(A/N: Description of a very brutal death for possibly ceremonial reasons)

“I need the three of you to listen to me very carefully.”

Our guide into the heart of the forest was a dryad named Oak-Leaf. She was a big woman, taking a lot after Blonde-Giant but was dark-haired instead of blonde as well as being a bit older. She was not unfriendly towards the three of us but was clearly a lady who had job to do and wasn’t really interested in anything outside that job.

“I know that you have some expertise in fighting and dealing with monsters. You, especially you, Witcher. I know who your companions are and I know what they are capable of. But make no mistake, the things that you are dealing with over the next few days as we travel into the heart of the forest will be like nothing that you’ve ever seen before.

“And that is a lie. It is important that you know that that is a lie. I know that you, Witcher, had to deal with an Arachas that had escaped from the heart of the Forest and it will have behaved something like every other Arachas that you have ever seen, dealt with or heard of. But now it will be different.”

Kerrass nodded to that.

“Going into the heart of the forest will not be like that. You will see Arachas walking along next to us. You will see Echinopsae bowing to greet us and you will see bears and wolves living alongside foxes and rabbits. The coming Equinox is moving from Winter into Summer which means that things will be lightening up. Believe me, you would not want to be making this journey during the Winter Solstice or the Autumn Equinox. One is death and the other is decay whereas this one is about birth and new life.

“Be grateful for that.

“But that is not to say that the coming journey is completely free of danger. Quite the opposite. The danger is that if you threaten, or are seem to threaten any of that new life, then that new life will be defended accordingly. Things can go from the metaphorical cute and cuddly to slathering and dangerous between blinking.

“So make no assumptions. If I, or any of my scouts, tell you to do something or not to do something. Then we expect to be obeyed instantly and without question. this is for our safety as much as it is or yours and believe me, we will not compromise our safety when it comes to making this journey. If it comes down to it and it is a choice between the safety of one of my scouts, or myself, and delivering the three of you down to the heart of the forest, I will not hesitate, not even for a second, before I will order you filled full of arrows and being left for those animals that are down here, to eat what is left of your corpse.

“You will see things down here that will look to you like monsters that you have heard stories about. If they attack, defend yourselves by all means and fighting an Arachas, an Endrega or an Echinopsae down here is exactly the same as it would be up in the real world. The difference is that their motivations are different. They will not behave the same. And that is the thing to bear in mind. So watch your aggression, and be careful of your body language. If a fight starts, and it might, defend yourself as your Witcher training tells you to, or in the way that you are told to by others.

“Specifically, if a crow lands on a nearby branch to look at you. Do not spook it. That is the Schattenmann watching you. If a wolf walks up to you and sniffs you, that is the Schattenmann testing you out. Keep your weapons in their sheathes and we should have no problem. But if you can’t do that, then I will tie you up and drag you to the Schattenmann. If you make that difficult. Then your throat will be slit and I will leave you where you fall.”

Nothing like a good speech from a guide who is taking you into dangerous places in order to set the mood.

“There are some more practical points.” She went on. “I don’t care what kind of reception you had back in the settlement, but believe me when I say that I don’t care. I choose the scouts that help me take people like you into the heart of the forest. Therefore, there will be no fraternisation between you and them. They will not offer and you will not pursue it. You might have the impression that dryads go that way reflexively. But believe me, this is not the case here. If one of my scouts decides to cut your balls off in order to make a point, then that is just the way things go.

“You will help us stand watches. There are three of you. It should only take us three or four days to get down to the heart of the forest depending on how the journey goes. So each one of you will take an early, middle and late watch and then should we run over, then we will figure that out accordingly.

“I expect you to arrange your own camp. Food will be brought to you and you will eat the food and drink the drink that we bring to you. This food and drink are carefully measured out in order to help you make the journey. Eating too much, or too little, will endanger the group. I don’t care if it tastes bad or if you don’t like it. Eat the damn food, or otherwise risk being left behind when you start to weaken.

“You will also be brought some herbs that we expect you to rub under your armpits and around your groin areas in order to suppress natural scents. Do not stint on these and again, we expect you to act as ordered. It obscures your scent from certain kinds of monsters that are out there, the attentions of which, we do not want to attract. Keep noise to a minimum. Speak only in low voices and only when absolutely necessary. Unchecked laughter can risk lives and I won’t have it.”

Kerrass literally raised his hands to ask a question. I nearly cried with laughter. I didn’t, I had enough sense to see that it would have been inappropriate. But it was close.

“Yes?”

“What about involuntary noises?” Kerrass asked. “Freddie here has nightmares and he claims that I snore.”

“Then I hope that the pair of you share a bedroll so that you can wake each other up in order to prevent disaster.”

Kerrass just raised an eyebrow at that, but we said nothing.

“Relieve yourselves a small distance from the camp. Each of you will be given a small shovel with which you will dig yourself holes to squat over. Any leaves and things that you use to clean yourselves with should be deposited in the hole along with your leavings. We are some distance from the drinking water streams so there is no danger of cross-contamination. Urine should be covered with a layer of forest debris, the type that can be done by kicking a boot over it so don’t trouble about that too much.

“When you do go to relieve yourselves. Do not go alone. Two people go so that one can stand a lookout while the other is squatting. The things down here that might hunt you, recognise the relieving of oneself as a time of weakness, do not allow them to take you by carelessness.”

She took a moment to look each of us in the eye.

“I do not exaggerate.” She said. “The things that I say will save your lives. And I would much rather you say of me ‘She was very strict with us and her precautions seem pointless’ rather than ‘if only she had been more strict with her orders and then more of us might have survived’. I have been making this journey since before all of you were born and I am well-practised with it. But even my safety record is not perfect. However, almost universally, the people that have died were the ones that failed to listen.”

I liked her.

I volunteered for the middle watch on the first night. The middle watch is traditionally my least favourite watch as I never feel as though I manage to get a proper night’s sleep and I wanted to get it out of the way. It was not the best idea that I’ve ever had but it was not the worst either. I might have been better off going with taking the first watch so that I could let all of the events move through my brain as it was.

That opening part of the journey was not too bad. It turned out that the dryad settlement, (note that it didn’t have a name. It was just “the settlement) was on some kind of plateau so as we descended, it was quite a sharp drop. My newfound sense of vertigo in these kinds of situations did not help my sense of safety or wellbeing. We were climbing down rope ladders and following steep, zig-zagging paths. Experienced climbers have often told me that climbing down is much harder than climbing up and this was the proof of that statement that I had not been looking for. Once we had reached the base of the cliff, the goods that had been lowered on ropes, were divided amongst us and we started moving down into the depths of the forest itself. We took our time, and the march leader set a slow and steady pace.

Other than our personal belongings, we carried nothing else. There were no food supplies or water skins to divide between us which seemed to be divided among the dryads that came with us. There were about a dozen of them, all told. Six scouts and six guards. As I think I said last time, we were being escorted, not guarded. Not really anyway. I have no doubt that if we tried to make a run for it then we would soon find an arrow or a spear in our back for the danger of it. I had no intention of doing so but I did wonder at the lack of supplies.

We would stop every so often and a guard would walk down the line with a waterskin wrapped around her before she would pour the three of us a cup of water each and demand that we drink it. There were herbal, fruity tastes to that water although I could not recognise them.

It was clear that Stefan wanted to refuse and, indeed, wanted to carry his own water but one of the dryads just raised her eyebrows at him.

“Can we not carry our own water?” He asked.

“No.” She said.

“I was taught not to trust water handed from…”

“Fine,” She snapped. “Don’t drink the water. I will have yours and when you collapse from dehydration we will divide your things between us. I quite fancy your sword myself. The armour will be smelted down for arrowheads. Good metal is a rarity.”

He was already drinking the water.

Lunch that day was a fruity, sweet oatcake. It was not very large, about the size of my palm, but I was promised that it would last me the rest of the day and keep my energy levels up. It did too.

We came to a stop much earlier than I was expecting us to. It wasn’t more than a couple of hours after we had stopped for lunch. To me, we seemed to come around a corner and we were in the middle of a large… fortification. It was like an outpost, the ruins of which still litter the countryside in Velen. It seemed like… even though this place was not a proper settlement, it was enclosed. There was a small wooden palisade wall and a watchtower. There were three dryads waiting for us. Two scouts and lookouts standing with spears and bows waiting at the gate as we walked in. And there was an attendant who didn’t speak to us. When we got in through the gate it became clear that this was a permanent structure, almost a military camp. There were easily another couple of dozen dryads here moving around and performing small chores.

Our guide, Oak-Leaf spent some time taking a report from the others that were there while the guards and scouts that had come with us left a large amount of the supplies that we had brought with us at the fort before making camp themselves or moving off to various pre-arranged stations. It all had the feeling of a well-practised manoeuvre that had been performed many times.

Then Oak-Leaf gave us her speech. It sounded like she had given that speech many times but even then, she did not sound bored with it.

As I had predicted though, I did not sleep well that night. There were still thoughts of Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed in my mind, which upsettingly mixed together with thoughts of Ariadne in ways that made me feel more than a little bit uncomfortable. Also, a new feeling that I did not recognise seemed to come out of nowhere and it took me a, not small, among of time to figure out what the problem was.

