(Warning: Scenes of torture)

In the end I spent three days with Letho.

I'll say this for him. He is the truest person that you'll ever meet. He does not dilute himself on any kind of level, what you see is what you get and if he doesn't like you or wants you to go away he will say so. His size affects that aspect of his personality. I've heard that old phrase of a Bull in a glass-shop and that is Letho to a tee. Brute force is part of his character. It's built into him. When he moves, he expects you to get out of his way and if you don't then he will knock you down and then wonder why you're angry at him.

As I say, he doesn't try to be something else, he doesn't try to charm you or be nice to you. If he wants something he'll ask you for it and if you ask him for something, if it is in his power to give you that thing then he will give it to you.

You might regret asking, as his method of giving you the thing might not be the way you expected it to be given.

But that blunt force approach to his physical movements is carried over into his character. He is well aware that he looks like a brute and a thug. He describes himself as being ugly but he has crafted that aspect of himself into a weapon. He lets other people draw their own conclusions from his appearance and then gives them enough rope to hang themselves with. It has been claimed that he is one of the principal architects of the downfall of the original Lodge of Sorceresses as he simply let them talk and talk and pretend to be their pawn. But when the push came to it, he proved himself far far cleverer then they had ever even dreamed that he could be.

That is who Letho is.

He is a hard man to like. But if you can take him at his word. If you can take the entirety of him with all of his insults and his lack of manners and wrap your own head around his... around his very direct method of thinking. Then you will find a rare individual.

No I don't like him. But I respect him enormously. The way I feel about Letho is complex and I'm going to need to spend some time thinking about why he makes me so uncomfortable.

He thinks in straight lines which is something that I struggle with. But I need to quantify that.

You might think of yourself as a direct kind of a person. Honest, loyal, the kind of person who looks a man in the eye and shake his hand with a nice firm handshake. But even then, you think in corners and curves.

I'm a Nobleman and I was trained in courtly techniques. I am taught about etiquette, courtesy, sincerity and other such things. This means that my thinking is always along the lines of, “What is going on and how does it affect me? What could go wrong? How does that affect things? What could the consequences of that action be?” and so on.

Letho would just see the solution and move towards it, heedless of the consequences or of who he might be hurting and how that would affect other people. As an example.

When a child draws a picture of someone, in comparison to the paintings of skilled artists, where oils and things have been used. The child's drawing is obviously inferior because, you know, it's a child. But you don't tell the child that this is the case. You say that that drawing is amazing and tell them that they've done really well because that helps the child build confidence.

Letho would tell the child that the picture was rubbish and then, if he liked the child, he would produce a good painting of a person and show the child how their drawing could be improved.

Let's make the example a little more.... obvious.

A Nobleman comes to you. For rendering services to someone they have been given a grant of a new estate in the country. A part of the countryside that is famous for...Oh I don't know....The production of it's cheese.

One of the farmers there has a method of smoking the cheese that makes it taste unique. And as such your friend is making a fortune. He wants to credit the farmer and his chosen method of demonstrating that gratitude is to add something to his heraldry to say, not only that he is now lord of this new manor but that manor is famous for it's cheese. He brings you the heraldry and he says “What do you think?”

You think it looks ridiculous. A proud shield displaying a cheese wheel along with the remarkable odour that the cheese produces in the form of wavy lines above the cheese wheel. It is making your friend a fortune however and the man is, after all, your friend. In no way is this new piece of heraldry going to affect you in any way.

What do you say?

In Letho's case he would say that it looks ridiculous. When his friend was upset, Letho would shrug and point out that his friend had asked his opinion.

In that way he is the most honest. The truest, person that I've met.

Kerrass changes according to the situation. I haven't seen Letho hunt but Kerrass can change his personality, his behaviour and his use of language according to the situation he finds himself in. I can't imagine Letho doing that. I can imagine Letho talking to children. I can imagine him asking simple, brutal questions that deeply upset the child in question and causing the parents of the child to become angry. Then Letho punches out the parent. Hunts the monster and uses a portion of the reward to buy the child a doll or some sweets.

I can also imagine Letho in a court situation. I find the mental image incredibly funny.

I will change my earlier statement. I do like Letho but he is a difficult man to be around. I do not know that he is my friend but I found his company...refreshing and liberating. Almost relaxing.

He is also startling in his intelligence and his strategic and tactical thinking. If he had joined an army he would have been a general that men would talk about in hushed whispers about how he sacked the most formidable towns and defeated numbers six times his own. His capacity for knowledge was immense and he was always trying to increase that knowledge because “You never know when that little titbit would come in handy.”

We spent that first night playing cards until we were both drunk enough to struggle to see the cards. Then we played dice before passing out.

He woke me early the following day with a breakfast of more mushrooms and some of the salted pork that he had shamelessly stolen from our packs.

“I've got some Alchemy things going on today,” he said as we ate. “Kerrass told me that you wanted to know about the Witchers trials?” The food was again, delicious.

I nodded as my head couldn't decide between shovelling the food into my mouth faster or slowing down to enjoy the flavours.

He responded with a nod of his own. “Then if you stay quiet today, I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

That was all he said. He had set various Glassware jars simmering over various small pots of flame that he was muttering over and adjusting in very careful detail. I was again struck, in the same way that I was when I had watched him cooking, at how... careful he was. How delicate and precise he could be with his giant hands and fingers.

I spent the day exploring. I tell a lie, I spent the morning exploring and the rest of the time I spent poring over the Witcher library.

If I wanted to retire and risk the enmity of Letho and Kerrass both, I could have made a fortune by stealing one of those books back to the university. I took two of them down and started reading on the subject of Necrophages. It was dry reading but the level of information that was in there was absolutely beyond anything I had ever come across before.

In the entirety of the rest of the time, Letho and I didn't communicate. He was busy with his mixtures and I was content to leave him to it. At one point he started cooking. I asked him if I could help in any way and he looked at me as though I had offered to take a shit in the cooking pot. I held my hands up in surrender and went back to my book. He did ask me what my tolerance for spices was though and something that may have been approval sparkled in his eyes when I said that I was quite fond of spice.

Then came a point in the early evening when Letho came over with his sword on his back.

“Come on. Kitty cat said you could fight and I don't believe him. A fighting scribbler, heh,” he sneered and had turned for the door before I could get my spear out of my gear.

For whatever reason I had fitted the two pieces together when I walked out the door of the keep. It was lucky that I had because Letho levelled a blow at my head that would have decapitated me if I hadn't blocked it. He drew back and hammered at me again. This time I was better braced for the blow and his sword bounced of my spear shaft. The third time he changed the direction of his strike, mid-movement and swung up on the diagonal line towards my groin. I panicked, pushed the blow aside with the haft of the spear in an old Quarterstaff technique and used that same movement to try and slash the spear blade at Letho's face.

Anyone else would have flinched back. It's not a new move. I've used it before which is why it was ingrained in my muscle memory to the point that I fell back on it when startled. In every other case, men move back from the strike.

Letho stepped inside the curve of it, grabbed the spear just under the head of it and tugged. I could no sooner have fought that tug than I could have turned aside the charge of an angry bull. He pulled me into a head-butt that sent my ears ringing. He then tossed me aside in the same way that a man might toss aside a rotten piece of fruit.

In front of the entrance to the keep at Kaer Morhen there is a wall, about waist high. I assume it was a last line of defence where archers or crossbow men could stand and fire down towards the gate. The force of Letho throwing me, sent me colliding into that wall and tumbling over it. I had enough time to realise what was happening, tuck my head in and roll with the impact.

