Chapter 13: The Price of Preparation
Matthias Harlow
Dregsdon, Angren
1253
Dawn crept into Dregsdon reluctantly.
The fog still clung to the streets, pale and low, muffling sound and dulling colour.
The sun had yet to properly rise, but the sky had lightened enough to turn the crooked roofs into silhouettes rather than shadows.
Jorren's forge was already awake.
The shutters were thrown open, and a cloud of coal smoke hung thick in the air.
The rhythmic clink of metal carried from inside, irregular, distracted—less the confident beat of routine and more the sound of a man thinking while he worked.
Jorren himself stood hunched over his workbench, squinting at my longsword laid bare before him. His grey-streaked hair was pulled back into a rough tie, his apron already dusted with filings despite the early hour.
He didn't look up when he spoke.
"You know, sire," he said, voice dry as kiln ash, respectful despite the fatigue lining it, "most men give a smith more than a few hours' notice when they ask for silvering."
"I'm aware," I replied evenly.
He allowed himself a small, tired huff. "Aye. And most men don't ask for it before the sun's even decided whether it's going to show its face."
He finally glanced up at me, eyes bloodshot, beard uncombed, and dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment.
"But," he added, rubbing at his brow, "I also know what it means when an ealdorman asks a man like you to deal with a mill that's 'gone wrong.'"
He gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the river beyond.
"That sort of thing doesn't wait for convenience."
I inclined my head slightly. "It doesn't."
Jorren grunted, then reached for a small wooden box on the shelf beside him. He opened it, revealing a pitiful assortment of silver scraps: bent wire, a dented spoon handle, a few shaved slivers wrapped in cloth.
"This is it," he said plainly. "All the silver I've got worth melting."
He picked up the longest piece between two fingers, weighing it with a craftsman's eye.
"And even if I stretch it thin—real thin—I'd barely coat half the blade. Edge only. No fuller, no spine. Certainly not the whole length. I don't rightly know how those Witchers afford entire swords of the stuff."
He looked back at me, expression apologetic but firm.
"Silver's scarce out here. Always has been. Merchants hoard it, and nobles wear it where it doesn't do anyone any good. I can do something for you, sire—but not what you're asking."
For a moment, the forge was quiet except for the low hiss of the coals.
Then I reached into my pack.
Jorren's eyes followed the movement automatically—habit more than curiosity—until I set the first object down on the workbench.
A crumpled silver chalice.
Deformed in shape, but unmistakably noble make. Etched filigree ran along its stem, worn from damage but well cared for.
Then another.
Then a bundle wrapped in cloth: forks, spoons, a shallow plate—scratched, dented, but unmistakably silver.
The soft clink as they touched the bench was louder than it should have been.
Jorren stared.
Slowly, he reached out and picked up one of the chalices, turning it over in his hands. He rubbed a thumb along the rim, then bit it—hard enough to leave a mark.
"Gods," he breathed. "This is real."
"It was," I said, "part of our tableware, to protect against sickness and poison."
Jorren looked up sharply. "Are you sure, sire, you're willing to part with it so easily?"
I met his gaze. "I'm not parting with it, I am putting it to better use."
He studied me for a long second, then barked a short, incredulous laugh.
"Fair enough."
He spread the pieces out across the bench, eyes lighting with professional interest now, fingers already calculating weight and yield.
"This," he said slowly, reverently now, "this would do it."
He looked up again, excitement cutting through his fatigue.
"Full length. Both edges. Proper thickness, too—not some whisper of silver that flakes off the first time you nick bone."
Then his expression shifted, the craftsman's caution asserting itself.
"Still," he said thoughtfully, "silver's a fickle thing as a weapon. Too soft by half. It deforms easy, wears quicker than steel, especially if you strike hard or often. It doesn't like stress, and it doesn't forgive poor balance."
He ran a thumb along the flat of your blade, imagining the coating.
"Even plated right, it'll need care. Re-silvering eventually. The edge will dull faster, too—won't hold the way steel does. That's the price of using it against things it was never meant to fight."
He paused, frowning slightly.
"Which is what's always puzzled me about Witcher swords," he admitted. "I've seen two in passing over the years. Old ones. Scarred. Used. And yet the silver holds far longer than it should. Stronger. Truer."
He shook his head faintly.
"Must be something in how they forge them. Or what they mix in. Or… who's swinging them."
His gaze lifted to meet mine again.
"But I'll do this right," he said firmly, already reaching for his tools. "Won't rush it—not where it matters. You'll have a sword that holds silver like it was born with it."
He hesitated, then added with a faint, wry smile, "Even if silver itself was never meant to last."
He glanced out at the street, where the fog was finally beginning to thin.
"Give me the morning," he added. "By noon, she'll be ready."
"Wait," I said.
Jorren paused, one hand still resting on the hilt laid out across the anvil. He looked at me expectantly, respectful, but a bit irritated—men like him didn't enjoy being stopped once they'd settled on a method.
"Plate only one side," I said. "Leave, the other steel."
His brows knit together at once. "One side?"
"Yes. Leave the other steel."
For a moment he simply stared at me, as if checking whether I was joking. When he realised I wasn't, he exhaled slowly through his nose.
"That's… not how it's usually done, Sire."
