If you ever want to start a fight in scholarly circles, ask them how Echinopsae start.

I don’t mean that literally, it would have to be quite a specific subset of scholarly circles, I doubt that scholars of medicine would care a great deal as to how Archespores start, only to how they end. And I would be astonished to learn that there are any rhyming couplets that can go with “big fucking murderous plants that come out of the ground and try to eat you.” I mean, I don’t know, not being a poet myself, but surely that wouldn’t be something that could happen.

But I promise that that particular group of scholars, the men, and women that study monsters and curses and strange magical phenomenon that assail the continent at every opportunity, will get into a massive row on the subject.

Not Witchers though. They don’t care as much either. It is enough to know about them, to recognize the signs of their growth, and to take steps to destroy them and make sure that they never grow again. That is as much as Witchers care about such things.

So what is an Echopsae? Or it’s larger and more powerful cousin, the Archespore?

That is an interesting question. Essentially they are giant, carnivorous flowers that sprout up out of the ground. They can lay dormant on the surface, showing only a small part of their bulk in an effort to lure in its prey before sprouting large Viney, sinuous growths that stand between seven and twelve feet tall with a flower that is easily two feet across. Then the flower attacks you. Generally, that comes in two ways. The first is that it will try to lash out at you by closing its petals and swiping at you, tearing at your body with its thorns and the sheer impact of being hit in the chest or face with a thick vine growth. Or it will spit its poisoned darts at you.

The darts have a soporific poison that will send animals and people to sleep so that they can be properly digested over time by the Echinopsae’s poisons.

If that was all they did, then that would be horrific and dangerous enough. But the other thing that they do is that they can burrow underground. Don’t ask me how they do that. Something with the working of the plant and the body of the vine I suppose. But then it can burst up from the ground and it moves with terrifying speed.

It’s no fucking joke.

And even then, that is not all that they can do. If the plant has been in the location for an extended period of time, it can also grow bulbous sacks and leave them in their wake or around their area of territory. And these sacks are, by far, the most dangerous bit of the Echinopsae in question.

Why is that Freddie?

I don’t know Freddie, they already sound pretty fucking dangerous to me.

Well, you would be right. The point is that these bulbs are inflatable sacks of growth. And as they grow, they are inflated with poisonous, acidic, goo, and a noxious gas that would be poisonous to the average human. Witchers are immune to the poisons of course, but that doesn’t save them from the corrosive elements within the plant itself. Expensive gear can be reduced to slag and all but destroyed before the thing can be destroyed.

So to kill or destroy an Echinpsae, you have to be aware of its burrowing, deflate the bulbs by puncturing them with the thrust of a weapon, arrow, or crossbow bolt, and then you must remove the flower from the vine that it has sprouted from.

All while it is spitting its thorns at you and doing its best to poison you, strangle you, and… well… you get the idea.

But here is where it gets interesting. They look like plants and have all the features of a plant or a flower. There is a journal in Oxenfurt library from a scholar that travelled to the wild and fabled lands beyond Zerrikania where there was a plant described that would eat insects in a similar way to how the Echinopsae behaved.

But they are not plants according to any biological definition of the term.

There are no roots. As far as Kerrass can tell me, they do not use water or sunlight to grow. The sprouting of the flower would suggest some kind of bulb for the sprouting to come from, but that’s not the case either. They die if you cut that central… stem in two with the base of the stem in one part and the flower in the other.

I’ve seen Kerrass fight one of these things for hours where I have also seen Kerrass blink when one has sprouted next to him before he cut it in half in the same movement as he drew his sword.

He has also, more than once, simply argued that the field that has sprouted the Echniopsae be covered in lantern oil and then burnt. This also seems effective.

So where do Echinopsae, or archspores which are essentially the same thing only bigger and a deeper crimson in colour… Where do they come from?

And this is where the argument comes in.

I have read a number of different works on the matter. One tome argued that Echoinopsae are from seeds that fell to the ground during the Conjunction of the Spheres. Another suggests that they are all seedlings from one, great, massive archespore that is somewhere in the world.

That thought is a truly terrifying thought and it is one of the few things that I sincerely hope I never get to see.

By far the most common theory is that they come from curses.

If someone curses the land, one of the things that might come up is that the land will start to grow Archespore. I have seen this one happen.

Kerrass and I were hired to investigate a field. No plants would grow on it besides these strange flowers. Animals that went to graze from what sparse grass could grow there would grow sick and die and when the farmer was questioned, it turned out that he had bought the field from his neighbour who had, themselves, bought the field from the former….

You know what, it doesn’t matter.

But it turns out that someone in the field’s history had said, “Well if I can’t have it, you will never grow anything on it. I curse you and the field to grow nothing and all you will get from it is poison and misery.”

Kerrass took one look at it and declared it cursed with Echinopsae. He killed it, suggested a field burning and then the field should recover.

What was interesting from my perspective was that the monster was confined to the field’s boundaries, as set by old dilapidated fencing which would not have posed any kind of serious barrier to anything that was burrowing underneath it.

Another source of these vile and dangerous plants is bloodshed. This is similar to the above curse. You can often find Echinopsae growing in fields where people have been murdered or there have been large-scale massacres of some kind. Not battles though. You don’t find them on battlefields. Another little mystery about these weird plants that aren’t really plants.

Another area that Kerrass dealt with was the result of a group of Elves being rounded up into a particular field and then slaughtered. Their blood stained the ground and from that blood grew the Echinopsae. Kerrass destroyed the plants and advised the villagers to erect a memorial. The villagers told Kerrass that the local lord had committed the massacre and would be angry if such a thing were to happen. Kerrass shrugged, pocketed his fee and we moved on.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that you can often find bones, wedged in between the growths of the vines of these deadly things which lends credence to the following theories.

There are mirror image theories here. One says that if there is a plant that is buried beneath an innocent, murdered man. Or an evil, hideous man. Then that seed will sprout into an Echinposae. There is certainly evidence that Echinopsae have grown around graveyards and over the graves of murdered people.

What does Kerrass think? As I say, he doesn’t care. He knows how to look for Echinopsae. He knows how to spot them when they arrive and he knows the various things that might lead towards the presence of Echinopsae. He knows the questions to ask and what kind of things to say. He knows when to burn everything and when to leave it alone. His theories? He agrees with me.

What do I think? I think that all of the above is true.

Apart from the thing about them all being sprouted from one giant carnivorous plant. That shit is too crazy to exist because if it did, then we would have heard about it by now. A giant Carnivorous plant that can send its seeds to all of the corners of the continent? I mean…? There is something in me that suggests that it might happen, that nothing is too weird to not exist in some form, but….

Whatever happens. There always seems to be a curse at the root (Freddie: unintentional pun there) of the problem. Sometimes that curse needs to be hunted out and found on the grounds that just killing the Echinopsae is rather a case of treating the symptoms rather than the disease. And whatever else happens, the thing needs to be destroyed, either before or after the curse.

