Vaes Drakarys - Present Day
Angelus - First Person
"Again."
Enoch and Triss came at me from the left—Enoch diving low with his jaws open, green flames gathering in his throat, while Triss channeled fire magic from his back in a spiraling arc to cut off my escape routes. From the right, Mikhail hit me with a concentrated beam of frostfire that carved a white line across the sky and struck my barrier hard enough to make my scales vibrate. Below and behind, Balerion surged upward with Drogo on his back, the black wyvern's massive jaws aimed at my trailing wing while Drogo prepared to launch himself from Balerion's spine in a leaping strike that had become his signature opening move.
Four attackers. Three dragons. Coordinated, experienced, and fighting with everything they had.
I loved these sessions! It's been a while since I've stretched my wings.
The barrier I'd erected around the engagement zone hummed with power—a hemisphere of compressed draconic energy roughly two miles in diameter, centered above the harbor of Vaes Drakarys. Inside it, we could unleash our full combat capabilities without worrying about shockwaves flattening buildings or stray fire incinerating the fishing fleet. The barrier also served as visual containment, reducing our aerial battle to flashes of multicolored light and distant thunder for the spectators below.
Speaking of spectators.
The Red Faith contingent—Kinvara, Melisandre, Thoros, and a dozen lesser priests—watched from their compound's courtyard, necks craned upward with expressions ranging from academic fascination to naked terror. The Wyrmborne medics had set up near the training grounds along the harbor wall, supplies laid out and healing magic primed for the inevitable injuries. Daenerys stood at the observation platform with Jorah and Jhogo, arms crossed, her purple eyes tracking the battle.
Ciri, Arya, and Geralt watched from the wall nearby, their enhanced senses letting them track details baseline observers would miss.
But all of that was peripheral. My attention was on the fight.
Enoch's green flames reached me first. I rolled left, letting the toxic fire stream past my right wing, and extended my foreclaw to catch the tail end of the blast—absorbing the energy and redirecting it as a superheated pulse that slammed into Mikhail's frostfire beam. The collision produced a steam explosion that obscured the sky in white vapor.
Good. Obscured visibility favored me—I had thermal sensing my opponents lacked.
Through the steam, I tracked Mikhail's heat signature pulling up and banking hard to reposition. Enoch and Triss were circling for another run. Balerion was—
CRACK!
Drogo hit me in the ribs.
The Dragonborn had launched from Balerion's back while I was focused on the energy exchange, crossing the gap in a single impossible leap using every ounce of his considerable strength. His arakh—Wyrm-Forged, blazing with crimson light—connected with my side in a blow that would've cut a lesser wyvern in half.
Against my scales, it drew a thin line of blood and hurt like absolute hell.
I twisted, catching Drogo with my tail before he could drop away, and sent him spinning toward the harbor below. He twisted mid-fall—and Balerion swept under him for a clean retrieval.
Good, I projected to the group. That's the first clean hit in three sessions. But you telegraphed your approach—Balerion's upward feint gave away Drogo's jump. The Cannibal won't give you an opening that obvious.
It worked, Drogo pointed out, settling back onto Balerion's spine.
Against me at seventy percent, yes. Against the Cannibal at full combat intensity? That feint costs Balerion a wing and you your life. I let genuine pride warm my next words. But the coordination between your launch and Mikhail's beam was well-timed. That's the kind of combined assault that creates openings against an opponent with matched raw power.
I felt Mikhail's acknowledgment through our bond, threaded with frustrated determination. She knew I was pulling my punches—fighting at three-quarters strength rather than full force. These exercises weren't about defeating my own forces. They were about showing them what fighting at this tier felt like, so the Cannibal's power wouldn't paralyze them when they encountered it for real.
Reset, I called. Enoch, Triss—lead the next engagement. Mikhail provides suppression. Drogo, Balerion—hold back and watch for the opening I create when I deal with the lead attack. The Cannibal fights alone, but he compensates with overwhelming aggression. Learn to read the gaps in that aggression.
Below us, the medics were already on alert. These sessions had never resulted in serious injuries—I controlled my output with surgical precision—but the accumulated fatigue and minor damage wore on my opponents. Triss had taken a glancing hit from my wing last session that left bruises across her entire left side. Enoch's tail still showed a slight bend from where I'd gripped and redirected his dive two weeks ago. Mikhail's left wing membrane had needed healing after I'd demonstrated exactly how fast a draconic opponent could close distance when properly motivated.
Each injury was a lesson. Each lesson brought them one step closer to surviving the Cannibal.
Enoch came in hard and fast—the young green wyvern had grown significantly since hatching, and while he still lacked the raw power of his siblings, his agility in the air was unmatched. Triss rode his back, her crimson scales catching the sunlight as she wove fire magic into a web of interlocking barriers designed to box me in.
Clever. She was building a cage rather than attacking directly.
I let them think it was working for three seconds—just long enough for Mikhail to commit to her suppression angle—then I accelerated.
The thing about fighting opponents who coordinate well is that their coordination depends on timing. Disrupt the timing, and the coordination becomes a liability.
I folded my wings and dropped fifty feet in a heartbeat, passing through the gap between Triss's fire-cage and Mikhail's frostfire line before either could adjust. The shockwave cracked the barrier's inner surface and sent ripples of distorted air cascading outward. I came out of the drop directly below Enoch, inverted, and caught his underbelly with my foreclaw—not hard enough to injure, but firmly enough to spin him into a roll that nearly threw Triss from her seat.
Then I climbed straight up, directly into the path where Drogo and Balerion had been positioning for their flanking strike.
Balerion's eyes widened—as much as a wyvern's could—and he banked hard to avoid a collision. Drogo, already committed to his leap, found himself airborne with his target suddenly moving toward him at a speed that turned his offensive maneuver into a desperate dodge.
I caught him. Gently, relatively speaking.
My foreclaw closed around his torso with precisely enough pressure to immobilize without crushing, and I held him at arm's length while his arakh scraped uselessly against my scaled grip.
Dead, I said simply. Enoch—incapacitated. Triss—dismounted in approximately four seconds once Enoch loses stability. Mikhail—out of position with a three-second correction time, during which a real opponent would have closed distance and engaged. Balerion—forced into a defensive maneuver that opens his wing to a crippling strike.
I released Drogo, who dropped and landed on Balerion's spine with a grumpy demeanor.
Total engagement time from my acceleration to the kill: approximately six seconds. I let that sink in. The Cannibal may not have my technique, my experience, or my tactical sophistication. But he has raw power that matches my own, and when you apply that kind of power with animal cunning and thousands of years of predatory instinct, you get results just as fast. You need to assume that anything slower than what I just demonstrated gets you killed.
Below, on the observation platform, Daenerys turned to Jorah with an expression that mixed concern with iron resolve.
The Red Faith compound's courtyard had gone very quiet.
We landed on the training grounds thirty minutes later, after three more engagements that gradually increased in intensity. The medics moved in immediately—healing Triss's bruised ribs from a wing-clip she'd caught during the second exchange, realigning a minor dislocation in Enoch's left wing joint, and treating the assorted cuts and contusions that had accumulated over an hour of combat against an opponent who was holding back and still faster, stronger, and more lethal than all of them combined.
I settled into my alternate form as the medical teams worked, conserving the energy I'd expended during the session. The shift from my true dragon body to the Dragonborn form I wore in public was second nature now.
Mikhail landed beside me and performed her own shift—something she'd only recently mastered, the ability to compress her full dragon form into a Draconian body built for the ground-level world. Her white scales rippled as she transitioned, and what emerged was striking in a way that drew eyes even among the Wyrmborne, who were accustomed to draconic beauty.