Letho descended the stairs, no expression on his face. There was absolutely nothing there. I could have been a piece of meat to him. A piece of meat or an animal that needs butchering.

I was winded, bruised and there were tears in my eyes from the stinging blow of the head-butt. I had a dim thought that my nose might be broken.

As has always happened in these situations when I have felt my back against the wall and the terror of....whatever threat is coming towards me, I felt a terrible anger in me then.

I screamed and charged him. Timing my point of attack so that my first blow would land just as he was lifting his back foot off the stair behind him. He had been expecting my attack and knocked my blow aside with a casual swipe of his sword.

But in the game of expectation I still had this one. The first thrust was followed by a rapid series of thrusts aimed at his groin, neck and eyes. Off rhythm and random in pattern. Kerrass would have been proud.

Still his expression didn't change. Again, when he should have stepped backwards. When everyone, including Kerrass who taught me the move, receive that sequence, they move backwards. That's what it's designed for. That's why we had worked it out. It was designed for when I was up against a superior foe. Kerrass claimed that the number of superior foes that I might meet on the byways of the continent was decreasing but I was under no illusion here.

The move was designed to make a person back up or to move sideways and off the thrust-line.

Letho didn't. He moved towards me.

Again he grabbed the spear just below the beginning of the blade and tugged. I was leading with my right hand and I tried letting go with that hand and threw a punch at Letho's face.

He just refused to react how any other man would have done. Another man might have flinched backwards. Letho dipped his head so that my blow glanced off his brow, causing more pain to me than it must have done to him. He gave me a huge blow in the chest pushing me stumbling backwards towards a wall. I tripped over something and fell backwards.

The violence of the man was incredible. So focused and uncompromising. It was also so simple but no less skilful than Kerrass' fighting techniques. The way Kerrass fights displays his mastery of the form and the technique. Now that I am so much better educated in violence than I was when I first started this venture, I can see the skills and the incredible amount of work that went in to his fighting.

Letho makes violence look easy. It's direct, bruising and uncompromising. But also, because he doesn't behave in a way that you expect him to. He's also utterly terrifying, implacable and utterly unstoppable. Like an avalanche that is filtered and focused against you specifically.

I had fallen and struggled to roll backwards to my feet. I botched the movement and covered my head with my arms to protect myself from the attack that I expected.

“Not bad,” he drawled from where he was standing. Just out of range of any blows that I might aim at him.

He was leaning on my spear. “At least, not bad for a scribbler.” He sneered again. “Kerrass told me that he had done his best to give you some general survival tricks but that was honestly better than I was expecting.”

“You must have set your expectations incredibly low then.” I commented as I examined the couple of scrapes and things that I had received.

“I had, to be truthful. The Kitty cat has set you in good stead. Let's head back up. He turned and walked away, still carrying the spear. I spent a bit of time making sure that I was still relatively uninjured before following him. I found him next to the door drinking from a water-skin which he threw at me when he was finished.

“Hydrate,” He ordered and I did as I was told. The water was a little bitter. “I put some herbs in it to purify it. Better for you than adding alcohol to everything but it does compromise flavour a little. Drink it.”

I did as I was told. Letho was playing with the spear.

“You've had a good teacher,” he commented. “I would have given you a sword,”

“I knew some Quarterstaff before he started.”

Letho took that without comment. Twirling the spear around a bit so that the sunlight glinted off the blade.

“A Quarterstaff wouldn't bother someone in armour though.”

“Hence the blade.”

“Hmm. But using a spear falls apart when you know how to beat a spear.”

“Which is?”

Letho grinned at me. “Don't you know? I've already shown you. Would you like me to demonstrate?” He threw me the spear which I caught.

His sword was out and flashing towards my head. I leaned out of the way so that the blow passed me although I felt the wind of it. Returned to an upright stance and used the added momentum to swing a blow on the opposite side to where Letho's sword was, aiming for his neck.

He parried, because of course he parried, but then he turned the parry into a turn and he was inside my guard and his blade was next to my skin.

Again I had the opportunity to learn that Letho's breath smelled like mint.

Once he had given me enough time to realise that his blade was next to my neck he pulled back.

“Do you see it now?”

“I think so. Once an opponent is passed the blade there's not a great deal I can do.”

“There is,” Letho sneered. “You could bruise my ribs with a pommel strike or with the haft of the spear. But beyond that. You could fall back.”

“But once you start falling back...”

“You never stop.” Letho finished for me. “At least he taught you something.” He grunted.

“So how do I protect myself against that. I'm never going to be that good with a sword, as Kerrass said, correctly in my opinion, my brain keeps getting in the way.”

“He's not wrong. I can almost see your brain working. Get yourself a knife. A decent dagger, like these.” He patted the two blades strapped across his belly.

“I was going to ask about those. Kerrass doesn't have them and I've never heard of another Witcher using them.”

“You have,” Letho commented. “You're just being polite.”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, we're talking about you now. Look. I'll show you.” He reached out and plucked the spear from my grip and gestured with it to some training swords that were propped against the keep door. They were lighter than the ones that I had found in the courtyard the previous day.

“People are designed and built for self-preservation.” Letho said testing the spear for balance a little. “A lot of your fighting is designed, presumably by the Kitten, to keep your enemy away from you. But the real way to kill a man is to get close to him. So if you find someone who knows that. Who has trained himself to avoid that then, you're fucked. So you need a back-up. Now...”

He readied the spear.

“Attack me, and close with me. Don't jerk back, get closer.”

I swung a movement at his head but diverted to his feet. He knocked my blow away easily and brought the spear down in a vertical strike towards my head.

Of course I jerked backwards. The spear stopped, dead, just above where my head at been.

“Pussy,” Letho hissed.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. Again, same movement, this time step inwards.”

We ran through the movement. This time I managed to overcome my flinch and stepped into him. He grunted his acknowledgement of my doing what I had been told.

“See. I am now in range of your sword and what can I do? Stand still.”

He struck at me a couple of times with the spear. As far as I could tell, he was only pulling the blows a little bit but they still hurt. But he was right, the spear was blocked by his hands or his arms and body got in the way.

“You see?”

I nodded, rubbing at a bruise on my ribs.

“Awww,” he drawled, “Is the little Scribbler hurt?”

“A little.”

“Heh, So here's what I would do. Again.”

He took up the stance. I swung my attack, he blocked, I stepped in. He let go of the spear with one hand and drew one of the knives at his waist.

I swear I could feel the cold of the metal despite the fact that it wasn't touching me.

“You see how it works.”

I looked into his eyes. Still flat, still dead. Again I was being weighed and measured.

“I think so,” I said, dimly screaming at myself not to say the words that came out of my mouth next. “Could you show me again though?”

I saw something flicker in his eyes then. I don't know what it was and never got the chance to ask him. We squared off and the manoeuvre repeated itself.

“I see,” I said. “Thank you for the tip. I shall certainly take the opportunity to pick up a dagger when I'm next near a blacksmiths stall.”

I then turned my back to put my practice sword back on the rack.

“Can I ask a couple of questions now?” I said turning around and back to him. I thought I saw, I can't swear to it but I thought I saw amusement in his eyes.

“Sure,” he said, picking up the water skin and drinking off another large amount of the water before passing it back to me.

“So, the knives?”

Letho grunted. “We call them “The Vipers fangs”. All Witchers of my school had them and we considered them to be just as vital to a Witchers survival as our silver and steel swords. Here, put these on.” He reached behind the practice sword rack and produced a pair of thick leather gloves, the kind that you might use to work at Alchemy.

