The Traveler: Part 1

Chapter 19

It was dank and dark. A constant drip of liquid could be heard somewhere off in the dungeon. The sound permeated the prison. Whether it was from a faulty roof many stories above or run off urine from the prisoners' cells was uncertain. The smell of excrement was indeed pungent; so much so that those without sargek, a balm with oddly addictive properties smeared underneath the nose, one was sure to vomit. Fully pledged witch hunters often withheld this information from recruits and cadets put on dungeon duty. It was their favorite game betting on which ones would lose their breakfast first.

The witcher awoke hung from all four limbs by chains belly down. He couldn't tell what time of day it was and wasn't sure how long he'd been there. He tried remembering the details of the fight. Three of the bastards went down as fast as a hummingbird's heartbeat. The fourth, a massive bloke with shoulders as wide as a bull's horns, had given him more trouble. He remembered giving the man a deep slash to his cheek, which was when everything became fuzzy. His last memory before winding up here was of the cold sludge of the Novigrad streets cooling his face.

He contracted his cat eyes examining his shadowed surroundings. Apart from a steel door, which was the only entrance, he was surrounded on all sides by large ashlar stones once carefully placed by a mason long ago. To the left of the entrance was a wrack probably used for torture tools of various sorts, yet it was empty. He watched as rats scurried to and fro under his belly perhaps hoping for something to eat. The witcher twisted and and jerked, hoping to loosen the chains from the ceiling to no avail. He inhaled once, trying to filter out the stench and smell anything that could be informational. Upon smelling the absence of iron, he concluded that the chains which suspended him were of dimeritium. He tried to go into a meditative state, hoping to retain his strength on the off chance his captors gave him a opportunity to escape.

Hours must have passed and the sounds of the dungeon became familiar to him. Occasionally the screams of some pour soul reached his ears, but he had no room for sympathy. His only concern was to escape and get to his wife and children who he was to meet at the Novigrad docks. I hope they made it and got on the ship, he thought.

Eventually he picked up on the sound of rattling keys and foot steps. The glow of torches and the shadows they cast could be seen through the bars of the door to his cell. It opened with a creak as three men traipsed in. The one with the gash in his face he was already acquainted with. The man's wound was covered with a thick cotton cloth and held to his face with leather straps. When he turned his head, the collar of his leather coat sheltered it from view. The witcher could smell the blood and whatever peculiar ointment they had used to treat it. Another was short and stringy with a pointed chin and an upturned nose. He wore a linen jerkin with alternating colors of dull black and brown and leered sinisterly at the witcher. The third however, noting by the behavior of the other two, was clearly in charge. He was clean and well dressed in a fine leather trench coat with an insignia of an eagle sewn onto the right breast. His loose chestnut curls were pulled back behind his shoulders with a silk ribbon and his big blue eyes looked at the strung up witcher with a sort of calm.

"Greetings witcher," the man began with an almost sincere air of formality. He waited for a few seconds, prepared to give the mutant hanging in front of him a chance to respond. When the witcher said nothing, he continued.

"I'd hoped for this to be a pleasant conversation, but if you are so inclined to rudeness we can be a bit more direct with each other. You have already met Beags I assume?" He gestured to the large man with the gash. Beags stepped forward and kneed the prisoner in the stomach.

The witcher groaned and after regaining his breath decided to speak. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Ah, so we are to have a pleasant conversation after all." Breags stepped back and the man continued. "As to who I am? A simple servant. A child of the Eternal Fires spreading its light wherever I can so as to protect my fellow man from the evils of darkness. But you may call me Maldolus," the man said with conviction.