Hands locked, elbows fixed on the table made even with splinters under its legs creaking on the floor of the tavern now sweating away the excitement of a crowd itching for its entertainment out of the ordinary casualties. Eye to eye, Azaras' gaze was a seductive and dangerous thing to have across the table from yourself in any game of strength.

In front of Creyden's gates under waves of arrows flying over his head, less accurate now that they aimed at people trying to escape the fight, Sylvain's eyes were shadow of blood. He gulped red hugrily, while trails slipped from the corners of his mouth.

Off Azaras' chin fell just the drop from a river of ale, because her left hand has been given a mug, while her right arm was into battle with men thinking their own right was stronger. The back of the hand which reached the table surface first lost, only her adversaries were red of fury and she was sprawled on her seat like she owned it. Her own flush was a blush of alcohol and power.

Power turned crimson burning into Sylvain's breath, calling greedily for more, until the very field would tumble its gravestone inside his mouth. He raised without his sword.

Azaras' sword rested beside her, hilt against the table. She was toying with the man, though the duel long started. While her hand twitched, trying to raise the hopes of her adversary, Jaskier was coming alive on a song for which he had stolen a new lute from the "untalented" bards he met in that place.

The battlefield's song was terror. Screams were drapes Sylvain let caress his skin while he pushed forward, towards the next victim, charging at him. Sylvain grinned.

She smirked, knowingly and tightened her hand.

Sylvain's hand stopped the arms extended with a sword by capturing its wrist so tight a bone breaking sound was a drum to the highest note of wails.

The table creaked and the crowd's ovations went wild around as for a third time, Azaras pushed her adversary's hand to the surface of their match. "Is that the best you have?" She teased with her arms spread to the sides and her right knee bouncing ever so lightly to Jaskier's song, raging fire of passion coming alive as the coins poured from the bets against Azaras into his also "borrowed" hat.

Across the crowds, he'd wink at Azaras.

Across the field, Yulis'd watch Sylvain's each step.

A heavy drop shook the table and had Azaras' sword slid towards her. She caught it with one finger of her left hand, coming off the mug she was holding, her eyes raised to see a more solid man, definitely sober enough to consider his muscles would be more of a match for the tiny woman who had proved her valor with them, sit down and offer his right hand to the challenge.

Sylvain leaned back and a sword descended on the legs he had been munching into, tearing and cutting with his teeth, much sharper than ever before, for they grew inhuman to the master's spoilt soul. From the blood and flesh he gulped, feeling fullfilled, Sylvain raised before the much bigger and older man, wearing Hengfors honors; he had volunteered to be dropped as support for Creyden and he had never seen the cannibalism drip from the laughter of a mad king.

Azaras felt some resistance at last so she left the drinking for later. The mug dropped on the table and she put concentration onto the coming alive of the muscle rising her rolled shirt into a rounded hill of her upper arm seemingly so thin. Her head tilted gently, curiously still daring the man to put more effoet though her hand started tilting towards the table too.

Sylvain moved his chin slowly upwards, enjoying each blow of a sword he barely missed. He was weaponless, stepping back in a dancer's grace. But it was a monster's speed and cruelty which gave him the momentum to strike.

The back of a hand hit the table.

Sylvain's hand burst through the front of the soldier's belly, under his armour plate, pierced through flesh, dug through intestines and grabbed onto his stomach.

The shock was a sweet aroma to be embrace by any Arcapan blood remained.

Sylvain pulled out everything in the path of the stomach, hanging a net of organs and muscles out of the knight with fish gobbled eyes, lifeless glass on buckling knees. The king bit onto that web of death unsaturated with the carnage despite all smiles.

Azaras gazed sympathetic down at the much pigged hand pinned beneath hers and her smile was alcohol in its own because intoxicating, even those who did not like the yellow they found into her eyes, now applauded. The whole tavern turned into a cheer.

The battlefield was grave-quiet in the end, Sylvain but a mere stone solitary representing death itself for the hill drenched under Creyden's walls, which have seen none spirit worse than that of the king whose crown was burried in the insides of corpses. So foul, the ravens that brought the night stayed away from the prey cut open to the air.

