#severe liberties taken with ice troll anatomy

[polyfacetious]

kingofdirtandnothing said: Freezing

“Not to question the actual witcher in all his...witcher-y knowledge. But don’t you think it’s a bad idea to hunt for an ice troll during the winter solstice?” Jaskier’s breath is a pale puff of air in front of him, his every step encased in the crunch of deep snow.

“Geralt?” The witcher is a few leagues ahead, his dark armor hard to miss in all this white. He doesn’t answer.

“...Although, I guess, the good people of Skellige wouldn’t be having troll problems in summer, would they?” Jaskier gets a grunt in response, this time. But then, perhaps it was the wind, or a falling rock. Geralt woke up in a particularly surly mood today.

“Is the black wardrobe a strict must in the witcher order? Don’t you think it’d be better to blend in with the snow? Geralt?” No answer, just more snow crunching. “Honestly, I know you didn’t want me to come, but must you keep acting like I’m no—“

“Quiet.”

They may not have traveled together for long, but Jaskier has by now learned the difference between Geralt’s ‘shut the fuck up, Jaskier’ voice, and his ‘there’s a monster close by’ voice.

So, Jaskier goes quiet, and when Geralt motions at him sharply, he hurries to the edge of the snowed-in path, to hide behind a...well, a larger mound of snow.

Geralt stands alone in knee deep snow, his sword raised and his golden eyes searing and bright in an otherwise pale and blue world.

Jaskier’s breath trembles with terrified anticipation, his heart a panicked drum between his temples as he looks around for any sign of whatever alerted those sharp witcher senses.

The ice troll barrels out from under a snowy hill with a roar that Jaskier feels down to the bone, and Geralt meets it head on.

His silver sword gleams in the icy air—covered in ogroid oil from the moment they left the inn this morning—, and chinks like steel on steel against the beast’s hard skin. Or perhaps, steel on ice—as the blade cracks through and Geralt earns himself another angry roar.

The troll yanks his arm back to swat at the witcher, but Geralt is faster, a swivel on his heel that’s barely hindered by the snow, before he thrusts the sword against the beast’s barrel chest and pushes on with a roar of his own.

It should be ridiculous—a man of Geralt’s size having any effect on a troll’s weight. But the monster cries out, stumbling back towards the outcrop of a deep ravine. Stone and snow immediately begin to crumble beneath its weight, and the bard breathes a sigh of relief.

It’s a mistake.

Jaskier should’ve known better than to allow any sense of victory to take root, as the troll’s hand lashes out with surprising speed and grips Geralt’s arm.

“Geralt!” He cries out, watching in horror as both troll and witcher fall out of sight, with only the whisper of snow, the crumbling of rock, and the fading roar of the beast to prove they were ever there at all.

“Fuck—“ Jaskier hisses, running from his thrice damned hiding place to fall to his knees at the edge of the ravine.

“GERALT!”

His voice echoes hopelessly all around the mountain pass, and when no answer comes, neither from the monster, nor from the witcher, Jaskier makes a decision.

Digging through the pack he convinced Geralt to let him carry, he pulls out the witcher’s silver chain, and a short dagger. Rope would’ve been best, he thinks, but—still better than nothing.

With only his harried breaths for company, Jaskier secures the chain to the sturdiest tree at the edge of the cliff, and pushes all reason and logic aside to start making his way down the steep ravine, using the chain to hold onto, and the knife to help keep purchase on the icy rock.

It all goes more or less according to plan, though he still takes a graceless tumble down the last third of the way, falling against the solid body of a—

“—that’s a dead troll. Oh, Gods—Geralt!” He calls out, scrambling to his feet to move away from the enormous corpse and look for the witcher. “Geralt!”

With no answer, and no witcher in sight, Jaskier entertains the horrible notion that the troll might have fallen on top of Geralt. But before he can even consider trying to move the big, ugly thing, he hears a cough.

“Geralt?” Jaskier stumbles further down, and feels his heart fall to his feet. “—Geralt!”

The witcher landed in the freezing river, the lower half of his body under the quiet current trickling down beneath a thin layer of ice.

“Oh, Gods, please, don’t be dead, please, don’t be dead, don’t you dare be fucking dead—“ He all but falls to his knees at the witcher’s side, yanking off his glove to feel for Geralt’s pulse with trembling fingertips.

He waits, biting his lip, and trying to listen past the panicked drum of his own heartbeat.