Her Draconian form stood tall and powerfully built, with dark brown skin that contrasted sharply against the white-silver scales covering her body like natural armor. The scales swept across her shoulders, down her arms, and covered her legs entirely—thick, interlocking plates that caught the light with a metallic sheen. A massive tail extended behind her, ridged with white spikes that tapered to a curved blade at the tip. Her hair was wild and black, a voluminous mane that fell past her shoulders in untamed waves, framing a face with sharp features and golden eyes that burned with inner fire. Clawed feet gripped the stone, and her hands ended in scaled fingers tipped with white claws.
The frustration in those golden eyes was barely contained.
"I know you were holding back," she said, her voice pitched low enough that the medics wouldn't overhear. "Seventy percent, maybe less. The acceleration you used in that last sequence—I couldn't even track it until you were already past me."
"Sixty-five, actually. And the acceleration was closer to eighty—I wanted to demonstrate a specific point about speed differential." I reached over and touched where her wing membrane had thinned during a hard banking turn. The tissue was intact but strained. "You're compensating for your frostfire imbalance by favoring your fire side during aerial combat. It's creating a slight asymmetry in your turns that I exploited three times today. When you face the Cannibal, any asymmetry becomes a vulnerability he'll find instinctively. You need to integrate the ice component more fully."
"I know." She flexed her wings, wincing slightly. "The ice component needs more raw material to develop properly. I've been meaning to ask—is there a source of concentrated ice magic we could acquire? Something like what the Balrog provided for fire?"
"There might be. The Wall in Westeros is ancient magical ice—possibly the largest concentration of ice magic in the known world. But that's a resource we can't access yet, and we have more immediate concerns." I turned to where Enoch was being fussed over by two medics while Triss sat beside him, healing magic flowing from her hands into his wing joint. "Enoch—how does the joint feel?"
The green wyvern lifted his head and chirped—a sound that had evolved from the adorable proto-roar of his hatchling days into something deeper and more resonant. His mental voice touched mine through the bond.
Sore but functional. The correction the medics applied is already integrating. I'll be flight-ready by tomorrow.
"Good. Your aerial agility is your strongest asset in the Cannibal fight, and I don't want it compromised by accumulated training damage." I looked at each of them—Enoch, Triss, Mikhail, Drogo, Balerion. "You're improving. The coordination between you has doubled in effectiveness since we started these sessions, and Drogo's hit on me today was something I genuinely didn't anticipate. But improvement isn't the same as readiness. The Cannibal is an ancient predator with power that matches mine and instincts honed over centuries of hunting and killing anything draconic that crosses its path. When we face it, we need to be better than good. We need to be exceptional."
Drogo, who had dismounted from Balerion and was inspecting a new dent in his Wyrm-Forged armor with professional detachment, looked up.
"Then we keep training until we are," he said, his deep voice carrying the simple certainty that had always been his greatest strength as a warrior.
I nodded, feeling something warm settle in my chest that had nothing to do with fire.
These were my people. And I would make them ready for what was coming, no matter how many training sessions it took.
Vaes Drakarys - The Arcane Lyceum - Three Days Later
Kinvara - Third Person
The lecture hall was designed for a hundred students. Today it held twice that number, with Wyrmborne mages, Battlemage Corps members, and assorted military personnel packed into every seat and overflow observers standing along the walls. The architectural style was unlike anything Kinvara had encountered in Volantis—clean lines, functional aesthetics, and abundant natural light streaming through crystalline windows that she suspected were grown rather than cut.
Two women stood at the front. Kinvara studied both of them.
Yennefer of Vengerberg—the midnight-scaled Draconian whose violet electricity still occasionally arced between her horns when she wasn't paying attention—moved with the confidence of someone who had taught at Aretuza and found this environment far more receptive. Triss Merigold—crimson scales visible on her shoulders and arms beneath a practical tunic, red hair bound back, blue-green eyes sharp with intellectual enthusiasm—handled the demonstrations with a deft touch.
"Portal magic," Yennefer began, her voice carrying easily through the hall despite its conversational volume, "is not a spell in the traditional sense. It's a negotiation. You're asking reality to fold itself—to connect two points in space separated by distance and, sometimes, dimensional boundaries. Reality doesn't enjoy being folded. It resists. It distorts. And if you lose control at any point, reality punishes that failure in ways that are catastrophically permanent."
A murmur ran through the assembled mages. Several of the younger ones exchanged nervous glances.
"That said," Triss added, stepping forward with a warmth that balanced Yennefer's clinical approach, "the Wyrmborne magical system offers advantages traditional Chaos magic doesn't. Your connection to Angelus creates a stabilizing resonance—an anchor, a fixed point the portal can reference. This reduces spatial drift. Think of it as having a lighthouse in a storm. You still need to navigate, but at least you know where the shore is."
Kinvara sat in the back row between two Wyrmborne guards whose attention split between the lecture and their prisoner. Melisandre occupied the seat beside her, ruby choker catching the light, her red eyes fixed on the demonstration with a hungry gaze.
"Their magical framework is completely different from anything we practice," Melisandre whispered, the admission clearly costing her something. "R'hllor's gifts work through faith and fire—we channel divine will through our belief, and the Lord of Light shapes the world in response. What they're describing is purely mechanical. It requires neither faith nor a divine intermediary—nothing but skill, knowledge, and raw power."
"Which raises uncomfortable questions about the source of our abilities," Kinvara said quietly. "If magic can be systematized this thoroughly without any divine component, what does that say about the magic we've attributed to R'hllor for centuries?"
Melisandre didn't answer. The question was too dangerous, and they both knew it.
At the front of the hall, Yennefer raised one hand. Violet lightning gathered between her fingers—a controlled current she shaped into a ring about three feet across. The air inside shimmered, then opened, revealing a view of the harbor district from roughly a mile away.
"This is a short-range observation portal," she explained. "Non-traversable—nothing can pass through, and it requires minimal energy to maintain. It's the foundation technique all portal magic builds upon. Before you can fold space, you need to learn to see through space."
She held the portal steady for ten seconds, letting the audience absorb the view, then closed it with a flick of her wrist.
"Now—who wants to try?"
The next two hours were a masterclass in magical education that Kinvara found genuinely fascinating despite her circumstances.
Triss worked with the students individually, guiding them through the visualization techniques observation portals required. Of the forty mages who attempted it, roughly half managed unstable flickers—brief, wavering windows into nearby locations that collapsed within seconds. Seven produced stable portals that lasted long enough to be useful. And two—a Draconian Battlemage with silver scales and a younger Dragonborn whose concentration produced visible veins of magic across his forearms—created portals clear and stable enough that Yennefer nodded in approval.
"You two stay after class," she told them. "You've got the aptitude for traversable portals, and I want to test your limits before we move to the next stage."
The traversable portal demonstration was something Kinvara wished she could have recorded. Yennefer created a full portal—a shimmering doorway crackling with violet energy—that connected the lecture hall to a courtyard roughly half a mile away. She walked through, waved from the other side, and walked back. The process looked effortless, but Kinvara noticed the faint sheen of sweat on Yennefer's brow and the slight tremor in her hands after she closed it.
"Even for me, that's not trivial," Yennefer admitted. "Portal magic requires concentration, power reserves, and spatial awareness that can only be developed through practice. In combat conditions—where you're managing threat assessment and physical exertion simultaneously—the difficulty increases exponentially. Most of you will master observation portals within weeks. Traversable portals will take months of dedicated training. And long-range portals, the kind that can move people across continents, may be beyond all but the most gifted among you."