I felt guilty. Not for the real or imagined betrayal of Ariadne although that was certainly there. But for leaving my daughters behind. I was a Father now. But far from being a matter of joy and warmth, it was a thing of guilt and unhappiness. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the end of this trek into the depths of the Black Forest, but at the end of it, would I even remember that I had two children waiting for me in the depths of that place? That thought was somehow worse. That I might forget? I didn’t like that.

It was one of those, not particularly restful things, my first patch of sleep, where I only know that I slept because a dryad shook me awake and bid me go and take my watch. It felt more of a perfunctory thing though, something as I was doing for the demonstration of the matter as all I could do was stand there in the darkness, looking out at… well, nothing. I could hear a lot though. Kerrass’ indistinct snoring, occasionally sputtering as someone woke him up and bid him change his position. I could hear the movements of the other guards and the occasional shifting of weight.

I decided to focus on that and I could slowly start to parse out the other noises that were in the trees. I could hear the sounds of the other guards, pacing, the sounds of the watch leader walking around and checking to make sure that none of the sentries had been picked off by an unseen enemy or had fallen asleep on the watch. I could hear the small pieces of conversation that drifted toward me as she did so. I could hear the occasional movements of the people around me.

It is all but impossible to keep perfectly still. Ariadne can do it but she doesn’t need to do boring mortal things like breathing. I mean, she does but not as often as you or I do. Kerrass can do it as well but he has to take a potion to do it. But people breathe, they swallow saliva or move their mouth around when it comes time to wet their dry throat. They might take a small swallow of water or take something out to suck on.

Apparently, I sometimes mutter my thoughts under my breath. I don’t do it consciously and it’s a recent habit.

But most of that was behind me, in front of me there was much less.

I could hear the wind in the trees far above me.

There was a strange kind of feeling in the heart of the forest. The main canopy of the trees was still far above me but in some way that I didn’t understand, there was also a sublayer of trees underneath. The required light, water and warmth seemed to be able to come down through the tallest canopies down into the depths of the forest below so that those trees could grow. As could the bushes and the various piece of undergrowth. The sound of the wind through the trees was almost enough to mesmerize me but there was just the wrong side of there being too much of it which made it intrusive. Two separate layers of forest canopy will do that and as such, focusing on that particular noise, meant that it was overwhelming. It was like hearing the sea in the height of a storm if there was also no wind echoing in your ears.

Slowly, very slowly, I pushed that sound aside to see if I could hear anything else. I couldn’t see anything but I was supposed to be a lookout in some way. Therefore, if I couldn’t see, I would try to hear.

I focused my listening and shut other things away. I tried to pick out other things. Things that could not be dismissed as the sounds of movement behind me or the sounds of wind blowing through the trees.

I heard some birds far off but that meant nothing to me. It was the hooting of some kind of hunting owl. As I say, it was a long way off and probably didn’t mean anything. My father was a hunter and although he preferred to hunt with hounds, he was fond of falconry and we had kept considerable… roost I think it’s called. I was never interested in that kind of thing. I can understand hunting as a way to make a living or as a way to put food on the table. But I could never understand how hunting was a sport. Shoot targets if you want to shoot at something. But the use of hounds or birds seemed to be making a big deal of the talents of some other animal or creature other than yourself. Father didn’t push the falconry side of things but he insisted that all his children know how to ride and hunt quarry from horseback, something that I have, very occasionally, been grateful to him for. But falconry takes a different kind of interest and I was never interested in that. It always struck me as being oddly cruel to keep a proud bird of prey hooded. I mean, I know why they do it and I know why it’s necessary, but it always struck me as being cruel.

And as for those people that wear hunting falcons in public as some kind of fashion accessory… well…

Gradually though, I started to hear something else.

Something was moving through the undergrowth nearby. I could hear the sounds of leaves and branches being moved against the overall sounds of the wind. Other things started to occur. I have no idea how much of this was true or whether it was something to do with the imagination filling in gaps that don’t exist. I started to feel as though I could hear the expulsion of air being pushed out of huge nostrils. I could feel the ground shake beneath enormous feet and more noise came, a nose, snuffling at the ground in the direction from which we had come.

The imagination can do strange and horrible things to a man. A side effect of travelling with Kerrass for so long means that, barring things that have come through the portals after the most recent conjunction of Spheres that was mostly averted by the Empress in Skellige. I am well aware of most of the things that can walk, crawl or fly around on the face of the continent.

And those things that came through most recently, like the Yuki-Onna and the increased number of Ice-Giants, are mostly focused on having some kind of cold effect.

There was none of that here. If anything, it was a relatively warm night. Several layers of Forest canopy will do that, protecting you from the cold and leaving you feeling relatively warm. So I knew that it couldn’t be a Golem or an Elemental. Nor could it be one of the huge insectoids such as a Kikkimore Queen (we were above ground) or an Endrega Queen. (That was a logical progression. We had seen no signs of eggs let alone damaged ones and the Endrega Queens only come to the surface at the last-ditch attempts to try and protect their nests. Also, the dryads didn’t seem to be so foolish as to want to establish a semi-permanent camp next to an Endrega next.) But the thing, whatever it was that was out there, seemed to magnify in my brain. It grew larger and larger and it was clearly after my blood. A Cyclops maybe, or some form of massive…

“Do not be concerned,” said a voice next to me. I will not pretend otherwise. I jumped.

The dryad smiled at me. I had not been introduced to this one although she looked faintly familiar to me.

“You did well.” She told me. “Not many humans would have been able to spot something moving out in the darkness.”

I took a couple of swallows in order to try and calm myself down.

“In all honesty,” I admitted, “I could not tell you where the thing was, only that something was out there.”

“But knowing that is half the battle.” She told me with another gentle smile. “And remember that the first duty of the sentry, even as the monster’s jaws close around your head in order to snuff out your life, you must scream. Even if it costs you your life.”

“Cheery,” I told her and she laughed.

“But true.”

“So what is out there?” I wondered.

She tilted her head to one side and listened for a long moment before shrugging.

“Probably a bear.” She told me. “Just looking and having a sniff if I am any judge. If there’s a bear there will also be wolves with him.”

“The bear is male?”

“Oh yes. At this time of year, the female will be off somewhere, guarding the cubs or still working on being pregnant.”

“And while we’re on the subject, I didn’t think that Wolves and Bears hunt together.”

“They don’t.” She told me. “But you are not out there in the world. You are here in the depths of the Black Forest, making your way down into the heart of that Forest and the home of the Schattenmann.” She nodded into the night. “The Schattenmann is looking at us, even now. He is deciding whether or not he wants us to survive and let us pass or whether or not he should send his forces to destroy us.”

“What will be the thing that tips the balance?”

“Who can say?” There was a smile as she said it. “When you came down here… and by you, I mean all of us. When you come down here, you are placing your lives into the hands of the Schattenmann. If he wants to kill us, he can do so at literally any time. He could send a tide of Endregas that would just wash over us like water. Our little wall would be battered down by bears or uprooted by Leshen. Our eyes would be picked out by Crows. Or just as likely, a swarm of insects would come where one sting means a slow, lingering, agonising death.” She drew out those last words with a certain amount of relish.

“Perfect,” I said. “Just when I needed more things to keep me awake tonight when I return to my bedroll.”

She laughed again and I knew why I recognised her.

“You and Chestnut-Shell are related aren’t you?”

“She is my sister.” The other woman agreed. “We share a father although our mothers were different. My mother was a warrior, as most are, while Chestnut-Shell’s mother was a teacher who approached everything as though it was some kind of lesson to be learned or taught.”

“Who was the…”

“He was a young, religious man, a boy really. Maybe seventeen years of age when he came to us. He was part of some kind of religious expedition into the forest to try and do… whatever it was that religious people do. My mother spoke of him fondly and often. Apparently, he wanted to be a priest, or a monk of some kind but was not yet old enough to ‘take the vows’ whatever that means. She said he was far more clever than his superiors who killed themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. She also tells me things that no young woman wants to know about their parents such as that he had talent and a young man’s enthusiasm and it wasn’t long before I was conceived. I have my mother’s skills with a bow and spear with my father’s attitudes towards spirituality.”

“Whereas Chestnut-Shell…?” I prompted.

“She got all the spirituality as well as the desire to educate everyone that she is right and they are wrong.” She grinned. “I love my sister and I am overjoyed that she has taken some steps to come out into our society. But we have found that we can only tolerate each other’s company for a couple of days at a time before one of us needs an excuse to leave.”

I thought of my own family.

“I used to think of my brother like that.” I told her. “I love my brother a great deal. But he is smarter than me in almost every way and because he was born first, he has this attitude that he knows more than I do. Which, unfortunately, is often true.”

“You are sad as you speak of him.”

“He is dying,” I told her. “Some kind of progressive disease that we didn’t catch when something could be done about it. Now the damage is done and the chances are good that he won’t be here this time next year.”

“I am sorry.” She said. “And your lesson is taken and I am grateful for it. I am also grateful that you made Chestnut-Shell very happy. Even for a short time. I have despaired of that girl for so long but now it looks like she might take the right steps.”

“What do you mean?”

