A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

148. Chapter 148

(A/N: Something of a disclaimer really. I have played through Witcher 3 several times, Blood and Wine specifically, 3 times. I have never ever taken the route of going to see the Elder. This is because, to me, Geralt would listen to the advice of the people advising him. So it's just never come up. I was aware of him and knew that he was out there and enjoyed the references to him, but I never actually saw him in action. I found that I preferred the mystery of him, the looming horror involved in not seeing him in action.

However, this particular bit about Freddie and Kerrass visiting the Elder has been coming for a while and I looked up the Elder's appearance and actions on Youtube. What I saw was… well… it didn't fit with what I had in mind.

So this is one of those times when my story falls more into an elseworlds kind of thing. This Elder is similar, but not the same as the Elder in the game. Please don't come at me about it. You have been warned.

Also, Off the top of my head, I could not remember the layout of Tesham Mutna and could not find a map. I will admit that I didn't look very hard as it didn't seem that important.)

(Warning: Contains scenes of character anguish, written from first person in historirical documents.)

Have you ever been really disappointed by the humdrum, boring reality of the way things work?

It happens on a semi-regular basis and it never fails to bring me down a little bit. It leaves me feeling as though I have been sold a crooked bill of goods, or that I have been mistreated in some way. Most commonly this is because, when things start, especially situations like this, I kind of feel disappointed that it doesn't start on a dark and stormy night.

It should have been a dark and stormy night.

It wasn't.

It was in fact, a pleasant spring afternoon when Ariadne came to Kerrass and I to inform us that the Unseen Elder of the Vampire race was ready to see us and that we needed to go right away. She had already arranged for our horses to be brought and saddled. She had put supplies aside in case the trip would take more than the day that she expected it to take and she had let the right people know that we would be gone for a little while. It was all rather… mundane. Kind of boring. It was as though we were all getting ready for a trip into town or a ride towards the market.

It was, by this point, several weeks after Jack had rampaged through the prison of Toussaint and made his little statement and as pleasant a period of rest and relaxation, I would struggle to remember off hand.

Yennefer and I had come to our agreement that we would work together on a series of academic books and essays. We would be attempting to catalogue some of the more unique and powerful entities that walk the face of the continent. We spent a few days talking about how we were going to do that, coming up with plans, processes and the like and it was as stimulating a time as I can remember having in the past. My health, both physical and mental, started to improve at something that was nearly an exponential rate and I felt stronger and stronger by the day.

Yennefer and I came to the conclusion that we would work together on these things until it got to a point where we couldn't stand the sight of each other at which point we would divide the work as best we can. In that event, Yennefer would work on those entities that were of a more magical nature and I would work on those entities that behaved more towards the natural world.

Lord Geralt had insisted on us agreeing to that point. He seemed to be of the opinion that there was a danger that we would fall out and that it might be catastrophic. Therefore, he insisted on us detailing how the work would continue should that happen. He wanted to make sure that neither she, nor I, would be tied up in legal or political wrangling when that would happen. The fact that he was so convinced that it would was only a little bit off putting.

We were still excited about the new idea though so we weren't that worried.

The process was going to be that we would try to catalogue the entities first, making contact with those creatures that might know more, or would point us in the right direction. From there, expeditions would be mounted to try and find the entities. After which, the friendliness or the approachability of the entity would be assessed. If the entity could be approached with relatively little to no risk, then I would get involved and an interview would be arranged. If that wasn't possible, then the book would be more based around the interviews of those people that had seen, or interacted with the phenomenon or entity.

We had numerous subjects to start with. It was agreed that we would leave the Beast at Amber's Crossing until a later date and it was clear that I was feeling better. Yennefer decided, all by herself, that she would take the lead on that particular investigation when the time came. In the meantime, we would be investigating and nailing down some leads.

Lord Geralt had written to a couple of the other Witchers to see what could easily be found. Kerrass was planning an expedition, funded by the Coulthard trading company, to investigate the Black Forest of Southern Nilfgaard. Kerrass and I had been promised an interview with the Unseen Elder of the Vampires and Lady Yennefer was communicating with a few of the other Sorceresses on the continent. It was also agreed that I would speak to one of the Yukki-Onna that were accompanying Jarl Helfdan and Queen Cerys to my wedding when the time came.

In the meantime, winter was passing, turning into spring and we were left to wait for when Ariadne told us that the Elder was ready for us.

It was a busy few weeks. For a start, Emma is bullying me into telling everyone that Kerrass and I got Knighted for services to the realm. After Jack had left and it was clear that I was recovering, the Duchess had already made some noises about wanting to throw a banquet in gratitude to those of us that had aided in the efforts to end the conspiracy.

As a result of that, predictably, all of the Knights of Francesca that were honoured, people like Guillaume, Gregoire, Palmerin and those that had taken part in the assault on Leblanc lands, turned down their rewards to a man, insisting on the fact that serving the realm of Toussaint was considered reward enough.

The courtroom was filled with a chorus of people saying things like "Well said," and "Rather." I shit you not.

The duchess ignored them and rewarded them anyway. Guillaume had a lump of land given to him as part of the reward. He is already his Uncle's heir but now he had a small parcel of land attached to those greater estates of the de Launfals.

Sir Gregoire was also given some extra land rights to expand his own holdings. Also, the wealth that had been confiscated from the conspirators had been put together in a fund. An amount of that would be applied to the cost of Gregoire's coming marriage to Lady Anne of Beauclair.

Palmerin had something similar. The succubus, Natanis, had returned from wherever it was that she had disappeared to and once again hung off the older knight's arm, making him smile easily and scandalising the rest of the court with her low cut dresses that seemed to be held on by the eyes of every man in the place.

Syanna and Damien were given an early wedding gift of the de Moineau estates which both of them tried to refuse on the grounds that the wedding was still some way off. Duchess Anna refused to listen to this though and informed both of them that she expected to be able to order the ducal Seamstress to design a new dress by the end of the year. She said these words with a dour, forbidding tone and I did not doubt that she would do her utmost to prevent the two of them from fucking about.

Literally and figuratively.

So all that was left was Kerrass and I. The court of Toussaint, being the court of Toussaint, decided that they wanted to knight us. There had been some arguments with the Imperial heraldic college about this, on the grounds that I was technically a noble of Redania and given Toussaint's equally technical nature as a separate country, this was proving to be a bit of a nightmare. Kerrass was easier to arrange on the grounds that Lord Geralt was already a master of a significant piece of land.

So the legalities of the matter were wrangled at the Empress' insistence. Something that, I'm told, she arranged because she thought it would be funny. We would be Knighted and be allowed to call ourselves "Sir" which I find constantly mortifying.

The ceremony was nice enough. It was a Knighting on the point of an act of service, so we didn't have to sit any vigils or anything like that. It was just a case of kneeling and agreeing to uphold the laws of chivalry. I listened carefully and there was nothing there that I could object to and plenty that I could agree to.

Emma was substantially more delighted than I was and boasted about it often and loudly. Mark was equally as proud, but I thought I detected a hint of concern in his eyes. That concern echoed my own feelings. I was all but convinced that my elevation would be the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Sam.

I still haven't heard from him.

Ariadne was proud. She accompanied me to the ceremony wearing the most fabulous dress that I have ever seen her wear. It was a vision of Beauclair fashion with just a hint of the darker shades of those colours. I rather sensed Yennefer's amused influence at work regarding the dress, but I didn't resent it. I spent the evening whispering filthy things into her ears and trying to make her giggle.

I failed, although she did reward me with the largest, most passionate kiss before she sent me to bed.

"Something to think about," she told me as she left me at my door.

Kerrass bore up well. He walked to the dais alone, but pointedly stood to one side as though he was making room for someone who wasn't there. I didn't ask him who that was, I didn't need to. The gesture was certainly noticed by the crowd.

As a Knighted man, I was gifted with a small parcel of land to call my own. Little more than a handful of acres and rulership of a small village. I have been to see it since then and it is very beautiful. I have no idea what to do with the place but the village seems to be largely self sustaining.

Emma has promised me some farming reforms and the like to keep them going and lift them up a little. The villagers are insisting on building me a "Manor House" on those lands. I tried to tell them that my needs were not that great and that I would be quite happy with a nice cottage somewhere nearby, but they were having none of it. It took me a little while as I was, and am, still a little dopey, but I eventually realised that the Manor House had nothing to do with me. The villagers were building it as a point of pride.

Ariadne and I resolved to be DELIGHTED with whatever it was they produced for us. It's not going to be ready for another year or so though so for now, I don't need to worry about it. It falls heartily under the prospect of… "We might winter here in a year or two as we certainly won't be back this side of marriage or even for a while after that."

Kerrass asked for, and received, the rambling cottage that he had used to meet with Lady Moineau. Her friend still stayed there and from what I understand, Kerrass has no intention of turfing her out. The lady in question is distraught now that the figure of her hatred has died along with her friend and doesn't seem to know what to do with herself.

Guillaume said that he is going to try and take her in hand.

We were also given a sword each. Kerrass was very impressed with his and it has already replaced the steel one that he normally carried on his back. He complains that there might be a problem in the future in that the hilt is obviously richer than his old blade which might inspire robbers, but the weapon is just too good to ignore.

I have yet to decide what to do with my own sword. Apparently, it is a work of art, both of the utility kind and the aesthetic kind. Some people, including Kerrass, Lord Geralt, Syanna, Guillaume and Gregoire have all suggested that I learn how to use it. Similar to the way people refer to my learning how to use Father Gardan's axe which is still safely stored up in Ariadne's house in Angral. I am less convinced, despite the expert level tuition that I have access to. I have not lost that sense of… distrust of swords that was taught to me on the training field.

After that, it was mostly a lot of fun. At Syanna's request and invocation of my new Knightly duties, I gave a couple of lectures on courtly technique and investigative skills at the knights chapter house. Kerrass also gave some lessons on monster-hunting and some sword techniques that were added to the general knightley education.

Mark left soon after my Knighting ceremony. He claims that he still has a lot of work to do before he will be forced to retire from his current position. He visibly tires over the course of the day now, and every so often, you can see him just sitting there vacantly. After a while, it becomes clear that he is just not there. That his body is just a shell and that his mind and soul have fled. Then he blinks, smiles and is back in the room.

He forgets things now. Not big things. Not names of friends or family and I would bet that he would still beat you in an exam regarding the holy writings of the Prophets. But the other day, he got upset because he couldn't find his Cardinal, signet ring. It was on the table, literally in front of his eyes. He couldn't see it, even when we pointed to it. It wasn't until Emma picked it up and put it on his hand that he settled.

It will break my heart when he dies.

Emma and Laurelen left about a week later. They had stayed for a while to see to some business and arrange some donations when it came to the new "Just Some Girl" shrine. I was sad to see them go but I would be seeing them soon. The working plan was that when we had paid our visit to the Unseen Elder, I would take the transport gate back to Angral to pick up my gear when I was ready to leave Toussaint. I had some social things to attend to, before going on to Castle Coulthard.

Then it was just a case of settling in to wait.

There was plenty to do. Ariadne and I acted as official chaperones to Syanna and Damien's first walk by the river. It was actually very sweet. He did well, bringing her flowers and a poem that he had doubtlessly persuaded someone else to write for him. Syanna looked radiant in the frock that she insisted on wearing. It was a pink, frilly and lacy thing that was clearly styled for a girl half Syanna's age, but somehow, the younger sister of the Duchess wore it beautifully and made it look good.

They walked along the riverside path, arm in arm, before the four of us stopped and had a picnic where Ariadne and I pretended not to notice when the two of them snuck off for a kiss and a fondle behind a tree. They were acting like young people in love and although Damien looked a bit self-conscious, Syanna was having a blast.

I had promised various people that I would visit them, before or after the visit to the Elder. There was a tournament coming up that I had been invited to and there was also the matter of Sir Gregoire's marriage to Lady Anne. The pair had asked for, and received, permission to marry quickly in order to get round all of the problems regarding Anne's history and Gregoire's reputation. Guillaume and I had been asked to stand next to Gregoire and that was one honour that I did not intend to set aside.

Anne was radiant in her new role. I had set aside my feelings for her now and although I had, at first, been concerned that my heart would break, I actually found it easy to move on, my feelings turning from erotic desire towards easy fondness. I am enormously glad of that.

But I couldn't really do anything or make any concrete plans until this matter with the Unseen Elder had been finished.

Ariadne had asked that we stay close to Beauclair while we were waiting for the Elder to call for us.

"Why?" I asked. I was just curious. I certainly hadn't intended it to be some kind of important question. It was just… the thought that occurred.

"The Elder is…" She began before stopping to consider. I felt my mouth open in astonishment. Ariadne was flustered.

"The Elder is capricious and changeable in his nature." She told Yennefer and me. Kerrass and Lord Geralt were out somewhere doing whatever it is that Witchers do when there is nothing else to occupy their minds. "He is very changeable and utterly lacking in patience. He is a being of moods and he values his privacy intensely. He has torn apart others of us for approaching him when he did not want to be approached, or asking a question beyond the arbitrary number of questions that he wanted to be asked."

"Has he told us how many questions that I am allowed to ask?" I wondered. I had visions of having to prepare a list so that the interview wouldn't be wasted.

"No." Ariadne replied. "I have arranged that, when he calls, you will be able to ask questions until you stop and that if his impatience gets the better of him, then he will be forced to warn us of the situation so that we can leave."

"How did you arrange that?" Yennefer wanted to know. She was taking notes.

"I promised him something."

She saw me looking and answered the obvious question. "I promised that I would be in attendance and that I would follow his orders exactly and without hesitation."

"Is that all?" I wondered without thinking.

"It is a lot." Yennefer said. "What does that mean?"

"It could mean anything." Ariadne told the pair of us. "I have met the Elder on two occasions before. The first was when he acknowledged me and my existence. That would have been… roughly a century after I had been born."

"Sounds something like a baptism." I said,

'That is not far from the truth. As you will both know, the population of Elder Vampires is tightly controlled on the continent. There are many reasons for this including… Wait, am I being interviewed?"

