Wet. Wet and miserable, just like any other morning in the cave. The old master was still snoring next to him, the fire was long dead, and the sun was hidden behind eastern clouds.
Yannik threw off the pelts that kept him from freezing during the night and the smell of old sweat and animal hide hit his nostrils. He remembered the first morning under the pelts. He vomited violently then, and didn't return to the cave until the night. Master gave him a sip of Redanian herbal from one of his hidden flasks and he slept like a baby. He was never given another sip, as the master said he should get over it - smells are your friend, not your enemy. Easy for him to say, he could smell deer shit half a mile downwind.
Looking at the old master, still snoring, Yannik got up, stirred the embers a bit, blew on them and placed an old, dry log carefully on the fire, drilled as it was, by termites, like a piece of Boclaire cheese. Not that Yannik ever had Boclaire cheese. He did, however, hear stories.
Picking up the bow and arrows, he looked with awe at the silver sword, leather-bound, with master's hand always on the hilt. Quietly, he snatched an apple from the heap in one of the nooks and headed out. He waited till he was a bit further from the cave to bite into it, with gusto. It was time to hunt for breakfast. Or lunch. The old master was great with traps and there was always a brace of skinned and gutted hares hanging from the ceiling in the windy part of the cave, drying. He preferred them smoked, but it required more preparation and the master always claimed that it was too much trouble for too little meat. Yannik liked to feel useful, so he was going for a wild piglet or a baby deer this time.
Their cave was near the top of the hill, but the trees still obscured any view of the island. There was a nice little protruding rock, some way from the cave, where Yannik liked to sit and watch the horizon to the east. He never saw a single sail on it, no matter how long he spent there, but he made it his duty to go there once a day and sit a little. It was a wild sea, with waves as huge as a house in the windy months, but it was the only window into the wide world he had left.
He remembered a lot of the world. Not his parents, though. The first face he remembered was Captain Malooky, eyes dark as coal, face covered in tatooes. He had a bald patch he always covered with an assortment of hats that none fit him too well. Yannik served on his boat for a long while, the Red Harpoon, a whaler in the Great Sea by name, selling contraband goods all over the coast in the down months. When the Captain lost the ship and his life in a game of Gwent, Yannik was out of work. A few years running errands in Cintra, until he grew a bit. He was probably 14 when he found work on Escoonia, a merchant ship that took passengers and was bound for Skellige, Novigrad, Blaviken and Pont Vanis. The moment they took off from Cintra, a weird storm hit. Yannik never saw such weather. Lightning seemed slow and fat and it would hit the ship's mast time and time again, splintering it. The crew managed to escape the Sedna Abbyss, but they came out of the storm on the far side, the ship almost torn to pieces, with the rudder gone and only half a mast standing.
Something moved in the bushes, some 50 feet from where Yannik was squatting on the rock, lost in thought. He couldn't smell things like the master did, but his eyes and ears were young and keen. The movement and sound of digging followed by short snorts could mean only one thing - a piglet or a sow, perhaps a boar. He waited until the sounds subsided slightly, and then started, silently, towards the place he first heard them.
You can never move without making a sound, Yannik knew, but being careful and barefoot helps. By the time he reached the bushes, the pig (or a boar!) moved about a hundred feet deeper into the forest. He could hear the faint snorts as the animal dug into the rich dirt, looking for insects, or perhaps even tuber fungus. The tracks were clear, deep scars in the forest floor, easy to follow.
He set the arrow onto the string gingerly, getting ready to take a shot as he came closer. He could hear the pig clearly, but not see it yet. One careful step. Then two. Then a sidestep, so he could look behind the big tree. He could now see the top of the pig's hairy back. Another sidestep. And another.
The pig was about 60 pounds of meat, a solid young boar in the making. Its tusks were already protruding on the side of its mouth. It was a moment of choice - the boar was looking in the other direction, but it presented a smaller target this way - if Yannik went around a little more, he could get a better shot, but he could also be noticed by the prey. Pulling on the string now, he took a deep breath and aimed. A little below the arch of the back, with a bit of luck, the arrow could find the heart and kill the animal on the spot. He released the air from his lungs and the string from his fingers in unison.
The arrow hit but did not enter the body as Yannik had hoped, hitting a rib and staying stuck somewhere around the left shoulder. The young boar let out a terrible scream, and started running, shuffling a little, disappearing in the bushes.