“You say your brother is better than you? More intelligent and more…?” She waved her hand around looking for something.

“He is.”

“Chestnut-Shell is that to me, made worse by the fact that she is, technically, the younger sister by a month. When she started her training with the teachers and the attendants, it was agreed that she would do great things. That she would change dryad society for the better. It was amusing to those of us who come down into the heart of the forest, that our society said that she would be great and that she would change us and lead us forward into the modern world. And then when she, and others, did start trying to change things. The rest of our society just seemed to ignore her and laugh at her. All the while she is doing exactly what we expected, what we wanted her to do. And now we resent her for doing it. We wanted her to change things and when she tried they all yelled ‘NOT LIKE THAT’ and she came to resent them back. I don’t really blame her.

“We have fought, she and I, many times about the fact that she needs to be part of their world in order to change it. And she would grow angry that she had to meet them halfway when they would refuse to meet her halfway back. I am glad that you have started to change her mind.”

“You speak as though the people who work down here are different from other dryads.”

“We are different.” She said with a smile before straightening up. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” I answered with surprise.

“Good, you are obviously not overcome by some enemy, so I must check the next sentry. Good night.”

I never saw her again.

I dreamt that night. It was the same recurring dream that I had been having on and off for some time now. I dreamt that I was in a clearing at night, the campfire was burning and there was a feeling of good food, prepared in the open air in my belly. I was nice and warm, comfortable and I felt free. Whatever it was that I felt free from, I do not know but the feeling was there.

I could smell horses and the same smells of grass and leaves that are common when you are travelling through woodland. I could feel my clothes and blankets wrapped around my body and I was just taking a moment to look up at the stars that were clear and twinkling in the night sky above. It was just in that strange feeling that happens, just before you lie down when you are warm, tired and comfortable. The good kind of tiredness that happens after a long day’s travel or some hard time spent with friends that you haven’t seen in a while.

I could look over and see the space that Kerrass had set aside for himself to be able to sleep, marred only by the fact that he had clearly taken his swords with him. I knew, instinctively that he would be off, training, meditating or gathering the alchemical agents that he needed in order to mix his own potions. I was not concerned about him. I knew somehow that I was safe and well and that there were no monsters in the local area. No beasts either and that the chances of bandits finding me when I was out here was remote.

I felt safe. Which is strange in and of itself. I don’t feel safe in my own room in my family's castle anymore, despite being surrounded by the best walls, siege weapons and other fortifications that my father’s money can buy. As well as the best-trained soldiers that old Captain Froggart and now Sir Rickard can train. Even then I have to keep my assembled spear next to my bed and my dagger underneath my pillow otherwise I just can’t settle down in order to sleep.

There was someone else in the camp. I couldn’t tell who it was. Someone sitting on a tree stump, poking at the fire with a stick. A peculiarly male pastime in the presence of fire. Whenever there is a flame, my gender has an almost obsessive need to play with it. Especially when it is an open flame outside. There seems to be an urge in the male to find small bits of grass or twig and throw them into the flame, or to poke it with a stick. It is not uniquely male, but it is much rarer in the female in my experience, who just prefer to sit and watch the flames dancing.

It was definitely a male shape, not Ariadne or any of the other people that I had been travelling with. He was familiar to me although I did not recognise him. He was an older man, hale, fit and healthy in his later years. I would have put him somewhere in his fifties maybe. At that stage where the last vestiges of black hair are about to give in to the onrushing tide of silver and grey in the overall head of hair. He saw me looking at him, looked up and smiled before raising a finger to his lips as if to keep me quiet. He was dressed well, practically and in the cut of a man that can afford to buy the best clothes rather than being forced to choose whatever was convenient.

I woke to feel remarkably refreshed given that the first period of the two periods of sleep that I had had that night had not been the most restful of sleeping patterns.

I rose, ate, and cleaned myself with the provided herbs before readying myself for the day's journey. Much to my astonishment, Kerrass, Stefan and I were all ready long before the dryads were. We gathered, packs on our backs and were waiting next to the exit to the camp. A passing dryad saw us waiting and smiled before moving off onto whatever it was her next chore was. But the other dryads seemed to be taking their time a bit more.

It was almost as if they were dawdling. Doing small, unimportant jobs. Tightening the straps on their own packs. Sharpening spearheads and checking fletchings for arrows, that kind of thing.

I didn’t notice what was happening until the fourth dryad stepped out to join the others. Kerrass told me later that one of the dryads had just strapped her pack onto her back before taking up her weapons and just went to stand in the middle of the small fortified camp. She stood perfectly still, gazing slightly up into the canopy of the forest. After a little time, two others joined her which was when I noticed it.

A third stopped whatever chore it was that she was taking care of, just literally set it aside in order for it to be taken up at a later date and then went to join the others. One by one the dryads just stopped what they were doing and all went to stand in this small group of women. As well as our escort of twelve dryads there were another sixteen women there and they all stood together. Some of the women from this camp would be coming with us as well. There was a reason for this, I am sure that someone had told me but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what it was.

They just stood there for a moment. There was no uniformity in the way that they were standing. They weren’t in a circle or standing in rows or anything. They just stood there in a group, unmoving.

I looked at Kerrass who was just watching this activity with an expressionless face. Stefan was frowning in some thought.

In total, it lasted less than a minute before, as if on some signal, they all just relaxed and then went about their business. Oak-Leaf came over to us while others were putting their packs on and picking up their weapons.

“Time to go.” She told us, “do your best to only tread where the dryad in front of you in the line steps. I hope I don’t need to tell any of you gentlemen not to leave the path?”

I thought of Jack and shook my head.

“Good.” She said before turning and leading us off and out into the world. That particular leg of the journey was much slower than I was expecting and a much more circuitous route. I am not the best at tracking distance and location but it seemed to me that we could have travelled the same distance in a much smaller amount of time if we had travelled in a straight line to do so.

Of course, I didn’t say that. For a start, it was more than possible that my woodcraft skills are not everything that I would like them to be. Years on the road with Kerrass have helped me with this but in order to tell the direction of travel, I need normal things like the Sun, the moon and the stars in order to be able to travel. Recognisable landmarks also help when it comes to this kind of thing. But I was lacking in all of those things and as such, it could have been completely a matter of my imagination that we were moving in an exaggerated snake pattern.

It was far more likely though, that what was really happening was that there were things going on here that I did not understand. But when you are being guided by someone, especially when that someone is going with you and that you have no reason to distrust them, then you do what they tell you and you step where they tell you as well.

Stefan was not having as much fun, he was still struggling to trust these women and as a result, he was grumbling to himself as we moved. Grumbling at the slowness of the pace or at the perceived inefficiency of the route or whatever was going on inside the man’s head. I tried really hard to be sympathetic to the man. I tried to remember how obnoxious I had been with questions and grumblings just like Stefan’s when I had first begun travelling with Kerrass and I gave him a look of sympathy when one of the dryads turned and hissed an instruction to be quiet at him.

The three of us were spaced out in the route of march. There were scouts on either side of us and then there was a line of warriors and robed attendants. Kerrass was first among the three of us, maybe three back from the front and then there was a warrior between him and Stefan and then another warrior between Stefan and me.

I mostly kept my head down, watching where the woman in front of me put her feet so that I could follow the instructions that I had been given and I took care to place my feet accordingly.

A little ahead of me, given the snaking route, I could see Oak-Leaf leading us. She had a spear and she was prodding the ground occasionally as she moved. It reminded me of the way that you walk across treacherous ground, over snow or through marshes, slowly picking your way overground so that you don’t come to some kind of mischief.

It was oddly tiring. Even if we were not moving as quickly as we might have been. I maintain that I would have been more comfortable if we had been going at a swifter pace. But this slow and steady march seemed to make my thighs and calves ache.

The other odd delay was that we would stop often. A signal would be given and then we would just stay where we were. Sometimes someone would come back down the line and dish out a small cup of water to each of us that was taken from a waterskin. It was made clear that we were expected to drink it, regardless of how we felt on the matter.

We were also occasionally given a small piece of the sticky oat cake that, although delicious, left me longing for something savoury to eat at the same time. While we waited, we would watch as Oak-Leaf would consult with one of the other women before picking a direction, seemingly at random.

Once, Kerrass was summoned to the front of the line and his opinion was asked.

Eventually, we came to a clearing and we were told to take a rest and have lunch. Lunch was brought and, much to my delight was indeed a savoury meat sandwich. The fruity oatcakes were delicious, sticky and sweet but sooner or later my body began to long for something meaty and savoury.

As I ate though, I looked up to realise that it was happening again, the dryads ate their rations of food and water before they set aside the wrappings that the food had come in before moving so that they all stood together in the small, open area that we found ourselves in and then they stared off into the same direction, just staring off into space. The last woman to join them was the woman that collected all of the empty food wrappings into a bag, including off the three of us before she tied the top of the bag and moved to join her companions.

“What are they doing?” Stefan asked loudly until Kerrass shushed him and he repeated the question again.

“I would have thought you would have recognised it,” Kerrass told him with the false calmness of someone keeping hold of their temper. “They are praying.”

