(A/N: WARNING: Feels like a while since I've done one of these, rightly or wrongly, but scenes of a potentially disturbing nature. Specifically the horror involved in Witcher trials as well as imperfect descriptions of suffering with Mental health issues.

On the subject of the stuff about Mental Health. What is described in here is not supposed to be reflective of any single person's struggle with their mental health. But I have heard people describe their feelings as being like some of this. So please don't dismiss it as just being fantastical. There really are people going through this stuff in the world.)

“I'll never forget the first time I saw her.” Kerrass told me, the firelight reflecting off his eyes. “I mean, why would you forget the first time you see your Goddess after all.

“At first I didn't think she was real. She was standing off to one side watching us all. Watching me. She stood there and watched as the other Witchers and the apprentices went about their business. Watched while we were fed, sedated and otherwise cleaned up so that we wouldn't spread disease or infect ourselves with our own filth and similar.

“But she just watched. At first, I thought that she was some Sorceress. It happened occasionally that one of the Mages that worked on our mutations would bring in a fellow to watch, or to comment on the processes that were being used. Trusted colleagues that might be able to shed some kind of light on what went wrong with this or that as part of the process.

“The Elders from the school were always very strict on who they let in to observe the entire proceedings. They were never allowed to know the formula for everything that we were using. Nor were they allowed to take samples or attend autopsies. But it did happen and there was a woman standing in the corner of the Cave of Cages, just standing there and looking at us.

“So who else was it going to be really? Who else could it be? I imagined some beatuiful Sorceress seducing a Witcher in order to get a look at the fabled mutagens, or to otherwise see what all the fuss was about in return for some favours.

“I know better now of course but you have to remember that I was mad and so my feelings about other people were certainly tainted. And I also know that if any truly powerful Sorceror or Sorceress wanted to take the Witcher secrets, then there is little that we could do to stop them. The Wolves had the right idea. Hide the keep, that would keep them at bay. They can't steal the mutagens if they don't know where to look.

“But I digress.

“She was certainly beautiful enough to be a Sorceress. But again, how would you expect a Goddess to look? She changes every time that you see her. Normally it's small changes, subtle shifts in the shade of eye colour. Small differences in height, shape or weight. But that first time, she was different in a profound way. She had long, curly red hair that fell to the small of her back and pale green eyes. They glowed in the dark in a way that reminds me now of how Ariadne's eyes seem to take in the light around her and reflect and amplify it. Hers did the same and that was my second guess as to who she was. I guessed that she was some Elder Vampire come to avenge herself on the Witchers that might have seen to the deaths of her offspring or followers.

“I even tried to call for help. But I have no doubt that my rantings were ignored. Lost in the cacopheny that normally accompanies the presence of others in the Cave of Cages.”

“But she did nothing. She just stood there. Off to one side, watching, taking it all in. But all of that without judgement. She didn't seem to.... Care isn't the right word. It wasn't that she didn't care. She cared and does care deeply. But she was on no-one's side. She didn't mind about the man screaming his lungs out because he could hear a high pitched squealing noise in his head that threatened to shatter his skull. She wasn't on his side as he fought off the people that were trying to get some sleeping draught into his body so that the rest of us could sleep. But nor was she on the side of the men, apprentices and Witchers both, who were trying to medicate the stricken sufferer.

“She wasn't on the side of the Mage or the Mage's assistants who came into the cave to take notes and ask questions. Nor was she on the side of those of us who hurled ourselves at the bars in an effort to get to these fucks and choke the life out of their stupid bug-eyed faces out of some sense of vengeance because of what they had done to us.

“She just stood there and watched. With her long, luxurious red hair, sparkling green eyes, oval face, full lips that were tugged to one side by an odd smirk. She just sood there, one tanned arm coming out of her robe and holding onto a spear. Not leaning on it. More just resting it on the floor and keeping hold of it so that it didn't fall down.

“She wore a voluminous black cloak with a huge hood. It was not a glossy black or a shiny black or one of those cloaks that are dyed in stages so that when the cloth moves it hints at other colours underneath the nap of the fur. It was just black. The blackest black that you have ever seen. So black that it seemed to suck the light out of the room. Black enough that I thought it was a spell of some kind. Even Araidne's dress looked to have ripples and movements about itself when we first saw that and she was weak. This was black enough that she looked like a hole against the wall of the cave.

“When she came closer, I could see that she wre a long dress of dull black wool underneath the cloak, belted at her waist with black leather. The dress itself was loose and you could see gaps underneath it to show her body and skin. But there was extra cloth under the dress. A crude and rudimentary piece of corsetry to hold everything in place, not for the sake of modesty but more to keep her breasts tied down and out of the way. I could see patches of skin at her lower midriff and her underarm as well as her arms and shoulders being bare.

“Underneath the dress, she wore a pair of baggy, dark woolen Trousers. Similar to the kinds of trousers that Skelligan warriors make although without the patterns and the fancy dyes. She had boots on. Soft and supple boots that were of a similar dull, kind of fuzzy looking leather. The boots looked well worn and like the rest of her clothing. They looked old and almost crude.

“At the time, I wasn't really conscious of the age of the.... heh.... Fashion. But now, I could easily imagine the earliest humans dressing like this. Before people could sew and had to protect themselves. There was no.... finesses to her clothing. No craft or artistry. She had strapped herself up so that she could keep herself out of the way, there was no display of cleavage or anything else that might be tittilating.

“Her dress was practical and made from wool. I would leater learn that it was sleeveless to allow her greater freedome of movement and because she was quite warm enough. Trousers and boots, likewise, to protect herself from the elements.

“The boots were essentially leather bags with a thicker piece of cured leather sewed around the sole of the foot. None of this keel nonsense, or grips or treads carved into the leather. I would later learn that she often prefers to go barefoot, especially when riding anywhere but occasionally boots become necessary. Especially when walking through human filth.

“But her clothing gave the appearance of crudity. Or carelessness.... No, again, carelessness is not the right word. It was more as though clothing was relatively low down on her list of priorities. That she just needed something to do the job rather than anything to look nice or make an impression. I could easily imagine early men and women wearing clothes like that. Especially in those times before gender roles became more common and where women had to pick up weapons to defend the home just as much, or as often as men do. It was practical, it was utilitarian.... Yes that's the word I'm looking for. There was no ornament on them, nothing of grace or beauty. They were just clothes and she treated them as such.

“She had a shield alung on her back. The strap held in place by her left hand with the strap going over her shoulder. It was an oval shield and if she was careful, she could easily hide behind the entire thing. It was made out of wood with a solid handle in the middle. As she shifted around you could see other straps and things that were in place depending on how a wielder would want to use it. Whether they would want to hold it in place, strap it to their arms or just hold it in the same way that a man might hold a buckler. There was a black covering which I would find out to be some kind of leather.

“And all the time, she just stood there. I have no idea how long it was that she just stood there. Long enough for me to seriously believe that she was just some form of hallucination. Long enough to kind of convince me that I had finally lost what little remained of my mind.

“Sometimes she seemed to fade in and out as though she would almost be camouflaged with the rock face in the background. Other times she was there and as firm and sold as you or I. But she was always there. Just standing there. Watching. Always with those glowing green eyes. Just watching.

“Then came a time of quiet. It would happen occasionally. Just occasionally, in the same way that there can be great beauty in the chaos of a storm, well it turns out that there can be silence in a mad house. Everyone went quiet. I was kneeling on the floor, resting my head against the bars. I remember that because I remember the cold steel resting against my temples. I was kneeling there and watching her when she finally moved.

“Which was also when I decided that she was real. I hadn't been sure if she was some kind of hallucination before but now? Now I knew that she was real. I could see the way her cloak moved as it drifted over the loose stones on the ground. How it would occasionally catch one and pull it after itself. I could see it in the way that torchlight flickered as she moved, moving gently through the hall, using her spear as though it was some kind of staff of office.

“She came to me then. Walking through the others, none of who could see her or if they did they assumed, like I had, that she was some kind of hallucination. A product of all the herbs that they had given us as well as the projections of a mind long since lost to insanity.

“She walked through the cave like a Queen, finally come to her office and walking to her throne, her cloak sweeping behind her majestically while she held her head high and proud before she came to stand before my cage.

“Who,” She began, speaking clearly, carefully pronouncing every single syllable in each every word. You know the style of speech. Ciri and Emma both talk like that when they are throwing their authority around. “Who, the fuck, are you to summon me like that?” She demanded.

“I howled. I have no idea what posessed me to do that. But I howled at her. I poured all my rage and hate and pain and anger into it. All my fear, all my frustration, all my horror and confusion. I put everything I had into that scream. Everything I had. Everything that I had ever been or everything that I ever would be, I put it into that primal and formless bellow.

“I screamed for the boy whose mother had abandoned him. I screamed for the person who had taken what the Witchers had given him without questioning the harm it would do to body and mind. I screamed for all the pain and the injustice of it all and I balled all of that into a one lump in the middle of my chest and I threw it into her face with a howl of such pure and utter fury that I collapsed with it afterwards.

“And the silence of the madhouse had vanished. I had started it and now the others caught up my scream, my rage and my anguish. They jabbered, shouted and yelled. Leaping at the bars and dashing their heads against the cold rock. They screamed, laughed, wept and hollered with the pain of it all. The more lucid ones shouted for the guards to come and restrain those of us that might hurt ourselves or each other and all of us were shouting.

“I looked up at this woman. This impossible woman standing before me and she had her head head back, eyes almost closed in what I thought was a combination of bliss and joy. Then she looked around herself at all the chaos that was going on there and she laughed. She laughed with delight before her gaze fell back to me again where I lay. Slumped against the bars of my cage, the effort of my bellow consuming everything I had.

“I like you.” She said. “You have spirit.”

“Fuck your spirit.” I tried to snarl it but I suspect that the truth is closer to the suggestion that I whimpered it.

She laughed again before considering me for a long moment. “My name is Macha.” She said finally as if reaching a decision. “And I am pleased to meet you. Now, let's talk shall we?”

“And so we did. That is how I met my Goddess.”

-

After Kerrass told me that we were there to summon, and then to meet with, his Goddess. He stopped talking. He wouldn't be drawn on anything else and all but clammed up other than to say please and thank me when I passed him things. Before recommending that we got an early night. As I rolled into my blankets I could still see him staring out into the rain, leaning on his side as he watched the water fall and listened to the drops hitting the tarpaulin above us.

I always sleep well in that kind of environment. The noise of rain on the heavy canvas above us as a strange kind of effect in that it seems to drown out all the normal kind of noise and background thoughts that my brain tries to generate. It also helps to sooth me after a long journey. I've never been able to find out why but one of the things that I've already asked Ariadne for is that when we do get to move into the manor house in Angral, I want the master bedroom to be below the roof so that I can hear the rain falling on the slate above us. She looked at me for a long time and asked me why.

I told her that it was because I could not imagine a better image than to be lying in bed with the woman I love wrapped around me and listening to the rain outside. She smiled that smile that she gets sometimes when she's thinking about something sickeningly romantic and said that she would see to the matter.

So that night, I slept like the proverbial baby. Only once rising to relieve myself, well away from the circle. The place had begun to take on the feel of a religious site to me and I did not want to come anywhere close to sacrilege.

I woke late the following morning, Kerrass is normally a lot stricter about that kind of thing, insisting that we wake up early for some kind of training but this time, he shook me awake when the morning was well under way. He had already been into town and had a breakfast cooking. As you will know, I am a far better campfire cook than Kerrass is as his taste for food is much simpler than mine and therefore he doesn't really see the point in making special effort every night.

Don't get me wrong, he appreciates a nice meal when it's put in front of him but at the same time.... Food is fuel to him. He doesn't see the point except as an occasional treat for himself. And when that happens, the fact that someone else has cooked is part of the treat. He doesn't understand the pleasure that I occasionally get from being able to take all the raw ingredients and then turn them into a delicious meal.

