[Chapter Size: 2800 Words.]
Third Person POV
Cintra.
...
...
The castle had already been organized while a crowd gathered outside. There were both people originally from Cintra and Nilfgaardians, although the latter were a small minority. Many were afraid. Some were already packing their belongings to flee south as quickly as possible, while others, as incredible as it might seem, somehow sought revenge after seeing their relatives massacred by lightning. In any case, they would all be removed from those lands.
Ciri was already keeping an eye on those individuals, observing the crimes they would commit in the future, whether hours or days from now, while Madara's clones would carry out the executions.
Ciri once again appeared before her people. Even among the Cintrians, there would certainly be those who still harbored some resentment toward her for having remained away for so many years. After all, people tended to be petty regardless of the place, and many would never understand her absence throughout all that time.
They could not know that she and Madara had even more powerful enemies to face before they could concern themselves with the kingdom again and govern it. At that time, there had simply been no way to reclaim Cintra while they still needed to deal with far greater threats.
Cintra would certainly have fallen into chaos again if they had conquered the kingdom after their marriage and simply disappeared for 3 years.
In any case, Ciri gathered the people of the city, who began assembling before them. The Nilfgaardians wanted to know what would happen to them as well, knowing that they would soon be expelled from the kingdom.
It certainly did not make them feel any safer knowing that someone could simply speak through the heavens to the entire kingdom. Even more so when that same person could be the one who had flown over the city surrounded by green light, hurling lightning bolts and killing thousands of soldiers at the same time, as though she were making no effort at all.
That demonstrated just how powerful these people were. And it was even more shocking to learn that this incredibly powerful person was their new queen, the one who used to be the mischievous princess and a constant headache for her grandmother.
Ciri gave another brief speech, as Madara himself had suggested. After all, she was Calanthe's granddaughter, and even a simple appearance accompanied by a few words was already enough for some of the people to begin looking at her with a certain hope.
The Cintrians had practically become an underclass within Nilfgaard's regime. The Empire intended to gradually destroy Cintra's very identity, ensuring that those lands and their loyalty would eventually become entirely devoted to the Empire.
The plan was already being put into practice. Fertile Cintrian women would be forced to marry Nilfgaardians, whether they were widows or young maidens, to produce a new generation of children tied to the Empire. As for the Cintrian families that had still managed to survive together, their children would be indoctrinated to grow up under Nilfgaardian culture, imposed upon this land.
After all, for many, resistance was basically a death sentence. This affected the women of the kingdom in particular, since women naturally had an easier time submitting to conquerors. In many cases, the Nilfgaardians simply killed their husbands and forced them to remarry men from Nilfgaard.
It was a cruel system, but that was the reality of the measures the Empire had begun implementing in Cintra to completely dominate it. Possessing its lands was not enough. They also needed to control its people, especially because Nilfgaard still had plans for expansion and intended to conquer the rest of the continent. They needed more men, men loyal to the Empire...
In any case, Madara and Ciri could not simply get rid of the children who had been born during that period. Even they were not that cruel, despite how complicated the situation was. Many of the dead Nilfgaardian soldiers were the fathers of those children, and they would inevitably grow up having to deal with the consequences and emotions caused by everything that had happened.
Even so, Madara and Ciri agreed to keep the children of Cintrian women. If they showed any resentment toward Cintra or the new government in the future, they would have to banish them or enforce the law if any crime was committed. But that would be a problem for later. The other choice was to send them to Nilfgaard, but they would try to keep them in the kingdom, especially because the number of men had been drastically reduced by the war and many women would end up being forced to find some way to support themselves and their families.
Well, that would be a problem for later. They still needed to restructure Cintra once again, while nobles of the Empire, of all sexes and ages, remained in the cold dungeons, exactly as they had imprisoned the people of Cintra at the time of the conquest.
In any case, the following day, Madara and Ciri quickly began searching through everything in the castle's storage rooms. There were many things that had been removed over the years to make room for Nilfgaardian objects, replacing Cintra's old symbols, banners, decorations, and part of its identity for obvious reasons.
"Look at this." Ciri could not help but exclaim when she found something that made her eyes light up.
Madara was in another corner and approached her with a smile on his face and a large painting, but it was turned around so Ciri could not see what had been painted on it. Ciri looked at him with some suspicion, but first showed him a pile of notebooks and even a picture made by Mousesack.
