Chapter Text
It was slow, moving through the foggy moor. The dew not yet settled. The sound of the spectre cutting through the grass could be heard if you listen, but the poor victim was not listening hard enough. A man who’d been travelling for days, escaping to the next village over for fear of prosecution. His hands were stained with blood for the woman he loved, and he accidentally killed. The man’s guilt was feasting on his belly, rum and whiskey he’d been trying to burn it away with did nothing more than stir the bile.
Vomit stained his boots, upchucking again, dry heaving by the side of the road. He gagged, sipping water from his hide, he persevered on. Through the fog and tall grass he could see his destination. The village was a good size for him to disappear into, in a dip of land behind a mighty castle, large sea rock behind, waves crashing upon the cliff in steady beats. It was lively enough to have an open pub. A place to further drown his sorrows.
A scratch. That’s all it takes. Deep and unseen. The scratch that leads into madness. His guilt the trail of breadcrumbs leading the spectre to its feast. He stumbles into the warm stone building, stragglers and early morning travellers dipping into their vices once more before starting their day, those who’ve not rested since the previous evening.
A stumble and fall into the bench, his eyes unfocused. Sweat pooling on his brow as he replayed his crime. Over and over until the slosh put in front of him wasn’t enough to drown. He swallowed his guilt, coins tossed on the table and asked for a room. Sleep his sorrows away until they no longer felt so raw.
But it did nothing to quell the festering wound left by the spectre, the wound he didn’t know existed. The spectre stayed in the shadows, enjoying the meal it had been given. The guilt filled it’s belly for the first time in ages. But it wasn’t enough. The spectre was patient. This wound would fester more until it consumed the man’s body, until he was empty in madness or until he ended his life. And it would be fed. After, it could sense the delicious trail of guilt and sorrow in this village, it would feed again. The shadow demon grew satisfied in that it would no longer feel the acid gnaw of hunger.
A place destined for madness.
Years passed and those who did not live and die in this village never stayed for long. Some stories would say it cursed. People would grow mad, men and women slitting their throats in the street. Hanging themselves in the gallows. Screaming and becoming belligerent. Locked away for the rest of their lives. Holy men dared not step foot on the plagued ground. And the king grew sick with it. The disgrace handed down to him from generations before. The blame put on a mad King, his Great-Great-Grandfather now long dead, buried in the crypt below his feet.
With three wives dead, a fourth with a child on the way, hopeful for a son. He buried himself into resentment for the life he’d been given. Ungrateful for the fortune and wealth. Ungrateful for the ease in which he was able to live.
That’s what you resented him for.
You’d been given away as soon as your parents realized you had the gift. Trained and tasked with becoming the mage you were today. A king’s mage. The Cursed King’s mage. You’d seen this lineage’s descent into madness and were expected to stop it. You lurked in the shadows of his life, willfully standing by as wife after wife failed to produce him a son, the curse of the town pulling them into madness.
The first threw herself from a tower. The second put rocks in her pockets and walked her and her newborn daughter into the sea. The third was locked away in the asylum, screaming until her throat bleeds. The King, unsatisfied with his brood, took on a fourth wife. Maybe this time she’ll provide him a true heir.
But in all this, you felt, maybe you were the ungrateful one. You were given whatever you wanted, whatever resource you could possibly need or want. And you didn’t even have to fetch them yourself, a courier would pluck your herb and slaughter your animals. Your hands, shaking as they may be in grief for your position, no longer have the dirt and scars from your youth.
“You’re a beauty.” He’d mused. Your old King. He’d sought for you, the talent you’d possessed when you’d felt yourself still a girl. You were naive then, unknown to you the curse he brought on his back and lay at your feet. The dance in court, a seduction to your new position. Whether it was for you or him there was no clear answer. You knew, as your master had taught you, that he would never see you as more than a pretty ornament. A tool for his mastery.
It was better than digging up radishes and eating half cooked potatoes in your family’s shed. You wouldn’t care to wonder what they are doing now. Your parents and sisters are most likely older, more gray and more dead. A lineage you know not if it was passed on, but you weren’t of them anymore. Not for nearly half a century.
