Geralt's did not dare raise his hand, he tried not even to breate too hard as for his presence to disturb the beauty beside him. A single perturbation might have caused her discomfort, it could have bothered her from her deeper sleep. She lived in his dreams, short nights of love where the forest was theirs and it was a warm. There, her back would be facing him, she'd be still or breathing, a quiet little whimper who he could guard the scarless skin of.

Deep down, in a sick awareness, he knew it was only a dream and that seeing Azaras every night, in his sleep, was only going to make him exhausted in the morning. Days have been dark and Geralt reckoned his life would get darker still from just how many vows he broke. His hands were not what they used to be since she died in his arms.

Vivid surroundings tickled his senses in each of these dreams, a tease of heaven never to forget, even if it always felt like barely even a few minutes. The gentle moss underneath them, a natural blanket of the earth, had played them sheets only once before and he was glad it was there, instead of snow.

Azaras left shoulder rolled back. Geralt froze; she had never moved before in this dream.

The shifts of her positions came as blurred and echoed sounds for cruelly, he could not hear her breath, just the thundering beats of his own heart. Azaras turned all the way around, until she was facing him and then, with wide open eyes and freezing cold emanating from her paled skin, she looked at him as gentle as her touches.

It had always been such a stark contrast to Geralt how Azaras' violent delights mirrored into a need for softness between hungry kisses.

He held his breath for her, yet when her lips parted, she watched them move soundlessly, a secret mockery that he did not deserve to hear her voice anymore. Though he understood just fine what words were rolling off her tongue: 'I love you'.

Thrice she said it before she died and not even once had he been sincere or brave enough to say it back. Geralt felt like a coward becauss even there, in a perfect dream, his voice was hidden under shame and fear.

Waking up was just one brief blink that reminded him of where he really was: in chains, in a prison. Generally, he thought he deserved the irony of being locked up in humid darkness, were it not for the actual context being utterly disturbing.

Ever since he left the side of Azaras beautiful corpse, on the shore of the Great Sea, he would not dare forsaken her last request. He started hunting her monster after what descriptions she had given him and in those irregular travels, plenty more creatures of the night sprung out of the shadow. If he didn't know better, which he still did, blood magic was surely beginning to overwhelm the land of the continent, boil it in monster flesh, so much that soon, there will be so many of them that if they ate just one person each, they'd all be gone.

And no one ever seemed to notice. Town after town, everyone was oblivious that the end of days was near. In fact, foolishly, they all mocked it.

A mockery such as what had imprisoned him with faith that a Witcher did not possess the strength to break some chains.

Geralt had saved a man from a river creature, only to find out the villagers have used that creature he just killed for the past months as an execution ground. They willingly fed their prisoners to it, regularly, instead of being men and swining the blade down themselves on those they condemned.

Frankly, were it not for a certainty he had, Geralt would have stayed a while, let the humans think they got him, let them find another monster to try and tame and pay the price for their own stupidy while he watches from behind bars. But that wouldn't happen beyond this nap he took with a roof above his head, for these forests were lurking grounds for the dark.

Azaras hadn't had a roof over her head for so long the sky had become her distant friend and the grounds had called for her in permanence rather than break she used to take when her body felt younger. Nothing inside of her felt young while she was tossed around by one of the older monsters.

Older, for them, did not mean slow; it just meant smarter, hence they lived enough to escape all Witchers passing their lands before.

Maria's directions led Azaras downstream of the river she tried to follow upwards towards Kaer Morhen. The further she walked on it, the more humid the atmosphere got, instead of cold, and soon, even the waters ran deeper, the grounds got muddier still. Before she could complain about how deep her feet dug into tar, drowners got a jump on her.

She's been losing time with them ever since and just then, she had slipped on the mistake of entering their best territory: the water. The shore was a slide in its own and all Azaras tried, to grapple the edges and pull herself out of the river has been puerile.

Drowners were agile fighters, so she should have been in advantage were it not for just how heavy a mud armor got even to her enhanced strength and capabilities.

Igni.

Azaras followed Eskel's instructions exactly once more but though she let go of her faint resistance against the pull down of the drowners to try the sigil, her left hand didn't even spark a little light. "Fuck." She felt her right hand losing grip as well, and past her curse, she only took one deeo breath in before the river claimed her to its depths.