"No." I lied.

"Perish the thought." Yennefer said calmly, writing down some notes.

"There are many reasons for this." Ariadne went on, glaring at us both suspiciously, "But the main one is that if two vampires create a third, then what they are doing in reality is to create a future competitor for food stocks and the like. In more modern times, there is the matter of secrecy. We don't want to be discovered and have a situation where we find ourselves at war with the other sentient races. I, for one, believe that that is a war that we cannot win now that I have seen what we are up against."

She looked at me. "Thank you for making that clear Lord Frederick."

"You are welcome Madam." I said, bowing from the waist.

Ariadne winked at me.

"But the third reason is that the Elder wants to keep a close and careful watch over us. As I've tried to warn Freddie, Vampires love passionately, but we also hate and rage and destroy with equal passion as Toussaint has found out to it's cost. Therefore, the more of us there are, the more likely that disaster is to happen. There are, I think, other reasons that exist in the Elder's head, but he doesn't tell us why he likes to keep the numbers of us relatively small."

"I know you possibly won't answer." Yennefer said. "But how many Elder Vampires are there?"

"You are correct," Ariadne said. "I won't answer, although it's more because I am not sure rather than anything. In our clan, there are," she tilted her head to one side as she thought, "under fifty or so, I think."

"That's a small number to base a population on…" Yennefer rose and moved to a shelf where she took down a book. "Des Moines wrote that for a society to thrive before genetic illness and mutation sets in, you need a base of at least three hundred people. Of which, the ratio must be, at least, three females to one male. Yes, here we go. 'It would be a mistake to assume that such efforts would be pleasurable and any that think that such a state of affairs would be beneficial would do best to consider problems with fertility rates and survival rate of giving birth. Love is a luxury that could not be afforded for at least four generations. Preferably more. It would be a singularly unpleasant way to live for both the male and the female as the first duty to ensure the viability of the colony would be procreation.' Don't quote me but I think he went on to say that each woman in the colony would need to give birth an average of six times at least."

She shuddered.

"Who is Des Moines?" Ariadne asked. "I have never heard of them."

"Not that surprising." Yennefer said. "He was a stuck up prick, astoundingly arrogant made even worse by the fact that he really was as clever as he thought he was. I studied his work when I was interested in tracking… well…. His primary field was genetics. Someone challenged him to come up with how they could launch a colony effort and what the minimum number of people would be required to make it work. Presuming that there would be no more colonists after the first load, I think it was some religious fruitcake of some kind that wanted to found the perfect society away from all of the rigours of the modern world.

"I don't know who it was, but such men tend to want to surround themselves with impressionable young women and think they can get away with just fornicating all the time."

"So it is possible that the matter is the Elder's concern for genetic mutation. Fascinating" Ariadne mused. "I had not considered that. Science is not a common pass-time among my people, genetics even less so. It not coming up is… not that surprising."

She frowned.

"Hold on." I said, "That's the first time I've heard anything about there being Vampire Clans."

Ariadne took a deep breath. "It's not as exciting as you are probably thinking it is." She said. "There were three clans that came through the rift at the time of the Conjunction of the Spheres. One, led by the Elder, my clan, stayed near the rift to guard it against the day that the rift would reopen and the Elder could lead our people home. The others left for other places on this world."

Yennefer had leant forward during this speech, "Where did they go?" She asked carefully.

"I have no idea. It was well before my time."

Yennefer sat back, concerned and disappointed.

"I don't think you need to be too concerned though." Ariadne went on. "They have have not been seen or heard from in, literally, millenia."

"Were they any different to you?" Yennefer asked, scribbling furiously.

"In what way?"

"Different abilities, different skills, characteristics."

Ariadne shook her head. "As a race, we differ from each other. We very much self-dictate as to what we can do. There are similarities to be sure. The claws, the teeth, the feral nature of certain aspects of us. The fact that we are all but indestructible. To my mind, the difference in clans would be a lot like how Redanians are different from the people of Skellige. I understand that there are, or were, some small cultural differences. And for all I know, the reason that the clans left was because they were fed up with the Elder being… the Elder." She shrugged.

"There was a second time that you visited the Elder?" I prompted.

"Not quite true." Ariadne held a finger up in warning. "I said that I have met the Elder twice. The first was when I was inducted into our society and, yes, it was a lot like a baptism. The second time was when he summoned us all when the humans landed in the Pontar valley and we decided what we were going to do about it."

"Then how did you…" I petered out.

"He deals with the world through intermediaries." Ariadne said. "He will choose someone, or whichever vampiric servant is in the local area. The Bruxa, Alps, Fleders and the rest. He chooses them and we talk to him through them."

"Why? Yennefer wondered.

"The Elder has stationed himself as a guard. When you enter his realm you should know that he lives in the place where the rift opened through which he and his followers were spat, when the Conjunction happened. It is a strange place where the normal laws of the natural and Supernatural do not apply. He rarely leaves it. If we go to see him, then we are interrupting his watch over the place and might, in his mind, distract him from the moment when the rift opens again.

"The other factor is that the Elder is able to speak to all who are descended from him and before his will, we are but children. When he commands, we must obey."

I felt myself frown. "But hasn't he arranged that, in return for asking my questions, you must obey him?"

Ariadne shifted in her seat. "Yes."

"But if he can do that anyway, then why would he need to make that deal?"

"He wants to exert his will by her choice.'' Yennefer said, finishing a line of writing. "It's an obedience by choice rather than by necessity, biology or rank. A lot like the way such things work between two lovers."

I felt a trickle of fear. "Is he going to…"

"No no." Ariadne said. "He has no interest in such matters. I don't even know if he still has the ability or even the equipment to act on physical lust, even if he was so inclined."

"What does that mean?"

Ariadne shifted again. "You will know it when you see it. But his… psychological commands are painful and forceful to accept. To receive. It has been known to destroy some who are weaker than they should have been and as such, he would not want to destroy, even by accident, one who might still be useful to him."

"But not the other Vampires. The… what did you call them. The servant Vampires."

"They are, often, feral creatures. Bred for a service that neither they, nor we can remember." Ariadne shook her head sadly. "In the old world, I pitied them for being inferior beings. In this new one, the person I am now? I pity them for what we made them into. I wonder who they were before we did those… things to them."

She shuddered. "Having read and listened to some of what Freddie has talked about, with Jack, the Goddess and the rest, I have come to see our race in a new light. I see us as soldiers… not even that. We were weapons in a war that is long over. A war that was over before my parents were even born. And you must promise me that you do not tell the Elder this.

"I see The Elder as being one of those old veterans of one war or another. A soldier who was never more alive than when he was fighting. Who's life peaked in the depths of that war and since then, has been nothing but disappointed in the come down from that. Who still feels as though that war was the very pinnacle of their existence. I think he still waits for the battle trumpets to sound to call us back to the battle lines. Where the rest of us dread the day that that will happen."

"If it happens." Yennefer said.

"Indeed." Ariadne answered. But for whatever reason, she didn't seem convinced.

There are always more questions. I was particularly intrigued by this idea of there being more than one vampire clan but Ariadne could not give me anything else about it. So eventually, Yennefer and I just stopped asking.

In the meantime, we were staying in Beauclair and I found myself beginning to relax. The balance of Ariadne's and my relationship began to shift in that she was the one that was getting more and more wound up and stressed while I was becoming more and more settled and returning to myself.

I started to train with Kerrass again, working on my spear craft. Not that I was under any illusions that I would be able to do anything worthwhile if the Unseen Elder decided to take advantage of us. And I was also aware that, should all go to plan, I would be moving back towards the life of the gentleman of the Manor and my need to carry the spear everywhere with me would be lessened considerably.

But I still wanted to be able to use it. I also, very tentatively, started to learn how to use the sword that I have been given as part of my new knighthood. It was very slow going and I still struggled to stop thinking about using the sword and actually use the sword.

Ariadne, though, was getting more and more anxious. She took to walking around at high speed which, for a Vampire, is very fast indeed. She became… snippy. She would snap at people, including me.

Ariadne is a creature of self control. She insists that she is this way because of the sheer power of her emotions, so extreme because of her vampiric nature, can be overwhelming. Therefore, she needs to keep a tight control on herself. She is also aware that she inspires fear wherever she goes but especially here in Toussaint after the depredations of Detlaff. So she guards herself. She blends those mannerisms in so well that you can only see that they are there if you actually go and look for them. The most obvious example is that she covers her mouth whenever she laughs involuntarily. She has got the hang of smiling without showing her fangs now, but when someone surprises her and makes her laugh, a thing that I love to do, then she will cover her mouth so as not to frighten anyone. Including me.

I actually find her fangs rather cute and endearing but she doesn't really believe me. The incisors of her mouth are just a little bit elongated and her teeth are just a little bit sharper and pointier than normal human teeth. I am aware that a Vampire is self-actualising when it comes to their appearance and physical capabilities, so I also know that she works on her teeth whenever she gets the chance.

Another way that she manifests this control is that she is extraordinarily careful with her courtesies, her body language and her tone of voice. So where someone else might lose their temper under moments of anxiety and stress, Ariadne will forget to take part in society. What did that look like?

I knew something was wrong when she forgot to thank a servant for bringing her a cup of coffee. She realised almost immediately and apologised profusely to a confused and bewildered looking servant.

So I asked her how she was doing. She looked back down at her book and almost snapped "I'm fine." Thus telling me that she wasn't with remarkable efficiency.

The other thing that she did, or rather stopped doing, is that she stopped asking questions. It would not be unfair to say that Ariadne is insatiably curious. She asks questions about everything and anything. Things that you and I would never think twice about, Ariadne wants to know though. She wants to know in detail and then she wants to know why that thing is the way that it is.

She has come to terms with the fact that there is very little else that I can tell her and she has all but exhausted Kerrass' patience for such things. You can watch the glee in her eyes when someone new comes into her view so that she can tackle them with their viewpoints and opinions on this, that, the other thing and the price of fish. It's one of the things that I love about her. She wants to know, and she wants to know everything. Then one day, she was standing at the window, looking out at nothing and I realised that I hadn't heard her asking a question about anything in some time.

I had learnt my lesson though. This time I didn't ask her if she was alright.

Then the day came and as I say, I was almost disappointed with how mundane the entire thing was. Ariadne came to Kerrass and I to inform us that we would need to be ready to depart in the middle of the afternoon. I made a joke about wondering why we would not be leaving in the depths of the night. She didn't rise to the joke. She didn't laugh or otherwise react. She just told us that it would take some time to get there and as a result, we would need to set off in the middle of the afternoon. She told me to bathe and to wear some decent clothing as if I was dressing for a party, before she left in order to make some "other arrangements."

Kerrass and I did as we were told, wearing our best finery. I had enquired as to whether or not we should take a gift and Ariadne hadn't answered the question. The other arrangements that she had to make turned out to be some small supplies of food as, again, we would apparently be stopping to have something to eat as we approached… wherever it was that we were going.

Ariadne had arranged that our horses had been prepared in advance. The horses that had been lent to Kerrass and I as well as the horse that had become used to Ariadne.

I have never spoken about the way that other animals react to Ariadne. In short, most animals are afraid of her, at least a little bit. The more traditionally considered "herd" animals are especially nervous in her presence; sheep, cows, goats and horses are all reluctant to have anything to do with her. Now while that is not normally a problem to a woman that can teleport, sometimes it becomes necessary to train a horse to become used to her.

Apparently, the way that worked in Angral is that once the horse in question was chosen, she would just go and sit in the same paddock as the horse until the horse began to get used to her. It was all about doing the basic chores to do with the horse. Feeding them first and then moving onto the care of the horse's stall when the horse was elsewhere so that the animal could get used to the scent of the elder vampire before things could move onto the actual care of the animal itself.

Could she have shortened the entire process with judicious use of spellcraft? She answered that of course she could have done such a thing, but where would the joy have been in doing that. "Sometimes," she said. "It is best to do the job properly without taking all of the shortcuts."

I sometimes wonder what she and my father would have made of each other. There is still some hope that my mother will be released from her oaths temporarily in order to attend our wedding. But I do wonder what Ariadne and Father would have made of each other. He would have liked that particular sentiment I think.

I hope.

But I rather think that he would have been a bit jealous of her. The fact that she, a non-human, had been elevated to the rank of Countess for relatively little service. All the while he had been working for years and he was all but despised in those circles. There is also the problem that I don't think she would have taken any of his shit.

So we rode out of Beauclair palace together. Another concession that Ariadne had arranged was that we were riding together without escort. How she had convinced the Ducal sisters of that is something beyond my understanding. I am relatively confident that it began and ended with "I am an Elder Vampire. Do we honestly think anything out there is going to want to fuck with me?" And the sisters will have relented.

I haven't asked though. I have an awful feeling that I would receive an answer that I didn't like. We rode at a leisurely pace round the lake and up into the hills and to an area of Toussaint that I would have described as "Moor". The paths became more goat paths than the well maintained roads that I was used to. It soon became clear that if there were any regular roads around this place, then we weren't taking them.

We suffered under a short drizzle for a couple of hours which suited my sense of the dramatic a little more than Ariadne was clearly comfortable with, but things seemed to brighten up towards the end of the day.

"It's going to be a dark night." Kerrass commented to no-one in particular.

"Lots of cloud cover." I commented. I won't lie, I was enjoying myself. Nothing quite like the feeling of coming back to yourself. I was on the road. I had my best friend and the woman that I love next to me. My sense of humour was returning, possibly a little sharper and more bitter than would be entirely ideal. But I was feeling pretty good all things considered.

Ariadne led us off to one side of the road where we ate a small meal of cheese, biscuits, cured meats and dried fruits. Kerrass and I, caught up in our strange mood of being on the road again, were laughing and joking as we ate. Ariadne just sat and watched us, not really moving, certainly not eating.

"Fattening us up for the feast." Kerrass joked, making me giggle.

"That's not funny." Ariadne snapped.

