Truth or Dare

[antimonyschnuck]

Truth or Dare

Fandom: The Witcher

Ship: Emhyr/Geralt

Rating: Teen+ (IDK there's a dead hand in there so don't read it to a baby maybe)

Emhyr has a truth spell ring.
Ciri finds this morally despicable.
Geralt agrees to help her with a heist to steal it from Emhyr's vault.

Ciri also wears a cat-suit, does laser beam acrobatics and saves Mererid.

1600 words will stab you in the eyes if you trigger the secret mechanism (that cut)

Truth or Dare

Night had fallen over Vizima and its surrounding woodlands. The moon was almost full and illuminated the landscape well enough that landmarks stood out from the cloudy sky like black paper cut-outs. Between two trees more than ten ropes were strung taut at all possible angles, building a mesh of narrow gaps. A lithe figure, almost melting into the surrounding shadows, propelled itself head first through a triangular gap and landed on the other side with a somersault. A tiny bell rang.

"Shite!" She grunted.

"Yeah those dramatic moves might still work if nothing else is possible," a gruffer voice evaluated. "Keep practicising all of them, we don't know what we'll need down there." A gust of wind had all the small bells attached to the ropes ring at once, an eerie sound.

Ciri huffed.

"Breaking into Emhyr's secret vault was your idea," Geralt reminded her.

"Yeah, because it needs to be done, you agreed with that." Ciri stretched her arm muscles and took aim for another dive. This time she managed it without triggering a bell. "Ha!" She lined herself up for another one. Practise was all repetition. "At least it was easy for me to find out what security measures we'll have to get around. Would have sucked to get surprised by them."

Geralt grunted affirmatively. "Still can't believe he thinks it's a good idea to force a truth spell on everyone getting near him. He usually thinks things through a little more."

***

A few days earlier:

"Her Highness the Crown Princess," Mererid announced to the room, which was the Emperor's private parlour and therefore empty except for the Emperor himself.

"Cirilla, come closer, I need to show you something." The Emperor seemed to be excited underneath his usual veneer of cold enui. "Mererid." The mousy little chamberlain twitched but obeyed and approached, too.

The Emperor held out his hand and looked at it. "Mererid, have you ever been involved in any treasonous activities against me?"

Mererid trembled slightly. "No, your Majesty."

The Emperor looked triumphant. "See, it is the ring. It makes people speak the truth."

Ciri narrowed her eyes. "He would have said that anyway."

"Hm. You are right, of course." The Emperor thought for a few seconds. "Mererid, what is the biggest secret you keep from the world?"

Mererid blanched but started to say something when Ciri's arm clasped firmly around his head and her hand muffled his words. "You can't do that to people! This is undignified! Where did you get that ring?"

The Emperor gave her a disappointed look. "It was auctioned off in Novigrad, taken from one of the mages murdered by Radovid and the Eternal Fire before we liberated the city. One of our agents acquired it for the crown."

Ciri huffed. "So do you also have to tell the truth while you're wearing it?"

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous," the Emperor snorted. "This will be a great impediment against conspiracies and treason. The only inconvenience is, it has to be recharged every night. Thank the Great Sun Foltest had a very secure vault built into his palace."

Ciri let go of Mererid who'd finally gone silent, wiped his drool off her palm and shook her head. "Father, I implore you: Don't use this against people. You are going to trespass into their most private thoughts. Truth spells never do good, they only cause chaos and discord."

The Emperor just looked somewhat disgruntled, he'd thought his daughter would appreciate this more. "This ring will be very useful, you will see."

***

"What the fuck are you wearing?" Geralt's eyes bulged a little. "Looks like you're naked under a layer of dark paint."

Ciri rolled her eyes. "It's a cat-suit. I got it from uncle Lambert who kept a few things from Aiden. It's special cat school gear, it has a stealth spell woven into it."

Geralt shook his head. "You can't be seen wearing that!"

"Exactly."

Geralt growled. "You sure this isn't just something he wore for s-"

Ciri cut him off with a sharp look. "Look who's talking, I thought the word 'armour' implied it covers the arms."

"Also cat school. It's the lightest armour I have," Geralt explained.

Ciri sniggered. "Yeah obviously, because I can see your underwear." She poked him playfully in the arm. "Ready?" Gerald nodded and she portalled them from her quarters into a room in the palace's basement that held spare furniture.