“You speak as if this is all some kind of religion to them,”

“Have you not been paying attention?” Kerrass demanded of him and I deliberately looked away so that I would not have to see the temper outburst, justified though it might have been. “Being a dryad is a religion. At least it is here and although I have never been to the Brokilon forest, I am told it is similar there. They can feel the forest about them. This place is a church to them.”

“It’s not like any kind of religion that I’ve ever…”

“Then I repeat, you have not been paying attention.” Kerrass snapped. A little harsher.

I just stayed out of it. Where I had seemed to gain some patience for Stefan being Stefan, Kerrass seemed to have become less tolerant although I could not immediately tell why. I watched the dryads. I tried to do a couple of pointless things like trying to see if I could tell where they were looking or if they were listening to something. Of course, I couldn’t, but it felt as though I should.

As before, there was no signal, there was no celebrant leading the prayers or the meditations or whatever it was they were doing. They just all seemed to… stop and start moving at the same time. And then we were marching.

I’m going to talk about Leshen for a moment and I will explain why the sudden tangent in a little while.

Sometimes, when I am talking with various people that I meet, they ask me a certain set of questions. Some of those questions are really stupid and I let the people know that they are stupid. The ever-popular “Is Ariadne really that attractive?” is a good one and her favourite is “why don’t you just sleep with the Vampire?” Don’t ask me that one as it tends to make me angry. I feel as though I have kind of explained why that one is the case. But sometimes there are less worrying questions, more normal questions that are a bit more… I don’t know really.

But the question that I’m going to talk about today is “What is your favourite monster?”

On the surface, this is a strange, even foolish question. But I hope, I think, it goes deeper than that. If there is one truth that I have come across while I have been following Kerrass around it is that the life of a Witcher is actually fairly boring. It is a life of routine, travel, find the notice, answer the notice, hunt the creature, live or die, move on. On the surface and from a distance, it can seem to be quite exciting but the reality of the matter is that even the most exciting, terrifying thing can become routine after a while. Such is the life of a Witcher.

And I have begun to feel that. What is my favourite monster? It’s the monster that doesn’t kill me. I mean, the obvious answer to the question is that my favourite monster is Ariadne. She didn’t kill me and she and I have grown to love each other. And yet, some people would insist on classifying her as a monster despite her conversion to the faith of the Holy Flame. Something that I find endlessly amusing.

But the truth of the matter is that I do have a favourite monster and that monster is a Leshen. And the reason I like that particular monster is that they are so mysterious and incomprehensible. We understand so little about Leshen. We don’t know how they reproduce, we don’t know why they are created. All we have are theories. Admittedly they are often theories that seem to fit the facts that we are given.

We know that they are solitary creatures. We know that they take up a kind of lordship over woodland, the wilder and more untamed the woodland the better. We know that they have some form of intelligence and have even formed symbiotic relationships with local communities, even while that relationship can appear cruel and abusive in some ways. We know that they can communicate with animals, specifically and more commonly, wolves and crows.

We also know that they move between different sites. Sometimes on foot, or sometimes travelling along root systems or through the earth.

The list goes on.

We know that they manifest claws, they lash out with roots and vines as though they are whips, we know that they can cause roots and thorns to erupt from the ground in an explosion in order to catch the unwary.

We also know that Leshen can imprint themselves on locals and that even if you can kill the physical manifestation of the Leshen, then if there is an imprinted human in the vicinity, the Leshen will survive and regrow itself. Kerrass likens it to a gorse bush. If you hack the bush down but miss a part of the root, then the bush will inevitably regrow.

Leshen can also have altars that people can destroy or leave offerings at. They are part spirit, part physical thing and no matter how diligently or how quickly the Witchers work. There are always more.

There is even a significant amount of evidence to suggest that The Schattenmann himself is a Leshen. He has beloved people out in the villages surrounding the heart of the Black Forest. The physical form of him that Trayka had described was essentially that of a Leshen. We know that he has places of power.

But Leshen are almost universally angry, whereas the Schattenmann can be roused to anger but that is not always the case.

So why are they my favourite? Because there is so much mystery about them. During my time with Kerrass, I have faced two Leshen, the first was described, by Kerrass, as being young and not very powerful. Kerrass had identified what the problem was, had prepared properly and the thing emerged from the ground nearby. Kerrass had leapt and cut down the thing in a relatively short space of time. One of those fights that is over before it really began and I was still trying to get myself ready for a spate of violence when the violence was already over.

The second time nearly killed me. One of those times where I was not badly injured but a couple of inches to the left, or to the right, would have left me being severely injured or dead. As it was, my ribs had to be strapped up and it hurt to breathe for about a week afterwards. Kerrass decided that I would not be facing any Leshen after that.

But there is so much that we don’t know. They don’t… They don’t feel like any other kind of monster to my mind. Vampires, trolls, necrophages and the rest obviously came from somewhere else. They were not here when they were created or born. They came from somewhere else. Spirits like wraiths or wights also come from somewhere else. Tied here by traumatic events or by something that we have to figure out. Nekkers, Cyclops, Manticores, Griffins… All of them have habits and things that we can quantify. They are natural and they behave as animals do. Even though they might come from somewhere else.

Leshen don’t do that. They are simply Leshen. Someone has the theory that Leshen were here first, that the reason that they are so angry is that we are the intruders, that they see everyone as intruders.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And maybe they are right.

But I like that mystery, it calls to me somehow.

And it was on that march on the first full day of the march that I finally saw one up close.

We had stopped the line of march. This was not an unusual event and we were all waiting for the decision to be made as to what was going to happen next. I had drunk my cup of water and was nibbling on one of the oaty fruit cakes that they gave us periodically. They were deceptively tasty and the temptation was always that you wanted to wolf them down with a couple of swallows. But that always, always left me wanting more so I tried to discipline myself towards eating them gradually and in small nibbles. My resolve rarely lasted but the effort gave me something to do while I was waiting.

And also, so that I wasn’t listening to Stefan complain and wonder when the march was going to start up again.

This was one of those times when Kerrass had been called to the front of the line and was seen to be chatting with Oak Leaf. They seemed to speak for a little while before one of the attending dryads was sent back towards me.

“The Witcher wants you.” I was told.

I nodded and shouldered my burdens. “No,” she said. “Just your weapons. You will not need your bags and someone else will bring your things.”

I frowned in question but didn’t push things. Something in the woman’s voice suggested to me that they wouldn’t listen or didn’t know much anyway.

I jogged up to the front of the line to find a smiling Kerrass beckoning me to follow him.

He led me a bit into the undergrowth and we moved slowly and carefully. We had our rhythm when it comes to this kind of thing and I fell into it instinctively. He wanted us to move quietly and I followed his lead. It wasn’t far. We pushed through a line of bushes. There was a gap that I guessed had been used before and as we went, we found a few dryads waiting for us. One of them motioned for us to be quiet and I was a little amused to see Oak-Leaf shoot her a look of annoyance. We crouched behind a fallen tree and Kerrass leaned over to whisper in my ear.

“I know you like them.” He whispered. “And when they told me that… Well… I thought of you.”

I looked over at the dryads, Oak-Leaf who had been annoyed at her friend was smiling at me and beckoned. I went to kneel next to her and she pointed through the undergrowth.

It took me a while to see what she was pointing at. At first, I thought she was pointing at a small pack of wolves that were playing around at the foot of a tree that was sitting in the opening, a little distance from the other trees. It took me a moment, a little more than that, but then I saw the deer skull up near the top of the tree and I realised that it was not a tree after all.

Then came the moment of wondering as to how I could ever have thought of it as a tree at all. It rustled itself, an almost identical gesture to the way a human might shrug or shake itself and some crows that were roosting in its upper reaches seemed to shift with a cry of protest at the sudden movement.

The Wolves were being playful, leaping about and rolling around with each other. They were still wolves though so you could see the two that had been stationed as lookouts, the pack mother who was watching indulgently. But they were still Wolves.

But I was looking at the Leshen. He… I mean I want to assume that it was a he, I struggle to think of something like that as a woman. And I have to wonder if something like that even has a gender although I know it to be true that plants do have gender, I wondered if Leshen even had them. The Leshen seemed to be watching the Wolves play and unlike every angry, dark or terrifying Leshen that I had ever heard of. This one had flowers growing on it, leaving me bemused.

The dryad who was unconcerned about whether or not we were stupid enough to make a load of noise leant over to me.

“We are taking the march around him, but your companion said that you are fascinated by Leshen.”

“I am.”

The dryad nodded and a look of mischief crossed her face. “Would you like to meet it?”

“What?” I wish I could have managed more wit and charm than that.

“Is that even possible?” Kerrass marvelled.

“It is possible. They would become angry if the entire troop walked up to it and said hello, but the four of us?” She shrugged before looking at the one that I classified as being junior, Oak-Leaf had clearly headed back. “Well, the three of us. We will meet the troop on the other side.”

“Then of course I want to meet a Leshen.” Not for the first time, I got a glimpse of what Kerrass would have been like as a young man.

The two dryads had a brief conference before the younger of the two left to inform the column of what was going on and where we were heading. The younger gave her elder a bit of a strange look before heading back the way we’d come.