"It's a little funny," he replied, astonishingly calm in the face of Ariadne's displeasure. "But what are we supposed to think in the face of you not eating anything?"

She grimaced and took a small biscuit, nibbling at the edges. This too, is unusual for Ariadne. Normally she has the kind of appetite that makes other women complain about how she could possibly eat so much and yet remain so thin.

That's an exaggeration, but it has happened. Like sleep, she seems to be able to save up hunger and store food in parts of her body that those of us that are human, don't have. She can eat, drink and carry on with the best of them. She does get drunk but prefers not to, due to the lack of control concerns.

Her favourite food is meat pastries, pork sausage meat mixed with a little onion, herbs and apple wrapped in a pastry coating. Varieties on this theme are also appreciated but that is her favourite. She is also partial to a pigeon pie and she cannot walk past a street vendor that sells those flattened meat patties in a bun without buying one. To the point that she has to make an effort to walk around them in order to avoid the expense. Apparently, street vendors in Angraal have learnt to see her coming.

She likes them with onions and horseradish.

She will not thank me for telling you this.

"So where are we going?" I asked her in an effort to cut through the unpleasant atmosphere that was beginning to permeate the situation."

"To meet the Elder." She replied, finally giving up the pretense and setting the biscuit aside.

"Yes, but…"

She sighed. "It is called Tesham Mutna which, in your tongue means 'Burial Coffin'. It is an apt description."

"You do not sound like it is a place that you are fond of."

"On the contrary." She said. "I lived there once, for a long time. It is very beautiful and the view from the top of the tower into the main valley of Toussaint is a sight to take your breath away."

She sighed again. "But I have wished not to go back there. In the light of what I know now…" She shook her head. "Bad things happened there. Terrible things. Not a small number of them were done by me and I am dreadfully certain that you will both think less of me by the time that this night is over."

"Hey." I said, leaning over and taking her hand. "I love you. That is not going to change."

She smiled at me, "I hope so." She said before rising to her feet. "Come, we still have some distance to go."

It took us another couple of hours to get there by which time the sun had begun to set and the shadows were lengthening. Ariadne had made plans for this too and had brought torches which Kerrass lit with the trick of snapping his fingers. When that happened, I saw that there were spares for the return journey.

"When will we be coming back?" I wondered.

"Hopefully tonight." Ariadne said. "Although it is likely to be more towards the early morning. For reasons that I've never entirely understood, we like to do things at night. I mean, the Elders of us are not affected by sunlight, the lesser vampires only use night time because it's easier to hunt, so I've always thought that it would be better for everyone if we met at the height of midday, it would certainly distract all the people that would come after us."

"Men are afraid of the dark." Kerrass said. "That fear would have hidden you far more easily than the shadows of the midday sun."

"Possibly." Ariadne agreed. "But we were meeting at night, long before we had taught men to fear us. Also, we always meet underground too, so there isn't even the excuse of people complaining about sunlight hurting our eyes or anything. There it is up ahead."

I saw it first as a large watchtower above the horizon, followed by a ruined, circular tower that, in any other place, would have been a good base for a siege weapon or something. Then we began to see the remains of what would once have been castle walls and buildings. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite as ruined as it was. This was really broken down.

"What is this place?" I wondered as we rode up.

"I am not really the person to tell you." Ariadne said. "I know my own part of the places history but other than that…"

A strange bird seemed to sing from a small patch of bushes off to our right. Ariadne stiffened, Kerrass straightened and with a speed that I had not seen him use for some time, his silver sword leapt into his hand.

A woman stepped into view. She was naked, I'm sorry if that observation paints me in a negative light, but it rather struck me round the head. Her body was hard with muscle that seemed to be the only consideration on the body. There was no softness or smoothness about her. It was all muscle, sinew and vein. Her lips seemed to draw back from her teeth which were sharpened fangs. Long dark hair seemed to flap around her face and her fingers ended in claws.

The sight was… oddly erotic and absolutely terrifying. Hers was the beauty of the perfect hunter as it moves to bite down on your flesh.

Her face was drawn into a snarl before she saw Ariadne and the woman pulled herself back from a rage that was consuming and terrifying. Then she bowed.

Ariadne's horse reared, screaming in terror, but Ariadne wasn't on the back of it any more. Instead, she was standing with her hand wrapped around the throat of this new, female figure and had lifted her up off the floor.

I checked with Kerrass later and even he claimed to have never seen her move.

"You insult me?" Ariadne seemed calm as the woman struggled in her grip, clawing at Ariadne's face, arm and the grip that was choking off the air.

The woman seemed to struggle to say something.

"Human Lover?" Ariadne wondered. "You say that like it's an insult. But still, if you wish to challenge me, little Bruxa, then I will tear your skull from your body, pull your spine from your neck and display it for your sister's benefits. Do not think that I do not see them sulking in the shadows."

Kerrass turned to scan around.

Ariadne hurled the woman into a tree where she bounced off before flipping in the air and landing on her feet.

Claws extended from Ariadne's right hand. It was only in my mind that they made a silken noise as they extended.

There was a pause. The woman licked her lips nervously.

"I thought so." Ariadne said. "Now apologise."

The woman seemed to shift before my eyes into the form of a much more human looking woman with much more human features and body. She bowed at the waist.

"I apologise." The woman said.

"Not to me." Ariadne hissed. It was the first time, in a while actually, that I heard her sound quite so angry.

The woman looked appalled. "But… But he has killed many…"

"As was their just reward for being unable to control of themselves." Ariadne said. "He is a Witcher. What did you think that Witchers were made for? People like you decide that humans make for good snacks and the humans are going to fight back." Her voice held a new sound to it. Something I had not heard her use before. There was an authority here and a latent threat.

Also, scorn.

"Kneel," Ariadne growled. And it really was a growl. "Kneel or be Knelt."

The woman darted forward, took a quick knee before Kerrass' horse before almost vanishing before my eyes in a puff of reddish smoke.

Kerrass dismounted and found Ariadne's horse, bringing it back to the thoughtful looking Vampire, who sighed.

"I had forgotten how much I hate the games of the lesser ones." She said.

"What was all that about?" I wondered.

"I can explain that, if it's not too much trouble." A man emerged from the shadows. He was wrapped in a dark cloak that had hidden him from view. "I do apologise for not getting here before all of that was about to happen, but I was on the other side of the castle at the time, paying my respects."

He pulled his hood down to display a thin face with long sideburns and a shock of gray hair on the crown of his head. He had a strong chin and a wry smile.

"Indeed," the man went on. "It is really I that should be apologising to the fine gentlemen that stand before me. I was supposed to be keeping watch for your party when I found myself quite overcome with feelings of sentiment at being back here and as such, I found it quite impossible to perform my duty."

"Emiel." Ariadne smiled at him and the two of them embraced like long lost friends.

Kerrass and I looked at each other, shrugged and dismounted.

"Please, I beg you. Call me Regis, would you?" The man said. "It is a name that is known to the locals and I have grown quite fond of it over the years."

"Very well. In which case, you should know that I am Ariadne now." Ariadne said, smiling.

Regis smiled. It seemed to be something that he did easily, but not to a great and overwhelming extent.

"So I can no longer refer to you as Aunty Spider?" He asked slyly.

"You can." Ariadne admitted. "But then I would pull bits of you… off."

"Fair enough." Regis laughed. He seemed to be a happy kind of man. "And then these fine gentlemen would be?"

"This Witcher is Kerrass of Maecht."

"Feline school if I am not much mistaken." Regis held his hand out to be shaken. "How remarkable."

"Why is that?" Kerrass shook the offered hand.

"I had heard of the perils inherent in belonging to that particular line of witchers." Regis replied happily. I didn't know him but have you ever met a man that gave the very perfect first impression? I have known people like Regis all my life and if he told me that he was a professor of some obscure subject at the university, then I would have absolutely believed you.

It was already perfectly clear that he was both in love with his own voice, and that he loved to show off the breadth of his education.

"Others have it far worse than I did." Kerrass responded.

"Yes, of course, of course." Regis said, turning to me. "Which means that you must be the much debated Lord Frederick, the man that stole the heart of my aunt."

"Aunt?" I wondered. "Debated?"

"Yes as to both." He smiled easily. "Ariadne, as you call her, is the older sister to the one that is my Father. I have known her, literally, for my entire life."

"Other than when I was imprisoned." Ariadne said with a little touch of asperity and a hint of bitterness.

"Or when I was regenerating beneath the ground after those villagers got at me." Regis seemed oblivious to Ariadne's sour mood. Or maybe he was too good at noticing it because Ariadne promptly laughed.

"Oh come on." She said to him. "You deserved that."

"Deserved it?" Regis threw up his arms in horror. "How does a man deserve to get his head chopped off, have wooden stakes of nearly every type driven through his heart, get stuffed with garlic, covered in Holy Water followed by being covered in Holy oils before being burned and then buried? How does a man deserve that?"

"By flying headfirst into a well, while drunk on too much blood." Ariadne told him.

"You see." Regis said in an aside to me. "It always paints me in a bad light when they mention that part of things." He sighed happily. "It is good to see you Aunty Eight Legs."

"Careful." She said. "Or I will start to call you Batty."

He laughed. She laughed. Kerrass and I looked at each other.

"I would love to stay and banter with you for hours after so long apart." Regis said. "But as well as playing at being a look out, while being a spectacular failure at it. I am also acting as chamberlain and page this evening and I am to tell you that he is waiting for you. Then I shall look after our guests until the company is ready for them."

Ariadne nodded and turned to me.

"I love you Freddie." She said.

I felt a trickle of fear run down my back.

"You make it sound like you are saying goodbye." I said,

"Let us hope not." She replied before turning to Kerrass. "Keep him safe." She told him.

Then she seemed to just dissolve into a black mass that sank beneath the earth. Dress and all.

I stood there for a while, staring at the patch of ground that Ariadne had disappeared into. It looked churned up like some kind of molehill.

"Should we be worried?" Kerrass asked Regis.

"What? Oh yes. Absolutely." The other Vampire answered. "The Unseen Elder summons only rarely and it never turns out well, for anyone."

I found, much to my astonishment, that I was angry. "If he hurts her…"

Regis laughed. "You will what, I wonder?" He said. "I know who you both are of course, when I heard that this was all going to happen, I read up on your exploits as far as they've been published so far and the two of you have performed many wonders…"

He tailed off as he looked around himself. "Actually," He went on, "Do you mind if we talk while we walk? The Countryside is not entirely safe tonight and I would hate for something to happen to you while we were on our way to your audience."

"Why is the countryside unsafe?" Kerrass wondered while I fumed.

"Entirely my fault I'm afraid." Regis admitted. "As you are probably aware, the last time I was here I was partially responsible for the death of one of our own. An old friend of mine was driven mad by the attentions of a woman and I was forced to end his life." He sighed. "He had been a good man and a good friend up until that point, but if he had been allowed to continue then he would have ended up causing untold damage to the world. Once again, Witchers, mages and everyone else would have been united against the Vampire race. It would have been war and although we are difficult for you mortals to slay, it is not impossible. It needed to end and I was the one there to end it."

He shook his head. "There are still days when I wonder if I did the right thing. Days where I think it might not have been better if I hadn't gone into Beauclair and ripped the lungs out of the woman that did that to him."

"Syanna." Kerrass said.

"That's the bitch, yes." Regis replied calmly. "Unfortunately for my temper, she is sister to a ruler and if I allowed my temper to get the better of me, then there would still be war. Pitchforks, burning brands, that kind of thing. Other than the garlic. I am quite fond of garlic, especially in a nice creamy soup. Anyway,"

We continued to move towards the castle as Regis lectured. That is exactly what it was like. It was like listening to a lecture. He spoke well, with occasional tangents and lines of discussion that I could not follow. Something which some people have accused me of in the past. I was also given the impression that I was being distracted from something.

"So I killed Detlaff." Regis carried on. "Coincidentally, I did so in the courtyard of Tesham Mutna and for that crime, a lot of the… I really don't like to refer to them as "lesser" but unfortunately the description is rather accurate. But the lesser vampires around here were under his sway. He had a charm about him and the lesser races adored him. I killed him so they hate me."

"You seem calm about it." Kerrass said. I still didn't trust myself to speak yet.

"In this case, my sympathies rather lie alongside theirs. Except I am more aware of who was really responsible." He sniffed. "Anyway. My punishment for that crime is that I must act for the Unseen Elder in tonight's proceedings. I must put up with every insult and injury that they, Detlaff's followers I mean, might put on me without retaliation. They are allowed to do anything short of killing me. An unnecessary precaution, it would take all of them, combined, several days of work to come close to actually killing me. But someone could do me enough damage to ensure that I would be remaining underground for some years. The problem is that this precaution makes them think that they can.

"So far today, I have been defecated on, pissed on, vomited on and beaten. I have been doused in blood and all sorts of unspeakable substances that I will not describe for fear of turning your stomach. And the night is yet young."

He said this with a little smile that made me kind of wonder for his sanity.

"Why did that have anything to do with what has just happened?" Kerrass wondered.

"They are emboldened now." Regis said. "My companion the night of Detlaff's death was a Witcher. Geralt of Rivia? You know him?"

"Yes,"

"Of course, of course. Foolish of me. But the more feral of my erstwhile racial comrades would not be able to tell the difference between him and your good self. Emboldened by what they are allowed to do to me, they must have decided to take matters into their own hands regarding a Witcher as well. I really should have been on the lookout for such a thing on the grounds that I was well aware that you were coming and that this might have had an effect.

"But, as I always do, I felt the need to pay my respects when I pass that place where I killed my friend. Even though I was merely the axe of the proverbial executioner and his real killer was elsewhere, I still can't help but feel responsible. Alas, that it distracted me from what I should have been doing which is to look out for the two of you."

We were still talking as we moved up towards the castle.

"Anyway, Lord Frederick. I have to admit that I am very pleased to meet you." He went on. "Not only have you thawed the heart of the woman who we had all assumed would remain single until the end of the world, or the portal reopened for the Elder to lead us through. But also, your works on the subject of Witchers have been most enlightening."