Geralt listened at the door and opened it a crack when he didn't hear anything. He nodded at Ciri and they snuck into the dark corridor, moving soundlessly to the door at the very end of it. This was the easiest security measure to overcome: Ciri had stolen the keys from Emhyr's walk-in vault in his private chambers.

The door opened into a small antechamber. Three doors led from here into three different directions. Two of them were dead ends with creative traps, only the one to the left was actually connected to the vault. Usually it was secured by a magical force field that scanned for the Emperor's cornea but Ciri had already disabled it by removing a power crystal from a socket, also at the other vault upstairs. They went through that door without problems, too.

The dimly lit corridor in front of them looked unassuming and invited to be walked through. Geralt nodded at Ciri and they both pulled up cloths covering their mouths and noses. Geralt rolled a smoke bomb exactly two meters into the corridor where the billowing smoke revealed criss-crossing red beams of magically generated light. Ciri stretched her arms and legs and carefully threaded herself through the gaps between the beams. Geralt had to admit the cat-suit was appropriate attire for a task like that. He watched her breach the last layer of beams with a dive-somersault combo and remove the crystal powering the beams from its socket. The magical light barrier flickered out of existence and Geralt followed Ciri down the corridor.

There it was, the actual vault chamber. The blasted truth ring stuck on the ring finger of a glowing artificial hand inside of a glass case. Well, hopefully artificial. Artificial or organic, it apparently recharged the ring over night. There also was a large glowing rune circle on the floor around the glass case that could only be deactivated by the Emperor himself.

Geralt started to climb up the wall. It was built from large slabs of stone stuck together with dimly shimmering mortar - that's where the dimeritium was - and provided enough bumps and grooves to be climbed by a Witcher. For the ceiling he had to drive pitons into the stone. He suspended himself with a harness from the already placed pitons while driving in the next ones. One of them slipped from his grip and fell and it was a close call but Ciri caught it before it fell on the rune, athletically diving for it, landing just outside the rune circle.
Geralt abseiled himself from the ceiling right above the case, carefully cut a hole into the glass and retrieved the ring from the finger of the definitely not artificial hand. He looked up and - great timing - right into the amber eyes of the Emperor coming through the doorway with two Impera guards.

There was a pause where no-one said or did anything except for staring. Then Geralt incinerated the magical hand with Igni, Ciri jumped between him and the Impera and finally the Emperor shouted at his guards, sending them out.

***

"How did you know? We didn't trigger any alarm." Ciri addressed the most important thing first.

Emhyr glared at her. "There is a silent alert automatically counting everyone entering the final vault chamber. Just so you know. For your future endeavours."

Geralt cleared his throat. "Can I come down now?"

Emhyr huffed, disabled the floor rune circle and held out his hand. Geralt put the ring on his palm, drew himself up on the rope, made it swing to the side, burned through it and landed elegantly on his feet. The Emperor watched him closely, probably out of suspicion; but if so, he seemed to think Geralt's biceps to be most suspicious.

"Using this ring is morally despicable," Ciri made their intentions clear. "It will also cause more harm than prevent it. At least you won't be able to use it anymore after its charge is run down."

Emhyr looked conflicted and seemed to be debating with himself. He looked at his daughter and sighed. "I was not ready for it but I need to know." He slipped the ring on. "How exactly do you feel about me?"

Geralt looked anguished and made a weird strangled sound. "I feel extremely attracted to you, not just physically, although: yeah, wowza. You also smell extremely good and you're a sarcastic bitch, I like that in a man. Your voice is like a razor embedded in velvet, I could listen to your scathing remarks all day. I want you so bad it hurts sometimes and that's the main reason I'm still here."

There was a very long shocked silence. Emhyr and Ciri stared at Geralt and Geralt stared at Emhyr. Eventually Geralt took a deep breath and nodded. "You know, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, since it's your fault I said it at all." He turned to leave when Emhyr gripped him by the arm.

"You still broke into my vault and destroyed my property." The Emperor's voice had taken on a so far unknown timbre, even lower and harder than usually. Geralt slowly looked him up and down and smirked. "Yeah like that."

"Melitele's tits." Ciri fled the scene fast enough to avoid seeing Emhyr shove Geralt against the next wall.

She was extremely grateful the spell had landed on Geralt. If Emhyr knew how little she actually hated him and how much she still craved for his approval, she'd lose a lot of well needed leverage.