I love it because it's one of the few skills that I have picked up because I wanted to pick them up rather than because I had to. I had to learn to cook otherwise I would not have been able to enjoy good food while I was a student and money was a bit tighter. Fighting, debating, scholarly pursuits and the rest are all things that I HAD to pick up. Either as part of my training as a child or because I was called into that vocation.

But cooking? There was a skill that I picked up because I wanted to eat better food, both at my lodgings at the University or out on the road with Kerrass. I could have lived off bread, cheese, cooked meat and dried fruit. I could have lived off the kind of stew that everyone knows how to make, you know the kind, meat in pot, pour water over it, add vegetables, stir until everything is reasonably soft and then eat with bread.

Everyone knows how to make that and when you hear about trail “stew” then that is what you are thinking about. A watery kind of gruel with vegetables and meat (if you're lucky) floating around in it where some of the meal is boiled to the point of mushyness and some is tough and chewy.

I've gone off topic, especially as I'm pretty sure that I've talked about this particular facet of life on the road before.

My point is, I cook and Kerrass does the clearing up. I'm getting pretty good at it to be true and when we are out hunting, I have to leave my packs behind because of all the extra tools and pans that I have picked up over the years that clatter while my horse moves.

But Kerrass can still cook a fairly decent steak although he prefers his steak a bit bloodier than I prefer mine nowadays. I have gotten better with that kind of thing, but I still struggle to achieve his levels of “I prefer to hunt my food” cooking of a steak. And he can still cook a good breakfast. A meal that I am pretty sure is his favourite meal of the day.

“So what's on the plan of today's work Kerrass?” I asked.

“After training,” He began, spooning another pile of mushrooms into his face. “We need firewood.”

“Ok, how much?”

“Lots of firewood. Far more than you are thinking at the moment. We still have several days before the Equinox so we have time, but we need Firewood. Mountains of it.”

“Alright.” I commented, cutting up one of the Garlic Sausages that Kerrass had bought from the village. I started looking around for trees and other places that I might get wood from.

“But it's not just as simple as that.” He said. “Anything that you can get from the battlefield will help. So if you find anything burnable on the field, then we can use that too. Remains of war engines, broken bows, arrow shafts, Spear shafts, Axe hafts, anything. Old bits of banner pole.”

“Ok, I get it.”

“I'm not sure that you do. Also bones, Old skulls, rib cages. The base of the fire is going to be from the wood, that is the basic ingredient but we need other stuff as well. Bones work as fuel...”

“They really don't Kerrass.”

“They do for our purposes and if you get the fire hot enough. Bones, clothing. Anything that will burn, you get it.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Working.” He said, pulling the cloak of Crow's feathers around as evidence. “Also waiting to take the delivery of all the lamp oil that is being delivered and the three carts of firewood that I have had ordered.”

I felt my eyebrows raise towards my hairline. “That is a lot of firewood.”

“And we need more.” Kerrass told me. “We have plenty of time, so feel free to go and have a look around the place. Go and see your areas of “historical significance” and have a good time. But Firewood. Lots of it. And take your spear with you.”

“After that Bounty Hunter, I'm not likely to forget.”

He grunted, already selecting the next feather to be added to the cloak, with his tongue clamped firmly between his teeth.

“Kerrass?” I began.

“Mmm?”

“Did you set that fight up, between me and the Bounty Hunter I mean?”

He looked at me for a long time before looking back down at his work. “You were never in any danger Freddie. You did well and he underestimated you.”

“What if he hadn't?”

“You risk your life every day when you travel with me Freddie, you know that.” An extra sense of hardness had crept into his posture and his expression.”

“Yes I do, but never through your negligence.”

He sighed and set the cloak aside. “Freddie, I love you like a brother, in fact, more than I love some of my actual brothers. But we are here. This is what needs to be done and there is a lot going on here that you do not understand. And before you start, you will never understand it. In the same way that I will never understand what the difference is between how I've seen you bow in Northern Redania versus Southern Redania. Let alone in those Southern Bits of Nilfgaard that we've visited. And you did it automatically and without thinking. This is my arena. Not yours. These are my Sacred Rites. Not yours.”

He realised that he was getting angry, although I've seen him angrier. “You were never in any danger Freddie. He would not have been allowed to kill you but it does mean that you will be able to speak when the time comes.”

“You could have told me.”

“I could have. But there was no time for that.” And that seemed to be the end of that.

I went off to walk it off, taking the time to have a sit somewhere and talk it out with Ariadne a bit. I won't go through the entire conversation. She spent most of her time being Kerrass' advocate while also understanding why I was upset and angry. She warned me that similar instructions will be given in the winter when it came to the matter of meeting her contact. I asked her if meeting that contact would involve some kind of fight to the death. She laughed and said no. Although she did warn me that I might have to sing.

I am not at all convinced that she was entirely joking.

But in the end, I went off and did what I was told. I took my horse with me and went looking for firewood, tying up whole bunches of the stuff and strapping it to the side of my horse. When I didn't think my horse could carry any more, I would take it back to the circle and hurl it into the middle with the rest where Kerrass was half building the fire and half working on the cloak.

“It was easy to tell where the fire was meant to be on the grounds that, while I worked and toured the battlefield, I had seen the wagons of Firewood heading down to our camp and had watched, amused, from a distance while the bemused townsfolk had dumped it all within the circle rather carelessly before Kerrass carefully set about constructing the huge mountain of fire that would eventually be there.

I also watched from Natalis Hill as two more wagons were led down to the camp site. Two whole Wagons carrying several huge barrels of Lamp oil. I hid as he was doing that. I could see him looking around for me as though he was expecting me to do a good chunk of the work.

But true to his word. Kerrass did not make a comment. He would wordlessly accept the bundles of firewood that I brought him. Taking the sacks of bones and skulls and ribs with the only comment being that I didn't have to worry about the condition of the bones. The Necrophages had already sucked all the goodness out of them anyway So I shouldn't feel shy of bringing half a rib cage or a jawbone or anything.

Which was good. Because I hadn't. It was true, what bones there were were often shattered and hollow meaning that the marrow had already come out.

But it only took another day and a half for the preparations to be made. All that was left to do was for Kerrass to finish the cloak that he was working on diligently and, apparently, there was no such thing as too much firewood. So I would just keep collecting it. Over and over and over again.

I spent my evenings in Brenna itself. Talking to the locals and collecting the human history of the place. What the people were like, how they came to live there and so on. I spoke to the oldest inhabitants of the time who had hid on a hillside in case one side or the other decided to appeal to his patriotism and demand that he stand in line with an old, rusty hunting spear.

I spoke to the innkeeper a lot who kept topping up my tankard. He knew who I was and wondered if there would be a chapter devoted the field at Brenna. I told him that there would almost certainly be a chapter or three about the place but beyond that, I couldn't have commented. I returned to the camp every night where we would train inside the circle, eat dinner and go to bed.

Or rather I did. Kerrass was finishing his cloak and muttering to himself. More than once he went out hunting for more Crows. There were a lot of them in the local area and he fitted his crossbow together in order to kill a few of them in order to fill his last few needs.

The day of the Autumn Equinox dawned with absolutely no change. The sun had come out a couple of days ago and it left us with quite a beautiful day. I was expecting something different but Kerrass didn't react. He just rolled out of his bedroll with a quiet smile.

“So what do we do today Kerrass?”

“Nothing till tonight.” He told me. “Then we're staying here until she shows up.”

“Which is.... How long?”

He shrugged. “As long as it takes. Buy supplies will you? Enough for several days.”

“Lovely.”

I wandered back to town and took another look around the battlefield in the glorious sunshine. Supplies were taken down and while the day passed by, Kerrass saw to it that our horses were taken up to the town and stabled for the next week. I wandered back at sunset to find Kerrass carefully setting up the firewood or what's left of it into one place.

“Do we want to keep something back?” I asked as he tossed the last few bundles of broken bones and arrow shafts onto the pile. “You know, to keep the fire burning?”

“No,” He said. “Once it's lit and consecrated then it will keep burning until she decides that she doesn't care any more. If it burns down then we will know that she isn't coming and that will be the end of that. Do me a favour though would you. Take another barrel of the oil and pour it round the circle. You don't need to be too careful, she just wants the work to be put in.”

I shrugged and got on with it.

Having heard about this adventure from me, several people have wondered why I would be so involved in the rites to another God when I so devoutly follow the Eternal Flame. The truth is not that complicated. First is the fact that I was aiding someone else in their religious observances. Just as I would tolerate and accompany a friend to a service to Kreve or Melitele. Nor would I interrupt people leaving offerings to any of the smaller Gods and Goddesses that litter the countryside. The Nilfgaardians might be a Monotheistic culture but the north is Polytheistic and so, as a Northerner, I see no conflict here. I have sometimes wondered if life would be simpler for us all if we were more Monotheistic, but then, what if we were all Monotheistic in the time of King Radovid the mad. Emma, Laurelen and myself would all be on pyres by now I am sure of it.

Some people might even suggest that we would be better off that way.

But the other truth is that I did not know what to expect. I took comfort from the fact that fire seemed to be an important part of this faith that Kerrass was a part of, which brought his faith in line with my own. So I was more curious than anything. Curious and fascinated about what was about to happen.

So I did as I was told, took the spigot out of the barrel of oil and gently poured the contents around the circle. Kerrass had taken one of the other barrels and was pouring it into the central stack of wood. When it was all done, all the oil had been poured, all the wood and debris and things had been stacked, we ate a meal, a light thing that didn't sit too heavy on the stomach. Kerrass told me that we would just be grazing over the next little while until his Godess' arrival and sure enough, I could see apples, rounds of cheese, loaves of bread and a large pot of that stew that I was talking about bubbling away.

We ate, then Kerrass wandered off and came back with the pigs bladder and the sacks full of heads and moster trophies which he placed inside the circle. Lastly came the flashy, jewelled duelling sword that Kerrass had taken from the man that Kerrass had killed, along with the Broadsword that he had taken from the body of the Bounty Hunter.

Then he waved me over to sit with him for a bit while we shared some mead that the locals brewed. It was surprisingly sweet, even for mead.

“So we're just waiting for full dark to start the ritual.” Kerrass told me. “The trick to it is to wait for full dark and then to leave it an extra couple of hours just to be sure. But before midnight though.”

“How long will it take her to arrive?” I passed him the bottle.

“It depends.” He said taking a long swallow. “First of all, how far away is she at the moment and secondly.... I dunno, I sometimes get the feeling that she enjoys making me wait.”

“You sound like you're talking of a lover or a woman that you are courting more than a Goddess.” I commented carefully. People can be touchy about their religious rites and although Kerrass had never mentioned his, I wanted to be careful.

“You would not be wrong.” He told me. “And you will see why when.... if she chooses to grace us with her presence.” He said this last with a kind of bitter amusement as he stared off into the night. Then he stopped and shook his head as though shaking off sleep.

“First of all though,” he went on. “A couple of warnings. Once the ritual is completed she could turn up immediately or she could take several days to arrive. During that time though, it would be the height of bad manners if she turned up and neither of us were awake. She is a Goddess with a temper and as one of her aspects is a Goddess of Death, we don't want to piss her off too much.”

“Kerrass is she....”

He held is hands up. “I don't worship the Lionhead Freddie. I am not so foolish as that.”

I subsided. My leap of logic seems flawed to me now but at the time, I hope I can be forgiven for my sudden fear.

“What I'm saying,” he said, getting things moving again, “is that we need to set a watch and one or other of us needs to be awake at all times.”

I nodded. “We've done worse before now.”