He was fat, your king, stuffing his sorrows down with roast pork and wine, blind with it. You mused if he could even perform at all let alone produce an heir on his part. His pretty bride, sold to him by her own family, a noble’s daughter who was afraid, very afraid.
“Will I be cursed?” She asked, made aware of her pregnancy, the seed having taken root in her belly like the beginning of her end. A death sentence created by rumor. “When my babe is born, would I sooner throw myself into a pyre than try to produce again?” Her eyes dazed, wide, and unblinking.
You were meant to console her, you assumed. Tell her what she wanted to hear, that she wouldn’t fall into the same madness that had taken every Queen before her.
“Madness only takes you if you let it.” A small vial for the health and well being of her baby. “Persevere and keep yourself strong.” That’s all you could give.
You’d come here softer than you should, calloused from your training, but training and real world experience were very different. The first time the old King had come to you in ramblings and despair you’d given him something to sleep, you tried to find the source of his pain like he’d instructed, but he’d soon fell. Locked away in the stone walls of this castle until the day he’d passed, his son taking the throne hastily after and finding a proper bride who quickly sired him a son. Your current King. The one who took his throne only after his Father was slipped into madness like a dream in the night. Swift and abrupt, unending nightmare of a dream.
He’d hung himself in the main hall.
His son was a child then, twelve when he’d taken the throne. You’d served a boy who’d barely found his own cock before he was giving you instruction. Pompous and confident in the wake of his Father’s death, the boy seemed so sure he would not meet the same fate. But now as his beard turned gray without an heir he claimed he was given a headier curse.
“Is there anything you could do to guarantee me a son?” His face half lit by the candles in your room, red and puckered with age.
“There is nothing guaranteed with magic.” You state and wrap your gown further across your body, the King having interrupted your bath, gown sticking to your legs. “I’ve done everything I’ve known to try to give you a son, everything ethically possible.” His mouth stank of rot. Spitting, snarling, hair pulling,
“Well try something unethical then or it shall next be your neck hanging from my gallows.”
It was hard to be grateful for this life, but swallowed down by the guilt of others suffering. Those you could see without food or drink, empty bellies in his Kingdom he cared not about more than his own life.
There was a way, but it was never something you’d expected to be pushed to do. It seemed madness had already taken root in him, or perhaps it was you for you were not sure who was more mad for this act. Him requesting it or you following through.
It made you sick, but it was not something you could show. And when he asked it done you appeased him. The memory of the sweat and crying, your fingers aching with it. The unrest afterward.
The village, thick with mud from the last rain, smelled of shit. You thought about all of the other mages that were gifted with you, their gilded cages in high towers above prosperous cities. You’d picked the short straw. Or perhaps you’d been the short straw that your old King picked himself.
Winter was approaching, snow would soon lay thick on the ground, so you had to move quickly or else you’d never get a moment of peace until well after the birth of the new prince. Your fingers found the precarious rock’s surface. A deep crawl belly to salty rock to make your way into the sunken cave, the ocean spraying against your side, soaking you to your slip as you made entrance.
A wave and the fire roared to life, illuminating your place of escape.
You’d found it in a dream, leftovers from the mage before you, burned on a pyre for bringing this curse upon the village. The curse upon her king. But you knew it wasn’t a curse, you’d known that for a while now. It was your purpose to identify the source of the curse, but you had. It was not something you knew how to fight.
The beast was uncommon, a whisper heard in the shadows, a task only a Witcher could take on with hope to survive. The last Witcher that had stumbled upon your town had gone mad in his own right, succumbed faster than any before him and threw himself into the sea.
That seemed like a lifetime ago.
The cave was hot with the fire, clothes discarded, you kneel at the foot of the fire. Seeking, in fear for your own life now, the guilt of what you’d just done was enough to take root deep in your belly and rip you apart. You had to find another Witcher. And soon.
You drift into a memory. Just a girl, well before you knew what you would soon become. Your hands, clean, reverting to calloused and thick with dirt. You hadn’t had your first blood, your breasts mere buds, new and tender, you were back on your family’s farm.