"But the potential applications are extraordinary," Triss added. "Tactical insertion of strike teams. Rapid evacuation of wounded. Supply chain logistics that bypass conventional transport entirely. Strategic intelligence gathering that no spy network can match." She smiled, the expression of a woman who genuinely loved her subject. "The Wyrmborne military is already the most formidable force in the known world. Add portal capability to your existing advantages, and you become something no enemy can predict or prepare for."
Kinvara leaned toward Melisandre. "They're not just teaching combat magic. They're building a logistical infrastructure that would make the old Valyrian Freehold look primitive."
"And they're doing it openly," Melisandre replied, her voice carrying an edge that Kinvara recognized as professional jealousy struggling against honest admiration. "No secrecy, no mystery, no priestly gatekeeping. They're distributing magical knowledge to their military as standard capability. Do you understand what that means? Their common soldiers will eventually have access to abilities our most senior priests spend decades mastering."
"If they master them."
"Even if only a fraction succeed, the numbers are overwhelming. Twenty mages who can create tactical portals gives them strategic mobility nothing in our experience can counter." Melisandre's hands tightened in her lap. "We need to learn everything we can while we're here. Not for R'hllor. Not for Volantis. For ourselves."
Kinvara regarded her subordinate with approval and caution. Melisandre was right—the knowledge being demonstrated in this lecture hall was worth more than anything the Red Faith could have gained through theological negotiation. But the admission that they were learning for themselves rather than for their god represented a crack in the foundation of everything the Red Faith had built.
A crack that Kinvara suspected Angelus had deliberately engineered.
The Drowned Whale Tavern - Same Day
Thoros - Third Person
Thoros of Myr had always believed that the best intelligence came from taverns.
Not from formal interrogations or diplomatic functions or carefully staged audiences with powerful people—those provided the information they wanted you to have. Taverns gave you the truth: the things ordinary people said when they were three cups into an evening and their guard was as low as their voice was loud.
The Drowned Whale was a mid-tier establishment near the harbor district, catering to dock workers, low-ranking soldiers, and the merchant class that kept Vaes Drakarys's economy functioning. Thoros sat at a corner table with a cup of surprisingly excellent wine—the Wyrmborne might be military fundamentalists, but their vineyards were better than anything he'd tasted outside of Lys. His Wyrmborne guard sat two tables away, close enough to intervene if necessary but far enough to give the impression of casual surveillance rather than active imprisonment.
The guard's name was Sergeant Morvik, a copper-scaled Dragonborn with a patient demeanor and a sword that Thoros suspected could cut through castle walls. He nursed his own cup of water—guards didn't drink on duty, apparently—and watched Thoros with the relaxed attention of someone who'd decided his charge was more likely to embarrass himself than cause trouble.
Thoros took a long drink and listened.
"—saying the contract board posted three new hunts this morning," a Dragonborn woman at the next table was telling her companion, a scarred Draconian whose acid-yellow eyes marked him as a black-element type. "One's a pair of vampires. Not the blood-sucking corpse kind from the old stories—proper monsters. Three farms east of the city, livestock drained and two laborers found dead with their blood gone."
"Witcher monsters," the scarred Draconian said, shaking his head. "That's the fifth new species we've cataloged this season. The Conjunction brought all kinds of nasty things into our territory, and they keep spreading. At least the griffins and leshens have predictable behavior. These vampires are something else—intelligent, fast, and they don't show up on standard magical detection."
"The Dragon Witchers are handling it. Them and the White Wolf—word is they're taking the Red Faith observers along on this one. Should be interesting to watch holy fire meet unholy blood-drinkers."
"Rather them than me. I'll stick to garrison duty, thanks."
Thoros filed the information away and kept listening. Over the next hour, as the tavern filled with the evening crowd, he pieced together a detailed picture of daily life in Vaes Drakarys.
The Wyrmborne discussed their work with casual openness like they had nothing to hide. A Dragonborn mason described the construction projects expanding the harbor district—new housing, expanded market facilities, and what he called "the Hatchery," a large enclosure near the city's eastern edge for raising draconic creatures from eggs. A Draconian smith complained that demand for Wyrm-Forged weapons outpaced the supply of raw materials, which sparked a discussion about mining operations in the interior. Those mines were producing metals at a rate that would have impressed even the Ironborn.
What struck Thoros most—and what he knew he'd report to Kinvara later—was the contentment.
Not the false contentment of people afraid to speak freely. Not the brittle satisfaction of subjects who praised their rulers because punishment was the alternative. The Wyrmborne spoke about their lives with the genuine comfort of people who'd found something worth belonging to. They complained about their jobs, argued about politics, traded gossip about their commanders' personal lives, and debated tactical doctrines with a freedom that would have been impossible in Volantis. There, the wrong word in the wrong tavern could see you sold into slavery by morning.
"Another cup?" the barkeep asked—a Draconian woman whose green scales and cheerful disposition suggested she'd chosen this profession over military service by preference rather than necessity.
"Please." Thoros handed over the Wyrmborne currency his guards had provided for incidental expenses. The coins were unlike anything he'd encountered—dark metal stamped with draconic symbols that seemed to shift slightly in the light. "Better wine than most of what I've drunk in Volantis, if I'm honest."
"The vineyards east of the city were established in the first year of settlement. Lady Angelus gave specific instructions on soil preparation and grape selection. The vintners say it shouldn't work according to conventional agriculture, but the results speak for themselves." The barkeep set a fresh cup before him. "You're one of the Red Faith visitors, aren't you? The priest with the drinking reputation."
"My reputation precedes me, it seems."
"This is a small city. Everyone knows everything." She leaned on the bar with an easy posture. "Finding what you're looking for?"
"Still figuring out what I'm looking for, if I'm honest." Thoros took a drink and let the wine settle warmly in his belly. "How long have you been here? In Vaes Drakarys, I mean—before the Wyrmborne arrived, or after?"
"After. I was born in Yunkai—a free woman, technically, though that distinction meant less than the slavers liked to pretend. When the Wyrmborne liberated the city, I had the choice: conversion or civilian residency. I chose conversion because I wanted to actually live, not just exist on the margins of someone else's empire." She held up her scaled hand, examining it with the fondness of someone admiring a flattering garment. "Best decision I ever made. I work because I want to, I own this tavern instead of renting from a master, and nobody can sell me, beat me, or claim my body as their property. If that's serving a dragon, I'll serve her gladly."
Thoros nodded slowly, filing that testimony alongside everything else he'd collected.
When he left the tavern two hours later, Sergeant Morvik fell into step beside him with the smoothness of long practice.
"Learn anything useful?" the guard asked, genuine curiosity threading through his professional neutrality.
"I learned that your people are genuinely happy," Thoros said. "Which is the most dangerous thing you could have shown me."
The three leaders of the Red Faith delegation reconvened in their compound that evening, settling into the common room that had become their de facto council chamber. The building was comfortable—better than Thoros had expected for a luxurious prison—and the Wyrmborne guards on the walls maintained their watch with a professional disinterest that looked like soldiers who had more important things to worry about than three priests having a conversation.
"I need to tell you both what I saw at the Arcane Lyceum," Kinvara began, her voice carrying a measured tone. She described the lecture in detail—the portal magic, the systematic approach to magical education, the traversable doorways that Yennefer had demonstrated with apparent ease.
Thoros listened, drinking from the bottle he'd brought back from the tavern, and offered his own report in exchange. The tavern conversations, the contentment of the civilian population, the economic structures that produced genuine prosperity rather than the extractive wealth that defined every slave-based economy he'd encountered.
