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The storm hit them three miles outside of Glinnik. It wasn’t a standard autumn downpour, but a violent, churning deluge that turned the rutted road into a canal of thick, swallowing mud. The wind howled through the ancient trees, tearing leaves from the branches and lashing at the two travellers with icy malice.
Geralt of Rivia led Roach by the reins, his head bowed against the gale. His dark wool cloak was soaked through, heavy and steaming with the foul, sulphurous stench of the drowner den he had cleared two days ago. He was exhausted, his joints aching from the damp cold, his mind trapped in a brooding, impenetrable silence.
Behind him, Jaskier was a portrait of utter misery. The bard’s once-vibrant plum-coloured doublet was splattered with filth, and his flamboyant feathered hat hung limp over his eyes. He cradled his leather-wrapped lute against his chest like a dying child, his boots squelching loudly with every step.
“If we don’t reach shelter soon, Geralt, I swear to Melitele my toes will rot off right inside these ridiculous boots,” Jaskier groaned, his voice cracking against the wind. “I have bleeding blisters on top of my blisters. We need a fire. We need ale. We need to sleep in a bed that doesn’t crawl with earwigs.”
Geralt didn’t answer. His amber eyes remained fixed on the horizon until, through the sheets of grey rain, the bleak, thatched roofs of the village finally appeared.
The Drunken Cormorant was the only sanctuary the small settlement offered. It was a low-ceilinged, suffocatingly tight tavern, crammed to the walls with tense, weathered locals seeking refuge from the storm. The air inside was thick with the smell of wet wool, cheap tobacco, and roasting fat. But as the heavy oak door slammed shut behind the witcher and the bard, cutting off the roar of the thunder, the ambient noise of the tavern suddenly died.
Every single head in the room turned.
The reaction to Geralt’s presence was immediate and visceral. The casual, drunken murmurs vanished, replaced by a tense, hostile quiet. The villagers, hardened, dirt-streaked men with calloused hands and weary faces, shrank back into their benches. Their eyes darted from the heavy silver sword hilt peeking over Geralt’s shoulder to the uncanny, luminous amber of his eyes. It was a collective look of profound displeasure and deep suspicion.
Geralt scanned the room, his mutated senses noting an unusual detail: the common room was populated entirely by men. There wasn’t a single woman, barmaid, or local matron in sight. The men sat rigid, huddled over untouched mugs of stale ale. They looked like they were waiting for something, and the sudden, violent intrusion of an armed, dangerous stranger and his peculiar, miserable company had ruined the anticipation. No one drew a weapon, but the heavy scowls and the collective shifting of weight away from the doorway made their resentment loud and clear.
Beside him, Jaskier took in the icy reception, shivering violently as cold water dripped from the brim of his ruined hat. He leaned in toward the witcher, throwing in the ever usual sarcastic comment.
“Well, look at that,” Jaskier quipped, his voice dripping with faux-cheer. “Another roaring success, Geralt. You instantly win a crowd wherever we go. Truly, your natural charisma is a gift to us both.”
Geralt ignored him, stepping forward to break the gridlock. He led Jaskier toward a narrow, isolated table in the far corner, away from the hearth. The villagers watched their every movement, their eyes burning holes into the witcher’s back. An old, balding innkeeper approached them with profound reluctance, his hands shaking as Geralt ordered two mugs of their strongest ale. When the drinks arrived, they were slammed onto the table with an angry, heavy thud, the innkeeper retreating instantly without a word.
The heavy, suffocating silence stretched between the travellers and the locals. But just as the tension reached a breaking point, the awkward moment was violently broken.
Thump.
A pause of several seconds.
Thump.
The sound vibrated through the floorboards, a slow, deep percussion that felt less like music and more like a collective heartbeat slowing to a crawl. The entire room fell into a breathless, deadening stillness. The scowls on the villagers’ faces instantly melted away, replaced by a glassy-eyed, vacant reverence.
On a low wooden stage in the corner of the room stood four otherworldly women. To the unmoving patrons, they appeared to be a travelling troupe of ethereal musicians. Three of them, possessing a devastating, celestial beauty that seemed entirely too pristine for a backwater village, stood in a loose crescent, holding a low, melodic harmony that felt like a physical weight pressing down on the air. One of them tapped a shallow frame drum, her long fingers setting that agonisingly slow, deep pulse.
Thump.
