There are more! There are more! Beyond the spheres, comes the White Light, the Black Sun, the White Frost! From behind come the hands of our false gods, the King In Scarlet, the beast of beasts, the white flame, the ripple of fate and chaos, the thousand eyes staring down from the night sky, the shining path heralding a false dawn! The Blind Sheep will willingly gather to the slaughter as forgotten horrors cast a shadow out of time and starlight. Madness shall set the world aflame…
-Suicide note of Professor Radovid Garin, found scrawled in blood in his cell.
...
As the forest fire raged to the southeast, the Witcher thought he could hear screams riding on the winds.
He could see past the lands of Kaer Morhen to see the tops of the pines, oaks, and redwoods aflame. He rode away from the Trail, down old overgrown hunting trails and crooked goat tracks to avoid getting involved in Henselt's mad folly.
Kaedwen had never been the most prosperous of the Northern Kingdoms. With very little land for agricultural use and less precious minerals being mined in the mountains, furs and lumber were the main source of income for the Kaedweni. But ever since the war broke the only ones getting any coin were the Witchers. Mainly due to the explosion in the population of Necrophages and Spectors.
They're starving now with the lack of game. Famine was common in the northern parts, so the desperate Kaedweni would have almost certainly hunted every animal just to survive.
Despite his age, Roach was steady and surefooted as ever, avoiding getting stuck in wet muck of the road. It took him days to get towards any sign of civilization. All the villages he saw were either abandoned or burnt to the ground. Some had been abandoned when the War began, others seemed more… Recently violated. Some had bodies heavily mutilated, some had bones crunched from the hooves of warhorses and the teeth of beasts and monsters.
The world was full of monsters.
Most of the devastation was towards the middle of the country, where there was a zone miles thick of devastation created by endless raids, bloody pogroms, destructive sacking, and pointless battles. Where there was once fields of barley, and oats were now thick prairies of Buckthorn and other weeds fed by maggot and worm covered skeletons. The wilderness had taken over the villages, the flowers and grass providing ample coverage for outlaws, cannibals and worse.
At one point Geralt reached a forest where every tree had a hanged man or women. Geralt stopped counting at one hundred and six. Fools. Wiselec, will infest the country now. When Geralt reached a road, there was a sign post decorated with rotten skulls, with something illegible written in blood. This must be Henselt's territory. Geralt turned back immediately.
There were so many trophies tied to Roach that Geralt feared that she would be weighed down. He had heard stories from Lambert and Eskel but he never thought it was this severe…
He made it to a refugee camp. The northern half Kaedwen was full of these. Much of the wood had been cleared and used to create an enormous hastily made palisade, surrounding a crowded gord. Men bundled in thick cloaks and wearing hats made from pelts guarded the entrance. It had been common for Kaedweni to wear such hats, some for fashion, others for warmth. It was something distinctly Kaedweni that even war couldn't take away.
"What do ye what Witcher? We have no coin. And we're not letting you in." A middle aged man with one arm brandished a sharpened stick at Geralt. Geralt understood the warning.
"Relax, I won't trouble any of you. I want information."
The other younger man laughed cynically. "Where the fuck have you been Witcher? Your kind travels like Rats and feeds off our generosity. Haven't you been hunting?"
I've been dead for the past twelve years. It still pained Geralt to think he would never be able to thank her… No, get that out of your mind.
"How's the war going?"
"It's a fucking dance." The younger spat at Geralt's feet and left.
The older man sighed and bid Geralt to come closer.
Most of it was what he already knew. Three years after the Nilfgaard war, Henselt took advantage of Demawend's sudden sickness, and annexed the Pontar Valley. Crown Prince Stennis led the response forces. He won many battles, but got too cocky. When Henselt called for talks but on the condition that he went alone, Stennis stupidly accepted it. He was betrayed and captured for assurance of his father's capitulation. He sent armies toward the north, Adding Caingorn, Malleore, and Barefield to his own personal lands. When Malleore rose up in rebellion, Henselt burned the city to the ground.
These aggressions were not taken lightly by the other nations. They immediately issued a harsh embargo on Kaedwen crippling it's economy. But when the royalty by the peasents and serfs was threatened by the peasents and serf's there always was the nonhumans there to take the blame…
After that Henselt focused on making a heir. He had several new wives, and hundreds of cocubines (some were barely flowered.) none of them lasted very long. But they did make plenty of heirs.
Then to put it lightly Henselt went mad.
He started cruelties that Geralt had (maybe still) only believed were rumors. He took pleasure in torturing the poor and rich alike, particularly women. He kept the scalped hair of dwarves as a carpet, and the noses of gnomes and the ears of Elves in pickled jars as to observe his "victories." Humans weren't safe either. He flayed, decapitated, impaled, castrated, hanged, scalped, disemboweled, and mutilated entire cities worth of his own people, all because of perceived slights and treason. He even took out his rage on his own children. The Nobility, tired of Henselt's butchery (or more likely threatened for their lives) launched a coup against him.
