Chapter 18: SOMETHING IN THE WALLS
The investigation took three days of careful observation.
I couldn't ask direct questions without revealing how much I'd noticed—and without understanding what we were dealing with, alerting the enemy seemed like a bad strategy. So I watched. Listened. Let my enhanced senses sweep through the keep's ancient stones for anything that didn't belong.
The wrongness was everywhere.
Not visible—not something I could point to and say "there, that's the problem." More like a flavor in the air, a pressure against my awareness, a sense of being observed by something that didn't quite exist in normal space. The Ciri-Link picked it up strongest near Eskel, but traces appeared throughout the keep's older sections.
[THREAT DETECTION: ANOMALY IDENTIFIED]
[TYPE: UNKNOWN — DIMENSIONAL/SPIRITUAL ORIGIN SUGGESTED]
[THREAT LEVEL: INDETERMINATE — INSUFFICIENT DATA]
The system confirmed what my instincts already knew but couldn't specify the source. Whatever this was, it fell outside the categories my ancient body had been designed to recognize.
Voleth Meir.
The name surfaced from meta-knowledge I'd tried not to rely on. The Deathless Mother. A demon imprisoned beneath the keep, feeding on pain and chaos, manipulating anyone vulnerable to her influence.
In the show, she possessed Ciri. Used her power to break free. Caused the massacre at Kaer Morhen before they could banish her.
I remembered fragments—not clearly, not completely, but enough to know the threat was real and coming soon.
I can't stop her with knowledge I'm not supposed to have. But I can prepare. I can watch. I can be ready.
The Leshy contract came as a relief.
Lambert had found the posting during a patrol—reports of missing livestock, strange sounds in the forest, the telltale signs of something territorial and hungry settling near the keep's perimeter. Normal work. Clean problems with violent solutions.
"You're coming," Geralt said at dinner, and it wasn't a question.
"Wouldn't miss it."
We set out at dawn—Geralt, Lambert, and me, leaving the others to maintain the keep. The forest welcomed us with the quiet hostility of winter wilderness, bare branches clicking like bones in the wind, snow crunching beneath our boots.
The tracking took most of the morning. Leshy signs were distinctive once you knew what to look for: disturbed bark at exactly torso height, the faint smell of rot masked by pine sap, animal bones arranged in patterns that served no natural purpose.
[MONSTER KNOWLEDGE: LESHY — UPDATING]
[WEAKNESS: FIRE — IGNI EFFECTIVE]
[WEAKNESS: SILVER — HIGH DAMAGE MULTIPLIER]
[BEHAVIOR: TERRITORIAL — AMBUSH PREDATOR — USES ENVIRONMENT]
"Found the nest," Lambert called from ahead, crouched beside a massive oak whose trunk had been hollowed into something like a burrow.
Geralt examined the tracks surrounding it. "Recent activity. It's close."
I extended my senses, searching for—
There.
"Left flank, forty meters, in the canopy."
The Leshy dropped from the trees before anyone could respond.
The creature was a nightmare of bark and moss given purpose—eight feet tall, arms ending in claws like sharpened branches, a face that was mostly absence where features should have been. It moved with the jerky unpredictability of something that wasn't quite alive in the conventional sense.
Geralt intercepted the first strike, silver sword deflecting claws that would have opened Lambert from shoulder to hip. I flanked right, looking for an angle while Lambert recovered and went left.
The Leshy screamed—a sound like trees dying in a fire—and the forest itself seemed to respond. Roots erupted from the frozen ground, grasping for ankles, trying to pin us in place.
"Igni!" Geralt shouted.
I was already moving. Fire bloomed from my palm, catching the roots, spreading to the Leshy's bark-flesh. The creature recoiled, and Lambert struck while it was distracted—a deep cut across what might have been its thigh.
[SP: 165/200]
We fell into a rhythm I didn't remember learning. Lambert harried and distracted; Geralt delivered the heavy blows; I provided fire support and watched for environmental attacks. The coordination felt natural, instinctive, like we'd been hunting together for years instead of weeks.
The Leshy adapted. It stopped using the forest and focused everything on Geralt—the obvious threat, the one with the silver blade. Claws blurred through air thick with the smell of burning wood and monster blood.
"Cole—opening!"
I saw it the same moment Geralt called. The creature's back was exposed, attention fixed forward, no defense against—
I charged.