A night above the tavern, dissputed into a certain diffusion of the chaos, especially after they have taken advantage of the foolish pockets of all the drunk fools. Jaskier has returned and presented Azaras, by standing besides her table, with a pouch filled with coins. "We did formidably well."

Azaras dug her right hand into the open and into a palm which burned as much as her face, giving an overall feeling of hotness which opened the first buttons of her blouse, she scooped five coins. Those five round pieces landed beside the pouch and she gestured towards Jaskier.

"For your soap," she reminded him with a sigh when his confusion took a break and faded him into the general chatter of the room. While Azaras leant back, she left no time for commentaries, but instead dug herself deeper into a fairness imprinted into her being, from her upbringing, something becoming a mutant would have never wiped clean from her memory. "It's not enough though."

"It's more than enough," Jaskier laughed. He took his five coins gratefully and dropped then in the only pocket of his pants that he knew was not compromised in any way. "Did Eskel forget to tell you the monster hunting business is not very successful anymore? Even with the growth of monsters, you did plenty for just one day..."

"I beat some men and shattered their ego," Azaras looked up at Jaskier with a faint smile. "It felt amazinf, surely, but I was supposed to end monsters today, not toxic masculinity."

"That's a monster anyhow."

Unnoticed to the normal senses of Jaskier, but loud enough to be picked up by Azaras' on edge calmness, another man sat down at her table, across from her, placing his joined hands on the surface and leaning over them. "I've been watching you tonight."

Wrinkles of age became brighter from under the green fluff on top of the man's hat, shadowing his face. Indeed, he was a frail elder, hardly stock to take the challenge, barely looking touched by the effect of spirits from the tavern, but instead dressed in such fine clothes that Jaskier at least, immediately understood he had plenty of coins to be stupid about spending.

"Trying to tell if you are a Witcher or a fraud," the man continued, secretive and hushed in tone.

Azaras' own voice remained loud and clear, her assertiveness unbothered with the trails of suspicion. "So which is it then?" she crossed her arms at her chest.

The man sniffed away the curiosity, distinguished it from hostility and straightened up in his seat, "I need help with a monster." The tavern's supple wench stepped heavily around their table just then, and in a hope to avoid another client, she did not notice knocking over Azaras' sword.

Metallic sound crashing onto dull wood was the same noise by which Geralt was spending away all afternoon, and hopefully night, so that he may be in the yard all through tomorrow and to the deadline Azaras had chosen for herself. No one doubted his determination to do just that, nor his endurance to carry out the madness by which Eskel was sure would prove every single thing he speculated.

He gave his friend a few hours of loneliness and getting lost into the oh, so generous ache of the muscles, a pain filled with a satisfaction, before he approached him in the yard by the mean which would get the most out of Geralt. Eskel's sword blocked the path of his friend's and metal on metal changed the pattern so loudly it scared birds away from the very tops of the fortress, where towards still stood.

"What are you doing?" Geralt grunted. There was not doubt their swordplay would be denied, for that flowed naturally, scratching tips of blades and sharpness until sparks were drawn, carrying blows in X-shapes and matching attacks with light flanking. The question was instead for the determination brushing Eskel's features, thriving in the dark where almost just their eyes shone aglow. Of course, there was also the whiteness of Geralt's hair which belonged to the moon and the stars above.

Eskel planned to get right to the subject, cut right into it with the same tactic he applied in fights, "Linking your destiny with someone else's is the stupidest thing I have ever seen you do."

Despite the meaning of his words, his accents were light and carried softly, more of a normal conversation than an argument. Geralt, unsurprisingly, did not answer verbally. His next strike simply got heavier.

What Eskel was making up for through tactics to keep up with his friend was what Geralt had been focusing his training on since forever: brute force.

"Was taking vows of marriage not enough?" Eskel hummed along, speeding up their game of crossing swords. He knew, he was starting to bring Geralt to a point of anger desired.