"I know."
In truth, the idea had come to me the moment he'd spoken of silver flaking, of how poorly it held compared to steel. I remembered a book from my youth—one I'd read until the spine cracked and the margins filled with idle notes.
A story of a demigod son of Poseidon on a quest to save his mother, in the book, monsters could only be harmed by a specific divine metal.
One of the characters in the book, forged a sword that was made from both steel and the metal, in order to harm both monsters and mortals, I doubted Jorren could craft a sword of that caliber, it would at least be more convenient than carrying two swords.
"I don't intend to fight only spectres," I went on. "If I meet bandits on the road, I'd rather not discover too late that my blade bites like a spoon."
Jorren rubbed at his beard, considering. "You realise doing that will throw the balance off," he said. "Silver's heavier than steel. The blade'll want to pull toward the plated side. You'll feel it in every cut."
"I'm strong enough to compensate," I replied without hesitation. "And precise enough to learn the rest."
That earned me a long look—one measuring not my words, but my shoulders, my stance, the way I held myself even at rest.
"Hmph," he grunted at last. "Reckon you might be."
He shook his head once, half in disbelief, half in reluctant admiration. "Most would call it madness."
"I'm not most."
"Aye," he agreed quietly. "That you're not."
He turned back to the bench, rearranging the silver with slower, more deliberate movements now, recalculating in his head.
"All right. One edge plated. Fuller stays steel. Spine stays steel. I'll counterweight the pommel as best I can, but it won't be perfect."
"It doesn't need to be."
He hesitated, then gestured to the remaining silver still spread across the bench. "And the rest of this?"
I reached for my waist and placed a dagger beside the longsword. Plain, serviceable. Steel worn smooth by use.
"Plate this," I said. "Edge and point."
Jorren raised an eyebrow.
"And whatever's left," I continued, "smelt it down. An ingot, if you can manage. I'll pay you for your labour."
He looked between the dagger, the silver, and finally me.
"You're a strange man, Ser Harlow."
"So I'm told."
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he gathered the pieces together. "Very well. I'll do it proper."
I stepped back then, leaving him to his craft, to the hiss of coals and the quiet alchemy of fire and patience, while the fog outside thinned and the day edged closer to whatever waited for me at the mill.
I stepped back, leaving him to his craft.
As the forge fire flared brighter and the first chalice disappeared into the crucible, the sun finally cleared the horizon—casting pale gold light through the smoke.
Preparation had a cost.
Today, I was paying it in silver.
By the time the sun had climbed high enough to burn the morning mist off the river, I was already on the road.
The mill lay downstream from Dregsdon, where the river bent and narrowed, its banks choked with reeds and water-dark soil.
Vott and Branik walked a few paces behind me, boots crunching over gravel, their halberds slung but ready.
They'd been ordered to escort me to the area, not beyond it, and both of them knew it.
Still, neither looked particularly eager to continue on once the mill came into sight.
I felt the weight of the newly silvered blade at my hip with every step. It sat differently now, heavier in the hand, subtly unbalanced in a way only I would notice.
I can still smell the forge on it if I try hard enough—hot iron, quenched oil, a ghost of sulphur where the silver was coaxed into shape instead of beaten like honest steel.
It's a long blade, longer than most would choose, up close you see the divide immediately. One edge gleams pale and cold, silver drawn out clean and bright.
The other is darker steel, honest and workmanlike, holding the faint ripples of the hammer no matter how much Jorren polished it. They meet down the spine like two men who don't quite trust each other.
In the hand, it tells on itself. The balance isn't right. The silver pulls away from the cut, heavier than it should be, while the steel edge lightens the weight. It wants to roll in my grip, as if the blade's always deciding which side should strike first.
The hilt's plain, by design. Leather grip, brass fittings, nothing to distract from the blade's purpose. No runes, no jewels—this wasn't forged to be admired on a wall. It was made to bite.
I won't lie and say I'm entirely satisfied. A perfectly balanced sword is a comfort; this one isn't. But there's something honest in that imbalance. It reminds you what it's for. Silver for the cursed and unnatural. Steel for everything else.
Jorren's work was as good as could be expected of a Journeyman, but silver was silver. It changed how a sword moved.
My thoughts kept drifting back to the tower. To the girl, I had saved on a whim and did not know what to do with, now that we were at a crossroads .
"Why must I stay here", Rhenawedd had asked, arms folded tight across her chest, frustration sharp despite how carefully she tried to hide it.
"Whilst you're out there doing something that isn't tedious?"
"I'm not going out on a trip to the opera," I replied, keeping my voice low. "I'm hunting a monster. I don't even know what kind yet."
She'd bristled at that. I could see the argument forming before she spoke it.
"Something that gets fully trained knights killed," I'd continued before she could interrupt. "Never mind a malnourished teenager in the first stages of recovery. I'm fast, yes—but I'm not sure I'm faster than a wraith's teleportation, assuming this even is a spirit. Bringing you would be an unneeded risk."
She'd opened her mouth again, then stopped.
For a long moment she just looked at me, jaw tight, eyes sharp with the kind of understanding that didn't make the truth any easier to swallow.
Then she'd exhaled slowly. "Then I would ask a favor of you," she said.
