to be made.

And this sorcerer hurt her, so it didn't even matter whether there political implications involved, if there was a bigger scheme. This matter was personal.

Geralt's anger was a result of Azaras' pain. Horrifying are raging Witchers.

With speed unlike any other, Geralt crashed through the tunnels of crystalized blood, forming thin columns of maze to separate him from the sorcerer. His longsword cut through these puerile barriers and in it, his yellowed eyes glanced upon the reflection of just how deformed the sorcerer had turned through the darkness. It was as close as monster as anyone could get, a skeleton with rotten, molded flesh, barely hanging on its putrid bones, held together by sheer shadow, ash afloat.

Nothing scared Geralt then, nothing could, because his sword swung straight for the sorcerer's head and the impact with crystallized blood sent shards of red flying through the rosa's light fragments.

Fear was a fuel for Azaras instead. The more arrows she had to let go of, at monsters she didn't even know the name of, the mroe accurate and precise got her aim, the stronger got her senses. Muscles started ignoring tension, numbing pain, and if any drop of turmoil slipped through, it was sweetened in adrenaline so that the fight may seem enjoyable at least.

Most monsters conjured and birthed in that rippled house of blood were small, children not yet fully developed, hence rather easy to put down with just one arrow. And all that fell found their way to Azaras' feet; she'd step on corpses like a stair and retrieve each lost arrow poking out of them, helping her climb up, even from the times where her foot fell deeper through the ribcages.

One bigger problem arose when some sort of telepathic Alp, came out of nowhere in her face and placed its palm over Azaras' whole face in a victorious hiss.

It was inducing her an illusion that limped Azaras as soon as her eyes rolled back. Her jaw was loose.

Geralt felt the silence on her side of the room, but he had no way of backing away from the fight he commenced into. He was certain something happened with Azaras, when after pushing the soul of his foot into the sorcerer, he had to twist his longsword in his right hand and hit it back at a monster coming to save its master.

All the blood that got spilled on the carpets turned to weapons. Shards sharpened at the breath of the mage and they got tossed into the Witcher, who had to assume they were poison to any veins.

Azaras saw herself holding a sword to the beast, her beast, the one she set off to murder, her truest desire since she left Sylvain in his bed. That winged demon was at her feet, at her mercy, whimpering and she held the sword. She could kill it any way she wished and it felt good.

Until her eyes looked down at she saw the sword's cleanness reflecting back the truth. She saw the Alp's wicked smile and first, her mind was so wrecked she couldn't remember where she had seen that face before. The sword tilted by the guidance of her wrist bending up; now, the reflection showed her true self, not clean or perfect, but in danger of being controlled in her weakness by yet another monster.

Filled with spite, Azaras threw her sword upwards, not down at the beast. The tip of her sword drove through the Alp's chin, into its head until it came out on the other side. With a scream, it let go of Azaras' head and she was able to stand up to, from how she'd been knelt.

Azaras nudged the sword towards the Alp's chest and the blade sprung out flatly through the monsters face, bursting blood on the woman's face. She heard the danger afar and from the higher ground, she deliberately knelt again, leaving the sword down and taking instead an arrow and her bow again.

Geralt sword stuck in a crimson crystal and it would not move more than an inch by pull. He could try punching it but he felt a monster approach while the sorcerer tried to get away.

An arrow whistled through the chamber and the werewolf mutant rolled dead, destroying the table set for three and Geralt's problematic crystal. He weighed his sword, threw it in a backwards grip then tossed it away.

With wide red eyes, the sorcerer met the sword in an open, shocked chest. The flesh started burning away and melting off of them, touched and pierced through by silver.

A wave of crimson was turned of all the monsters in that house of horror and Azaras, from on top of a mountain of dead, had to land down in a puddle of blood, not even that carpet could swallow. She recognized the smell...

It smelt like the village she woke up a Witcher into.

The sorcerer laughed when the waves have painted the columns, the walls and reached their hair, framed their head and soaked the deintegrated clothes. They were becoming nothing but a deformed, old face in a sea of red. Their eyes would be melting to join this whole that reached a little under Geralt's ankles.

He walked slow through this shore brough atop of the hill, until his left hand reached his sword's hilt. Then, with a creakingly strong grip, he twisted it, bringing the laugh to a pitiful cough.

The maddening look in the mage's eyes was wicked. "I am...," they opened their mouth and blood clogged their words, "not...," death shaped through, "the only... one-"

It succumbed to a black spot on the new red flooring.

With a helpless stare, Geralt noticed in a fraction of a blink how the black spot moved away from his feet. He turned around. The blood waved fainted than the sea below.

He didn't have time to speak, but just watch.

An intelligible shape of blood formed behind Azaras while she tried to catch up and join him beside the kicked over table. She pushed through the blood until a prick holed the left side of her neck.

Geralt bolted off his spot, raised the blood as high as his shoulders, and when Azaras fell over and blood gushed from her neck, he caught her. The last spell of the mage disappeared, having fulfilled its purpose.

The Witcher's big right palm held the wound in Azaras' neck, she leant into his touch, almost limp, gaping for air and slowly understanding it was death she was feeling this time. Her eyes blinked rapidly. "Geralt?"

She was dying and yet he did anything but look at her, while all she wished was stare into his eyes. Her breath hitched. Geralt shivered and searched amongst his pockets for just one small recipient of a dark potion.

"I love you," Azaras breathed out.