You saw him there for the first time. The man they called the White Wolf. He threw a creature at the foot of a man’s hearth. An exchange of coins, your eyes looking up to meet his; gold. You felt bewitched by them. A wash of familiarity... You’d been waiting near his horse, a gut feeling you couldn’t resolve. He’d paused, you were sure looking down at your dirty face and hands. An empty belly. A moment of eye contact while you waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He’d slipped you a coin, pulled from his pocket and into your grubby little hands. One coin. Before his back turned and he rode his horse out of the village and far away from you.
You felt it, beneath your fingertips. Smooth and cold. You marveled at how men would kill for this shiny piece of metal, given no more worth than what they themselves give to it.
When you’re pulled back to your present it was there, between your thumb and forefinger, the only difference being fifty years. But the world was vast. It would take a certain orchestration of events to get your Witcher here. It would be your paranoia maybe, or the fact that the spectre knew what you were doing, but you could see the shadows shift out of the corners of your eyes.
The Witcher needed to get here fast, the Hym seemed to have locked it’s sights on you.
…
The Witcher heard tales of a beast, coin for another, and another. He’d never had good enough fortune for money such as this. Every village he went to seemed to have a story for another, and another. On and on until the realization. A clear path on a map leading him to an unknown destination. He wondered who’d orchestrated this. You could sense it from your sanctuary.
The wonder of the plan. The hope that it would be a lost love. You cared not for who he loved but only wished he would quicken his feet. The paranoia grew by the day. The fear buried in your gut and sickness that washed over you as the Hym suckled at the guilt, feeding it’s belly on your mistakes.
A trail of breadcrumbs stained the bodies of creatures you’d placed into his path. Bodies slewn and dispatched for thankful villages and the satisfaction of a job well done. It had been months before you saw him cross the threshold of your castle. The paranoia and fear growing in bile in your belly. You weren’t sure he was even real until your King called an audience with him.
The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. He stepped into your throne room and there was a primal feeling in your gut. You’d brought him here, to you. The Hym scratching at your back. You knew your King would seek any cure to save his life that he could, even if it wasn’t actually his life that was in danger.
You could imagine the spectre’s claws in your back as your King began to speak.
“I’ve heard tales of you, Witcher.” Your King’s voice, sure and booming for respect. “The White Wolf.” You watched Geralt, expressionless, almost bored. “I have a task for you Witcher.” You saw those gold eyes shift from him, a pull towards you that you’ve created. A raised eyebrow. “My family has been cursed for nearly a century now.” He stood from his throne, stepping towards the man. “My useless mage has not found a resolve for said curse,” His eyes drift to you as well as your King’s. You willfully show no response. Your King scoffs, “I’m hoping to employ you for the cause of saving my kingdom.” More to save himself.
The Witcher looks to you, the familiarity on his features, the same familiarity you felt when you’d met him as a child. You could see the gears of his mind turning. He turned his gaze from you slowly as your King continued.
“We’ve been under this curse, turned my family, my citizens into madness.” He says, “With not a clue as to the cause. If you listen you can hear the screams from the mad in the asylum upon entrance. If any being born of magic can break this curse, it would be you Witcher.”
Like poison in your veins, black and thick, you dipped down into that madness. Sweat on your brow, sorrow and rough cries in the night. It’s how he found you.
“How long have you known of this Hym?” His voice gruff, deep. You could see in the mirror your sunken eyes and vacant expression. A pallor of death.
“Long enough to be a fool to be taken by it.” You breathe, dampening a cloth to place on your neck. He leaned against the wall by your door, reflected in your mirror.
“Were you the one laying beasts in my path to lead me here?” Those eyes, focused and calculating, sent a chill down your spine as you turned to him.
“How else would I have acquired a Witcher?” His eyes focused on the shifting shadow. A pass of the spectre hiding behind you.
“What is your guilt?” He asked, hands clenched tightly by his sides. You swallow roughly, the words not wanting to peel from your throat.
“To be fair,” You bemoan, “I deserve death.” A hand braced on the table. “It feeds on the despair of the guilty and has served its cause.” You can’t sink down into it, the drowning.
“Killing.” He states. You shake your head, swallowing roughly.
