Red- The Witcher

Words

Sage

The moment the night had gone quiet, I chased Geralt and Cirilla away, making them take my son away too. It was the only thing I could think of to keep them safe, all of them. Cirilla tried to argue with me about fleeing with the man who hunted her but I made her understand. Geralt tried talking to her even through he was still bent over the fact that I was staying.

Jaskier didn't mind staying with me and Yennefer had unfinished business with Fringilla and Francesca about their shared visions. And me, I was in the center of the chaos in Cintra.

I was in my room, fixing the sheets of my bed when the door swung open and Eredin barged in. He pulled me away from the bed and pinned me against the wall, his fake arm on my arm and his good one, tightened against my neck.

He breathed heavily like an animal, his air blowing against my skin. I couldn't touch the floor because he had raised me to his height. "Where are they?"

"Who?"

"Don't play stupid with me!" he yelled, hitting my head against the wall and I groaned. That's when I placed my hands around his wrist, wheezing, as I tried to push his hand off and my eyes began to roll back.

"I can't breathe," I struggled to say. His green eyes moved around my face and he slowly loosened his grip but his hand was still around my neck.

"That Witcher, Cahir, and Cirilla," he said slowly but in an enraged voice. "Where are they?"

"I don't know," I said. "They didn't tell me so you wouldn't preform a Dol Durza on me."

"Oh that's fine," he lightly chuckled. "I know that you have a tether to all of them. That's what Danika did with me."

"Would you treat her like this?" I asked, tilting her head.

He scrunched his nose, sharply inhaling and let go of me. I dropped, landing on my knees and coughed, trying grab air into my lungs.

"I trusted you!" he yelled. "I gave you your son back!"

"You chose to," I replied. "And you chose to believe that woman in my mind was real. How stupid of you. I wonder how many mistakes you've made as a stupid leader."

"Oh shut up!" he shouted at me. "You should've just finished running towards me so this would've been a lot easier. You would've made a perfect Rider."

"I would never ride by your side."

"You will when I destroy this entire world in search for that girl," he said, his words filled with pain and meaning. "In the process, I kill your lover and your son. Sage Anika Dyffryn, mark my words: you'll either die in vain or be my right hand."

"Eredin," I stated, watching his finger drop from pointing at me. "Eredin Bréacc Glas!" I was too slow when he shielded himself with a spell he didn't have to speak to cast, and the waves of my voices pushed him against the wall.

Once the waves were gone, he charged at me, with every anger and power in the Spheres and drew his sword, shoving it in my chest.

"Danika," he whispered, closely into my ear as I wheezed. I trembled, trying to grab the blade that with piercing my abdomen, stopping blood from spewing out of me, and I began to cry. "Danika, I know you're in there."

"No..."

"Voleith Meir told me you were," he stated. "And you had almost come out. Come to me, my love. Listen to my words and come."

I wheezed once more, feeling the life pull out of me. I tilted my head, mouthing for him to stop this lullaby but he wouldn't. He was so anger-driven that he was exercising this spirit out of me. Just like the vision I had with the demonic witch, my entire life was vanishing. The thing keeping me alive was slipping away. The banshee I thought was gone was coming back to take her rightful place in the world was returning.

"Eredin," I heard a voice say, the same voice I heard when I was running to him.

"Please," I whispered, coughing blood. He drew the sword from me and caught my slump body.

"I'll tell your son, Cirilla... Geralt," he said, brushing my hair. The same hair that I felt consume in a fiery red, the original color, as the artificial ash white was getting drained. Eredin contorted his fingers, pulling the soul out of me and I heard her scream in her lifeless form.

I coughed out blood once more and I felt her leave me, all alone when she had saved me years ago. I had cried out for someone to save me and here she was, abandoning me.

My face broke more into sobs as I my vision hazed as I gasped for life. Danika floated above me in my last flashes of consciousness, and I felt her bless me with a last vision of me and my son in our old home in Nilfgaard.

The End