“She won’t last long that one,” our remaining guide told us, her voice a little louder. “She sees all of this as some kind of status symbol. She wants to stand as the guardian of knowledge to keep lesser away. Follow, but go carefully and keep your hands away from weapons. You will be surprised as to just how much it understands regarding intent and attitude.”

Slowly, she rose from her crouched position, gesturing for us to wait a moment while we all watched the Leshen. A single crow left the upper shoulders of the creature and flew towards us before it veered off. The dryad gestured so that Kerrass and I rose to our feet slowly and carefully. Half a dozen crows swooped towards us but the dryad gestured for calm and we stayed still.

The birds flew around us for a while, swooping and veering. One dived straight for my head and I could not help but flinch before it veered away and back to the greater flock. Gradually though, the birds seemed to calm themselves and withdraw.

The dryad beckoned and we slowly climbed over the log that had been in our way, carefully and keeping our eyes on the Leshen in front of us. The wolves were no longer playing at it’s feet but rather, they were sitting on their haunches and watching us as we approached. They seemed relaxed but you can never tell with wild animals. Especially animals like this that can go from calm to angry at the drop of a hat.

Slowly, we edged forward. I didn’t really know what to do in this situation, do you maintain eye contact or would that be considered a challenge. I checked with Kerrass and the dryad who was keeping her eyes on the Leshen so I decided to follow her example.

A wolf decided that we needed to be sniffed and came towards us, two others joined it directly and the dryad gestured for us to stop. One wolf came close to us while two stood between us and the Leshen and another went past us to examine our back trail. The closest one was a huge beast. I am used to hunting dogs which are not small but domesticated animals never quite prepare you for when you meet the real thing. It was looking at me with a calculating expression.

All three of us were thoroughly checked out with a kind of sceptical air to the sniffing. Anyone that might be laughing at the idea that a wolf can have enough character to appear sceptical about something, I’m afraid that you don’t know enough about animals. It wasn’t odd, I wasn’t surprised. But what was odd was that the wolf didn’t react to Kerrass in any way. Animals don’t like Kerrass. Famously cats will hiss and dogs will bark. Horses can be trained but it takes some time for the horse to get used to the Witcher that is riding them and any other horse that might be nearby can also be having problems. This Wolf sniffed Kerrass’ hand, his backside, his boots and the points of his swords before it moved on to me.

I was examined in a similar way before it stood in front of the two of us. Not the dryad as she seemed to be exempt from this kind of thing. Then the wolf gave a little growl to us. A more eloquent expression of “Don’t be an ass and we won’t have any trouble,” can not easily be identified. But it seemed that we had passed some unknown test and the wolves moved away, opening an avenue between us and the Leshen.

I remember it as being tall, but not surprisingly tall. It stood at maybe eight-foot-tall all things considered. The antlers on the skull that seemed to act like the thing's face added to that height. It was also, not really solid. It seemed to be made of a tangle of branches, vines and roots. Twisted and thorny. If it stood still enough, for long enough, I am pretty sure that you could poke my spear, or a sword, straight through it.

As for this one, there were things growing up it. I could see ivy, some grass and some moss that were growing on exposed bits of wood. There were also bits of mushroom and other bits of fungus that could be seen sticking out of various places.

When I read back the things that I have just written, I am concerned that it might appear as though the description was quite funny, or give an impression that the Leshen was quite ordinary. It was not. It was a thing. A solid thing. It was like the difference between seeing the proverbial wolfskin rug and then actually seeing the thing, breath steaming in the air as it growled at you.

We approached slowly and carefully. The Leshen seemed to twist where it was with a creaking of moving wood as it stretched and adjusted itself so that it was looking down at us. The dryad gave a little curtsy and gave a little gesture that Kerrass and I should do something similar and we gave a bow.

I forced myself to look up into the eye sockets of the deer skull as it looked back at me. I was struck by a feeling of incredible age. I was looking at something ancient and unknowable. This was so utterly different and again, I was struck by the mystery of Leshen. We don’t know what they want. We don’t know where they come from. We don’t know what they eat or even if they do eat. It would be naive to just assume that they need water and sunlight, the same as any other plant.

It felt so… alien and in that moment, the difference struck me about the face and I was frozen in awe and a kind of strange, fascinated terror. I just stood there and gaped at it, feeling stupid and at the same time… strangely peaceful. If it had wanted to kill me at that moment, it could have done so and there would have been little to nothing that I could have done to stop it.

After some moments of staring down at us, it gestured and a large patch of apple-blossom sprouted out of the ground in front of us. And yes, I know that Apple-Blossom only grows in apple trees but when the giant, terrifying monster from the depths of your innermost nightmares makes something impossible, then you might have the opportunity to comment.

I just stared at it as it turned and walked away. The crows leapt from its shoulders and circled above it while the wolves trotted at its heels. Within about twenty meters, the Leshen sank into the ground. Roots seemed to grow up from where it trod to surround its legs and pull it into the earth itself until there was nothing there. The crows circled a couple of times before they flew off in random directions. The wolves trotted off into the woods and vanished.

I just stood there, I am not ashamed to say that there were tears streaming down my face and when Kerrass put his hand on my shoulder, I jumped a mile.

“Flame,” I muttered.

Kerrass understood, of course, he did.

I have spoken with trolls and Elder Vampires and spirits from other realms. But somehow, I had not been moved as much as by that Leshen in the depths of the Black Forest. I don’t know, but I think that this is because of the lack of understanding. Trolls are not so far from humans in their behaviour. I’m sorry if that offends you but it’s true. They want to live, eat, drink and have a good time. Vampires want to do the same and otherworldly entities largely seem to want to survive and be left to amuse themselves. I can understand that.

But Leshen? I mean I understand that they want to protect their territory and I can respect and applaud that. But other than that? I just don’t know and that was me for the rest of the day. Stefan tried to engage me in conversation a couple of times but he was largely unsuccessful to the point where he accused the dryads of having done something to me.

We came to another camp in what I took to be the later afternoon and I had begun to realise the reason for the relatively short marches. The dryads took their time because they needed to make sure that they got to this place or that place without intruding on something’s territory. There also needed to be time to make the detours around the monster nests when they had moved as well as the trails that other things might have chosen to use that are invisible to the rest of us.

It was a much smaller encampment than the first one. Again, there was a small garrison of women who wore the same clothing as the other scouts and warriors had been wearing. These were a bit lighter and a little bit more worn. As we approached, it became clear that we were also carrying supplies for this outpost and more than one dryad from the garrison was seen to be relieved when a crate was opened and a new robe or a cloak was produced as well as several skins of drinking water and crates of food.

We were directed as to where to set out our blankets and again, just warned to stay out of the way while the rest of the dryads did all of the chores that needed to be done. I watched as some new hatchets were vigorously employed to cut and stack some more wood that was obviously being used to shore up the defences. Several coils of rope were untangled and stacked in several key positions that meant nothing to me but were clearly very important in some kind of strategic way. Water was placed, cooking bowls were likewise put into different areas and again, just as it was beginning to get dark, the dryads seemed to drift together to stand in a group to stare off into the trees.

Stefan made a comment about now being the perfect time to make a break for it and to attain our freedom. I did my best to ignore him but Kerrass was, again, a little more brutal in his opinions.

“Answer me honestly.” he said. “Do we have enough food to make the return journey or is all of our food provided for us by the dryads that we would be escaping? While you are thinking about that, consider the water situation.”

Stefan frowned. “We could hunt?”

“You mean that Freddie and I could hunt. I know you can’t do more than set a few traps and not very good ones. And believe the two of us when we say that hunting for food while you yourself are being hunted is far from being entirely easy. Secondly. Which way would we go to get out of the forest?”

“We could follow the…”

“The what? the back trail? Straight into the arms of the other dryads that we left behind and the greater dryad community. Who would be… I’m just guessing, less than entirely pleased to see us. Then we have to get out of the greater forest as a whole. Where we don’t know the lay of the land, there are few, if any landmarks and we have no idea where we’re going. Next bright idea?”

Stefan either didn’t have any more ideas, or he was forced onto the back foot by Kerrass’ vehemence.

“I am going forwards.” Kerrass said. “I am here on a mission, a mission that you agreed to support. I am here to communicate and meet with the Schattenmann. A mission that I was commissioned by Freddie so he is unlikely to side with you. I would rather go with the dryads who are guiding us and are at least relatively friendly, until there is no other choice or they make their enmity plain. And finally, who knows how the forest will react if we flip off the chosen servants of the Lord of the Forest? I met a Leshen today. It is an experience that I will never forget and it is unlikely that it will ever happen again. I invited you with us to help us on our way. If you are not going to do that, or if you have another objective in mind then you should say so now and save us all the fuss but you should also know, that if you interfere with the dryads or anything else that’s going on here. Then my only route towards survival is to help them contain you.”

Kerrass stalked off. Stefan stared after him for a while before he turned in his blankets, away from me with a very thorough impression of “leave me alone” which I obeyed.

I was having my own crisis as it was, triggered by staring into the eyes of a Leshen, and I was still coming to terms with that. So it wasn’t that much of a conflict for me.

I all but slept through the remains of the afternoon. Watching the dryads go through their rituals with a strange kind of detached feeling. I ate my food and didn’t taste it and when it became clear that I was on the early watch meaning that I would need to get out of bed and watch the dawn, I climbed into my bedroll and went to sleep easily and without complaint.