I did as I was told and he passed one of the daggers over.

It was heavier than I had first though it was, much more weighted towards the handle than I had been expecting. As I held it in the light I could see that the steel looked it was wet and then when I tilted it towards the light there was a rainbow sheen to the blade.

“Is that in the oil?”

“That's not oil,” he said, equally as carefully taking the dagger off me and slotting it back into it's sheath. “The Pussy cat will have told you about the stereotype of the Vipers that the other schools all hold which is that we've forgotten more about Alchemy than the rest of the schools put together?”

I nodded. “I had heard.”

Letho grunted. “Well that's true, but a little simpler than the full truth. The real truth is that we've forgotten more chemistry and forging than the rest of them ever knew. Those daggers were designed by one of ours. The forging method is lost although the Silver haired puppy dog tells me he found some documents that might shed some light on things relatively recently. But the method of making them means that they never need to be oiled. Not for monsters humans or beasts.”

He sniffed, hawked and spat. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yes we know alchemy. But I've never once had to use a blade oil on any of my weapons. The poisons were baked into the metal when they were forged.”

“An impressive feat of engineering.”

“That's one word for it. Others might say different.”

“But why daggers as well. Other than the flowery name.”

“Heh. I honestly wonder that no-one else uses them. The thing with spears is not peculiar to spears but also swords and shields and maces. If you close with an enemy then their weapons are vastly reduced in efficiency. So then you pull a dagger.” He shrugged again. “It makes sense to us.”

“I suppose it does at that.”

“Anyway.” He stood. “Got to check a couple of the potions. Dinner'll be a couple hours. We talk about the trials tomorrow.”

“What about Kerrass?”

“He took some supplies. He'll be off moping somewhere. Witchers are good at moping.” He lumbered through the door.

Once again, I offered to help with dinner. This time though, Letho simply ignored me and I felt that my duty was done and returned to my book. All too soon though Letho called me back to the table and put down a spiced Lamb dish that he described as being called Lamb Curry. It was delicious and I fell into bed for my second night spent in Kaer Morhen.

I woke up when a bucket of icy cold water was tipped over me and I leapt up to consciousness with a yell and a jump out of bed.

“Time to wake up Scribbler,” Letho drawled in a flat tone.

“But it's still d...” I nearly bit my tongue as Letho cuffed me round the ear.

“You wanted to know about the trials. Well these are the trials. Welcome to your first day of the choice Scribbler.”

“But...”

He cuffed me again.

“When I want to hear your voice, worm, I will ask for it. Until then dress. Breakfast is ready and if you're not there in one minute I shall assume you're not hungry and we will start the day as I mean us to go on.”

He turned and left.

I stared at his retreating back for a moment until he called “fifty seconds” over his shoulder.

I leapt to my travel bags where I opened the top to find myself a clean and a dry shirt. Except the bags weren't there. There was just my boots and my spear.

“Where are my things?” I yelled to no answer.

I put my boots on and caught up my spear as I dashed over to the table where Letho was putting a kind of porridge mixture into a bowl.

“What did you do with my clothes?” I demanded.

Letho ignored me. “Your foods getting cold.” His voice was flat and dead. “You've got two minutes to eat it.”

“Where are my things?”

He looked me up and down. “You're wearing them aren't you? Eat. One minute forty five.”

As sometimes happens in moments of high stress, my body decided that I had lost my mind somewhere and rushed me over to the table where I started shovelling food down my throat where it burnt my mouth. It was porridge, much like you might eat elsewhere. What I didn't recognise were the berries that were mixed into the porridge which left an odd burning sensation in the back of my throat.

When I had scraped the bowl clean Letho pointed at a large bucket of water.

“Clean your bowl, put it away and then come back.” He fished a cloth bag out from somewhere, from which he took a long, straight razor which he started stropping against the leather.

“Quicker.” He rumbled.

Once the bowl was cleaned and I stood in front of him Letho looked up at me.

“Here's the deal Scribbler, You want to know about the Witcher trials. Fair enough, I will tell you. This is the trial of choice. You must get through the trial of choice to find out about the trial of Grasses, the Trial of Dreams and the Trial of the Mountain. Failure to do what I tell you will mean that you learn nothing. If, at any point you have had enough or would rather we stop. All you have to do is say, “I give up,” and we stop there. But. I will never tell you about the other trials. I will also tell the Kitten that he shouldn't tell you and I will spread the word amongst every other Witcher that I meet that they should also, not tell you about the trials. I will make it my business to prevent you from learning about them. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“At any point. Just say, “I give up.” f you say anything else, I shall ignore you. Just three little words. Understand?”

I nodded again.

“Good. Strip.”

“What?”

“Your clothes Scribbler. Strip. Or I will strip you instead.”

I did as I was told. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was screaming. It was still dark outside and the only light for me to see by was cast by the fire and from several of the many candles that were dotted around the place. I was cold, still a bit sore from where Letho had administered the previous days “Lessons.”

But a small nub of stubbornness had been tapped into and I found that I was refusing to give up.

Letho walked round me, examining my naked body in minute detail. Commenting clinically on my muscle mass in different areas, body fat, scars and other signs of injuries. He brought a candle close to my face and spent a long time looking into my eyes before opening my mouth and peering inside at all of my teeth and tongue.

Then he examined my penis declaring “No obvious signs of drug use.”

Holy flame knows what he meant. I was frozen in shock and terror. No-one should have a candle that close to their genitals uninvited.

I was shivering by that point. A potent combination of fear and cold. He pushed over a stool and ordered me to sit. When I did so he shaved my head and face until I was utterly bald like himself. Then I was again ordered to stand and he shaved all of my body hair. Including my pubic hair.

“Why...?” My stunned mouth was articulating.

“Lice,” was the answer. “Just because we're immune to diseases doesn't mean we shouldn't protect ourselves from filth.”

When he was done and I felt even colder and itchy, he threw a white powder at me which itched in my eyes and made me sneeze. Then he did the same to my back.

“Normally I would give you some Novice clothes but you're much to tall for standard novice clothes. Put your old ones on.”

“But they're still wet.” I complained.

Letho ignored this as being unimportant to his world view.

I dressed.

Letho gave me a cup of a strange kind of fruit juice. It was blue and tart and in a strange kind of way, it warmed me down to my toes.

“Right, bring your spear.”

What followed was not the worst day of my life. That still belonged to the creature of Amber's crossing and the day immediately after Kerrass brought me out of the woods. But this was close.

What made it all the worse was how clearly Letho had taken the measure of me. It was galling how easy he found it to manipulate me. Every time I was faltering, every time I was on the point of giving up he would sneer with a whispered insult. Or he would just remind me about the information that would be kept from me if I was to give up. Yes I already knew about the choice and what was involved but this was it. This was the choice made manifest.

I don't think I've worked that hard, physically on any given day of my life. Even under the watchful eyes of Kerrass or my tutors when my father still held out hope of making a knight out of me. I've spent entire days in the saddle that didn't leave me as sore or as stiff as that day under Letho's watchful gaze.

We started off by running the castle's walls. A miniature assault course of climbing up and down ladders and steps, running across parapets and jumping across gaps. The view must have been magnificent as we ran, my breath steaming out in front of me in the cold morning air but I didn't have time to see it We ran three circuits all the while Letho who ran in front of me, showing me where to put my feet and where the safe ladders were was calling insults and goading me on. He was also yelling the pace and an almost constant instruction as to how to breathe. Every time I started to pant or gasp for breath he would bellow the order back “control your breathing.”

