“What do you want, warrior?”
The man soaked in blood grinned. His eyes were black, his skin was snowy, and the veins in his face and exposed hands pulsed with dark power; but he was no witcher. He couldn’t be. His grip on the silver-bladed sword was awkward, unused to the weight. He did not have the build of a monster-killer. If not for the magic, and the blood, he would look weak.
“I want my witcher, of course,” he rasped.
The lord scoffed and sipped his wine. “You cannot have him, and you will die if you continue this foolish quest,” he said flatly. “You may have cut your way through my men to reach here, but you are human. Humans cannot contain witcher magic. Do you want to die?”
The man laughed. It was a hideous sound, loud and rough and mad. The lord frowned, and squinted, looking closer. It was hard to tell, when the man was so far away, but…
The cup slipped from his suddenly cold hand.
“Yes,” the man soaked in blood said, his grin that of a madman who died a long, long time ago. “But it will be by his hand, and no one else’s. No one said I was human.”
“Jules,” the lord gasped.
“No. My name is Jaskier. Now give me my witcher, Father.”
~
Geralt pressed his fingers to his eyes again, gritting his teeth. He still wasn’t used to the hazy shadows where his vision used to be. Luckily the torturer was inexperienced; Geralt wasn’t fully blind. Yet.
His fingertips brushed gingerly against the raw, puffy scar at the corner of his right eye. He knew it was only a matter of time before they gouged the organs out of his head. He would fight, of course. He would kill. But his eyes were less important than--
The stench of blood. Metal and sweat. Rage. Witcher potions.
Linseed oil. Buttercups.
The sea.
Geralt attempted to stand, but his feet were still healing. His heart was beating too fast. He turned his head, towards the dim square of light that was the window of his cell. Surely not…
“Jaskier?” he whispered.
The lock clicked. The door opened. Geralt took a deep breath, and tasted the flat, salty-sweet tang of blood and offal. Under it was Jaskier, though—unmistakably his bard.
“Jask,” he repeated, and lurched to his feet. The form in the light gasped, then rushed forward to embrace him. Geralt wrapped his arms around Jaskier and held him too tightly, trembling with relief. Alive. Safe. Maybe the gods existed. Maybe Destiny had taken pity on him.
But… why did Jaskier smell like witcher?
Pulling away, Jaskier pressed a vial and a sword hilt into Geralt’s hands. Geralt sniffed the bottle as his fingers curled into the familiar indentations of the leather grip. Swallow. Potent. Too potent. It would make him sick to drink it.
“I need you to kill a monster,” Jaskier said.
Geralt felt a feral grin spread across his face. “Give me a scent,” he replied, “And their head will be yours.”
Jaskier held a piece of fabric up to his face. Geralt breathed in deeply, and growled in hate and anticipation. He knew that scent. It was carved into his memory as deeply as the voices of his brothers.
“He’s wounded,” Jaskier told him. “Not enough to slow him down, but enough to cause upset. Can you smell him, Wolf?”
“I smell him,” Geralt hissed, popping the cork from the bottle of Swallow.
“He’s all yours, my dear. I’ll clean up the trash behind you.”
Geralt growled again, drank the potion, and darted around Jaskier. A monster to slay, for his bard. There was no task better suited to him.
~~\0/~~
Ten Years Previously
It was a fine thing, to be free and untethered. Truly he was meant to exist this way.
But Jaskier had tasted the stability of love, and now he could not be satisfied with the adrenaline of lust. So he waited at the inn for Geralt to finish his latest contract, instead of leaving for the nearest court or brothel—one and the same, truly. Full of rich men paying for the use of others’ bodies. And Jaskier was tired of it all.
Nilfgaard had fallen. Cintra had been restored. That didn’t mean there weren’t still monsters to clean up—both beast and man. Whilst Geralt specialized in the former, Jaskier concentrated on the latter. Like now, as he wrote a letter to a contact in Redania containing coded and magicked information. The old men who called this backwater village home were good at hiding, but their soldiers were not. Jaskier had seen them, and their weapons, and their fine steeds. And their sorceress.