“Saving.” He circles the room, stepping close to the shadow, the spectre moving out of his way. “Brutal men... rapists and murderers. Women who drown their children based on their sex.” Your heart picks up speed as he settles in front of you, “It deserves to die with me.”
“So you would let it take you?” His eyes looked through you, burying themselves into your thoughts.
“I deserve this madness.” A hand placed over your belly to steady yourself, “I’ve given the King what he wants at the cost of my own conscience.” You had to admire the Witcher for his poker face. Not many men would not show emotion when you admit to a child sacrifice. The give and take of magic a cruel fate for the King’s needs. It felt justified and left you craving his disappointment, his ire. But it hadn’t been given.
“Slaying a Hym isn’t easy.” You could feel the spectre, the emotions it felt at the cost of the proximity to the Witcher, but departing a Hym from its meal was a feat on its own.
“You’re Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf,” you muse, “If anyone can do it, you can.” You see him swallow, eyes focusing in on yours. Close enough that you can feel his breath.
“We’ll have to go somewhere a little more private for that, its lair will be the place tied to your guilt. We have to go there.” The sorrow, the lust for death, a sweet release from this ebbing guilt. You could almost taste it.
Your shadow shifted and he could see the horns. A demon to be exorcised.
He followed you to the cliffs, trusting your footing to be true as you climbed down into them, sliding your belly against the wall and watching as he held his sword aloft to fit through the small space into the cavern aglow by fire.
“I’m going to need more light than this.” His eyes focused on the damp walls and dim glow. A log pulled from the fire. He lit the torches in the corners of the room, a deep dark hole that led further into the cave systems beneath the city forgotten, his back to it while he faced you. “I need you to focus on something, anything else but the guilt… preferably something pleasant.” He steps towards you, “It’s going to come out of hiding and what you will feel will be intense, whatever you do, don’t succumb.” A vial, procured from his pocket and quickly drank, eyes blackening.
“You make it sound so easy.” A drawl from your mouth as the whispers begin. The haunting demon who plagued your every thought, the despair that grew on your tongue.
“Focus.” His voice cut through, pushing you back against the far wall, “And stay here.” His sword gripped in his hand. “Do not interfere.” He turned his back to you, the shadows shifting on the ground as the Hym exposed itself. The tall spectre’s horns brushing the top of the cave. Red eyes glowing in the pitch black.
Elder spilled softly from your mouth, his sword turning in his hand, before striking the beast. Your vision blurred, knees sinking into the floor as it flooded your airways, burning down your throat.
“Again!” a yell. A rod against your back, you straighten. Your training, so long ago now. Tissaia. The old mage taught you well. Raised you practically in the cobwebs of her home. The place that birthed every proper mage of your lifetime. The chaos that spilled from your fingertips, the fire burning in your belly, stoked by her hand. “You’re better than this.” Her beauty matched only by her venom. Her bite, fierce and lethal. “Do better.”
You flourished under her through perseverance and determination. These private lessons you’d suffered through long before you were brought into the circle, years before you would ascend, years before your time in court.
“Focus!” Was that her voice or… your vision snaps back to the present, Geralt damp with sweat, blood cascading down his arm you find yourself panting on the ground. His silver sword slashes across the demon’s belly. A high pitched whine. You could feel the edges blur again, ebbing and flowing, taking your consciousness.
A boy birthed in the asylum. A slight deformation. You hushed him quietly as you robbed him in the night. Villain. That’s what you were and what you’d come to be. This boy wouldn’t survive. A slim chance with the ailments he was born with. He would soon be ripped from this world regardless, that’s how you reasoned in choosing your prey. Your last ingredient for a spell you shouldn’t be casting.
You’ll do this, and then it will take you. That blissful Hym. It will give you the final push into cowardice. The push you would need to finally be rid of this place. This useless mage you’d become. His belly was round, so were his cheeks, his legs kicked in the cold air of the cave as he wailed.
Elder words spill from your mouth as you raise the blade into the air. Striking true between the third and fourth rib. A wheeze and he’s gone.
You found yourself gasping for air. Screaming as the wind picked up, a strong force over your mouth and chest. You felt trapped, cold stone against your back. It clears, your vision focusing in the dark. Whimpering against Geralt’s hand, “You’re fine.” Gruff words of comfort. “It’s gone, you’re free.” You catch your breath against him, pinned down by his arms in your anguish. What had you done?