"They're building something that will outlast all of us," Thoros said when they'd finished exchanging intelligence. "The magic, the military, the economy—none of it depends on any single person. If Angelus vanished tomorrow, the systems she's created would continue on their own momentum. That's not an army or an empire. That's a civilization. And it's less than two years old."
"The Red Faith is over five thousand years old," Melisandre said quietly, her red eyes fixed on the flames dancing in the hearth. "We have temples in every major city from Asshai to Oldtown. Thousands of priests, millions of followers, centuries of accumulated knowledge and influence. And yet—" She hesitated, and when she spoke again, her voice carried a vulnerability Thoros had never heard from her. "What they demonstrated today in that lecture hall exceeded anything our most gifted flame-speakers can achieve. The portal magic alone would have been considered divine intervention in any Red Temple in the world. She's teaching it as a standard military capability."
"Your faith in R'hllor is shaking," Kinvara observed, not unkindly.
"My faith in R'hllor hasn't changed. My understanding of what R'hllor is has." Melisandre turned from the fire, and the ruby at her throat pulsed with reflected light. "The flames still show me visions. They showed me dragons and fire and a queen who would reshape the world, and those visions were true. But I attributed them to R'hllor because that was the only framework I had. What if the flames were simply showing me reality? What if the power we call R'hllor is something more complicated—or more mundane—than we've allowed ourselves to consider?"
"That line of thinking leads somewhere the Flame-Keepers in Volantis would call heresy," Kinvara said.
"The Flame-Keepers in Volantis don't have a dragon who predates their god by millennia sitting a mile away, casually demonstrating powers that make R'hllor's gifts look like candle tricks." Thoros took another drink and set the bottle down with a deliberate thud. "I lost my faith years ago—you both know that. The fire brought me back from death, and I still couldn't believe a loving god was behind it. Being here, seeing what Angelus and her people have built, doesn't restore my faith. But it does answer a question I've been avoiding."
"What question?" Kinvara asked.
"Whether the power we wield comes from where we think it comes from." Thoros met her eyes steadily. "Or whether we've been telling ourselves a comforting story about a force we don't understand—because the truth is too frightening to face without a narrative wrapped around it."
The fire crackled in the silence.
"We need more information before we draw conclusions," Kinvara said finally, her diplomatic training reasserting itself over the theological crisis brewing beneath her composure. "Tomorrow, we've been invited to accompany the Dragon Witchers on a contract expedition. Monster hunting—these "Witcher creatures" the Conjunction brought to this region. It'll give us a chance to see their combat capabilities firsthand and interact with the population outside the city walls."
"And to see whether the fire still answers when we call it," Melisandre added softly, her gaze returning to the hearth.
None of them said what all three were thinking: that they'd come to Vaes Drakarys expecting to find an Apostle of R'hllor and a queen touched by divine fire. Instead, they'd found something far more dangerous to their understanding of the world.
A civilization that didn't need their god and worked anyway.
The Eastern Hinterlands - Two Days Later
Geralt - Third Person
The hunting party assembled at dawn at the eastern gate of Vaes Drakarys, and Geralt took a moment to assess the group.
Ciri stood beside him, Zireael across her back, her ashen hair pulled into a practical tail and her green eyes bright focused with anticipation. Arya occupied Ciri's other flank, lighter-armed and more compact, Needle at her hip and her amber eyes already scanning the terrain beyond the gate with predatory attention.
The Wyrmborne contingent consisted of eight Hunters—Draconians and Dragonborn who specialized in monster-hunting operations that had become increasingly necessary as Conjunction creatures spread through the region—and four Battlemages from Lysara's corps, their bladestaffs held with a casual readiness of trained soldiers. Their equipment was uniformly excellent: Wyrm-Forged weapons, armor combining hardened scales with metal plating, and alchemical supplies that Geralt recognized as modified Witcher preparations.
The Red Faith delegation was stranger still. Kinvara, Melisandre, and Thoros stood near the gate, flanked by four lesser Red Priests and two Wyrmborne guards whose expressions suggested they considered babysitting duty beneath them but accepted it without complaint. The priests wore traveling clothes rather than ceremonial robes—a concession to practicality that Kinvara had apparently insisted on.
"You've never seen a Witcher hunt," Geralt said to Kinvara as the group formed up for departure. Not a question—a statement establishing the terms of what was about to happen.
"I've seen men fight monsters before," Kinvara replied evenly. "In Volantis, the priests of R'hllor sometimes deal with creatures conventional soldiers can't handle. Shadow-spawned things from the deep places of the world."
"Those are different from what we're hunting today. Witcher monsters—leshens, griffins, vampires—have specific behaviors, weaknesses, and countermeasures that can mean the difference between a clean kill and a disaster. If I tell you to stay back, you stay back. If I tell you to run, you run. No heroics, no flame-casting unless I specifically request it. Clear?"
Kinvara's expression shifted—not offended, but recalibrating. She was accustomed to being the authority in any room she entered, and taking orders from a white-haired swordsman with cat eyes was clearly a novel experience.
"We're clear," she said after a moment. "We're here to observe and learn, not to prove anything."
"Good." Geralt turned to the expedition lead—a scarred Draconian huntress named Veyla with dark green scales, thick dark green tail and whose acid-yellow eyes and clinical demeanor reminded him uncomfortably of Lysara. She is one of the unique dual elements among the Wyrmbornes that managed to combined two very deadly natures. Acid and Poison. She has long teal hair with the top wrapped in a brown bandana. Wearing a open dark green jacket with brown color linings on her collar, her red necklace, cleavage and abbs showing in the opening (Geralt notices she's not wearing a binding undergarments for her breasts), her sleeves rolled up to reveal partial scales, brown gloves on both hands and her left forearm wrapped in brown straps. Dark brown pants with only her right pants leg rolled up, a belt equipped with potions and other tools, two different dark brown knee-high boots. Equipped with a cutlass and throwing daggers.
She notices Geralt checking out her cleavage and smirks in his direction. Forcing him to look away and pay attention to the objective at hand.
"What's on the board today?"
Veyla keeps the smirk for a few moments before shifting her expression to a serious one and starts consulting the rolled parchment she'd retrieved from the contract posting at the Hunter's Lodge. "Three contracts, all within a day's march east. First: a Leshen that's established territory in the Thornwood—local patrols have reported corrupted vegetation and displaced wildlife, matching the pattern you and the Dragon Witchers killed last season. Second: a Royal Griffin pair nesting on the coastal cliffs east of the Thornwood. They've raided livestock from three farming settlements and killed a shepherd last week. Third—" She paused, and something in her expression sharpened. "Two vampires. Not the folklore kind. The Witcher kind."
"Katakans?" Geralt asked.
"Based on the reports—drained livestock, two human fatalities with complete exsanguination, and they've evaded standard magical detection—that's Lady Angelus's assessment. She identified them as higher vampires of the Katakan subspecies. Dangerous but manageable with proper preparation."
"Katakans are clever hunters," Geralt told the group, shifting into the briefing mode that decades of Witcher work had made second nature. "They're faster than anything you've fought except maybe the wyverns. They can turn partially invisible in low light, and their claws shred standard armor. They feed on blood—not for nutrition exactly, but because feeding strengthens them magically. The ones we're hunting have been feeding for at least two weeks based on the kill pattern, which means they'll be at enhanced strength." He ticked off their weaknesses. "Silver weapons are most effective. Fire works to a degree. And they need to be killed completely—Katakans regenerate from injuries that would destroy most creatures, so we take the heads and hearts as confirmation."
