"Ignis." She hissed at the dead man splayed before her. He replied, rippling into a vivid flame. The night's cold was such that compromising her position was well worth the warmth fire provided. Fortunately, the glen she occupied was framed by a brush thick enough that it largely contained the light the corpse now generated. From outside its wooden walls, the flickering appeared faint enough to be mistaken for moonlight if one wasn't already aware of its presence.
She crouched low over the heat of his bubbling, blackened skin, trying to retain every morsel of it she could. A stench of burnt death filled the space. Despite this, she grimaced and tugged at her leather trousers.
"Ugh." Even the reek of the corpse did not mask the smell radiating from her person. She rose and peeled the soiled butcher's clothes from her skin, tossing them casually into a nearby patch of grass. Her bare flesh shimmered with fire, sweat, and blood. She basked for a moment in the sensation: the cold air's caress, the freedom of her nakedness. She then drew a deep breath, stood very still, and waited. The unmistakable sound of water soon crackled in her ears. She made for the alchemist's satchel and sword which she had previously draped over a nearby tree. The redwood had fallen into the glade at some point, possibly from weather or fire. She couldn't be sure. From the dangling satchel, she withdrew a blue kerchief and pursued the trickling sound of her anticipated bath.
A trickle the water truly was. The pitiful run was barely visible between the bed of stones and mud on the forest floor. This was a river once. She knelt and touched the satin cloth to the stream. The water was frigid, but as necessary for her cleanliness as the fire was for her warmth. Ah, the fire... It certainly sounded tempting now. Mnh. She squeezed the excess liquid from the kerchief and touched the damp cloth hesitantly to the skin on her arm. Her pores painfully peaked in protest, but she continued scraping the gore from herself.
There, alone in the shade of the evening, she cleansed. The cloth wove through the three scarred rift on her side like a river in a canyon. Even after ten years, the marks had never shallowed. She often needed to bend to her opposite side to clean the deepest of places. A well of flesh on her left thigh still throbbed painfully when she swiped across it. She gritted her teeth. That repulsive whoreson... She pried from within the cup of new scar tissue a chunk of someone else's bloodied meat and flicked it to the ground in disgust. The cock who had driven the rapier through her leg had suffered a lethal blow soon after their dispute, but to date, his lunatic behavior baffled her. An ambush while she was fighting an echinops. To what end? She still wasn't certain and had accepted she probably never would be. The man was dead. The creature was dead. She had been paid. None of it mattered anymore.
Sighing, she rinsed more foreign blood from the cloth, submerged it until it ran clear in the stream, then continued her ritual. She needed to move soon. Water had the nasty habit of indiscriminately attracting the thirsty. When she could no longer detect her own smell, she whipped the rag dry as best she could and made for the encampment in the glen. Its glow invited her through the thicket. Every step she took she minded for there was no knowing what patrolled this area of forest at night. She had no desire to find out when she was unarmed and unclothed. Were a nekkar or endrega to cross her, there would be very little she could do to stop it. The monsters could also move with a subtlety no man could possibly hope to emulate. But men she could handle. If one feigned to provide them pleasure, they had a knack for permitting a woman lethal proximity. She had taken advantage of this on more than one occasion. In this wood, this late, this deep, however, she doubted anything less than monstrous would find her. Still, her ears strained for any movement out of sync with her own. Now that her pupils had adjusted to the dark, the deadlight she followed was a beacon calling to anyone or anything with the acute eye to spy it. As she approached, she decided to move more cautiously, just in case someone apart from herself had accepted its invitation, though she doubted it under current conditions. Once she came within an approximate observing distance, she crept steadily through the brush until- she froze. There, standing with his back to her on the nearest side of the flames, stood a white-haired man in hunter's garb.
He moved through the unfamiliar space equally as carefully as she did. He was in the process of noting her belongings. Two swords were strapped to his back. One was iron, but one was forged of silver. She felt a rift opening deeper and deeper in her stomach. That hair... That sword... it can't possibly... But I can't bloody see. The ashen rear of his head was still bowed and faced her direction. Ensuring she made no sound, she progressed round the perimeter. His apparent physical youth betrayed his hair color. That meant... but she needed a better vantage point. Perhaps her eyes deceived her in the dark.
His tone of motion was exacting, purposeful. What did he want? Why was he here? Had he tracked her? A person such as he, with a silver sword such as that, would only appear under one very specific condition. Silently, she watched, taking care to shift only when he did. His head inclined toward her satchel and sword. He dipped his hand into the leather pouch and withdrew it empty. Nothing inside was worth pilfering. Some clothes, some empty potion bottles, the dregs of herb and other alchemical elements. Basic, unneccesary, undesirable. The most captivating thing of all seemed to be the corpse she had ignited. He analyzed it, prodding at it briefly with a stick before tossing the scrap of wood into the fire. When it didn't catch, he grunted knowingly and turned... When he did, she felt the sensation of her guts spilling from her insides. Something which was nothing less than monstrous had indeed found her. His amber irises could not be mistaken. He was a witcher. He was the witcher. He was Geralt of Rivia.