When we were done with that we started off with weapon drills. I was allowed to use my spear and the vast majority of the drills that we used were similar to the ones that Kerrass had already taught me. The difference was how I did them. We would run over rocky ground before Letho would yell for me to do one or other drill. Then we would move on. Another set of movements while I stood on one leg but I was still expected to put my full weight and strength behind each blow.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

We did another one on the see-saws where Letho enthusiastically worked the other ends in a deliberate attempt to tip me off the edge and onto my back. Another on the roundabout which, again, Letho span in bewildering and chaotic patterns.

Anyone else would have been laughing at my discomfort. Or giggling at the number of times that I fell backwards onto my arse. They would have even mocked me when I had to stop to throw up into a bucket that Letho pushed over for that purpose. But Letho's face never changed from that implacable mask that he used when fighting. I've seen more expression carved into the face of Golem's and earth elementals than that man showed me that day.

But still I didn't give up. I don't know why. Letho's manipulations of me, certainly played their part. His insults and commentary urging me on. There was also a part of me that wanted the information that he had offered. I had no doubt that I could wear Kerrass down enough to the point where he would give me any information that I pressured him into but that wasn't the point by then. Still another part of it was that I had no energy left for giving up or to give to the mental capacity to make up my mind to give out those three little words.

Letho worked me hard. I was astonished when he called a halt and realised that the sun was in the sky.

“Walk,” he said. “Stay standing, if you lie or sit down you will stiffen up and then you'll hurt yourself. Walk it off.”

He disappeared inside for a moment or two but when he came back he had a small square of.... Well I don't know what it was. It was a kind of sugary, buttery cake that crumbled in my mouth. It tasted of sweetness and mint. It also gave me a strange kind of energy that I could feel spread out from my belly into the rest of my limbs. When I had finished that he gave me a cup of something that was almost milk but not quite. It settled my stomach like milk and had the same creamy taste and texture of milk as well as an after taste of what I thought was honey. There were other flavours in there but I couldn't recognise them.

I drank it all at a single swallow to realise that Letho was staring at me flatly.

“Time you met “The Killer” Scribbler.”

And, Oh boy did I.

The trail for the Killer leaves Kaer Morhen and climbs up into the mountains to where the air is so thin that there were times when I was struggling to breathe. I felt light headed and dizzy as we ran, still with Letho calling out instructions to me, breathing easily while jogging backwards as he threw insults and directions back at me before turning and leaping across gaps or scampering up cliff-sides that goats would struggle with, without effort. Always ready with a quick insult or hissed encouragement. Then the path comes down off the mountain and down a large scree slope down the mountain where we enter the forests that border that deep valley. That isn't to say that the path was any safer, we still had to run along sheer drops or make long leaps over gaps that might have broken limbs had we fallen in. Even then we skipped entire sections of the track as parts of it had fallen into disrepair over the years and were no longer usable. We took the rest of the day over it and it was dark before our feet finally found the road and we started to head back towards the keep.

Letho was with me the entire way. Sometimes in front of me, sometimes next to me, sometimes behind me. He seemed to have an instinct for what I needed to hear and when I needed to hear it, whether that was an instruction, an insult or encouragement. He drove me to the edge of what I thought my endurance was capable of and then he pushed me a little bit further than that. I hated him that day. I hated him as he called out the pace, reminded me to breathe, or the effortless way that he would scamper up logs that I struggled to climb, or the grace with which he would leap through the air to catch onto hand holds that I would have missed. It was a brutal grace and I hated him for it.

That was another way of thinking about the difference between Letho and Kerrass. The way Kerrass moves and fights is, well, cat-like. He attacks furiously and randomly while at the same time maintaining a healthy respect for his own life and body but he does it with an absolute minimum of effort. His sword is razor sharp and he keeps it that way so that when it hits something, he only has to use the very minimum of force for that blade to shear through skin, flesh and bone. What Letho does is that he takes the most direct course of action.

Whether that's through the person or people or obstacles. Very early on in our adventures I witnessed Kerrass fighting a knight. Sir William the Ram, he was called and they fought each other on relatively flat ground. Kerrass dissected the man, aiming for his weak points until the man was helpless before him. I don't know for sure but I suspect that what Letho would have done in that situation would have been to kill the horse. He certainly wouldn't have allowed the knight to get to his feet. He would have walked up and stamped on the man's neck, or stabbed straight down into the visor. If the knight was on foot, I feel sure that Letho would have just struck the man in the head or used a simpler, stronger and more brutal tactic than Kerrass did. No less valid, and both things worked.

Kerrass is a masterfully crafted and wielded blade.

Letho is the sharpened lump of metal with a handle wielded with impossible strength and the knowledge that it would still get the job done.

There is skill in both men. Mastery in both.

Letho was so different from what I was used to. Even more different than what I had found with Kerrass and that day, as I ran, I hated Letho.

But I did what he told me. I ran until my entire body was screaming with agony and then I ran a little bit longer. It was a relief when I got down into the valley and we started to run along the tight packed ground of the road that Kerrass and I had ridden into the valley on and I could see Kaer Morhen in the distance, still dominating the sky-line.

It was getting dark by this point and the earlier feeling of oppression was beginning to build up again. I remembered what Letho had said earlier about the Wights coming out at dark and I found that I still had some more to give. Still had some more energy and I stepped up the pace.

I turned for the keep but Letho had different ideas.

“Where you going Scribbler?”

“It's dark,”

“So?”

“Are we not heading back?”

“Tired and hungry are we?” I could hear the sneer in his voice, even if I couldn't see it.

“Yes,”

“Day's not over yet. Follow,” I heard him rooting around in a pile of wooden things that were at his feet and he straightened with a lit torch spluttering to life in his hand.

He led me off, at a slower pace but still, not slowly. The path that he was leading me to went uphill. I could feel grass underfoot but I could tell that I was still on a road of some kind. We went higher until the road came to a flatter area and the hardened earth of the road became a looser, gravel and stone covered ground. A huge dark shape loomed before us. Not a castle, the likes of Kaer Morhen. Smaller, flatter and uglier.

“This hill fortress was one of the defences in the valley. Fuck knows why Kaer Morhen and the Watchtower weren't enough by themselves but, there you go.” Letho's voice drifted back at me through the air. “When I first came here, a man called Eskel told me that he used to be brought up here to train at the sword. He told me that the Elder Witchers used to bring them up here at night so that the young Witchers would have to get used to being around the ghosts of their predecessors. Heh, personally speaking I just think it was a joke played on the youngsters.”

He led me through an opening in the wall and I found that I was standing in a large courtyard. Shadows cast by the torchlight on broken stone, danced against the walls.

“So here's the thing Scribbler.” He planted the torch in the ground, wedging it so that it stood upright.

“Dinner's back at Kaer Morhen. You make it back there and I'll give you some. If not, I'll spend some time tomorrow looking for your corpse.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around several times rapidly. I had been expecting that cheap trick though and as soon as he let go I was looking for the torch flame, thinking that I could orientate myself using that.

But Letho was too quick. I heard him snap his fingers and a blast of air hit me in the chest and sent me tumbling. The same blast must have snuffed out the torch flame because when my head had stopped spinning enough for me to be able to stand, the light was gone.

The first thing that crossed my mind was not to panic.

The second thing that crossed my mind was the very distinct thought of “Why shouldn't I fucking panic?”