"You're talking about them like an exterminator discussing pest species," Thoros observed from the back of the group.
"That's essentially what Witchers are." Geralt checked the edge on his sword—the Wyrm-Forged blade that had replaced his old silver weapon and proved even more effective against magical creatures. "We were created to kill monsters that ordinary soldiers can't handle. Our training, mutations, and entire existence are built around understanding these creatures well enough to destroy them efficiently. Unglamorous work. A specific skill set applied to a specific problem."
Ciri stepped forward, picking up the thread naturally. "The Dragon Witcher school—the one Arya and I are establishing—follows the same principles, adapted for the Wyrmborne. Enhanced bodies, specialized weapons, knowledge of monster behavior and weaknesses, and the tactical discipline to apply it all under pressure. Any of you who've hunted griffins or wyverns already understand the fundamentals. Witcher monsters just require additional specialized knowledge."
"And considerably more caution," Arya added, her amber eyes sweeping the group with an intensity that made several Wyrmborne hunters straighten involuntarily. "These things survived the Conjunction. They adapted to a new world and thrived. Don't underestimate them just because they're not as big as a dragon."
The group set out into the eastern hinterlands as the sun cleared the horizon, casting long shadows across terrain that shifted from cultivated farmland to wild scrubland within the first hour.
The Leshen found them first.
Geralt felt the change in the forest—the silence that settled over the Thornwood like a physical weight, the way the trees seemed to lean inward, the underbrush thickening into barriers that funneled movement along specific paths. The temperature dropped noticeably, not from cold but from the absence of the vital warmth that healthy forests radiated.
Old one. Entrenched.
He'd hunted enough leshens to read the signs the way a sailor reads the sky. The degree of corruption told you how long the creature had been nesting. This one had been here for months—the bark on every tree within sight was discolored, faintly grey, and the undergrowth grew in patterns that formed natural channels. Funnels. Kill zones.
"Stop," he said, raising his fist. The Wyrmborne halted immediately—they'd learned to trust his judgment in these environments. The Red Faith delegation was slower to comply, but Kinvara's gesture stilled them.
"It knows we're here," Ciri confirmed, her eyes unfocused as she extended her spatial awareness into the corrupted forest. "The Leshen's influence extends about three hundred meters in every direction from a central point—" She pointed toward a dense cluster of twisted oaks. "There. And there's something else, just like last time. A cold spot. A dimensional wound right at the edge of the Leshen's territory."
"Wraith," Arya said, Needle already in her hand.
"Seems to be a pattern." Geralt drew his sword, the Wyrm-Forged blade humming with energy that made the corrupted trees recoil. "The Conjunction damage creates weak points that attract both corporeal and incorporeal entities. The Leshen establishes physical territory; the Wraith anchors to the dimensional instability nearby. Symbiotic relationship, or convenient coexistence."
He turned to the Wyrmborne hunters. "Veyla—split your team. Four hunters and two Battlemages on the Leshen. The rest on wraith duty. Ciri leads the Leshen team; Arya handles the wraith. I'll float between both."
"And us?" Kinvara asked.
"Back line. Observe. If something breaks through, your fire will hurt both creatures—leshens are especially vulnerable to flame, and wraiths don't like it either. But only as a last resort."
Kinvara nodded, and Geralt caught the way her hands moved subtly into pre-casting stances. Whatever else the Red Priests were, they weren't helpless.
The Leshen attacked when they were forty meters from its core territory.
Roots erupted from the ground like wooden serpents, targeting the lead hunters with grasping tendrils that sought to entangle and crush. A murder of crows exploded from the canopy in a shrieking cloud of black wings and razor beaks, diving at the group from above. The Leshen itself materialized from the trunk of the largest oak—a towering figure of twisted wood and antler-crown, its hollow eyes burning with ancient malevolence.
Bigger than the last one.
The thought came clinical and automatic—the part of Geralt's mind that cataloged threats even as the rest of him was already moving. This Leshen stood nearly three meters tall, its antlers spreading wide enough to snag in the canopy, and the roots it commanded were thicker than any he'd encountered. Older creature, deeper roots, more territory to draw power from.
Ciri moved first.
She blinked—the Elder Blood-powered teleportation—and appeared directly behind the Leshen, Zireael already descending in a diagonal cut aimed at the junction between its torso and right arm. The blade connected with a sound like axe-into-heartwood, and the enchanted edge bit deep.
The Leshen screamed.
Not a sound—a pressure. A psychic howl of rage and territorial violation that slammed into the hunting party like a wall. Three Wyrmborne hunters staggered. One dropped to a knee, clawed hands pressing his temples. Geralt's Witcher hearing turned the shriek into physical pain behind his eyes, and he saw Ciri flinch mid-blink, her teleportation carrying her ten feet left instead of where she'd intended.
It's stronger than I told them. Adjust.
"Ears!" Geralt shouted. "It'll do that again—be ready!"
The Leshen whipped its remaining arm in a backhand that cut through the space Ciri had just vacated, the gnarled limb moving faster than something made of wood had any right to move. It missed her by inches—she'd already blinked again, but the displacement was sloppier this time, landing her on uneven ground that forced a half-stumble before she recovered.
The Wyrmborne hunters engaged the root network with their Wyrm-Forged weapons, the crimson-edged blades severing the grasping tendrils with more ease than mundane steel would have managed. The Battlemages targeted the crow swarm with focused fire spells—controlled bursts rather than area bombardment, picking off birds in tight groups that disrupted the flock's coordination.
Then one of the roots found a target.
A hunter named Tharos—copper-scaled, the same sergeant who'd assisted them on the previous expedition—took a tendril around his ankle. He cut at it immediately, training overriding panic, but two more erupted from the soil beneath him before his blade completed the swing. They coiled around his legs, his waist, and pulled.
The sound he made wasn't a scream. It was worse—a grunt of compressed agony as the roots constricted, tightening with force that cracked the armored scales along his ribs.
Three seconds. Maybe four before it crushes him.
Geralt was already running. He covered the distance in two strides and brought his sword down on the thickest root in a two-handed chop that would have split a man from crown to sternum. The Wyrm-Forged edge sheared through enchanted wood and the root recoiled, spraying black sap. He reversed the cut and took the second root on the backswing, then grabbed Tharos by the collar and hauled him backward.
The sergeant gasped—a wet, ugly sound. At least one rib was broken, maybe more. The scales on the left side of his torso had caved inward where the root had squeezed, the damaged plates weeping blood.
"Healer!" Geralt called, shoving Tharos toward the back line. "Keep pressure on the ribs. Don't let him lie flat."
A Battlemage caught the wounded hunter and dragged him clear, hands already glowing with restorative magic. Geralt turned back to the fight, his pulse steady but his mind cataloging the near-miss. That was four seconds from dead. These roots are stronger than the briefing reports.
"The totem!" he called, having located it earlier. "Southeast corner, buried under the root mass of that dead elm. Someone—"
Arya was already moving. She crossed the distance in a blur, her Dragon Witcher speed carrying her through the root barriers faster than the Leshen could redirect them. She dropped to her knees, hands digging into the corrupted earth, and pulled.
The totem came free—a carved piece of antler wrapped in woven bark and bone fragments. Arya drove Needle through its center, and the effect was immediate. The Leshen's form shuddered, its regeneration failing, its wooden limbs losing cohesion as the magic sustaining it drained away.
It screamed again—the psychic pressure wave weaker this time, but still enough to blur Geralt's vision—and hurled itself at Arya in a final, desperate charge. Branches and roots and the full weight of an ancient forest spirit bearing down on a girl who weighed barely nine stone.