“We have. When she does arrive, we should have plenty of warning unless she's choosing to just be that way today, but when she does arrive I need to warn you about something.”

“Is this not something that you should have warned me about before?” I teased.

“Probably, but we're in it now.” He sighed and a look of uncharacteristic hesitation crossed his face. Then his expression firmed up. “Don't resist.” He told me.

“What do you mean?”

He frowned. “Freddie, I will explain all. Hopefully we'll have enough warning before she arrives for me to get through it all but it's just something that needs to be said in advance. But don't resist.”

“Kerrass.” I chided. “What have I said before about being cryptic?”

“I know, I know. You will have all your answers soon I promise.”

We settled down for a while, passing the bottle back and forth before Kerrass climbed to his feet. “Well, let's get the party started.”

“Kerrass?”

“Mmm?”

“Are you ok with doing this? You sound as though....” I shook my head and just plunged in. “You sound as though you don't want to do this.”

“No I do, I really do which is part of the problem. It's just.... Every time I see her, she reminds me of how far I've come and what I used to be as well as how easy it would be for me to slide backwards into that. That is.... not always pleasant.”

We stopped for a while as Kerrass seemed lost in thought, staring into the pile of wood. Again, he shook his head as though banishing some drowsy thoughts.

“Here we go then.” Kerrass gestured and the flames leapt up through the piles of firewood, bones and battlefield debris. Then he turned and gestured again so that flames leapt up all around us in the circle.

“I bring you flame.” Kerrass declared. Not yelling, but not quietly either. “I burn the bones of men killed in battle. I burn the arrows and spears cast in anger. I burn the banners of armies that led the charge into enemies ranks.”

The heat was incredible. A wall of fire behind me and a solid column of flame in front of me. The smell was awful.

“I give you the tongue of a monster that I tore from the jaws of death while it's teeth still reached for my blood.” Kerrass pulled the offending appendage out of his sack and threw it into the flame.

“I bring you the paw of a Griffin, cut from it's leg as it swept to take my life.”

Again, it was sent into the flames.

“We give you the heads of men that sought our death and the deaths of those who could not fight for themselves.”

I remembered the bandits that had been killed on the hill, not that long ago. I remembered the face of the man that I had skewered that day. His teeth had been rotting in his head as he screamed at me and his face had been ugly with hate and lust for blood. It had not been a difficult fight or a difficult kill as his desire for my death and the stench of alcohol on his breath made it clear that he was doomed before I got anywhere near him.

“We give you weapons that we took from men who fought us in fair combat.” Kerrass said, throwing the broadsword and the duelling sword into the fire as well.”

It went on and on. I'm not telling you the most of them to ensure that you can't accidentally summon the Goddess in question. She would hate me for that and hate you even more. But Kerrass stood there, reaching into the sacks at his feet, pulling something out and throwing it into the flames with an odd little ritualistic speech. He poured the blood onto the fire surrounding us in stages, not all at once but in precise amounts and in a strange pattern.

It all went on the fire and I watched it burn. And I had thought that the smell was bad beforehand.

“And I bring you rainment for your coming.” Was the last thing as Kerrass held up the cloak of Crow's feathers. “A gift, for my Goddess of Battle.” He said, laying the cloak, carefully, on the ground.

Then he stopped, seeming to subside in some way.

“Well that's that,” He said to me after a moment or two. “Apple?”

“What?”

“Do you want an apple?”

“Is that it?”

Kerrass jumped over the flames and came back with the fruit, tossing one to me which I caught automatically.

“Pretty much,” He told me before biting down hard, juice spilling out over his chin. “Now we wait to see if she comes.”

“How long is that gonna take?”

“Freddie, I have performed this ritual dozens of times. It works nine times out of ten. The longest she's ever kept me waiting is a week. Will she turn up?” He shrugged. “I think so. I suspect that she will want to meet you.” He glared at me. “Don't fall into the trap of taking that as a compliment though. Her blessing is a mixed one at best. The absolute worst thing that we can do is to jump and shout for her attention. Let alone demand her coming. We would hate to see her angry. According to rumour, when she gets angry it generally involves a Body-count.”

“When did she last get angry?”

“According to the version of the story that I heard? Falka's rebellion, but that's from a dubious source. She occasionally has little snits that result in hundreds of people getting killed. The last one was when Jacques de Aldesbourg tried to overthrow Foltest. According to rumour among that small circle of people like me who worship her, de Aldersbourg tried to get her on his side against everything he saw as a threat and she was not pleased at the prospect.”

“Wow.”

“As I say, it's just a rumour. You tired yet?”

“Not yet. It's too hot to sleep now.”

At first Kerrass was quite tense. He was like.... He was walking on the edge of things. He was nervous I think but there was an extra effect to it as well. He was... Ok. Let's try this. He was like he was waiting for someone or something to show up at a party. No, that's exactly what he was like. He was that person, and we've all been that person at one time or another, where everyone is in the tavern having a good time and someone is waiting for their crush to arrive.

Every time the door opens, they jerk in their seat, their head turning towards the door to see who has just walked in. I try to be tolerant when I see it in other people as I am well aware that I have been that person on more than one occasion. But at the same time, it can be awfully funny when you're watching someone as they instantly perk up as they turn towards the door. Then their face seems to sag as they realise that it's not the person that they want to see. They subside in their seat, sullen and depressed until the next time that the door opens and someone walks in.

It can be a struggle not to laugh at times.

But then the object of the crush that they have been waiting for comes in and it's like the person has come alive.

That was what Kerrass was like. Except, instead of watching the door of some tavern, he was watching the flames. There was no way for me to tell what it was that he was looking for and it was several hours before he noticeably relaxed and seemed to become his old self again. It took me a while to realise what he had seen as well but when I did see it, there was no getting away from it.

The fire was not consuming the wood. Not the wood, the bones or anything else that we had thrown in there. The heads and the monster remnants had vanished, consumed by the furnace like heat of the thing but the wood itself was not going down. Nor did the oil around the outside ring seem to be being consumed. Kerrass visibly relaxed and nodded to himself before taking a deep breath.

“Well she's on her way. So there's that at least. The ritual has worked.”

“So how long do we have to wait?” I asked again,

“We will know when she is close Freddie, believe me when I say that we will know when she is close.”

That was not reassuring. But with that relief Kerrass checked that I was alright to be awake for a few hours before rolling over in his blankets and just went to sleep leaving me to watch the flames dance by myself for a while.

I find flame hypnotic. A leftover from my religious upbringing I suppose but I always like the sound of it, the rippling air noise that comes as well as the crackling of the fuel, the occasional spitting of the oil but mostly, I just like the gently dancing flames and watching the embers rise up on pillars of heat in order to reach the heavens.

It's restful, calming and I've always liked it. There was an extra factor here which led the entire thing an edge of anticipation, but I was content to watch the flames with Kerrass snoring gently beside me.

We swapped over a bit later and it was my turn to rest and the sound of the flames lulled me to sleep. Not for the first time during the entire process, I was reminded of a rite of the Eternal Flame and whether or not there was any commonality between the two. Just as there is between the Fire and the worship of Kreve.

But that sense of being involved in something sacred or holy lulled me into an easy sleep and I woke in the early hours of the morning.

It took three days to come to a head. During that time, Kerrass and I trained, argued, debated, played dice and cards. There was always some element of competition about it where Kerrass displayed the knack of the truly great debators, of being able to argue both sides of the point, the one just as easily as the other. At first, he was kind of playful with it. Commiserating his losses, teasing me for mine and generally enjoying himself but later, he seemed to get more intense over the losses and a little more crowing over the victories.

But after two days of this slow kind of building behaviour, he seemed to calm again. Become placid with it. Exactly like a priest. Not one of those Fire-breathing men who stand on street corners and harrangue all comers about the evils that men and non-human commit. But one of the gentle sort for whom serving and helping others is a calling that must be obeyed.

We sat, we talked and caught up on things. We discussed my wedding and he gave me some pieces of practical advice for the wedding itself. Referencing his own weddings to two seperate women and I felt his grief for them both that was still raw and a little too near for anyone's comfort.

But he told me two things. The first was that although a lot of the decisions about the wedding itself were out ot my hands, there were still things that I needed to bear in mind. The most important thing to remember, at the end of the day, is that the person that you are marrying is the reason that you are there. If you keep that in mind all through the ridiculousness of the entire situation then you will be fine.

He also warned me that on the day itself, other than swearing the oaths and sitting next to each other during the dinner, you actually spend quite a lot of time separate from your new spouse. So he told me something interesting. I am possibly paraphrasing here but...

“On the day itself, everything will always be moving impossibly quickly. From the moment you rise in the morning to the moment you go to bed at night, your day will be planned out. And in those moments where you are expecting a pause, old friends and people that you barely remember will be coming up to you with bottles and tankards where they will insist on pouring you a drink and talking about old times. So my advice is this.

“At some point during the day, before the alcohol has properly kicked in, but after the oath has been sworn. Take a bottle, and the woman that you love, and just go off somewhere quiet. Not to screw, kiss or do any of that kind of thing. But just take some time to sit quietly in each other's company, away from everyone else, and take in the fact that you are married and all the things that are happening over the day. Because when you get to bed at night, you will be too drunk or exhausted to do much more besides take your wedding clothes off and fall asleep.

“That's assuming that there won't be people there to witness the consummation. If that's the case, then my advice to both of you is to make peace with the fact that your first experience with each other is going to be dissappointing. Unless you're into that kind of thing, I imagine that being watched can really put you off your game.”

On and on it went. Advice like this.

“Why are you telling me all of this Kerrass?” I asked at one point.

“Because there may come a time when I can't.” He said. “Either that I can't, or that you don't want me to.”

I should have listened to that really.

It was on the night of the third full day, the fourth night that we first heard a peal of thunder. It was a distant thing, remote and far away and Kerrass stopped our sparring session and looked off into the distance where the Thunder seemed to be coming from.

It was odd, because it had not been a day for thunder. It was a relatively calm day really, there was none of that smell in the air that heralds a thunderstorm, nor was there a closeness in the air, I didn't have a headache, or any of the other signs that there might be a storm due to come down at any moment. So it was completely out of the blue from our little camp.

The villagers, being villagers and relatively sensible, ran for shelter in preparation for the storm that they were now expecting. They had been relatively accepting of our eccentricities, a few of the children had come out to look at the crazy Witcher and the even crazier Scholar that had lit a huge bonfire out in the middle of the field of battle. But beyond that, they had left us alone. We had plenty of supplies and although I was hesitant to try it for myself, the fire in the ring around us was not nearly hot enough to prohibit my jumping over the flames easily so we were in no danger of running out of supplies.

So Kerrass turned to where we thought that the Thunder was coming from and just stood there for a while, his sword in hand, waiting, I tried to ask what he was waiting for, even though I should have seen the answer easily, but he waved me into silence.

Then the thunder rolled again.

“She is coming.” He told me.

We threw the blankets outside the circle of fire as well as the food and other things that we had lying around the camp. We kept our weapons though at Kerrass' insistence. We stopped and listened to another roll of thunder.

“What now?” I cursed myself as I asked. I was beginning to feel as though it was the only question I knew how to ask. Kerrass smiled at me though as he sat down, looking relaxed, and gestured for me to sit opposite him.

“Now is the time for talking.” He told me. “Now I answer all of your questions.”

“All of them?” I asked slyly.

“Within reason,” His answering grin was telling. “There are some questions that you would be better off asking her after all.”

But even then, it was a long time before he started to speak. “I am a lucky man really.” He began carefully. “I am certainly far more lucky than those people on the continent who worship other things. I am obviously no Atheist but I can understand the arguments that these people make. I can understand what they say when they argue that the Holy Fire was the last remnants of an old Elven ritual or magical place. I could even believe those people that suggest that those early priests and priestesses of the Eternal Fire made something up in order to be able to properly control the populace that was growing in Novigrad at the time. I can understand that although I think that the truth is actually somewhere in the middle of both arguments.