"Thank you." I said, trying really hard to like the man. There was something about him that set my teeth on edge and I couldn't have told you what it was. He was charming, friendly, obviously well educated but there was just something there that was pushing me the wrong way.

"If you don't mind, however," he went on. "I do have some thoughts."

"Oh?"

Kerrass turned away and pretended to examine the horizon.

"Yes." Regis, for his part, seemed oblivious to what was going on in my mind. "You have a tendency to wander off topic, at length, for protracted periods at a time. Filling your pages, and your word count I suspect, with information that serves neither the narrative that you are spinning, or the educational point that you are trying to make. What that means is that the reader is often tempted to skip over entire paragraphs of prose on the grounds that there is nothing there that could possibly interest them.

"Then, when it turns out that there was a small nugget of information embedded in the skipped paragraph, the reader becomes frustrated at the fact that they must trail through the things that they don't care about in order to come across the very small but specific things that they missed.

"It is not a new criticism." I countered.

Kerrass coughed, still purposefully looking away.

"However," I went on, "such complaints come from, I find, those people that are both well travelled and well educated. Normally men who know about all the things that I am talking about. Men who know about castle walls and small vagaries of history. Just as often as people criticise me for those huge tangents… And I agree, sometimes they do get out of hand, but even when I think that, there are normally also some comments that readers actually quite enjoyed the extended comments."

"That's as maybe," Regis countered. "But that's not what your readers are reading your work for. They are reading to hear about Witchers, the way that they work and the way that they operate. Sometimes, they might be interested in the curse that you and your companion are lifting, wanting to know about the events that you are caught up in and I grant you that. But they are not reading for these other facts and missives. Now don't get me wrong."

He held up his hands in an effort to try and quell something.

"Don't get me wrong. I know why and how you fell into that trap, it was because you, correctly, felt the need to explain to your readers some of the things that were happening, specifically in your mind and to enable the context for the things that were happening around you. But I rather feel that one thing has overtaken the other and now it overwhelms it. Things that should have been dismissed in two or three issues of the magazine end up taking huge amounts of time.

"If people want to learn about the battlefields that you have passed through or the specific vagaries of the Skelligan court, then they will read up on the subject themselves."

"Will they though?" I argued, but I couldn't get any further.

"Also," he went on. I don't think he was overruling me or being rude, I just don't think he noticed. "While I have you here. I must say that I really must recommend that you choose which direction you want your academic career to go. Your work rather leans towards the lurid and entertaining aspect of things rather than the academic. Yet you state your desire to be an educator. That your reasons for doing these things in the first place are in order to fulfil your scholarly requirements. Yet the structure of your articles seems to be meant to entertain rather than in order to educate."

"Why are they not the same thing?" I demanded with possibly a little bit more force than I had initially intended. "THe vast majority of people want to get on with living their lives. They don't care about what Witchers do or why it's so catastrophically wrong to be prejudiced against non-humans. They want to live their quiet lives, work, get enough money to get by and be entertained enough so that life can be worth living.

"Many of these people do not have the first idea how to make their lives better with education, no matter what walk of life they are operating on. Many of the higher stationed simply don't realise what those of them that are born into less privileged families are forced to put up with. And even worse than that, those same higher stations either don't know how to educate themselves, or simply are not allowed to.

"I had to rebel against my father in order to attend the university of Oxenfurt and women are often told, literally, not to worry their pretty little heads about things. Those people that can educate themselves, or are interested in educating themselves are not our concern. It's about sneaking in a bit of education to those people who can't learn, or won't learn. How do we do this? By entertaining them.

"Also, people take in information more easily when it is entertaining rather than dry and boring. The dry and boring book on the subject might contain more information, but if the person has switched off from that information before actually getting anything out of it, then the masses of extra information are still useless.

"Going back to your earlier point. To be interested in those things and therefore to travel there to see it for yourself, or to find new books on the subject to broaden their own minds, people must first know that they are interested in the subject. And for those people to find out that they are interested in such things, they must read about them in something that they might be reading for other purposes. For example, for entertainment.

"So they pick up that magazine that has an essay on the subject of a famous curse and ghost ship of Skellige, or has an eye-witness account of the scandal that has recently rocked the noble families that have lands around Oxenfurt. And as part of that, they read about the culture of the islands or the processes that are involved in hunting down fugitives and the histories of this, or that, part of the world.

"Then, they say to themselves, 'I wish I could know more about that' before rushing off to the library or the book stall in order to find out what else can be found out."

Regis was smiling at me. "Well put." He said. "It is an interesting knife-edge to walk down however and I do not envy you that particular balancing act. However, I feel forced to put the following question to you. How many people have actually taken what you have written and learned from it."

"If only one person…" I began.

"Ah, so you are an optimist then. No comment on all of those people that have taken the wrong lesson from what you have written, that their future is easily to be found at the end of the lane and instead find a sticky end."

"I have done what I can for those people. I have offered advice and counsel, both to the people that have a wish to follow in those particular footsteps and for the families and loved ones of the same."

"Yes, however I notice that you didn't add that advice until your Brother instructed you to."

"First of all, I wasn't aware that it would be a problem and second of all, what else could I do?"

Regis smiled again. "I am sure that the families of those people that have lost their lives in trying to emulate your success would suggest that ignorance is no excuse, the same as it is not in the eyes of the law. What else could you do? You could stop travelling, stop aggrandizing yourself and stop building yourself up to be the unstoppable hero. In short, go home, stay there and do not write anything further."

"That rather sounds like trying to close the gate after the horse has escaped." I said, "But my counter to that is two-fold. The first point is in the larger form and the second is in the specific. Firstly, if everyone did that, stayed at home, didn't set out to learn and strive to improve themselves. If people don't follow examples from those that came before them while setting examples for those that would come after, then all we would be would be a series of isolated individuals, very possibly still living in huts or caves and certainly at the mercy of all the monsters that surround us.

"In the specific? What about all the lives that I have saved? I don't like to think of it like that, but Kerrass keeps telling me that I have indeed saved quite a few lives. I am sure that they, and their families would be much happier that I didn't stay at home and instead went out into the world. Both those families that know about who I am and what I did, but also those people that are not yet born who will never have to suffer the passage of the Skeleton Ship. Or those villagers that will never have to suffer under the yoke of the First-born cult.

"And if I had stayed at home, I would still be a sad, lonely, unhappy little boy that believed that the world owed him something because his Father and Grandfather before him had done the work. I would still be disdainful about religions other than my own. I would not hate Elves and other non-humans but I certainly think I would be disdainful about them. I would be married to whoever Father would have arranged for me and I would have made for a poor husband. Instead, I have friends that I love and am engaged to a woman that I adore."

"What about the injuries that you have taken, to both your body and your mind."

"I would take all of them again." That was not a new question. "All of them again in return for the gifts that I have been given."

"Well said." Kerrass muttered quietly.

"Well," Regis said happily. "That really was a lovely little debate. I would argue the point further but we have come to our destination. I don't think that they are quite ready for us yet so please, take the time to stretch your legs. The view of the valley below us is really quite spectacular."

Kerrass and I dismounted. My head was still reeling from what we had been talking about.

"Don't worry about your horses." Regis told us. "They are quite safe here. Please take a look around. Tesham Mutna is a wonderful place."

I stomped off a little way and muttered to myself, only to find Kerrass chuckling behind me.

"What." I demanded of him.

"He likes you." Kerrass said.

"That's funny, because I am really struggling to like him."

"Really? I thought that the two of you were very alike." Kerrass replied, "or maybe that's the problem. Still," Kerrass scratched his chin while he looked at the Vampire who was sitting on a lump of stone and rooting around in a satchel. "He started that debate in order to get a conversation going. I would wager that, until he gets to know you, that is the kind of man that would argue that crows are coloured white and that the sun is actually cold in order to start a conversation."

"Well," I began… You know those times when you can hear yourself beginning to speak and wish that you would just stop. "There is such a thing as Albino crows."

Kerrass just looked at me before stomping off to join the Vampire.

I turned away,

"If you are looking for something to do." Regis called out. "Try and find the entrance way. If you do find it, you will be the first person, ever, to have done so without being shown."

I stomped off into the ruins. For reasons that I am happy and willing to admit were absolutely my own ego, the conversation with Regis had caught me wrong, upsetting me and making me angry. I could absolutely see Kerrass' point about the man… the Vampire just wanting to start a debate in order to provoke a discussion and a conversation amongst strangers. I could even, if I squinted a bit, see Kerrass' point that the two of us were quite a lot alike and that was why he had managed to get under my skin quite as effectively as he had.

All of that was true, as was also the fact that I was worried about Ariadne. Her last comments had seemed a little cryptic and I was not feeling entirely comfortable with the things that she had said.

That's my excuse for why I was feeling so grumpy and I'm sticking to it.

Eventually though, and entirely predictably, the lure of the ruins was too strong for me to resist and I started to look around.

At the time of writing, I have to admit that I have absolutely no intention of going back to Tesham Mutna. It is a strange, eerie place and although it is true to say that it is also very beautiful there, there is a quality about it that leaves me feeling unsettled. There is also a general feeling that I am intruding on someone. It is one thing to go stomping through old ruins when the denizens of those ruins are long dead, but it is quite another when you know, with absolute certainty that those people that used to dwell here were still alive and might just sneak up behind you to whisper something in your ear.

The place is also guarded.

Despite all this though, my professional curiosity was piqued. I have spent a lot of time in ruins as many of you will be aware. It is not reductive to say that this is the case. The simple fact of the matter is that it comes from two directions. The first is that in my capacity as Kerrass' chronicler and occasional assistant, a lot of times, whatever it was that we end up hunting turns out to have taken up residence in the local set of ruins. Also, I am a scholar and historian. Therefore, ruins have a particular resonance and fascination for me.

It is certainly morbid, also true, to learn that Ruins are fascinating to me. I don't know if it's amongst the ruins of the North that I first discovered my fascination with the history of those that came before me. But I can well believe that it all started with me clambering over ruined castle walls when I was younger.

As always, Emma would be by guardian and companion on those excursions. She would be admonished by Father and Mother to keep me safe in the face of… whatever could be out there and, although I don't remember why she started the game, I can remember that we used to play it. She would challenge me to try and figure out what all of the different rooms were in the various ruined walls and things that we found ourselves in. There is a very real possibility that it was an effort to distract me so that she could go back to reading her book or doing whatever else she was interested in at the time. But it soon became one of those areas that we bonded over.

It's a useful exercise in the field as well for both witcher and scholar. As a scholar, it will help you identify the place that you find yourself in and as a witcher, if you are still in the part of the investigation where you are figuring out what is going on with the spirit that you are hunting, it can be advantageous to know, or to be able to figure out, where in the castle you are at that time.

See Regis? That is a tangent that explains why particular skills might be useful, establishing my history with the skill and giving other people a reason to work on the skill themselves. A gateway.

I can hear you chuckling as you read this Regis. Now we are even.

So, walking through the ruins of Tesham Mutna, I started to employ this oldest skill in my arsenal of scholarly weapons.

Now Regis gets to have his own back a little bit. My tools didn't work for quite a long time. Why? That was a riddle that took me a distressingly long amount of time to figure out.

There was nothing that I could identify with absolute certainty to be a kitchen. You can normally tell by the presence of ovens. The kitchen is in an area, often on a lower level so that all of that unsightly butchering and work can be hidden from the betters of the castle. There is also a need to have vents and gaps in order to carry the smoke and fumes from the cooking away from the building.

Because of that, I couldn't find anything that looked like store rooms.

I managed to identify the main keep with relative ease, it was the largest round building there and although I was able to make my way in and have a bit of a poke around, I could find no main hearth and therefore, I could not identify a main hall. There was no upper floor and I could not state with certainty whether there had ever been one or whether or not the owners of the keep slept here.

I was more successful when I started to identify things like different courtyards and therefore the defensive capabilities and construction of the place. It felt more like a fortress than a residential building. The kind of place where you garrison soldiers and keep a look out against something. This was borne out by the presence of a higher Watchtower.

I also had more luck in figuring out what had happened here.

The stones had been removed. Unlike the other castles and keeps of Toussaint in their various states of disrepair. I'm thinking of places like the prison because my guess would be that Tesham Mutna dates from around that time. The ruination of those buildings has come from decay. The normal kind of thing where stuff gets eroded by the elements and therefore simply falls down. Or the locals need some decent stone to place as a hearth stone or a door lintel.

That kind of decay is, by far the most common cause of buildings just simply disappearing over time. In cities, buildings get knocked down in order to make room for new buildings, or fall down due to overbuilding in areas where building anything more than a shed is inadvisable. In the countryside, the decay is slower and… if I'm honest, less pleasant.

Here though, there had actually been an effort to take the place apart.

"It has a dark history." Regis said behind me, making me jump. It seems that the ability to move utterly silently is common for the Vampire race.

"What?" I was angry, it is never nice to be snuck up on.

"Tesham Mutna." He replied. "It has a dark history. Peace offering?" He held up a dark leather flask.

"What is it?"

"It's my own concoction. Being practically immortal gives you plenty of room to devote yourself to a number of different hobbies. I myself have devoted myself to several things including the practical management of the health of those people that I share this continent with. That led me towards herbalism which, in turn, led me towards the art of brewing. This particular vintage is not my best as I was forced to leave some of my best equipment behind with the speed that I was told to come here. But still, it is pleasant enough."

"With all due respect Regis. That wasn't an answer to my question."

He tilted his head to one side as he considered what I had said. Another physical tick that he seemed to have in common with Ariadne.

"No, I suppose not." He admitted. "It is moonshine. Specifically Mandrake Moonshine."

"I thought that Mandrake was poisonous."

"Oh it is." Regise said, passing the bottle over. "Very much so. But it also depends on your method of preparation. It also has many other uses including the treatment of Erectile Dysfunction in smaller doses. But if you prepare it properly, then it can act as the active ingredient to make a particularly smooth and powerful ingredient in liquor. Try some, please."