Then, the fourth woman stepped forward into the amber glow of the hearth. She was a creature of mesmerising, elongated geometry. Her body was defined by exceptionally long, slender limbs and delicate fingers that tracked through the heavy air with impossible, snakelike fluidity. Her narrow waist swayed languidly to the deadening pulse of the drum, her hips tracing slow, hypnotic circles. A cascading sea of ink-black, curly hair tumbled all the way to her hips, contrasting sharply with the pale skin of her bare shoulders. As she turned her head, her pale green eyes caught the twilight of the fire, shining with a brilliant luminescence.
Her dance was a masterclass in elegant, slow torment. She did not stay on the stage. She glided off the wooden planks, her movements so light she barely seemed to touch the warped floorboards. She began to weave through the packed tavern, moving gracefully between the rows of tables. She teased everyone, leaning over the hardened villagers, her long fingers feathering across their rough cheeks, her pale green eyes locking onto theirs until the men whimpered, entirely paralysed. She danced in front of a burly blacksmith, her body uncoiling and snapping with an unnatural grace, drawing him into a breathless trance before she elegantly pulled away, leaving him aching for her return. One by one, she subdued the entire room, turning the hostile tavern into a temple of silent adoration.
Eventually, her slow, winding path brought her to the far corner, in front of Geralt’s table.
As she drew near, the ambient music of the tavern seemed to fade into a distant, muffled background. The other three women stepped off the stage, their celestial forms moving through the tables, flirting with the remaining men, laughing in sweet, whispery tones that seemed to bounce off the rafters. They wove a thick, elegant veil of enchantment over the entire common room, a collective intoxication so intense that it was impossible to tell where human infatuation ended and something deeper, more otherworldly, began. Two of the singing women slid into the booth beside Jaskier. Flushed with alcohol and starved for artistic muses, the bard immediately leaned into their touch, entirely oblivious to everything else.
But the lead dancer took a special, targeted interest in the witcher.
She did not show fear, nor did she display any outward apprehension. Instead, she approached Geralt like a queen assessing a fascinating subject. She leaned over their small table, her long, curly black hair draping over the edge like a velvet curtain, completely cutting off Geralt’s view of the rest of the room. Her scent washed over him—a heavy, mysterious aroma of rare oud and dark musk that felt entirely out of place in a muddy village tavern.
The world began to warp for Geralt. His silver wolf medallion against his chest did not twitch or jerk violently; it merely thrummed with a rhythmic, deeply suppressed micro-vibration that matched the sluggish thump of the drum. It was a sensation so perfectly aligned with the natural warmth of his own mutated body that his baseline instincts remained unalarmed.
Instead of danger, Geralt felt a profound, unexpected wave of emotion crash through his defences. He looked up into her pale green eyes, and the cold granite mask of his face fractured for just a tiny moment. He felt a fierce, burning heat pouring into his soul. For a man who had spent days drowning in the freezing, silent agony of Yennefer’s rejection at Aedd Gynvael, this sudden, intense focus felt like a miracle.
She didn’t speak to him with demands or vulgar provocations like tavern wenches usually did. She simply offered him her absolute, undivided attention. Geralt felt a strange, intoxicating longing swell within his chest, a primal need to step into the fire she was offering, to let the freezing weight of his witcher’s life melt away, completely unaware of the hidden strings shifting in the dark.
She danced in front of him, her movements shifting until the performance was no longer for the crowded tavern, but solely for his eyes. The rest of the world dissolved into a blur of shadows and smoke. Geralt sat completely paralysed, the slow, languid sway of her hips pulling his consciousness in and out of reality, anchoring him to the heat radiating from her skin.
Her green eyes locked onto his golden ones, refusing to grant him release. Even her dark eyelashes seemed to track her movements in the same heavy, mesmerising tempo. Step by step, she closed the distance between them until she slowly, fluidly slipped onto his lap.
Her touch was feather-light, almost a phantom sensation through his leather doublet. Her long, delicate fingers traced slow, soft circles across his chest, swirling intimately around the heavy silver chain. She mapped the contours of his torso, her fingertips hovering a hair’s breadth above the snarling wolf head, weaving an invisible pattern through the air without ever letting her bare skin make physical contact with the metal.
The heavy thump of the frame drum struck again, and in that exact moment, Geralt’s mutant heart answered. The percussion and his pulse collided, locking into a single, synchronised, and suffocating rhythm.
She leaned her head closer, her ink-black curls cascading over his shoulder, her breath warming the skin of his throat. When she spoke, her voice held a soft yet potent, seductive warmth.