You wail. Embarrassingly and out of code. You wail. He lets you struggle out of his grip, hands beating on his chest. “I told you to let it take me!” His jaw clenched, letting you sit up, backing yourself away from him and pressing as far into the wall as you could possibly be. “I told you--”
“I know what you said.” Voice level as always, even though there’s blood crusting on his arm and neck. “I saved you--”
“I should not have been saved.” He scoffs, sitting on his ass.
“I thought that was the Hym talking.” He shrugged, steeling you with his eyes. You glare.
“It was not.” He hummed, looking around the room, seeing the vials and herbs strewn about, glasses broken in battle.
“I thought Mage’s brave.” He mused, “You’re a coward.”
“I brought you here for a reason, Witcher.” Your head leaning back against the stone.
“If you wanted to die, you wouldn’t have brought me here at all.” His brow furrows, in mock contemplation, “But why wouldn’t you let it just take you? Once you’re dead you’d no longer have to concern yourself with a Hym anyway. It doesn’t torment the dead. So that means…” You roll your eyes, avoiding his gaze. “You care enough about the people here, as much as your cold dead heart could, to save them from the same fate…. How noble of you.”
“Shut up.” His smirk, you let a heavy breath, eyes dry and itchy from crying, “I still killed a child.” The smirk drops, and he sighs as well. You were sure your womb would be aching if you had one.
“The child,” He starts, “Wouldn’t have survived either way?”
“It might have if--” You shake your head, rubbing your eyes with your hands.
“You wouldn’t have chosen a child not destined to die.” A glare, your glare.
“You don’t know me.” You spit, pushing yourself up from the floor. He follows suit, standing across from you.
“You’re right, I don’t.” A step closer. “But I’ve known Mages like you.” Another step. “And Mages tend to have a soft spot for children.” You could feel anger bubbling up in your chest,
“I’ve never wanted a child,” You bite.
“Regardless of that you no longer have the choice.” His canines were sharp up close. “And that kills you.”
“If only.” He scoffs, close enough to taste his breath. You remember the rumors about Witchers, the rumors you knew to be true. How they were formed. “You know,” his head leaned down, forehead brushing yours. “I’m sorry for what they’ve done to you.” A stab into his chest, drowning out in a primal need. The comment ignored as he smashed his lips with yours, tangling his fingers into your hair. His teeth were sharp against your bottom lip. You beat him back with your fists, blood smeared on your bottom lip, his pupils blown wide. “Cad.” You spit, a grin, and you meet again.
The stones rough against your back as you submit to him, his palms wrapped around your wrists and pinning you to the floor, a rough thrust and a gasp from first contact. Those eyes, black around the edges still, boring into your very soul as his hips meet yours in a brutal pace, splitting you into eye rolling pleasure.
The friction of primal need. A burning of adrenaline in your veins. His hands release yours, sitting back on his haunches he grips your hips tightly. Your own hips rocking to meet him on their own accord, chasing the pleasure you so desperately sought. The slip you’d been wearing, torn on the sides from hasty tugging, he leaned over lavishing a nipple into his mouth, your fingers drifting between the two of you to bring yourself over, breath being caught in your throat, face red with exertion you push him over, his back meeting the stone floor where you straddle his hips.
You slip yourself down his length, legs still shaking in orgasm and press your hands to his chest, rocking yourself, grinding your oversensitive clit against the course hairs at the base of his cock. His head hits the ground, hands bruising your hips as you work both him and yourself to a release. Head tossed back, sweat dripping down your spine. He spills himself inside you while you work yourself through your own aftershocks. Panting and suddenly extremely tired. Drained, you collapse next to him, his seed dripping down your thigh.
“Collect your coin,” You pant, “And be gone before I wake.” You could see from the corner of your eye, his head turning towards yours. A pause, your breath catching. You felt bare, naked before this man. The forgetfulness of lust crusting on your leg. You needed him gone, if only to drown your sorrows once more before moving on. You see his mouth open, then close, deciding against whatever he was originally going to say. A moment of quiet.
“As you wish.”