There! It’s weak, and terribly slow—slower than usual—, but it’s a pulse!

Jaskier crawls over to take hold of Geralt from under ridiculously muscular arms, and pulls him out of the river with no little struggle.

It’s too wet down here, there’s no way he can build a fire, and he can’t climb back up the ravine with the witcher on his back.

“Fuck—!” His voice breaks as helpless panic and fear begin to truly sink in, and Jaskier continues dragging Geralt to the body of the troll. Dead, horrid eyes stare blankly at him as he gently places the witcher down, and Jaskier brushes wet strands of hair from Geralt’s pale face.

He’s paler than usual, his lips already blue, and the rusty color of blood in his hair. He’s also not shivering. And Jaskier knows that’s not a good sign.

Witcher heartbeats are impossibly slow. That makes them particularly vulnerable to the cold.

Jaskier doesn’t know how he knows that—perhaps something Geralt mentioned, on one of his rarer, informative days—, it doesn’t matter. He has to get him warm.

“Why couldn’t you have fallen in a nice mound of snow?” He scolds the witcher uselessly, and looks desperately for any source of warmth they can use. He sees no caves, no place to keep the cold at bay. Only bare trees, a frozen river, and a dead troll, Geralt’s sword still embedded in its chest.

“Eugh.” Dark blood has seeped into the ground around the felled beast, a puddle of black gunk that seems to have melted the snow around...

—Oh.

“Alright, Geralt. You’d better not yell at me when you wake up—you needed a bath either way.” Jaskier mutters to the unconscious witcher as he steps over him to reach the dead troll.

Putting his glove back on, he takes hold of the sword embedded in the ice troll’s ribcage, gripping it with all his strength to dig it further in. The monster’s sternum gives with a sickening crack, and Jaskier feels his own stomach contents roil as he continues cutting along the troll’s front. From chest to navel, until a (hopefully) witcher sized gap has been carved.

“Right.” Jaskier tosses the sword aside, trying his best to breathe through his mouth. But the heat coming out of the beast’s innards is actually trailing with steam — this might just work. “Okay, now for the fun part.”

Taking a deep breath, he digs his hands into the troll’s guts, pulling out a half digested—yeah, he’s not going to look at that—something, and a whole lot of innards to make room for Geralt.

The heat of the troll’s blood is seeping through the sleeves of his coat, and it helps him regain some of the feeling in his hands as he crouches down in front of Geralt, patting his cheeks.

“Come on, Geralt, you can’t die like this. What kind of a song would this make? The white wolf freezing to death in some Gods forsaken ravine? That’s shit.” He takes hold of the witcher once more, picking him up under his arms to drag him closer to the troll, “Whew! You’re heavy. Should lay off the stew for a little while.”

In the end, he gets Geralt inside the troll feet first, shaking with exertion by the time he manages to lift his ridiculously toned upper half and shove him completely inside the beast.

Panting, Jaskier yanks blood soaked gloves off and reaches in to feel Geralt’s pulse—still weak, still slower than usual, but still there.

“Good. Good, good.” He whispers. Now he just has to make sure the wind doesn’t freeze up the troll’s insides before Geralt comes to. Looking helplessly about, Jaskier makes a decision.

“You better wake up soon, Geralt.” He scolds with a weak laugh, and shrugs out of his coat, fitting it over the witcher like a blanket of sorts, or a stopper against the wind. “I’ll be needing that back in a bit.”

It’s hard to tell the time when the skies are this grey, but Jaskier is mostly sure they’ve got a few more hours of daylight. Plenty of time for a witcher to recover.

“But you...you rest, now. I’ll just...I’ll take a little breather.” His teeth are chattering from the cold seeping into his bones, and Jaskier lowers himself down to curl up against the troll, just by Geralt, his hands held to his chest in vain attempt to protect them from the ice.

Hopefully some of that monstrous heat will still make it to him.

“You’ll see.” A hard shiver rakes up his spine, and Jaskier wraps his arms tightly around himself. “We’ll be alright.”

His body feels heavy, and before long, the shivers stop coming altogether. It’s the troll’s heat, he thinks to himself. It must be working. Surely, that must be why.

“See? What’d I tell you? Good as new in no time.”

But for now, he’ll just...he’ll just take a little nap.

“I’ll see you later, Geralt.”

The weight of the cold wins over, and Jaskier feels his attention wane, exhaustion falling over him like a heavy blanket.

He closes his eyes.

He won’t open them again.

Not in this lifetime.