I did so, and much to my disgust, it was absolutely delicious. I passed the bottle back.

"I can certainly see how a man might get a taste for it." I said, "It is dangerously smooth."

"Yes." Regis agreed. Previous customers have even requested that I put some extra rasp into the flavour in order to remind them that they are drinking a particularly strong spirit."

"I can see why that might be wise." I said, not being able to contain a chuckle. "I'm sorry Regis."

"Whatever for."

"I was being an ass earlier."

"Nonsense." He said, waving me off after taking a swig of his own concoction. "You are worried about the woman that you love and as Geralt is fond of telling me, I do rather become fond of my own voice at times. It has rather got me into trouble on occasion."

"Am I right to be worried?" I asked him.

He wouldn't meet my gaze. "I'm afraid so. Yes."

"Why?"

"I am afraid that I am unsure. I killed another one of us in order to protect the greater whole. Others have even admitted that it was the right thing to do but despite that, it is a deadly crime in our society and I should pay for it with my life, both as part of our laws and… for other reasons. It seemed to be the only way forward at that time. But in return for that, awful, crime. I am being let off with a little bit of an affront to my dignity and the real equivalence of a slap on the wrist.

"In comparison though, Your beloved has done nothing wrong as far as I can tell. We knew that she was going to integrate with human society. Indeed, for many of us, we saw her efforts to be a first trial of what else we could achieve. To see whether or not humanity, under the Empress, would finally be willing to accept us if we lived out in the open. She warned us that would probably include the taking of a husband. We all agreed that she could do worse than someone such as yourself that was actively and visibly working to overcome his prejudices and was already aware of her nature.

"And yet, she has made the Elder angry. I don't know why. I don't know how."

"Is she in danger?"

Regis winced and again, wouldn't meet my gaze. "It depends on your point of view. He won't kill her, I know that for sure. That law is his and he won't break it, even himself."

"That is not reassuring."

Regis sighed. "All you can do is move forward with it now. Come, have a drink and let us discuss the nature of the building that we find ourselves part of. I can answer some questions. Not all of them, but some of your questions."

"Why is my life always like that?" I moaned. "People only answering some of my questions."

"That is life." He replied. "In many ways, life is deciding what the question is before learning that the person that should have the answer, does not. Then you move on to the next person and the next until you find that answer. Unfortunately, in the looking, you often find that you have simply identified more questions that you need to have answered for you."

"There is truth in that." I admitted.

"It is the curse of those that wish to educate themselves." Regis told me. "The wise man said that Wisdom is knowing how much you still have left to learn."

"Yes he did." I agreed. "Although I should wonder which particular wise man said that in your case."

Regis laughed.

"But in this particular instance." I went on. "The answers that are being withheld from me seem to always be regarding people that I care about."

Regis either didn't notice, or didn't care about my bitterness.

"In this case," he went on. "The answer is that we are being carefully placed on a board. The Elder is, well, older than the rest of us, keeping a charge and a watch that only he knows anything about. I think he gets bored and occasionally, he will choose to play a game with those of us that owe our existence to his whims.

"Personally speaking I wouldn't mind, except that he is far more intelligent than you and I put together. Made so, partially at least, by the fact that he is the oldest thing on this continent, possibly on this plane of existence. That amount of experience alone can artificially give him the appearance of being more intelligent than he actually is."

He was leading me back to where the horses had been tied and that Kerrass was waiting for us.

"What that means," Regis went on. "Is that being subservient to the Elder is like playing a game of cards. Do you know Gwent?"

"I do."

"Fascinating game, a cross between tactics and random chance. The sort of game where you can win the game before you sit at the table by studying your opponent. Doing that properly will mean that you can know, or make a good guess, about what deck a person is going to use, followed by what kind of gambits they are going to employ."

"Do you play?"

He chuckled. "No. I am not nearly decisive enough to play it. Just choosing which of the five decks I would want to play with is difficult enough, let alone what kind of deck I want to play, which leader I want to choose and which type of that particular deck I want to use. Let alone how many weather cards and decoys and so on and so on. Then we get to the game itself and what do I do? When do I stop and let them take a turn? When do I go for broke? I would analyse the matter to a loss and the person I would be playing would die of old age before I lay my first card down."

"You could have simply said that it does not appeal to you."

"But it does appeal, that's part of the problem. However, we have gone off topic. Dealing with the Elder on any level, especially those of us that owe him our allegiance, is like playing a strange variation of gwent that involves blank cards against someone who won't tell you the rules and who is always smiling. The difference for me and the lady whom you adore, is that we are not the people playing the Elder, we are the cards that are placed on the table."

I let that sink in for a moment as we sat down.

"You make it sound like I should pity you."

"And if the Elder was angry at me, I would deserve your pity."

"So he is angry at Ariadne?"

"I very much fear so."

"Why?"

"You will have to ask the Elder himself when you see him. There is a common saying about rulers that applies doubly to him. In that, on any given day, there is absolutely no knowing what the Elder is going to choose to care about."

"Lovely." Kerrass had been listening to what we were talking about.

"Let us leave that topic of conversation for now." Regis said "And let me tell you something of the history of this place before we go down to the party."

As should, by now, be evident, Regis and I share the character trait that we are rather in love with the sounds of our own voice. He is, even more than I am, prone to vanishing off on tangents to the main narrative to a rather extreme degree. So I am paraphrasing what he said here.

"The place where we came into the world during the Conjunction was actually far below ground." Regis told us. "The Elder and his immediate companions emerged into a cave. It is a strange place now, the rift is still there although much diminished from when it would allow the passage of beings through. However, it distorts the area around it. If you end up in there then I would suggest keeping your eyes towards the ground as otherwise, your sense of what is up and what is down can become turned around, leaving you disoriented and nauseous. It is enough to make one quite dizzy, let alone a human who has not been there before."

"I shall remember that." I said as Kerrass nodded.

"At first, according to what our parents told us, we waited in the cave for a long time, expecting that the portal would open and that we would all return back to where we came from. As to why we came, I have no idea and the Elder isn't telling us. My father had the theory that we were once a vanguard of an invading force that was coming through the portal in order to invade this realm before the closure of the portal rendered the matter moot. Another theory was that we were a patrol that was on it's way somewhere."

"What's your theory?" Kerrass asked.

"I think that it was magic." Regis answered promptly. "As Geralt's paramour is so fond of saying, Magic is art, science and chaos all the same time. The portal was opened at the same time that magic entered the world and as such, at the time, Magic would have been more chaos than it would have been anything else. Therefore, my belief is that the sheer amount of magical chaos in the air would have meant that we were just the ones that were sucked through. I think that such military theories would not hold water due to the sheer amount of magic in the air."

Kerrass nodded.

"So we waited." Regis said before grimacing. "I say we, this was still over a thousand years before I was born. But the Vampires of the time waited until it became necessary to look outside of our little cave in order to find sustenance. Through our own means we were able to find a way to head towards the surface of this world and from there we tunnelled to the surface to look for nourishment. The place we came to the surface was this place. Tesham Mutna."

"Who called it Tesham Mutna?" I wondered.

"Not us." Regis replied. "My people are not given to artistic expression, not really. It is the kind of thing that we have absorbed from the humans and the Elves around us but we did not come here with anything in particular. It is another argument in favour of the theory that we were soldiers before we came here. I might get punished for suggesting this but it is also possible that we were not very important soldiers either, despite the other vampiric creatures that came with us. It did mean that we had plenty of scouts however, the garkain, plumard, fleders and the rest.

We also had relatively little written language, an art that we stole from the elves in the main. So we don't really have a written record of the time. There were elves in our local vicinity and again, I might get punished for saying this, but I rather feel as though we were afraid of the elves at that point in time.

"For whatever reason, we stayed in the local area, whether due to the designs of the Elder keeping us here, or because the pressure of outside concerns forced us to maintain our presence. As to that, I truly don't know the answer. What I do know is that Tesham Mutna was built as a fortress to guard the entrance to our caves and tunnels. It was a garrison."

"It is a bit grand for a Garrison." I argued.

"There were intimidation factors to take in. When it was built, we were done hiding and we needed to dominate the countryside. One of the things that you have to remember is that we were relatively scarce in number. Yes, we are powerful and if we put our minds to it, a single, elder vampire would make relatively short work of a company of men, even if he was unsupported. It might take us some time to draw off, isolate stragglers and things but a short while ago, Detlaff and I assaulted a fortified manor house with Geralt…"

"He has told us the story." I said, "He said that he felt as though he was being escorted into a place rather than what normally happens in his world, where he is the one doing the escorting."

"Yes well, he is being a little harsh on himself there. But it is true that Detlaff and I were making short work of the relatively experienced, well trained and equipped guards and mercenaries. But there are still relatively few of us. A concerted, knowledgeable attempt to destroy us all by the mages, Witchers and armies of the north and, or the south, would destroy us.

"So we built a massive Fortress in order to terrify the locals. We had our lesser races protect us and work in that area."

"Lesser races?"

"The Fleders, Ekkimoras and so on." Kerrass supplied for me.

"Quite so. Detlaff was the first that tried to treat them as equals. He was not entirely successful in that matter although his efforts meant that they were all devoted to him. It was he that all but created the more feminine of them, the Bruxae in particular were his doing. I am enough of a scientist to wonder how he did it while being enough of a vampire to have a good idea. And unfortunately, I am also enough of an elitist to think that the idea of how he probably did it is disgusting. But he reasoned that we would need go-betweens, that brute force against the elves and the coming humans would not work and would bring far too much attention down on ourselves. So he came up with the beautiful seductresses of the Bruxae in order to lure and seduce. He was incredibly successful.

"So that is why there is a castle here. It is a fortress, designed to protect the portal and prevent the local races and the local humans from looking too closely."

"But this place is ruined." I said, "It takes effort to ruin a place like this. Concerted effort. It wasn't neglect that leads to a castle becoming as ruined as this one. People came and tried to destroy it. What are the odds that if I took a spade, dug a little way down for a couple of hours, how long before I would find a layer of ash from the fires that were set around here."

"Not that long." Regis admitted.

"So what happened?"

Regis looked uncomfortable and I got the sense that we were coming to one of those topics that he wasn't allowed to talk about. Then a female voice came.

"There was a crime committed here." Ariadne said and we spun to see her standing nearby. "A terrible crime that had been expressly forbidden by the Elder and it brought down the wrath of the local humans upon us. Many lesser Vampires died and it was only because some of our arts were not understood by the local mages that we were able to retreat and consolidate. The humans thought that they had destroyed us, or driven us off. They were wrong."

Regis rose to his feet and dusted himself off during this little speech.

"He wants you." Ariadne told him.

"Then I shall, I have no doubt, see you later gentlemen." Regis shook our hands one by one before briefly embracing Ariadne and kissing her cheek. Then he seemed to leap into the air before turning into a reddish, black smoke that drifted over the castle walls and vanished.

Ariadne seemed to sag when he left.

She was different now

When we had come out to Tesham Mutna, she had been as she always is. She had the appearance of a young lady. If you didn't know who she was, you would guess that she was somewhere in her early twenties. Roughly my own age. She prefers to dress simply in relatively plain dresses except when the occasion demands it. She likes long skirts and when she is travelling, she prefers a belted waistcoat type of thing over a long dress that is belted in the middle. She also wears trousers and boots under her skirts that are often divided for riding or walking long distances.

She also, in these times, carries a leather shoulder bag that she wears across her body which contains, among other things, some soap, a journal, a piece of writing charcoal, some kind of small food snacks, a small amount of money, a hair brush and some kind of strange contraption that she uses to tie her hair back when she needs it. There are also some small healing herbs and bandages.

The bag, for something that is being carried by a Sorceress, is only magical in that strange form of female magic which means that she can pack a truly dizzying amount of things in that bag without seeming to distort its shape, and that she can root around in it for ages before finding exactly what she needs, often with a spoken incantation like "I know I put one in here," and "I have just the thing for something like that."

She carries a long Knife on her belt as well as a standard eating knife. Not that she needs it to defend herself but the absence of such a weapon would draw more attention.. There is also a pouch that contains some jars for the taking of samples if she sees anything out and about that she might want to take back to a lab and study.

For travelling about, she wears one of several off-white, creamy dresses. A colour she chose precisely because everyone expects her to wear black. The color black is reserved for her "Lab smock," her words, as well as some night gowns or if she is playing up to her role and other people's expectations.

Colours and things are reserved for special occasions or when she is choosing to defy preconceived notions. On any given day, there is no telling which of these she is going to choose to do. She wears her hair loose, or tied back in a braid or tail which she pulls over her shoulder when she needs to see to work on things. Also, because she knows that I like that style.

And that was how she had come to Tesham Mutna. Simple travelling clothes, hair simply tied back. She had changed somewhere now though and it was suddenly a reminder, not that I particularly needed one, that she had once been considered a Queen.

The dress was rich and regal, Black with strange dark gems sewn into the material. She wore a corset which was reinforced in order to emphasise her shape. The skirts were large and just as ornate as the corsetry. Around her neck hung a heavy Golden, elaborate looking monstrosity of a piece of jewellery that I didn't like. It was not far off looking like a chest, or neck plate for a suit of armour. More gems were embedded in this thing. They were also dark colored, but due to them being bigger than before, I could see that they were not black, but rather the darker and deeper shades of other gems. I saw emeralds, rubies and sapphires in this thing. It must have been monstrously heavy and if Ariadne had been human, I would have guessed that it would give her some difficulty in breathing.

She was heavily made up as well, cheek bones accentuated, lips cloured and eyeliner applied and those were just the cosmetics that I could recognise. Her hair was arranged over her ears and down her back in some kind of elaborate hairstyle that seemed to involve braids. There was more jewellery there as well that weighed the hair down. On top of her head was a crown, the center of which contained a deep red ruby.

In her hand was the Golden Spider staff that was a little taller than her, the head of the staff depicted a rearing spider as though it was just getting ready to strike.

At first, I thought that she had decided to wear an illusion for the purposes of… whatever was going on. But then I realised that there was a movement to the dress and to her face that betrayed that she was really there which, in turn led me to another realisation.