And none of this knowledge or experience was of any use to us as the group walked smack into the middle of a patch of Archspore.

It was a sudden thing and there was absolutely no warning. Kerrass had time to catch his medallion before it shook itself free of his neck and to shout a warning, but that was it. They were on us and we were under attack.

We had left the last village behind a day ago. Not the village of Piotr’s former residence, but the last village that we could get supplies from before we were making the final approach to the heart of the Black Forest. We were laden down with goods. Each of us had multiple skins of water crisscrossing our bodies because Piotr had warned us that we should drink none of the natural water from within the forest itself.

Apparently, it carried the Schattenmann’s own essence in the water.

We were also laden down with firewood. Each of us strapping many different branches to ourselves. It was not cold and we always had Kerrass’ rock warming trick to fall back on, but sometimes, firelight is necessary for… well…. Light.

And we all had supplies for a long time. We had no idea how long it would take us to find the thing that we were looking for, so we carried as much as we could to ensure that we would be able to find it. The march was ever as it always had been. Piotr was now, fully committed to his role as our pathfinder.

He had mellowed a little since we had all learned of his history. I didn’t tell them the story, but somehow, Henrik and Stefan found out while Stefan had heard from the priestess at the village. Piotr led the way, his saber in his belt but he was using a broad short sword to hack his way through the undergrowth.

Kerrass went with him, Medallion out, half watching his medallion, half watching the foretrail and scanning off to either side.

Henrik came next, alternately carrying his wood-cutting ax or his bow which he used to scan for threats. Piotr had ordered us that we were not to hunt anything or to eat from any animal that we killed. An instruction that I was more than happy to keep. But Henrik was alternating between the two weapons. Occasionally wielding his ax when the path became too blocked for Piotr’s short blade to be of much use.

Then was me. The close undergrowth meant that my spear was ungainly and I carried it in its sling over my shoulder. I was much quicker now than I had been when the journey had begun, and it would be in my hands in a flash if I needed it. I was also leading a small pony. Small enough to fit through the undergrowth but strong enough to carry some of the heavier baggage.

Then came the unusual partnership of Stefan and Trayka who guarded the back trail. I have no idea when it happened but the two worked well together. Trayka aimed past him as Stefan would scan the undergrowth. I remember no words between the two and there was certainly nothing untoward going on. But nevertheless, a friendship had formed.

And so we traveled along the overgrown track.

And it was a track. There were signs of people and wagons passing along there. Deep ruts in the earth, small pieces of debris as well. Stefan found a stuffed bear at one point, while I found discarded, bent nails and a damaged, heavily rusted horseshoe.

But that didn’t stop it from being heavily overgrown.

True to his reputation, Piotr led us well and we carried on, making fairly good time.

Kerrass had time to grasp his medallion, shout and have his silver sword half in his hand before all hell broke loose.

I can only tell the story of that fight from my own perspective. It happened that fast.

There is a sound that happens when those Echinopsae breaches the surface and reach for the sky that is unlike any other. There is the rumbling sound of the earth being thrown loose, stones tumbling around, and the cracking of roots that were in the way of the spore growing. That is terrible enough, but as you are reacting to that, one of the things that I am always, always unprepared for is the feral… rattling sound that comes when they attack. It is hard to imagine a plant roaring or growling but that is quite literally what is happening.

Then there is the strange combination of spitting and swooshing noise as the poisoned thorns start to tear their way through the air towards whatever targets the Archspore dictate.

“Freddie”, Kerrass shouted and I dashed forwards to support him.

I was not the best fighter in the group. Even if you discount Kerrass, Stefan was by far a better sword than I was a spear. The difference was that I knew how to fight these things and more importantly, had fought them before. My spear was off my shoulder and the two ends were being fitted together as I moved.

Not that I’m a veteran you understand. But I had, at least, seen them before and had killed more than a couple.

Stefan knew what to do, but he had never actually seen an Archspore and for a moment he was frozen while he took in the scene.

The mule screamed as one of the thorns struck it.

“WHAT DO I DO?” Trayka demanded.

“Shoot the heads,” Piotr shouted.

“No,” I screamed. The heads wouldn’t even notice an arrow. “Shoot the bulbs.” I pointed to one that was already growing.

All of that happened in the opening moments.

There were three of them that had grown on either side of the path. Flame knows what had happened to cause this here but that wasn’t important right now. Two were on the left-hand side of the path and the other was on the right. One of the two had a large, purple flower while the other two were a more pinkish, orange-red.

I went for the one by itself.

Henrik had loosed his arrow at one of the flowers and missed. As the flower was swirling around trying to strike at the Witcher. Which is the other reason that shooting at the flowers doesn’t work. He cursed, threw his bow aside and went for his ax.

Piotr had his sword out, buckler on, and was jabbing at one of the roots.

“SLASH AT IT.” Stefan roared, finally free from his brief moment of shock. “THE Point is useless here.” He hurdled the falling mule and leapt to Kerrass’ side. Thus getting in Kerrass’ way.

Kerrass cursed as he mistimed a dodge and had to halt mid-spin.

Trayka had taken cover behind the mule and was shooting at the bulbs that were now building up.

I got in two good swings at the plant that I was attacking. One blow bounced off while the other bit deep.

The flower screamed and shrank beneath the ground. And again, yes, plants can scream. I have heard them.

I spun, looking for where my spore would surface.

Piotr had taken the instructions and had slashed into one of the trunks of the spores only to find that his sword was now lodged deep into the body of the plant and was stuck. Kerrass was sending Stefan back to help Piotr. Henrik had pulled his ax free and was moving to help. Trayka was accurate with her arrows but more of the bulbs were bursting forwards.

“STAB THE BLUBS,” I shouted at no-one in particular before taking a guess and jumping.

Echinopsae have some small intelligence, or at least, it sometimes feels as though they do, and my guess was that it would come up behind Trayka, or near her in order to stop the arrows flying.

So I dashed, half leaping, half running towards her.

More than one Bulb had burst now and I held my breath as I ran through an orange cloud.

Someone else had not been so lucky and I could hear someone retching. Even with my precaution, I felt lightheaded. Trayka blinked as she saw me running towards her and for a moment, her instincts assumed I was a threat and her aim waivered.

The spore breached the surface behind her and to one side. Trayka realised the threat and what I was aiming for, dropped her bow and drew her hunting knife.

“NO,” I screamed. “I have this.” I struck at the stem, my blow bouncing off the tough, sinewy vines. “Keep shooting the vines.”

I struck again and my blow bounced.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you attack a monster without a silver weapon in your hand.

I was hurting the thing though, bruising the plant or whatever happens, and my next blow bit deep.

The spore screamed.

I felt an impact in my back, ignored it and swung again. This time my blow went deeper.

Another problem is that if you don’t cut clear through the stem in one strike, then you must try and strike the same place again on your next strike. But I had hurt the archspore now and it was sluggish to react.