Yannik ran over to the place where the boar had been a moment ago, cursing under his breath. Drops of blood could be seen, but the young boar was as likely to die of blood poisoning as he was of the wound itself. It might take the whole day to find it, if he found it at all. He sighed and started for the nearby bushes, his head down, following a trail of hooftracks and blood. It ran clear for a good long while, with occasional drops of blood almost unnoticeable in the shade of the forest. Turning north-east, the path took the boar towards the overpass. Yannik knew that the boars used the overpass a lot, it was the only path known to him that connected the north and south sides of the island easily. There was still a bit of climbing involved, but at least you didn't have to scale the craggy tops that rose on the island's spine. There was supposedly a nest of harpies somewhere there, but he never ventured that far.
As he reached the overpass, Yannik realized he would have another problem. The ground turned to gravel and stone and there were no hoofmarks. Blood drops were the only thing left and they were rare. He wished again that the old master was there with him - he could follow the smell of the wounded boar as easily as other people followed a white stone road.
It was the master's nose that brought them to the island in the first place. After the storm left the ship alone, they had no means to repair the controls, no mast and no sails. Several arguments broke out between the crew and the passengers, and at one point swords were drawn. The old master warned them that once he draws his sword, it does not get sheathed without being bloodied first. They did not listen. There was four of them, and the captain was with them, and they laughed. What followed was a dance the likes of which Yannik has never seen, before or since. Old man's blade rose and fell but once. During that movement he crossed 10 feet and blood gushed from deep wounds on three different men.
The captain, white in the face, sobbing, grabbed Yannik by the collar, placing him between the old man and himself, sword still drawn. In his panic, he threatened to kill the boy if the old man didn't throw down the sword and leave the ship right away. Old master calmly placed the sword on the wooden floor and asked for one of the boats. He also asked for Yannik. He never knew why, although he was always glad he did. The old man was a witcher, a monster-hunter, his superhuman reflexes tempered at Kaer Morhen some 100 or so years ago. He has been everywhere in the Northern Realms and further, fought every imaginable creature and monster for crowns, orens, ducats, and florens. Sometimes, he fought them just to help some poor soul, sometimes he left poor souls to their deaths. He picked his fights, he said, which allowed him to live this long. Not the signs he used, not his skill with the sword, not his knowledge - just his nose. The old man would rub his large scarred snout with his right hand and laugh while telling the story of the first time he failed to listen to his nose because of a woman. The second time, he said, was when he did not leave the boy to the captain. Yannik smiled at the memory.
That was some months ago, or it might have been almost a full year since then. It was hard to keep track of time on an island in the middle of the sea, where the seasons didn't seem to matter much. It was mostly cloudy and rainy, except when it was cloudy and sunny, briefly. He learned much in that time. How to recognize and follow animal tracks, which plants were good for what, how to use the bow, to skin and gut the prey. They have been practicing with wooden swords, branches about an inch thick, every couple of days, when the old man didn't complain about his back giving him trouble. Yannik was probably getting better, but he felt he would never be a match for the old man and his lightning reflexes. He could parry a few, that was it, but he would get praised for it every single time. He never managed to get a blow in, that's for sure.
He stood there, uncertain. Then he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
"Could I smell you, pig?"
The overpass was silent. Clouds dissipated and the sun beat down on the gravel. It was seldom warm on this island, Yannik sadly learned, and he enjoyed the sudden onset of sunshine. The nights were particularly bad, and if it was not for the old man's ability to conjure fire right out of his fingers, they would have suffered much more in those first days on this lonely piece of land. Yannik suspected that the old man had more tricks up his sleeve, yet he rarely showed any desire to present them or even talk about them. It was only due to the sheer boredom of the evenings they spent together that the old man talked a little about himself. And when flint was found, the finger magic was gone as well.
From the overpass he had a great view of the northeast side of the island, covered as it was with thick jungle all the way to the water's edge. They never went that way because the passage was too cumbersome - the creepers were sticky and insects bloodthirsty - and any animal worth its meat would hear them coming a mile away. Still, something caught Yannik's attention, something that was not supposed to be there. His heart jumped in his chest at the tiniest smudge of white in the distance. It was there one moment and gone the next - but it looked like a sail! The island bent in that area with a huge reef made of volcanic rock, creating a peaceful lagoon on the other side, the exact place where Yannik and the old man first arrived at the island. The rocky beach had little to offer when it came to food, fresh water and shelter so they never went back there. They hid the the rowboat in the bushes, made sure it was high and dry and well camouflaged. Yannik bit his lower lip. What if whoever that sail belonged to could give them a ride? There was no time to go get the old man.