She was wearing a costume.

"I am bid to take you below to where the assembly awaits us." She told us formally. "On the way down, I can answer any questions that you may have regarding Tesham Mutna and its history. If you will follow me."

"Ariadne, is everything ok?" I wondered, rather redundantly. It was clear that everything was not ok so I don't know what I expected her to say.

"Everything is fine." She said as she led us over to a wall.

Her tone lightened a little as she waved us to the wall.

"Regis likes to play a game whenever people come here. He tells people to look for the entrance to Tesham Mutna itself. Did you find it?"

"I did not." I admitted. I knew her well enough by now that it was clear that I needed to play along. She wasn't going to tell me what was going on and I felt as though we had reached a place where I just needed to aim myself at the end of the night and hope for the best.

"By all rights." I went on, "The entrance should be in this wall somewhere. If the keep followed any kind of realistic pattern of the time, which hasn't changed much in the intervening years. This should be where the entrance is."

"So you haven't been able to find it then. Kerrass?"

"I didn't look." Kerrass sniffed. "I was given the feeling that Regis was laughing at me. I did not enjoy the feeling."

"Yes." Ariadne almost gave us a genuine smile. "He can occasionally give that impression. He has mellowed out a little since his most recent brush with death at Stygga. But he still likes the sound of his own voice, still prefers to use a hundred words when ten words would do the job and always wants to explain things to people that are experts in the field that he is explaining."

Kerrass just turned and looked at me.

"Yeah, alright." I admitted.

"Also," Ariadne went on. "He has a tendency to want the last word on something. In this case, however, it is an odd trick. It is not magical but I wish I knew how it was done. You have both looked. Can you see the entrance?"

Kerrass sighed and walked forward, producing his Witcher medallion and walked up and down the wall a couple of times, frowning in concentration before shaking his head.

"No, I cannot." He admitted.

"Freddie?"

I shook my head.

Ariadne nodded, a glimmer of sad humour seemed to twinkle in her eyes for a moment before she walked towards the wall and into the entrance to the keep.

"Yeah." Said Kerrass. "I saw that coming."

It was a strange kind of optical illusion. The entrance didn't just appear out of nowhere. There was no shimmering as it came into view. No pop or magical sparkles to show where it was. It had always been there and now that we could see it, it seemed impossible to think that we had not seen it, or that we couldn't find it again if we went looking for it.

The entranceway was a large tunnel, not particularly wide. It was well lit by torches along the walls. On the wall was a series of hung travelling cloaks and weapon racks that contained many different varieties of weapons that had clearly been placed there.

Two large… creatures were waiting for us and were pacing with some agitation. For those that know, they were Garkains. For those of you that don't know what these things look like, then all I can say is a variety of "Lucky you."

Try and imagine a large bat. Only imagine him to be heavily muscled, lacking in wings and with these strange kinds of bony protrusions instead of ears. They have huge jaws, elongated arms and legs that end in long, thin, hands and feet with excessive claws that can tear through metal armour as easily as you or I may tear into a loaf of bread.

They are typically found in caves, or in sewers for the more urban areas. Remarkably adept at moving around stealthily, they can squeeze through the tiniest holes that you wouldn't believe. They possess a grim kind of sense of humour and a low kind of animal cunning. They certainly possess intelligence of some kind..

They are the kind of intelligence that knows exactly what they need to do to survive and don't see any reason why they should bother with bettering themselves any further than that.

One of them licked it's lips as it gazed at me.

"More snacks." It hissed.

"Honoured guests." Ariadne told it firmly.

"Pity." The thing said, extending a claw towards me. "That one looks nice and plump."

I tried not to look at Kerrass who was using a coughing fit to palm a potion into his mouth.

"As Regis should have told you." Ariadne said to us, as the two garkains flinched at the sound of Regis' name. "Your horses are in no danger. Please hang up your cloaks as I assure you, the tunnels are quite warm. Also, it is required that you leave your weapons behind. The Elder guarantees your safety and you will come to no harm here."

"Resist." One of the Garkains told us. "Please resist. It has been years since I've eaten a Witcher."

Ariadne snarled something at it in a language that I didn't recognise. It snarled back at her. She moved and the thing went flying back across the room and crashed into a wall. When it rose to its feet, black blood was leaking from a cut across its face. It bowed down low before Ariadne's expression.

"Apologise." Ariadne told it.

"I am deeply sorry, Witcher," It whined. "I meant no offence."

"None taken." Kerrass replied, placing his swords on the rack alongside the others. "It has been some time since I killed a Garkain as well."

The two Garkains hissed at this.

I sighed and put my spear next to Kerrass' swords, propping my belly spear and boot knife next to them. Ariadne nodded and led us further down the tunnel. We got a little way down the tunnel before I couldn't hold it in any more.

"That was a show wasn't it." I said, "That was for someone's entertainment."

Ariadne said nothing.

We came to a flight of stairs. There was a feeling that there was much more to what was going on but I couldn't see it. It was similar to how we hadn't been able to see the entrance to the complex. There was one route into the depths of the place and that was the route that was lit. Kerrass and I just followed, what else were we going to do.

"What did Regis tell you about this place?" Ariadne asked.

"He said that it was built to protect the entranceway into the world for the Vampiric race." Kerrass said. "That it was here that the Vampires emerged into the world and they wanted a fort to protect it."

"That is true as far as it goes." She said. "The castle and the tunnels that we dug were not solely for those purposes though. After all, the cave that houses what remains of the portal has no entrance or exit. It is only possible to breathe down there due to the powers that exist inside it. The truth is that, from there, we had to teleport to a cave further up and work our way to the surface from there. Everything that Regis told you was correct. But he was born long after Tesham Mutna had served its purpose and everyone but the Elder had moved on. Tesham Mutna had another purpose as well."

"What purpose was that?" I wondered.

There was a pause before Ariadne answered. Just a small pause but it was there nonetheless. If I didn't know her as intimately as I would like to think I did. I suspect that I probably wouldn't even have noticed it.

"It is easier to show you." She said. "Through here."

We entered a small antichamber. I was again struck with the surety that there was more to this place than I could easily see. Whatever strange form of magic that had kept me from seeing the Entrance to the greater complex of Tesham Mutna was affecting me. Again, I have some distance from these events now and as such, I have a certain amount of hindsight to work with. I think it was about here that I came to realise that what was happening now, was part of the show that was being put on for me.

The Antichamber looked a lot like a study. It was small, utterly without ventilation, but I suppose that that wouldn't matter to the Vampires. There was no furniture in evidence but there was shelving built into the walls where I would have stored scrolls, books and ledgers. I could well imagine some kind of filing system at work.

There were also three large… well… banners that were hanging from the ceiling. They looked old, faded with the centuries but it was still clear to see what they showed.

The imagery was striking and unpleasant.

"What are these banners?" Kerrass asked before I could.

"They are the banners of the Vampire Clans." Ariadne told him. There was a strange note to her voice that I could not recognise. Relief maybe? Wariness? "As I told you, do not be too excited. We would all look the same to you, or so I'm told. The other two clans left before I was born. Shortly after we came to the surface of the continent.

"Which clan do you belong to?" I wondered, mouth automatically speaking and asking questions as I took in the three flags.

"That one." She said pointing. "Along with every Vampire that you will meet tonight, have ever met, or will ever meet unless you travel far across the horizon. And for all we know, they have found other portals and ways off this sphere of existence. It is impossible to say for certainty. Only the Elder might know and he isn't telling anyone. We are clan Gharasham."

I looked at the banner that she pointed to. It depicted a hand. My guess would be that it was once a stark, white hand on black background but the ravages of time had reduced the white to a kind of chalk colour, with the black fading to an off-grey kind of colour. The hand was depicted, palm towards the viewer and the painter had depicted palm and knuckle lines. At each finger tip there seemed to be a wound that was leaking red colouring. The palm had a large, teardrop shape on it that was also leaking as though it was bleeding. At one time, I guessed that the image would have been quite striking.

I found it intensely depressing.

"It looks like a battle banner." Kerrass said.

"That is undoubtedly what it was." Ariadne told him. "Our historians do tell us that when we came through the portals to this place, we were fighting a war and that these were our standards."

"How do you know that?" I asked. "Regis seemed to suggest that that was only a theory."

"I have… other information." She said.

"What are the other clans?" Kerrass asked, heading off the debate and the questions that he knew I would ask.

"That one was the symbol of the Ammurun." She said pointing.

The flag depicted another pale hand, but the fingertips of this one were elongated into claws. The hand was wrapped around a long, pointed dagger in the traditional, theatrical, underhand stabbing grip. The dagger was depicted in a similar shade of chalk white to the hand. The dagger pointed down with a pointed blade and round pommel. Again, blood was a theme as it seemed to run between the fingers of the hand and dripped down the blade. I got the feeling of assassins and being stabbed in the back. I said so as well.

"It is impossible to say." Ariadne said. "The only thing that we know about them is that no sooner did they get here than they went West over the sea

"Which leaves us with the Tdet."

She gestured to the last flag.

Of the three, despite there being no blood on the image, I rather think that this one would be considered by Mark as being the most profane of the three. Again, there was another hand held up, palm facing the viewer with the thumb and the fifth finger brought together in the same gesture that priests use to bestow a blessing on a large group of people.

Wrapped around the wrist of the hand, underneath the thumb of the grip and rearing up above the fingertips of the hand was a mottled, golden, fanged serpent. I know that it was fanged because it had its mouth open, ready to strike.

"Cheery." I muttered.

"As the Ammurun went West, the Tdet went East over the Blue mountains." Ariadne told us.

"Sounds like scouting missions." Kerrass said.

I found myself nodding. "Form a beachhead with one unit protecting the way home while one force scouts to the east and the other scouts to the West."

"What did they find I wonder?" Kerrass muttered.

"A much better question is why did they not come back?" Ariadne ventured.

I shook my head. "Off the top of my head, there could be any number of reasons. There could have been a falling out amongst the leaders of the clans and they have settled elsewhere. We know that the Elder and your people strictly control your population to avoid drawing attention to yourselves. Maybe the threat of having so many vampires in one place was dangerous?

"And that isn't the most paranoid reason." I went on. "What if, over the seas and the mountains, there are predators, monsters that we haven't met yet or haven't been able to migrate to come at us here on this continent. Things that have destroyed these other Clans.

"What do you think, Ariadne?" I wondered, turning towards her.

Her face was still, shadowed in the torchlight so that I couldn't see her eyes. For the first time in a long time as I looked at her. I felt an old thrill of fear.

"I think it is time to move on." She said.

"Another reason," I suggested, more out of pique than anything. "Is that we only know what happened because the Elder tells us so. We only have his word for it after all. Who knows what happened? As a historian, I am loath to believe only one source."

Ariadne continued to say nothing.

We entered a hallway. If I didn't know better, I would say that it was a jail. There were metal...bars down the side of the room with similar metal shelves so that all of the bars and shelves formed small cubicles that were stacked, one on top of the other from floor to ceiling on either side of the central corridor.

There was a smell here and I didn't like it, even if I couldn't identify it.

Each of these cubicles was about three foot wide by one foot tall by six foot long. The floors of these cubicles seemed to be made up of rollers of wood that, when I touched them, rolled smoothly and evenly. I guessed that they would make it easier to get large and heavy things into and out of the cubicles.

Ariadne had stopped and was watching us.

I examined the metal bars carefully and I saw places on the bars that had once formed brackets for things to be hooked in. Raised semi-circles of metal that had holes punched in for hooks. I looked around and couldn't find any of these hooks although I looked quite extensively.

"What are these for?" I wondered.

"I know what they are." Kerrass hissed.

Turning to him I could see that he was rigid with some emotion, probably several emotions. Breath was hissing between his teeth. He was pale and clammy to look at and his eyes were bugging out of his skull.

"You kept humans in these cells," he hissed. It was not an angry hiss, more as though he was forcing the words out between his gritted teeth.

"And Elves." Ariadne agreed in a neutral voice. "Dwarfs and Halflings too when we could find them."

"That smell." Kerrass went on. "No matter how hard we scrubbed, we couldn't get that stench out of the walls, out of the cages. We scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, but still the smell of piss and shit and vomit and fear and madness and…."

"How far does this corridor go?" I asked Ariadne, breathing deeply to keep calm.

"Just a little way and…"

"I think you should take Kerrass away from this place." I told her, "It will remind him of the cages that he was kept in once."

I was again being struck by the suspicion that I was being tested. That I was being watched and toyed with in some way. I looked at the bars, the cages again and felt something change in my head.

"Take him away and get him something to drink." I told her. "I want to stay here and look around a bit."

Ariadne's expression was still a mask and I wondered if she had slipped into her illusion of herself. I used to be able to tell whenever she did that but now I was not so sure.

She stepped forward to take Kerrass by the arm and tried to lead him to the end of the corridor.

"Don't fucking touch me." He snarled, reaching for his sword that, of course, wasn't there. "He wailed in fear and pain for a moment and covered his face. Ariadne took him by the elbow and this time succeeded in steering him to the end of the corridor.

I found myself alone and took a moment to try and identify how I was feeling. It's a habit that I have come into since the depths of my illness, both in Angral and in Toussaint. That habit of self-assessment in order to see if it is a form of my illness that is making me ill, or if I really am angry or upset.

I decided that I was legitimately angry. Someone had literally set that up, bringing Kerrass to a place that would remind him of the horrors of his old life. Now they were setting me up and I found myself wondering what was next. What was the thing that I was here to see?

The answer came clear to my head.

"Well fuck you." I muttered, half to myself and half to my unseen and unknown Watcher. I was a historian and a scholar dammit and by the Eternal Flame, I was standing in the depths of ancient history. So I would damned well do my job and if I came through all of this then I would damned well find the person that had put Kerrass through that in order to cause them pain.

