Chapter Text
Fire alone would not be enough to finish this hunt.
Igni’s fierce magic sizzled over the Witcher’s skin, scorching crumbling stone and stray pieces of parchment alike as it roared from his fingertips. The paper caught and burned in the air, flickering and winking out of existence like fireflies around his head. Before him his enemy raised their hands, palms aglow a sickly green, and the maelstrom of flame meant to destroy them vanished in a whirl of frigid smoke.
The townspeople of Erith told him there were strange figures stealing away men that dared wander too close to the abandoned guardtower entrenched deep in the wilderness. Strange figures that enjoyed stringing said men’s body parts across the forest greenery like macabre Yule ornaments. They described a wraith. A spirit.
This was no wraith.
The Witcher grit his jaw and unsheathed his silver blade, the other still strapped to his hip. The potions he’d taken beforehand weren’t meant for this kind of fight. One mage could threaten a Witcher’s life.
Two would be more than enough to end it.
Outside, the daylight was fading. Cast in shadow, a woman’s voice crooned. “ Silly Witcher. You think a sword will be enough to stop us? It’s like you’re not even trying, pet.”
The air crackled and wavered like a mirage, Chaos and something distinctly other vibrating the air like a lute string pulled too tight. The Witcher hardly had time to bare his teeth and snarl before the magic crescendoed and shattered, a powerful blast of energy sending him careening back into the wall behind him. His head snapped back against unforgiving stone, blood filling his mouth as his fangs caught on his tongue.
The shadows stirred, one cloaked figure dissolving into two. Dark hair and willowy hands beneath blood red fabric. Corruption behind cruel smiles and too-thin faces. Wielding their magic—powerful, unforgiving, old magic—came at a cost.
The Witcher groaned, staggering to his feet. They were enjoying this—playing with him like cat and mouse. To harness the whims of Chaos was one thing. Many monsters and men alike bent it to its will, his kind included.
Never in his life, however, had he seen the Old Ways harnessed by mage twins.
They fed off each other like one being; parasitic and strengthening in turn as Chaos flowed between them. For now they attacked him one at a time, each wanting to outdo the other, but should they decide to channel their intent together into one coordinated strike. . . .
No. He needed to end this now.
It was far too easy to let the mages come close. He’d packed a few of what was supposed to have been fireball bombs—infused with silver dust to send wraiths and other manner of beasts packing—but one accidental and near-disastrous ignition a day or so ago on the Path led to the discovery that the damnable things only smoked and died. Not useful in the slightest, but as a distraction—
The Witcher smiled. It was not a nice smile. Igni crackled in his palm. The bomb was in his hand. The mages paused, magic writhing in the air as they realized what he was holding. One of them narrowed her strange, too-bright eyes and hissed, “You wouldn’t dare. That would destroy you too.”
Thankfully, self-destructive and Witcher may as well have been synonyms. Laughing, he tossed the lit bomb into the air, darting to the side as the mages shrieked and threw up a shimmering barrier as one.
But no blast came, and as the women cursed his name in rage and confusion, the Witcher disappeared into the smoke.
The smoke was harsh and acrid in his eyes and lungs, but he had not survived the Path to be felled by so simple a thing as lack of sight. The Witcher listened carefully to the scrape of bare feet on stone, ranging out his other senses until he could practically feel the tendrils of Chaos snaking from the mage’s fingertips, searching, searching, searching for him as they chanted under their breath, and he was behind one of them now, her magic shields lowered and his silver blade tight in his grip—
The Witcher struck quickly and without mercy, cleaving the woman’s head from her shoulders in one clean strike. Blood sprayed from her cut throat across the cobblestone floor and his armor, her last words nothing more than an animalistic shriek that twined with her sister’s own agonized howl as their connection was severed.
Then, all was silent.
The air began to shift. Contorting. Twisting. The Witcher stepped back, slow heart speeding up as the smoke shivered and parted like a great sea, disappearing into nothing and leaving one lone figure facing him.
The mage stared in shock, hooded cloak falling away to reveal ghastly white skin and a rapidly reddening mark across her throat. Even in death, it seemed, they were tied. It wouldn’t be long now.
One breath. Two. The woman’s gaze fell to her fallen twin, and it felt like the very air around him squeezed. Her voice was quiet. Creaking. “You killed her.”
He took a step back. Something was changing; his instincts screaming at him to see something he could not. The mage’s knees trembled before locking tight, her dark head of curls rising once more. Her eyes were blank. A lone tear slid down her cheek. Then another. Then another. Her hands began to glow. “You killed my sister!”
And perhaps these mages had known love, once. Perhaps they’d only ever had each other. Blood began to drip from the woman’s nose, but the mage didn’t seem to notice. The Witcher cast Quen as power built in the air around them, pulsing like an open wound.
It was around that moment that things went terribly wrong.
The mage screamed, and it was a wretched, broken thing, thrusting her hands forward as Chaos surged from her in an unstoppable wave. His Quen shattered like cheap glass.
One moment he was standing, ready to strike. The next he was pinned halfway up the wall, sword ripped from his grip and feet dangling off the ground as the breath was driven from his body. The Witcher cursed, struggling and hissing and baring his fangs like a cornered animal because he could not move . His hands were pinned against the wall, unable to sign, unable to reach his other weapons.
Helpless.
He’d been too confident. Now he would pay the price.
The Witcher could do nothing but watch as the mage stalked closer, straining against the Chaos that held him. Though her condition rapidly worsened by the moment, her eyes were focused through her tears. Only when they were nearly nose-to-nose did she halt, and distantly he noticed the remains of the other mage take on a strange, shimmering hue that seemed to gravitate towards the wrathful woman before him. Was she still feeding off of her twin, even now?