“I can absolutely believe that many of the small spirits that the farmers and the villagers of the continent worship and leave offerings out to, are either the last remnants of legitimate and very real nature spirits that have either died of moved on. I can also see and appreciate the argument that a farmer needs someone to curse or blaspheme against to make himself feel better, or to believe that there is a reason that his crops have failed for the ninth year in a row. He needs to believe that he has angered some God rahter than admit the simple truth that he is just unlucky and that there is a problem with the land that he is trying to grow things in.

“I can also see the arguments that men looked out and saw the lightening flash in the fields and tell themselves that this must be the work of some God in order to explain that which is probably a natural phenomenon. Or the Southerners that look up into the heavens and see the sun and think that it must be holy.

“And who is to say that they are wrong. The sun does, after all, dictate the way that we live their lives.

“But what I have over all of you, is that I have seen my Goddess. I have met her, talked to her and loved her. It is also true that I have hated her and cursed her name many times in the past.”

“Why have I never heard of her before?” I asked. “What's her name?”

“You have heard of her.” Kerrass told me. “You have, although you have not been able to identify that which you have heard. You have heard of the horsewoman of war?”

“Yes.” I answered. “Often dismissed as a peasant supersition. A woman riding desperately in front of the armies and the war front. She was last seen in Velen towards the end of the last continental war, although some have suggested that this was likely just people giving supernatural characteristics to Lady Yennefer when she was riding through the area. I don't deny that Yennefer can be terrifying when she wants to be and it is true that no sane person, let alone a woman, would be riding through a war front, by herself.”

Kerrass chuckled at that.

“Yes I remember. I have spoken to Yennefer and my Goddess about that mistake. They are a lot alike, my Goddess and Yennefer in many ways. Yennefer was concerned and a little disquieted by the mistake while the Goddess found it rather amusing.

“But yes, my Goddess is she whom some of the common folk call the Horsewoman of war.

“They see her riding on a black horse before the armies. It doesn't matter which side of the army. But she rides, black cloak flying out behind her like some kind of primeval battlestandard. Hair flying in the wind. Sometimes, witnesses say that she has blonde hair, others say that her hair is black and some, rarely, say that she has red hair. But she is always accompanied by crows. Another reason that folk mistook Lady Yennefer for the Goddess as I understand she occasionally likes to use Black Birds as servants and messengers.”

I grunted at that.

“But she has often been seen riding hither and thither during the continental wars. It has been a busy time for her and she does not always appear like that. I know, for instance, that Constable Natalis had a lewd dream about a dark haired woman the night before the battle of Brenna. He spoke of a passionate, terrifying woman who loved him fiercely and clawed his back and bit his neck. He thought it nothing more than a dream until his squire noticed the teeth marks on his neck and nail gouges on his back, when his armour was being placed around his body.

“I also know that, supposedly, Queen Meve was seen conversing with a woman in a black robe carrying a spear before the first battle of Aldersbourg and the black robed woman left in a fury shortly afterwards. The common folk at the time nodded their heads sagely and claimed that these angry words were the cause of the defeat of the Northern Monarchs in that battle.

“There are many such stories like this one that I can tell. I can tell you that, according to legend, the life of Queen Calanthe was saved at the battle of Hochebuz by a woman wielding a naxty looking spear and a strange oval shield of foreign manufacture.

“A man called Torretz says that he shared a drink with a beautiful blonde who wore a black cloak, in an inn before he went to war and would later take the battle standard of Lord Karenas home with him to Nazair after the second continental war. He used it to win great fame for himself and won favour in the Imperial Court.

“A Skelligan warrior named Oingus got into a drinking contest with a woman that challenged his manhood. When he lost she advised him to skin a pig and to use the bloody skin of the animal as a shield cover, telling everyone that it was human skin. That man went on to be called Oingus Blood-shield and just the sight of his bloody shield would cause brave warriors to flee in terror.

“I have many stories like this. Far too many stories. I collect them.”

He stared into the fire for a long time after this. As he seemed to peter out.

“I will never forget the first time I saw her.” He said.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

-

“What did you talk about?” I asked after a long while. Kerrass seemed to have sunk into the memory and was struggling to get out. He was lying on his side now, propped on his elbow and was just staring into the flames with a strange kind of hypnotised gaze. I had little doubt that he was looking at things, or watching events that were happening a long time ago or taking place in some other location.

He heard my question but he didn't answer it. He didn't even seem to notice it really but then he was jerked into the present by a relatively close peal of thunder.

It still wasn't raining.

Then he grinned at me. “I don't really think I did much talking if we're being honest with each other.” He said. I think it would be closer to the truth to suggest that I whimpered and begged and moaned and pleaded while she crouched there and listened closely.”

He stopped talking there for a moment as he reached for the words, opening and closing his mouth a few times as though tasting what he was about to say.

“I know.... You can't....” He blew some air out of his mouth in exasperation. “It is difficult to speak about just how awful it was in the Cave of Cages.” He said. “You know about the other trials, both the formal and the informal ones that Letho and I have both talked about. The trials of Choice, Grasses, Dreams, Sword, Death and the Mountain.”

He took another deep breath.

“I realise that I am telling the story out of order. I'm sorry for that.”

“I know Kerrass, it's alright.”

“Do you not want to go and get your papers and your quills or something?”

“No, this doesn't feel like.... Flame I don't know Kerrass. It feels more as though the way you're telling this is as important as what you are actually saying.”

He grunted and looked away.

But,” I said carefully. “I also notice that you are distracting me, or maybe yourself, from what you actually need to say.”

He smiled. “Getting perceptive in your old age Freddie?”

“I had a good teacher.”

“Hold off your opinions on how good a teacher I am until after the night is over.” He told me. “Ok....

“Ok. I passed my trial of the choice easily enough. The truth was that I didn't find it particularly difficult. I got none of the stomach cramps or pains that sometimes accompanies the roots, herbs and mushrooms that we all have to consume. I did get the runs occasionally and everyone vomits up their food sometimes when their insides are rearranging themselves. You soon gain a new tolerance for other people's flatulance when you are surrounded by boys who are, not only, going through puberty but are also taking body altering chemicals and hormones.

“The worst I ever remember getting from all the stuff we ate was this pain in my lower back and sides. Around where my Kidneys are which probably tells you something. As for the rest of it.... I found that I wanted to be a Witcher. I really did. Like most of us in those caves of the Feline keep, I knew what poverty was actually like and I had decided that I wanted none of that. My mother, as I've said, was probably the village whore and that came with bouts of homelessness and being forced to live off other people's charity which I hated but then again, what are you going to do about it? At the time there was nothing that I could do.

“It has been suggested that I was quite clever for my age. But I remember thinking that it was quite logical. One of the other lads that had come with me from my village tried to run away and go home but I thought that that was pointless. I had no desire to return to that kind of life and I was also left with the stark reminder that my mother hadn't fought for me. She had sent me with the Witcher in order to get me to go so I knew that even if I did manage to get away from the keep and, by some miracle, survive to make it home, then I knew that there would be no welcome for me there.

“My mother would not be waiting before some kind of warm hearth with arms wide and welcoming. The world just doesn't work like that.

“So where else would I go? I was not deluded enough to think that I would be able to make my own way in anything else. A few people had suggested that with our sword skills being what they are, we could make our way as bandits or as mercenaries. Neither option seemed particularly appealing to me as I could well believe that banditry is either feast or famine. I didn't like the prospect of running from the law or from angry villagers or from this or that in the middle of winter.

“And the problem with being a mercenary was... Well.... I could easily imagine how Mercenaries would be treated as expendable by the Lords and Generals that they were hired by on the grounds that dead mercenaries didn't need to be paid. So I didn't fancy that either.

“Also, I had seen some of those older Witchers train. Another easy flight of the imagination was a half skilled mercenary going up against a Witcher. I did not want to be afraid any more. I didn't want to worry about people attacking me or people using their strength and holding that strength over me the way the bigger kids had always helf things over me when I was little. I wanted to be the best. I didn't want to settle for second best, a soldier or a mercenary. I couldn't face being some scribe or scholar...

I laughed at that and Kerrass looked at me in shock before he realised what he had said and we had a shared moment of amusement.

“I can see why.” I told him.

“Yes. On balance I would have been richer than I have ever been in the past if, at the time, I had left and been some kind of tutor, teaching spoiled little rich children how to form their letters. But so far, my education had been quite broad and I could have made it in any number of professions. Scholar,” He looked at me side long “Lecturer.” He teased and we both laughed. “I could have been a herbalist or an alchemist. I could have been a tracker or a hunter but there was always that thing in the back of my mind that told me that although I could be any of those things. I would always be afraid of the next man that approached me with a sword. Even though I had been highly trained, even by that point, there is always someone better than you.”

He stared off into space for a bit longer.

“I wish I could tell you something more flowery.” He said after a while. “I wish I could tell you that I longed to make a difference in the world and ensure that some people live without fear. And that was true, but my main driving goal was that I was desperate that I didn't live with fear.

“So I threw myself into my studies. All of them. Sword play. Sign work. Book learning, all of it. I acted up, sure, I was a young teenager. Of course I acted up. But I was not acting out because I was rebelling, it was more that I acted out because whatever I did had seemed like a good idea at the time. I was also far from the most gifted student. Some took to swordplay and acrobatics easier than I did. Some picked up the learning or their hands were better shaped in order to force themselves into the patterns to form the signs. But I was the most determined. I think I can say that.

“I remember various older Witchers talking about the apprentices. We used to make a game of it, trying to sneak up on them in order to eavesdrop without being caught. I remember them saying of me, “He will never be famous or take anything unusual, but that one will still be around long after the rest of his fellows are gone.”

“I am too.” Kerrass got a sad look for a couple of moments before he shook himself again.

“I worked so hard at being a Witcher, even before I was a Witcher.” His gaze became distant, back to staring at a memory.

The thunder seemed to be getting closer to my ears. Kerrass didn't even look up.

“They come for you at night. When the others are sleeping. You never hear them coming, why would you. They're Witchers and they are far better at this than you would ever be. They come for you at night and the first thing you know is that leather hand over your mouth as they force this rubber ball into your mouth. Tie your hands and feet, blindfold you and then bodily carry you off to where your trial of the grasses is going to begin.

“We used to laugh and joke about it when we found an empty bed. We used to laugh, telling jokes about this kid or that one running away or going for their trials. We hardly ever saw them again of course because they would sleep in different stalls and once you are a new Witcher, you find that you don't want to be around those kids that you came up with. Because it is all too feasible that they will soon be dead anyway and you don't want to... There is no longer the shared fear that you might die soon. That shared terror is no longer there and you end up feeling distant from those leftover apprentices.

“But they come for you at night.

“Letho showed you a little of what it's like to go through the trials but he only showed you a fraction of it. And to make matters worse there is the fact that you are now well past your twentieth year. I was fourteen as far as I can tell. Men who had shown me gruff affection with their blows and lessons, no matter how harsh they might have been, now struck me hard to keep me sedate. I was held down in a panic as I had no idea what was happening to me.

“Later, I wondered how I would have behaved if they had told me that it was my turn for the trial of the Grasses, how would I have behaved then? I have no idea of course. Schrodinger once told me that that had been tried at various junctures, taking new apprentices through and showing them the cages and the tubes and tables. They had tried making that part of The Choice. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that the body just tries to rebel at what is being done to it. It doesn't matter how careful they are. It doesn't matter how gentle they are. The body always tries to rebel.

“Rather naively, I also once asked if you could sedate someone in advance to make it easier for them to... take it I suppose. Apparently the mages in charge of the transcformations refused this prospect. Insisting that any chemical, alchemical or magical sedative would interfere with the workings of the mutagens or the magic flow that they were using.

