The mud had a voice. It wasn't the soft, sucking whisper of the Ard Carraigh lowlands, but a thick, glutinous gulp that seized Geralt's boot with every step and released it with a resentful sigh. The air, heavy with the scent of decaying reeds and something sharper, metallic, clung to his leathers. He was young, the white hair still shocking against the unlined planes of his face, but his eyes—the color of pale honey in the flat, grey light—were already old.
He was on the Path, two years out from Kaer Morhen. The naivety of the first few months, the simple belief that contracts were about monsters and coin, had already been scraped away by the reality of human complexity. He'd learned that a "monster" was often just a symptom. The disease was usually fear, greed, or stupidity.
The village of Doln, a clutch of sod-roofed hovels hunched against the perpetual damp of the Murkwold Fens, was a textbook case. The alderman, a man named Bor with fingers stained brown from peat and a perpetual squint, had met him at the edge of the settlement, the mist coiling around his knees like a shroud.
"Takes the sheep from the outer pastures," Bor had said, his voice a low rasp. "Dragged old Merek's boy last week. Found pieces of him. Just… pieces." The man's eyes darted to the silver wolf's head medallion resting on Geralt's chest. It didn't tremble, but Geralt felt a faint, familiar vibration thrum through the metal, a whisper of chaos.
"Signs?" Geralt had asked, his own voice low, measured. He'd learned to keep it calm. People found the gravelly neutrality less threatening than any attempt at warmth.
"Tracks like a man, but… wrong. Splayed. Deep. And a sound." Bor shuddered. "A wet clickin', like stones knocked together under water. Comes from the old barrow mounds, west of here."
Now, Geralt moved towards those mounds, islands of gnarled earth rising from the black water. The politics of Doln were as murky as its waters. The village technically owed fealty to Lord de Ruyter, whose timber fort sat on a dry hill a day's ride south. But de Ruyter cared for timber and taxes, not for sheep or shepherd boys in a bog. The contract's coin was a pittance, scraped together from Doln's meager stores. A lord's contract would have paid five times as much. But no lord had sent for him. This was people's work.
As he navigated a half-submerged causeway of moss-slick stones, his mind worked. Humanoid tracks. Dragging prey. Barrow mounds. The medallion's hum suggested necrophage, or something elemental. A vodyanoi priest? Possibly. But the "wet clicking" didn't fit.
The first mound loomed, a dark breast against the sky. The entrance was a black slit, partially flooded. The stench here was overwhelming—not just decay, but the cloying sweetness of bog myrtle undercut with a foul, meaty tang. And there, in the soft peat at the water's edge, were the tracks. Bor was right. They were bipedal, with a long, dragging heel, but the forepart was splayed into four distinct, deep impressions. Claws.
Geralt knelt, his fingers hovering over the print. He pinched a bit of the disturbed soil, brought it to his nose. Earth, rot, and… a faint, acrid chemical smell. Alchemical. His pulse, always slow, ticked up a notch. This was no simple graveir or flederr.
He drew his steel sword. For all the talk of silver for monsters, steel was for things that bled, and most things in blighted places like this did. With a whisper of Igni, he lit a torch wrapped with bog-fat and let the flame settle. Taking a deep breath that filled his lungs with the foul air, he stepped into the barrow.
The darkness swallowed him. The torchlight danced over slick, carved stones, ancient etchings worn smooth by time and seepage. The floor descended into shallow, icy water. The clicking began.
It wasn't from one direction. It echoed, seeming to come from the walls themselves—a rhythmic, damp click-click-scrape. Geralt moved forward, his boots causing tiny ripples that lapped against mossy bones piled in niches. This was an old place, a forgotten place.
The tunnel opened into a central chamber. The water was deeper here, pooling around a central stone slab. On it lay a grotesque tableau. The remains of sheep were arranged not as a meal, but with a dreadful symmetry. Skulls faced inward. Rib cages interlocked. And in the center, propped up, was the pale, gnawed-upon torso of Merek's boy, a crude crown of woven reeds upon his head.
On the far side of the slab, a shape straightened up.
It was tall, spindly, its skin the color and texture of a drowned thing—grey-green and slick. Its limbs were too long, ending in those splayed, four-fingered hands with black, curved claws. Its face was a nightmare parody of humanity: no nose, just slits, a wide mouth full of needle-teeth, and large, milky eyes that held no pupil, no soul. But it was the creature's back that confirmed Geralt's suspicion. Protruding from its spine were thick, chitinous growths, like the shell of a giant insect, and from between these plates, two vestigial, twitching limbs ended in hard, clicking mandibles. Click-click-scrape.