The creature started to turn. Too late. I hit it at full speed, Igni flaring around my fist, driving into the hollow space where bark-flesh met something vital beneath. Fire poured into the wound, cooking the Leshy from inside.
It thrashed. I held on. More fire, more pressure, everything I had pushing into the monster that wanted to throw me off and tear me apart.
Then Lambert's sword took its head.
The Leshy collapsed. I rolled clear, breathing hard, covered in sap and worse substances I didn't want to identify.
[COMBAT COMPLETE: LESHY DEFEATED]
[XP: +150]
[MONSTER KNOWLEDGE: LESHY — 35%]
"Clean kill," Geralt said, examining the corpse with professional interest. "Good coordination."
Lambert offered a hand to help me up. "Not bad, basement boy. Not bad at all."
We made camp that night rather than trek back in darkness.
The fire crackled between us, warmth pushing back against the winter cold. Lambert had produced a flask from somewhere—he always seemed to have one—and we passed it around while the stars emerged overhead.
"So," Lambert said, halfway through a story about a contract gone wrong in Oxenfurt. "This succubus walks into a tavern, right? And the bard—you know the type, all ego and no common sense—he sees her and immediately starts composing a love ballad."
"This can't end well," I observed.
"It absolutely does not." Lambert grinned. "See, the succubus has standards. And this bard? His rhyming scheme was offensive. She literally kicked him out a window because he rhymed 'desire' with 'fire' three times in one verse."
Despite everything—the wrongness in the keep, the threat I could feel building, the weight of responsibility I'd chosen—I laughed. The sound surprised me, genuine and unforced.
"That's the worst joke you've told this week," Geralt said.
"You laughed."
"I did not."
"Your face moved. That counts."
The stars wheeled overhead, indifferent to our small fire and smaller concerns. Tomorrow, we'd return to a keep that held something ancient and hungry. Tomorrow, I'd have to figure out how to fight an enemy I couldn't prove existed.
But tonight, the fire was warm, the company was good, and the darkness waited outside the light.
Geralt found me during my watch shift.
He approached without sound—even with enhanced senses, I barely registered him until he settled onto the log beside me. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The fire had burned low, casting shadows that danced across the frozen ground.
"You've been watching Eskel," Geralt said finally. Not an accusation—a statement of fact.
"You noticed."
"Hard not to." He stared into the embers. "He's been different since Ciri's surge. Distant. Saying things he doesn't remember saying."
So I'm not the only one who's seen it.
"There's something in the keep," I said, choosing my words carefully. "I can't prove it, but it's focused on Ciri. And I think it's affecting Eskel."
Geralt's jaw tightened. "Her dreams have changed. Darker. She won't talk about what she sees, but she wakes screaming."
The Ciri-Link confirmed what he described—fragments of Ciri's nighttime terror bleeding through, images of cages and hunger and something old that whispered promises it never intended to keep.
"We need to watch him," I continued. "Not confront—not yet. But be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"I don't know." The honest answer. Even meta-knowledge couldn't tell me exactly when Voleth Meir would make her move. "But whatever's coming, it's building toward something. And if it's using Eskel as a conduit..."
"He's family." Geralt's voice carried weight that went beyond the simple words. "Whatever happens, we protect our own."
"Agreed."
We sat in silence after that, watching the fire die and the stars turn. Lambert snored from his bedroll. The forest held its breath around us.
Family. He called Eskel family, and by extension, he's including me in that protection.
The realization settled into my chest like warmth from a hearth I'd thought would never be mine.
The keep felt wrong the moment we crossed the threshold.
Not dramatically—nothing obvious enough to explain to someone who couldn't sense it. Just a pressure in the air, a weight that hadn't been there when we left. The stones themselves seemed to pulse with something that wasn't quite magic and wasn't quite intention.
"Where's Eskel?" Lambert asked, scanning the main hall.
No answer. The space was empty, fire burning low, dinner dishes still on the table as if everyone had left mid-meal.
"Vesemir?" Geralt called.
Silence.
Then, from the training yard, Ciri's voice echoed through the stone corridors:
"Has anyone seen Eskel?"
Cold dread coiled in my stomach. The Ciri-Link screamed with wrongness—not danger to Ciri directly, but proximity to something that shouldn't exist, something that was watching through eyes that didn't belong to their owner anymore.
Geralt and I exchanged a look. No words necessary.
We moved.
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