“Cruel is not the word for it.

“And all the while I was trying to scream through the ball that was jamming my mouth. Too big for me to easily expel by myself and I was forced to breathe through my nose.

“The trial of the Grasses.” He shook his head. “I know that you are working with Ciri and the rest to try and arrange matters to see if we can have a new set of Witcher schools. I read your account of those meetings and I agree with Eskel. When this journey of ours is over and you're happily married in the arms of the Vampire, I intend to pay close attention to those schools. I mean to see to it that nothing like that ever happens again and if necessary, I will carve my way through whichever Imperial soldiers, Sorceresses, even Cousin Witchers that stand in my way if I have to in order to prevent anything like that from happening again. I have no doubt that Eskel and Letho, at least, will accompany me on that mission.”

I shifted around uncomfortably“Other ways are being looked at Kerrass.” I told him. “I would not put my name next to anything as cruel as what happened to you or any of your fellows.”

“I know Freddie. I know. They say that Witchers were invented by Alzur the mage. I wish I could meet the fucker. I wish I could meet him and push his face through a wall before forcing him to endure everything that they put us through.”

I carefully said nothing.

“Letho gave you an idea of what it was like. But he was right. That was only a fraction of the total feeling. There is no way of actually knowing what it was like unless you have actually been through it. That's another reason why Witchers are often seen as an aloof bunch, separate from everything that everyone else can ever think or be. It's why we struggle to make friends or have lovers because who do we share that with? Who can possibly claim to have undergone even half of what we went through?

“And there are always things that go wrong. Always strange mutations. Did you know that I don't have any toe-nails? This is because, apparently, while in the cage and having the stuff punped through my veins, my tonails grew at an exponential rate and only way they could stop that was to pull them out.

“People occasionally do something foolish and ask me what the worst part of it all was and I cannot answer that. There are moments that stick out. The needle into the base of the spine is an agony that is impossible to describe easily. So much so that you find yourself comparing agony, I have been injured before, more seriously than that, but the pain involved during the trial was worse somehow. Because I could always fight back on the hunt I suppose.

“There is also the matter of the needle in the eye where you have to keep your eye perfectly still so that they can get the needle straight through the pupil into the eye itself. There is no way to do that except to stare straight at the needle itself as it descends towards you. They do it slowly too because if you jerk suddenly at the last minute then that's the eye ruined.

“I managed one eye but they had to cast a paralysis spell on tme for the other one. I could not tell you which was worse. Lying there and watching that needle descending towards my eye and waiting for the sensation of that cold metal entering my eyeball, or the sensation of lying there, eye drying up as I couldn't blink or move and helplessly watching it as the needle descended.

“The tubes in the orifices were less than pleasant. One in the arse, one down the eye of my penis. I never knew what those were for and to be honest, I never asked. One down each nostril pumping in this stuff that was a high carrier of oxygen so that my body wouldn't starve. It felt like a combination of drowning and breathing at the same time.

“But the most uncomfortable were the tubes in each ear. I know why that was happening of course, it was because they were altering my senses and effecting the drum and the bones inside in order to help with my sense of balance as well as my hearing. But I remember that it just left me feeling dizzy as the liquids and alterations left me feeling as though the room was literally spinning around me.

“I remember waking up at one point in the middle of the process and being able to look around. I was just a mass of tubes and needles and Goddess only knows what else was going on around me. I could handle the needles but it was the way my limbs moved. The rippling of the veins as various parts of me had things forced down them until my skin burst. It was as though bits of my skin and muscles were rippling and moving as though I was just a sack of skin that contained a host of eels.

“But I suppose that that might have been the madness beginning to set in.

“I don't remember the first time that I woke up after it was all over. After the Grasses and after the Dreams. After the tubes and the needles and the fumes and the chemicals. I don't remember it. It has been said before that that might be some kind of blessing. If it is, it's a blessing that I despise. I would rather remember what happened. I would rather remember why they chose to lock me in a cage as opposed to any of the other things that they could have done.

Apparently I killed someone. I wish I could remember that. They say that you always remember the first person that you kill, but I don't. I have no idea who it was and that eats at me.

“If it was one of the Witchers that did all of these things to me, then I am alright with that. If it was the mage, or one of the mage's apprentices that were tasked with overseeing all the different stages of the transformation then I am alright with that too. Honestly, thinking about those fucks, I wouldn't have pissed on them if they were on fire, I really wouldn't.

“It's a hardship to examine yourself sometimes. The pyres of Redania when Radovid's madness was at it's height were awful things. But I wonder how many people it killed that deserved it. There were many innocents on those fires I am sure of that. But how many of those mages were just as guilty as the torturous fucks that tied them to the stakes themselves.

“That thought haunts me sometimes. The same group of people that have cured the Catriona as well as so many other plagues and diseases. That have all but rid the continent of dangerous Dragons. That lay down their lives for the North at the field of Sodden. Those people are also the same gorup of people that invented methods of doing this to children so that they could have servants to do the jobs for them that they couldn't be bothered to do for themselves. People who could have saved the citizens of Cintra but decided not to out of a fit of pique.

“But it also haunts me when I catch myself thinking that. Letho was right. The things that they did to us were monstrous and in doing so, they made us into monsters. The bit that me missed out was that we are reflections of them that did this in the first place. I have wondered if that was why we stopped doing it. In tying children to the cages we remembered everything that was done to us and saw our own evil reflected back at us. But this is not a new topic and is better left for another time.

“So there are gaps in my memory from that time and I hate that. I hate not knowing what I did or why I did it. I hate missing out on my own memories and all of the things that I have done wrong or badly. I want to know them because I want to atone for them. Or worse than that. All of the things that I am afraid of, are things that I might have done but can't remember. What if there are things in those memories that make what I CAN remember pale in comparison. Friends like Schrodinger and Gaetan and other survivors from the Cat School. Would I look at them and remember that they had had something to do with what had happened to me. Would they look at me strangely if they could remember more?

“I have no way of knowing. All that is certain is that at some point over the course of those trials, whether because of the chemicals and hormone treatments, or because of the trauma and pressure on the mind, I broke. I went mad. I probably killed someone. Fuck, I probably killed more than one person.

“So instead of waking up in a bed, naked and shivering with the shock and the deprivation of everything that had happened, my first conscious memory of life after the trials was the Cage.

“My Cage. Heh. My cage became my world. I have no idea what it was made out of other than being some kind of metal. I know that it was just shy of six feet long because I couldn't lie down in it easily. I had to curl up on my side or lie across the diagonal. But lying across the diagonal meant that at least part of me was lying in my own excrement. Not that there weren't times when I ignored this and did it anyway.

“As I say, it was just shy if six foot long by about four foot wide and also about five and a half foot tall. I actually know why it wasn't six foot tall. This was because they didn't want us to be able to stand up at our full height in the cages so that when someone came in or opened the door, we would already be at a disadvantage because of the stoop if we tried to attack them.

“I don't know what it was made of. I know that the metal was cold which was sometimes a blessed relief in that cave, because it got hot in there. Really fucking hot. From the fires and the number of people in it it got really hot. When I say Cave I don't know what you are expecting but it was not that much bigger than the average kennel or sheep hut and it crammed several people at a time. Later, long after I had regained my sanity, I forced myself to go back to the cave with some kind of half baked notion of destroying the cage that I had lived in. I remember it being much smaller than I remembered and I never found my cage. It was there apparently, I just didn't recognise it.

“But that was when I first woke up. The only way I can describe it would be if you can imagine taking a bath in warm Sewage. I've tried to talk about it before and come up with ways with which to describe it and any other method that I might use seems to fall short of what it is actually like. To the conscious mind, to the sane mind I can describe the uncomfortable heat. I can describe the raw stench of unwashed human and the waste that they produce. I can describe the rotten food that the inmates stole, or kept in the belief that they would be deprived in the future, the vomit the sweat and all of the other chemical smells that normally accompany a sick room.

“Because that is what the cave of Cages was really. It was a sick room. A Sanitorum.

“But to someone who has lost their mind like I had lost mind, there was an extra horror to it all. Because here's the thing. Madness is contagious. Not like Catriona or a cold or a cough or any of that other stuff. But if you get a group of people into one room that have lost their minds then you will see it happen.

“I once sat and talked to Schrodinger about it as he was one of the few that could stand to be near the cages for extended periods of time. Something to do with his... own particular brand of mutation. But he said that it was like looking into the chaos of a storm. Just after the farmers or the villagers have cut the hay and the debris from that is flying everywhere. When the wind is howling, the rain is falling and the lightening is crashing down around yourself enough to shake the ground. Then there comes a moment of utter peace. As though the entire world is suddenly taking a huge breath before it plunges into the storm again.

“Apparently, it was exactly like that. There were shared hallucinations, visions, dreams or whatever you want to call them. We would all start shouting and jumping and complaining at the same time and we would all... There were few of us that were stable in our insanity and I was not one of them. I've talked about the school's master before who had a knack of drilling repetitive information into the reluctant minds of young apprentice Witchers but would eat any that became over-confident.

“He was one. He would plead with us to be silent. Over and over again, he would try and talk to us, try to get us to calm down. I'm told that he was actually quite helpful. That he would be able to talk to even those of us that could barely talk backwards.

“He would sing to us. Just a little tune that would reach down into the childlike centre of the brain and cause us to become calm.”

Kerrass smiled at the memory. I was frantically reaching for the equilibream that I needed in order to listen to the story without allowing my emotions to show on my face. But this was appalling. I had such sympathy for Kerrass then and I felt so sorry for him. But that he smiled at a memory from out of the depths of all of that horror. I don't know what that says about the mind but I suspect that it's nothing good. Then he started talking again.

“But that was what I remember waking up to. I remember pushing my hands to the side of my head and screaming with the volume of it all. It was so loud that I could barely stand it. I'm not talking about the sound of the other people in the cages although that was certainly an issue. It was more to do with the voices in my head that were shouting at me.

“Back there and then, I didn't have the strength to fight through them. I didn't have the knowledge that you need to be able to distinguish the one from the other or to tell what was real and what was not, so instead, I could almost see them standing around my cage, laughing at me. I was so sure of it that I complained about it bitterly to the keepers of the cages. I didn't know that they were hallucinations, I thought that they were real, honest to Goddess people that were trying to tell me things. Trying to warn me of danger and protect me from those people that were seeking to do me harm.

“I don't think I'm doing that place justice. I don't think I'm properly describing just how awful it was. But at the time, in that place, there was nothing I could do about it. This was my new normal and the voices, the shadowy figures that stood just outside of my vision and yelled at me, were telling me that I was a prisoner. That this was my fate. That I was never going to be a Witcher and that I was going to die here, in the muck and the dirt and the filth and that that was exactly what I deserved to happen.

“I first tried suicide in that first week. I tried to bash my own brains out against the metal bars. I was restrained before I could do myself any permanent damage but I have the distinctest memory of feeling this awful pressure inside my skull and that the only way I could get the pressure out was by ramming my head against the wall in order to split my own skull open in order to let all the voices out.

“Heh, funny story actually. While they were trying to medicate me, I used to get these headaches, similar to this pressure feeling and I found that I could liessen the pain a bit by pressing my palms against my temples. The harder I pressed, the less pain there was. Therefore it seemed perfectly logical to try and stand on my head in the cage in order to reduce the amount of pain that I was in.

“Imagine me, naked because they wouldn't let us wear clothes incase we fashioned them into weapons to end ourselves or others, delirious with pain and out of my head on the drugs that they were trying to medicate me with, trying to stand on my head.”

I laughed with him. The story was awful but it seemed important to laugh at the story. So I laughed. Don't judge me, what would you have done?

