Impoverished villages, rude bumpkins, and remote swamps. That was what most Temerians thought Velen was made up of, and now, the witchers were right in that swamp.
"I swear I'll make it pay for trying to lay a finger on my apprentice!" Felix roared into the skies. He was in the center of the group, holding Carl's hand and chasing after that trail of blood in the air. It would lead them to the ear's owner.
Letho was in the vanguard, scouting out their path with his silver blade, while Auckes and Serrit took up the middle. They were looking around cautiously. A swamp covered in a blanket of fog was never safe. These were the feasting grounds of ghouls, drowners, water hags, and necrophages. One slip up and they would become food for monsters. Roy was in the rear. His Manticore Boots would sink into the soil with every step he took. It hindered his movement.
He looked up at the sky. It had brightened up. The sun was starting to shine, the temperature was rising, and the drops of water were turning into steam, draping this dangerous place with a veil of silk-like fog. The witchers could only see about twenty yards around them. The soil was filled with weed and murky puddles, and trees stood around those puddles. Sometimes they would also come across decaying animal corpses as well.
They heard caws coming from the corpses, and a few gleaming crows would burrow out of the bodies before flying up into the sky.
A breeze swept across the swamp, and ripples spread out across the murky waters. It was as if something was trying to break through.
"M-Master, I'm scared…" Carl's face was white, his eyes filled with terror. He was holding Felix's muscular arm, trying to find a sense of security.
"Remember what I taught you, monkey." Felix held the boy's hands and stared into the swamp's depths. "Swamp dwellers share one trait: they love the smell of a coward's blood and heart. The more afraid you are, the faster you'll die."
Carl shivered. He craned his neck and mustered all his courage to say, "I-I'm not scared anymore."
"Good." Felix sneered. "But don't worry. I'll slice them up if they try to lay a finger on you."
"Look!" Letho suddenly called out to everyone and pointed at a piece of moss-covered, decaying log floating on the swamp. It was swimming not far away from them. Everyone turned their attention to it. The log looked like any other regular wood, but upon closer inspection, they noticed that something like a mushroom was growing in the little pit on the top. The plant was shaped like a whirlpool.
"Is that an ear?"
"Yeah. A human ear. It's rotten. Must have been here for quite a while."
The witchers were silent. They had a feeling that this bizarre setup was a part of something more sinister.
Roy massaged his forehead, muttering, "Ears in the swamps of Velen… Is the Whispess behind this?"
"What are you mumbling under your breath, kid?"
"I just remembered a story about this place."
"Did you see it in a book, or is this one of your 'feelings' again? Tell us about it."
"This is about some of the most ancient beings in this land—" Roy was just starting his story, but he was forced to stop.
Someone was singing in the swamp, beyond the fog. It sounded eerie, and nobody could make out what the lyrics were talking about. Their attention was grasped by the song, and they listened closely as they approached the direction of the voice.
"We sisters three, hand in hand. Cross the land, scare the men. The turn goes: Three times thee, three times me, three times more. Nine…" They came to a rickety hay shack, and fields of celery and bulrush stood before it. A man was singing in the yard. His singing could bring an army to their knees, but still he kept singing as loudly as he could.
The man was about forty years old. Life tarnished his face with wrinkles, and he was in hemp attire, just like anyone else in a village. The man was hurt, however. His right cheek was covered in a bandage, and there was blood on it.
The man was engrossed in his singing, as if that was the only thing in life for him. He splashed golden liquid onto his crops as he sang, oblivious to the approaching witchers. He got the shock of his life when someone patted him on the shoulder. The oily, transparent liquid in his ladle fell to the ground, and the man's face was contorted with pain.
"Who are you? Did you have to be that quiet? You shocked me!" the man growled. He did not welcome the witchers at all.
"Sorry, brother, but we're witchers who're just passing by. We need to ask you something." Felix squeezed through the group, and it was then he realized that not only was the man's right cheek hurt, his left ear was missing as well. Half of his hair was missing, literally. One side of his scalp had no hair on it, while the other side had thick brown hair growing out of it. His eyebrows had been shaved off as well, and his left leg was replaced by a wooden prosthetic, though it looked like the leg of a table. The man looked funny and weird at the same time.
The veteran witchers were keeping their eyes on the man, while Roy stared at the fields. The crops were plentiful. It was the sign of a bountiful year. Roy looked at the bucket beside the man. It had a golden liquid in it, and it smelled like oak. This is no ordinary fertilizer. It's some kind of oil extracted from oak fruits.
"What'd you say?" the man yelled at the witchers. "I can't hear you!"
The man's hearing was ruined when his ear was cut off. Felix approached and huddled to his ear, then he told him what he said earlier. The man waved him off impatiently. "I don't know why you're here, witcher. It's just a backwater place, and I have no requests for you. I don't even have the coins to pay." He pointed to the west, and as if he were chasing them off, he said, "Try your luck out at the Hunched Swamp or Lower Velen if you need any requests."
"That's not why we're here!" Felix's patience ran out, and he whipped out the exquisite dagger. "Do you know what this is?"
