@kingofdirtandnothing ( geralt & oberyn )
Most days, there’s a simple process to his work, and it goes like this: somebody hires him, he asks as few questions as he needs to find out what he need to know, and then he kills a monster. Ideally, but not necessarily, he gets paid somewhere along the way.
And then there are the days where it’s all backwards.
He hadn’t even intended to pass through the city gates, thinking instead to circle the sprawling mess of buildings and carry on his way through the night. But the grainy half-light of dusk had brought with it the sound of screams ricocheting from the walls of the dilapidated, lean-to buildings that spill out past its walls, the same kind of semi-permanent slums that spring up around city gates everywhere.
The fleder had killed two people before he’d managed to blind it with fire, pulling the igni sign between his fingers and flinging the yellow-orange flame into its face, too wide and too littered with teeth, before cutting it from its throat to its waist. Later, the area will fill with thugs and prostitutes and petty criminals, but for now there’s nobody to watch him methodically extract its fangs, strip the sinew from its wings.
He takes its head, and more in hope than expectation, passes into the town proper.
“Witcher, are you?” a guard asks him, squinting through the dark and the gentle rain. “Prince Oberyn’s looking for a man like you to deal with a—oh.”
Geralt raises the severed head, still dripping sticky black blood, and is sent to meet a man who may or may not see fit to retroactively employ him for a task already completed. Unlikely, since he has no motivation now to part with his coin, but only time will tell.
He’s been filthier than this, certainly. His hands are dark with drying blood and the rain has left his hair tangled, but it has washed the worst from his armour. Still, they take the head from him before they let him pass inside, unsure what to do with the slab of flesh and bone that is clearly heavier than they expected, and more grotesque beside, and Geralt is ushered through into a room that has almost certainly never seen anyone as grimy as he is.
The man within it, too, stands in stark contrast to Geralt himself, in his fine clothes. Geralt observes him for a moment, tips his head.
“They tell me you were looking for a witcher.”