“I tried suicide several times after that. I tried making the guards kill me by hurling myself at them in an effort to kill them. They must have been able to tell that my heart wasn't in it though as they just battered me unconscious and threw me back in the cage. I was a fully formed Witcher so I have no doubt that they could just feed me a potion and heal me up that way. I tried to stop eating and drinking but that only goes so far. I'm still a Witcher and conditioned towards long periods of deprivation and at the end of the day, when I was too weak to fight back, I was restrained, a tube forced down my throat and I was fed that way.

“The worst of it though, the very worst of it was when I was given some kind of respite from it all which came in the form of realisation and clarity. The reason that they wouldn't let us die was because they were trying to cure us. There were cases where it succeeded, where they were able to find the right combination of drugs and herbs and whatnot in order to allow a man to come out of the cages and rejoin society again. To take up his swords and become a Witcher. They never gave up in that regard. Kindness or extra cruelty? I don't know. Could go either way I suspect.

“But they found a combination that would allow me to lessen the voices in my head. But that meant that I would become aware of my surroundings. I was no longer consumed with just trying to force the voices out of my head, instead, I was able to see myself. Really see myself and what I had become. That was almost worse than having to deal with the madness.

“When I was mad, I longed for those moments of clarity but when I was medicated, I would be longing for the soft embrace of madness.

“It's true what they say. In the throes of madness, the world made sense to me. It made sense that the world was out to get me and that these things that lived in the dark corners of my mind were my only friends, the only things that were out to protect me and properly take care of me. It made sense because surely these Witchers would not do all of these things to me to help me. They wouldn't put me through all of this to help me. That made no sense.

“But then they would get the herbs into me in some way. Often by spelling me to sleep and then forcing one of the newest concoctions down my throat and into my belly. Then came the last form of torture. Waiting for the drugs to kick in.

“And it was in one of those states that I first saw her, first saw the Goddess. Not quite sane, but not quite mad either. Climbing towards sanity out of a hole encrusted with shit, pus and blood and the worst of it was that I knew that I was going to fall back in at some point.

“If there was one moment where I truly hated the people that were around me then it was this one. This was the moment where I had sanity shown to me. It was like I was given this vision of what life could be like. I could go, travel, fight monsters, eat real food, love women, men and everything in between if I wanted to. They would give me this little taste of what that was like where even the fact that I could see the utter squalor that I was living in for what it was was like a light shining through the darkness.

“When I didn't know that, when I was off those bits of herbal remedy. Maybe they were trying something that simply didn't work as well or monitoring the dose so that the cure didn't become worse than the disease so to speak, then I was mad. I had no idea what was really going on and I didn't really care that much. I was one of those raving lunatics that I have talked about before, hurling my excrement against the wall and whoever was foolish enough to come too close.

“But when they gave me the stuff, I never knew how although I guess that they mashed it into my food. There was always this period where I would feel too hot and I would start to sweat. Really sweat, rivers of the stuff running down my spine, out of my scalp and down my face. It felt so hot as the entire thing began that the only relief that I had was to kneel in the corner of my cell and press as much of my body up against the bars as I could manage. Taking in the cold of the metal while giving out the heat from the rest of me. Then, when the metal got too warm or too clammy, then I would move down the wall a bit. Kneeling in a different patch of that cage where there was some more cold metal and I could find a bit more relief.

“At first, I just thought she was this kind of extra shadow. Another voice, another soul to share my head with as in the depths of my madness, that was what I thought the voices were. I thought that they were spirits, or other people that lived inside my head. Unborn brothers and sisters that hated me for being born while they never got the chance of life. And at first, I thought that she was one of them. A silent sister that watched and listened.

“Then, as the drugs seemed to take more and more of an effect, the puddle began to become.... solid is the wrong word for it. More opaque I suppose. It was no longer a shadow, it was a puddle of darkness, like a portal or a mage's gateway. It was a long time before I realised that it was a woman wearing a cloak and when I did realise that, I nearly wept with it because I thought that she too was an hallucination. But then, I could feel the herbs beginning to kick in. I could feel the sanity returning and I could not wait for that to happen because I was so sure that this returning sanity would dismiss this new ghost from my mind.

“But instead, it seemed to make her more real.

“She came to the bars of my cage and looked down at me. At the time, I had no idea what a Queen looked like let alone an Empress. But that was what she looked like. Terrifyingly regal, especially as I was still, essentially, a field orphan. A farming village's castoff. I wanted to pull back from her and run away to hide lest I run the risk of insulting someone who was obviously my better. But I didn't. Instead, I clung onto the bars with everything I had. Trying to decide whether this was another hallucination or whether it was a sign that I had finally gone beyond the point of no return and was irretrievably insane.

““Who the fuck are you to summon me like that?” She demanded of me. The language caught me off guard, I will admit that. Despite the relative simplicity of her clothing, she looked like a Queen or some kind of noble and there she was, despite her educated tones, swearing like a ploughman. I would normally say that she swore like a sailor or a soldier but I didn't really know how those men swear at the time.

“But something in the way that she demanded that caught at me. I had no idea who she was, I had no idea why she was here and suddenly it was all too much and I felt a rage building and boiling in my stomach. I imagine it is a rage that you know quite well yourself Freddie. But it was an awful thing, a ball of fire in the pit of my stomach. Now I know why it happened. It was the rage of an abandoned man, a man who only has his life left to lose and is angry about it.

“As I say, everything went into that rage. The anger of abandonment by my mother and, presumably, my father. The betrayal that I felt towards the elder Witchers that had allowed this to be done to me. The betrayal of the Mage who had clearly not done things right. Those are all the rational things that I was angry about but there was more to it than that. There was also the rage against the air for not tasting right. The water for making me sick. I hated the rock for being hard and the fact that I could no longer remember what it was like to sleep with a pillow beneath my head.

“I don't know where it all came from. But it came through all the potions and poultices and salves and herbs that I had been given in order to keep me calm and docile and it was all there. All of it and it all formed into this ball of fire in the bit of my stomach. And now here was this woman in front of me and it seemed to me that she was a target for everything. She was the object of my rage with her clean hair, clean clothes, smooth skin and pretty face. She was something that I could direct that rage at harmlessly. After all, there was the wall of a cage between me and her.

“I didn't do it consciously, but I could could no more have kept that ball of rage in my stomach than you could push a troll over with one finger. It erupted out of me, It would not be too much to say that I vomited it forth and I screamed.

“And then I got even angrier as she laughed at me. Laughing with delight and that laughter banked my rage and I would have done anything to get out of the cage that I was in and choke the life out of this woman that stood in front of me. Laughing at me.”

Kerrass shook his head at the memory.

“She wasn't laughing at me of course. As I say, my scream had brought the house down and started everyone else screaming and she was looking around herslef laughing with delight and taking it all in. Just as it had come without warning, the rage left me, leaving only exhaustion and fatigue in it's wake and I collapsed backwards.

““I like you.” She decided after a moment, grinning from ear to ear like a cat that's got the cream. “You have real Spirit.”

I tried for defiance. I really did but there was no way that I could manage anything after that. She laughed as I tried though.

““My name is Macha.” She said. “And I am pleased to meet you. Now, let's talk shall we?”

“I don't know what I did from there. I suspect that I whimpered or something. She wasn't impatient with it, she didn't yell or anything like that. She waited. I had no idea what for but realisation hit me.

““You are waiting for the herbs to kick in.” I don't know if I said it aloud or thought it with my front brain. But there were the words somehow and she heard them.”

““Very good.” She said. I felt like I had just got a question right in Alchemy class. “Now, why did you summon me?”

““Wha'?” I must have been blinking furiously, my eyes were having difficulty focusing.

““You did.” She told me with a smile that reminded me of firelight on the edge of a blade. “Rather hard too. You think I turn up like this for just anyone? What do you want?””

I shivered as Kerrass spoke. I remembered a conversation that I had with the entity Jack, across a table in what passed for a tavern in a different world. Kerrass glanced at me and I guessed that he had also connected the things together at some point.

““I tried to tell her that I didn't know. Again, she wasn't angry, nor disappointed. She was... She was a little exasperated I think. Impatient at most as though she had things to do and places to go, people to see that kind of thing.

““Yes you do.” She told me. “You know but you just don't know how to say it.”

““I'm so tired.” I told her. “I don't want to live like this any more.” My words slurred. I remember that taking some of those drugs made me feel like I was drunk only with having the hangover at the same time. I had a burning need to vomit.

““Ah, so you seek an ending.” She told me. “That is understandable. Although I would be reluctant, someone such as yourself is a rare find. But if you are truly at the end of your struggle then I can grant you peace if you prefer.””

“I had no doubt that she was offering me death and something in me rebelled at the thought.

““Nnnnnnnnoooooo.” I growled and the word re-lit the fire in my belly. “No.” I said again. “No no no no no no Noo.” I started to shake my head from side to side violently. “NoNOnononononono NONONONONO NOOOOOO NOOOOOO.”

“The movement of my head caused my nausea to overwhelm me and I really did vomit. All over her as it happened although she ignored it. It was as though she didn't even notice as she peered at me intensely. “I see.” She said thoughtfully. “Then it was for a different reason that I was summoned. It is true that I have so rarely felt a need for me such as the one I felt at your hands.”

“I stared at the puddle of vomit and wondered how much of the herbs I had just vomited over the floor. Meaning, how long before I descended into madness again.

““Who are you?” I asked although I suspect that the words actually didn't sound like that.

““My name is Macha.” She told me, again with that lack of anger, or frustration. More of Impatience. “But I have many names over the years. I seem to collect them along with men who claim to be my husband or consort without checking with me first. I am a stranger here though and I come from far away. Although this place is much more to my liking than the place I left behind. There is powerful magic here and I like that. I have so missed the magic from back home when it left.”

“She grinned. This time I was reminded of the sharp pain that happens when you break a limb.

““Now, I will ask again.” She went on. “What do you want? I can give you much although there will always be a price and you must decide whether you are willing to pay it.”

““I.... What can....” I began.

““I can give many things.” She said, answering my still forming question. “But rather than asking what I can give, ask for what you want. It must be something quite fundamental. Almost primal in your mind and makeup. And you must want it really bad. So what is it?”

“She was trying to be encouraging. In the same way that our tutors in monster Lore would try and force an answer out of a shy kid.

““I don't want to live like this any more.” Was what I said but I have no idea what it sounded like. “I want to leave this place. I want to live. I want to fight back.”

““Now we're talking.” She said, rubbing her hands excitedly. “What else?””

““I want to fight through this.” I told her. Probably not in so many words, but that was the sentiment I was trying to get across “But I'm so tired. I need strength to keep fighting. I need strength to win and I need to be able to push past this and see clearly. I want.... I want to be strong and healthy and.... and.... I want to be done with this place.””

“She grinned at me happily. It was the grin of that pain you get when you've been really cold and you move back into a warm area or climb into a warm bath.

““So what you're telling me is that you want the strength to keep fighting and the strength to win, so that you can fight off your madness.” She laughed again. I was struck with the image of steel striking steel. “That's what your existence is. You're struggling to push through this. Fighting to keep going. How wonderful. That's why you were able to summon me.”

““I didn't summon you.” I tried to protest.

““Oh shush.” She told me. “There are summons and then there are summon. I am the Goddess of battle and yours is one of the purest forms of the struggle that I have seen in many years. I could no more have resisted coming and seeing this than I could resist the prospect of a challenge. You have every possibility of being one of my favourites. How wonderful.”

“She laughed again. I am running out of ways to describe what it sounded like. I suppose I could say that it sounded like the noise a wooden sword makes when it strikes a practise dummy. That was certainly closer than some ideas that I've had over the years.

““She stood over me then, tall, beautiful and terrible. “I shall give you this. But before I do, I must give you the price. Are you ready to hear it?”

