A Bond of Blood

[Aero Blue]

THE SORCERESS

---

The cold greeted Teleri as she awoke, along with the pervading smell of fish and waste. Cold, with a viscous sheen like alchemical slick, and slimy and-.

On her face.

They threw it on her face, the barbarians.

She awoke with a start and a sputter, and not longer after her rousal came the realization, the truth of the dripping contents. Sewage, with the distinct scent of rat and sloughed-off drowner flesh. Some time ago, she had perhaps thought to brew a poultice from such vile ingredients, may have even imbibed such a concoction. She retched nonetheless, unprepared.

"The little lady awakens."

Teleri could scarcely see, her hair cast down upon her eyes and glossed over with slime, but could yet envision the sneer on the witch-hunter's face.

"'Ave you been in Novigrad long, darlin'?" Thick calloused fingers parted the drapes of hair upon Teleri's visage, casting them aside to reveal himself to her: a man of some brutish constitution, of towering form and hunched back, as if an ogre who concealed his nature in the regalia of the Eternal Flame. He bore a jaw so prominent that it rendered his head almost trapezoidal in shape, the left side of which was scarred over by flames.

"I s'pose it don't matter over-much; surely y'ave some small idea of what's what. You're a witch, and I - ever faithful servant of the Eternal Flame - am to have you readied for the spit."

She remembered now, falling from her steed into a world of dark. Now here she sat, bound against a post in a dimly lit room - no, a cell. Her wounds had been crudely addressed, laced over with dirtied bandages, no thought given to the prospect of infection. And why would it be? She allowed the bitter thought to tide her over as she watched the Hunter vanish into the shadows of the cell.

"Come the 'morrow, you will burn." He re-emerged, a crude spike of metal in hand, "But before then, you'll sing. A riveting performance, a stellar song, a line for each of your brothers and sisters."

Even as he approached, Teleri paid the Hunter no mind, ignoring both steel and the prospect of the flame. Something else pulled at her. It burned, as if a pair of seared hands reaching along the ridges of her wounds and pulling. It tugged like an impetuous child upon a mother's hand, with direction… with want. She choked, and gasped, and sputtered at the pain of it all, and her mind darkened as the ephemeral outlines of an image surfaced.

The Witcher.

 

[Nav]

THE WITCHER

---

Vezan liked monsters. Unless under times of extreme need, like presently, he made the conscious choice to avoid contracts involving cursed beings. Monsters were simple: they hunted to eat and to kill, because they liked the scent of blood and death, and that made sense to him. Curses? Curses were complex, layered, and fickle things that didn't like to be so easily solved. They often came with troubling side-effects, like the pulsing heat still burning in his palm like he'd dunked his entire fist into a smithy's forge. As he walked away from the wizard's hut, his stride so long it was on the verge of breaking into a jog, Vezan open and closed his fist in repeat.

His feet knew where to go intuitively. He didn't know the path immediately, but whenever he reached a Y in the road, some inherent force tugged him in one direction or the other. Prowling like he was on a mission, Vezan shouldered past young fisherman hauling in woven baskets of their day's catch, and elbowed into young women sweeping shop fronts. He thought nothing of pushing children playing aside, his pace wavering as he pounced into a jog. His swords jangled on his back, a continued hunger gnawing in his belly, but nothing could have pulled him off his route. He'd sooner have perished of dehydration while trying to reach the sorceress than to stop for a sip of ale; that was how strong of a command the pain possessed over his brain.

He stopped abruptly. His heels digging into the mud and his cat-like eyes swiveling towards the derelict building to his left. The burning in his palm ignited with a hellish fury, and he knew: she was there.

The old stone building clung to the hillside scree, stubbornly refusing to die. The walls were little more than the same rock and dirt they stood on, yet storm after storm failed to return them to Earth. It was ignored by passerby's, but he could already smell the insurmountable horrors that must have been ongoing in its walls. Not even in a monster's den had he smelled such the strong aroma of death and torture.

There was a single soldier out front in the polished regalia of the Eternal Flame, but the plump fellow with a moustache as furry as a fat caterpillar was crouching down against the stone wall, head bowed, and soft snores blowing the hairs of his facial hair. Testing the door, it swung open with a squeal. The guard stirred, mumbling something, but before he could rouse any further, Vezan had already slipped inside to the cold, damp stone hall, lit by torches hung periodically. He shut the door behind himself silently, sliding the lock into place so no reinforcements could follow him in—at least with any ease.

A drip of water, moans of prisoners—none of whom he could identify as belonging to that troublesome sorceress—Vezan pressed forward on silent tiptoes. He held his breath, he couldn't help it.

Come the 'morrow, you will burn.

Vezan paused, swiveling his head and straining again to hear. The echoes of the old shingle made it hard for even his sensitive ears to pick a direction the noise came from. Again, he followed the burning, but it was too late. From down the hall, a pair of boots plodded along. He couldn't go back to the entrance, and he had no other routes left to him.

"'Ey!" One of the soliers cried as they came up from the staircase and into the hall, waving a torch out towards Vezan. "What you think you're doin here, Witcher? Secure the prisoners!"

The second guard wheeled around on a heel and darted back from where he came, screaming obscenities about an intruder while the first guard dropped his lantern and raised his sword.

His head, detached from his shoulders, joined the sword on the stone floor a moment later as Vezan stepped over him and proceeded down the stairs.

"Here, Sorceress… 'Ere boy." Whistling, and calling for his unwitting companion like a dog.

 

[Aero Blue]

THE SORCERESS

---

Teleri was, it had to be said, at least somewhat thankful for the burning - numbing - sensation, unexpected and unexplained though it was. The heat emanating from her wound… was she succumbing to infection? Was it some insidious part of that beast's physiology? She laid the thoughts to rest, convinced that specificity would only kill the strange sense of goodwill she currently felt towards the hideous gashes upon her person. And how strange it felt indeed that, in her feverish haze, even the imagined outline of the cat-eyed Witcher's visage and the faint echoes of his voice provided no small relief.

Her main source of relief was the numb - whether it be from the overwhelming heat, or the slow sensation of death inching menacingly forward. The obscenely-mannered Witch Hunter had begun the practice of his 'craft', in a manner that Teleri felt was closer to exaltation. Teleri could not bring herself to look upon his face to confirm, but knew all the same. The way the spike danced upon her skin in an anxious staccato, like the nervous caress of a virgin lover. Prodding and teasing.

The spike pressed the skin, and just barely broke it, a meager - and deliberately measured - sting that drew the slightest trickle of blood. The spike had been dulled by the man's... previous endeavors, and doubtlessly he had preferred it that way. It made for a vile threat, the unspoken promise of a long death.

She could not help but let loose a chuckle, even as the spike danced upon her every pore. She had never been the foremost amongst her kind, though it had been a desire for much of her years. She would fall, today, as perhaps a middling sorceress, and no great loss when measured up against the greatest of her peers. But Teleri Anest would keep hold of her conviction.

She would not give, and she chuckled once more - so that the Witch Hunter, perhaps, would understand. The prodding stopped, and Teleri knew that he did.

And then he stabbed, and Teleri knew doubly so.

All the same, she chuckled - laughed, even, in near-madness - for even before Vezan had sounded down the steps, Teleri could 'feel' him through the pulsing of her wounds.