I found this second thought a little funny and let myself have a bit of a chuckle at my own brain. Then I sat down and tried to do some serious thinking.

First things first, I looked up at the stars to see if I could tell anything about direction or roughly where I was oriented. It was a good idea but foiled a little bit by the fact that astronomy was not my best topic but I could figure out which way was North. I remembered, from the approach to the castle that when Kerrass and I had approached Kaer Morhen we had come to it from the South. That was the same path that Letho and I had used to get us back to Kaer Morhen. From there the path had diverted off.

That was it. We had followed the path.

I tried not to think about the fact that I could begin to hear noises in the air. It might have been the moans of ghosts waking up or Wights deciding that their graves were a little bit too familiar.

I reminded myself not to panic.

Had Letho left me?

Possibly. If I shouted out for help, would he come back?

I doubted it.

Would he help me if I called out the “I quit,” sentiment. That was more likely but then I would never find out about the next trials.

I climbed back to my feet. The sky was without a moon so what little light the star-scape gave me was small. Starting with where I stood up as a centre, I worked my way out in a spiral pattern until I came across some rocks at my feet. Crouching I had a bit of a feel around I felt my hopes perk up as I found the torch that Letho had discarded. The end of it was still warm.

Those voices on the wind were louder than they had been.

No time to worry about that. Focus.

I carry a belt knife. Casting around a bit I found some twigs and some dry feeling grass. Taking the knife, the grass and a lump of stone I spent some time trying to make fire.

For the first time in a long time I thanked Kerrass for making me do most of the cooking as I was much better at lighting a fire than I had been when we first started the journey. I lit the torch and held it up.

Just in time to see the first wight levelling a sword at my head.

I threw myself backwards and heard it scream. I rolled, still had hold of the torch and I ran for the exit. The old fort really was just a circle of stone. But it was on two levels. I jumped down to the lower and pelted towards the entrance as the very real threat was behind me.

Thankfully I made it out of the circle fairly quickly and turned to see the green glow of the wight disappearing behind me.

I gave myself the luxury of a bit more time to catch my breath and calm down a bit. I looked up at the sky to check where I was but the torchlight had robbed me of my night-vision and I couldn't see. If I could find the path though?

Again I made a quick search of the surrounding area until I find a path that I thought was in the right perspective to the fort. Time to make sure though but preparations first.

Using the torch, I gathered a few more bits of dead grass and bits of twig and old leaves and tucked then inside my shirt so that, in theory I could relight the torch. Then I snuffed it out on the ground.

Again, I waited for my night vision to return.

Make use of all my senses.

The river. The river ran to the southern part of Kaer Morhen and I had been walking along a path that had branched off from the road into Kaer Morhen to get here.

Yes, I was heading in the right direction.

Taking my time and walking slowly so that I could feel the ground while checking the sky occasionally so as to check my direction of travel, I set off into the night.

I often wonder about that night. Obviously, everyone reading this knows that I made it back in one piece but where was Letho during all of my deliberations? I never found out. I do know that when I recounted this story to Kerrass when we were back on the road he first reacted with Anger followed by a kind of wry amusement along the lines of “Well, I guess it worked out alright,” and told me that I got off easy. But I've always wondered. I had no doubt that if Letho wanted to he could have done it so that I would never have heard him. He might have been mere meters away from me and I never would have seen or heard him and as I say, it was anything but a quiet night.

I found the fork in the road where the main causeway headed back towards Kaer Morhen and the other fork headed away South. I found it just as I was beginning to be convinced that I had missed it somewhere. I relit my torch in the entrance way to make my way through the castle and up to the keep.

The warmth that washed over me as I made my way back through those doors and into the keep was wonderful.

Letho was crouched over a pot, stirring it with a long handled spoon.

“Well done Scribbler.” He said without looking up.

It was a red meat stew that we ate that night. I can't remember much else about it. Letho ordered me to sleep after that and I now know that the old saying about being asleep before I hit the pillow is not an exaggeration.

I woke slowly the following day. I have no idea what time it was but I know that I became aware slowly. Painfully so but I had no desire to wake up any quicker. I allowed myself to slowly climb out of the state of unconsciousness. First, I was aware of light, then warmth and, relative, comfort. Then, when I was finally ready to make that last leap into consciousness, I allowed my eyes to open.

Then I made a mistake.

I shifted my weight.

My entire body yelled at me which was an interesting sensation. Not something that I had experienced before but at the same time I felt fully justified. Every bruise and ache that I had ignored in the face of Letho's scorn or encouragement came back to bite me.

I must have groaned because then Letho's voice drifted over to me from the kitchen area.

“Morning Scribbler.” He seemed far too jovial. Much more than I felt should have been allowed after the amount of effort that we had both been putting in last yesterday. “Rub the stiffness out of yourself. Things to do today.”

“Oh yes?” I managed to turn and through a truly astounding amount of effort I managed to sit up. At the time I felt as though climbing mountains would have been easier. Figuring that I was halfway there and after rubbing my calves for a few moments I pushed myself up to my feet and paced up and down until I could begin to feel the stiffness lessen. Not disappear. But at the time I was grateful for small mercies.

“Yes.” He was shuffling around somewhere just out of sight. I could hear metal squeaking and jangling as things pushed and crashed together. One of the things that I had began to get used to was that there was no scent of food.

I pulled on a fresh shirt and staggered off to relieve myself before coming back.

Letho had been busy while I slept. Next to the Kitchen area a space had been cleared and the things that I could hear being pushed around were not entirely pleasant in appearance. There was a sturdy looking table that had a huge array of tools on it that looked like the tools that a torturer might use in his day to day activities, knives, screws, boxes and cages. Sharp needles, clamps, vices and small jars of various liquids of varying colours. There were also several carefully coiled rubber tubes of varying sizes.

Next to the table and at a right angle to it was a ghoulish looking contraption. A little above waist height it looked like a cage. Roughly humanoid in shape and it had many screws, straps and things that I gathered were restraints of various kinds. Next to that again was a complicated looking glass contraption. Large hollow globes that were filled, a little over half full with another multitude of liquids. The globes fed into long glass tubes that terminated in tapered ends that were held closed with tiny spigots.

“Is all of that to do with the next trials?” I asked.

Letho said nothing. He was pouring a liquid into a large flagon which he then offered to me. He then picked up his own cup and led me over to the various apparatus.

“What about breakfast?” I asked.

Letho shook his head. “This bit is nasty. You might be grateful for not having eaten by the time we're done.”

“Lovely. The drink's ok though?”

“Yeah, it'll help with the stiffness.”

I took a sip and grimaced. “Not pleasant.”

“Medicine never is.” Letho grunted. I had wandered over to the table and examined some of the tools there.

“This looks horrible.”

“And it is. Sooner or later. Every one of us gets put in a cage like that one.” He pointed at the restraints, “We get tied into it and then they start administering the potions and the mutagens.”

“Lovely.” I took another sip from the cup. It really did taste awful and I put the cup down in an effort to not drink any more of it. Hoping that Letho would let me off with not drinking it.

“So what's involved?” I asked.

“Well, by this point the student has been drinking the potions and eating the mushrooms that we've been giving them since they arrived. They've been training hard and obsessively, developing their bodies and their minds to the point that they can accept the mutations, you get me?”

“I do.”

“So then, we lay the student down into the cage and we mix these potions into their blood-stream. This apparatus is a bit different from how they used to do it at the Viper school but it's similar enough to show you.”

