Geralt's Arc

Chapter 11 of 17

The cleared pass took them the last stretch to the peak by midday. The runed door waited there, carved into the mountain, its symbols glowing faint red. Something behind it was awake. Geralt shoved the bound mage down against a boulder and drew his silver sword. Rain stood at his shoulder, spent from the storm but steady. This was the fight they had climbed for. Then Malachar began to whisper. "You feel it, sorceress." His violet eyes fixed on Rain, not Geralt. "That thing behind the stone has never harmed you. He wants it dead because someone paid him once. You settle for his word." His voice stayed low and even, sharp as a blade. "Break the runes and you free the last true creature left. Kill it for a Witcher's coin. That is your choice." Rain's hands lowered. Geralt saw it. Her breath caught, and the warmth she'd been holding ready flickered out. The mage had found the old wound in her. She had never wanted this hunt. She had come because Geralt argued the beast killed people, and now the mage's calm voice pulled at that doubt. "Rain." Geralt kept his eyes on the door. "If you waver now, I break that stone alone. And the moment it breaks, the beast is strongest. I'll be swinging steel at full strength with no cover. He knows that. That's why he's talking." Malachar smiled. "Or she listens to someone who touched the deep currents. Not to a man who kills what he's told to kill." Rain turned to the mage. Her face went cold again, the softness gone. "You chained a dragon in the dark for years," she said. "You called that deep. I saw what deep costs." She lifted one hand toward Geralt, not the door. "He freed the bird. He freed the dragon. You bound them. I know which of you I stand with." Warmth spread back into her palms. She gave Malachar a last look and pressed a strip of cloth over his mouth, tying it hard behind his head. His whispers stopped. He glared, silent at last. Geralt let out a breath he had not known he held. "Then we do it together." "Together," Rain said. She set both hands against the glowing door. "Break the stone. I'll blunt the first blow when the cage fails." Geralt raised the silver sword and struck the carved runes. Stone cracked. The red glow flared white, then split. A roar came from inside, deep enough to shake ice from the rocks above. The door buckled outward. Behind it, something vast moved into the light, and it fixed its eyes on the man whose scent it knew. Rain did not run. She stood beside him, hands burning bright. Whatever the mage had tried to plant in her was gone. The beast was free, at its deadliest, and for the first time on this mountain, Geralt was not facing it alone.