She was good, but Yennefer was better. And with the entire force of her Lodge behind her, she could easily sway the woman to give up her lord and his sons. Jaskier allowed himself a small smile as he signed the letter with a tiny bird. Yennefer still wasn’t his favorite person, but only because she wasn’t Geralt. Other than that small detail, there was no one he trusted more.
With the three of them on the trail, Ciri wouldn’t have an enemy on the entire continent within a decade.
Not that she knew the extent of her parents’ goals. The last time Jaskier had seen Ciri, she had laughed that they were all too protective of her. She was a woman grown, with a wife and a place as a weapons-teacher. It didn’t matter how grown she was, though. Not to them.
Jaskier frowned. It was wrong of him to be so protective of her, when he wasn’t even her father. But he would still burn the world to the ground in her name. Was this how her grandmother had maintained her station? This blind loyalty that ensnared the hearts of the powerful until they couldn’t imagine a world without her?
Did it matter? They would root out every speck of conspiracy, to keep her safe. They would kill everyone they had to.
Jaskier pushed himself to his feet abruptly and paced the room. These thoughts, though frequent, and often quite logical, frightened him. He had asked Yennefer to poke about in his head to find any seed of madness in him, but she had said there was nothing other than what all men had. Jaskier had not been violent when he was younger.
When he was ignorant.
He sighed, and sat again. Nothing for it. He’d have to hope Geralt came back without wounds, so they could spar, or fuck, or both.
“I do so wish I understood what’s happened to me,” he murmured, leaning his chin in his hand. “There’s so much beauty and delight in this world, and yet the one thing that doesn’t move me is death. Hmm.”
“Is that so, little one?”
Jaskier shot to his feet and whipped around, his hand going to his dagger. In the corner was a shadow, undulating, covered in eyes of green fire. The lights of the candles and setting sun seemed to leech away into the inky dark of the shadow. The scent of ancient blood on cold stone filled the room.
Jaskier scowled and took his hand from the dagger’s hilt. “Mother,” he said dryly, and bowed. “Stop sneaking around like that.”
A wet chuckle, like a drowned person choking, and the shadow resolved into a tall, broad woman clothed in rags. She smiled, baring her fangs endlessly stained in blood. “But it is so fun, my dear boy,” she cooed, cupping Jaskier’s face in her sea-cold hands. “You are just as easy to frighten as your father. What funny creatures, men.”
“What do you need, Mother?” Jaskier asked. “We’re quite a ways away from the sea. A goddess of sirens should be with her people, in the waters.”
Her smile grew soft, her enormous wings mantling around them both as she pulled Jaskier into a gentle embrace. He hugged her back immediately, breathing her salty scent deeply. He’d missed her. Only a year, and he’d missed his mother, the daughter of Storms and Death.
“I need you to promise not to hate me,” she murmured.
“I could never hate you, Mother,” Jaskier replied.
“Not even if I granted your wish to know?”
“No. Your blood is in my veins. You know I want more than is good for me, always.”
She laughed again. “The sea takes, and takes, and takes, and gives but rarely. It is time I tell you.” She pulled back enough to tilt his face up to look into her eyes of storm-fire. Her expression and voice were gentle as she said, “My blood is in your veins. It is awakening. I am fading, and soon you will take my place, the lord of death at sea.”
Jaskier went cold. “Mother…”
“Hush. I am losing power. It is a cycle, like the tides. I Saw your coming fifty years ago, and that is why I seduced your father, married him in the way of humans, and bore you. Now you are coming into your own. You will take my place and feast on those who trespass in our beloved ocean. Do not be sad, my pearl. I am not dying. I will simply go where the ones before me went.”
“Mother.” Jaskier licked his lips, gathering his courage. “Mother, I can’t leave Geralt.”
His mother smiled indulgently. “You needn’t leave him. You can keep him in the depths, like my father kept my mother. You can even let your little sorceress friend visit once a moon. But you must come home when I fade. You must take up the chalice. There are too many humans who seek to tame the sea. They must remember why they worship us.”
“I’m not god material.”
“Neither was I. It comes to you. Don’t you feel it, my pearl? That jealous love. That lust for the blood of those who hurt those closest to you. That is the sea within you. Answer the call of the sea.”
