Auri should have known. From the moment he found her things hadn't made sense. She'd been so desperate to get off the fucking continent she'd ignored the signs completely. Of course he had been sent for her head. The soldiers he'd bribed days before had come back to check on him.
'You want me to help you kill them? Why?' she asked and cradled her still limp arm.
'If you don't, we die.' he said simply and drew his sword. 'Can you fight?'

Auri chuckled darkly. To tell him she knew was a bad idea. She needed the leverage. The moment he found out he'd kill her. It didn't matter that he'd somehow decided to free her and help her. He still needed her head. The order came from the Emperor, and as the dutiful Commander he was, he'd deliver.
'Now, Auri. Please, you have to-'

Auri thought of the Nilfgaardian soldiers that had followed her from Sodden Hill. Had he sent them?
She thought of the soldiers, who had taken bets amongst themselves about who could make her beg for death first. She thought of him. The commander with the feathered helmet, standing on top of the hill watching the carnage. She'd seen him turn his horse and flee. She was glad he got caught. She hoped it had hurt.

Fine. If he wanted fury, he'd get fury.

The flames came before she could stop them. She didn't even have to focus before the flames crackled in her palms. She opened herself up to it, the grief, despair and the anger. He'd get what was coming to him, when she got off this fucking field. She'd make him feel it. Oh, he'd feel it. As for now-
'Don't let them flee!' Auri yelled over the roaring fire, she watched Cahir raise his sword and head for the first soldier, utterly oblivious. Auri steeled herself and sent a stream of flickering fire toward the rest of the soldiers, making them more erratic and desperately scrambling to get away from the inferno. It took less than a minute for one of them to turn to ash, his gray remains scattered on the winds and the others stopped dead in their tracks.

Auri let the flame in her hand die and grabbed for her sword. She'd have to use her left hand, she'd be better off with the fire. Her throat was raw, her entire body ached and if she let the fire take root again she'd end up like the still smoking soldier. The anger fueled her, she let it. She saw the toothless soldier grin beneath his helmet and she snarled.

The plains were not as muddy as she'd feared. She moved through the singed grass with ease and made her way across the fields, the trees casting long shadows in the flickering fire that quickly spread all around her.

'Did my screams live up to your expectations, soldier?' she roared when she found him standing before her panting like a wild animal. The flames licked at his heels.

'You'll be dead come morn, that's all that matters, little girl.' he wheezed through ash-coated coughs.

'You'll be dead before that, tell your fucking Emperor he won't get me alive.' Auri snarled and raised her sword.

When his sword hit hers she realized she had underestimated him. He was so much larger than her she struggled to stay on her feet when he pushed the sword toward her upper body. She had nothing left to do but to whirl out of the way as he retreated to strike her. A ball of fire hit his legs and he moved away from her fast enough that the fire died out before it did any damage. Auri cursed. She could feel the warmth dwindling as the blood loss began to affect her. She had to get him to the ground before he came at her again. She cast a quick glance to her side to see Cahir flurry around a disgruntled soldier. With one swipe of his blade the soldier's head hit the muddy ground and the squelch sent the two others into a rage.
'He even helped you. How sweet. Even he won't be able to save you again.' Said the toothless man and spat at her feet. Auri flicked her wrist again and the flickering flame struggled to breathe. She was no longer angry, she was just tired. Her knees grew weaker with every step and her shoulder ached.

She lifted her sword just fast enough to parry one of his continuous advances and she was driven further back with every strike. Auri growled, dropped her sword and forced the fire to obey. It flickered up in both her palms and she threw herself at the soldier, the shock of it momentarily froze him. Auri placed her burning hands on his face, covering his black eyes. The fire burnt his eyeballs clean out of his head, his screams of pain and rage dropped him to his knees. Auri kept her grip on his head as the smell of burning flesh and hair forced its way up her nose and to the back of her throat. His skin blackened beneath her touch and she only let go when the screaming stopped. Her knees hit the mud.

Auri turned her face away from the crumbling Nilfgaardian. She reached a hand over to the arrow still sticking out from her shoulder and broke the tip off. She screamed through the pain and dragged the shaft out of her back.
When her eyesight returned she grabbed her sword off the ground. Cahir was still fighting the last two soldiers. The other four lay strewn out across the smoking fields, their blood mixing with the reeking mud.
She'd be of little help to him, there was nothing she could do. She had to wait for him to fight them off, she had no more rage, no more strength and no more breaths.
What she did have, was reason. She saw the trap he was about to walk into before he did. She moved her eyes to the woods and noticed another black-clad soldier following the fighting with his eyes. She picked herself up from the ground and ran. He had the bombs still, the dimeritium bombs. If one of them hit the fire he'd die in a blast of spell-forged iron spikes. Her revenge would crumble when Cahir did.

