oOo
"Come around, children, come around!" shouted the long-nosed man, a big grin on his face. "It's time for a story you all know, yet you cannot get enough of!"
The tent was filled to the brim with gleeful children. Joy filled the air, and for good reason – it was the Resurrection Festival. A famed Abyss delver had gone for his last dive, to attain unimaginable glory, yet never being able to come back.
"Ahem! It's time for me to begin," said the entertainer, signaling his assistants to dim the lights. The children quieted down in anticipation.
"The last unexplored area in the whole world – the bottomless chasm, Abyss!
Filled with dangers beyond belief, only the bravest enter it."
He shot a smile at the audience. "And as you know, all of us delvers here in Orth are brave."
"There are five kinds of delvers here.
The red whistles! The apprentices, who are destined to become something great!
The blue whistles! The adepts, who know their way around the devilish chasm!
The moon whistles! The teachers, who share their vast knowledge with those who don't have any!
And the black whistles! The experts, who brave countless dangers and environments!"
"But wait," he stopped, raising a questioning eyebrow at the children, who had their eyes glued to the man. "I've forgotten one. What could it be?"
At the question, all the children erupted shouting, everyone wanting to answer. The entertainer took a step back, and started laughing.
"Ga-ha-ha! I see, I see! No doubt of it!
The last delvers are our heroes, those who surpassed all their limits and became something greater – they are the white whistles! The best of us all, they could even be called the conquerors of the Abyss!"
The crowd started in cheers, their noise drowning out that of the entertainers. Yet one white-haired boy stood back, eyes set straight and arms crossed. A voice whispered in his ear,
I'll be waiting, Geralt.
oOo
The First Layer, Abyss
Eyes sharp, Geralt walked downwards with a sedate pace. While he was in somewhat of a hurry, rushing forwards helped nobody, especially himself – one wrong step and he'd be plummeting down towards his death. The first layer of the Abyss, where he currently was, wasn't considered as incredibly dangerous as the other layers, but it still had its hazards.
He suddenly heard a distinct screech, as if the beast it came from had read his mind, and he pushed himself towards the rock wall behind him.
A thornwing. Solitary hunter, preys on what it considers weak. Three-star danger rating, a serious threat.
The big bird, a grey, fierce creature with wings with poisonous spikes on them, was approaching him with alarming speed. No use in hiding, Geralt pushed himself to his left, drawing out the sword on his back with a smooth motion.
It was not a good sword. Geralt hesitated to even call it a sword – the crossguard was nowhere to be found, the edge being littered with small nicks and breaks. But even the worst of swords were better than no swords at all.
The thornwing apparently thought the same, and its flight came to sudden halt. The bird's easy prey wasn't that easy after all, and it seemed to have second thoughts.
"C'mon down," growled Geralt. Suppressing a brief ting of annoyance due to inability to growl properly anymore, thanks to his newfound child-ness, he gave the blade an experimental twirl. He still had it, even if his muscles could use some work.
Instead of doing so, the thornwing gave one final screech and took off downwards. Geralt chanced a look off the cliff to see where it went, but soon enough the mists in the middle of the layer obscured the form of the bird.
"Good," he muttered to himself. While taking down a three-star beast was most likely in his capabilities, he hadn't especially wanted to do so – firstly because he wouldn't have been paid for it, and secondly because he had something else to do. A contract, in fact.
Now, in the city of Orth contracts weren't actually a thing. The monsters in the Abyss never actually left the Abyss, so there wasn't any incentive for hunting down them, apart from what one could salvage from them. For instance, thornwings weren't hunted because they were a threat, but because the poison they had inside their thorns could be used for antidotes.
But occasionally the Delvers Guild –the only official way people could become Abyss delvers, and the organization which Geralt and his orphanage was a part of– asked whistles of all statures to do tasks for them. They didn't pay, but the rumor was that people who did all sorts of odd jobs for the Guild got promoted faster.
And so, when asked, Geralt accepted. It didn't have any downsides to him.
The contract was simple, this time. A group of red whistles were missing – they hadn't been seen for twelve hours, by the time he had accepted the request to locate them. They were last known to be some 150 meters deep. He was told to find them, determine if they were still alive, and if possible, help them up to the surface.
Sheathing his sword and checking the depth meter -138 meters-, the young-yet-old red whistle started trodding down the path once more.