Yannik distorted his lips and created the closest replica of a cockatoo's voice he could. There were no cockatoos on the island, but only the master and Yannik knew that. The old witcher's ear will be able to pick up on the direction and he will reach this place shortly but Yannik had no time to waste. The old man will follow his tracks as if a path was clearly laid down in front of him. It was time to get going.
Picking up the pace, Yannik ran a good half a mile down the gravelly overpass, until it started to descend rapidly. He used one of the canals carved by the rainwater to quickly reach the lower levels of the forest. Once he reduced his elevation by a couple hundred feet he reached the stream that was going all the way down to the lagoon. Yannik started following it, bent double, stopping at each bush large enough to cover him in order to assess the situation. True enough, once he was closer, he could discern the shape of a smallish, one-sail boat pulled up to the rocky shore. It was empty, save for some bags and a small trunk. Yannik held his breath and listened. There was a distant sound of the forest floor cracking under someone's careless steps, up the southern slope, that lead to the Place of Worship that the old Witcher found, but was weary of. Perhaps against his better judgment, Yannik followed.
The unknown man's trail was easy to follow and Yannik was soon very close behind him. The man did not seem to notice anything or anyone, working his way upwards and forwards, straight to his goal. Yannik found a nice vantage point from which he could observe what was going on. He carefully placed an arrow on the bow, just in case, and waited with baited breath. The man, who seem to be wearing worn, but finely crafted clothes, had a full head of very dark hair. Yannik couldn't see his face, but his ears were unmistakably elven. His movements seemed joyous at having reached the center of the little stone circle and he started placing something at each of the four pillars. When he finished, he stood by the center altar, pulled out a handful of straw, placed it on the altar and used a flint to create sparks. The straw quickly caught fire, at which point he placed what looked like seaweed and other plants on it and black smoke started billowing.
"Nakamu asante Oghoghorno itti amau igana."
Yannik, having never witnessed anything out of this world apart from the old man's occasional useful tricks, stood up, agape. What appeared at each of the four pillars were some sorts of phantasmas or ghosts, hovering in mid-air. One of them resembled a bride in all but her face, which was distorted beyond any human features. It was a face of someone long dead, with an unnaturally long tongue forking out as it hissed. Another one was clad in green, a shadow with bony hands and features that showed themselves only between what dark cloth it covered self with, a sword in one hand and a faint light in another. The third one and the fourth one seemed alike, distinguished by the hair - one was dark as the night, almost glued to its skull-face, while the other one had auburn hair and it flowed slowly, regardless of the wind, as if it was submerged.
The man seemed overjoyed with their appearance, his face stupidly agrin, as he pulled something out of a bag, held it high and shouted triumphantly: "Nakamu Oghoghorno!" The specters drew closer to him, rocking in their unsteady rhythm. He tried the words two more times, each time less sure of himself and finally, with a scream, he started running away from the swaying horrors. Yannik ran out of the seclusion of trees in shock, but there was nothing he could do but watch the man being ripped apart by the specter quartet as if he was a paper toy. Each of them held onto the ripped part briefly then dropped it as if it was not what they wanted. And then, they turned their empty eye sockets to Yannik.
He stood motionless for a brief moment, gaping in disbelief, as they slowly, swayingly, came closer. Yannik remembered the drawn arrow and aimed at the closest one. The shot went through the ghostly presence without a hindrance, hitting a rock some distance further, bouncing off it clumsily. Yannik shook his head and turned to run, heedlessly, as far away as he could, but he only managed a few of steps in his panic before he staggered directly into the old man and found himself down on the ground, looking up as the old witcher applied oil to his silver sword, giving it a reddish gleam.
"Stay there." he said, matter-of-factly, his eyes focused on the wraiths.
He made a few steps towards them, creating intricate patterns in the air with his sword. He waited until they all drew closer and then made a sign with his fingers. As he did so, strange markings glittered in purple in a wide circle around him and all four specters screamed in unison. Whatever that was, it seemed to be hurting and disorienting them. The old man did a blisteringly quick dance towards the hooded figure and his quick cuts seemed to connect with its ghostly visage. As it received the beating of his gleaming sword, it screeched desperately, diminishing with each hit, and disappearing after he connected the fourth time. The old man turned his attention to the raven-haired wraith as it was getting ready to attack, quickly making another sign with his hand that sent it tumbling away, as if he held a small hurricane in his fingers. A quick dance to the next shadowy presence and it was quick work, as with the first one. The third one, a ghostly mirage of a dead bride was dispatched with five quick hits in succession. The old man's movement seemed a tad slower and his breathing was beginning to be labored. The last wraith was screaming, rushing back towards the old witcher, now that the markings disappeared from the grass. The old man picked a small bundle from his waist and threw it on the ground in front of the approaching phantom. The explosion of silvery fog seemed to greatly disturb it, and the witcher finished it off in a beautiful turn and a two-handed hit that sent the wraith into oblivion.