“You burn so brightly beneath all that armour, Wolf,” she murmured, her pale eyes flashing as she glanced down at the silver beast on his chest. “Let me keep the cold away.”
The heavy, exotic aroma of rare oud and dark musk wrapped around Geralt like a physical shroud. It was the scent of ancient earth, sweet spice, and all woman—an intoxicating, heavy blend that completely flooded his highly acute mutant senses. A witcher’s nose was a curse in a place like this, built to dissect a hundred foul odours at once, but she left absolutely no room for any other stimulus to engage him. The smell of stale ale, the toxic tang of drowner blood on his cloak, and the damp stench of wet wool vanished, effortlessly replaced by her.
Geralt found himself entirely encapsulated in her presence, isolated from the tavern around him as if they stood alone in a pocket of stopped time. He was drowned in the brilliant glow of her pale green eyes and the curtain of her ink-black curls, locked solely onto the shallow, whispery rasp of her breath and the low, synchronised thump of his own heart and consumed by the tingling static where her long, slender limbs pressed against his heavy leather doublet. She invaded his heightened perception completely.
Before the final, hypnotic boundary could close around Geralt, Jaskier was already lost within his own blissful element.
At the adjacent table, the bard had smoothly transitioned from a shivering, mud-soaked traveller into a creature of pure, theatrical gallantry. Two of the singing women had slid into the booth beside him, their pale skin and long hair glowing softly in the hearth light. Instead of shrinking away, Jaskier sat up, his chest expanding as he unleashed the full, formidable weight of his eloquence.
“My dear ladies,” Jaskier purred, his voice carrying the practised, rhythmic cadence of a courtier. “I must confess, I thought the storm outside was an act of divine wrath meant to punish us for our sins. But looking upon you now, it is quite obvious that the heavens simply wept out of sheer jealousy. For how could the sun dare to rise when it knows its dawn is completely eclipsed by the light in your eyes? To sing in a place so dreary is a tragedy; you are muses trapped in a stable, and my lute practically weeps in its velvet wrap, begging for the honour of accompanying such celestial harmony.”
The two women giggled, a melodic, crystal-like sound. They leaned closer, their long fingers brushing the fabric of his doublet. Jaskier, thoroughly intoxicated by the downpour of his own smart compliments and their eager reception, flashed his most dazzling, confident smile.
“But surely,” Jaskier continued, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “a crowded, damp common room is entirely unworthy of the verses I feel blooming in my soul. Why don’t we seek a more… refined, private setting? Somewhere we can discuss the finer nuances of composition, away from the smell of wet wool and the brooding, silent gargoyle I call a companion.”
With a graceful nod, the two women slid out of the booth, their long, slender limbs guiding a thoroughly charmed and willing Jaskier toward the private back quarters of the inn. He didn’t look back, entirely convinced he was the architect of his own grand, decadent romance.
With Jaskier gone, the last anchor to the physical world vanished, leaving Geralt alone with the lead dancer.
She leaned her head closer, her black curls cascading over his shoulder, her breath warming the skin of his throat. When she spoke in a sweet whisper that felt ethereal, echoing directly inside his mind.
“Follow me.”
Slowly, she slid off his lap, but she did not break eye contact. Her slender fingers trailed downward, lightly catching the palm of his hand. She didn’t pull him; she simply began to move backwards, step by graceful step, toward the creaking wooden stairs at the back of the common room. Her narrow waist swayed languidly to the slow pulse of the drum.
She was a vision of pure fire and absolute peace, drifting into the shadows of the upper floor. Geralt, enchanted by her scent and gaze, stood up. His towering, powerful frame moved with the sluggish, heavy cadence of a sleepwalker, lured by the quiet promise of a sanctuary from the cruel, freezing world outside.
The heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the common room vanished behind the thick oak door of the private attic sanctuary. The persistent, driving thunder of the storm outside muted into a dull, rhythmic vibration. Inside the room, the frame drum’s beat completely subsided, fading into a hollow echo before dying altogether. The silence that followed was not empty; it was instantly occupied. The new rhythm was kept solely by Geralt’s own slow, mutated heartbeat, pulsing deep within his chest and vibrating through the air like a pendulum.