"Look at this. Our notebooks from when we were studying the languages of the continent. There's also a painting Grandpa made of us when we were children!" she said, showing a certain affection and nostalgia for them before looking at Madara and then at the painting he was holding.
Madara also looked at the notebooks, remembering that time when the two of them practically lived inside Mousesack's laboratory to study languages. Then he turned his attention back to Ciri, once again displaying his smile.
"Oh, nice! And I found something quite interesting too," he said, turning the painting around.
"What!?" Ciri immediately lost all color in her face.
There was that painting of her, painted when she was still just a little girl, after her grandmother had practically forced her to pose for a painter in a dress.
She had been a little chubby back then and hated the dress she was wearing. She hated that her grandmother had forced her to do such a thing, and she posed with the grumpiest expression in the world.
"You didn't have this?!" she exclaimed. Ciri knew Madara had hidden that painting back then.
"Actually, I managed to get several copies back then. I asked a painter to copy it. I couldn't allow there to be only one painting like this... They spread quickly, although there were still some in storage. I even found one of them inside your late father's chambers," Madara explained.
Ciri stared at him in horror. As much as she still felt a shiver when remembering that her father was the late Emperor, at that moment she was far more outraged with Madara. How could he have made several copies of that embarrassment and spread them throughout the entire continent?
"You... You didn't do that!" she demanded furiously, causing even the place to tremble slightly.
"Well, it's not that bad. Aren will love seeing what his mother looked like. You were a little older than him at the time, right?" Madara asked, still with an amused tone. "You were such an adorable child, my dear wife."
The next instant, the painting caught fire.
Madara merely sighed and blew on it, extinguishing the flames, but the painting was already completely destroyed.
"You ruined one of the copies."
"There are more?" she demanded.
"Oh, yes. I found about twenty of them stored in that corner," he said.
Ciri looked at him in horror. "Where are they, and you've already taken them, haven't you?" she immediately demanded.
Then she simply looked into the future until she saw what she wanted to see, but it was while glimpsing the past that she discovered where Madara had come from and saw her husband placing all the copies of the painting inside one of his scrolls.
"Give me your scroll right now!" she demanded.
Madara raised an eyebrow. "You can't use chakra."
"I know, but I can destroy them," she said.
Ciri lunged at him, but Madara disappeared the next instant. She also vanished from the storage room immediately.
A chase began inside the castle. Madara teleported using the Flying Thunder God Technique, while Ciri used her own magical teleportation, glowing and disappearing in green flashes.
The two frightened everyone along the way as they appeared and disappeared throughout different parts of the castle. No one could understand what was happening. All they saw was Ciri simply chasing Madara, followed by a flash and a loud sound.
The problem was that the chase quickly went beyond the castle.
One moment, Ciri was already atop a mountain in Skellige, trying to lunge at Madara as he disappeared. The next, they reappeared in a region of the Nilfgaardian Empire. A few seconds later, they were in the middle of Redania, then heading toward Toussaint, while the people who managed to glimpse them, being in the right place at that moment, could barely understand what they were seeing. Everything happened so quickly that they saw only blurs and a flash before both disappeared again.
Ciri did not stop. She chased Madara across the entire continent. He even tried to throw her off by creating several clones, but she quickly managed to find his true self using her vision of the future.
Ciri already knew where he would go before Madara even used the Hiraishin, managing to surprise him a few times when he appeared somewhere and she was already there, trying to grab him before he could move again.
An explosion erupted over a volcanic mountain somewhere among the mountain ranges dividing the Northern Kingdoms.
Madara could not help but smile. "Is this really how it is, my dear wife? We reclaimed our home yesterday and now you're starting a chase after your own husband?"
"Give me the scrolls! Give me all those paintings! I won't let you keep those images, much less show them to our son!"
"Oh, really? Try to catch me."
He disappeared.
Ciri did too.
Vesemir was preparing a potion when Lambert finally entered.
"Vesemir, you damned old man! Is this where you've been hiding?" the man shouted, entering Kaer Morhen after several months without setting foot there.
"It's the only place I stay, Lambert," Vesemir grumbled, though he could not help but show some satisfaction at seeing the other witcher again.
"I was already on my way here, but three days ago, I started hearing some pretty bizarre things," Lambert said in a more urgent tone.
Vesemir examined him and could not help but let out a sigh. "I imagine I already know what you're talking about," he said.