Yannik started breathing again.
"Old man, are you...is everything..."
"It has been a while since I had this kind of exercise", he half-grinned, with signs of perspiration on his forehead. "Now to see what our friend here wanted so badly as to risk his life and limb for."
As they approached the quartered body of the man, a terrible sound hit them like a wave and the stony circle first flew up and then hailed down all across the clearing, raining pain on Yannik and the old man. When they looked up, their hands, shoulders and heads bruised and cut, they saw a bluish-tinted creature, with a cylindrical, rising above them, over seven feet tall, six slanting cuts on each side, which opened and closed with regularity. It seemed to be breathing heavily, and each breath caused the shimmering body to increase and decrease its translucence, its internal organs almost visible. It had fins of various length growing along the trunk. With no warning, a tentacle shot out of its body at enormous speed, heading for Yannik. The old man made a lightning-quick sign with his hand and for a brief moment there was a glassy sphere surrounding Yannik. The tentacle hit it and it exploded, throwing Yannik back and destroying the tip of the tentacle. Some of the oily, gooey substance escaped from the tip and splashed on the rocks, smelling harshly, and the creature let out another scream, its body wiggling and leaning to its right. Then, another tentacle shot out of its left side, with a wet sound, aiming for the old man. He noticed it a moment too late and only managed to pull out his right hand out of its grasp, enough to cut the tentacle coiled around him with his sword. As soon as he was free, he hurled two bombs at the monster. Their explosions blew away the creature's outer layer and exposed its innards, a jelly substance with organelles of various colors moving and pulsing in it.
Yannik was back on his feet with no time to think. His bowstring hummed with determination, releasing arrow after arrow, trying to hit the colored parts of the creature's insides, each hit accompanied by an inhuman, guttural scream. The old man approached the gelatinous mass and a brief stream of fire emitted from his hand. The creature turned its back (did it even have a back?) to them and started to limp away, towards the cliff. The old man came steadily closer, readying the final strike. He brought his silver sword high above his head and stopped. He stood there for the briefest of seconds, before tottering to the side and falling to one knee. The creature labored its broken body over the edge of the cliff. Few moments later, far below, there was a thunderous splash.
Yannik felt a pang of fear as he dropped his bow and ran over to the old man. He was already undoing his leather garments, gasping for breath. As he removed his sleek black leather jacket, they both noticed the blood on the plain cotton shirt he wore beneath. Slowly, in obvious pain, the old man took it off. His torso and his arm, all grey hair and matted muscle, showed a thousand little prick-marks, where the tentacle had grabbed him for a brief moment. The flesh around them was already turning bluish.
"It is...poison...I don't know which." said the old man. He laughed and coughed a little.
"I don't think...I am immune to this one."
Yannik stood there, on the brink of tears, looking at the old man, unable to move a muscle. The old witcher dropped down on his right elbow and then lay down on his back.
"Yannik."
The boy awoke from stupor and approached him quickly.
"I never thought I'd this, but I actually seem to have someone...to pass my belongings to, such as they are."
The old man laughed and coughed again. Yannik felt a warm tear on his right cheek.
"It's not a lot. Remember to take off…leather armor. One day...it will fit you...worth its weight in gold." He coughed and spat.
"My lungs are filling with fluid... whatever you find...in the cave...is yours. All I want to take with me...is the medallion..." Another bout of coughing stopped him.
Yannik made a pillow out of the old man's leather jacket and placed it gently under his head.
"Silver pendant...fleur de lie...remember Raquell du Moppasaint...she can help...show it to her." He swallowed and coughed some more.
"Turn me to the side."
Yannik did.
"Remember...silver sword for monsters only..."
The old man coughed terribly, shook a little and spat blood.
"That creature...it lives."
Yannik turned around, half expecting to see the jelly-beast climbing over the cliff, but there was nothing. He was looking away for but a moment, but when he turned back, the old man's eyes were closed.