Geralt considered Azaras a fire in her own self, a torch of dancing interest of curiosity and individuality. He never once wished to dim her brightness, nor control where her light goes or what it burns, but he only ever wanted to be around it for as long as possible. Once, all they could spare to steal from destiny was a couple of days. Now, she was his fire and he was her cooling anchor.

"Answer me, Geralt!" Eskel demanded all of a sudden, bringing both his hands on the hilt of his sword then pushing Geralt's away from him so that the iron tip dug into the dirty snow. There, their foreheads gravitated closer and without touching, they allowed their eyes to meet in a heavy breath. "Did you not realize how selfish that is?"

Linked destinies do not continue existing, one without the other. Even though he could let her go, by concept and thought, soon this emptiness would hurt him through her absence. All because of their vows, spoken by a fire, in a dance that became a rite. It was followed by their conjoint bodies, glowing under a certain full moon's power, enchanted into their words of love they whispered to each other.

They did not mean for the connection to happen, but neither did they regret any second of it, because one way or another, they both enjoyed having the burden of too many choices being lifted from their shoulders. Their only choices was to remain together and it was good becausr they wished that and they could, at last, fulfill said desire that has been asleep for far too long.

Geralt lifted his sword in a certain yank. He stepped forward and elbowed Eskel's hands apart. Whether or not the sword fell from his grip did not matter, because Geralt's own blade came to his friends throat and stopped before even touching it. "Selfish or not, it happened and there's no undoing it. But if this is the one pleasure I gain from life, then proudly I will remain selfish about her and I can only wish you find someone to be selfish about."

Self-conscious though, Azaras' eyes widened at the gradious sight of one well-put-together home with large gardens and patios and at least a dozen rooms spread on a ground and upper floor, circularly ending with a stable in which horses slept with cows, both of with unsettled by her presence in the property.

She remained a few steps back therefore, after the rich man who got lucky enough to find a Witcher in town before he signed away his wife to a mage or doctor who may ask for far more and do far less on the saving matter.

"Jaskier, I don't think I am qualified for this sort of jobs," Azaras whispered. All her confidence woke up in the cold night to a realization. "Thing is, I am pretty sure that if he doesn't know what's happening to his wife, I won't either. I know as much about recognizing monster as the next mortal."

While at first he thought she was just having a moment of foolish uncertainty from the alcohol, by first noticing she was sober, Jaskier was quick to tell her words apart and gasp in whisper, "Are you kidding me?"

Azaras flattened her lips nervously. "I should uave probably mentioned that the many mosnters I have killed, I mostly didn't even knew the name of. Hitting them in all ways until they stop moving is very efficient, but I doubt it's what this man is looking for."

"Unbelievable," Jaskier half-laughed.

"Follow me, please," the man, Tirron by his presented name, urged them to follow. Neither Azaras, nor Jaskier had the heart to tell him yet that his hopes have already shatteres long before they climbed his stairs, entering his home and skulking after him into a humid room, warmer than the rest of the house and the outside, though no fires were lit.

Though Azaras complained about not being able to recognize monsters, she immediately remembered on folk tale that scared the living out of her in Arcapan. It made her hurry her step and join Tirron by his wife bed and just as she expected, she saw the woman sleeping, sick and still, paler than any human should have been and drawn of any sort of weight so that there was mostly just skin left on bone.

"She fell sick, right?"

"And after she fell sick, she didn't wake up again," Tirron confirmed and Azaras grimaced. He thought she was weird, for suddenly looking anywhere else but at the wife, but he kept talking, even as the Witcher's eyes followed the wall behind the bed, the ceiling, even the entrance to the room. "But she's still breathing, and I heard there may be some unnatural things at hand, for which your kind would be the best to deal with this."

"She's already dead," Azaras did not find it easy to give him the news, but it was necessary to do it as soon as possible. "She's already dead and you know it," she repeated, louder, focusing on the man actually keeping eye contact with her this time. "You just have to remember it, right now." Her head turned slightly to the side and much mroe hurried she addressed her friend, "Jaskier, get closer to me right now and don't leave my side."

