WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

002. seeing is believing..

Cavernous shadows froze their bones. Further inside the valley, each step dug into the earth. Stone's cold, its narrow halls seemed those of a prison without bars, going for all eternity in a splitting image of Hell itself.

Condescending mist of pure darkness should have clouded their vision away from the trails they followed and perhaps into the instincts of fear that humans experience in the dark. Their minds did not play tricks, not even in the obscurity of Azaras boxed lantern dangling between them; their tensioning silence was too strong to trigger anything else but an adrenaline response.

Each time a speck of the space between rails turned to a pool of dried blood, each time the shadows revealed in the orange light clawed paths, scratched in the walls of the mine, Geralt and Azaras knew they were nearing an answer, or at least would at some point. For now, there was no visual guarantee of monsters, nor even finding the missing villagers.

Though unhappy about it at first, Azaras was quite glad Geralt found, as per usual, a middle way. By first undermining her capability to carry out the target's killing, he insisted to join her in the descent down the infernal abyss of these abandoned mines. Were she to come face to face with the monster which she has been hunting, he'll give her the chance to settle the score; and if she were to be sloppy and fail, he'll be there to finish it off.

It wasn't the concept behind it which brought, at last, some joy to her numb heart, but the simple fact that after two years, she wasn't entirely alone for once.

From everyone out there, Geralt's path crossing with hers again felt like a good reminiscing of a buried happiness and entombed past. But their meeting also came with the promise of an end. Before ever meeting Geralt and even after, Azaras recalled having been rather scared of Witchers. Their mutated nature, unnatural glint of their eyes, those were superficial aspects, but perhaps it scared her more thinking there was such a ghostly being to walk emotionlessly the world.

Now, she knew better, for she has become that too. A heavy door has crushed the royalty in her, killed the woman who baked and laid in grass to watch the clouds; it forged in blood a passive soul.

The light flickered in her lantern only partially. Beyond that point, the darkness was the subejct to Geralt's enhanced senses. A tingle alerted him and he interfered for both their sakes in the nick of time. His right arm wrapped around Azaras and pulled her back from in front of him to now stumble against the wall. Wearing his full armour, the cloak fit right in with the darkness, so Geralt raised the material and duck his head. The right hand gestured down at the lantern and wordlessly Azaras understood.

She lowered the light and hid it too, under her own travel cloak. They made quite some strong sounds, between the stomps of their boots and the clicks of the metal they carried, but once this position commenced, the only sound which remained was a silence, slowing fading into the noise which Geralt felt, caverns away, approaching.

"Quiet," he murmured the strong demans, having felt her squirm to straighten up. His low voice swayed her in no way at all to cease the little tingle of her quiver against the hard cavern wall.

Azaras had a certain darkness around her eyes, a paint she wore, even back in the day, as a sort of symbol of her eyes' beauty. Green surrounded by black, fit right in with the scenery, because the woman bent down and curled one finger around the edge of Geralt's cloak meeting with the wall. She pulled it aside enough for only her right eye to glance out. Unlike him, her senses weren't all on peak; she had to relate on what she was most certain of and seeing was a definite equivalent to believing.

Geralt did not have to risk a glance to know what Azaras might be seeing. The beast was carrying a still live prey for a while. Blood was gushing from some part as it was dragged across the rails and for some reasons, though struggling, in the humane way, to escape, they could not scream or speak. Not that so deep into the ground, anyone could hear.