Another blow went deep. I missed again, and again but then another blow got through, all but killing the monster. It fell, limp and twitching.

Kerrass’ training is insistent though. Always check to make sure that your enemy is dead so I struck again, severing the stem, and turned to see what was happening.

It was not completely disastrous.

Kerrass had killed his own spore and was trying to get Piotr to clear out of the way so that he could kill the third. A bulb had exploded over Stefan and he was frantically trying to clear the poison off before it did too much damage.

Henrik was down and Trayka was crouched over him.

“Fuck.” I swore and hurdled the screaming mule for the third time to get to Henrik’s side.

He was staring at the sky, blinking rapidly as he tried to follow something with his eyes. Something that no one else could see.

There were two of the poisonous thorns in him. One in his unprotected neck round the back and another in his forearm.

I swore again as I pulled the thorns out. I knew from experience that they wouldn’t be barbed.

“I need water,” I shouted as I started to squeeze the wounds to get some of the poisoned blood out. All that shit you read about sucking out the venom, can work but is just as dangerous for the man doing the sucking as it is for the man who has already been poisoned. Trayka pulled at me but someone, I think it was Stefan, pulled her off.

The last Archspore died.

Henrik gripped my arms and groaned with the pain as he started to sweat.

“You’re going to be fine,” I told him. And the thing was that he really was going to be fine. Kerrass knows a remedy for the poison of an Archspore, both short term and long term. I just didn’t know if he had any ready.

I heard Kerrass’ voice.

“We need Celandine, Mandrake, Sage and puffball.” He told someone. “Go, be quick.”

There was the stomping sound of some crashing through the undergrowth as someone pulled something out of my back.

Turns out that Henrik wasn’t the only person that had been hit by a thorn. The difference was that the leather of my coat had protected me.

Here’s one for your notebooks. Echinops thorns can be protected against by thick clothing, cured hides and boiled leather will do the trick. They will simply bounce off metal armour. I would imagine you might have a bad day if you depend on chain mail as the thorns are thin enough to find a gap. But those thorns are made for striking at the skin, not at piercing anything particularly layered.

“Careless Freddie.” Kerrass joked with me as he showed me the thorn.

“And what about you?” I demanded as I pointed to two thorns in his own armour.

“Well, would you look at that?” He joked, pulling them out and tossing them aside.

“Is now a time for jokes?” Trayka demanded angrily. “My Father is dying.”

“No, he’s not,” Kerrass told her. “Freddie has mitigated a lot of the damage and providing we can get somewhere safe in the next couple of days, then I can brew a proper cure.”

“The village is not far away now.” Piotr appeared with the required plants. “We will get there tomorrow.”

“Echinopsae, want their prey weak and paralysed,” Kerrass said. “That’s why they poison you first. Yes, it is deadly if you don’t get the thorns out and get some of the poison out as well. It stays in the system and multiplies so it can still be deadly, but not if we can get the cure into him within the next couple of days.”

Trayka nodded miserably and angrily scrubbed the tears from her eyes while she stood up and moved away from my view.

“Someone get some water on to heat.” Kerrass picked up a rock and heated it on the ground. “Then throw those plants into the mixture and stir them.”

“What with?” Piotr asked.

Kerrass finally lost his temper. “I don’t know, use your dick if you like.” Then he bent to help me work.

In looking after Henrik though, we lost the mule. There was too much poison in the system of the poor beast already, we could not have got the poison out, and dragging it off to try and properly cure it would have been cruel. In the end, Trayka dealt with it and we divided as much as we could among ourselves and dragged some of the stuff behind us. The bundles of firewood, for instance, were tied to Henrik’s feet and as well as carrying him, we dragged that stuff behind us.

Trayka fashioned a stretcher so that we could carry her father. Among other things, she stole my spear to do so. I deliberately said nothing other than to make sure that the blade was properly covered to protect it from as much of the forest debris as I could. She used a stout stick for the other three parts of the frame and used her own cloak as the base of it.

Stefan volunteered to drag the poor old man but even for him it was a struggle. I volunteered as well after it became clear that Piotr wasn’t going to volunteer and that Kerrass was too needed to be practical. Trayka wanted to carry her father alone and though she was certainly strong, the offer was ludicrous in the long run. In the end, she and I would swap on occasion while she glared daggers into Piotr’s back.

I took a rather perverse pleasure in the knowledge that Piotr would not be getting laid that night, nor any other night for that matter.

We made slow time and that night’s camp was not a pleasant one.

Piotr and Kerrass argued. I didn’t listen because I was too busy nursing Henrik.

Here is another note for those of you that might be trying to follow in my footsteps or otherwise emulate me. Ensure that there is more than one person in your group that knows how to care for injuries and sicknesses. Because if one of them gets injured (Henrik) then you must make sure that there is someone else (me) who can pick up the slack.

The argument was something about everyone having a role. Piotr was unhappy about everyone, including the “jumped up streak of piss of a nobleman” telling him what to do in the heat of the moment. Kerrass’ point was that when you hire a guide, you follow their instructions, when you hire a soldier, you follow their orders on the battlefield and when you travel with a Witcher, you do what the Witcher tells you in the face of the monster. I was very gratified to hear Kerrass point out that I had killed one of the things whereas he, Piotr, had simply got his sword trapped and not been able to do anything.

Stefan tried to be a peacemaker but then Piotr turned on him, trying to drag the monk down with him until Stefan, who lost his temper after being called a coward, wondered how the best guide in the region didn’t know where there was a patch of Echinops and how said guide had failed to prevent us all from wandering right into the middle of them. So then it was Kerrass’ turn to act as the peacemaker.

I understand what Piotr was doing. He had reacted badly in the fight and made a few mistakes. He was angry with himself and therefore, he was angry with everyone else, struggling to find a target.

Had his mistakes contributed to Henrik’s injury? There is no way for me to know. Such things happen when you are all surprised and… well… ambushed. I would dearly love to place all the blame at Piotr’s feet, but that would be unfair. Even Kerrass, the Witcher, didn’t see it coming and truth be told, we were lucky it wasn’t worse.

I sat with Henrik and applied Kerrass’ cleanse to his wounds.

Yes, I have been poisoned by an Echinopsae before and the recovery is awful. First there is the cleaning of the wounds and then you need to take the remedy which involves swallowing the herbal horror before shitting through the eye of the needle. Then it just stops. You feel like you’re dying until suddenly, you feel perfect and can get up and carry on as if nothing happened.

Henrik was in the bit that feels as though he was dying. Trayka wanted to sit with her father but she was working off her own anger in her own way. Occasionally, we could hear the sounds of arrows striking wood nearby followed by the sounds of branches striking tree trunks until they snapped.

“I saw what you did,” Henrik said, looking up at me as I bathed the wound in his arm.

“What?” I was distracted, wiping the clear discharge that was leaking from the injury. That it was clear and not creamy with black threads running through it was a good sign.

“You saved my daughter’s life.”