She fell back and the surface, distanced of her in green hues of dirt, outside was just some quiet waves at last.

Azaras lost her arrows during the first rolls and tussles of the ambush. Now, underwater, her aching muscles managed to break the tightness of a drowner's grip on her, taking her for a swim down, and immediately twisted around in the current with her sword in hand. It was heavier to swing underwater, but just one hint of luck helped her slash that drowner's throat.

A bonely screech reverbed the water and from behind a second drowner appeared and bit down on her shoulder. Though she did not reach her pain limit, Azaras gasped and she swallowed some of the bubbles of dirty water.

Now, she was going to run out of air.

Two more drowners were coming from beneath and if they caught her ankles, she'd be down for, because even at that depth, she barely saw the surface above.

Azaras hit her head back; once just for testing and the second to actually knock that drowner off of her back, stop him from drawing up intense tinted blood into that angry water, surrounding them with bubbles and dirt. Without the dire need to survive, there was beauty to the transcendental scheme of filth, a microbiological miracle of the system underwater, where weight lost all meaning. There, Azaras hair may have caught some algae, but it danced, all slowed, in waves around her; her braids were too weak to keep it all out of her face.

She did not wait or admire though. Azaras spun around and impaled the drawner with the sword she held so tightly she couldn't even feel her locked hand anymore.

All at once, she threw the corpse down at the mourning fellow drowners, giving herself the opening of pushing up in her arms, circling around and swiming back to the surface. Her vision had been blurred for a while, her eyes itched and her lungs desperately wished to gasp for air as much as possible once her head was above the water again.

Instead of relaxing though, Azaras swan back to the shore and dug her sword into the mud, deep enough for her hilt to be stuck in there too. Perfectly anchored, she began to pull herself up the slippery surface.

The whole of the water behind her screamed its battlecries and at least a dozen drowner hands grabbed her feet and pulled her down. Her hands were strong enough to hold her weight on the sturdy sword, but her kicks of her legs were not ridding the resistance.

If they kept this up, Azaras knew she would sooner be torn apart rather than win the fight.

"Come on," she urged herself with every inch of desperation available. Azaras uncoupled her right hand from the hilt of her sword and left all the pain of holding back the drowners into her left arm. That palm burned stronger than the sigil she attempted using with her right.

Her eyes shut closed from the pain she started feeling in her legs. "Come on," Azarad whimpered. Behind her eyes, she ultimately remembered her brother, the way he too lost his legs. Whatever happened to her remembering those past incapacities of hers ignited her right palm in a tall torch.

Igni.

Azaras pushed that short-lived spell to the water and all the hands that started climbing up to her waist and belts scattered away in screeches and screams. It was just a span of a few seconds in which she pulled herself fully on shore, dragged through the mud and scattered on her feet.

Geralt dragged his steps away from the village he had caused trouble and distress to. They shunned him away from their borders and mute, after breaking his way out of their prison, fighting so much he scared them all, he left with his head bowed, a walk of shame.

He had regained his swords, his belongings and Roach, but there was a presence beside him entirely missing, a soul he doomed when he made promises he did not come to keep. What use were all the strengths and powers if when it was needed most, his speed was not enough to save her?

Geralt made just one more promise her ears never heard before her eyes lost the light: he'll find the winged beast that brought her ruination, the thing which set her up on a road of pain and was just as much to blame for her death as him.

He had clear plans. He'd take that beast's head and hand it over to her brother, Sylvain, in Arcapan, if he still lived, with the news of her death and offer to take his own life too, for having caused them, as a kingdom, more suffering still.

Geralt considered that a fit ending. On the way there, after he had slain the beast, he will go on the paths of Rivia one more time, and shake Vesemir's hand perhaps once more as well. Nothing his teacher could say would change his mind; the world was getting to heavy to carry alone again.

"Geralt!"

He turned to look over his shoulder and froze in place.

If dreams have been silent, reality could have caught now voice, but there was no way to turst every sense he held recognzied. The heart scrunched in his chest for fading away, it died and returned in faster beats. By his hitched breath, instinct lit his knuckles branding the hilt of his sword.