The room was illuminated only by the soft, amber glow of a few scattered tallow candles. Their small, flickering flames cast long, dancing shadows against the wooden walls, painting the bed in a warm, golden light that felt entirely cut off from the cold world outside. She stood before him, the gentle candlelight catching the deep lustre of her long, dark tresses and softening the angles of her elongated frame. Her pale green luminescent eyes, catching the amber sparks of the flames, held him completely captive.
“You carry so much, Wolf,” she whispered, her voice a purr that vibrated directly against his skin. She stepped closer, her limbs pressing against his solid frame. “So much steel. Let me unburden you from the heavy weight you carry.”
The words hung in the air with a heavy, double meaning, cutting straight through his physical defences and into the deep, aching void of his emotional isolation. She was offering to strip away his weapons, but beneath that, she was offering to lift the crushing psychological exhaustion that had locked him in stone since Aedd Gynvael.
Slowly, her fingers worked the leather bounds of his swords. She unbuckled the scythe-like sheaths, sliding the heavy steel and silver blades away from his back. Next, she mapped the contours of his torso, masterfully unlacing the heavy leather harness of his armour. Piece by piece, the dark, studded leather slid off his shoulders, exposing the pale scars that patterned his powerful chest.
Then, her hands trailed upward to his throat. With a swift, calculating pressure, she executed a precise, tight tug on the metallic links.
Snap.
The targeted tension broke the silver chain of his medallion.
Instinct overrode the illusion for a single, fracturing moment. Geralt’s hand shot upward, his rough, calloused palm slamming flat against his chest to catch the falling wolf head, averting the silver from tumbling to the floorboards. His amber eyes narrowed, a flash of dormant witcher guard rising like a wall between them.
The dancer didn’t flinch. She instantly offered a soft laugh, her eyes widening in an expression of innocent, clumsy dismay. She gently pressed her palms against his forearms, easing his rigid guard down with an effortless, soothing warmth.
“Oh, forgive me, my love,” she murmured playfully, her breath brushing his lips. “How incredibly clumsy of me. Do not fret over a silly piece of metal. The village blacksmith can easily fix the chain for you tomorrow morning. But now… now it is time for rest and… pleasure.”
The tension dissolved. The heavy cloud of her oud and musk scent invaded his senses once more, completely erasing his caution. Geralt let his hand drop, allowing the broken silver chain and the wolf head to slide into her waiting veil, entirely forgotten.
She guided him toward a wide porcelain basin filled with steaming water. With unmatched affection and meticulous care, she began to bathe him. Her soft hands ran over his shoulders, gently scrubbing away the thick grime of the road, the bitter salt of his sweat, and the foul, lingering stench of the dead monsters he had slain. She treated his scarred body not as a weapon, but as something precious. Every touch was an antidote to his pain, pouring pure fire and unadulterated tenderness into his weary soul.
When they finally came together on the sheets, the lovemaking was a slow, deliberate siege, a beautiful conquest where they claimed each other little by little, inch by agonising inch. Every contour of Geralt’s scarred, heavy frame was cherished, kissed, and tasted as if it were sacred ground. Her lips traced the jagged lines across his chest, her delicate fingers mapping the rough ridges of old wounds, applying a soothing balm of sensual heat. Geralt responded with a primal urgency, his large hands enveloping her slender waist, pulling her down into a breathless collision where their skin melted together.
As she shifted over him, her long, slender limbs wrapping around his torso, she didn’t just touch his skin, she pierced straight through his armour, tapping directly into the weeping, fiery reservoir of his unexpressed love.
His mind was unmoored, dragged violently back into the bleak, freezing memory of Aedd Gynvael. His last encounter with Yennefer in that wretched, snow-dusted town had left him completely shattered. The image of her still pierced his thoughts like a physical thorn. She believed mutants and sorceresses were too twisted by magic, too monstrous, to ever feel or express real, uncorrupted love and warmth.
But Yennefer had been wrong. Geralt was burning inside. He loved her with a desperate, terrifying truth. He had walked away from Aedd Gynvael feeling like an empty, frozen husk, condemned to the dark.
Until now.
What this ethereal dancer offered Geralt wasn’t the icy reservation of Vengerberg; it was pure, consuming fire. Sensing his desperate need to be loved, she read his thoughts and projected his ultimate desire right back onto him. She poured a torrent of raw, fierce emotion directly into his veins, and it felt like molten gold rushing through his blood, instantly melting the bitter shard of ice in his heart. For a man who had been told his entire life that he was a heartless, emotionless monster, this absolute, unconditional adoration was dizzying, terrifying, and completely intoxicating.