I tried to play it off. “Your daughter’s shooting saved more than what I did,” I told him. “Now lie still.”

“When you take her.” The old man pleaded. “Be gentle with her. I will not stop you.” There were tears in his eyes.

“Once again,” I said, wiping the injury again, before moving round to examine the neck wound. “I am engaged to a woman that I love and I believe in Monogamy. Your daughter’s virtue is safe from me.”

“But be good to her and take care of any issue.” It was as though I hadn’t spoken. “She is a good girl my Trayka and I love her. I have been a poor Father to her and I would ensure this one thing if I can.”

I looked at the old man’s face which was twisted in real distress as he stared at me, barely seeing me.

“I will take care of her,” I told him. “Where it is my responsibility to do so.”

The old man slept.

Eventually, Kerrass took over from me, ordering me to get some rest and I slept.

In the middle of the night, I woke up needing to piss and went behind a tree to let the water out before going to check on my patient.

I heard something in the wind and stopped, staring off into the night.

What with one thing or another, I had not actually stopped since the fight with the Echinops. Carrying a grown man who was made out of more than a little bit of muscle, followed by caring for that man had left me so tired that I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the bag that I used as a pillow. But I was on my way back to where my blankets lay when I first heard something on the wind and I stopped, dead in my tracks.

I listened. It was a clear light and the moon was shining, heading towards a full moon so there was plenty of light to see by. I had taken my spear with me and a number of years on the road had taught me how to piss while holding onto my weapons, but it took me a moment to realise that I was holding my spear, ready for a fight as I looked up at the sky, trying to find out where the sound had come from.

There was nothing.

I could hear Kerrass snoring a little way off, a distinctive rumble that I am now so used to that I only notice it when it changes. I could also hear Henrik wheezing but it didn’t sound dangerous. It was the whistling sound of air between teeth. A man struggling to breathe a little bit, but there was no wetness to the sound. I had lost track of who was on watch and if Piotr, Trayka, or Stefan snored, I had never identified it.

But then I realized that it was not any of that I had heard. Indeed, I shouldn’t have been able to hear the sounds of Henrik breathing in a forest. There should be the sounds of small animals rustling through the undergrowth, birds, and bats flapping about in the darkness. The wind in the leaves would have been quite comforting at that point in time.

But there was nothing. It was as though the whole world had stopped and was waiting for something. I felt like an actor on a stage who has just forgotten their lines, waiting for the next thought to occur and just hoping that it would turn out to be the next thing that I had to say in order to continue.

Then I heard it again. Just in the distance. A cry, a moan even, a sound of agony and torment that seemed to have been ripped from the throat that had made the noise. It rose and fell with a break in the middle, a gap for words to be spoken.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I shivered.

Trayka moved up behind me. I knew for a fact that if Trayka wanted to sneak up on me, then she could have done so and I would not have heard her, which meant that she had deliberately telegraphed her movements so that I could hear her and be prepared.

“It is the hanging priest’s voice.” She said. “You know, from the story? He is calling for help.”

I nodded, taking in that information.

“He has been calling for help since we arrived.” Trayka went on. “Depending on the direction of the wind, you can hear him for a couple of days in any direction. Including, presumably, from the heart of the Black Forest itself.”

I think it was more words in one sitting than Trayka and I had ever shared.

Kerrass often has ‘opinions’ on being woken up in the middle of the night, but I found that I didn’t want to be alone so I reached for a conversation starter.

“Have you been here before?” I wondered.

“A couple of times.” She said, coming to stand next to me. “I came once before from a more Southerly direction. I had business in the area and decided that I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was a real tourist moment. One of those things. I was born and raised in the woodland around the Black Forest and I had only ever been to visit the Priest and see his warning when I was much younger. I wanted to see how much I could remember and how much was born of all of the terrible stories that the other visitors tell themselves.”

“How was it?”

She shrugged.

And what was it like when you were younger?” I asked when it became clear that she wasn’t going to give me any more details.

She didn’t answer that question either.

“I saw what you did today.” She told me. “You saved my life I think after I nearly shot you.”

I shrank in embarrassment. “I do not travel with other people too often,” I told her. “Mostly just with Kerrass where my entire job is to just get out of the way in a fight. But I do know that when shit like that happens, there is too much chaos going on to properly state who saved who or even who did what.”

I could feel her looking at me in the darkness. “You are a good man.” She decided, nodding.

“How can you tell?” I wondered, feeling amusement in my voice.

“You lie badly.” She told me.

I laughed and after a moment, she added a chuckle to my own before the mirth died out to the sound of a particularly high-pitched bellow of pain in the difference.

“I shot him when I was last here.” She said. “The priest that hangs from his church.”

“I thought that the church had burnt down.”

“It did, but it either got rebuilt or has regrown in the meantime. But he hangs there and he pleads, begs, and moans. Most of the people that visit try to kill him. Some of the more unpleasant visitors make a game of it, seeing who can kill him the slowest. Not that he cares. He barely seems to notice the pain anymore.”

I took that in with a certain horrifying feeling.

“I shot him twice in the rib cage. I had been, seen the village and decided that I didn’t want to stay. So I shot him in the chest. Deadly shots, both of them and he died. I swear that he died. Three hours later, I hear the cries start up again as I walked away.”

“Lovely.” I heard myself say. “Something to look forward to.”

She grunted.

“You also saved my Father’s life.” This piece of gratitude sounded more like an accusation than anything else.

“I was there and I knew what to do,” I told her.

“Some men would have left him.” She hissed, a wave of sudden anger and bitterness was in her. I wondered if she was talking about Piotr.

“I am not some men,” I said. “I am me. And anyone I know who I would have any time for, or would remotely care about, or claim friendship with, would have done their best to help. Even if we needed to help a stranger.”

“Why?” She wondered. She seemed younger somehow.

“Because one day it might be me left lying there by the side of the road with an Echinops thorn in my neck.”

She grunted in acknowledgement of that.

“Still,” She said. “Thank you.”

“You are quite welcome,” I told her.

She waited a moment, possibly doing the same as I was which was trying to think of something else she could say. In the end, though, she turned and walked away.

“Wait,” I said, something suddenly occurring to me.

She turned to face me.

“Why is your Father so insistent in his concern that I am trying to seduce you?”

She stared at me in the darkness, the light of the moon and the stars had thrown her eyes into shadow, making her look sinister somehow.

“My father loved my mother very much.” She said. “I do not know, because she left us when I was very young. But according to the other people from my village, she was much younger than him. She was a pretty woman and married my Father because he was decent and kind to her, rather than just trying to have a pretty girl in their bed.”

She sneered with an old anger.

“One day, a handsome young Lord rode into the village for water and food on a hunting trip. He saw my mother and invited her to go with him using pretty words and practiced charm. She went with him without a backward glance. Now my Father lives in terror that the same thing will happen to me. But he will not understand that he lost me a long time ago.”

“What happened to your mother?”

She shrugged.