I bent to examine the metal bars. They were ice cold and the edges were sharp. You would not be able to stand up, turn over or move easily if someone forced you to lay down in one of those things. I guessed that you would have to go in, feet first in order for you to be fed and to be able to breathe and if I assumed that that was the case, then the holes and the hooks would be meant for the restraints to be hooked on to.

I turned around and looked for where the restraints might be kept.

Further down the corridor of cells was a hollow place. In the middle of this place was a wooden lectern and I finally found some proof that this was being staged. The bars had been immovable and had been built into the walls, the floor and the ceiling of the corridor so they had definitely been around as long as the hall had been here. But the Lectern itself was relatively new. You could tell by the wear and tear on the wood which was unvarnished. If that wood had been here as long as the steel Bars had been, then it would have rotted away.

There was also a torch, bracketed to the wall so that I could see the book that was resting on the lectern easily. It was almost funny to see.

The book itself was old and had that feel that comes when large reference books have had spells placed on them in order to preserve them. Lady Yennefer has many of these kinds of books and I was lucky enough to be allowed to study some of the same in the libraries of Oxenfurt that had escaped the book burnings of the Eternal Flame.

Another idea for a scholarly work if anyone wants one. A work describing the heroism of those Librarians that archived and hid away the most important and valuable books from the Eternal Fire fanatics. They were not entirely successful, but what they did manage to preserve will form the basis for modern education in the future of the North.

There is a feel to such books. The paper is that little bit more flexible than it should be. The pages turn in a uniform way. The book doesn't smell of anything and the paper and bindings seem too uniform and smooth to the touch.

It was a scientific journal. The last page entry read "The first stages of the experiments are over and it is time for me to present my findings and properly begin my own research. The subjects are too broken to be released and I will recommend extermination."

There was another set of pages that was over there that I was clearly meant to read. For a while, I was tempted to set it aside as I felt sure that I was being manipulated. But in these cases, it is also true that you can learn from the things that people want you to be manipulated by, as not.

The one on top was particularly chilling. It was written in an older form of the elder speech used by the southerners at that time. I say southerners as, by my reckoning, this page was written long before Nilfgaard had a name, let alone had developed a written language. It is true that those humans in the South seem to have gotten on well enough with whatever form southern elves seemed to take although those elves seem to have disappeared a long time ago. But they got on well enough that the elves taught the southerners language and writing.

But I'm digressing again.

The original paper has been taken off to be placed inside a museum. It was badly degraded and we nearly lost it when it was exposed to the open air. I had not been prepared for archeological work when I went to Tesham Mutna but it seems clear that I would not be invited back. And even if I was invited back, it was not clear that I would go.

This was what was written as best as I can remember it and translated from the original.

I will die soon.

I will die soon and I can no longer bring myself to care. I wonder if this is what despair feels like.

When I was being carried back to my cell, a piece of parchment fell from the book that one of them carries with… her?... At least I think it's a her…. But the parchment fell and I took it. That, and a piece of the coal that I have pilfered from the fire bowl that is kept alight nearby in order to keep us warm.

One of the prisoners who was here before my arrival, claimed that the bowl was first lit because a couple of prisoners had frozen to death while lying in their own filth. It would seem that the filth froze first and that cold seeped into the person's body, killing them.

A piece of parchment and a piece of coal are my tools with which I can tell my story, such as it is. But I can no longer remember my story. I am so tired.

I have no idea what time it is. They cycle through the prisoners and bleed us accordingly and I have decided that these bleedings are now mornings which, according to my math, means that they bleed someone every day, whereas each individual is bled once every third day. They bleed us so much that afterwards, I am too weak to move, barely able to drink the broth that they bring us to feed us and keep us alive.

I can't do this much longer.

The man in the cage above me died yesterday. They had brought him back from being drained and he just died shortly afterwards. The female came and was angry, making a note in the book that she always carries with her. She reminds me of someone but I can't remember who it is. There are so many things that I can't remember now. I know that I used to walk in the sun and feel the wind on my face, but I can no longer remember the colour of grass or the sky. I know that grass is green and the sky is blue but I do not know what that LOOKS like.

The man above me died and when he died, his bowels opened and the excrement dribbled down between the bars in the cage, just as mine will dribble down onto the person below me when my time comes.

It will not be long now.

They brought some new people in, maybe three days ago. The female was happy. She is the only female voice amongst all of them. I know that there are other females but from those that deal with us. She is the only one that works with us regularly. The female was excited. Something about this new batch of people was interesting to her.

The monsters that they use as servants brought the new people in and jammed them into their slots while the woman and a couple of other men supervised. There was the jangle of chains and rustle of leather straps as they were secured in place. For a while there, there was music to the movements as chains rattled and clashed. Coupled with the howls of terror as the newcomers settle in.

They no longer need to chain me in. I am too weak to escape. The newcomers will learn, although I envy them their terror and their energy. Someone is telling them to try and bash their brains out against the mettle. It has been tried before, sometimes it even works.

They don't know yet. They don't know the real terror that is to be found deep in these tunnels. When the skittering things come for us and take us down to the chambers where we are strapped down and bled, only for our blood to fall into carefully maintained troughs and run away. At first, I gave a lot of blood so that the liquid sloshed in the metallic instruments. Now though, it ebbs thickly and sluggishly.

The first time it happens, it is terrifying. You are there, not knowing what is to come and that lack of knowledge terrifies you. You struggle, uselessly against monstrous strength and inhuman grips, but that only makes the blood flow faster. They laugh and comment to each other.

I don't struggle now. What's the point.

But that first fear is…

They will learn.

I have lost count as to how many times they have come for me. The next one will kill me, I am all but certain. If not the next one, then the one after that. It is now, the one thing that I will look forward to. The blood looks so beautiful as it stains their blades.

I can no longer remember my own name.

I felt sick.

I could feel the fragility of the parchment and I set it carefully aside, returning to the book, flipping towards the first entry that I could recognise what was written. Before that entry, the writing was in a language that I did not recognise, using letters and sentence structures that made no sense to me.

Entry 1

The learned one has died. I am really quite… he would have called it 'angry'. As a basis for my argument that this new cattle has some form of… brains and therefore intelligence, he would have been invaluable. He was bled too much and died on the table. The corners of his mouth were turned upwards when I insisted on being taken to view the corpse before disposal. I suspect sabotage. I leave this entry in their written language that the learned one was teaching me, as evidence against the future.

Entry 2

I have decided to keep recording my findings in the language of these creatures. If my suspicions are correct, and the learned one's death was as a result of sabotage, then it is possible that they learned… so many weaknesses in the language… that the learned one would provide evidence for my case and as such, he was killed. Therefore, I will write in the cattle language in order to throw them off. They will decide that I have invented a code in order to stymy them. I find that thought… amoosing. No, that doesn't look right. Amusing. That is better. I wonder if the learned one would consider that a form of vengeance.

Entry 3

To repeat certain observations from earlier for ease of reference. Their physical development from youth to age is similar to our own. However, they have no control over their physical development when adulthood is achieved. Superficial signs of age begin to accrue, delayed or sped up by life factors such as illness, lifestyle, cleanliness, diet and other factors that have yet to be identified. Signs of age include hair turning grey and then white, an increasing stoop, mental infirmity and loss of energy.

We have realised that age of the subject does influence flavour but not strength of the effects. I suspect that this would be a matter of personal taste. Speaking personally, I prefer an older vintage.

I skipped over a few pages as a growing suspicion was forming in my mind by this point. Another entry caught my eye. I have no idea which number entry this one was.

I have made a breakthrough. These creatures do not fear death, or rather, it does not hold the same terror as it does for us. This is really quite extraordinary. The great mystery of our existence is what happens when our physical form is destroyed. Apart from the fact that such a matter is all but impossible barring intervention of another of our kind. We had always assumed that we would simply cease to exist. It is why the application of language in it's written form is so vital. If we do not record what we see, hear, learn and do then that will be lost in the eventual destruction of ourselves.

But these… They call themselves 'Humans'. These humans do not fear that coming event. My competitors in the argument as to how to treat these new species that we have encountered would argue that, given the pace of their natural degradation and the inevitable nature of their expiration, their lack of fear is due to the inevitability of it. They claim that they have merely come up with a way to console themselves as to what happens when they die.

The humans have convinced themselves about the existence of something called a 'Soul'. They claim that when they die, the soul carries on to go to… wherever they go next.

I am fascinated. I mean to find this soul and examine its nature.

Following entry

I am concerned that my competitors might be correct on this count. I have dissected three subjects now and can find no evidence of anything that might resemble this so called "soul" that gives these humans so much solace. We had already identified many of the internal workings of their bodies. Their hearts, reproductive organs, pulmonary and nervous systems are close to our own. Their digestive systems are not nearly as efficient as ours and I suspect that, if we had better equipment, we would learn that the nervous systems do not work in the same way that ours do.

But I have ground down every single part of the human, both alive and dead, including the most likely candidates for the housing of the soul and I have found nothing there.

I am disappointed.

The capacity for self-delusion is not a catastrophic obstacle when it comes to arguing for the intelligence of these creatures, but it would argue against the free roaming method. After all, if they are more capable of self-delusion, then they are more capable of deluding themselves into other, much more harmful beliefs.

Following entry

I have conducted further interviews on the subject of a Soul and after an initial disappointment, I think that there is something interesting here after all. It seems to be a concept that is shared amongst all of the "human" subjects no matter where they are from on the sphere that we find ourselves on, no matter which sphere that they came from themselves, they seem to share this central concept. It is described as an unknowable 'something' that means that existence becomes more than it is. It is an ongoing thing that was there before a human is born and continues long after they are dead.

There is even some belief that this 'soul' can be reborn into many lives and bodies over the course of its existence.

I charged the hunters to find me one of the shorter, doughtier races that refer to themselves as Dwarves as well as one of the beings that seem responsible for what passes for written language in this particular guise. I intend to put the question of the "soul" to them.

The immediate following entries seemed unremarkable and I skipped over them until I found the entry about the interview with the dwarf.

Fascinating. The Dwarf, A name that seems a little insulting to me, it's a descriptor, not a name for a race, not only claimed to believe in the existence of the Soul, but also believed that the Souls of his ancestors watched over him while he lived and worked. He actively looked forward to seeing his parents and elder brother again in the future.

And then the Elven entry.

The hunters have outdone themselves, coming up with two Elves, a male and a female. I wonder if I can breed them. They have claimed the production of offspring would not be possible due to their advanced age. I am not sure I believe them on the grounds that they still seem to appear at an equivalent age to relatively youthful humans. But one of the hunters reported that the elves did not respond to threats of death on the grounds that, and I quote "My soul will go to a better place". Words cannot express my excitement.

I leant back from the small lectern for a long moment before bending back to the pages. Flicking through them until I came to the end. The notes appeared to be an examination of human emotion.

My learned colleagues have been sitting on a discovery that would have been useful to my own lines of enquiry for some time. I am really quite beside myself with rage and I have registered the complaint with the attendants of the Elder for his review. We are supposed to be working together on the "humanity project" with regards to deciding their eventual future and as such, they have been keeping things from me.

It would seem that humans, elves and dwarves all have something of a claim towards emotion. Or if not emotion, some kind of primitive equivalent. So far, things that have been identified include fear, anger and hatred. To be honest, none of these things are particularly surprising to me as I write this. These emotions are common throughout the animal kingdom and it should not be at all surprising that such emotions are present.

However, my fellows are trying to identify these things and seeing where they lie as the concepts are new to them. I find this frustrating. It is true that we do not feel fear. Anger is a waste of time to be set aside as soon as possible or, at best, used as a focus where possible, and hatred is pointless. These are the instincts of lesser beings after all. I put it to them that the reason that they are so fascinated is because they are finally able to communicate with a being that can feel these things and as such…. They were most offended by the prospect. I wonder if they finally understood what Anger means.

They are obsessed with understanding fear and are tearing subjects apart in order to understand it. They think that fear is something that you can find, that it lives somewhere in the heart. They are finally approaching the realisation of the human concept of the soul. I have decided not to disabuse them of the notion.

Fear is an instinct that we have moved beyond. After all, what is there for us to fear?

They are also trying to elicit different emotional responses with a view to seeing if the blood of a terrified man tastes different to the fear of an angry man. Further evidence that their research is not about learning new things. But rather about learning how the world can benefit themselves.

The truth is that I did not investigate down these lines due to my conviction that such matters are pointless. The Fight or Flight instinct is common to just about all living creatures, regardless of any level of intelligence. The real question here is what happens if other, more advanced stimuli were applied in order to draw out more complex emotion. They have words for them as I was finally able to perfect the magic to be able to pull the language and writing out of their minds. But what is hope? What is compassion? What do humans mean by love, desire or lust?

I snapped the book closed. I didn't want to read any more. I went back to look at some of the cages and the, for want of better phrasing, cells that these humans would have been kept in. I was just, experimentally, climbing into one, feet first and on my back, to see what it would feel like when I felt her presence.

"Actually," Ariadne said. "We used to put them in there facing downwards."

"That sounds uncomfortable." I said before I could stop myself. "Why?"

"Two reasons." She said. "The first was that it discouraged escape attempts. We never found out why but humans struggled to move when they were kept face down. They needed to push themselves up to get out and they found that much more difficult to do so when they were facing down. It also meant that they would not drown in their own vomit when the nausea became too much for them to bear."

I nodded and pulled myself out of the hole that I had pushed myself into. I felt the need to brush myself off, even though the place was clean. It took me a moment to find where she was. She was standing near the other entrance to the room. The opening that she had taken Kerrass through. I walked towards the Lectern.

"This is your book isn't it." I said, not really asking the question. I was as confident as I could be. The handwriting was different but there were flourishes that I thought I could recognise. "You made these journals and these notes."

"Yes."

"And this record of a prisoner. You were the female that he was talking about."

"Yes."

I couldn't see her expression. Too much of her face was in shadow.

I made another guess. I was less certain of this one but I was pretty confident that I was right.

"You let the leaf of parchment fall. Yo unwanted to see if he would use the paper. You also arranged the piece of charcoal to fall close to his hand so that he could use it. I bet you even stood in the shadows and watched him write where he couldn't see you."