“I love you, Geralt,” she whispered, her voice a shaky breath against his ear, her waist swaying to the slow, heavy heartbeat of his own pulse. “I’m yours. I’m whoever you want me to be.”
Geralt’s chest heaved, the air catching in his throat as a raw, painful tremor broke through his mask. He was a drowning man willingly swallowing a breath of flame, letting the boundaries of reality blur.
“How?” he growled, his voice thick and broken with a vulnerability he had never allowed himself to show to any living soul.
“Shh… close your eyes, my love, or everything will disappear,” she whispered, her long fingers soothingly stroking his white hair, anchoring him to the mattress. “I’m here with you.”
He closed his eyes, surrendering completely to the illusion. When the searing intensity finally shattered his remaining restraint, a deep, ragged moan tore from the very bottom of his throat, a sound of profound relief and unburdened agony as he pressed her tight against his chest, gasping her name onto her bare skin.
“Yen…”
Spent after the exhausting peak of their lovemaking, she lay quietly in his arms, her elegant frame half-covering his own powerful torso. The sheets were tangled around their legs, damp with sweat, but neither moved to pull them away.
She reached up with a pale hand, tracing the sharp line of his jaw with her fingertips. She watched with a quiet intensity how incredibly relaxing her touch was for the white-haired mutant. Geralt’s eyes opened and closed slowly, tiredly, his golden gaze heavy with the weight of sleep. He was clearly exhausted, ready to let go, but something deep within his primal training kept him anchored, refusing to let himself drift completely into the dark just yet.
His own fingers rose, tracing slow, lazy circles across her bare back. His movements grew more sluggish as the moments fled by, matching the deeply slowed rhythm of his own mutant heartbeat underneath her chest.
Looking up at his relaxed features, she began to softly sing an old folk lullaby. Her voice, so melodic, carried a heavy dose of sadness:
“Wolves asleep amidst the trees,
Bats all a swaying in the breeze…
But one soul lies anxious, wide awake,
Fearing all manner of ghouls, hags, and wraiths.
For your dolly Polly, sleep has flown,
Don’t dare let her tremble alone…
For the Witcher, heartless, cold,
Paid in coin of gold,
He comes, he’ll go,
Leave naught behind
But heartache and woe,
Deep, deep woe…”
The lyrics hit them both equally, but with vastly different, cruel meanings. To Geralt, listening to her soft voice sing how the true world saw him—as a heartless, cold monster paid in gold to bring nothing but woe—felt like a knife peeling away his remaining defences. It forced him to face his monstrous reputation in the very moment he was seeking to feel human.
The dancer leaned closer, her long, curly black hair draping over his chest like a shroud. Her voice dropped to a trembling whisper as she sang the final verse, her eyes fixing onto his closed eyelids :
“Birds are silent for the night,
Cows turned in as daylight dies…
But one soul lies anxious, wide awake,
Fearing all manner of ghouls, hags, and wraiths.
My dear dolly Polly, shut your eyes,
Lie still, lie silent, utter no cries…
As the Witcher, brave and bold,
Paid in coin of gold,
Cut and dice you…
Eat you up whole.”
On that last phrase, pointing directly to the predatory, dark side of the witcher, her voice suddenly hitched. A sharp, involuntary gasp caught in her throat. She stopped singing entirely, her fingers freezing against his skin.
The illusion cracked under the weight of a mutual realisation. They both knew what they were. She was a creature hiding from the blade; he was the blade waiting to be drawn.
“Why did you stop?” Geralt asked softly, his golden eyes remaining closed, refusing to break the peaceful dark of the illusion.
“Nothing,” she whispered quickly, her eyes darting toward the hidden silver on the floor. “I just… remembered something.”
“Your heart beats faster,” Geralt murmured, his acute senses tracking the sudden, erratic spike in her pulse.
She forced a playful, melancholic smile, her delicate hand moving up to caress his jaw. “You’ve got this effect on me, Wolf.”
“Fear?”
The succubus paused for a long, heavy moment, a shadow crossing her flawless face. “Fear of losing you,” she whispered.
The deep, unnatural slumber that followed felt less like rest and more like a cruel out-of-body experience. The transition was seamless but dark, the ambient warmth of the room curdling into something progressively colder and more suffocating.
Geralt found himself standing in the centre of the town square of Aedd Gynvael. The sky above was a stagnant, bruised purple, and a bitter, charcoal-tinted snow fell silently around him. The air smelled intensely of frozen iron and ancient disappointment.