“I don’t know and I don’t much care. Bitch left us.”

She was angry now and turned away. Our conversation seemed to be over.

I stood there and listened for a while as I heard the poor man, wherever he was, crying out in his anger and pain.

The following morning started slowly. Not because we were all reluctant to start, but because when you have an injured member of the group. An injured man who wants to pretend to himself and to everyone else around, that he’s actually fine, then things can be slow to start.

Henrik tried to walk and argued with us when we tried to make him lie on the stretcher. Then he wanted to know why we kept the stretcher constructed rather than taking it apart as he thought we should.

Then he got out of breath eating his breakfast.

And that was the battle. We had had to divide up the goods that were on the back of the mule between us we managed to explain away the stretcher on the grounds that it would then carry our firewood and other goods that we didn’t mind getting bumped around.

We were maybe a hundred paces further down the trail before Henrik simply fell over.

In the end, it was his daughter that stood there and glared at us all until we all backed off a little while and then she let him have it. I didn’t hear all of it because I was trying to give the pair of them some privacy. But there were some parts of it all that we just couldn’t avoid hearing, to the point that Piotr went a little bit ahead to scout the trail while Stefan, Kerrass, and I all stood around avoiding each other’s eyes.

She called him a drunk, a lazy old lech of a man whose pride had destroyed what little amount of quality that he still had. And that was some of the nicer things that she said.

In the end, he was convinced to lay down on the stretcher.

The problem with Echinops venom is that it’s an insidious thing. It latches itself inside the body in some way that I do not understand and would require a mage to explain it to you. It seems to get inside the bloodstream before it multiplies and then spreads. It is a paralytic so as it works its way through the body, it just grinds everything down to a stop. The danger is that if it gets into the heart or the brain then it will convince them to slow down and eventually stop. And it can take a long time too. A very long time. And people rarely die from it although it is deadly in the long term and in larger, untreated doses. That is not how Echinops kill people. It paralyzes them and then it eats them.

So what needed to happen, now that we had got the thorns and the worst of it out of his system. Was to get rid of the stuff that had taken hold already before it multiplied. That would need somewhere stable for Kerrass to brew the purging agent and then time for the stuff to come out.

Which was a process that I personally found less than pleasant. Apparently, the stuff that he brews is designed to break down the part of the poison that allows itself to latch into the flesh of the victim. I can’t pretend to understand more than that. I know field medicine and injury treatment, but longer-term alchemical cures are a bit beyond me.

We got Henrik back onto the stretcher and made our way down the track. Kerrass and Piotr leading. Stefan and I dragging the now sleeping Henrik and Trayka bringing up the read.

Kerrass did say that it was ok for Henrik to sleep on the grounds that it would slow the spread of the venom in the system. That can sometimes go both ways.

In the end, we arrived in the village in the middle of the afternoon, later than we had planned but that’s what happens when you drag a huge woodsman behind you.

We heard the priest before we saw him.

That wasn’t just because I had my head down with the rope of Henrik’s stretcher around my neck. Nor is it just a figure of speech. You cannot fail to hear him as you approach that town.

We stopped regularly during that patch of the journey. Kerrass insisted on it. The exertions of the previous day, the fight, and the emotions that stem from the sudden action can always leave a person more exhausted than their body would normally require. So we would pull and carry Henrik on the stretcher that we had improved during the early parts of the morning.

And then we would stop. Kerrass bullied Piotr in making us some restorative drinks. Piotr didn’t like that, nor did he like the way that Trayka fell over herself to accommodate both Stefan and me.

It was in those quiet moments that the priest’s voice would drift through the trees towards us.

“Help me.” He would cry. “Help me…”

Sometimes it was a moan, sometimes a scream of anguish and pain. Sometimes he would whimper it and sometimes you could hear a rage in that voice as he used his anger to fuel that voice into a bellow.

“HELP ME.” He would scream into the early morning leafy canopy.

Then the six of us would look around and realize that we were all listening to the voice. That we had frozen in place as we waited to hear what the voice would say next, how it would sound, or what emotion would be behind it.

Piotr would move first. Lifting his burden back onto his back and moving back to the trail. Somehow that would break the tension and we would all start moving.

“HEEEELLLLLP me.”

Stefan and I would look at each other before moving to Henrik who would occasionally stir in his slumber to exchange words or drink the stuff we gave me before shifting his weight and returning to a kind of slumber or a daze. How Stefan kept going I will not know. My gear and share of the supplies were arranged around Henrik and on top of him. The rest divided between the others. My spear was still part of the stretcher and I carried my knives. But beyond that? Stefan insisted on carrying his sword and continued to wear his armour as some kind of… Holy burden.

“Help me,” came the cry.

Stefan was a fit man, as strong a man, and as fine a warrior as I’ve seen. Kerrass had the edge but you could kind of tell that that was due, as much, to experience with the blade rather than anything else. The edge that Stefan had was in Strength and he would often get frustrated with Kerrass avoiding that strength.

But despite this, he was still left struggling with carrying Henrik as well. He would be red-faced when we took a rest and Kerrass had to stand over him in order for him to take refreshment and admit to the fatigue and the weakness.

Mid-morning, the priest changed his tune.

“Stay away.” He cried. “Don’t come here. Stay away.”

We stopped again and listened to him. Ears open as we let the noise rush over us. All of us standing in a line, frozen by the anguished agony of the voice that we had heard. Kerrass sighed and ordered another rest.

“Kill me.” The priest whimpered and at that moment, I would have done so in order to give my brain some peace.

I have said before that traveling is an almost meditative process. You travel along, the entire world reduced to the road under your feet or the horse under your arse. The scenery passes you by and unless you discipline yourself towards looking around and paying attention to your surroundings, that’s the way it works.

At least for me.

My brain will go over old problems. Long finished conversations and arguments. Fantasies for how things could have turned out and dreams for the future. Books and essays that I could write, want to write, and will probably never write.

Let alone publish.

Traveling with someone can lead to long, pointless conversations about nothing. Going over the same conversations over and over again. But even with long-term comrades like that, you can find yourselves slipping into the gentle reverie of long-distance travel.

I longed for that dreamlike state and the priest was keeping it from me with his shouts, screams, whimpers, and moans.

Henrik was not that heavy. I mean he was, but the burden was more about carrying it properly. But after a while, it started to drag down and become more and more difficult. So I longed to escape into that dreamlike state. I wanted to picture what married life was going to be like with Ariadne. I am not ashamed to say that I was looking forward to my wedding night despite the fact that more than one married person has told me that the wedding night itself is never that great. That both partners are too tired, too full of rich food, too drunk from all the drink, and too sweaty from all the dancing so that the thought of actually making love with the person of your dreams becomes a little distasteful.

But for the dream of the road, that didn’t matter. I wanted to dream of that magical moment when Ariadne would disrobe and I would stumble out of my clothes and then…

“KIIIIILLLLL MEEEEE.”