A Kikimora-worker hybrid. His Witcher training surfaced. Kikimora were swamp dwellers, but this… this was a perversion. The chitin, the chemical smell—someone had twisted a kikimora with crude mutagenics, tried to force an evolution, create a guardian or a weapon. And then abandoned it here, a mad, starving thing driven by pain and instinct to build shrines to its own suffering from the corpses of its prey.
The creature let out a gurgling hiss, the mandibles on its back clacking furiously. It didn't charge. It sidestepped, unnervingly fast, circling the slab. Intelligent. Territorial.
Geralt switched his stance. He threw the torch into a dry niche, casting frantic shadows. The light was both a weapon and a vulnerability. He needed to see, but so did it.
It struck without warning, a blur of grey. Geralt pirouetted, the classic Witcher whirl, and his steel sword sang. It bit deep into the creature's arm, and black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it hit the water. The creature shrieked, the sound a bubbling wail, and its claw raked out. Geralt leaned back, feeling the wind of the pass, and countered with a slash across its chest.
The fight was a brutal dance in the confined, watery space. The creature used the environment, leaping to the walls, scuttling across the ceiling to drop down. Its mandibles snapped, trying to shear his hamstring. Geralt was faster, his mutations granting him preternatural reflexes, but youth and a flicker of overconfidence cost him. Dodging a lunge, he slipped on a submerged bone. He went down on one knee.
The creature was on him in an instant. A clawed hand slammed into his shoulder, punching through the leather, scoring the muscle beneath. White-hot pain lanced through him. The milky eyes were inches from his own, the stench of its breath suffocating. The mandibles reared back to pierce his neck.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Geralt shoved his left hand forward. "Aard!"
The blast of telekinetic force was point-blank, raw. It didn't just push the creature; it crushed the air from its lungs and sent it crashing into the stone slab. The ancient rock cracked, and the grisly shrine collapsed in a heap of bones and rot.
Geralt was on his feet, sword high. The creature struggled, dazed, its chitinous back-plates cracked. He didn't hesitate. One final, downward stroke, and the steel severed its head from its shoulders. The milky eyes filmed over instantly. The clicking mandibles gave one last, feeble twitch and fell still.
Silence, broken only by Geralt's ragged breathing and the drip of water. The pain in his shoulder was a deep, throbbing ache. He cleaned his blade on a dry patch of the creature's rags, then set about the grim work of proof. He took one of the distinctive hands and the strange, chitinous mandible.
Emerging from the barrow into the late afternoon gloom felt like rising from a grave. The clean, cold mist was a blessing. He packed his wound with a poultice of celandine and dwarf essence, the familiar sting a grounding sensation.
Back in Doln, the atmosphere had shifted. The fearful tension was gone, replaced by a wary, almost disappointed relief. Bor handed over the small purse of coin, his gratitude muted.
"Lord de Ruyter's men came," Bor muttered, not meeting Geralt's eyes. "Just after you left. Heard about the trouble. Said we should have petitioned him. Said bringing a… a witcher… onto his lands without his leave could be seen as poaching his rights of justice."
Geralt felt a cold knot form in his gut, colder than the fen water. It wasn't about the monster. It was about jurisdiction, about the appearance of power. By solving their problem, he'd made the village look independent, and made the lord look negligent.
"He's fined us," Bor said, his voice hollow. "The coin we gave you… we'll have to double it for his coffers."
So, his work had saved them from a monster only to beggar them further. Geralt stood, the weight of the creature's hand in his sack suddenly feeling like the weight of the whole, stupid continent. He tossed the small purse back onto Bor's table. The coins scattered with a dull clink.
"Keep it," Geralt said, his voice even flatter than usual. "For the fine."
He turned and walked out of the longhouse, towards Roach, his solid, uncomplicated mare. The people of Doln watched him from their doorways, their expressions unreadable. He was not a hero. He was an ill omen, a necessary evil that had left a different kind of debt in its wake.
As he rode away from the fens, the dull ache in his shoulder a persistent reminder, he looked at the twisted mandible in his hand. Someone had made that creature. Someone with knowledge of mutagens. This wasn't just a monster hunt; it was a thread, a bloody thread leading into a darker tapestry of ambition and cruel experimentation. And he, by pulling on it, had likely drawn the attention of powers far more dangerous than a bog-mutated kikimora.
The Path stretched before him, a muddy track beneath Roach's hooves. It led away from Doln, away from the immediate politics of a petty lord. But it led towards the source of the mandible, towards the kind of trouble that didn't just cost coin. It cost souls. Geralt of Rivia, two years on the Path, felt the first true chill of the winter to come, and urged Roach into a trot. The echo of the fens, the wet clicking of mad science and human folly, followed him into the gathering dark.