All the way through this, all I could see in the pit of my mind’s eye was that hollow socket of the deer skull. But that had not been all that had been there. By a trick of the light, some of that socket had been shadowed in darkness. But some instinct also told me that that darkness was slightly off centre, as though it was shadowed by more than just the daylight. It was that shadow that bothered me. I felt as though it was drawing my gaze and that I was sinking into it like I would a whirlpool. It wasn’t the terrifying darkness that is hidden at the end of a tunnel or a cave. I could not imagine Jack looking out at me from the depths of the Leshen’s face.

It was something else. It was like the yawning chasm of sleep that was opening up, ready to take me into it’s embrace after a hard day. I wanted to throw myself into it.

I know that it’s just a deer skull. Although Kerrass does not allow me to go anywhere near a fight with a Leshen, he has allowed me to go through what remains of the thing after it has been destroyed. Mostly, it looks like dead wood and vegetable matter. And at the end of the day, when the…. Whatever it is that animates a Leshen into being is gone, it’s just an animal skull, most commonly a deer, sheep or goat skull complete with horns when applicable.

Apparently, there is even evidence that Leshen are known to change their skulls when opportunity or circumstance presents themselves.

But it’s just a skull. I know it’s just a skull. It is clear that it is just a skull. But I could see something there. I know that there was something there. It felt old, incredibly old and although I am all too aware that I could not possibly comprehend such matters, it felt… not wrong. But different. I was fascinated and terrified of it in equal measure. I was hypnotised by it. I desperately wanted to look away and to think about something else but no matter how hard I tried, I could not avoid but to look back and see if I could see into the darkness. I wanted to see something in there. Something that I could catch hold of in the same way that a drowning man would hold onto a floating piece of wood in the storm.

But there was nothing there.

I was reminded of the curse that had been laid onto Duchess Anna-Henrietta of Toussaint by Jack. The bottle of wine curse. The most delicious bottle of wine will grow in her obsessions until she cannot help but drink some of it. Only for it to be the most perfect wine that she has ever tasted before, giving birth to an obsession to replicate it that will consume her. I almost felt the same way about what I had seen in the depths of the eyes of the Leshen. I realised what was happening and I fought the images with fantasies about Ariadne. I am not ashamed to say that this is not a new technique for me. I try and build an image of the woman that I love in my mind. I try to picture what she will look like in her wedding dress and when I am confident in that image, I picture what she will look like when I take the wedding dress off her.

Eventually, I slept.

It took me a long time to wake up and I was bleary for a long time. The dryad that shook me awake for my watch looked at me with curiosity before sympathy and realisation seemed to take over her expression. She left for a moment and returned with a herbal drink, one of the many blends of tea that the dryads seem to have at their disposal which went some way to clear the fog from my mind. I did a little bit of a warm-up and I was stationed at one of the entrances to the enclosure that we were in. There were two of us, myself and a dryad that I took to be a little younger.

She wasn’t there long though before an older dryad came and spoke to the other for a short while and replaced her.

The new dryad and I spoke a bit. She asked me questions about who I was and where I was from. It was basic questioning really including my opinions about what was going on in the greater world, the form of the Black Forest and what I thought about the place.

As I say they were very basic questions and I will admit that I found them quite annoying until I realised what she was doing. She was essentially keeping me awake and interested in the world.

“Alright,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She smiled at me. “Why must anything be going on?”

“You ask me questions without being interested in the answers. I can tell because your follow up questions have almost nothing to do with the initial question that you have asked.”

She smiled at me. “Well done. I had been warned that you were a clever one.”

She sighed before continuing.

“It takes people like that sometimes. People just drift off, drifting away with the forest. They see something or hear something and it has an effect on them. I’ve seen huge men, woodcutters and soldiers in the outside world that have stood at the base of our giant trees and it is the first time that they’ve ever felt small before they begin to weep and become as children. I have seen storytellers and bards struck dumb in awe at the sight of it all and a man who had worked in a field his entire life, never once being able to express himself, had asked for a skin that we used for recording supplies and a stick of charcoal. He drew the most amazing picture of a woman that he had never met. We had an old diary from a previous traveller that he then proceeded to fill with sketches of everything, us, animals, trees, plants and this strange woman over and over again.

“It also goes the other way sometimes. Men are driven mad by it. Women too, including dryads. They become violent, abusive, angry and snarling like wild animals. Brave men become cowards and vice versa. Cruel tyrants become pacifists. You name it, we have seen it. This place has an effect on people, you go into a place like this and you never come out the same way.”

I considered this for a while.

“I feel like I did the first time I went into the cathedral in Novigrad,” I said. “I remember the sheer awe of the place struck me dumb until the tears were tumbling down my cheeks and I could barely stand with the sheer impact of the entire thing. My parents had to take me away from the place before I just started to weep.”

“Interesting.” The woman said. “I have seen that reaction too so I wonder if there is something in common. Between your holy places and ours.”

We stood in silence for a short while and I could feel my mind beginning to retreat again, the image of the deer skull floating in front of my vision.

“Can I ask a question?” I wondered

“By all means.”

“What is it that you are all doing? When you all stand in a group and stare off into space I mean.”

She laughed quietly. “In the morning, if we have time, I will show you.”

That sense of anticipation carried me through the rest of the early morning watch. I listened as the birds started to sing in their eternal greeting of the dawn. I watched the light creep across the dead leaves and bits of twig on the ground. Shapes emerged from the dark shadows and started to take proper form and definition. Slow, steady movement in the camp behind us started to grow louder and louder. Small groups came past the pair of us in order to relieve themselves in the woods and the trees.

Breakfast was brought and it all seemed to be coming together.

I returned to our small area of the camp where it was clear that Kerrass and Stefan were still not really talking to each other. I ate and packed my gear accordingly and sure enough, the dryads started to come together in their gathering. Just standing in the open space.

When the invisible signal came and the dryads parted, my early morning companion came to me.

“Follow,” She said. “Bring your things.”

I did as I was told.

“Where are you taking him?” Kerrass wondered.

“That is also something that I would like to know the answer to,” Stefan added, a bit sharper.

“Your companion will be returned to you.” The dryad told the pair of them. “You need have no concern.”

Kerrass subsided a little bit but Stefan was having none of it.

“I demand to know what…”

“You demand?” The dryad hissed. A couple of the dryads that were working nearby looked up. One of them picked up a spear.

“It’s alright,” I told Stefan. “I will be back soon.”

My guide led me out of the camp. “Do not worry, we will return to your friends soon. This will not take long.”

“Why not?” I wondered. “Why won’t it take long?”

“Because you will either feel it or you will not. Now pick a direction.”

“What? I thought you were my guide.”

She smiled at me. “Would you be really angry with me if I told you that in this you must guide yourself?”

“I will be fairly annoyed at your cryptic speech, yes.”

She laughed.

I looked around the small area outside the encampment, chose a direction and started to walk.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“What are these encampments?”

“They are like our islands in the storm. The forest is always changing. Always turning this way and that way. The animals and those that you would call monsters are constantly shifting it. And as such, we are constantly trying to keep some kind of order so that we can get to the heart of the matter.”

We came to a small clearing, I could hear running water and I stopped. “Where to now?”

“Where do you want to go?”

I chose another direction and after a moment or two, the dryad continued speaking.

“So, given that we have to make regular… pilgrimages into the heart of the forest, it became necessary for us to maintain some camps in the place. To keep an eye on things and make sure that darkness isn’t overwhelming things. We have to identify sickness as it develops, rot in the plants and madness in the creatures. So early in our time here we identified those places that seemed the most stable and established camps there. And as people journey in, we take supplies to them and monitor them and maintain them. That is the task of the attendants of the Schattenmann. We “attend” to his wants, his desires and we maintain his sanctuary. To whit, the part of the forest that you are travelling through now.”

“The more and more that you speak, the more and more that it sounds like you are his priestesses.”

“From what I have heard about the religions of the rest of the outside world, that is not far from the truth. I heard your friend commenting the other day and he is possibly closer to the mark. All the dryads of the Black Forest are priests and holy people of the Schattenmann and the Black Forest is our church… You felt something didn’t you?”

I had stopped walking. Saying that I had felt something seemed a little bit extreme but I had suddenly felt as though I had run out of pathways.

We were in a small clearing. The ground seemed undisturbed and was covered in a kind of light green, ivy looking plant. There were fines of it everywhere. We were surrounded by the trees and I could hear the birds singing in the upper branches along with the wind pushing through the leaves.

The dryad examined my face for a moment and nodded.

“Close your eyes,” She said.

“It’s all about the hearing and the feeling.” She said. “Do you know how to remove sounds from your hearing?”

I nodded.

“Good. I thought so. You look the type to know how to meditate. I will still talk you through it though unless you have an objection.”

I shook my head and as she promised she took me through it. I’m not going to go all through it now. It’s a process very similar to prayer or that state that I am in when I am writing an essay or one of these articles for long periods of time.