I remembered how carefully she'd chosen her words then, how she stood straighter despite the tremor in her voice.
She had nothing—no prospects, no family willing to claim her, no path forward that didn't end with her dependent on someone else's mercy.
"When you return," she'd said, "and when you eventually leave this town… take me with you. As a squire. Teach me the sword. Teach me how to protect myself."
I hadn't known what to say, so I put it off.
"We'll talk when I return," I'd said at last.
It wasn't a promise. But it wasn't a refusal either.
"—so if the thing shows itself near the waterwheel, you'll want to keep the sun to your back," Vott was saying suddenly, pulling me back to the present.
I blinked, refocusing."What?" I asked.Vott flushed slightly, realising he'd been speaking into my silence.
"I said, sire, if it's a spectre, it'll favour the shade under the mill. Less light. Colder air."
Branik nodded in agreement.
"I didn't realise you were a ghost hunter, Vott," I said dryly. "Should I be bringing you along as well? Perhaps you've a charm tucked away somewhere. A prayer. A very brave disposition."
Both of them stiffened at once.
Vott went pale beneath the grime, shoulders drawing up as if he'd been caught doing something improper. Branik's grip tightened on his halberd, knuckles whitening, his expression hard despite his silence.
"I—no, sire," Vott said quickly. "I mean—no. I don't know anything proper about it. Just… just what folk say. What's passed around since we were children."
He swallowed and hurried on, words tripping over one another.
"They say the dead don't like the light of the living. That spectres linger where it's cold and dark, where the sun don't touch proper. That's all. Stories. Superstition."
I raised a hand, cutting him off before he took me too seriously.
"I'm joking," I said. "About bringing you along."
Vott let out a breath he'd clearly been holding, shoulders sagging with visible relief. Branik relaxed a fraction beside him, though his eyes never left the mill ahead.
"I understand," I continued more evenly, "why most men would rather not go anywhere near a wraith. That isn't cowardice. It's sense."
They exchanged a glance at that, Vott nodding once.
"You've done what was asked," I said. "That's enough."
I turned back toward the mill, the warped timbers looming ahead, the waterwheel groaning softly as the river pushed against it.
"When we arrive, make your way back to the village," I added without looking back.
I slowed, eyes lifting as the mill came into view in the distance.
The mill squatted at the edge of the river like a guilty thing.
It had once been well-built—thick timbers, stone foundation, a wheel wide enough to grind the entire village's grain.
Now it leaned slightly downstream, boards darkened by rot and moisture, moss crawling up its legs like grasping fingers.
The water flowed.
That was the first wrong thing.
The wheel should have been turning.
It wasn't frozen by ice, nor jammed with debris. It simply sat still. As though the river itself had decided the mill was no longer worthy of motion.
"It wasn't like this, just last week the wood was hale and strong," Vott commented, fear and unease coloring his tone. "And the wheel stands still, as though no water flows past it at all. unnatural is what it is."
"And the miller said the sounds come just before dusk. Laughter, mostly. Sometimes singing. Sometimes nothing at all," Vott continued on.
"Good," I said quietly.
Both men looked at me.
"That means it hasn't left yet."
I stopped at the edge of the path towards the mill and turned to face them.
"Like I said mke your way back," I repeated. "If I don't return by dawn, tell Wencel exactly what happened."
Vott swallowed. "And that would be?"
I rested my hand on the hilt of my sword.
"That you're better off moving villages then trying to deal with whatever is in there."
Neither laughed, good I wasn't joking.
I stepped forward alone, toward the mill, the river murmuring softly at my side, the world quieting as I entered the threshold.
Daylight died a few paces in, smothered by warped planks and years of use.
Narrow beams of pale light leaked through cracks in the walls and the slats of the roof, cutting the interior into uneven columns of grey.
Dust hung thick in the air, drifting lazily where the waterwheel's motion stirred it, each mote glinting briefly before sinking back into shadow.
The place felt abandoned in the way graves did—empty, but not unused.
The floorboards creaked under my weight, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness.
The grinding stones loomed to my left, massive and inert, their surfaces scored with countless shallow grooves from years of work.
Grain sacks lay where they'd been dropped, split open, their contents spilled and trampled into the floor like pale sand.
I slowed my pace and let my other senses rise.
For the first time in a bit over a day, I inhaled deeply
The world shifted.
Sounds sharpened first—the groan of the wheel outside resolved into individual stresses in wet wood, the soft drip of water somewhere below, the faint scratch of something small moving within the walls.
I could hear the building settle around me, every tired beam and nail complaining under its own weight.
Then scent.
I drew in a careful breath, nostrils flaring.
Nothing.
No human fear-sweat. No old blood. No rotfiend musk, no grave-soil tang of a wraith.
Not even the coppery hint of a struggle. For a place that had driven men to flee in the night, it was… clean.
Too clean.
I moved deeper, boots silent now, each step measured.
My eyes adjusted, picking out details that should have been lost to shadow: handprints in dust on a beam above the millstone, small and shallow; drag marks across the floor that ended abruptly; scuffs along the wall at knee height, irregular, as though something had been shoved aside rather than knocked over in a fight.
Clues.
Plenty of them.
But they didn't fit.
I could see the pieces clearly—the way a child might see letters on a page—yet the words refused to form.