Before him stood Yennefer. But she wasn’t flesh and blood; she was a statuesque figure carved entirely from jagged, brilliant ice. Her amethyst eyes were dead, reflecting a distorted, terrifying silhouette of his own mutated form.
“We are both ice, Geralt,” her voice resonated, sharp and ringing like a bell through the empty square. “Formed by forces beyond our control, incapable of the warmth you seek.”
The pain of her words burned inside his chest. He loved her, but his mutated tongue and scarred heart had lacked the words to express it. Desperate to prove her wrong, desperate to break the frost that separated them, Geralt stepped forward and reached out.
The moment his rough palm made contact with her cheek, a horrific, echoing crack shattered the silence. The ice did not melt under his touch. It fractured violently. The statue of Yennefer exploded into a thousand sharp, stinging shards under his hand.
He was left standing entirely alone in the suffocating cold, his hand bleeding, surrounded by the ruins of the woman he loved. A crushing, heavy realisation squeezed the breath from his lungs: he destroyed everything he touched.
The sheer horror of the nightmare tore Geralt back to reality. He lunged upward in the bed, gasping for air, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.
The room was flooded with the grey light of early morning, and the bed beside him was cold and empty. But as he drew a ragged breath, his highly acute mutant senses registered a fatal flaw in the air. The room was heavily inundated with her scent. It was a thick, oppressive cloud of rare oud and dark musk—sweet, mysterious, and heavy.
But it wasn’t lilac and gooseberries…
The sensory wrongness acted like a splash of ice water, instantly clearing the lingering fog of the sedation from his mind. His dormant witcher instincts surged back to life with a vengeance. He had been tricked. He had been systematically sedated.
Before he could even swing his legs out of bed, a violent, frantic pounding rattled his door.
“Master Witcher! Open up, in the gods’ names!” a rough voice shouted from the hallway. “A man’s been found dead by the old hayloft! The alderman needs you!”
The fantasy was brutally ripped away. Geralt scrambled to the floor, pulling off the silk veil and grabbing his leather harness. The moment his fingers brushed the silver chain, the wolf medallion began to vibrate violently against his palm, thrumming with a frantic, aggressive warning. The house was a nest of monsters.
Ten minutes later, Geralt was kneeling in a secluded hayloft on the edge of the village. The corpse of a young local man lay before him, his face locked in a permanent, horrific grimace of ecstatic agony. Geralt scanned the body, gathering the unmistakable evidence: the bruised hips, the deep scratch marks on the back, and the total, unnatural draining of the man’s vital energy during a frantic sexual encounter.
Geralt leaned closer to the corpse’s neck, his mutated nostrils flaring as he sifted through the stench of sex and blood. Beneath the copper tang, he picked up a familiar, haunting aroma.
Oud and musk.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place with a sickening thud. The ethereal dancer was an alpha-succubus. Her performing troupe was a predatory coven feeding on the village. And Jaskier, completely oblivious and helpless, was trapped alone in the tavern with them.
Geralt sprinted through the muddy village streets, his silver blade already drawn, his mind consumed by a cold, protective fury. He kicked open the doors of The Drunken Cormorant, shattering the silence of the common room.
Jaskier lay slumped over a corner table, completely unconscious, his face deathly pale and his breathing dangerously shallow. The two singing succubi and the third companion were already cornering another terrified villager, their beautiful facades beginning to warp into grotesque, predatory masks.
Enraged by his friend’s fragile state, and deeply humiliated by the sacred, vulnerable emotions the coven had exploited to blind him, Geralt moved like a whirlwind of silver. He cut down the first creature with a single, sweeping pirouette. The other two shrieked, lunging with clawed fingers, but Geralt parried their strikes effortlessly. His blade moved in a blur of perfect, lethal geometry, painting the tavern walls with their dark blood. Within seconds, the three companions lay dead on the floorboards.
Geralt turned his glowing, yellow gaze to the hearth, leaving her for last.
She stood frozen against the stones, her long, curly black hair wild, her pale green eyes wide with terror and a profound, hollow sadness. “I should have drained you when I had the chance,” she hissed, her voice a desperate, feral rasp. “I should have taken your fire.”
“You shouldn’t have touched him,” Geralt growled through clenched teeth, stepping toward her.