He moved the glass globes round the cage until they sat next to where the patients groin would be.

“The best and fastest way to do that would to be just attaching the tubes,” he pointed to where the stack of them were on the table,” to the arteries in the groin. But we often found that when the student started to go into spasm, that needle would tear the skin and the subject would bleed to death. So more often than not we went in through the arms and neck.”

“Surely you would have the same problems going in through the neck as you would in the groin.”

“Yes, but it's much easier to strap the head into place than it was the hips. There are ways and means of course but that's never quite as efficient and made for more work. We needed to secure the head anyway as there was some stuff that needed to go in through the eye.”

“Yikes.”

Letho just grunted

“So when the patient was properly immobilised we would send the chemicals through the tubes and into the body where it would begin to adjust the nervous system and the blood flow in the body. Strengthening the heart and things like that.”

“And that's the trial of the grasses is it?”

“Yeah.”

“And how many people survived that?”

“Generally we thought we had done well if we got four viable Witchers out of the process.”

“What did they die of?”

“Liver failure, shock, sometimes it was that their body simply rejected what we were doing to it. Can you blame it?”

“Not really. Painful?”

“Very. Sometimes we couldn't find the arteries that we needed so that we had to dig around to find it. Sometimes that artery wasn't big enough to allow the free flowing of the mutagen so we had to...adjust matters. All the while, the subject had to remain conscious.”

I winced in imagined sympathy as I picked up a huge syringe. The needle, although hollow was big enough that I could see the hole in that needle without looking closely.

“I'm sorry.” I heard myself say. “That must have been awful.”

“It was. Finished your drink?”

“Sorry Letho, I think I'll live with the stiffness.” I tried to make it a joke.

I heard Letho take two quick steps towards me. I turned just as he punched me in the gut.

The breath whooshed out of me and I staggered, gasping for breath. I couldn't breath. Couldn't yell or scream. I still had something in my hands, a medical instrument of some kind. I swung it at him, more out of reflex than anything else as I was mostly doubled up. I felt him grab my arm and simply pull the instrument out of my hand. Then he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me up and backwards.

“You assume that you get a choice in the matter.” he grated. He pulled me back over to the table and tilted my head back, putting it down on the table so that my back was arched backwards. Using the other hand he forced my mouth open and put some kind of wedge between my teeth leaving it so that my mouth was held open. Then a peg was added to my nose so that I could only breath through my mouth.

“Drink, or drown.” Letho grated before pouring the contents of the mug down my throat.

It was a close run thing. I coughed and spluttered but the flow was unstoppable as the liquid was poured in at a fairly steady rate. In the end I gave up and swallowed out of self defence.

Letho's expression didn't change. He might has well have been a machine. Like one of those new fangled printing presses that I've seen at the university.

When the cup was empty, he threw it aside and let go of me so that I could crash to the floor. I pulled the clamp off my nose and pulled the wedge out of my mouth.

“What the hell are you....”

“Shut up.” Letho had turned his back to me and was fitting a length of rubber hose to the glass machinery. “You wanted to know about the trials of a Witcher. So I'm telling you. But you don't understand it yet. You still don't get it. No-one ever does. So I'm going to show you.”

“What was in that drink?”

“In the drink? It was a paralytic. Not to send you to sleep but so that you won't struggle as hard when I start moving you around. It'll make the injection go a lot easier.”

“You bastard.”

Letho ignored me as he attached another tube to the glass globes.

“Why?” I asked

“Because someone needs to know. Someone should know.”

He came back, crouched next to me and looked into my eyes. Whatever he was looking for he didn't find it as he took another length of tubing and started to attach that one as well.

“Ok.” I said. “I give up. Game's over.”

Letho chuckled. He came back over to me, removed my boots, my trews and my shirt. He did so professionally. I still had strength to try and fight him a little but I might as well have been punching a mountain. Both from the perspective of the person that I was hitting as well as the strength that was in my limbs.

“There's not a choice any more Scribbler.” He said after staring at my face for a moment. “You passed “The Choice” remember. Now we come and get you if you give up and run away.”

He picked me up under the armpits and carried me over to the cage where opened it and then threw me inside, arranged my limbs properly and let the lid of the cage close with a crash.

It was not lost on me that he locked the clasp.

Then he went to work, strapping me down, clamping me down so that hat little movement I did have was completely restricted. I couldn't move. I could barely breath. I could just about turn my head to watch him as he went about his business. Spinning handles and wheels. Doing up straps and buckling me down painfully so that my skin was pinched between the leather.

Lastly he came to my head, pushing my head back into place he fitted leather strap over the top which he then tightened using anther wheel. Another set of pads was placed on either side of my head and then tightened so that I was kept immobile.

It was literally as though my head was trapped in a vice. I couldn't see anything any more. I could only see directly up at the ceiling. Letho's face came into view.

“You comfortable Scribbler?”

“Fuck you.” I snarled although I suspect it came out as a whimper.

“Good. Hold onto that anger. Think clearly about how much damage you want to do to me and how much pain you want to cause me. The hate will give you something to focus on when the pain starts.”

He put the wedge back between my teeth.

“So this is the trial of the Grasses.” I heard squeaking metal sounds of something being scraped over stone floor. It would have turned my teeth on edge and caused me to wince if I had had the room to move. “This is by far the most famous of the trials and it's the one that Wizards and Sorceresses get all moist over when they hear about it. I don't know what goes into the chemicals but fortunately, the Wolves had some left over so, heh, we were lucky there.”

I could see the top of Letho's head now. I guessed that he was stood somewhere around my waist. I could feel him tightening a strap around my upper arm before he started flicking his finger at the crook of my elbow.

“Nice thick veins you have here Scribbler,” he commented, “That makes it so much easier.” I saw him lift a tube and fit a needle on the end of it. “Make some fists with your hands.” He instructed.

“Fuck you,”

“Suit yourself.” He flicked the elbow again. “There we go, you're going to feel a pinch.”

A pinch I felt. Then I felt something cold and slimy against my skin.

“Oh fuck it all, the mixture's spilling.” Something came out of my arm, I felt hot liquid over my skin and dripping down past my elbow.

“Half a moment,” Letho sucked on the end of the needle and then spat before bending over and looked like he carefully pushed the needle back into my arm. This time I really felt it.

It felt cold. But it burned at the same time.

Let me put it like this. Imagine being cold, you've been outside in the snow or something when you get handed a hot drink. Maybe some mulled wine or a strong liqueur. You drink it and you can feel the warmth go through your body, starting with your throat and then moving down to your belly before it radiates out like that.

The feeling of that chemical going into my body was like that only in a more concentrated way. I could feel that same fire move from the arteries to the veins and the capillaries and to the tips of my fingers. Calling it painful would be the world's worst understatement. It was like the insides of my body were on fire. But it hadn't yet reached my shoulder. It was crawling through me, slowly, so slowly. It was taking it's sweet fucking time as well.

“You think it hurts now?” Letho asked. He was over my face again. “Wait until it gets to your heart. Then we're really off to the races. But, we've got a different chemical to put into the veins on your other side. Also the ones in your ankles. Stay where you are now.”

I whimpered when I felt him insert a needle into my other arm.

By the time he had worked a needle into the pulse point on the inside of my ankle I was already screaming. Some of the chemical was now getting to the point where I could feel it in my lungs.

I felt as though I was drowning.

I knew I wasn't. I knew that I wasn't. In the same part of my brain that commented and remembered the things that had happened to me in the woods of Amber's crossing, that part of my brain told me that I wasn't drowning. But I felt as though I was.

