Wrongly have the heads burdened in blissful blindness seen the spring as the cradle of the awakening. When nature blooms in fresher greens and the skies explode in pure blues so bright the sunshine gets lost amongst so very few clouds, that sometimes touch the mountain peaks and other times, they roll down on morning fogs.
If that was the light, then winter was darkness. The sleep of all that was kind and prosperous brought chills from caves, from depths of earth and paved to hymn awake the hills of monsters. Fogs were grey and poisonous, the skies were infinite in coals and lead and through the snows, untamed dunes of iced death, one rider has been separated from his horse.
There were times to fight and there were times to run.
His breath was in his temples. All senses drenched in the stimulation of sharp inhales. Followed by too short exhales, were it not for endurance, fatigue would have washed over the scars the right side of his face carried as the ground would carry forever the marks of roots.
One foot in front of the other, his boots dug into the white nothingness, in a creaking run that if he could stop just for a second, the fine ice on top would no longer be able to stop the snow from swallowing him whole. Though a silver longsword was in his right hand, there was no ponder of looking back, no second of desiring a breath. His amber eyes focused on pulsing the tip and out of the path up.
Once on top, he slid down and his hardened heels finally hit the solid ground of an almost crumbling stone bridge. A tall fortress in ancient ruination, completely lone and still stood before Eskel.
From behind, the chattering sound of wood grew closer. It laughed as it came for him. Each second arrived with another thousand punctures of the snow, a thousand thin legs moving so fast they shivered plates of armory he could only compare to trees from the brief encounter he barely escaped.
As there were good times for running, experience devised for Eskel lessons that there were times too when swords would do him no good, perhaps especially against newer threats. Only fools would dwell in counting on their blade, no matter how sharp, when the enemy shivered frivolity of perfect parry.
The second he took for a proper breath was spent away putting his sword back. He made a run past the frail, once sturdy, bridge. Its columns used to sustain curved ceilings, a tunnel leading into what now, may have looked like the desolation in which the darkness lurked, while in the past, it used to be a heaven, a place of relaxation and of earthly warm waters that unclogged any veins, eased any muscles.
Rivers must have ran cold.
Eskel ran past the entrance pavilion, half collapsed inside. He jumped over the artisan fountains, cracked, dry and home to patches of white on dirty black stone; until he reached the center of a yard, because the ceiling has long been blown to shreds by the strong winds that hurled these sides of the continent.
No moon, no stars. Just the thundering clap of wood on wood, now louder than before. The monsters lurked from quieter snows, to pavements they climbed with speed they stole from clouds stagnant on the sky, forestry of statues.
They were two seconds behind him, he guessed and only those two seconds of thought he had in his advantage before in the flutter of his traveling cloak, Eskel turned around. The bridges of both his palms ignited the air, a fire breathing dragon erupted from them.
Narrowed eyes and deathly glares, Eskel watched with gritted teeth and a locked jaw how the auburn flooded the oddest monsters who have managed to almost get a drop on him by pretending to be trees, back on the road. They have feasted on his horse, leaving him on foot for miles.
His lungs bathed in the newer warmth and the closest of the creatures turning to ash was ointment to the strength. From an angle, these were dolls on fire, marionettes with life and flesh sticking out from a rounded carcass. Their heads used to be just a hanging bush of hair, but that was first to burn and reveal eyes out of orbits, a tunnel tongue for sucking blood.
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WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )
Fanfiction𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐔.. The wolves that bow their heads have not lost the sharpness of their teeth, but for the second in which their heavy breath has fanned the kinder hand. Its sleeve of red builds the bridge between the species, to...