Ciri appeared between them.
She blinked into position and caught the Leshen's charge with a thrust that punched Zireael through the hollow where its heart should have been. The Wyrm-Forged blade went in one side and out the other, and the creature's momentum carried it forward until it was close enough that Ciri could see individual beetles crawling through the cracks in its bark-flesh.
For one frozen instant, the Leshen's hollow eyes stared into hers. Something behind them—intelligence, hatred, the territorial fury of a thing that had claimed this forest—flickered and died.
Then it collapsed into a shower of dead branches and black ichor, falling apart around the blade that killed it.
Ciri pulled Zireael free, breathing harder than she would have liked. Not from exertion—from the adrenaline of watching that thing charge at Arya, from the split-second calculation of can I get there in time that had only one acceptable answer.
The temperature dropped.
The air went from cool to freezing between one heartbeat and the next, and Geralt felt ice crystals forming on his sword before he'd finished wiping the Leshen's ichor from the blade.
"Wraith!" he shouted, spinning toward the dimensional wound Ciri had identified earlier. "Everyone with Wyrm-Forged weapons, on me! Everyone else, back!"
The spirit rose from the ground like a column of frozen hatred.
It was worse than the one they'd killed last season. That wraith had been a faded thing—old, weakened by centuries of gradual dissolution, barely material enough to hurt anyone. This one was fresh. The Conjunction wound that anchored it must have been recent, pouring dimensional energy into a spirit that had gorged on the power until it was dense enough to kill.
The wraith took a female shape, its features twisted into eternal rage, and it was fast—faster than a fresh wraith had any right to be. It crossed the distance to the nearest Wyrmborne hunter in the time it took Geralt to draw breath.
The hunter—a young Dragonborn woman with rust-orange scales—got her sword up. Credit to her training. But the blade passed through the wraith's translucent body without the enchantment catching, and the creature's clawed hand raked across her chest armor.
CRACK.
The sound of Wyrm-Forged plate splitting under spectral claws. The hunter flew backward, slammed into a tree, and slid down with a groan. Four parallel lines gouged through her breastplate and into the scales beneath—not deep enough to kill, but the cold bleeding from the wounds was worse than the cuts. Frost spread across her torso from the impact points, coating her scales in white rime that made her gasp and curl inward.
"Spectral cold!" Geralt barked. "Fire! Get fire on those wounds before the frost reaches her core!"
One of the Battlemages broke from position to tend her, slamming a warming spell against her chest that fought the supernatural cold for territory. The hunter screamed at the contact—hot magic against freezing spectral damage—but the frost stopped spreading.
Arya intercepted the wraith on its second lunge.
Her Wyrm-Forged blade—imbued with properties that forced spectral entities into material existence—cut through the wraith's reaching claws and into its translucent torso. The creature shrieked—the soul-deep wail Geralt knew too well, the sound of a spirit that had forgotten what it was to be alive but remembered what it was to suffer—and solidified partially as the blade's enchantment took hold.
But partially solid meant partially strong.
The wraith twisted on Needle's edge, wrenching itself along the blade toward Arya with a mindless hunger that transcended pain. Its hands found her shoulders and the cold slammed into her like a hammer—Geralt saw her face drain of color, saw her eyes widen as her body temperature plummeted twenty degrees in a second.
Move.
He closed the distance in three steps. His sword caught the wraith across the back, the Wyrm-Forged enchantment completing what Needle had started—forcing the spirit fully into materiality. It solidified in a heartbeat, shifting from translucent to opaque, and the moment it became real flesh and bone rather than frozen energy, it became something he could kill.
The Wyrmborne hunters converged from three sides. Three blades struck simultaneously—two into the torso, one taking the head clean off. The wraith shattered into fragments of cold light that dissolved before touching the ground, and the temperature snapped back to normal as if someone had thrown open a furnace door.
Arya stumbled backward, breath clouding in front of her face. Her lips had gone blue. Frost coated her shoulders where the wraith had gripped her, and she was shaking from the cold that had burrowed into her bones and squeezed.
"Here." Geralt caught her arm and steadied her. His body ran hotter than a normal man's—one of the less celebrated Witcher mutations—and right now that heat was a mercy. "Breathe. The cold will pass."
"That was—" She clenched her teeth against the chattering. "That was different from last time."
"Stronger. Much stronger." He glanced at Ciri, who was already scanning for secondary manifestations with her spatial awareness. "Clear?"
"Clear," Ciri said after a moment. "Both entities destroyed. The dimensional wound is still there—it'll attract another wraith eventually—but we can mark it for a containment team."
Geralt nodded, then turned to find the Red Faith delegation standing exactly where he'd left them. Kinvara's composure remained intact, but her hands trembled—from restraining herself from casting. Melisandre had gone white-faced. Thoros gripped his wine bottle like a lifeline.
"That's a Leshen hunt," he said. "Any questions?"
Kinvara had several, but she saved them for the march to the next contract. Behind them, the Battlemage healers worked on Tharos's cracked ribs and the spectral frost burns on the young hunter's chest—both injuries requiring sustained magical attention that would drain the healers' reserves for hours.
Geralt made a mental note: Wraiths near Conjunction wounds are getting stronger. The dimensional instability is feeding them. This is going to get worse.
The Royal Griffin pair proved more straightforward—nesting on the coastal cliffs and terrorizing nearby settlements. The creatures were large, aggressive, and fast, but predictable. Griffins attacked from the air, diving on prey with talons extended, and the countermeasure was the same as always: barrier magic to disrupt flight, coordinated ground teams to engage the grounded creatures, and decisive strikes to vulnerable points once the aerial advantage was gone.
The Battlemages brought the female down cleanly—a triple barrier that tangled her wings at the peak of her stoop and sent her tumbling into the rocky ground where the hunters waited. She died in seconds, overwhelmed before she could recover her footing.
The male was harder.
Watching his mate fall triggered something in the griffin—a berserk rage that turned a predictable predator into something recklessly dangerous. He abandoned his diving pattern and came in low, screaming, talons raking the ground at speed. The barrier the Battlemages threw up caught his right wing, but his momentum carried him through, scattering the formation and putting him among the hunters before anyone expected contact.
Veyla took a talon across her forearm. The claw punched through the scales at her wrist—the thinnest point in any Dragonborn's natural armor—and opened her up from wrist to elbow. She hissed between her teeth, shifted her cutlass to her off-hand, and drove her blade into the griffin's neck from below as it reared over her.
It died thrashing, its claws scoring deep furrows in the cliff stone. The whole engagement lasted less than a minute. But the way Veyla's acid-yellow eyes tracked the creature's death throes—watchful, measuring, not relaxing until the last twitch subsided—told Geralt everything about the respect she'd learned to give these things.
"Clean enough," Geralt said as the hunters processed the kills. Veyla let a healer tend her arm with an impatience of someone who considered medical attention a luxury.
"They're getting better at this," Ciri observed while the rest of the party worked. "Six months ago, a griffin hunt this size required a full company response. Now a squad handles it in under a minute."
"Training and equipment make the difference," Geralt agreed. "And experience. They've fought enough of these now that the fear's gone. Once the fear's gone, the technical skills take over."
He paused.
"The vampires will be different."
The trail led them to a ravine system three hours east of the griffin cliffs, where caves offered shelter from sunlight and easy access to the surrounding farmlands. Geralt had been tracking spoor for the last hour—claw marks on stone, traces of dried blood that his enhanced senses detected long before anyone else's, and the distinctive musky scent that Katakan vampires left behind.