I screamed and I screamed. But then I couldn't. I couldn't get enough air to scream.

All the while, Letho kept up his commentary.

“No shame in screaming Scribbler. No shame in it at all. In a fight I always thought that it was a bit of wasted breath to hurl insults or shout or whatever at your opponent but in this case, your voice is the only weapon that you have so get angry, scream, yell. Make me feel it.”

My left leg started to shake. I tried to fight it as the burning ice started to crawl up my leg but it got worse and worse to the point where the cage was audibly rattling.

“There were times when I used to climb up to the highest point in Viper Keep and scream my rage and anger out into the wind. But no-one ever came to rescue me. Just as no-one's going to come for you now. Your Kitty cat friend is down at the south end of the valley right now.”

I howled, time was starting to stretch out for me and the edges of my vision were starting to turn black. My stomach heaved as I so desperately wanted to vomit. The shaking had taken hold of the rest of my body now as muscles started to cramp and spasm in all kinds of different direction. Up, down, left and right. During one lull in the pain I tried to shake myself free, to pull out from the bindings but it was useless.

And I still couldn't breathe.

“You see, what the Trial of the grasses does is, it changes your physiology. This is the bit that makes our digestive system and our metabolism that much heightened. It's this that means we can drink the poisons that we laughingly call “Witcher potions,” so that we can fight the nightmares that live on the edges of humans consciousness. The cowardice that is so obvious and so pervasive. They created us so that they didn't have to worry about these things. So that they wouldn't have to face up to their own problems.”

That was the point where the potions started to reach my heart. The beating accelerated to the point where I could feel it beating at my chest, like a hammer on the inside of my chest. I wasn't screaming by this point. Instead I had scrunched my eyes closed and was just focused on breathing. It was a fight to get air into my lungs. The pain in my chest got brighter, harder and more fierce. I lost all feeling in my left arm and then an incredible pain in my chest.

I lost consciousness as the next thing I felt was general agony as I thrashed about into the cage, jerking around like a fish that had just been taken out of the water and thrown on the river bank. Letho was pulling a needle out of my chest as I woke up.

“Welcome back Scribbler. Your heart stopped for a moment there. Can't have that.” He leant close to my face then and the smell of mint washed over me. “You need to feel it.” He said.

“So as I was saying,” he went on. “This is the bit that means that Witchers are better able to take on the potions and things that we consume in order to be able to fight. It also speeds up our metabolism and renders us better able to resist the poisons and diseases that we have to put up with on a daily basis. The intake of all of these chemicals is hard on the body though. Kidneys, livers and hearts are only rarely able to keep up with everything that we're doing to it. Ooh, hold on.”

I heard something clatter against a tray before Letho's face reappeared. “This is also the bit that mutates the eyes. Hold steady now,”

He used his thumb to peel back my eyelids and I had enough time to see a giant needle descend towards my eyeball. I felt cold metal before some more of the silver fire crept across my vision.

I screamed. My vision had turned silver.

I don't know how long I was like this. Letho insisted on keeping me awake. I passed out, any number of times and he kept me awake by method of chucking buckets of cold water over me.

I hated him then. I wanted to go home so badly. I wanted to be told that I was stupid by my father and say that I would submit to marrying whoever he wanted me to marry. That I wouldn't complain any more. But Letho wouldn't let up. He refused to let anything continue.

“Now is not the time for giving up Scribbler,” he said, over and over again. “You wanted to give up, you should have given up yesterday. I would have fed you some nice food while you waited for Kerrass to come back from his moping but you wanted to know about the other trials and now, here you are. Your tired muscles are on fire and you can feel it trying to kill you. You might even want it to succeed by now. You want me to take the pain away. You're imagining the cold knife pressed against your skin followed by a short wet feeling and then all the pain, all the ice and fire and fear can be taken away. That's what you want. It's certainly what I wanted when I was where you were. But try as we might, your body will try and survive.”

The pain wasn't done with me. Periodically, fresh waves of agony, followed by nausea and a feeling of being submerged in deep water was followed with feeling absolutely dehydrated. I was sweating uncontrollably as well as shivering like I'd been left on top of a glacier at the height of winter.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I managed to ask at one point.

“Why? You asked me to Scribbler.”

Fresh waves of agony ripped through me then and my vision swam. The Quicksilver waiting at the edges of my vision.

“Never be ashamed of tears Scribbler. You are mourning the loss of your innocence.”

Gradually, so slowly, the pain seemed to lessen. I heard Letho get up from where he had, presumably been sitting on a stool.

“Is it over?”

“Nah. Next we move onto the next stage. The Trial of Dreams.”

“The trial of what?”

I screamed. The cage spun me round lengthways and suddenly I was facing the floor, suspended by the cage. Cold metal pushing into by body even though my head was still clamped where it had been. I felt Letho pulling out the needles from my arms and ankles.

“This is the really interesting bit.” Letho said. “This is the bit that's supposedly to do with the loss of emotion. It's the part where we change up your skeletal make-up so that your bones become tougher and more resilient to harm. We also adapt your nervous system so that you are better able to react faster as well as use all of the other mutations that we've given your body. It takes a special kind of something to make it so that the control of your pupils is voluntary rather than involuntary.”

“How do you do that?”

I shouldn't have asked. Letho crouched next to me. So that I could see him.

“Well Scribbler. You see this needle?” He showed my the largest medical syringe that I've ever seen. It was full of a strange cloudy yellow liquid. “I'm going to jam this needle into the base of your spine and inject the mutagens directly into the sack of nerves that live down there. If you survive... well.... we'll worry about that if you survive shall we?”

“Please don't,” But he was gone.

“Letho,” I called. “Please don't do it. I'm begging you. My father's rich. Letho?”

I couldn't hear him.

“Letho, I'm begging you. Please. I give up ok. You win. You win everything. Please don't. Letho I'm sorry. Whatever it is. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you just don't. LETHO???”

I felt a sharp pain on the small of my back before an agony that is indescribable ripped through me and I passed out.

I dreamt.

I was locked in a room and I couldn't get out. There was a door with a window and the window had bars there. I hurled myself against the door hundreds of times until my entire body was broken but still I threw myself at it. When my arms broke I kicked at the door. When my legs broke I used my head as a hammer. I kept battering at that door, over and over and over again until my head became soft and I could see splinters of bone against the cold, hard and unfeeling door.

But I didn't stop because I wasn't alone in the room and it was coming for me.

I was falling. Not a long way but I was taking my sweet time to hit the floor. At first I couldn't tell what I had fallen from but that didn't seem to matter. I couldn't remember if I had jumped or if I had been pushed. All of that seemed unimportant to me now though as I was falling. I panicked. I screamed for help but that still didn't seem to achieve anything. The panic left me.

“Fuck it,” I thought to myself and I flapped my arms like they were wings.

It didn't work. I fell to the ground but I didn't stop. My body failed to shatter into a thousand pieces, blood did not leak from my mouth, eyes and rectum. Instead I fell through the ground. The ground tore like I was falling through paper and I turned my head as I fell through the ground to see that the world that I had lived on for my entire life was nothing more than a paper sculpture made from the cheapest street corner reed paper. I reached out my hand to take hold of the sculpture but wherever I touched, the paper set alight and began to burn.