I had the hardware for this: sight that cut through gloom, hearing that caught what others missed, a sense for the unseen tug of things that didn't belong.
What I lacked was the software.
Experience.
A Witcher would have read this place like a book. I was staring at the letters, knowing they mattered, and having no idea what they said.
I frowned and inhaled again, deeper this time.
There it was.
Not rot. Not decay.
Damp earth. Wet leaves. Moss after rain. The sharp, clean scent of bark split by frost.
A forest.
The smell didn't belong here. Not in a mill of stone and old grain and riverwater.
It threaded through the air lightly, almost playfully, strongest near the rafters and the far corner by the wheel housing.
Before I could follow it—
Something whistled past my head.
I twisted on instinct. A wooden peg shattered against the wall where my face had been a heartbeat earlier, splinters spraying.
Another object followed—a fist-sized stone, hurled from the shadows with surprising force.
I brought my sword up just in time, the rock glancing off the flat of the blade with a sharp crack that sent a jolt up my arm.
The mill erupted into chaos.
Loose tools clattered to life. A bucket skidded across the floor.
A broken plank tore free from a wall and sailed toward me like a thrown spear.
I stepped back, boots sliding on spilled grain, senses flaring as I tracked the trajectories.
None of the attacks came from the same place twice. High, low, left, right—always just out of sight.
Not random.
Playful.
Testing.
"Enough," I said sharply, voice carrying through the gloom. "I'm not here to hurt you if it can be avoided."
A sack burst open above me, showering flour into the air. The dust caught the light and turned the mill into a pale, choking fog.
I coughed once, blinking through it—and in that brief, hazy moment, I saw movement in the rafters.
Small.
Quick.
Gone the instant I focused.
The forest-scent deepened, thick and unmistakable now.
Not a wraith. Not a curse.
The first playful whisper slid past my ear like a breath I hadn't earned.
"—catch me if you can…"
So faint I might have imagined it.
I froze, sword half-raised, eyes sweeping the gloom.
Another followed, this one from behind me, higher pitched, thin and wavering.
"—not yours… not yours…"
The sound wasn't carried by the air so much as pressed into it, riding the creaks of the mill It came from everywhere and nowhere, voices overlapping just enough to make it hard to tell how many there were.
A third murmur drifted down from the rafters, almost playful.
"—too slow…"
Flour dust hung in the light like pale fog, and within it shadows twitched, stretched, recoiled. For a heartbeat, I could have sworn I saw shapes at the edge of my vision: a hunched figure near the stones, a face where the wall should be, long fingers curling around a beam.
The sort of tricks meant to break men who already wanted to believe.
My grip tightened on the hilt.
"Enough," I said, voice steady, carrying through the mill. "That won't work on me."
The whispers faltered—just for a fraction of a second.
"I know a haunting when I feel one," I bluffed, turning slowly, letting my gaze rake the shadows without chasing any single illusion. "Cold spots. Rot. Echoes that don't belong to the living. This place has none of it."
A plank creaked overhead, protesting the weight of something small shifting its position.
"You smell like leaves and rain," I added. "Like bark and loam."
Silence pressed in, thick and expectant.
"I don't know who you are," I said, lowering the sword a fraction, not enough to be careless but enough to be deliberate. "But I know what you're not. This mill isn't haunted."
A loose pebble dropped from the rafters, clicking against stone.
"If your willing to talk, I promise I won't strike first, I'm here because the mill must turn again," I went on. "If you stay hidden and keep throwing things, this only ends with fire, iron, and less reasonable men who won't care what they're destroying."
My eyes lifted to the beams above, to the dark pockets where the light refused to settle.
"I'd rather you make yourself known," I said evenly, "before things escalate."
Silence followed my words—not the hollow, echoing quiet of an abandoned place, but something tighter, listening.
Then came a sound.
Not a footstep. Not quite.
A soft scritch of claws on old timber, followed by the faint creak of a beam bending under a weight far too light to be human.
From the shadowed rafters, something shifted.
It unfolded itself from the dark like a thought given shape.
What stood before me now looked almost… human.
Almost.
A boy, at first glance. Blond hair cropped unevenly, catching the light in pale strands like wheat in early sun. His frame was slight, wiry rather than frail, all tendon and lean muscle.
His chest was bare, and along his sides ran pale tattoos—thin, curling lines etched into the skin as if they had grown there rather than been inked.
They followed the lines of his ribs and hips in patterns that reminded me of roots, or river currents seen from above.
He wore an improvised kilt of leather and woven hemp, tied at the waist with cord, practical and crude in a way that spoke of long use.
His feet were bare. His toes curled against the stone like he half-expected it to soften beneath him.
But it was his skin and face that gave him away.
His bones were too fine, too delicately arranged, giving his face a smooth, almost cherubic shape at first glance.
High cheekbones curved softly into a narrow jaw, and his chin was small, rounded, as if unfinished.
Pale skin stretched over it all, unblemished but not healthy either, holding a faint greenish undertone that caught strangely in the light, like leaves seen through water.
His nose was short and slightly upturned, giving him a perpetually curious expression, and his lips were thin, often curled into a half-smile that never fully reached his eyes.