"Two of them," he confirmed, crouching beside a cave entrance. "Male and female, based on the scent. The female's larger—probably the dominant hunter. The male stays back and feeds on what she brings." He turned to the group. "This is going to be harder than the Leshen or the griffins. Katakans are intelligent. They know we're coming—they've been watching us since we entered the ravine. They'll try to separate us, pick off isolated targets, and use the caves to negate our numbers."
"So we enter the caves?" Veyla asked, her freshly-healed arm flexing experimentally.
"We don't enter the caves. We draw them out." Geralt stood, his gaze sweeping the ravine walls. "Blood bait—fresh, warm, in the open where the scent will carry. Katakans can't resist an easy meal when they've been feeding regularly. It's like offering wine to a drunk. They know it's a trap, but the compulsion overrides their judgment."
The Battlemages created the illusion—a wounded animal, bleeding and stumbling in the open ravine. The hunters positioned themselves in concealment, Wyrm-Forged weapons drawn. Geralt took the highest position on the ravine wall, where he could see both cave entrances and the kill zone.
"Kinvara," Geralt said, just before taking his position. "If one gets past us and comes your way—use as much fire as you can produce. Vampire flesh burns, and even a Katakan will retreat from sustained flame."
"Understood." Kinvara's composure was impressive, given that she was about to witness a vampire hunt with nothing but her faith and fire between herself and creatures that could tear through armored soldiers.
They waited.
Twelve minutes of silence, broken only by wind through the ravine and the phantom sounds of the blood-bait's labored breathing. Geralt controlled his breathing, slowed his heartbeat, and let his senses extend into the ravine like invisible threads.
There.
The female's scent, stronger now. Moving.
His medallion vibrated.
"Contact," he breathed.
The female Katakan came from above.
She dropped from the ravine wall like a stone, unfurling at the last second into a blur of pale skin, black claws, and a mouth that gaped far wider than any human's could. She was on the blood-bait in under a second. The instant she realized it was an illusion, she spun toward the nearest concealed hunter with a snarl that ricocheted off the ravine walls in overlapping echoes.
"NOW!"
The hunters sprang the trap. Wyrm-Forged blades flashed in the afternoon light as eight Wyrmborne warriors converged on the exposed vampire. The Battlemages hit her with simultaneous fire and binding spells that slowed her preternatural speed just enough—
But Katakans were fast.
Geralt had warned them. He'd given them numbers, comparisons, descriptions that should have prepared them. It wasn't enough. Nothing was enough until you saw it with your own eyes—saw a creature the size of a large woman move with velocity that made trained Wyrmborne warriors look like they were swimming through tar.
The female twisted between two closing blades with a flexibility that suggested her spine wasn't entirely bone, then raked her claws across the nearest hunter's chest plate—
SCREEEEEE.
The sound made Geralt's teeth ache. Metal and magic shrieking as four parallel trenches opened in Wyrm-Forged armor designed to withstand dragonfire. The hunter—a veteran Draconian named Marek who had fought in the Meereen campaign—looked down at the gouges in his breastplate with an expression Geralt recognized immediately.
Disbelief. The sick understanding that the armor you'd trusted your life to had just failed.
The Katakan launched herself toward the ravine wall in a leap that carried her fifteen feet up, blood dripping from her claws—she'd cut through the armor and into the scales beneath.
She sliced through Wyrm-Forged plate. That shouldn't be possible. Two weeks of feeding made her this strong—if we'd waited another week...
Arya caught her mid-flight.
The Dragon Witcher had positioned herself above the engagement zone for this moment, clinging to the ravine wall with her retractable clawed fingers dug into stone. She dropped onto the vampire's back as it tried to scale the wall, driving Needle into the junction of its neck and shoulder with both hands.
The Katakan screamed—part predator rage, part genuine surprise that something had gotten above her—and reached back to grab Arya with claws that had just shredded enchanted armor like paper.
One claw caught Arya's thigh.
She felt it punch through the leather, through the skin, into the muscle beneath. The pain was immediate and absolute—a white-hot shriek of nerve endings severed by a monster. Vampire claws carried a toxin that amplified pain signals, a predatory adaptation that paralyzed prey long enough for the killing bite. Arya knew this. Geralt had taught her. Knowing didn't help.
Don't freeze. Don't you dare freeze.
She ripped Needle free and kicked off the vampire's back, twisting mid-air to land on the ravine floor. Her right leg buckled on impact—the slashed thigh muscle couldn't take her weight—and she turned the fall into a controlled roll that put distance between herself and the creature.
The wound steamed. The Wyrm-Forged blade had done its work, disrupting the Katakan's regeneration and leaving a wound that wouldn't close naturally. But the creature wasn't dead, wasn't even incapacitated—it clung to the ravine wall with its remaining good arm and hissed at the hunters below, pale eyes calculating how many it could kill before the injuries dragged it down.
"Arya—" Ciri started.
"I'm fine." Through clenched teeth. Blood soaked through her legging, dark and steady. Not arterial—but bad enough that she'd be fighting at half capacity if this went much longer. "Worry about that."
She pointed. The male had emerged from the caves.
He was smaller than his mate but faster—a blur of motion that hit the Wyrmborne line from behind while their attention fixed on the female clinging to the ravine wall. He came low, almost crawling, using the uneven terrain to mask his approach until he was close enough to strike.
The first hunter never saw him. Claws hamstrung the Dragonborn from behind—a precise, surgical cut across both tendons above the ankle—and the soldier collapsed with a sound more bewildered than agonized. He tried to stand, couldn't understand why his legs wouldn't respond, and took a raking blow across the back that sent him sliding face-first into a rock formation.
"BEHIND!" Veyla screamed, wheeling to face the new threat, but the male was already moving—already past her guard, already reaching for the next target.
Geralt dropped from the ravine wall.
He landed between the male Katakan and its next victim. The impact of his boots on stone rang loud enough to make the vampire flinch—just a fraction of a second's hesitation, but it was enough. His sword came around in a horizontal arc that the creature ducked under, then reversed into a backhand cut that the Katakan twisted away from with vampiric flexibility.
Fast. Very fast. Though Not faster than me.
The male hissed—recognizing a hunter who knew its kind—and backed away, pale eyes weighing options. Geralt read the calculation happening behind those eyes. Two injured companions. One clearly dangerous opponent. The rational choice is retreat.
"Ciri—the female!" Geralt called, not taking his eyes off the male. "Don't let her regenerate!"
Ciri blinked into position above the wounded female Katakan, which had been using the distraction to climb higher. She appeared on the ravine wall directly in the creature's path and struck twice. The first cut severed its left arm at the elbow. The creature's grip failed on that side, and it swung out from the wall on its remaining hand, dangling and hissing. The second cut opened its belly from hip to ribs, and the Katakan lost its grip entirely.
It fell twenty feet to the ravine floor and hit stone. But the vampire was still moving—still trying to drag itself upright on one arm with its intestines trailing behind—when Ciri blinked down and drove Zireael through its heart. The downward thrust pinned it to the ravine floor.
The female Katakan convulsed. Its remaining hand clawed at the blade, fingers scraping against Wyrm-Forged steel with that awful metallic shriek. Then the enchantment disrupted whatever kept the creature alive, and it went still.
The male vampire saw its mate die.
The calculation in its eyes changed. The cold intelligence drained away, replaced by something Geralt had seen before in monsters and men alike—the look of a creature that had decided it didn't care about surviving anymore.
Grief. Even in vampires.
Instead of retreating—the intelligent choice—the vampire screamed. The sound was raw and wounded, stripped of everything predatory and reduced to pure anguish. Then it charged Geralt with the abandon of something that had lost the only thing worth living for.
