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“You seem to know a lot about the Hunt.”
Ever since Geralt mentioned Navigator portals, Keira seemed all too intrigued about his personal history. He regretted saying anything, even identifying the Riders to begin with – he was starting to think he’d have been better off letting her go on believing that the Red Riders were nothing but fairytale. He attempted to deflect, “You should try talking to a witcher from the School of the Viper sometime. They’re practically archives on the Hunt in themselves, know everything there is to know.”
“Is that where you learnt it? From a Viper School witcher?”
“Shh. Hear that?” She definitely didn’t; he was having to strain his ears to even discern that someone was talking, and he had enhanced senses. But it was a convenient reason to end the conversation and focus on the present – meaning their imminent deaths, most likely. He couldn’t parse the words and doubted it would have done much good if he could, since they were probably speaking in a Tir ná Lia dialect that his rusty Elder Speech would not cover.
As they entered the next chamber, the three Riders they had seen enter the ruins were standing at the opposite end, disabling the Sage’s defences so that they could pass through. He recognised the Navigator, their staff and the way they held themselves. The name eluded him, but it was the prodigy, the one who led Riders on risky endeavours that paid off too often for Imlerith to speak against them openly. The prodigy was at the right hand of the party’s leader whose stature, even for an Aen Elle elf, was lofty. Before Geralt could think of ducking out of view or telling Keira to extinguish her light spell, the commander turned his head to look at them.
There was quite a distance between them, but he felt their eyes meet across the cavern, and a cold flame shivered up his spine. The sockets of Imlerith’s gleaming mask were dark voids, burning with hate.
The lieutenant issued an order, indiscernible but unmistakably calm and ruthless, and advanced forward with the Rider that wasn’t the Navigator. The prodigy turned to face them from his ridge and raised his arms, staff glowing brighter as he uttered spells in Elder Speech. Geralt cast Quen as he heard, saw, felt a tear, or a scream, rip open the passages between worlds. They didn’t punch all the way through to Tir ná Lia, just into the white cold the Riders traversed as wraiths, gathering frost on their armour and shaping ice into hounds for the chase.
The sign protected him from feeling the drop in temperature, but his breath was clouding in front of him, and frost was crawling rapidly across the stone for every moment the violent winds of the portals blew. “We need to close the portals!” he shouted over the noise. Even if they could reach the other side of the cavern in these conditions, the cold would keep bleeding out into the rest of the cave system and eventually beyond, until Velen was frozen from below.
Keira cast something, and the air stilled around them – some kind of bubble spell, insulating them. “I need to get closer,” she said. “Stay by me.”
Hounds came snarling out of the tears, lunging for Keira, and Geralt beat them back. His sword chipped the icicle spines on their backs and changed their trajectory, but it took blasting them with Igni to soften them up enough to wound. The silver blade twirled around Kiera’s head to slice off a Hound’s lower jaw, and the first tear snapped shut, leaving behind a dusting of snow. By the time they were working on the third tear, Geralt’s fingers were numb inside his gloves, even shooting sparks out of his fingers as often as he was.
The same instant the final tear was closed, the bubble that had shielded them from the cold burst, and Kiera swayed on her feet. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’ll pass,” she said, but the wobble in her voice swept down to her knees, and she fell backwards into his arms. Her skin was clammy, and he could feel her pulse racing through her skin. “That took… a great deal of Power…”
She sounded exhausted. He thought of the Riders ahead - three of them. Geralt probably wouldn’t survive that fight on his own, but if there was a chance Ciri was here, he couldn’t turn back. He would just have to take those odds. “If you can’t go on--”
“You can’t leave me here!” she objected, and she seemed to find her feet under her slightly, taking some more of her own weight. He was reminded of the night they met in Thanedd, when she demanded he pick her up and carry her as if it was his fault her leg was broken, merely because his bones had been the ones to break her fall when she was thrown out of a window.
“I wouldn’t ever do that,” he told her. “I would love to say we can stay here a while and rest, but--”
“I know, I know,” she said, righting herself. “We must go on.”
There was a low boom, and the ground shuddered, making icicles on the roof of the cavern quake. The way forward was blocked by a gigantic wall of ice, and he muttered, “Damn,” before focusing Igni into a stream. Who knew how long it would take - once he’d made a hollow, he could use bombs, but it would still take too long.
“Leave it to me,” she waved him out of the way. He was going to object that he really didn’t want to have to carry her out of here, but she spoke an incantation, “Gynvael esse uisce,” and the entire wall cascaded down, turning to slush at their feet. As they passed through the chilly passage it left, she said, “You’d never have managed without me, would you? Come now, admit it.”
The sound of the noise became clear in the next chamber. Dust was still settling from the dramatic shift in the stone, creating a roughly circular arena separating them from the ransacked laboratory on the other side of the cavern. In the middle of the pit, a Rider had one knee to the ground, his head bowed, and a bubble of blue magic gathered around him. It was a meditative technique the Hunt used, but he’d shrouded himself in a shield so that they couldn’t sneak up on him.
“He awaits us,” Keira remarked.
The Rider raised his head, and Geralt saw a gaunt, white skull and a helmet shaped like a mitre. “Nithral.”
She did a poor job of veiling her surprise as he jumped down into the pit. “You know him?”
It was hushed, but the sound was amplified by the chamber, and Nithral definitely heard it. His magic bubble dispersed, and his armour clanked as he rose to his feet and pulled his axe from his back. “You are stubborn, cú an.”