It seeped into my mind. It was gradual and obsessive. Like a drunk singing in the street, a couple having sex in the room above you, or a dog barking in the night. Where just when you think it’s over and that they’ve given up so that you can return to your studies or sleep. You just start to get back to grips with the whole thing and then it starts again.

“Help me. PLEEEEASSEEEE help me.”

And this was worse. At first, I felt pity. I wanted to help him because he was clearly in so much pain and even if a person felt a fraction of pity for the poor man, you would react to that sound and want to help him. But after a while, I began to feel that pity, empathy, and compassion turning into a loathing so fierce that I could almost taste it.

I wanted to help him. I wanted to kill him or to get someone else to kill him for me. Anything so that I could have a bit of peace.

So I honestly didn’t realize that we had reached the village until we were there.

All I was focused on doing was putting one foot in front of another and I just realized that I was no longer pushing my way through the undergrowth. I was at the back of the stretcher anyway which makes it seem a little more realistic.

So all that happened for me was that I realized that the undergrowth was no longer pulling at my ankles and footsteps and that the sun was falling on my face.

It was like a weight was lifted off my chest and I felt as though I could breathe easily again. Woodland, especially woodland as old and primeval as the one that we had been moving through can become an oppressive place. You can feel it weighing down on you. It becomes stuffy, dark, and hard to breathe. I make jokes about it being like traveling through a cave system or a mine and people laugh at me.

But it’s true.

So feeling the sunlight on my face and the breeze ruffling my hair. I cannot tell you how pleasant it was.

It looked like quite a nice village really.

“There is a safe place to sleep, over in the stables,” Piotr said. “This way.”

I hadn’t realized that we had put Henrik down until it became time to pick him up again. The last part of the journey is always the hardest. I gritted my teeth and forced myself on. One step in front of the other.

“What are you doing here?” The priest called. “Go back. LEAVE THIS PLACE. GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM. GO BACK.” His words became frantic and insistent. A ghost of his old priestly authority in the back of his throat.

“HE WILL COME FOR YOU,” He shouted as the route that Piotr was taking us seemed to leave him behind. “THE SCHATTENMANN always comes. He will come and he will take you along with all of the rest. Leave this place.”

That last was a whimper.

Piotr took us to this building. It was larger than the average stable that you would have imagined for a village of this kind but it was explained away by the fact that they might have needed somewhere to store the working horses and draft animals before the individual homesteads would be able to take away those particular tasks.

Whatever else there was, it was no longer those things. It was a sleeping quarters now. There was straw on the ground and I was surprised to find that it was clean and well maintained. Piotr led Trayka off to one end of the building and they returned, carrying blankets which we arranged to go to sleep in, laying Henrik down in one of the stalls. Kerrass asked for a flat and clear area to make his potion and he was pointed towards the tack table where a groom or stablemaster would work on harness and Kerrass moved that way before stopping with Piotr’s hand on his arm.

Piotr turned to face all of us. Stefan was in the middle of taking his armour off with the obvious intention of throwing himself into his blankets and sleeping.

“Help me.” The priest called.

“Now listen,” Piotr said. “This is where my guiding ends but it is also the most important bit. Listen now or I will not be responsible for you disappearing.

“You will not need to see the Witcher’s medallion dancing around to learn that this place is cursed. So heed this warning. By all means, wander around and explore. Pick things up, examine them. But then put them back. You might be asking why we don’t pick a house and sleep in one of the beds there, many of which still have blankets on them. It is because you will not see the dawn. You will have vanished, leaving your belongings behind like the people of this place did.

“Whatever you pick up to examine, leave it behind. Take no souvenirs, down to a sprinter of wood in your clothing. We all mean to go deeper into the forest, but nothing from the village. You will find food in pots and water onto boil, but do not clean yourself from the well or eat any of the food that is cooking, despite how delicious it smells.

“Above all, do NOT, under any circumstance, pray in the church.”

“These blankets have been brought from elsewhere and this is the reason that I told you to bring our own firewood, water, and food.”

“HELP ME.” The priest screamed. The voice sounded dull in the building.

“What about him?” Trayka wondered. “Sleeping is going to be really difficult if he’s screaming all the time.”

Piotr snorted.

“By all means try to help him. Pray with him. Bless him. Throw holy oils on him. Shoot him or kill him. Use your Witcher trickery if you must. But he will still be here when we leave. Better, wiser, and more powerful than we have tried to lift the curse and sometimes they have even lived to regret it. I would suggest that we take it in turns to kill him. That way, we can have a bit of peace. It takes him a couple of hours to recover and before friend monk or friend scholar” he said those words as though they were insults, “get upset. If he doesn’t die instantly, he will look at you with gratitude in his eyes. He will literally thank you for the, hah, mercy.”

He turned and went into his own stall without a word.

“We will be leaving the day after tomorrow at the earliest,” Kerrass said. “It will take that long for the potion to be brewed, administered, and then finish moving through Henrik’s system. Get some rest everyone,”

He didn’t add the traditional “You will need it” afterward, but we all heard it anyway.

I ached in places that I was not used to aching. My stamina is now at the point where I can ride all day without really noticing it and I can fight for a good long while before I would start to feel out of breath. For reference that is still not as long as you might think of it in books or plays, but considerably longer than I used to. Carrying a heavy man plus extra burdens with ropes over my shoulders and around my neck takes its toll, however. I made an effort to rub some of the stiffness and pain out of my legs and arms, or at least the bits that I could reach, but it would take some time before I would be able to deal with my neck and shoulders. I wanted Ariadne to be there to be able to give my back a proper rub.

I took some of our water and soaked my feet as well after a little too long walking through the forest floor without taking my boots off

As a point to all of those would-be travellers out there, do not neglect your feet. Make sure to clean them up and air them out on a regular basis. Fungal infections and worse are nothing to be joked about. You will thank me for it.

I wrapped myself in a blanket and tried to rest. I was tired, I clearly needed the rest, my eyes wanted to droop closed and my thoughts were wandering.

But I ached and was sore. This is not an uncommon thing. I was also missing Ariadne keenly but I didn’t want to disturb her in the middle of whatever it was that she might have been doing. But the last reason that I couldn’t sleep, or even doze, was the priest.

“Help me.” He would call. “Please help me.”

Then there would be a pause while I waited to see if he was done. Everything became heightened then, the sounds of the nearby trees. Henrik’s snoring and the gentle movements of the other people in the group seemed to be louder than they really were.

“Leave now, Go back. Do not be here.” And the priest would start again. I concluded that I was not going to get much sleep, rose from my bed, dressed lightly, and went out into the village, taking my spear with me. Not that I was expecting trouble but… blah blah… when least expected… blah blah.

I stepped out in the open air, waving to Kerrass as I went past so that he knew where I was, and went out into the pleasant, mid-afternoon sunshine.

As I say, the village was quite nice. A little more spaced out than I would have thought. Normally villages seem to be clumped together for whatever reason, probably for mutual security and the like. But this one seemed to be spaced out.