You work through all of the other things that are going on and then one by one, you shut them out. It takes time and can take practice. Some people can just jump into that kind of state. Kerrass is one of those people, the bastard. I’ve seen him sit down and close his eyes before remaining still like that until a specific time of day comes up and then he climbs to his feet without even seeming as though any time has passed. I can do it in certain circumstances. When reading about something that I am particularly fascinated by or writing about something that I am particularly passionate about.

This was one of the difficult ones though. The hardest thing for me to set aside is the mysteries that surround me. Therefore, the things that I find I have to really work on are when I have to dismiss the questions that seem to define my existence.

But I went through it. She took me through a different route than I would normally use. She had me separate my feelings first which made the entire process much more difficult, at least in my experience. It is much easier to shut out the things that are further away than the ones that are internal. But this seemed to be something to do with “The absence of self” that some philosophers seem so fascinated by.

So I dismissed the feeling of the clothes on my skin, the tightness of the straps and the heaviness of the pack. I dismissed the sound of my breathing and the feeling of the air in my lungs. I dismissed the other sensations of the wind on my skin and the distant feeling that I would need to urinate before too much time had elapsed.

That took some time. Like all good meditation guides, she was patient and took her time with it. Then I was left with the greater feeling of the forest.

I dismissed the sound of the birds in the trees. Then I dismissed the small animals that were burrowing in the undergrowth. Then it was the turn of the wind in the leaves and the creaking of the branches. It was not easy. It felt unnatural to me to do things this way round. I wanted to work the other way.

But we got there anyway and I felt myself floating free.

To be clear, I was still aware of all of the other things taht she had specified. It is more a feeling of being apart from things. I know that this practice is not particularly common in the world, let alone in the academic community. So some people think that I was not able to hear the actual birdsong and trees and the like. This would be incorrect. I could certainly hear them. I wasn’t ignoring them as ignoring something is an active process and takes effort. What I was doing was putting myself apart from them.

And she told me to listen. Then she said “Deeper.”

And that’s what it turned into. She alternated between telling me to listen and then to go deeper. It would have been silly if it had not actually felt quite profound. I did as I was told and I went deeper and deeper. I have no adequate way of describing the sensation to you. I could feel myself sinking into the ground. A strange kind of weight seemed to settle around me. It was not uncomfortable. It was like climbing into a cool bed at the end of a hot day. There was a strange buzzing noise growing in my ears and then, after another long moment, the ends of my fingers started to tingle.

I went deeper still and much further down, I felt something strange. I didn’t hear it, I swear that I felt it instead. I felt a heartbeat. It was beating incredibly slowly. It was not mine, I had set that aside along with all of the other feelings from earlier. This was the heartbeat of something else. For a moment, I wondered what it was before the answer came to me. It was the heartbeat of the forest.

It was the heartbeat of the Schattenmann.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the dryad. I was crouched now although I do not remember moving. I had pushed my hands into the dirt and I was touching a tree root. What I felt was an echo of the same kind of horrified fascination that I had felt as I looked up at the Leshen.

The dryad looked down at me with a strange expression, almost one of sympathy, respect and kindness on her face. She held out her hand and helped me to my feet.

“Well done.” She said. “Not many can do that on their first try.”

“This isn’t a forest is it,” Was the only thing I could think of to say.

“It is.” She told me. “But it is also the Schattenmann. He is in the forest, the air, the water and the trees. When people see him, they are not seeing The Schattenmann himself. They are more seeing a manifestation of the Schattenmann. They are seeing the thing that he is possessing and using. And sometimes, very rarely, he might manifest as himself and when that happens?”

A look of genuine terror swept across her face.

“I still have nightmares about that night. The rage of the Schattenmann is… terrible.”

I took that in for a moment.

“Come,” She said. “We must rejoin the party and we must move swiftly if we are to catch them.”

We jogged back the way that we had come until we came to the encampment. I ran easily and it actually felt a little bit better to be moving at a reasonable pace. There were still dryads in the encampment continuing the same kinds of maintenance chores that you can find people performing up and down the world in small border garrisons. Boxes being stacked and restacked, dirt being cleaned out. I saw one woman cutting encroaching vines away with a long knife.

She wept as she did so.

We stayed long enough for my companion to check the line of march and we ran off again.

As I say, it felt good to run. To put all of the rest of things behind me. There was just the feeling that I was running, that I would continue to run and that all I had to do was to follow my guide and pay attention to my immediate surroundings. There was a strange sense of peace that was in my heart that had settled there since I had felt something as part of the meditation.

It sometimes takes you that way if you have gone into a deep trance. Those moments where you have to force yourself to put down the pen in order to eat something, relieve yourself or go to bed. But you find yourself resenting that process and looking forward to being able to take up the pen again, even as you know taht the thought will have escaped from you and you will spend hours, sometimes days, before you find it again.

I felt like that. I wanted to sit somewhere quiet and think, but if I couldn’t do that, then running through the green splendour of the Black Forest was good enough.

We caught up with the party disappointingly quickly. Kerrass and Stefan greeted me when I approached and Oak-Leaf called for a brief rest.

“How did it go?” She asked of my guide.

“He did well.” Was the response. “He certainly felt something in there. I think… I think that the Schattenmann might have chosen.”

Oak-Leaf nodded. “There are other candidates.” She said.

“Look at him.” my guide, whose name I hadn’t learned. “Look at his face.”

Oak-Leaf looked at me for a long time before grunting and moving back towards the head of the line.

“Wait,” Stefan said. “What do you mean, ‘The Schattenmann has chosen’ what does that mean.”

“Now is not the time.” She told him, having stopped to listen, she turned and restarted her movements.

“When will be the time?” Stefan demanded. “What has the Schattenmann decided? What has he chosen?”

The dryads ignored him.

“Good luck.” My guide shook my hand as she turned to go. “I hope to see you again.”

“What does that mean?” Stefan demanded. “What do you mean by that?”

My guide gave him a withering glare. Nodded to Kerrass and then just moved off back the way we had come.

“Shut up.” Kerrass snarled. “Just shut up, will you. Stop antagonising them by asking questions that you know that they are not going to answer.”

Stefan glared back. Then he blinked and sighed. For a moment, it looked as though he had been about to say something but then he stopped and turned away.

His attitude of martyred resentment finally got through to me and I snapped.

“What?” I demanded. “What is it? Why are you so determined to hate these people and to drive them away and to split them apart? Why are you so determined to undermine us and aggravate them? Have you forgotten what we are here to do and what we are here for?”

He stopped, stared at his feet for a moment and then shook his head before walking off.

“I will admit that I would like to know the answer to that as well.” Kerrass snarled, standing next to me.

Stefan stopped in his tracks for a moment.

“I have not forgotten.” He said, turning around. He looked calm and there was an infuriating sense of righteousness in his face.

“No, I have not forgotten.” He went on. “Indeed, I wonder if I am the only person here who still remembers what is at stake here.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at the pair of us before he turned, picked up his pack again and walked away.

“Fuck,” said Kerrass.

I just looked at the broad back of the church soldier that I had liked once.

Kerrass looked over to the head of the line.

“And with that, it seems we are starting to move again.”

I spent some time trying to argue with Stefan, but he resolutely refused to get anywhere close to me where words could be exchanged. He walked in front of me and when I sped up my pace in order to get a bit closer to him, he would increase his own pace and I would be forced to jump to catch up to him. After which, the other dryads would frown at the pair of us and look at us with disappointment and condemnation in their eyes until we fell back into place.

Kerrass seemed to be the same way as he was thinking furiously.

When it became clear that Stefan wasn’t going to talk to me, I took a bit of time to try and examine what he ahd said and see if he was right, even remotely.

I did not like what I found.

I thought of Ariadne and wondered how I felt now. It was true, she would forgive me. I was confident in that. She had proved it now, several times. I had a look at my own behaviour and I absolutely believe that I would have been killed if I hadn’t agreed to spend time with Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed. Or worse. I remembered the herbal stimulants that we had all partaken of and wondered what the more powerful versions of those things would have done to my mind and body.

I had done that to save my own life and I had behaved towards the two dryads as best as I could.

But had I betrayed Ariadne?

Then there was the possibility that they had behaved like some kind of honey trap. Was I being indoctrinated? I thought of the stories that Trayka had told us. About what we had heard in Piotr’s home village. And the emaciated skeleton of a priest that had been hung from a church door. How did I feel about the Schattenmann now? And how much of that was a conclusion that I had reached myself and how much was the result of a manipulation of some kind. How much of it was the result of a bit of kindness and a bit of eroticism.

I didn’t like the answers I came up with. Or rather, I didn’t like the answers that I couldn’t come up with.

We came to a place for lunch. It was chosen a bit more carefully than the places we had previously stayed for lunch. It had a feeling of a lookout point. It was a flat platform up a tree branch. We had to climb a rope ladder to get to it where we discovered a series of platforms that were linked by rope bridges. There were a couple of other dryads that were already there. They had been expecting us and while we rested ate and drank, Oak-Leaf and the leader of those look-outs seemed to have a long conversation about the things that were coming up. There was a lot of pointing and directive behaviour. Curves being described with hands and gestures, that kind of thing.