Without her smoke screen, she was no match for a witcher. Geralt easily sidestepped her desperate lunge, catching her by her delicate throat and pinning her against the stone hearth. With a swift move, he brought the heavy, blood-slicked blade directly against her throat.
The unforgiving touch of the monster-slaying metal hissed violently against her neck, burning her flawless alabaster skin. An agonising wail of pain tore from her throat. Large, genuine tears streamed down her face, cutting tracks through the soot on her cheeks as she writhed under the scorching heat of the silver.
Geralt looked down at her bleeding skin, his hand tightening on the hilt of the sword. He pressed the blade slightly, preparing to drive it home…but paused.
He read the raw, naked terror in her eyes, the echo of the longing they had shared just hours before. It’s her nature, a voice whispered in his mind. It’s what she is. To a human, she was a murderous monster. As he looked down, his eyes caught the polished, blood-smeared flat of his own silver blade. There, reflected in the cold metal pressed against her burning skin, he saw his own face. His pupils were still completely dilated into bottomless black voids from the toxic adrenaline, his skin deathly pale, his expression devoid of anything human.
Wasn’t he also considered a monster by the world?
The heavy burden of his nature’s reflection suffocated him. She was a creature following her primal instincts to feed her pack and to love fiercely in the dark. And what was he? An engineered weapon paid in gold to bring nothing but heartache and woe, standing over a weeping coven with a sword in his hand. If she was a monster to the humans, then in this reflection, he was the ultimate abomination.
He let out a heavy, ragged breath and backed off, sheathing his sword.
“Go,” he commanded, his voice cold but firm.
The succubus opened her eyes, staring at him in utter shock. Her chest heaved as she looked from the witcher to the lifeless, mutilated bodies of her sisters, pooling blood on the floorboards. She didn’t move. She didn’t run.
“I can’t be without my sisters…” she whispered, her voice cracking, a profound, hollow sadness echoing through the empty tavern.
He looked at her trembling fingers. Geralt knew the brutal reality of the Continent. A lone, wounded succubus, hunted by fearful villagers and stripped of her coven, would not survive the week. She would be hunted, tortured, or torn apart. Her lullaby had come full circle.
As hard as the decision was, Geralt looked at her one last time, a heavy sorrow filling his own heart. He raised his silver sword.
It was a pity death. A swift strike of silver to spare her from the tormenting winter of a lonely world.
The tavern door groaned on its hinges as Geralt stepped onto the porch. The cold, morning rain immediately pelted his face, washing the blood from his blade, but it couldn’t touch the hollow, burning ache in his chest. In his arms, he carried Jaskier, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket. The bard was breathing, his pulse steadying, but he was still deeply asleep.
Waiting at the bottom of the steps was the village alderman, flanked by three heavily armed guards.
“Is it… is it done, Master Witcher?” the alderman stuttered, his eyes darting to the open tavern door. “The dancers… the demons? Are they dead?”
“My horse!” Geralt ordered intently.
“Are they dead?” the alderman insisted, raising his voice to catch the witcher’s attention.
“They are dead,” Geralt said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
The alderman let out a breathless sigh of relief. He reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy burlap pouch, the 200 orens clinking together. The stable boy appeared with Roach following behind.
“The village owes you a great debt, White Wolf,” the alderman said, stepping forward to offer the gold. “You’ve rid us of the filth. Monsters, the lot of them. Disgusting, heartless beasts wearing beautiful skin to trick honest folk.”
Monsters. Heartless. Paid in coin of gold.
The words of her lullaby echoed through Geralt’s mind, deafening and mocking. He looked down at the gold, then down at his own blood-stained gauntlets. He had killed the beasts, but as he stood there, he felt more like a monster than a man. The alderman thought he was praising a hero, but he was simply holding up a mirror to a monster.
Without a word, Geralt stepped down the stairs. He let go of Jaskier with one arm just long enough to violently backhand the pouch of gold out of the alderman’s grip. The burlap tore against the gravel, and the coins scattered into the thick, filthy mud of the village street.
“Keep it,” Geralt growled, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, volatile malice that made the guards instantly step back in panic.
“M-Master Witcher?” the alderman gasped, dropping to his knees in the mud.
Geralt didn’t look back. He mounted Roach and adjusted his grip on the unconscious bard, pulling his friend closer to his chest, the only fragile thread tying him to his own humanity. He rode past the trembling men, Roach's hooves splashing through the scattered gold and the pooling rainwater, as the strange travellers disappeared into the misty, silent woods.