“I was blinking furiously. The vomiting earlier had indeed robbed me of some of the herbs that should still be in the system and my grip on sanity was beginning to lessen. I could no longer see her features and she was seeming to fade into another one of those formless shadows that crept around on the edge of my vision. Even though the descent into madness is like a returning to sanity and objectivity without all of the conflicts and confusions of my previous existence. Even though that was the case, I felt that what this voice, what this shadow was telling me was important.

“There is very little that I can say to explain what this level of madness was like for me and I have tried many times. So here it is. Try and imagine that your sense of right and wrong is not something that you have internalised. It is not an automatic code that you hold yourself to. Instead, it is a person that stands outside of your body. Just out of sight, out of the corner of your eye and a little distance away so that their words come to you slightly muffled. You still know that it's important. But that sometimes, it's a separate thing from you, easily ignored and then, as time passes, it gets tied together with all of your other drives that have also been externalised. Including your lust, your hunger, your desire to do good things and be a good person. And all of them are shouting at the same time. So much so that you can no longer tell the difference between all of them and those people that are trying to help you in the real world.

“But in this case. Some part of me knew that what this voice was telling me was important and I desperately wanted to keep hold of her. Desperately wanted to make sure that what she told me was something that I could remember. That I would remember because some part of me. Some instinctual, primal part of my being knew that if I didn't listen to this, then I was possibly, probably even, lost.

“She saw it though and pulled a face. “I think we will get past that. You need to be thinking clearly to make these kinds of choices. And even if you say no, I suppose you have earned some kind of reward for the joy and power you have given me.” Then she snapped her fingers, smiling the smile of an elf that sees a human at the end of their arrow.

“Oh Freddie. I know that you know what it's like to come through insanity and into the clear. Into sanity and the open air. But suddenly, that moment of clarity that she gave me. I don't know why she did it. I don't know if it was that she really wanted to reward me or if she was just showing me something. To this day, I have no idea and, knowing her a bit better like I do, it's more than likely that both are true. She both wanted me to see what she could give me, what was at stake but also to give me a reward for “the sweetness of my struggle.”

“I can only remember wishing that I had more in my stomach to throw up over the floor of my cage.

“In that moment there. I saw myself for what I really was. Down in the filth and all of the squalor. Suddenly it seemed worse. I saw the clammy water running down the walls, condensation from the evaporated sweat and the water and all kinds of other filth running down the walls. I suddenly had a smell of myself and the rotten straw littering the floor. The stale urine and the rotting filth. I suddenly saw it. Really saw it, all of it and I hated it all even more because it smelled sweet to me. That moment.... I could still hear the voices of course. They never went away, they never entirely go away but suddenly I knew them for what they were and I knew myself to be insane.

“That realisation was a gift that I had never realised before. It was weird. I had always known that I was mad, that something had gone wrong during my trials. But now I really knew what was going on. I knew how far I had fallen, I could see it, smell it, hear it in everything that was going on around me. I could taste it in the air and that knowledge cut me to the core and that pain, that pain was so good. There was no confusion any more. I could see what was real and what was the product of a sick mind.

“Even though I had always known that I was insane, there was always some doubt in the back of my mind. Always some doubt that what the shadows were right. That the other Witchers were just doing this to me for their own gain. That I was some kind of test subject in their little concerns, their little schemes to try and make better Witchers. Or that they were preparing me for some kind of dark sacrifice that I had never known about during training.

“But now that was what she gave me. Certainty. I knew that I was insane. That it was all some kind of figment of my imagination. The conjurings of my damaged brain and what had been done to me.

“I have been angry before in my life but I have never been angrier than I was in that moment. Because there was another certainty there as well. The certainty that, if I did not take this woman, this strange otherworldly thing up on her offer, then I would return to my comfortable familiar insanity and that all of this would just be a memory. Something that I would forget until my body and what was left of my mind finally gave up.

““This is what I offer.” She said. “This is what I can give you. Clarity, knowledge and strength to keep fighting. My price? You must keep fighting to win it.”

She stared into my eyes for a long time.

““That is my price. The struggle must continue. It will never end. You must keep taking the potions that they give you. You will never have an entirely quiet moment inside your own head. You will always be fighting to keep the madness at bay. Always. There will be good days, there will be bad days. Some times, you will feel the madness coming for you and will be better able to prepare yourself for it's coming. Some times it will come on you suddenly and you will fight desperately to keep hold of yourself. That is my price. You will keep fighting.

““On the day you give up. On the day that the struggle becomes too much. On the day that you stop fighting, even for a moment. That is the day that my gift will be taken away. Do not be afraid of this. You are my warrior now and your fight is my fight. When the struggle becomes too much, there is no shame in losing. On the day you give up and stop fighting, I will be there to take you into my arms. But may that day be a long way off.

“The warmth of her voice dissipated suddenly and she was cold as the blade that stabs you in the gut.

““When that day comes, do not disappoint me Kerrass. I look forward to seeing your struggle for many years to come. Now do you accept my price?”

“I nodded. I said yes, I screamed it up to the roof of the cave. I screamed in fear, pain and anguish that I had been reduced to this mere shell of my former self.

“She laughed when she heard it before she kissed me, hard. Hard enough to draw blood through the bars of the cage.”

I stared at Kerrass for a long time. A lot was falling into place now and I found my mind going back over all of our previous adventures to those places where he had seemed to be losing his grip. To the time after Kaer Morhen and the death of his friend. To the castle of sleeping beatuy and the look on his face when he saw the Dragon. I had thought he was just despairing of ever being able to save Sleeping Beauty but this added a whole other context to that.

The look on his face as he stood over the graves of three people that he had loved.

But Kerrass wasn't finished talking yet.

“I slept. Possibly the first, undrugged night's sleep that I had had in ages, months even. They never tell you how long you've been in the cages if you make it out. But I slept and woke feeling rested for the first time and it was like being reborn. It was agony, a pain the likes of which I could describe. As Schrodinger told you. They found me kneeling against the walls of the cage, the same spot that I had first seen my Goddess. I was sweating hard and shivering in the clammy air and I spoke the first real words, the first coherent words that I had spoken since my trial.

“What did I say?” Kerrass laughed. “I said, “Is there any chance of some clean water and something proper to eat?” My jailers fell back from my cage in astonishment. “Also a bath,” I went on. “Because I stink.””

Kerrass grinned at the memory.

“I was cleaned up. The mage turned up and cast that small spell they have which meant that I was the only clean prisoner in the only clean cage in the place. That first day they watched me constantly, waiting to see if I would retreat into madness. We spoke of small things which was how I started a friendship with Schrodinger. He was the first one who stopped asking me how I felt and offered to play cards with me.

“The following day I started being tested. I was allowed to dress myself and answered question after question after question. Routine questions as well as complex ones. They asked me the formula for Swallow and how to tell the difference between a Ghoul and an Alghoul. They finally let me out of the cage after four days and I was escorted everywhere by a Witcher who followed me around with his hand on his sword strap. I trained a lot during that time, regaining speed and strength that I had lost in the cages and after six months the masters told me that I was ready for a trial of the mountain.

“Yes, I was given a trial of the Mountain. Whereas some people are given a specific monster to slay, I was given a wraith to dismiss. The masters wanted to see how I would cope in social situations, talking to people and investigating the past history of the place. That kind of thing. I passed, even with another Witcher, still with his sword poised to end my life at a moments notice, which certainly gave the villagers a bit of a pause for thought as I asked the polite questions about recently dead people, and I set out on the path.

“I had no idea who she was. In all truth I think it would be fair to say that I didn't really believe in her for a number of years. I lived the life of a Witcher for a long time, just walking the path and things. I did as I was bid, drank the potions that they had made for me, learned the formulae to make my own as and when those situations came up that I was running out of existing stuff and otherwise put it from my mind.

“I think I had been on the path for about ten years when I met my first sign that she hadn't just been a figment of my fevered and tortured imagination. This will have been after that first time that I had gone down to Dorn and met the Princess for the first time. After that, I had spent a good amount of time just... wandering the Northern Continent. I had yet to feel the pull of going back to that place and so I was a little lost I think. I had no idea what to do with myself after everything that had happened.

“I threw myself into my work, no job was to big or small and I would often fall into the trap of being a hero to some of these small villages. Giving my money back to the injured family to keep on behalf of this orphan or that widow. Very unprofessional and I was taken to task for it several times because in doing all of that, it meant that future Witchers in the area struggled to get the fee out of people that they had been hired by. Because why should they pay if that Cat Witcher hadn't charged for the destruction of a nest of Rotfiends so why should we have to pay for it.

“But I needed to feel like a good man in the aftermath of all that horror from down with the Princess. I needed to know that I was a good man and that I hadn't irretrievably stained my soul in the doing of the things I did. The voices were sounding in the back of my skull to a rather extensive degree. They were the ones calling such things into doubt and although there are always some voices that are on my side and wanting to help me. The small shadows that insist that I have nothing to worry about and that I am, indeed, a good man. It is always the others that seem loudest. And while they are all yelling at each other in the back of my skull. It makes sleeping fairly difficult.

“So I met my first follower of the Goddess that wasn't me. He was a mercenary. You can find hundreds of them on the road. In times of peace you can find them escorting caravans and guarding shops. Generally fairly serious men that watch everything. They are always saving their money, always looking to buy the next piece of equipment, to get their shield repaired or their sword properly sharpened. A steel Gorget or some Dwarven manufacture gauntlets. The next piece of equipment will be their last and that will be the equipment that will properly ensure their survival in the battles and the combat to come.

“But there are always more repairs to make. Always new pieces of gear that need to be collected. So I found this man staying in a tavern in Cidaris. I was working for a nearby Lord, looking for a Chort that some villagers were claiming had stolen a bunch of cattle as an excuse for not paying their taxes.

“It hadn't. The villagers were very poor, taxed to the point of starvation and they had been forced to sell a couple of cows in order to have some food in order to survive. I let them get away with it and claimed that I had found sign that the Chort in question had moved on. I only got a fraction of my fee and I was using it to have a drink, something to eat and a night in a proper bed.

“The mercenary spotted me taking my time over my pint and he placed another pint on the table in front of me.

““Us followers of the Goddess need to stick together.” He said. “And you look like you could use another pint.”

““I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't follow Melitele or any of the other local Goddesses.”

“He stared at me for a long moment, eyes wide in wonder before he laughed. I was still a little sensitive about such things and he waved me off.

““Sorry,” He said. “I just didn't expect to see a Witcher who worships her who didn't know what it was that he was doing.” He laughed again.

““I follow no Goddess.” I insisted.

““You do.” He said. “As do I. Tall woman, beautiful in a way that reminds you of sharp edges, pain and fingernails gouging chunks out of your back. Odd Shield, nasty looking spear, wears black. She will have come to you when you were at your lowest or more desperate moment.”

“I just stared at him. He nodded when he saw my look. “I thought the same. I thought that she was just a weird vision given to a dying man.”

“He stared into the fire pit of the inn for a while. “My time came on a battlefield. I had a stomach wound and was losing.... we're gonna say fluid, from through the hole. I had a lap full of blue sausages as my guts had fallen out and I knew that I was dying.

““Then she came to me. She was covered in blood although you could tell that none of it was hers. Gore and guts fell from her spear and she was grinning with the joy of it. The fighting had passed over me although I could still hear it in the distance. She laughed, I remember that the most, she laughed.

““I asked her for help. My friends had left me at my insistence and they were off fighting somewhere else on the field and I regretted that. I wanted to stand with my friends on this field of battle to save our homeland. She laughed as she often does and joked about how most would ask to be able to get home and see loved ones. I told her that my parents were dead and my wife had run off with another man” The Mercenary laughed at the memory. “That made her really angry as I recall.”