The bard complied immediately. Seeing Azaras be so on the edge gave him a quick taste of how awful it was to forget Witcher were an awfully dangerous company.

"What are you...?" By the time inertia started talking for Tirron, blinking with Azaras' words in mind made him falter, confused, then immediately gasp out tears. With one hand, Azaras gave the man the support necessary to stop him from falling over.

"It killed her!" Tirron cried out as if he has been holding that in himself for too long.

"How many did it eat so far?"

"Alright," bothered by her bluntness, Jaskier's higher pitched voice hoped to interrupt while he was pretty much glued to Azaras' side. "Now is a brilliant time to start talking and just tell me... Am I in grave danger right now?"

"We all are," Azaras answered, just as calm, focusing on hearing a coherent answer from Tirron's cries.

"... the maid and then the gardener," a mere tremor was his voice, "then my dear Lily and now... it said I am next! Please-" His hand finally woke up and realized it could hold Azaras. Instead of letting him hold her, she stepped back and let the two men join hands.

"It's a giant snake, back in Arcapan we called it Apeş," Azaras explained with her little distancing of the men. She did not take her sword, but rather her bow, and for nothing else but aiming at the many windows tightly shot. Four windows that may destroy this perfect habitat, and she fired four arrow, one for each of them to shatter, break and let the cold, winter air inside.

"Apeş hunt in the nature during the summers, when the temperatures are warmer, but as soon as the cold comes through, especially winter, they seek refuge in homes in order not to die. And Jaskier, you don't see it right now, because it's still hiding. Apeş prey on weaker minds, suck and entire household dry and feast until the warm days return... There you are."

After breaking the four windows and creating a sort of releasing wind in the room, Azaras started stepping around in a small cricle, aiming a fifth arrow at the walls and the ceiling she watched. Finally, towards the right side of the bed, in the corner, she narrowed her eyes on something and released the arrow.

It bounced off something before it could hit the corner. A haunting hiss sounded.

Green scale by green scale, from the hitted nose to the extent of all its growing body, the Apeş started appearing. Its big eyes were completely white and hypnotizing in every way. That wet body colors luminously on what little light found in the darkness of the room, for it's tail spred across the the back of Lily's bed, all the way over the ceiling and dangled its end over the door, shutting the door closed with a long and excruciating creak.

It was a small household, despite the big house. No children to feast on. Therefore, the Apeş hypnotized the clueless husband into going to ask for help and bringing more fools in to be trapped.

The lights playing on its green scales like ghosts were in fact very much the souls it ate to grow so big because a trail of such light was leaving Lily fully at last and the whole body of the snake started moving. Lily turned to dust, in her clothes and in her bed.

Apeş pulled its head back, formed a curve into its neck. Azaras let go of the sixth arrow, hitting Apeş' forehead and realizing the scales were too thick for her arrows. The snake shook its head and it still gained them some time.

"Out on that window, now," Azaras ordered the men and pointed them to the right direction. Jaskier took the lead.

The sprint to the window was barely a second, and in that interval, Azaras switched her bow for her sword, in time to have met the blade with the snake's snout. The impact of a longer body was overpowering her slowly and her heels slid back up until she was on the same line with the window on which Jaskier, from outside, helped Tirron exit.

Only once, from the corner of her eyes, she saw the men beginning to run away, Azaras continued with the most technical approach: gain the advantage of the terrain.

She dragged the silver slash across the snake's face and since it opened its mouth, she cut nicely and deep a scar that would anger it into following her. Her slash pushed the head to her left while she dashed through that window on the right in a clean jump. She rolled out on the snow and through the glass and brick, the giant snake followed into the cold, where it was in clear environmental disadvantage.

"Keep running," Azaras shouted for the men to distance themselves and not just stand and watch.

They were too slow and as she feared, though she did not run away too fast, the snake's empty eyes fixed on the stagnant men with faster heartbeats than her. Apeş lowered its head to the ground, hurt its scales on the cold snow, but moved, regardless, fast, in a wide circle around Azaras and in a clear attack towards Jaskier and Tirron, now running away far too slow compared to the snake bigger than the household's garden.