Auri thought of nothing but his hand holding hers when she woke up as she reached for the dagger in her boot. Lies. She shook the image from her mind and focused on the dagger he'd tried to push through her heart instead. She'd never been a good fighter in her life, she relied on the fire and the errors of others, she'd never win. She saw the soldier bend down and wrap his gloved hand around one of the bombs and she reacted instantly. She palmed her dagger, drew her arm back and sent the steel flying, aiming for his neck.

He screamed as the dagger carved through his leather armor and into his stomach. He dropped the bomb he was holding, and frantically moved his hands down to his injured stomach desperate to stop the bleeding. Auri knew it wasn't fatal.

She leapt across a small stream, tumbled over a few broken branches and was upon him before he knew where she'd even come from. Auri placed a kick to the middle of his chest and pointed her sword at his neck when he hit the ground with a pained smack.

'I would lie still if I were you. I have questions,' she said and pushed the tip of her blade down.

The man only whimpered through the pain and the blood running from his mouth told her he'd be unconscious before he could give her any answers. She wanted to ask him how the fuck they kept finding her, though she knew it was him. Cahir kept them on her trail.

Auri didn't have time to form words before he pushed a knife she hadn't seen into her foot. Her boot took the brunt of the force but it still hurt enough for her to lose her balance. She was so sick of fucking fighting. She should have trained more, if she had she wouldn't have ended up on her back in some woods in Velen.

'You're not as clever as you think, you little bitch,' the man said and spat blood into her face. Auri yelped when he placed a foot on her leg and tried to get away. Her sword had fallen when she did and she tried to reach for it but he only kicked it away.
'What are you without your fire? Nothing.' he said and moved his sword closer to her head. His fingers dripped blood all over her face and the steady stream from his stomach did little to stop him. It should have incapacitated him, he shouldn't have been able to stand up straight.

'She's a hell of a lot more than you, I can tell you that much,'
Auri closed her eyes when Cahir's looming shadow fell upon her, she heard the last gurgling breath before the soldier's heavy frame slumped to the ground, the jitters sent drops of blood flying into her face. She didn't look at him when she opened her eyes, she only looked at Cahir, standing above her with his sword still raised. Fury. He was furious. His eyebrows had knitted together and a muscle in his jaw kept flexing every time he breathed.

'What the fuck were you doing? I told you to burn them!'
Auri shook the lessening shock from her mind and rose from the ground, her ankle barked but she didn't care all that much about it. She only cared about the sword still raised over his head.
'I saved your ungrateful ass, you absolute moron! He had bombs! He was going to throw several of them in your direction and if he had you'd be nothing but a pile of steaming-'
'Auri, calm down,' the worried tone scared her. Her blood heated in an instant and the feeling of the tether loosening from around her heart made her want to show him exactly what hellfury was. Auri closed her eyes and tried to rein herself in.

She wanted to burn him and tell him she knew exactly what was going on. She'd never be safe again. She'd told him where she was going, he knew everything. He'd follow her and subject her home to the same violence that decimated Cintra-

Auri took one look at his eyes, his hand on the pommel of the sword that had undoubtedly cut down several scores of innocents. She kept the fire in her palm, she played with it absentmindedly. Moving her fingers and curling her fist. She had no idea what to do now, he'd ruined everything. Every plan she'd had had gone to hell. Again.

She'd give him one chance. One. He deserved that much for not killing her instantly. There was no way she'd be able to pretend she didn't know. If she had to fight to get out of this she would. She refused to fight fair, he had not been fair. Why should she?

She grabbed her dagger. The soft whinnying from behind her made her stop. The horse.
He still had the horse.
Auri grinned, moved her eyes to Cahir, palmed the blade, retracted her arm and watched the growing shock in his eyes as her dagger carved through the leather in his side.

Cahir wheezed as his knees hit the ground. He pulled the dagger out from beneath his ribs and gaped at her.
'What-'
'I told you to tell me the truth, you lied.' Auri replied coldly.
'What the fuck have you done?' he asked and stared as his hands ran red with blood.
'I gave you a chance to survive. I felt I owed you that, since you didn't kill me straight away. This is the last I want to see of you. If you ever come near me again I will take your head.'

Auri stepped toward him, kept her eyes on his face when she bent to pick up her dagger. He was armed to the teeth, if he wanted her dead she'd be dead. She'd expected him to put up a fight, she'd expected him to drag her to the ground and end her, to finally do as instructed and bring her head to his precious Emperor.

Cahir did nothing. He kept his eyes on the ground, gaze following her hand as she wrapped her fingers around her dagger.
'Are you going to kill me?' he asked weakly, a bloodied cough obscuring the rest of his words.
'On Skellige we deal with things differently, Commander Cahir.' she said and placed the blade back in her boot. 'I will do what Skelligers usually do with Nilfgaardian scum, I will leave you to the wolves.'