The sight of the dagger horrified the man. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. His teeth were mostly decayed, and he stammered, "Y-You have b-blasphemed…"
"Shut up!" Felix stuffed the man's mouth with a bloody ear and shut him up. He held the man up by his shirt, and the man swung a leg around. "You'd better not try anything stupid, you bastard. Now answer my question. What the hell is in this swamp? How did it turn you into this wreck? And why'd it try to take my apprentice?"
If looks could kill, the man would have died a few times now. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head, and he was shivering, perhaps from both fury and fear.
"You can't expect him to tell you anything when you just stuffed his mouth with an ear." Roy took the ear out of the man's mouth.
The man heaved a sigh and growled menacingly, "You fool! You've removed the holy relic from its place! God shall judge you!"
"Did you just threaten me?" Felix slapped the man, but he controlled his strength. It was only hard enough to leave a mark on his face. "I'll make you wish you were never born." Felix started casting a sign, but Roy held his arm, stopping him.
"No. Don't use Axii."
"Give me a reason not to." Felix was surprised Roy would stop him.
"Roy's right," Auckes agreed. "We almost got in trouble the last time we tried to use Axii on another god's believer. Never do that." He was talking about that beggar who believed in Coram Agh Tera. "We'll search his house. You keep an eye on him, Vulture."
Letho, Auckes, Serrit, and Roy went into the rundown shack, while Felix stuffed the man's mouth with a ball of cloth to stop him from cursing at them.
"What'd you stuff his mouth with, master?"
"To be a witcher is to hold your curiosity down, little monkey, but I'll make an exception this time. They’re the pants you wore when you wet your bed two days ago."
The man's hands were tied behind his back, and he fell back to the ground, flapping around like a dead fish.
***
The house was stark, and even more so than most villages’. There was nothing but a thin mattress, rickety tools, and a gigantic oil painting on the mottled wall.
"An oil painting in a rundown shack in remote Velen?" Letho stood before the painting, looking surprised. The painting was ancient, but it was well kept. The engravings on the golden frame still looked smooth and even. There was not a single mark or a speck of dust on it. Obviously someone cared for it a lot. Three lifelike, beautiful women stood in the painting. They wore black silk dresses, their skin was fair, and their curves were perfect.
Their feet were bare, and they were huddled together, head on one another's shoulders. The women were elegant, as if they were elves who were frolicking in the woods. It was as if they would walk right out of the painting once they were done with their nap.
It was a mesmerizing painting. Even Auckes and Serrit were captivated when they saw it. Roy, however, scanned the painting and confirmed that it was just a regular item. He then searched the mattress and found a thin, yellowing book. It was titled “She Who Knows”.
"Legend has it that Velen has four ladies. The Mother comes from a land far, far away. Tortured by her loneliness, The Mother made three daughters from dirt and water…"
"What'd you find, Roy?"
"A myth." Roy looked at the painting. "It's probably about how those ladies came to be."
"Read it aloud, kid." The other witchers huddled closer and listened to the story.
"A long, long time ago, there was only one ruler in Velen, and her name was The Mother. She created three daughters to ease her loneliness, and the four of them lived happily. But bliss did not stay with them for long. For some unknown reason, The Mother started losing her mind. She became a tyrant. The madness eventually overwhelmed her, and she wished to massacre the whole of Velen. Her daughters rose against her, killing The Mother and sealing her soul beneath The Whispering Hillock.
Since then, The Mother's daughters took over Velen. The people of Velen would pay tributes to them, while they, The Ladies of the Wood, would grant them health and bountiful crops in return."
***
A long silence later, Roy said, "So those women in the painting must be the Ladies of the Wood." More precisely, the Weavess, the Brewess, and the Whispess, Roy added. He explained, "But I don't think you should trust this book completely. The Ladies of the Wood must have embellished the story and made themselves look like angels. I've seen another version of their story in another book, and these ladies were no angels. The Weavess makes clothes out of human hair, so that guy gave her half the hair on his head and all his eyebrows. The Brewess is a master at cooking meat. If I'm right, that's how the guy lost his leg. The Whispess cut his ear off and hid it somewhere in Velen to spy for her."
The witchers paused for a moment. They could not imagine the beautiful ladies in the painting doing something so horrific.
"So you're saying the Whispess influenced Carl?"
Everyone turned around. Felix had come inside.
"I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on that guy."
"Don't worry. I knocked him out. He won't wake up for a while."
"Where's Carl?"
"He's outside, keeping an eye on the guy. He's been following me for days. It's time for him to work."
"Shit!" Roy shouted, but it was too late.
They heard screams and an eerie laughter coming from outside. When they came back out, all they saw was a big murder of crows flying through the sky and disappearing in the horizon like a big, black cloud.
Carl was nowhere to be found, and the man's limbs were all cut off. He was lying on the freezing ground, coughing up blood and his innards. Despair, frustration, and agony flashed in his eyes as he spasmed a few more times and took his final breath.
A message was written on his chest. It was bright red and bloody. 'Border Post,' it read.
***
***