Geralt met the charge head-on.
The exchange was brutal and fast. The Katakan was enraged, desperate, and grief had burned away its caution—a combination that made it more dangerous but predictable. It overcommitted to a lunging bite aimed at Geralt's throat; he sidestepped, felt teeth snap shut close enough that the wind of the creature's jaws touched his skin. It extended both arms in a raking attack; he ducked under, the claws passing inches above his scalp. And when it tried to leap over him—a last desperate gambit to get behind him and use its speed—Geralt was already turning, tracking the arc of the jump and adjusting his blade to meet the trajectory.
His sword caught it in the belly at the apex of its leap. The Wyrm-Forged edge opened the creature from hip to ribs, and when it crashed to the ground behind him, trailing black blood and a sound that Geralt would never admit haunted him—the keening, hitching wail of something in agony that could still feel loss even as it died—he reversed his grip and drove the sword through its spine.
The wailing stopped.
Silence settled over the ravine.
Geralt pulled his blade free and wiped it on his thigh. His hands were steady. The steadiness engineered into him via mutations that kept his body functioning at peak efficiency regardless of his mental state. He was grateful for that right now, because what his mind was processing was the sound that male Katakan had made when it saw its mate die, and how much it had sounded like a person.
Don't. It was a monster. It killed people. This is what you do.
He turned to check on the wounded. The hamstrung hunter was already being tended by a Battlemage healer. The back wound on the other was painful but shallow. Marek—the veteran whose armor had been gouged—was staring at the trenches in his breastplate with an expression that had moved past disbelief into existential reassessment.
"She went through it," Marek said, his voice hollow. "Wyrm-Forged plate. The smiths swore nothing short of dragonfire could penetrate it."
"They were wrong," Geralt said, because there was no kindness in letting a soldier believe his armor was invincible. "Katakan claws are magically reinforced—the more they feed, the harder they become. These two had been feeding for weeks. Another week and she would've gone through your armor and ribs in the same stroke." He let that sink in, then added: "Have your smiths study the claw marks. If they can figure out what makes Katakan talons cut through enchanted metal, they can engineer countermeasures. That's how Witchers have survived for centuries—every monster that almost kills you teaches you something."
Arya had lowered herself against the ravine wall, one hand pressed against the wound on her thigh. Ciri knelt beside her, applying pressure and a healing salve from the expedition kit. The gash was ugly—four inches long, deep enough to expose muscle—but Arya's enhanced physiology was already slowing the bleeding.
"The toxin?" Ciri asked, her voice tight.
"Fading." Arya's jaw was clenched, but her eyes were clear. "Geralt was right—the Dragon Witcher mutations metabolize vampire toxin faster than baseline humans. Hurts like someone stuck a hot iron in my leg, but I can feel my nerve signals normalizing."
"Don't put weight on it for at least an hour," Geralt told her. "The muscle needs time to knit. You walk now, you'll tear the fibers worse than the claws did."
"I'm aware." The irritation in her voice was a good sign—it meant the pain was manageable enough for her personality to reassert itself.
Geralt turned to address the group. "Two Katakan vampires. Dead and confirmed." He gestured to the bodies. "The heads and hearts get removed here—standard precaution against regeneration. Someone get me a sealed container. Vampire blood has alchemical properties the research teams will want."
"Is that... normal?" Thoros asked from behind the rock formation where he'd watched the entire fight, his voice carrying controlled horror overlaid with professional curiosity. "Fighting creatures like that, as a matter of routine?"
"For a Witcher, yes." Geralt sheathed his sword. "We've been doing this for centuries. The Conjunction brought these creatures here, but they've existed on the Continent for as long as anyone can remember. Vampires, werewolves, griffins, leshens, wraiths—they're all part of the ecosystem. Witchers exist because someone has to keep that ecosystem from consuming everything else."
Ciri and Arya were already directing the Wyrmborne hunters on processing the vampire bodies—Arya from her seated position against the wall, her voice carrying command despite the wound. The hunters watched and assisted, learning techniques for handling creatures they'd never encountered: how to safely remove a Katakan's claws for alchemical use, how to extract the fangs without contaminating the venom sacs, how to preserve the blood in sealed containers that prevented exposure.
"This is what the Dragon Witcher school will teach," Ciri said to Veyla as they worked. "Everything you need to know about these creatures—their behaviors and weaknesses, how to kill them, and how to use what they provide. The Conjunction brought monsters to our doorstep. We're going to make sure we're all ready for them."
Veyla nodded slowly, her acid-yellow eyes moving between the two vampire corpses with professional assessment. She flexed her freshly-healed arm—the one the griffin had opened—and glanced at Marek's gouged armor, at Tharos walking gingerly with his ribs still knitting, then at the young rust-orange hunter whose chest still bore frost-scarred scales from the wraith's touch.
"How many more species are there that we haven't encountered yet?"
Geralt and Ciri exchanged a look.
"Many," Geralt said simply.
The Red Faith delegation returned to their compound that evening in thoughtful silence.
Kinvara waited until the guards had settled into their watch positions and the lesser priests had retired before gathering Melisandre and Thoros in the common room.
"Three contracts in a single day," she said, settling into her chair. "A forest spirit, a pair of aerial predators, and two vampires. Any one of them would have required a full temple response in Volantis—a dozen priests, days of preparation, prayer circles and purification rituals. They handled them with a small team in hours."
"The Witcher is remarkable," Thoros said, pouring himself wine from the bottle he'd acquired on the expedition. "Not just his fighting ability—his knowledge. He understands these creatures the way a maester understands anatomy. There's nothing mystical about his approach, nor anything that invokes divine aid. Just methodical expertise."
"And the Dragon Witchers—Ciri and Arya—are training the Wyrmborne to do the same." Melisandre's voice was quiet, contemplative, stripped of the prophetic certainty that usually colored her statements. "They're creating an entire military branch devoted to monster hunting. In a generation, every Wyrmborne settlement could have its own monster-hunting unit."
"Meanwhile, the Red Faith's approach to supernatural threats remains what it's been for five thousand years: prayer, fire, and hope that R'hllor answers." Kinvara let the observation hang, aware she was voicing a criticism that would have been unthinkable weeks ago. "We need to be honest about what we're witnessing. The Wyrmborne are doing things our theology insists should require divine intervention, and they're doing them through knowledge, technique, and systematic application of power. Every day here widens the gap between what we believe and what we observe."
"So what do we do?" Thoros asked. "We can't go back to Volantis and tell the Flame-Keepers that R'hllor might be unnecessary. They'd burn us for heresy before we finished the sentence."
"We don't go back with that message," Kinvara said. "We go back with a different one—if we go back at all. We tell them the dragon queen's empire represents a potential ally rather than a competitor, that the fire magic they practice is compatible with R'hllor's teachings rather than contradictory, and that the Red Faith's best path forward is adaptation rather than confrontation."
"And privately?" Melisandre asked.
"Privately, we continue to observe, learn, and prepare for the possibility that our entire theological framework needs revision." Kinvara met each of their eyes in turn. "The fire still burns in my heart. I still feel the warmth of something greater when I reach for the flames. But I'm no longer certain that what I feel is what the Red Temples taught me it was. And I'd rather face that uncertainty here—in a place where seeking truth is valued—than cling to comfortable certainties that crumble the moment they meet reality."
The fire crackled in the hearth, and none of them reached for it.
For the first time in any of their memories, they simply watched it burn.
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End of Chapter Thirty-Two (Part 2)