Azaras was before him, just a few trees away. Mud has solidified over her armour, instead of light metal, she looked like she was wearing brown wool or wood. She was paler and she looked tired, like she had ran the distance from the Great Sea to him.

But no ghosts or illusion could have possibly replicated her scent muffled by the dirt of life, so his hand hesitated on drawing out his sword, even if his voice did not. "You're not real," Geralt shook his head.

She too froze in place when her voice cracked over his name. A pained echo stung on the scar on the side of her neck and made that loving name sound tremored. Geralt's voice woke her up to step forward and drop all her defenses, full of trust. "Don't do that to me," Azaras shook her head.

On the brim of collapse she forced herself to not limp her walk closer, and even pull by the chain around her neck until the medallion shone into Geralt's eyes.

The closer she got, the realer she became. If this was a dream, it had suddenly turned too cruel; he could feel her breath, breathe in her own air and swallow the little sounds of her voice. Nothing changed about Azaras, except perhaps the things he did not know: her eyes were torches turned gold, her body felt frail.

Azaras did not see into his mind, into the typhoon of thoughts and shivers that happened to him all at once, overwhelmed with a haze that could not comprehend the lowest lows to highest peaks at all. She only saw the cold, the stoicism and it hurt more than the bite marks still bleeding lightly under her clothes.

Bowing her head, she took off the medallion and fisting it, she punched it in Geralt's chest, "Don't you dare do this to me right now, Geralt." Her beg crippled her shoulders into a fall of reason; she too would have been weary if anyone returned from the dead.

She couldn't emphatize with him and forget how much she ached to have been by his side again. Safety. Home. Were they not worthy of that second chance?

The second her fist hit his chest and he felt the realness of the touch, his left hand caught her wrist. His hand hugged hers to his chest there, while the other desperately held the side of her neck. Geralt moved two thumbs over the scar, slow and tender, before completely melting away, beside the sword he dropped when she got closer.

Roach puffed behind him. Even the horse recognized her so he let go of every barrier, every flinch of lack of faith. Trailed from her neck to her face, he held the side of her face and Azaras leant into his palm, breathing heavily.

Geralt bowed his head in adoration at last and she met his lips with relief.

Though all her parchments of worship have been gentle, this time, their kiss was hunger made flesh, between two souls not knowing how to quicker reunite.

Tears sneaked salt on their tongues and hot breaths steamed home into humid air. One loss was enough to surface every single craving, every shed of lighted lust, and brush away the hesitation, the shameful guilt of diving head first.

Geralt's forehead brushed on Azaras' and leant there for the couple of breaths which followed, utterly lost. Their noses touched. Now both his hands held her head and all he wished was to squeeze her back to his chest and never let her go. It was a wish he had to close his eyes for. Azaras' own hands came over his, granting a silent permission for everything she knew they both needed anyhow.

"I found it," Geralt whispered. His lips flattened and he held back tears he did not want to ever have to shed again, not in front of her.

"Found?" Azaras eyes opened with his. Doey, she looked up at Geralt. Was it comfort or pain that they were perfectly the same, to run in each other's veins?

"I found your monster," he gulped and prayed to see some happiness inside her sorrowful gaze. Geralt wanted to know everything which happened to her, but none of the curiosities compared to the need of making it right.

And light crept again into her yellow eyes. Her lips parted speechless first and her gaze dropped to his lips in disbelief. A cold wind blew and the medallion swung, tangled in her fingers still.

Those two hands of hers, brazed in hardship, let of his and dropped instead on his chest. Azaras smile. Then she bowed her head and laughed. From disbelief, her hands started shaking while she locked them on his plate.

Geralt closed his eyes to the song of her happiness and hummed the thrill of his own faint smile. Leaning his head back, he, a non-believer, thanked whatever fate played its threds on them and gratefully embraced his arms around Azaras' shoulders, guarding her head to his chest.

"I think," her voice spoke directly to his heart, "this would be a great moment to take me on a real bed."

Monsters could wait. In fact, the whole world could pause too, for all she cared, because they've been bleeding for each for too long not to live this little moments, while they last, while they still own them all in the palm of their tired, greedy hands.

chapter dedicated to obliviates