When he grinned, it was boyish—but there was something sharp beneath it, something that suggested teeth made more for tearing than smiling.
The eyes were the true tell.
Large and set just a fraction too wide apart, they gleamed with an unnatural brightness, irises a washed-out gold-green that reflected light like a cat's.
They didn't blink often. When they did, it felt deliberate, practiced, as if he'd learned the habit by watching humans rather than sharing it.
Faint markings traced his face as well—pale, almost invisible lines along his temples and beneath his eyes, like the ghost of old paint or ritual chalk, echoing the tattoos that ran down his sides.
They shifted subtly when he moved, as though they were less decoration and more part of him.
Altogether, his face carried the uncanny innocence common to godlings: the look of a child carved from folklore rather than flesh. Familiar enough to invite trust.
Wrong enough to make the instinct to flee prickle at the back of the spine.
He stepped closer now, unafraid, tilting his head up to look at me properly.
"You see me better this way," he said. "I forget sometimes. The other shapes are easier."
"I see you," I replied.
He smiled at that, sharp and pleased.
"I am Brenn," he said. "Keeper of this bend in the river. Or I was."
The name settled into the air, heavy with something that had once mattered.
"Then you know why I'm here," I said. "This mill feeds Dregsdon. You've made it unusable. And it isn't safe for… creatures like you to live so close to people."
Brenn's smile thinned.
"Creatures," he repeated, tasting the word. Then, suddenly, he laughed. Light, bright, almost musical.
"That's what they call me now."
He paced past me, fingers trailing along the wall. "The miller screamed when he saw me. Dropped his lantern and ran so fast he forgot his boots."
Brenn snorted. "I didn't even touch him."
"You frightened him into abandoning his livelihood."
"I reminded him," Brenn snapped, turning on me. "That this place was never his."
Silence stretched between us.
Then Brenn's gaze sharpened, fixing on me in a way that made something cold coil in my chest.
"And you," he said slowly. "Why are you walking among them?"
The question landed harder than any accusation.
'Does he know?'
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Hm," he murmured. "I know what you are, or rather what you are not. Not like them. But you wear their steel. Carry their rules."
He looked away, toward the wheel beyond the wall, its paddles half-submerged in the river.
"This was my land," he said, voice quieter now. "Before stone roads. Before fences. They used to leave bread at the riverbank. Milk. Apples. Old shovels and tools. They prayed, and I listened. When floods came, I warned them. When wolves strayed too close, I turned them away."
His pale tattoos seemed to catch the light as he spoke, faintly luminous now.
"But more people came," he went on. "They cut the trees. Straightened the river. Tamed the fields." His mouth twisted. "They didn't need a friend anymore."
"So I became something else," he said simply. "A story. A warning. A demon that would take their children as payment."
He shrugged, almost boyishly. "So I left."
"And now you've returned," I said. "Why?"
Brenn looked back at me, eyes narrowing with something like suspicion.
"You're a rude one, I introduce myself and even give you a whole backstory and you don't even give a name, are all Homunculi as rude as you or are you just special." He asks cheekily.
"Homonculi? What makes you think I am a construct?" I reply back confused.
"Your armor hides you well, but the forest knows, despite the stolen blood in your veins, it is not flesh behind your steel, but stone." he lilts taking a seat on a discarded barrel.
"You're awfully educated for a forest spirit," I mutter, "but your wrong, my name is Matthias and I am human, just cursed, I do not want to get into it, but I would appreciate it if you would take my word for it."
"Cursed you say, that sounds like an interesting story, one I would accept as a peace offering for earlier rudeness." Brenn says with a smile on his face.
I sigh and sheath my sword, from what little I remember Godlings weren't overtly dangerous, just mischievous. I could threaten it I suppose, drive it off or kill it, but it looked to much like a kid for me to be able to stomach the thought, and knowing my luck doing that would come back to bite me in the future.
I stepped into the shadows and took of my helmet and placed it atop a crate.
"Spirits you're as pale as corpse." He comments.
I Ignore him "If I tell you the story, or at least part of it, will you promise to keep it to yourself and tell me in exchange why you're here and what I can do to convince you to leave this mill."
"Hmmmm" he seems to think it over, but I knew he was just pretending. "Alright it's a deal, but this better be a great story."
At those words I took a seat next to my helm and started an altered story of what happened to me so far, of how I died of sickness far from home, and proceeded to wake up in a cave, transformed, he protested a bit when I proclaimed myself a vampire
"I've seen enough Mula and Nosferat to know that their nowhere near as open to honest conversation as you." he says
"Like I said I was cursed, I use the word vampire because it is the closest word I can use to describe what I've been turned into, and the problems I face due to it, now if you'd please let me finish." He nods his head rapidly at this, seeing this I continued my tale.
I told him of how after my turning, I ran into a group of brigands, holding an exiled noble hostage, how I in a moment of weakness and bloodlust I attacked and killed three of them and in a moment of clarity and guilt let the last one go.
How I rescued the noble woman, and that although despite my best efforts she was hard to get along with at first, though she had started to try and be less rigid since we arrived at Dregsdon, and how upon arrival at the town, I was asked to help deal with the haunted mill.
"And that brings us to here, where I now have to bargain with a Godling, so I may receive what I was promised and be on my way."