I wondered if there was some kind of city planning going on.

Some of it made a certain amount of sense. There was a small windmill on the hill to one end of the village that did its best to poke out the top of the forest canopy. I didn’t think it would be very efficient considering how pervasive the trees were but, the settlers probably assumed that they would be able to remove the trees for that reason. They were, after all, here to counter the influence of a being that lived in the trees.

There were also no pathways between the houses. Wide-open fields of green grass, rippling in the wind were all that stood between one house and the next. You could easily see the tracks that we had left earlier in the day as we had emerged from the treeline and moved towards the stables. Again, in most villages, you can see the pathways that have been carved between the houses. The alleyways and passages have seen so much footfall that they have become paths where no vegetation grows. It is in this way that roads are formed.

Here there was nothing. There was just the grassland. I wondered if this was because of the newness of the village and that there had simply not been enough time for anything to become worn in enough. Or if it was because, over the time since the village’s desertion, the grass had simply reclaimed what the villages had begun to carve out.

“KILL ME,” Screamed the priest. I jumped, it had been a while since he had last spoken

The wind seemed to echo in my ears but it was far from unpleasant. I even think I heard birdsong. As I looked around in the bright sunshine and pleasant warmth, I almost felt surprised when someone didn’t emerge from the nearby houses in order to ask me who I was. It was a nice place, a warm place and I could easily imagine that sense of community spirit that could be used to bring everything together.

I chose the first building to the left and started walking. As I say, it was surprisingly far. And I was hit in the face with the first of the surprises of the village. There was smoke coming out of the chimney.

I looked around at the other houses and saw that this building was not alone in that. There was smoke rising, from multiple chimneys and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before, or how I had possibly not thought of it as being particularly strange.

I suppose that fatigue had combined with a certain amount of expectation to mean that I had expected it to be there and had dismissed it without thinking through the implications. After taking that in for the moment, I turned back to my first target and restarted the walk.

The building had multiple chimneys and now that I was looking at it properly, I realized that it must have been the village Smithy or rough equivalent.

I looked back at the stables and back to the Smithy, again, taking in the distance between the two. Normally, planning would mean that the horse stables, livery workers, and farriers would be near the smithy in order to be prepared for whatever the need was. These people had obviously not seen it as that important.

“Help me.” THe Priest shouted. “Kill me.”

I ignored the noise. I didn’t want to think about that yet.

The Smithy itself seemed to be well-appointed. I have been in and out of many such now and it seemed to my amateur eye to have everything that a village smithy might need or want. There were recognizable tools hanging on the wall, some more worn than others. Some had clearly been homemade and others had been bought from a trader for some specific but rarely occurring purpose.

The forge was lit and glowing, the smoke from one of the chimneys came from the forge. The bellows looked as though they had just been abandoned and resting on the anvil with a hammer nearby was a piece of metal, clamped in a pair of tongs.

I shivered.

I explored a bit but was left with the ridiculous feeling that I was snooping, going through someone’s private things. The people involved must have been long gone or dead, but there was an immediacy here that left it feeling different to exploring ruins with Kerrass or for historical purposes. Not even close to the feeling of those homes that have been the site of some kind of horror that might result in a Witcher being called.

I found the door through to the living area of the building. It looked like a nice little home. There was a metal carving of the Great Sun symbol above the hearth that was lit. One of the cauldrons was bubbling some kind of broth and there was a large fish that was cooking in a pan directly over the flame. I could recognize some of the forest herbs that were in the pan with the fish that was sizzling in some, presumably, butter.

It smelled delicious.

Nearby there was a table with four places set and a basket of small bread loaves in the middle as well as a crock of butter. Separate jugs of milk, water, and a small wine decanter were also nearby.

One of the plates had a torn loaf in the middle where someone had set down a knife after beginning to smear some butter on the torn part of the loaf.

I backed away quietly.

The living area was equally nice and cozy. THere were six books on a shelf, one of which being the teachings of the Great Sun and the separate history of the Nilfgaardian Empire. The others had titles that I didn’t recognize and guessed that they were some kind of fiction. The adventures of someone and the teachings of someone else.

There was a doll and a set of soldiers on the floor.

The sleeping areas were neatly prepared and clean. I could easily tell which one was the child’s room as it was littered with old clothes and discarded toys.

I left quickly. Surprisingly so.

I am a historian. It is part of my job to go snooping around and this was the first time, ever, that I have felt uncomfortable because of it.

The next building was a house. It was large and a good chunk of it was uninhabited. I guessed that this was a family that had been split in two, or that they were hoping that soon there would be multiple generations. It struck me as a bit more optimistic than it had any right to be.

“LEAVE THIS PLACE.” The priest howled in dire warning. I ignored it

There were more signs in that house that the residents had actually just put whatever it was that they were doing down and walked away. There was a spinning wheel that had just stopped as someone put the distaff down. Some milk was in the process of being churned and there was some furniture in the back yard that was in the process of being carved. But the chisel and the hammer had just been set aside, wood shavings and splinters all around it.

The next house was a shepherd’s house. Smaller than the rest and the reason I could tell was due to the layout of the fencing in the back of the house. It was empty and clearly unused. Built for one of the families that were still on their way.

I was beginning to feel as though I had seen everything that I was going to see. I didn’t want to be here to see all of the remains of the different families that had come here with their hopes and their dreams dashed in the face of an enemy that they had not expected and had not bargained for.

I found that I was angry and immeasurably sad. Sad for these people that had made the mistake of following a man who told them all that he knew better.

Religion is a funny thing. It can produce great good and great wonder, but it can also produce ignorance and evil on a scale like nothing else. A man, a priest with all of the awesome power and authority that position entailed had convinced himself that there was a way for his own advancement. He had convinced himself, presumably in the face of others that warned him of the dangers, and he had led those people that had come here to their doom.

This thought occurred while I was standing in the cottage of a woodcutter. There were many and various axes and saws against the walls of different shapes, sizes, and weights. Boxes of wedges, used for the splitting of the trunks and the making of the planks that would be needed accordingly. He had been chopping wood. I don’t know why he was using that particular ax to chop the wood and not any number of the other axes that were propped against the wall. The chopping ax was buried in the middle of a large round and there was a stack of large logs on one side and a pile of split firewood on the other. There was a small wheelbarrow next to the pile of the cut firewood and the process was clear. There were children involved.

One child would move the bigger round in place. The ax would be wielded by the father in order to split the logs and then the younger child or children would collect the smaller pieces and move them to the pile. When there was enough, the wheelbarrow would be loaded up and the split wood would be taken and stacked against the eaves of the house. It was a nice picture and although I was probably being optimistic in my image of familial harmony, I couldn’t help but picture it.

They had all put down their tools and walked off. They had even closed the gate of the yard behind them. I could imagine the father carrying the smallest child on his shoulder as they went.

I was getting angrier. I didn’t want to see anymore, but there was something left that I still had to do.