It stung Geralt to look back at her and see the color leave her skin, the weight on his palm get heavier still. She said those words before, twice. The first time they were in the mountains neighboring Arcapan and the festival. The second time was last night, beneath an almost full moon.

She was getting cold and Geralt could not say the words back until he had opened the bottle as big as his thumb. He brought the recipient to his teeth and Azaras watched, fainter and fainter.

"Kill...," her only regret started falling off lips she could not feel, "... my monster."

The cap of the bottle popped.

"You'll kill it yourself," Geralt finally used his raspy voice, bringing the potion to her parted lips. Only Witchers could survive that liquid poison and use its benefits to get better. She was a Witcher, bleeding out should never be the way she goes. "Drink this!" He urged her, pouring the potion slowly in her mouth.

He didn't notice until then, just how much of her blood slipped through his fingers, dripped into the crimson lake. Geralt poured the right amount and even a little more, but when his eyes tried to find the light in hers, he found emptiness, stillness and death.

Strong in hold, the pain choked him. Tears had no sound, but his shoulders almost cracked from pressured they bowed under, from the weight her suddenly held to his chest. Geralt felt he couldn't breathe, far less let the excruciating scream out of his chest. Guilt forced him to hold all those cuts inside.

Sylvain looked down from his tower, this time towards the graveyard. He'd be staring at it, sleeplessly, all night, and soon the dusk would come, so long that Geoffrey tried to ponder worriedly if he should ask about it or not.

"A wolf slept on her grave last night," Sylvain answered after long hours of silence. "A dark wolf, with its fur as black as night. Were it not for its gold eyes, I would not have seen it either. It left her in the morning," he paused. "From all the graves down there that it sniffed, that wolf chose hers."

"Was it your sister's favorite animal?"

Geoffrey's care got shattered by the thunderstorm of a door pushed open. The council marched in and with them another Nilfgaardian representative, who was yet not the Empire's mightiest Sylvain considered Arcapan already worthy of. This time, they sent someone not even he recognized the rank of, just a cloaked person, whose hands, joined before their chest, were of an odd red shade, as dipped into paint or blood.

"You were expecting someone else, my Lord?" The ephemeral voice of this presence addressed Sylvain long before everyone could be settled at the council table. Geoffrey didn't even get his King's chair to his rightful spot, before Sylvain responded to the daring glazed scarlet look.

"I am a northern king and a conquerer, however it seems to me Nilfgaard is constant with its disrespect towards me."

"On the contrary," they bowed their head, sheepishly. "I am a gift of good will from Nilfgaard's throne itself."

"We don't need mage gifts," one of Sylvain's councilmen shouted. "We need people, food, supplies. Otherwise we are not lasting the winter and Nilfgaard won't have any allies in the far North."

The hooded mage did not look at any of the peasant. It stared right into Sylvain's eyes until he could feel the torching eyes marking his soul, long before they spoke. "How about legs?"

A chill travelled the spine.

It was so cold when Azaras opened her fully dilated eyes and choked.

From a laying position, she convlused forward and fell to the side immediately. With her pitch black eyes closed shut, a liquid as dark as coal spur from her mouth, from clogging her breath and her throat. The ghost of a pressure had her blink some awareness into her left arm and raise the hand to her neck.

She remembered the stabbing pain in an instant. Flashes of red, of darkness, of Geralt's face. It was an echo of a cry somewhere. And so much cold.

Blink after blink, her eyes cleared of the effects of the potion, relaxed to a gentle golden amber trapped in them, letting her stare down at what darkness she vomitted into the snow. It burned through it and poisoned the dead grass beneath.

Finally, Azaras regained awareness of what she was supposed to be feeling and she was ultimately not. Raising to a somewhat balance seat, she noticed her sword next to her, on the field that surrounded the place where the battle with the Blood Sorcerer took place. The ripple has been destroyed and it was gone from the horizon ahead, where only the sea roamed downhill. The storm ceased apparently, but the winds still froze, coming from her right, from the forests.

Azaras pulled her left hand from the side of her neck reluctantly, taking a quick peak down.

Not only was there no fresh blood on her palm, but a medallion which newly hanged around her neck bounced over her skin. It wasn't just any medallion, but the silver shine of the one Geralt wore.

"Ger-" All external wounds may have been healed but her vocal chords struggled to remember how to work, so Azaras' call for him was pitiful whiper.

"Gera-" she tried again beginning to look around. She let go of the medallion, instead to take her sword and prop it in the ground as an aid to get up.

"Geralt...," Azaras whispered, while with fugitive pains from laying there for maybe too long, she started standing up. Her head finally rose and at the edge of the forest's shadow, she saw the wolf of her dreams, waiting for her to see them, before turning around to the trees and a path through them.

For her to follow?

"The fuck," Azaras breathed out heavily. Next she groaned on some dragged steps. She shivered, of course, because her clothes were thin and dried in blood, but the familiarity to a dream gave her strength to fight the first few steps and find a pace to kill the numbness in her body.

Something changed and it was not the irony that blood did not make blunt swords. It was not even the aspect of death and return for her heart felt like it had died a thousand times before.

It were her eyes.

The wolf finally found her one of its own.

chapted dedicated to monaghanboyy

author's note:    WHY DID THIS ACT 1 ENDING FEEL LIKE A SEASON FINALEEEE AAAAHH

I'm about this close 🤏 to try and muster all my talent in editing azaras as a full blown witcher now, along with her "spirit guide" wolf.