But greed and gluttony have always been more powerful then decency and honor regardless of race.
Those who profited off Heselt's barbarism moved quicker than the conspirators could have noticed. Many were killed on sight, but more were tortured to death.
They weren't all killed however. When Henselt's eldest son Radovit, objected to his father's wrath, he was propped up by the "true patriots" and conquered the northern end of the country with ten thousand swords.
"Some fools think it's The War Of The Two Unicorns as prophesized by Ilthinne."
"Do you?"
The man gave Geralt a dark look and shrugged. Geralt gave him a gold Ducat and left. But not before the man gave Geralt some final bit of wisdom.
"What the fuck are we sposed to do wit this? I can't eat gold Witcher!"
.
.
.
The full moon shone through the ancient budding redwoods, showing the beginning of Saovine. Geralt cleaned his Gwyhyr, with absolute precision, refusing to miss an inch of blood. It was pointless sharpening and oiling it, as the blade would forever remain bright with a razor's edge.
Then again, he was only cleaning off blood he could see. It had been a force of habit, an act of reflex that he couldn't quite shake or break no matter how much training he had done since Rivia.
If there had been a fire, the dark smoky colors of the blade would have gleaned off the sword like Zerrikanni fireworks. But Geralt nixed that. He couldn't allow a strong monster to come in his state. Though it wouldn't have caught him unaware do to his heightened senses, his body had only just recovered from extreme lack of use.
Though some parts worked just as they had before…
His medallion suddenly hummed against his chest. Monsters were coming close. Geralt sighed, sheathed his Gwyhyr and unsheathed his silver.
A witcher's eyes shone bright regardless of time and day. However, any one could see the telltale turquoise glow of the lamps of moonwraiths. There were many of them, at least three dozen. Shit. His chances went from Gnome height, to zero.
Geralt went to retreat but when he turned to Roach, something happened.
When he went to untie his horse, Roach starred at Geralt. Well what Geralt thought was Roach.
Whatever abomination that had replaced his horse, seemed more nightmarish then any creature the Witcher had encountered. It's eyes had literary grown the size of saucers, piss yellow and covered in veins. It's jaw was unhinged and popping out of its mouth to form a grotesque smile. Its tongue had turned long and prehensile, rolling itself up in a spiral.
Geralt wasted no time. His sword cut through the monsters neck, cleaving it in half. As the head fell to the ground it returned to the original Roach.
That was Roach? What the hell is going on?
Geralt saw the light of the ghosts circle him, but before he could do so much as lift up his blade, they all turned to a wisp, and Geralt could only blink when they went inside his mouth.
The witcher felt as if his insides were being torn apart from within. His head felt like it was about to burst, his arms were as heavy as iron. If Geralt hadn't reacted in the next few seconds, he would have been possessed. He couldn't even think about the impossibility and absurdity of his situation…
"NOOO! I want him! I want to be alive again!" A male voice in utter torment scream inside Geralt's head.
"I want to see my baby boy! This body is mine, he doesn't deserve it he lost his daughter!" A mid aged women wailed inside Geralt's head.
Geralt bled from his eyes, nose, and ears, both literally and figuratively as the memories reopened old wounds and bandaged them with salt.
"I want to fuck… This mutants memories made me horny… Even the dead witch looks fuckable…"
That was the final straw.
Through sheer force of will, Geralt expelled the spirits from his body, screaming in rage. His normal emotionless demeanor was cracked wide open. The specters had remained corporeal for just a few seconds and Geralt didn't waste them.
Geralt wanted to kill every spirit in this forest caution be damned! He didn't care if he died here, they would pay for their mad folly. He was a professional and they were just dust in the wind.
He fought till dawn, where he collapsed from exhaustion, unaware of the incoming party seeking him.
.
.
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So, what do you guys think? Good prologue or what?
You see the idea of this came from my desire to write a dark, epic fantasy novel, but I wanted to get some practice before I started writing that. Since I respect GRRM too much to go against his wishes, I decided see if the author of the Witcher was fine with fanfics… AND HE WAS!
A few things to now about this fic. Unlike the author, I fully intend to expand the world of the witcher and make a seemingly living and existing world. I always wanted to know more about the culture of this world, cause in spite of it being my favorite fantasy world, next to Asoiaf and Berserk, we're given only scraps in terms of world building.
So, I guess you can guess I was disappointed by The World Of The Witcher. Sighs, what wasted potential…
I actually did research into medieval, and antiquity Europe, the Middle East, Africa, etc to make this by the way. And if you hadn't guessed already this already this is a crossover. If you get it right on the first chapter, I'll give you two internet cookies!
FUN FACT:
A Gord is a medieval structure similar to a ringfort. It's usually on a crannog or hill.
A wiselec is a spirit in Slavic mythology created by a man hanging himself. They were actually supposed to be Witcher 3 but were cut from the game.
I based the Zerrenkani off a mixture of Arabia and China, hence the fireworks. I got this idea from the fact that it was said that in the Witcher 1, they invented bombs.