I saw a woman although I didn't recognise her. Her face was different somehow and I have no idea to this day who it was. She seemed familiar to me in some way as though I had known her all of my life. Known her and loved her although I had never worked up the courage to say anything or do anything to let her know how I felt. Then, in that moment that the fires of courage met the ice of rejection and I was about to turn away, she leant forward and kissed me on the lips. She stood up and took me by the hand to lead me off somewhere but then...

I fought on a battlefield. I was wearing a black helmet and a black chest-plate. My forearms were covered with bronze arm guards and I screamed my defiance at the enemy that was about to overwhelm me. I was stood on the walls of a city. I had not chosen this fight. I had been a cobbler, I had spent my days making shoes for all of those people that had come before me but then the enemy had come. The master of the city was an evil man and he had forced us onto the walls on fear of the deaths of our families. Even now, his Sorcerers were committing dark rites and I knew, in the deepest pits of my soul I knew that my wife was already dead, fed into the dark rituals that our enemies had come to stop. We were going to lose and I found that I was glad. The sections on either side of us had fallen but we had stood firm. We were going to lose and my soul was damned. I saw the spear that flashed at me...

I flew above the river, so close that my fingers could almost touch it. I saw my face in the water, but it wasn't my face that was swimming in the deep. It was another face. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman but they swam easily along side me and beneath me. Suddenly the being in the water put in a burst of speed and they sped up from the water. They came out of the water and caught hold of my bod easily as they bit for my neck. Their teeth were sharp and I felt blood.

I screamed.

I woke up.

“Welcome back Scribbler?”

I was lying in a bed. One of the guest ones in Kaer Morhen. The sheets were clean and fresh. I was clean and fresh, lacking in the odours of fear and pain that I might have guessed at.

“What the fuck did you do to me?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Letho was sat on the bed next to me, resting easily, hands folded in his lap looking at me calmly. I saw that there was an egg timer on a table next to him and a book that had been closed and put on the floor. “Well, I poisoned you a bit but other that, absolutely nothing.”

“But the...”

“You wanted to know about the trials.”

I examined myself while he talked. I could find no puncture marks in my arms, could feel nothing wrong with my eyes. I lifted up the blankets and could find nothing on my feet. At one point he handed me a mirror and my own features stared back at me. Head still shaved from the previous day but my eyes were normal. I looked tired but that was about it.

“You wanted to know about the trials and there's only so much that we can do to tell people what it's like to go through the trials of being a Witcher. People talk about them as though they're hard, unpleasant, uncomfortable things but they miss the truth. They miss the terror. The pain. The piss, shit and vomit soaked honesty of someone that actually went through them. You wanted to know what it's like being a Witcher. I didn't even begin to show you.”

His eyes became vacant.

“You thought that yesterdays exercises were brutal? Try imagine doing all of those exercises. Day after day after day until your hands and feet bleed and your muscles tear. When it started to look as though you were getting the hang of them then they would give you more to do. You ran the killer once and it took you most of the afternoon and into the evening in the early summer. The Wolven Witchers would send their apprentices to do it before breakfast and again before going to bed. If you took to long then you went hungry. The faster you did it in the evening, the more sleep you got. That was when you weren't woken up in the middle of the night because something needed doing or they decided you needed some training in darkness.”

I sat still and listened to him. It struck me again, not for the first time, that he delivered this entire speech without obvious display of emotion. He hadn't changed his expression once during everything that he had done.

“They did that kind of thing from the moment that the young Witcher recruit came to Kaer Morhen to the point at which they moved on to the next trials. All the time they were going through puberty as well as taking the Witchers Mushrooms and berry juices. You have no way of knowing but the pain of that circumstance alone. The extra growth, the extra development all the while happening while they are on their own, miles from home as they had these things done to them.

“Then, if they haven't given up or died under the watchful gaze of their Witcher teachers they get given the trials of the grasses. But that doesn't stop the work. They still train and practise and learn. The potions that I gave you were being administered day and night. Try and imagine it Scribbler. You're in the cage and being drilled on Monster anatomy and the formula of potions. And it wasn't just for the couple of hours that you were in the cage. No. They were in there for days at a time. There is just one cage here at the moment. There would have been dozens of them when Kaer Morhen was working at it's height. Probably in a basement somewhere where rows of cages full of screaming helpless boys as poison, literally poison, was pumped into their veins.

“Imagine it Scribbler,

“People would run away. Of course they would. Wouldn't you? I did, several times. I hated my teachers for that. For lying to me about how horrible the trial of grasses was. But they hadn't finished. Even if we survived the trial of Grasses there was the Trial of Dreams.

“Days melt into days. Weeks into weeks. Bones stretch and skin changes. Try and imagine it scribbler. Your eye, literally changes shape. You can't imagine it. No-one can. Then as your brain and nervous system adjusts itself to the chemicals and mutagens you descend into madness. The dreams after which the trial is named. The “Lucky” ones climb out of that black pit of despair and horror. But many do not. Friends that you have spent years practising with. Training with and you watch them die. One by one. Until only you are left.

Why did you survive? No-one can tell you. The prissy arrogant fuck of a mage comes to you with a book and a quill. He asks you about your experience so that they can make the process easier for the next batch of people. Not knowing how lucky he is that I don't grab him by the throat and not smash his head into a wall over and over and over again until he stops bleeding.”

I stared at him in horror.

“I put you through two days of “Witcher like” circumstances. Stretch that out over days. Stretch that... that torture out over years. That is what it's like. That is what the trials do to you. Write all of that Scribbler. Write all of that and when people wash their hands of it and say that it wasn't done by them, remind them that it was done so that they wouldn't have to. We did it to ourselves. The tortured became the torturer. Because they demanded it of us.

“People wonder why there aren't any Witchers any more. There are a number of reasons for that, dwindling numbers, persecution by people in power, death at the hands of the mob, our own drive to preserve our own secrets but there is another reason. That reason is that other Witchers decided that they would not be party to that any more. We had enough humanity to realise what we were doing and deciding not to do it anymore. It was our final act of rebellion. We could probably make new Witchers. If we all got together in one place then I'm sure we could put enough knowledge together to make it happen. Kidnap a mage or three to make them monitor the processes. But we decided that we wouldn't do that any more. That's another reason why we don't see Witchers any more.”

He reached down next to him and produced two bottles. One large and one small.

“The small one will knock you out for a couple of hours which will take us, roughly until dinners ready. The bigger bottle will send you to dreamless sleep. There's two nights worth here. Half tonight and then another half for tomorrow by which time the remaining potions will have left your body and you won't have any more side effects.”

“How...?” I began.

“I'm a Viper. I've forgotten more about Alchemy than the rest of the Witcher's put together. Contact potions as well as ingested stuff and a little bit of hypnotic suggestion.” He wandered off and brought over the huge syringe that he had used at the end. He jammed it into his hand and this time I could see that the needle fed back into the bottle. “What did you think I was working on the day before we started.”

“Why then?”

“You.” he said. “You and that fucking peacock that follows Wolf around everywhere. Between you you've managed to turn the Witchers into romantic heroes. We're not heroes. We can't be heroes, romantic or otherwise. I did horrible things to save my family and I failed. Most of them, if not all are dead now but I would do anything to get them back. I did anything to get them back including cause a great deal of death and destruction in order to save my brothers. I would do it again though but should that kind of thing be allowed in the first place.”

He shrugged.

“To quote that philosopher, what's his name? Moore I think his name was. What was done to us was monstrous. And they created monsters. No matter how many lives we saved or continue to save. We did this to children. To fucking children. As well as everything else that might have gone well as a result of our actions. That needs to be remembered as well.”