"Yes. Something big is happening. The kings are dead, Vesemir! Someone is killing the kings!" he said, looking quite agitated.
Vesemir already knew what was happening. After all, he had encountered Madara and Ciri again after years, now accompanied by a child already grown in his mother's arms, only a few days earlier. Walking through those very same doors with Yennefer and Geralt behind them, as though those two brats might disappear again at any moment.
However, if anything unexpected could still happen at that moment, it certainly did.
The next instant, Madara appeared out of nowhere, startling Vesemir so much that he simply forgot about his potion, as well as Lambert, who stared at him in astonishment. Soon after, a greenish glow appeared and Ciri emerged.
"Give it to me!" she demanded, her tone filled with anger and warning.
"No," Madara replied, still maintaining his smile before looking to the side. "Hello, Lambert," he said casually.
The witcher continued staring at him with his mouth open, but barely had time to respond. Madara simply disappeared.
Ciri clenched her fists. "Lambert," she greeted him in a bad-tempered tone before glowing and disappearing again.
Vesemir remained silent, watching his potion begin to pass the point he wanted, before letting out a resigned sigh. Lambert merely pointed at the place where Madara and Ciri had been only moments earlier.
"What... What was that?" he asked, shocked.
"I don't know what those brats are up to, but their games have certainly become far too dangerous. And yes, they're back," Vesemir said, frustrated that he had ruined his potion thanks to whatever those two were doing.
Ciri appeared in a forest behind her husband and was caught by surprise the next moment when Madara, instead of fleeing, grabbed her arm before disappearing again.
Madara acted differently, seeing that the places where they began appearing started to tremble. She was getting angry, and Madara had no intention of giving in and handing over those memorable paintings.
Then, at a certain moment, Ciri was taken by surprise. Not even her vision of the future could prepare her when Madara lunged at her and teleported. Before she realized it, the two of them fell together inside the temple.
"Hey! What's this?" she exclaimed.
Madara could not help but lower his hands and grab her, making Ciri scream as he tickled her while giving her a few kisses.
"You're very stressed today. Calm down a little."
"How am I supposed to calm down?" she asked, laughing as she tried to glare at him angrily, but could no longer hold back her laughter. After all, Ciri was quite sensitive to tickling. "You're going to give me those paintings!"
Madara simply pointed to the side. Ciri turned her gaze while still lying on the floor and found Aren standing in front of a painting. The painting she had been trying to get from Madara. He had taken one of the clones and made it bring that painting to the temple, calling Aren over to see it.
The boy was also looking at his parents in surprise, since their sudden arrival had caught the attention of everyone in the courtyard. Madara and Ciri were still sprawled on the ground, one on top of the other, while she shouted at him to stop tickling her.
"Mommy! Daddy!" Aren ran toward them, laughing, before pointing at the painting.
"Mommy, look! Is that you?!" he said, beginning to laugh childishly.
They had been in Cintra for the past two days, but they always returned to sleep with Aren during the night. Until they could make the place reasonably safe for them and, especially, for their son, they would continue keeping him at the temple.
Ciri could not help but feel all her anger disappear the moment she saw her son pointing at her painting. Exactly what she feared most had happened. She stopped looking like a mother and even the queen of a kingdom and turned into an embarrassed teenager having one of her greatest secrets exposed while her son happily pointed at the painting.
"Mommy looks so funny in that!" Aren began to laugh and clap his hands as he approached the two of them.
Ciri remained stunned for a few seconds until she began to smile, finally seeming to find the situation amusing as well. She no longer had any choice.
"Damned Madara... You'll pay for this someday," she said before grabbing her son and kicking Madara, who was on top of her, away.
He easily leaped away, performing a somersault before landing on his feet again, while Ciri carried Aren over to the painting with a certain resignation.
Madara stood beside Eira, who had come to see the commotion. "It's time for us to go to Cintra," he said to the unicorn in a more casual tone.
On the other side, Ciri had no choice but to explain the painting while her son seemed increasingly interested. That diminished her anger a little, especially when she realized that even that embarrassing version of herself looked quite similar to Aren.
"We're going to have a painting of you like this too," she said with a certain mischievousness.
Ciri expected to find horror on her son's face, but instead, she found a boy completely delighted by the idea.
"I want a painting like that too!" Aren replied, making a funny face and completely shattering Ciri's expectations.
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