The Witcher shook his head, a snarl thrumming low in his throat. He refused to look away. “You. . .you were killing those people. I had to stop you.” He ground out, and the mage’s eyes narrowed.
“Men die all of the time. Be it by our hand or something else, they are expendable .” She laughed hoarsely. “Oh, but that’s how the world sees you too, isn’t it, Witcher ? You are something to use. Something to throw away. Disposable. Humans look at you and see nothing more than another monster.” She cocked her head to the side. He was close enough to smell her intent, rage and pain and foulness wafting from her in sour waves. “I’m sure you think you know pain.” She leaned in, voice a whispered hiss. “But the way I feel right now? Watching you take everything from me? Feeling my sister’s lifeblood on your hands?”
The mage drew herself upright, and the oppressive weight of Chaos grew around them once more. Power far beyond his own utterly overwhelmed his latent magic, and Melitele have mercy he couldn’t so much as twitch . Quick as a snake the woman lunged forward, grasping the Witcher’s jaw hard enough to draw blood with her nails. Her eyes began to glow. “I will make you long for something as sweet as pain!”
And oh, she made good on her promise. Though her time dwindled like last grains of sand in an hourglass, the woman did not pause to lament what would be her final moments alive, hands steady as she dug sparking fingertips into the Witcher’s skull.
His world exploded into fire.
Though it was undoubtedly only moments, to the man it felt like an eternity. The mage bit and scratched and clawed her way through his mind and soul, searching, searching, searching for the things he feared, for every single doubt and worry and nightmare hiding in the crevices of his mind—for though many would call Witchers emotionless the truth remained that they felt far too much—but he refused to scream, putting up walls only for her to tear them down and. . . .
“What a pathetic creature you are,” she hissed, drawing away and leaving him gasping, “Wanting so desperately to be loved by humans that you fear every moment they come close enough to curse your name, loathing what you were made to be even as you revel in the power it brings. You’re not even worth killing.”
The Witcher chuckled even as he fought for air. Her magic constricted around his lungs. “Sorry to disappoint.”
But the mage ignored his sarcasm, stepping away from him and swiping idly at the blood that dribbled from her parted lips. The wound at her throat was deeper now, weeping and dark. She grinned, and her teeth were crimson. “No, death is too good for you, Witcher. ”
Her time was almost up. The woman took one last glance at the crumpled body of her twin, face twisting into some terrible facsimile of grief, and then the Witcher couldn’t breathe once more as a roaring cacophony of power spiraled high above them both, seeping from her twin and from her own fingertips in a colorless gale. Her eyes began to glow. The blood dripped faster.
The woman unmade herself without hesitation. Chaos was a dangerous thing; its wielders walking the knife-edge of enlightenment and destruction. Even the Old Magic had rules, customs that must be obeyed lest the powers take what they were due. An unfathomably deep ocean where the undertow was just as likely to guide you to safety as it was to drag you under.
But the mage only smiled as she felt the current take hold.
Her voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once, a thousand voices screaming and whispering and wailing together as she sowed the seeds of their demise, her parting gift to the Witcher burning on her tongue. A curse. A binding of fate. “You will return to that which you fear most. You will taste that which could have been yet never will be. You will be stripped of all you think you’ve become and the strength it gave.”
Every word constricted around the Witcher like a coiling snake, and his skin began to burn, burn, burn like someone was skinning him piece-by-piece until they dug deep enough to put his soul on display. He writhed, a howling scream building in his chest and escaping at last because something was happening, she was killing him, she was tearing him apart. . . .
The Witcher’s sight narrowed down to nothing more than her fire-bright eyes. She staggered to her knees before the Witcher, dragging him down with her. Her lips whispered against his. A gallow’s kiss.
“Only when you are broken as you have broken me, only when you have tasted love only to have it ripped away will you return to this form that you so revile and crave.”
Fingertips dug into his temples. His world fell away. He was unraveling from the inside out. The Chaos reached a fever pitch, yet all he felt was bitter cold. The mage bowed her head. Accepted her fate.
“Julian de Lettenhove, you took everything from me. Now I will do the same. So it shall be .”
It was done. A spell complete, a life snuffed out as the last of the mage’s Chaos shuddered apart.
The Witcher collapsed beside her body bonelessly, eyes squeezed shut as his body twitched and contorted against his will. He was. . .he didn’t know what was happening, only that every too-shallow breath left him feeling weaker than the last, strength and senses sapping from him like snow melting before an unforgiving sun. Every mutation-sharp instinct fell away, winking out one by one. Sight. Hearing. Scent. What had she done, he was afraid, he didn’t want to go—
And in many stories and songs, the hero falls with a grand declaration on his lips. A final poignant thought to spit in the face of death.
Reality was nothing like the stories. In between one terrified heartbeat and the next, Julian of Lettenhove simply ceased to be.
In his place, slumped over against the wall and now not broad enough for the too-loose armor he wore, a human remained.
On the floor, hidden amongst fallen stone and torn clothing, a medallion shone.
But the world did not grieve for man nor beast, whether they be a too-young child or a grizzled old man, and so day turned into night, and night turned into day again.
The man awoke on the morning of the third day, pulling off the leathers that weighed him down without a thought. Clad in nothing more than a weathered red tunic and trousers, he walked out of the crumbling keep and into the fresh air of a forest rife with birdsong. How had he gotten here? Where was here?
The man wasn’t sure.
So began the story of a ghost. Of a man woven together from the dreams of a desperate child. Of the man a Witcher could never be.
His name was Jaskier, and somehow, someway, he knew he’d always wanted to be a bard.