It didn't take long to find clues. He soon arrived in a small clearing, with no cover other than a few bushes and a straight view towards middle of the Abyss. A prime spot for feeding birds of prey. A few pieces of fabric lying around, alongside some feathers.
Thornwing feathers. It seemed his contract involved those damn birds, after all.
While Geralt had no witcher senses anymore, he trusted his gut when it said that something had happened here. Crouching down next to the cloth pieces on the ground, he examined them as well as he could.
"Dried blood," he noted quietly, old habits kicking in. "Two, maybe three hours old."
No doubt whatever had found the red whistles there had injured them on some level. Of course, it could be the blood of someone else – the path he was currently on was told to be fairly often used.
In any case, there was too little to go on. No prints, for thornwings flew, and no marks of movement nearby; he couldn't track them down from here. No, what he needed was different. He needed bait.
Taking off his backpack, Geralt took out some of his supplies. Chunks of root vegetables, some hammerbeak meat, and spices from faraway lands to top it off – there laid the perfect recipe for a filling lunch, and by happenstance, a perfect bait for carnivorous birds.
He lighted up a simmering fire, and mixed the ingredients in. Now he only needed to wait, and so he did, settling down on a meditative pose.
If Geralt was being honest, he truly enjoyed his solo-dives down into the Abyss. It reminded him of the times when he was still a witcher, surrounded by wild and untamed nature. Orth as a city was fairly pleasant; no rampant racism, totalitarian regime nor any ongoing conflict. Yet it still was a city – a hustling hub of trade and home to a vast mass of people. He had never been a city person, and the Abyss brought some semblance of sanity and nostalgia to his life with its dangers and mysteries.
They were simpler times, his times as a witcher, when he only had to deal with cunning sorceresses and their plots, overthrowing tyrant kings, and slaying minor gods in addition to taking the occasional monster contract.
Uh, well. Maybe not simpler, but more familiar.
His musings were suddenly interrupted, when a familiar screech filled the clearing. The thornwing had arrived.
Geralt quickly drew his sword, taking a guard position. Unlike last time, the bird wasn't slowing down – maybe it had had enough him, or maybe it thought it had a chance against him. It didn't matter.
It's going to get cut down anyways, he thought, and swung. And missed by a hair, the beast moving its large body surprisingly quickly out of the way.
It didn't stop its assault there – it turned around mid-air, and tried to swipe Geralt with its unfolded wing. Trying to wound him with its poison, as it could paralyze the victim in mere minutes.
Geralt managed to bring up his sword just in time to parry the blow, drawing blood and eliciting a shriek from the creature. It's attack on him wasn't in vain, though, since the force behind its blow was strong enough to fling the young red whistle backwards.
He barely managed to roll away from the thornwing's follow-up, and pushed himself off the ground as fast as he could. The moment he was on his two feet, he was under assault again – this time by fierce and quick pecks that no doubt could pierce his inadequate leather armor.
A beast having a three-star level danger rating is nothing to laugh at, he thought, weaving around to dodge the birds attacks. I got lucky with the Crimson Splitjaw. I won't get lucky here.
With that thought, the thornwing tried its luck with another swipe of a wing. A few quick steps backwards, and Geralt was out of its reach. What the bird didn't clearly except was him to close the distance immediately afterwards, going in for a lunging attack.
Showing impressive agility once again, it twisted around, avoiding a fatal blow to its neck. But this time the witcher reborn was ready for such prowess, and swung downwards with his sword, gouging a deep, red wound on its body.
The beast shrieked in pain, thrashing its wings around. Geralt was forced to back off, and look for an opening with care – a creature driven to its limits was much more dangerous than one which wasn't.
He just had to look for an opportunity to present itself. The bird would tire itself with its wild attacks, and then he could finish it.
Soon enough the bird started to lessen its flailing, hoping for a breather. Geralt wasn't about to give him any, and he jumped forward with a downward slash. Which the beast dodged, of course, and took air.
And started to fly away towards the cliffside.
"Come back here!" the witcher-delver shouted, taking after it in a sprint. The bird was already over the side, flying towards its nest down below, but Geralt was not about to let the monster fly away, leaving his contract unsolved - who knew how many it had killed?
And so he jumped after it. Not the first time he'd done something like this.
Wind whipped his hair, and he was swiftly approaching his target. He held his sword two-handed, as steady as he could. And with a sound a steel striking flesh, he struck. The sword pierced through the thornwing's abdomen, eliciting another cry from it, and together they fell towards the grounds below.
Then they crashed.