I turned and moved towards the church and where I presumed that I would find the priest.

In theory, it was a nice, well-appointed church.

It was just off the middle of the village on a flat piece of land. If I didn’t know the history of what had happened here, I would have said that it was quite a nice little church. It was obviously made from amongst the first logs to have been felled. They had been staked together in a lean-to kind of situation before earth and wattling had been used to pack the gaps.

Or at least I think that was what was between the gaps, it was probably some kind of variation on these things.

And yes, I know that the stories said that the church had been burnt down but, there it was, the wood looking as new and cleanly cut as ever.

There was the symbol of the great sun carved into the entrance of the church and I knew from experience of similar churches to this one, that there would be little inside but an alter at one end and a few benches against the packed earth floor.

It was undoubtedly the first building that had been built when the settlers got here. While everyone else was still living in tents and sleeping underneath wagons, some men will have been cutting logs and building this church while the priest and his immediate disciples will have stood over the place praying and otherwise being useless.

If this had happened in the North, they would have been waving censors with burning incense, torches that burned with holy oils as they waft the smoke closer and closer to the building that was being blessed. I have no idea what the rites of blessing a building in the name of the Great Sun involve.

I walked around the building first, examining the walls. And yes, I can admit that I was putting off going to the front of the building and interacting with the priest that was swinging there. I had seen that Stefan was there and was praying and although I told myself that I didn’t want to intrude on the warrior monk’s prayers, I was putting things off and I knew it.

As I say, the wood looked newly hewn. You could still see some areas where plants were trying to grow out of the trunks themselves. A few logs were sprouting leaves that were still green. Eventually, this building would be torn down and replaced with a more permanent structure which was why it was left a little more derelict than you would, at first suspect.

I found something round the back though. There was a patch of burnt timber that was still smoldering. I have no idea what that meant. But I watched it for a little while before moving on. I would look again before we left and although I hadn’t marked the wood, I was fairly confident that the amount of burnt wood had receded a little.

There was no putting it off any further though and I walked around the front of the church where I found the hanging priest, yelling at the kneeling Stefan.

Stefan was barefoot and was wearing a simple robe that I took to be his monk’s habit. It was worn over a simple shirt and pair of trousers and the only reason that it seemed a little odd and contrary to the idea of a monk was that it was belted with Stefan’s sword belt and that his own great blade, only a little shorter than Kerrass’, hung from his hip.

He knelt with his hands clasped in front of him as he mumbled his prayers.

“DON’T JUST KNEEl THERE,” the priest screamed at Stefan, spittle spraying from his mouth. “KILL ME.”

The priest was just as pitiable as I had imagined he would turn out to be. It was clear, even without getting up close and performing a proper medical examination, that he was only alive because something magical was keeping him alive. He was thin, skeletally so, and was suffering from rather extreme malnutrition and dehydration. One of Stefan’s water bags was next to the kneeling monk and I could see water tracks on the hanging priest from where Stefan had wet a cloth and held it for the priest to suck some moisture from.

The priest’s hair had all but fallen out. Just a few, greasy strands hung from a pale and greasy scalp that was mottled and discolored from some… disease that comes with not eating and maintaining yourself properly. His eyes and cheeks were sunken and a mottled, patchy beard covered his face although I noticed that it had not grown long.

He still wore a priest’s robe and there was still a large and heavy-looking symbol of the Great Sun around his neck that seemed to weigh down on him even further. The robe was faded from what must have been its original black into a dark, greenish-grey.

The robe was ragged and you could tell the skinny, bony nature of the body underneath the robe from the shape of how it hung on the poor man. His feet were bare and looked more blue than skin color.

He hung by the wrists from some thorny vines that seemed to have grown from the logs that made up the front of the church. I don’t think I need to tell you that vines like that don’t grow from trees like the one that had been cut down. Trees that looked like some kind of Elm.

I got closer, ignoring the haranguing of the priest as he spat and swore at me in an effort to get me to kill him. The vines looked to be covered in small barbs and thorns, occasional large thorns seemed to sprout first. I didn’t bother trying to touch them or cut at them. I knew what would happen if I did that. There was some sign that it had already been tried.

“I don’t know what to do,” Stefan said suddenly, rising from his kneeling position and coming to stand next to me. “THe price of my own arrogance is made manifest I think.”

I snorted.

“You came here to try and lift his curse?” I guessed.

“Among other things.” Stefan snorted his agreed amusement. “This would not be my first curse, just as I understand that it is not yours.”

“It is not.” I agreed. “But you will notice that I have not written about the curses that we did not manage to lift. Or…” I looked at Stefan carefully.

“Or those curses that the victims do not want to be lifted,” Stefan said a little sadly.

“You know how this curse will be lifted?” I guessed.

“I have a number of ideas.” The monk agreed. “But all of them require this man, the priest, to be at least a little bit cogent and at least a little bit able to think for himself.”

The conversation stopped for a moment as the priest took that moment to hurl a long tirade of vileness at the pair of us for “not doing the decent thing and putting him out of his misery”.

It left him gasping for breath in a way that was almost funny. It reminded me of a toddler’s tantrum and the way that parents just kind of watch the tantrum play itself out for a while before just…. Continuing the conversation.

“The normal remedies are not going to work here.” Stefan went on. I had the odd sense about Stefan that he was trying to pity the priest, but that he was finding it a struggle. Again, the way that a parent might try and sympathize with the trials and tribulations of the child while also trying not to find it funny.

The things that we do to ourselves in order to rationalize the things that we see. What was happening, what had happened, and what was going to keep on happening to that priest was horrific. There was nothing we could do, so we made light of it.

“Who is going to feel any kind of true love with that,” Stefan said, gesturing at the wreck of a human being. “And if there was anyone who truly loved him, then they would have been in the group that came here with him. Prayer is not working as I think prayer is part of the problem.”

I nodded, that made sense. The reason that this man had been cursed in the first place was that he had shown devotion to one religion while disrespecting what else was going on in the area.

“If I could, I would have suggested a priest of a different religion but that would risk angering both this priest and the Schattenmann himself. What do you think?”

“I am not the expert,” I complained with a slight smile.

“Lord Frederick.” Stefan snorted. “You are fooling nobody with this modesty act.”

“No no.” I joked. “I really am this modest. Ask anyone. I even have to point out my modesty to other people when they don’t notice it.”

Stefan laughed. The priest whimpered.

“The Schattenmann needs to release him,” I said. “But I think, from the stories that you told me and that were passed on from Piotr’s village, the Schattenmann is prideful. I would guess that the priest needs to apologize and show genuine contrition.”

“I agree,” Stefan said a little sadly. “I would even offer to take the priest’s place but for the fact that, coming here, I am kind of left with the feeling that he brought it on himself.”

The priest drew himself up, scrabbling with his legs against the wood that he hung against in order to try and find some purchase. He filled his lungs and screamed the order for us to kill him.

We both winced at the volume and started to move away and back towards the stables