““I told her that my brother had come with me to war and I was desperate to stand with him in the face of the enemy. She told me that she would help me in return for my continuing to fight. That I would always be a soldier until the day it killed me. Of course I said yes. She bent down and kissed me and my wounds healed. I ran off, fought with my friends and I went home with my brother. But I had not lied when I sad that my wife had left me. He had a woman and children waiting for him whereas mine had died of some kind of pox. I remember shivering at the memory of the Goddess' anger at my wife's betrayal when I heard about her death. Apparently, the death was agonising.

““But I had no reason to stay home and I left. I have fought now in all the corners of the continent. Some say that I lead a charmed life but I know different. I know that I am a warrior of the Goddess of Battle. A warrior of the Horsewoman of War and I will die when she no longer has need of me, or when she grows bored of me.”

“The mercenary left the following morning after we had talked long into the night. He was guarding a merchant's caravan heading back south but before he went, he taught me how to tell other followers of the Goddess. After a while, it almost became second nature and not all of them are soldiers or warriors. There are several Witches, of the village Witch variety that follow her although why she is attracted to them I do not know. But it was one of them who taught me this ritual for summoning her. I have also known farmers who revere her name. She is rarely followed by Nobles or knights or people of power. Although she is often followed by village Witches you will never find a Sorceress that knows her name let alone reveres her as a being of power.”

Kerrass thought about this for a moment. “Maybe Yennefer but she is the closest one and I've never talked to her about her religious beliefs. Certainly Yennefer's life is defined by struggle so maybe...” He stroked his chin in thought before shaking himself.

“The Godess seems to have more of an affinity for the common folk. Those soldiers and fighters that fight in the front lines of things.

“I have summoned her many times since then. Sometimes I have summoned her to rage at everything that has happened or is happening. Sometimes I have summoned her because I need to remind myself that she is real. Sometimes I have summoned her because I want to talk to her, to see her.”

“Do you love her?” I wondered.

“Of course I do.” Kerrass chuckled at the thought. “She is my Goddess. Of course I love her. It's not the romantic form of love although that is in there but she is too.... You will see when you meet her.

“She always looks different as well. The first time I saw her, she had flaming red hair and round face. Every time I have seen her since she has had Blonde hair with a thin, aristocratic face....”

I kept my own thoughts on this to myself.

“She is always tall,” Kerrass went on. “Her hair is always free from binding and it is always long. She is always strong and muscled. She is built like a warrior, maybe a little bulkier than Ciri. Where Ciri is a dexterity fighter with rolls, spins and acrobatics. You could easily imagine the Goddess carving her way through a shield wall. Or being acrobatic I suppose, it would depend, like so many things with her, what mood she is in.

“She is always wearing black. Sometimes she is armoured but it is always black and that is in those times when she is not dripping in blood on the battlefield.”

He sighed.

“She is always beautiful.”

That thought seemed to stall him for a while before he started speaking again.

“She almost seems to have a different name for every worshipper that I have met.” He went on. “To me she is Macha. To others she is Morrigan, Morrigu or Mor-Rioghan which sound like variations of the same name. But I have also heard of her being called Badb, Nemain and also Anand. She seems to wear a different name in the same way that you would dress one way to go to court, another way to travel and another way to sit down to dinner at your families castle. She changes these names according to how she appears and in what mood she might be in when she arrives.

“There is even a theory among some of her followers that she is not one being but rather three sisters that travel the continent. We have no way of telling of course but I find that I doubt that. I think that the names come from a language that we do not understand and that rather than being names as we understand them, I think that they are descriptors.

“She asks for no sacrifices although she takes them when they are offered. There are no shrines erected to her because it seems that her nature is transitory. She demands no prayers although I have had proof that she listens when you do pray to her. She requires no worship other than what we already do in the fulfilling of our promises to her. For her, that is worship enough. Although with luck, you will be able to ask her about all of this kind of thing when she arrives. And most differently of all from other Gods and Goddesses that I hear about, when you turn aside from her worship she does not grow angry unless in doing so you are turning from the promise that you made her.”

I nodded in order to show Kerrass that I had heard what he said, but I was shaken with the implications of it all. A Goddess with few followers, no churches, no shrines and no sacrifices.

“So no priests then?” I asked.

Kerrass laughed. “No, no priests. Not that I know of anyway, or unless, techincally, all of her followers count as being priests but something tells me that we don't. If she has anything then I think it's much more likely that she has priestesses somewhere but who is to know? Again, why would she need them?”

It was an interesting question and it threw disturbing questions into my mind. Why do any religions need priests? Was one of them. Something to think about. I am sure that there are answers but I'm more convinced now, than ever before, that I will not be satisfied by those answers.

“So that's me Freddie.” Kerrass said. “That's why I am the way I am.”

I nodded. “There's a lot to talk about here Kerrass. A lot of questions.”

“I was sure that there would be. But be careful. She does not tell us who or what she is. But she is a Goddess of Battle. Of Magic, of struggle and of the fight.”

“But doesn't that bring her into conflict with Kreve?”

“No.” Kerrass chuckled. “Sorry Freddie but I have heard that before and she will be better able to answer that question than I can. No she is not in conflict with Kreve. He is a war God where as she is a Goddess of Battle. I do not really understand the difference either, but she does not care who's side she's on whereas Kreve definitely does. She doesn't care about causes of lordship. She is a Goddess of battle itself. Of the fight. So to bring that down on yourself.... well.... I have spent a lifetime fighting and whenever I have tried to stop, my madness has returned or the world has prevented me from ceasing my struggles.”

“A manifestation of her power?” I wondered.

“Possibly. Or people might have just wanted to stop me from owning an inn and burned it down. There was still conflict there. Still a struggle. You should ask her when she turns up.”

My mind was whirling around.

The thunder was getting closer while we talked and it had finally begun to rain. It was the strangest kind of rain that I had ever felt or ever known. I would say that the downpour was heavy and strong. There was little wind so it wasn't blown into our faces or sent our cloaks billowing. But despite the heaviness of the downpour, we were wet but we were not soaked through, it didn't seem to impede our clothing or make us feel uncomfortable. We were just wet and it did nothing at all to dampen down the fire or to make it flare up given that it was originally an oil flame, even though that oil must have burned off a long time ago now.

I hadn't really noticed it coming on. I was too busy struggling with everything that Kerrass had told me to notice the thunder getting closer or the rain getting heavier. Little moments through our past ineractions seemed to stand out to me. Moments that were coloured by this new insight into Kerrass' thought process. I thought of the stricken man that had stood over the graves of a Godling, Doppler and Succubus. I thought of the man that had howled his anguish as he killed a Grave-Hag. Small moments, where a look a of pain or grief or utter despair had crossed Kerrass' face and it all seemed to make more sense now.

“So you must keep fighting?” I said, more a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

“Do you ever get tempted to give up?” I wondered.

Kerrass smirked. “Every day Freddie. Every day. Sometimes it's worse than others. Sometimes it's just a fleeting thought that I shouldn't take my potions or that I should give into the trial of death. Whereas some days, and you've seen them, don't pretend that you haven't, where it's an honest struggle to put one foot in front of the other. Goddess, sometimes it's a struggle and an effort of will to simply breathe in and out as much as it is to push the voices back.

“Sometimes, the prospect of just finding a small dark corner to lay down and go mad is overwhelming. I once spoke of this with Gaetan when we were both feeling particularly philosophical. Gaetan is another case like mine in that he struggles with certain interactions. He calls it “noise”. Anything can add to the noise, human interaction, crowds, events or circumstances. It all has an effect and when it all gets too much, he explodes into violence. That gets particularly deadly when he has a sword to hand. He copes by finding ways to leech off the “noise” and of all the Witchers that I have known, he is the most solitary.

“But he once told me that he does not envy my trial of Death. He told me that for me, every day was a trial of death. That I was always tempted to give in, to stop fighting and to allow the madness to overtake me. Because it's worse for me. With death, you know that it will be sharp, painful and quick. Whereas with me, Madness will be long, slow and awful.”

“Whereas I felt the other way round. I would find his path of solitude dull, boring and lacking the necessary joy that I need in order to force the voices back. Long term solitude leaves me alone with the voices. Short term Solitude helps me to process things but long term...? He shuddered. “Just goes to show that we all have our own burdens to carry and that everyone's experiences are unique.”

“So is this why you don't want to settle down with Princess Dorn?” I asked. “Is that why? You're worried that your madness will come back because you will have stopped struggling for her...”

Kerrass' face went bleak. “Freddie.... Don't.... It's more complicated than that. I worried that freeing her was the end of my struggle and that I would go mad after that. And I was happy with that. If my sanity was the price of her freedome then that is a coin that I would have paid gladly. But then it didn't happen. There was still a struggle there. I don't know why and until I figure that out, I can't do that to her. I don't want us to give in and love each other only for me to.... Drop it... Please. I don't know the answer to your question there.”

“Oh Kerrass.” I shook my head as I thought of several dozen counters to his arguments and his fears while also discounting many of them at the same time. “The things that we do to ourselves in the name of the Gods.”

We sat in silence for a while. Kerrass was lost in his own thoughts and memories while I was replaying everything in my memory about times when he had appeared as though his madness was increasing. Every time that he had become depressed or struggled with something. Suddenly there was a whole new bunch of things to be thinking about. New colours to add to those interactions. It seemed like a very big thing to take in, an impossibly large new... shade to all of his behaviour. I went back through all of our adventures and wondered.

I am still wondering.

I was interrupted by a small black cat that wandered up to the pair of us. I don't know how it got through the flames but it seemed to wander up to us from just out of our sight. We weren't really keeping a look out for any kinds of threats. We had set fire to a not small area of land and if people wanted us then there was little we could do to stop them. But it just wandered up to us.

It sat in front of us and licked it's paws for a moment before it gazed at me with the slow mixture of contempt and boredom that I seem to illicit from cats. It stared at me for a long time, long enough to leave me feeling uncomfortable. Then it turned and walked up to Kerrass and climbed into his lap.

I laughed I think. Animals tend to dislike Kerrass. Cats and Dogs especially hate Kerrass for no readily apparent reason. Long ago he had first told me that it would be the Cats that would notice him approaching the village first and he had been right. Village Cats, pet cats, mousers and hunters all who would see Kerrass, arch their back and hiss at him.

But this little black cat with golden eyes to match his own, wandered up to him easily and climbed into his lap. Such an interaction is unheard of in my experience of him. The Cat chirruped at him and he sat up and crossed his legs so that the cat would have a more comfortable perch as she, apparently the cat was female, walked around on his lap while he rubbed at her head gently. After some time she seemed to climb up his chest a little, hind legs resting on his lap while forepaws rested on his chest and the cat seemed to look him in the eyes.

Then one forepaw came up and steadied itself on his cheek while the cat started to lick his nose. For his part, Kerrass did not seem particularly surprised by this interaction and continued with the stroking and petting of the cat. Paying particular attention to the things ears, under the chin and the small of it's back.

I could hear it purring from where I sat.

Then the cat stopped, pulled back a little and seemed to inspect her handiwork at cleaning Kerrass up. She looked like an old woman inspecting a grand child before the grand child is presented to someone of importance.

The cat gave another little chirrup, or a grunt before leaping back to the ground and wandering off. Round the back of the central fire.

The thunder rolled again.

“She is coming.” Kerrass said ominously and a little sadly. “She is not far away now. Prepare yourself.”

(A/N: The figure described here is obviously a highly adjusted for fiction form of the figure of Irish and Celtic myth and Legend. I hope that I have done that figure justice. She is described and characterised with the help of my wife who knows far more about this personage than I do. I have made some deviations from the figure herself in order to better tell the story so the differences are mine, not hers and she should not be blamed for those mistakes or changes.

As always, thank you for reading.)