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. I was right and I knew it.

"Can I keep this?" I asked, gesturing at the book. "This is a historical find that will reverberate through the scholarly world."

"I believe that it is intended as a gift for you." She said.

"Not worried that it will spark a pogrom against Vampires, against you?"

"No." She said. "I have spent enough time among humans to know that the majority of people in the more learned areas would struggle to believe it. They will see it as an effort, by you, to justify the existence of Witchers and Mages and the like. They will argue that it is fear based propaganda arranged to control them. And for the less learned people, they already know to be afraid of the dark."

I nodded. It was a brutal assessment, but also rather accurate I thought.

"Are there any other documents that they want me to see?"

"Yes. There is a cubbyhole in the base of the lectern containing a binder of similar documents to the prisoner's notes."

I looked for, and found the bundle, added the prisoner's note to the stack and re-tied the bundle. I was both fascinated and appalled at the prospect of going through the papers.

I also hated myself a little for the excitement that I felt.

"I shall have them taken and placed alongside your spear ready for the return journey." Ariadne said. "It is time that we moved on."

"Hold on," I said, taking a deep breath and looking around myself. It is important when you find yourself in places like this. Places where there has been so much horror in the past, to just take a moment to take it in. The mind can skip things over. Memories can be erased and destroyed and as a historian, moving through the torture chambers of those that would consider themselves better than me, it is important to take these things in. Not to try and experience these things for yourself. But rather to imprint them on your memory.

"You knew." I said as another insight occurred. "You knew what was going to happen to Kerrass when you brought him in here. You knew that he would be reminded of his cage and the cave that he lived in. You knew how he would react."

"I didn't know." She said.

"Come on Ariadne," I felt the first stirrings of anger and was surprised that I hadn't felt it before now. "You have forgotten more about how the brain works than our society will ever know. You knew."

"I didn't know." She insisted, her tone of voice not changing. "I didn't. I strongly suspected."

Her gaze had not wavered. Her expression, what I could see of it, did not change.

"It is time to move on." She said again.

"How much more is there to see?" I wondered

"There is some." She said.

I will skip over the blood-draining chamber. There was nothing new to say about it. It was a room where there were tables situated for people to be tied down and into them. There were tables with sharp blades and wicked looking hooks placed upon them. There was an aesthetic beauty to them. Obviously, I would not want to compare the two different things to them, but they reminded me of the tools of religious worship in the Church of the Eternal Flame. It was as though they had a religious significance and that they had been made to be physically beautiful as well as being very very sharp.

There were several draining tables and I, along with the faint kind of distancing of self that comes with going to places where horrible things occurred, I also found myself beginning to be amused by some of the things that I was seeing.

There was a smaller table, designed for those beings of shorter stature. I don't know why I found this funny, but I did.

I looked underneath some of the tables and found that they were made from wood. And like the Lectern, these tables were new. I looked as carefully as I could and could see no signs of recent blood flow, either on the knives, on the tables themselves or in the channels that had been carved through the stone for the passage of the blood. There is always some sign of blood. Even if you scrub and scrub and scrub, there are always some signs.

These tables were new. Brand new. You could still see the lighter colouring of the new, injured wood from where someone had attacked it with the carving tool.

It was not a small effort to keep myself from laughing.

I also noticed that Ariadne did not try to chase me out of this room with any kind of "We need to move on." I guessed that the show was over, or at least, that the first act was over.

"I am ready to move on." I told her after making my examination. "Unless there is something else that you need to show me?"

She led me through a doorway. We collected Kerrass on the other side of that room. He had been sat on a stool that someone had provided for him and had a skin of water in his hand from which he was taking occasional sips.

"You good?" I asked as he looked up to see me.

"I've been happier." He took a deep breath which seemed to shake as he breathed in. "That was, less than pleasant." His gaze flickered past me to Ariadne. "Tell me." He said in a flat voice. It had been a while since I had heard one of his Witcher voices. In this particular case, it was the voice of a Witcher who is getting necessary information out of someone that he knows is going to lie to him.

"Tell me. We are taking a very circuitous route down into the depths of the earth. It occurs to me that, even Vampires would value efficiency and understand the need for straight lines. Is there not a staircase or a central corridor that could have carried us to where we need to go without all of this moving around?"

Ariadne said nothing.

"I thought so." He said. "Well, let's keep moving then."

We went a little way down the corridors and I felt some more questions starting to come to the surface.

"So this place wasn't just built to protect your entrance way into this world." I said, "It was to house your food and drink."

"Tesham Mutna had many purposes." Ariadne said. "It was, indeed, here as an anchor point to link us back to the old realms that we came from. And yes, it was a place where we conducted our experiments on discovering what humans were and how they operated. It was indeed here where we discovered that, to us, your blood is like a cross between strong alcohol and a strong narcotic. The fortress was also built, partially, in order to protect our wine stores."

"What were the other reasons?"

"Punishment." Ariadne said with relish. Just for a moment, the old Ariadne, the woman that I fell in love with, was shining through

"It sounds like there's a story there." Kerrass muttered as we came to a spiral staircase

"There is and if I had heard it before the pair of you had released me, I might not have been quite so… ignorant when I emerged as to thinking that the world would just bow to my whim."

"Do you have time to tell us this story now?"

"I do, if we could just walk a little slower."

Kerrass chuckled quietly. I did not as I was still grappling with all of the implications of what I had seen and been told.

"As I say." Ariadne began. "Human blood is like a cross between the finest wine and the highest quality narcotic. My competitors in my research were in the process of arguing that all that humans were good for was breeding in order to produce better vintages. Whereas I preferred the idea of giving humanity their freedoms and that that freedom would produce both, better humans and better vintages.

"I stress that I had to put my opinions in those terms in order to get anywhere.

"My lead competition in the other faction was a Vampire called Khagmar. Or at least, that is the closest that it would sound like in your language. He never bothered with having a human sounding name like mine, or like Regis for example.

"Khagmar was a similar character to me in that we were both insatiably curious and scientific in our reasoning. Our parents were friendly and it was even mooted that the two of us would make good parents for any future children that we might wish for. What our parents had not managed to understand is that when two scientific minds meet, they either get on really well with each other, or they despise each other on sight and spend all their time arguing. Khagmar and I did the latter.

"I cannot pretend that it was entirely his fault. We just... annoyed each other. We would deliberately take the opposite view of each other in order to annoy or anger the other. At the time, I would insist that I was doing so because I did not agree with his hypothesis. But in being honest with ourselves we must occasionally admit that we are not perfect. In my case, there were times where I would just take the opposite view and work to undermine him because I didn't like his face."

Again, Kerrass laughed, but I was too deep in thought. Kerrass would later tell me that Ariadne was watching my face and that her performance was largely for my benefit.

"I stress that, the human project, was not one of those. I realised that the potential for intelligence was high. Not just in the humans but also in the Elves and the Dwarves."

"Not halflings or Gnomes?" Kerrass wondered.

"I am sorry to say that if we came across any of their people, it is far more likely that we confused them with Dwarves. Realising that there were separate species there, was a thing that was a little way beyond us. It was just a question that didn't occur to us to ask.

"To my shame, I still believed that Vampires were superior to humans, but I believed that the freedom that could be offered would work better than having humans in cages and controlled breeding camps."

"You mentioned this." Kerrass said. "The difference between industrialised farming and the more free range methods."

"Precisely. Khagmar was a proponent of industrial methods. I thought that the cruelty would make matters worse. But anyway…

"I went North to continue my work around Angraal. Khagmar stayed here and from what communication I had with what remained of the community, Khagmar was deteriorating. I said earlier that blood is like alcohol and drug combined, that also translates to how it acts on the body. Eventually, Khagmar's methods started to become sloppy. He became more insistent on procuring more humans. I lost track here because I was imprisoned.

"I am told that Khagmar became dangerous. He stopped being careful with his hunts and his blood parties. The parallels between human and vampire debauchery are really quite fascinating. His friends and he would go out into the world, find a village, drink it, far beyond the point of death and then move on. What that meant was that they were leaving a trail of broken bodies and destroyed villages in their wake. Just as dangerous was that their actions caused the lesser vampiric races to become complacent themselves. So the fleders, the alps and the rest started to kill and feed indiscriminately.

"As I could have warned them all, humanity was far from stupid and they were soon able to realise the pattern. witchers existed by this point and the mages had begun to properly harness magical force. Realising that this new type of monster was there, the witchers and the mages took to hunting and studying vampires with interest. And because Khagmar was foolish and addled with blood, he had left a pattern to be tracked.

"The mages and the witchers started to zero in on the location of Tesham Mutna and attacked it. That is what led to the ruin of the place. As a result, the Elder became concerned that they would find the portal and possibly take it to destroy it or worse, study iy. This was not to be considered. So the Elder and the nearby elder vampires took matters into their own hands. They captured and imprisoned Khagmar and discussed how to punish him."

"Imprisonment?" Kerrass wondered again.

"Far worse. They decided to punish him with his addiction. They locked him in a cage, trapped him so that he would be unable to move and kept him imprisoned far above the ground in a hallway, the very hallway that we are going to. Then the vampires had a party. Pouring blood into the place they got drunk, they got high, they did everything that you would, correctly, consider to be depraved and all the way through this, Khagmar could not get involved.

"As I say, I was not there as by this point, I was imprisoned in my tower. But I'm told that he went mad. The scent of so much blood rose to meet him and he threw himself at his bonds. Tearing himself apart in an effort to get free in order to partake in what was going on. An elder vampire is strong, but his cage had been forged to be stronger.

"When the party was over, the blood was cleaned away, or as much as any such things can be cleaned away, the watching assembly was appalled when Khagmar came down from his cage, fell to his knees and started to lick the stone floor."

"Sounds overly cruel." Kerrass said. "It would have been easier to just kill him."

"I was not there, so I can't really comment." She said. "I agree, but the Elder insisted that the worst crime that can be committed in our society is the killing of another elder vampire. Therefore, it would be immoral for us to do the same."

"What happened to Khagmar?"

"He went mad. Mind broken mad. He was put to sleep, placed in a coffin and buried in the ground until such a time as he regains his senses."

"Will that happen?" Kerrass was astonished.

"Eventually." Ariadne said. "What is not really known about my people is that we can hibernate in order to rejuvenate. It's how we can recover from serious injury. It can be helped along by another of our people if the recovery is taking too long. Regis told me that he was reduced down to a… his words 'A slightly damp and oily smear on a castle wall'. We can also put ourselves into such a state for whatever reason. It was this state that you found me in when you broke into my room. It can also be used in order to recover from serious mental injuries. If one of us goes mad from something or because of something we can enter a similar state until our brain and thought patterns reset.

"I have seen that humans often have an urge to almost hibernate after extreme shock, upset or heartbreak. They wrap themselves in blankets and insulate themselves from potential future hurt. It is essentially the same process only taken to an extreme. Humans are far better at… rolling with the emotional punches, than we are. You fall in love, break each other's hearts, recover and then fall in love again with a speed that we would find terrifying."

Kerrass let that one go without comment. I was half listening by that point. I sensed that Ariadne was trying to tell me something but I was not feeling wise enough to take the point. Instead, I decided that it was time to ask a question.

"Have there ever been any other Vampires punished in Tesham Mutna?" I wondered.

"There have. Regis is being punished as we speak. I do not know what will happen to him. He was using our habit of 'Out of Sight, out of mind' and was hiding in the south somewhere. It is generally accepted that he needed to do what he did, but escaping murder of another Vampire is a serious thing. It is a matter of some controversy that he is here now and his punishment seems so… small. For my mind, I suspect that his punishment is only just beginning though."

I nodded. "Anyone else?"

"Yes. There was a vampire couple named Tregard and Camille. They created a newborn without permission. As I think I have said, the creation of a new Vampire is strictly controlled by the Elder."

"What happened to them?"

"They love each other. They really do and also as I've said, Love, for us, is an all consuming thing. So their punishment was to be kept apart on the Elder's whim. One of them is kept entombed in hibernation while the other is allowed to be free. They are allowed to swap at any time which is the only time that they are allowed to see each other for one day."

Kerrass stared at her in open mouthed horror. "So one is free to miss the other and suffer the guilt over the fact that they can enjoy life. While the other is imprisoned. And when it gets too much, or the desire to see the other becomes too much, they swap over and consign the other to the same fate?"

"Pretty much."

"That's awful." Kerrass considered. "Is there a minimum period before they are allowed to swap again?"

"A decade. At the moment, Tregard is free. If you ever hear stories about a dashing vampire kidnapping winsome young women, then that's him. They always disappoint him however and he casts them aside. He gets closer to the other major crime that we have which is to betray our presence to the world. To bring the mages and the witchers down on our heads. Some would even say that, in the elder's mind at least, this exposure is a worse crime than anything else."

Kerrass chuckled.

I did not.

"Here we are." Ariadne said. We had come to the bottom of the flight of stairs and walked along a corridor before we came to a large set of double doors. She stopped and turned to face us. "I once told you that you would probably find Vampire parties incredibly boring. Well, now you will get your chance to find out. The pair of you will be the biggest sensation that our society has seen in centuries. It has been promised that no harm will come to you. Some will be curious to see what your blood tastes like. Do not be offended at this. They should accept a refusal calmly."

"And if they don't?"

"Call for Regis or myself. There will be plenty of people there who are going to be violently against open indulgence in such a formal setting. So do not worry. Remember also that, unlike humans, we do not decorate ourselves with signs of our wealth or prestige. There is a lady in here who is dressed, to you, like a whore. But to us, she is important and well respected. There is also someone in here that dresses in the skins of animals and nothing else. Do not be alarmed by what you see. Also, people might ask you to perform. Do not do anything that you are uncomfortable with and remember that our society moves slowly. Take your time and consider your actions. Brace yourselves, it will likely be an assault on your senses. It is also true that they will be putting on a show for you, seeking to get you to be emotional in some way."

She turned and pushed open the doors.

She did right to warn us.