Brenn listened in silence, chin propped on his palm, legs swinging lazily from the barrel. He didn't interrupt again. That alone told me I'd caught his interest.
When I finished, the mill was quiet in a way it hadn't been before. Not tense. Not watchful. Just… listening.
"Huh," Brenn said at last.
He slid off the barrel and padded closer, bare feet soundless on the planks. He circled me once, slow and deliberate, eyes flicking from my helm to my face, then to the sheathed sword at my side.
"That's it?" he asked. "No grand curse laid by a spurned lover? No moonlit ritual gone wrong? Just waking up in a cave?"
I huffed a quiet breath. "I never claimed it was poetic."
He grinned at that, sharp and fleeting. "Shame. poetic curses make for the best stories."
He stopped in front of me, close enough now that I could see the faint lines on his face shift as he frowned.
"You're not lying," he said. Not accusing. Assessing. "You smell wrong, but not false. Like marble soaked in blood."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all week." I joke
He laughed, a quick, bright sound that echoed oddly off the mill walls.
"All right, cursed knight," Brenn said, flopping back onto the barrel. "You kept your end. I'll keep mine."
He leaned back on his hands, gaze drifting toward the broken waterwheel visible through the warped slats.
"I didn't come back for the mill," he said. "Not really."
I frowned. "Then why chase off the miller?"
"Because he screamed," Brenn replied matter-of-factly. "And because he cut down the alder tree by the river. The old one. The one they used to leave bread at."
"I am sorry to hear that, but people cut trees. It doesn't give you the right to terrorise them."
Brenn's eyes snapped back to me, bright and suddenly sharp.
"They used to ask," he said. "They used to sing. They used to thank the river when it didn't flood and me when the wolves stayed away. I was never a god, but I was… something."
He curled his fingers, as if grasping at a memory that no longer fit his hand.
"Then more people came. Fences. Mills. Roads. They stopped praying and started counting grain instead. I became a monster in their stories, something to scare children into obedience."
"So you left," I said quietly.
He nodded. "The forest doesn't need thanks. It just is."
"And now?"
He shrugged again, but it lacked the earlier playfulness. "Now the forest is smaller. And louder. And full of iron, but I had found my place in it, but much like them a creature came and took it from me."
Silence settled between us, heavy but not hostile.
"Still," I said, "this place isn't safe for you. Or for them. If word spreads, they won't send knights next time. They'll send witchers. Fire. Dogs.'
"That's exactly what I want, for them to hire a witcher, so I could convince them to hunt the beast down." Brenn proclaimed.
"That wouldn't have worked Brenn, not everyone is Geralt of Rivia, the kindest among them would have tossed you out of here, the rest would have taken your head as proof of a job done." I chided.
"Maybe you're right, but what else could I have done, leave home after home driven away by monster and men alike, I'm tired of been driven off this was the only plan I had." he answers.
I already know where this is going,,,
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose
"If I get rid of the creature that's occupying your home, will you leave the mill?" I ask him.
He smiles and jumps of the barrel, "You help me get rid of it and I will even reward you my dear Carrion Knight."
"Don't call me that,"
We, that being Brenn and I, found ourselves in the mouth of a cave in what should have been a days travel from the mill.
I had for the first time since turning truly traveled a long distance even with the added weight of a child, I had tore through the foggy countryside like a bullet from a gun and made the trip to the cave mouth in under an hour.
After Brenn had disembarked and handed my boots- I had handed to him so they wouldn't be torn apart by the force of my travel through the country side- he hurled to the side.
"I'm not quiet sure how you convinced me to do that, or how I kept that in for 40 minutes, spirits you're quick." he commented as he wiped his mouth. "and you're feet why are they sparkling like that?"
"My skin does that when exposed to sunlight," I said as I pulled my boots back on, leather settling around my ankles.
"And don't think I don't realize what you're doing. You've been avoiding telling me what monster stole your home. Out with it."
Brenn shifted, scratching at the back of his neck.
"Well, to be honest with you," he said, rocking on his heels, "I was worried that if I told you what it was, you wouldn't have been quite so eager to help. But that was before you tore through sixty miles of marsh in under an hour." He laughed nervously. "So I suppose you can handle this."
He swallowed. "It's a forktail."
"A forktail," I repeated flatly.
"Not just any forktail, mind you," he rushed to add, bristling. "I could've run it off myself otherwise! Near dragon, she is. I didn't even know they could get that big."
He waved his hands as if the memory still offended him.
"It flew in injured about a moon back. I would've been more than accommodating. Truly! I wouldn't have minded a guest. But she tried to eat me the moment she saw me. Ran me off she did. Quite rudely, too."
I didn't respond.
My gaze fixed on the cave mouth ahead of us, its jagged stone rim swallowing the light.
Brenn's rambling faded into background noise as I focused, letting my hearing stretch, sharpen, sink inward.
There it was.
A deep, rhythmic thump.
Slow. Powerful. Too steady to be coincidence.
A heartbeat.
It's still here.
"Stay out here, Brenn," I said quietly, drawing my sword. The half-silvered edge caught the thin daylight, dull and hungry. "One way or another, this won't take long."
"I'll— I'll be just out here if you need me!" he called, scrambling back a few steps and offering a flimsy wave.