It was big enough that this distance was happening, yet the very end of its tail was still unmoved, besides Azaras. The scales did not bend to the silver tips of her arrows and after seeimg how ice scratched through them, Azaras was certain it was in the extremes the weakness of the monster.

All Jaskier saw when he looked back was a Witcher standing beside a monster and seemingly doing nothing. That one second of looking behind caused him panic and Tirron to turn his head to him rather than focus on the running. Tirron stumbled over his own feet and remained behind to the eager hisses of the snake.

Those vicious, victorious slithers turned to agony and gasps from its open mouth, where the split tongue convulsed and bent in angles. The second time Jaskier looked towards Azaras, she drove a torching sword down on the tail of the snake and cut its end cleanly off. Lights left that part of its body, released into the air and vanished.

But so was too, her sword, stuck in the snow and the dirt.

Only Azaras did not linger to take it out. She had only two breaths between that moment and facing the teeth of the snake which came for her with an open mouth, almost as big as half her body, though not yet fully expanded either. She would not waste her breaths on a sword that she couldn't move immediately or a potion she didn't think was worth using just yet.

What she did have which would come in handy was another arrow which she pushed forward without a bow, so that in the impact, her arm got swallowed by the monster and her hand twitched the around into its eye from the inside first, then as it convulsed, back and straight into its brain. She held the beast's jaw apart with her left hand, even if it broke some of its teeth in the process and ultimately after stabbing everything she could from the inside, when Azaras stepped back shakily, her arm came out intact, just full of guts from the monster which flailed, dead, down to her feet.

That day earned her plenty more than the coins.

As promised, returned by 'morrow's supposed dinner time, Azaras pushed the heavy doors opened with one palm and one fists of knuckles, where her fingers wrapped around three bags of coins. Tirron had been suffering as a puppet of the Apeş for so long he would have given her much more, were she ti be greedy.

The day's bounty was not the money, but the steps she took with pride across the hall of Kaer Morhen. Win blew snow inside behind her. She looked first upwards, proudly towards the tree and for a couple steps inside, she was almost able to hear the breaths of all the Witchers whose souls died while their marks lingered, as a reminder to those who remained. Those were the ones who turned from the table and the chats in silence, to watch her walk, curious.

The reward was throwing the three pouches in front fo Lambert, next to his food and meeting his eyes after.

It was true, none of them cared whether or not she had been affected by the monster in their yard and she showed it. But Azaras did. And this was her making up for it, not just in front of them, but in front of herself too.

Lambert looked down at the coin then shocked towards Azaras. Exceeding expectations, Eskel laughed immediately, as a witness to Lambert's shock. Azaras followed into the laughter too. She undid the belts of her weapons and dropped them there, on the ground, just so she could slid in the space between Geralt and Eskel.

Her right hand held onto Geralt's shoulder and in the moment of their eyes meeting she remembered why she accepted the ale in the tavern for... "I missed you," she admitted through a whisper, shy to even acknowledge with how much pride Geralt was looking at her, so great he even smiled faintly.

"Who the hell did you kill for to earn this much?" Lambert finally joined in on the laughter and passed across the table, to Azaras' left hand, her medallion.

"A monster that could barely fit our yard," she laughed. Her right leg flung up over Geralt's under the table, a comfortable position for raising her hands and putting the necklace back around her neck.

"And for that, I would not touch her right hand if I were any of you," Jaskier shouted, joining them only a bit slower.

Azaras' right hand already rested on the back of Geralt's neck under his messed up hair in need of one of their travel braids to be redone, as much as her own. Her arm was at home around his shoulders and he liked it there too, more than any winter coat.

He did shift his head towards her slightly, grimacing while Jaskier sat across the table, next to Lambert, "Where did that hand go?"

Looking him in the eye, with just a small pout, Azaras answered seriously, "Just down a monster's throat."

author's note:   THIS is my best chapter yet and i can rant hours about it, starting with the cinematic beginning of two simultaneous povs and ending with the badass return azaras had to kaer morhen after she technically left to prove herself that she is still worthy.