I tried to find a quiet place to sit and have a think while I drank my soup and ate my sandwich. I didn’t taste it really, I was staring off and into the trees while I ate and drank and was only dimly aware that Kerrass was still trying to have some form of conversation with Stefan. It was not going well for either of them.

I thought of Ariadne and I tried to bring her face to my mind.

I couldn’t do it. This troubled me more than I can easily describe.

It’s how I get to sleep at the end of a long day. If I have finished talking to Ariadne then I will say my nighttime prayers and lay down on my blankets. Often, I get to sleep fairly easily but if I am having any kind of difficulty then I will work at picturing Ariadne. Picturing her body and shape is fairly easy. She’s a tall woman and after that, I always picture some of what she would describe as her “working robe,” which is a dark, mostly shapeless dress that she uses when she is working in her lab or out in the fields with her people. It’s black or at least it’s mostly black now. Time in the sun has caused it to fade a little bit to a dark grey. It’s belted with a plaited leather belt and there are various pouches and packed scroll cases that are hung from it. Once you can imagine that, then you pretty much have the shape of her.

Then you picture dark hair which she pulls over her left shoulder. She claims to do this because it means that it is more in her control there rather than elsewhere but I am well aware of my own tastes and I have always found it looks particularly beautiful on her. So I sense that she does it for me.

Then I work on her face, forming it in my mind. I normally get to about her nose when I fall asleep or something else distracts me.

That’s how I work it. I’ve passed miles of fields of cabbages and turnips with that technique. I have sailed onboard ships for miles occupying my time with this most basic of mental exercises.

But now I couldn’t picture her. It troubled me. The desperation I began to feel to get this job done so that I could go and see her again began to feel a bit more overwhelming. I wanted to see her. I needed to see her and talk to her. I didn’t like this anymore.

We set off again after we had eaten, climbing down from the flets and it was at this moment that disaster struck.

There was an Arachas waiting for me. Arachas are strange beasts, partly insectoid in nature but they also have these blooms on their backs which means that they can disguise themselves in all but the open fields.

The ladder was lowered and a couple of our Dryad escorts went down first. Even though according to them, the forest was quiet and unworried, they were taking no chances and they went first to cover our descent. But with there only being one ladder, they had to move off to allow the rest of us room to get down onto the ground. Stefan had gone first, a dryad followed him and then I went. I managed to get down on my own two feet which was a good start considering how often I’ve got that step wrong and ended up collapsing. I rubbed my hands to get rid of the dust and dirt that comes from the ladder as well as to get rid of the feeling of the wood on my hands. I turned, moving away and adjusting the straps on my pack and making sure that I had my spear easily within reach as I got out of the way so that the next person could come down the ladder.

And the next thing I knew, something had struck me from behind and I was tumbling through the undergrowth. I landed badly and tried to roll. Something bit into my leg and I saw a white light.

Someone shouted something. Someone answered but my hearing was going echoey. It was actually not that unpleasant but at the same time, I had no idea what was going to be happening.

I heard the sound of swords being drawn. There are only so many things that sound like that and it’s unmistakable. There was more shouting.

I kept rolling. I needed to stay out of the way of whatever was happening. I found a flat bit and tried to climb to my feet but my leg wasn’t working. At some point, I had forgotten that it was my leg that had been injured so I fell again.

I was blinking against something, possibly pain or the effects of poison. Something was trying to obscure my vision.

More people were shouting, something was crashing. Some part of me was dimly aware that the venom of an Arachas was toxic and that I might be dying.

I laughed. Yet another time I was being poisoned to death and I was in real danger of my insides being liquified by venom. I remembered how that had turned out last time and I suddenly wanted Ariadne so badly that I sobbed. The distant part of my brain that was aware of what was happening to me was commenting that the venom was also obscuring my thinking process. Funnily enough, that wasn’t helpful.

There were strange noises. An odd kind of buzzing noise that, at first, I thought was in my ears but I could hear other things going on as well. People were shouting and screaming, not in fear or pain but there was a direction behind it. Something was being determined and then.

The shouting changed to shouts of anger. I tried to stand again, some pointless part of me that wanted to face my death with honour. At some point, reflexive muscle memory had found my spear and I used it to lever myself to my feet.

I opened my eyes to see Stefan pounding the body of the Arachas into mush. Kerrass stood nearby and some of the echoey feelings in my ears began to make sense. There had been magic used.

The dryads came out of the trees with their bows drawn and arrows with strange heads attached to the arrows. I blinked at them curiously before I wobbled on my feet and gently tipped backwards to land on my ass.

“Oww,” I said, feeling a bit stupid.

Kerrass was next to me in a moment with a dagger out, examining my wound, cutting away some of my trousers to get a better look.

Oak-Leaf crouched next to him.

“Tell me you have some Arachas antidote,” Kerrass demanded.

“We do.” She said before she turned and bellowed a name. I winced away from the sudden sound and felt myself starting to drift off. It wasn’t painful. That was one of the more worrying things. It wasn’t painful. It was… actually rather pleasant. The outsides of things were beginning to be a bit fluttery. I could see colours that I could not even imagine and I felt… actually quite good.

Another figure crouched next to me and I looked up into her face without really seeing it.

“Hello,” I said and grinned at her a bit lopsidedly.

“Hi,” She said before bending over and examining my leg.

Then I screamed as she reached in and seemed to play with it.

I passed out for a second there and the next thing I knew I was swallowing something that tasted of old socks. I swallowed and I swallowed again.

“Don’t vomit.” A woman’s voice said and I swallowed feverishly. My leg felt numb now. “He’ll be alright.” She said to Kerrass and Oak-Leaf that were standing over me. “He’ll sleep tonight and I would suggest that we have someone near him in case he gets dizzy again. But other than that?”

Kerrass crouched next to me while Oak-Leaf and the healer conferred.

“How long was I unconscious?” I asked.

“Not long, a minute or two?” He said.

I looked around and realised why I was surprised. “But… it’s getting dark.”

“Yeah.” Kerrass told me, his voice without tone. Yes, it is.”

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Oak-Leaf demanded of Stefan.

“It was attacking my friend.” Stefan insisted.

“What’s going on?” I asked Kerrass as I did my best to look at my leg which didn’t seem to be as bad as I thought it was. I had imagined a gaping wound but instead, it was more a case of a couple of puncture marks.

“Stefan killed the Arachas,” Kerrass said. “They didn’t want him to and are angry.”

“Oh,” I said before I felt the confusion kick in. “What?”

“It seems that to them, the Arachas was like a curious dog coming to say hello. They had an antidote to the poison that got into your system so all that had to be done was to drive the thing off. They had noise arrows and were shouting and all kinds of things. It was working too if you ask me but Stefan decided that you were at risk so…well.”

He gestured at the dead Arachas.

“Oh,” I said again, thinking of the speech that Oak-Leaf had given at the beginning of the journey. “Shit.”

Oak-Leaf gestured aggressively at Stefan who simply put his sword away. There was a feeling about him that he had essentially given up. There was a righteous slant to his shoulders that you see when a person has had enough of arguing with someone. When they have decided that the other person in the argument is just too stupid to listen and that the best thing to do is to walk away.

Stefan moved over to where his pack was and found two dryads barring his way with bows bent.

Oak-Leaf approached me and looked me up and down. “How are you doing?” she asked, gesturing at my leg.

“It stings,” I told her, testing my weight and the movement of the injured muscle. “Annnndddd it’s tender.”

“Can you move?”

I thought about it for a moment.

“I can move.”

She turned to Kerrass who was examining my leg from where he was standing. He was more watching me move rather than actually getting up close and personal.

“Can he move?” She asked him. “Sometimes an Arachas’ venom can give people a wrong idea of…”

“He can move,” Kerrass said. “He will surprise you with how fast he can move. Believe it or not, we have been through worse than this and been injured worse than this.”

She looked a little sceptical. So did I for that matter.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that he shouldn’t have to move.” Kerrass insisted. “Is there any reason that we can’t rest for the afternoon and start again in the morning?”

“Yes.” She said. “By nightfall, this place is going to be swarming with insectoids looking for some vengeance. Insects, wolves, bears. We are abandoning this place to the forest.”

She gestured and we could see the two lookouts that we had met there, lowering boxes and bundles of supplies down to the waiting travellers who were dividing the burdens among themselves.

“It is no small thing to abandon an outpost this far into the forest,” Oak-Leaf said with more than a little heat in her voice.

“I apologise,” I said. “I was stupid and allowed myself to…”

“Not your fault.” She insisted. “It happens, indeed, we have been lucky not to have any other things come and have a look at us. It wasn’t really attacking you. It was just wanting to say hello.”

“Really?” I felt an echo of my own touch of anger. “I would hate to see one when it was angry.”

Kerrass cleared his throat to cover my brief spurt of anger.

“In my experience, Arachas don’t just want to say hello.” He told the dryad.

“None of your experience takes applies in the heart of the Black Forest.” Oak-Leaf snapped before taking a breath. “No Lord Frederick. It is not you that should be sorry.”

She took another breath and turned to see what was happening with Stefan. He was standing, facing the irate dryads with his hand on his sword hilt and a relaxed attitude about his frame. I have seen that attitude so many times in the past. It was the mark of a man that was ready to fight and kill at a moment’s notice.