I didn't look back.
The cave swallowed me whole
A couple of dozen feet in, the cave widened suddenly, the ceiling lifting just enough for something large to breathe comfortably.
This chamber hadn't always belonged to a beast.
Charred stones lay stacked near one wall, blackened in a careful ring—an old fire pit, long cold.
Symbols scratched into the rock nearby had been half-scraped away, spirals and leaf-marks worn smooth by time and anxious hands.
A bundle of dried reeds hung from a protruding nail of bone, rattling softly in the draft. The place smelled faintly of sap and moss beneath the sharper stink of reptile and rot.
Brenn had truly lived here once.
And far at the end of the cavern, curled within a nest of bramble, shattered bone, and shed scales, something far less accommodating waited.
The forktail unfolded itself from the shadows with a scrape of talons on stone. Its neck uncoiled in slow increments, vertebrae popping wetly as it rose.
Wings half-spread, torn and scarred like sails dragged through mud, they brushed the cave walls and sent pebbles clattering down.
Its scales were the dull green-grey of old lichen, thick and ridged along the spine, each plate scarred by old wounds that had healed ugly rather than clean.
Steam bled from its nostrils with every breath, fogging the air.
One eye fixed on me first—yellow, slit-pupiled, calculating.
Then the other.
This wasn't some young drake testing its strength.
This was old. Territorial. Clever.
Big, too, longer than a cart, shoulders nearly scraping the stone as it shifted its weight, tail coiling behind it like a living flail tipped in barbs.
I drew my sword and planted my feet.
Left foot forward. Knees bent. Weight centered but ready to shift. Blade held low and angled, point threatening the neck while the guard protected my hands.
Shieldless—by necessity—but my stance was textbook Toussaintois longsword, drilled into muscle memory by men who'd believed discipline and honor could overcome anything.
I lifted the blade slightly and met its gaze.
"Come on then," I said trying to ease what instinctive fear I felt in the face of a giant winged lizard. "Let's see how near a dragon you really are."
The forktail roared.
It lunged.
I moved as I had been trained—step to the side, blade snapping up toward the neck, body turning with the strike.
Silvered steel bit into thick scale. Scale flared uselessly as the edge skidded, screeching across hardened plates instead of biting deep.
Too thick.
The creature roared and smashed its tail into the cave wall. Stone burst outward in a cloud of dust and shards, the impact shaking the floor under my boots.
I darted back, boots scraping, clearing the follow-up as the barbed tail scythed through the space where my legs had been a heartbeat earlier.
In again.
I slashed at the wing joint—too shallow. A cut across the forelimb—blood welled, dark and steaming, but the beast barely noticed. It snapped at me with a sideways bite, jaws clamping shut with a sound like a bear trap slamming closed.
I twisted under it, felt hot breath wash over my shoulder, and stabbed upward toward the throat.
It moved it's head back at the last moment and the blade glanced off a ridge of scale.
I swore and rolled aside as claws raked the stone where my head had been. Dust filled my mouth.
The forktail surged forward, faster than something that size had any right to be, jaws snapping again and again, forcing me back step by step.
In. Out. In again.
I scored shallow hits—along the flank, the base of the wing, the softer flesh beneath the jaw—but every moment I focused on the tail it punished me for it.
The thing knew how to fight in tight spaces, knew how to herd prey against walls, how to use the cave as a weapon.
A lunge—too close.
I barely twisted aside as its jaws closed on empty air, felt the shockwave of its bite ripple through my bones.
The tail came next, whipping low. I leapt as though I was wearing leathers and not full plate, boots scraping the wall, the barbs missing my calves by inches.
Knightly footwork. Knightly timing. Knightly restraint.
And it was getting me put into a corner.
I landed hard, breath hissing through clenched teeth, and for the first time since entering the cave I felt it clearly:
I was fighting like a Knight.
Too slow.
Not my body—my thinking.
I'm relying too much on his training
I darted in again, slashing for joints, wings, anything vulnerable. The Forktail reared, claws carving furrows into the rock where my head had been a heartbeat earlier. It was powerful, brutally so, and every blow it missed shook the cavern.
This wasn't a fight a knight could win alone.
The thought came unbidden, sharp as hunger:
Why are you pretending to be fragile?
Even back on the road out of Caed Dhu when I had those foglets, I had relied solely on the sword, even as it struggled to bite into their hides, that fight shouldn't have been a challenge for me, even near blind and deaf, I could have counter attacked and ripped them apart with my bare hands, but instead I had hacked at them with steel.
I wasn't someone who liked to repeat their mistakes.
I had to stop fighting it as a knight and fight it as what I truly was.
I sheathed my sword and hastily removed my gauntlets.
The Forktail charged, head lowered, when I dodged its attempt to skewer me, it stopped and used the momentum to swing it's barbed tail aimed straight for my chest.
I didn't dodge this time.
I rushed into it.
The poisonous barbed tail studded with knotted growths sharp enough to shear through flesh and bone in a single stroke slammed into me like a falling tree.
Metal screamed as it tore into my golden chest plate, the impact shuddering through my ribs. The force should have lifted me clean off my feet.
It didn't.
I had braced for it.