Hundreds of fights had started just like this, Riders and their shields penning them into an arena and baying for blood – always Geralt’s, red and mortal and flowing easily from his fragile, unprotected skin and bones. He knew how to fight armoured monsters, in quick precise jabs and pirouettes, but Nithral never bled, just vanished in a burst of snow and ash as wraiths did. The Hunt was never foolish enough to let Geralt draw their blood after the battle at the Hanged Man’s Tree. He fought their projections over and over; punished when he won, punished harder when he didn’t put up enough of a fight. Nithral made a jester of him, a fool for his king’s entertainment.
Keira’s voice cut clearly through the fog that had descended on his mind. “Geralt, I’m here to help you.”
“Step back,” he warned. A few moments ago she’d been on the verge of fainting, and he knew from experience that Nithral’s bardiche was nothing to scoff at. He’d have to use most of his energy to keep clear of its swings, and he couldn’t hope to win if he had to stop Keira from being bisected as well.
She scowled, “Stop telling me what to do,” and he didn’t have time to argue.
Nithral was patient. He was in no hurry to kill them - he was left behind to stop Geralt from getting to Ciri before Imlerith did. Killing them was just a bonus. So he was biding his time, keeping his defences up and waiting for Geralt to dart closer with a jab aimed at his side before he broke his stance to counter. Geralt’s shield shattered again and again, forcing him to interrupt his attacks to renew it. When a splatter of blood came with Geralt’s blade out of Nithral’s armour and he finally seemed to be making some headway, the Rider summoned a web of blue light around himself. Geralt was rebuffed, having to backwards-roll before he could get back to his feet, and he was immediately set upon by summoned Hounds.
Keira held her own, blasting the Hounds back with bolts of fire and lightning before they could get close enough to sink their teeth into her flesh. Geralt watched out of the corner of his eye as he dispatched his share of the dogs, and she didn’t show any signs of tiring, of reaching the limit she had been oh-so-close to in the previous chamber.
The last of the Hounds went silent, and Nithral emerged from his orb. The dance began again, in circles around each other, shifting to his back foot and feeling the bardiche’s blade slice through the air where his jugular had been microseconds before. That was too close for his liking; he dodged back and began to cast Yrden, hoping to slow Nithral down, but found he stepped back into his space just as quickly, and grabbed him by the front of his armour.
He hissed a command in Elder Speech, something close to, “Enough!” and pulled him closer, locking his bardiche against the blade of Geralt’s silver sword, and causing his arm to twist uncomfortably. “Ymostwng, Gwynbleidd.” Geralt flinched against the sound of his name, and felt a violent tug on his heart inside his chest. “Cú maethe esseath, nell'ea?"
Instead of frozen stiff, he felt his entire body go limp, and the flat of the bardiche blade slammed into his torso, driving the edge of his own sword into him. He toppled back, ribs screaming out in pain, and he could feel blood pooling through his armour at the shoulder - it was lucky that was the only place without mail his sword had struck. He was splayed out on his back, his arms feeling too weak to lift their own weight, and Nithral raised his weapon above his head - the first proper opening he’d exposed in the whole fight, and Geralt was powerless to exploit it.
A bolt of hot white lightning cracked the air and struck the Rider directly in the chest, boring a charred hole into his breastplate. The bardiche slipped from his fingers and clanged against the stone floor behind him.
The strength returned to Geralt’s body, and in a fluid motion, he took the hilt of his sword, brought himself up to one knee, then to his feet, and sliced Nithral’s arm off from the armpit. He fell into his back, blood rapidly pooling beneath the stump, and Geralt drove his sword between the breastplate and helmet until it hit the floor. Nithral let out a last rasping breath. Geralt caught his own, his lungs heaving like bellows. He was drenched in sweat despite the chill in the air.
“Are you well and whole,” Keira asked him. “I feared--”
“Unnecessarily,” he cut in. He even surprised himself a little with the undercurrent of bitterness in his tone. He wiped the blood from his sword and sheathed it, starting towards the raised area opposite the entrance. “Let’s look around.”
There was a pause, and for a moment he was foolish enough to think it would go unaddressed. “Sorry, are you actually angry at me for saving your life?” She sounded both disbelieving and irritated.
He stopped and exhaled through his nose. “I’m angry at you for lying to me.” He turned to fix her with a glare. “Dropped your damsel in distress act awfully quick.”
“Oh, get over yourself, Geralt.”
“I don’t appreciate being manipulated,” he scowled. His skin crawled again at the memory of Nithral using his True Name against him. He had hoped never to feel that sensation again. And now he had, and in the presence of Keira Metz, no less. If she had heard his name, she wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage when it suited her. He knew her well enough to be sure of that much.
“Really? Could have fooled me, the way you let Yennefer walk all over you,” she snipped back, quick. She didn’t have to think about which insult to reach for; it only reaffirmed his unease.
“Don’t bring Yen into this.”
“I see, it’s different when she does it, is that it?”
How could it not be? It didn’t surprise Geralt that others didn’t understand his and Yennefer’s relationship, but it did sometimes catch him off guard how little they seemed to regard it. Yen was not just any sorceress. Yen was not just anyone. He got ahold of his voice, and it was level and measured when he told her, “It’s like you said. We barely know each other.”
Keira Metz was not proficient at telepathy, or she would have heard Geralt add silently, And I’d like to keep it that way.