Reincarnation ➵ The Witcher

xi.

EDITH had been awoken with a jolt, a scampering fox awakening her from her slumber. What the fuck.. Geralt was now nowhere to be seen, and neither was his sword. The fire looked as if it had been stamped out, and Edith could hear the distant sound of struggling alongside the sound of water splashing. She regained her conscious thought quickly, and when she did she jumped up without a second thought. She had began jogging in the direction of the struggle, the forest becoming less dense as she wandered away from the road and instead filled with grey, dead trees attempting to grasp at her. Edith was sure she had small cuts from the branches ricocheting off of her body, but this did little to slow her pace, as her feet pushed her towards the action with adrenaline coursing through her bones. After a minute of jogging, she could eventually see the vague outline of Roach's tail, and she knew she was close from the sound of grotesque wail of a creature.

When the trees had ended and opened up to a clearing with a little pond, Edith froze.

"The fuck.." she was at loss for words. The creature looked like a whole other entity, it's legs were never endingly long and almost jutted out like tree branches. The creature was hunched over on its legs, and it looked like a giant spider that was currently attempting to murder Geralt. It hadn't noticed her presence, or if it did it didn't care too much of it as it's beady eyes were focused on the struggling picture of the man beneath the water. Not an inch of hair covered it's body, and Edith desperately looked for something to stop the creature in its wake. All that was around her was sticks and the occasional stone, but as the creature began thrusting his claw-like legs into the water where Geralt was situated, Edith had no choice but to use what she had in an attempt to at least save the Witcher's life.

Edith had picked up a stone, raising it behind her shoulder as she prepared to lob it, "Hey!" she screamed, throwing the rock and watching as it nailed the monster directly onto one of its legs. This did little to deter it though, as it still tried to impale Geralt rather aggressively and paid no mind to her presence. Edith began to panic, hands immediately instead grasping the stick closest to her. If it keeps it up Edith was sure she'd be preparing a burial for a Witcher, and she'd refused to do so on the second day of her leaving home. Imagine the shame of returning from running after a day of running away. Screw that.

Edith raised the stick behind her shoulder like she did the rock, "HEY, BASTARD, OVER HERE!" this time the stick hit the monster's head, and as she watched it fall to the floor, the creatures eyes momentarily glanced at her in distraction. This distraction was all that Geralt needed for the monster to loosen its grip just a millimeter enough for him to have a tight grasp on his sword as he sliced the claw holding him down.

Edith watched in a sick fascination as Geralt was pulled up from the water from the creature, before he raised his hand back with no hesitation before plunging his sword slide through the head of the creature with little effort. The creature let out a last wail before Geralt removed his sword from it's corpse. A thick black substance followed in its wake, and Edith grimaced in disgust.

"That was fucking disgusting," Edith explained, watching the body of the creature slowly sink into the water. Geralt turned towards her, slightly out of breath as she gazed upon his features. She gazed into the now soulless pits of his eyes, and the noticeable veins spreading across his face like a disease, "You possessed or something?" Edith snorted, watching as Geralt smirked a little.

Instead of answering her question, Geralt sluggishly dragged himself out of the pond without a second glance at the girl, black eyes focusing on the injured doe led meters from the edge of the pond with a noticeable gash on it's leg. Geralt tilted his head, watching the doe's quickening breath. Edith watched his movements from the corner of her eye, silence now seemingly a trait she contained.

"Today isn't your day, is it?"

Edith looked away from the mercy kill, instead hearing the sound of the sword hit the flesh of the doe as it took its last breath once and for all.