My crystalline hide caught what the plate could not, the blow shattering across me with a thud that echoed across the cavern. My boots shrieked against stone as I leaned into the impact, legs locking, calves screaming with the strain. The floor cracked beneath my heels—but held.
So did I.
My hands snapped shut around the end of its tail.
Fingers sank between overlapping plates of scale with a sound like cracking concrete, shards of lichen-hard hide splintering under my grip.
The forktail roared, a deafening, animal bellow that shook loose grit from the ceiling. It thrashed wildly, wings beating against the cave walls, membranes tearing further as it tried—instinctively, futilely—to take flight.
Wind battered my face.
I didn't let go.
I dug my fingers deeper, muscles coiling, bones locking into something no longer human.
An inhuman roar tore out of me as I heaved.
No flashy technique.
No knightly discipline.
No balance, no measure, no restraint.
Just raw, monstrous strength answering monstrous instinct.
The world tilted.
A ton of furious, living violence lifted clear off the ground as I swung. Stone exploded when its head and shoulders smashed into the cave wall, the impact collapsing rock in a thunderous spray.
Bone cracked. Scales split. The forktail's roar broke mid-scream, devolving into a wet, stunned bellow as its skull rebounded off stone.
I was already moving.
I released the tail and sprinted through the dust cloud, boots pounding, vision tunneling on the thrashing mass. I seized it by the horn jutting from its brow and the thick base of its neck, fingers locking like iron clamps.
Then I smashed its head into the wall.
Once—rock fractured.
Twice—its jaw snapped shut with a hollow clack.
Thrice—the roar collapsed into a gurgling, choking sound as blood and froth spilled from its mouth, its eyes rolling white and unfocused.
Its body spasmed, claws scraping helplessly at stone.
Before it could recover, I was on it.
I vaulted onto its back and drove my boot down astride its neck. Bone cracked under the pressure, vertebrae grinding as I forced its head sideways.
One hand wrenched its skull back, exposing the softer seam beneath the jaw—paler, thinner, vulnerable.
My sword was in my hand before the thought finished forming.
I brought it down in a brutal, overhand arc.
Only once.
The savage blow severed spine and sinew alike.
The Forktail's beheaded body convulsed, muscles twitching as it's blood gushed out of it's severed neck like a geyser, claws tearing grooves into the rock, then went still.
Silence rushed in to fill the cave, broken only by the hiss of cooling blood on stone.
I stood there for a long moment, blade dripping temptation.
Then, quietly, to the dead thing beneath my boot, I muttered:
"…should've stayed in the sky.".
"Wow you handled that quick!" Brenn said as he rushes into the cavern having heard the sounds of battle quieting, "Spirits my home! look at what she did to it, it's going to take days to get rid of the smell of dung alone!" he rushes past me and the beheaded draconoid and straight to the nest.
He stops by it, stepping onto the brambles in order to peek inside, whatever he sees inside causes he's excitment to die down and his shoulders to sag.
"Oh..."
I wiped my longsword clean on the red of my kilt and sheathed it, then crossed the cavern to stand beside him. One look into the nest told me all I needed to know.
A clutch of eggs lay nestled at its centre—large, leathery things, faintly warm, their surfaces marked with pale veins like cracked marble.
"That's why it drove me out," Brenn said quietly. "It wanted a safe place for its hatchlings."
"It doesn't change the fact that it attacked you," I replied, softer now. "Or that it chased you from your home."
He was silent for a moment, then nodded.
"I know. But… still." He crouched, carefully rearranging the brambles so they wouldn't crush the eggs.
"I won't leave them. I'll see them hatched, then take them far from here. Deep wilds. Somewhere they won't come back hungry and desperate."
He glanced up at me, eyes sharp again despite the sadness. "You won't tell the humans."
"I won't tell them about you or the hatchlings" I said. "They don't need to know."
That seemed to settle something in him. He straightened suddenly, the gloom lifting as if someone had tugged a curtain aside.
"Oh!" he said. "Right. Your reward. I did promise, didn't I?"
Before I could respond, he was already trotting deeper into the cave, bare feet pattering over stone. I heard scraping, a muttered curse, then a small triumphant laugh.
He returned holding a glowing runestone cupped reverently in both hands.
It pulsed faintly, warmth radiating from its surface, sigils carved deep into the stone glowing like banked embers.
"A Greater Dazhbog runestone," Brenn said proudly. "Old one, too."
He tilted his head at me. "Hand over the sword."
I hesitated only a second before drawing it and offering the blade hilt-first.
Brenn pressed the runestone against the flat just above the guard, murmuring under his breath in a language that slipped from my ears.
The stone flared once—brief, bright—and then went dark.
When he pulled his hands away, the steel near the hilt bore new markings, faintly glowing, as though heat still slept beneath the metal.
"There," he said, clearly pleased with himself. "It'll often set fire to the things it cuts . Monsters hate that." He eyed my sword proper, eyes traveling across its splintered edge. "Humans too."
"Thank you," I said as I sheathed it.
Brenn grinned, wide and sharp and entirely too pleased.
"Any time, Carrion Knight," he said, then laughed at my scowl. "Oh, don't look like that. You came back from death, traveling the world helping those in need"
He waved a hand dismissively.
"If you wanted a normal title, you picked the wrong lifestyle."