Inkpot Gods ↠ The Witcher

Prologue

The moon shone overhead, the light casting shadows amongst the dense and dreary forest in which a child was wandering. Clothes nothing but torn rags coated in fresh crimson splatters, her bare feet padded along the ground leaving a trail of crushed leaves and imprinted footsteps in the still damp mud.

A horse neighing in the distance—far too close for comfort—caused the young girl to halt her footfalls, panic swelling inside her chest as she hurried to hide behind one of the large and imposing trees that sometimes looked like huge monsters amidst the darkness of night. Straining her ears, she could make out the sounds of boots following the trail of the steps she had left behind and she knew she'd be found.

Her body ached far too much for her to consider running so instead she curled in on herself, tucking her knees below her chin and making herself seem as small as possible in the hopes that the stranger would simply mistake her for a mound of dirt rather than a human, except she wasn't a human either.

"I can see you, you know?" A gruff voice resounded through the still landscape.

Whoever he was, he waited patiently while the child weighed the consequences of all the actions she could take, deciding that she'd choose to instead study the man and try and discern his intentions. As soon as her head lifted his suspicions were confirmed; the child had amber iris' and cat-eye pupils, the tell-tale mark of a Witcher even if she was a girl. In order to seem less threatening he crouched to the ground.

"My name is Vesemir. I know a lot of people just like you, I can help you if you come with me."

"Like me?" The girl spoke, her voice hoarse and meek. It was likely she hadn't drank in a long time.

"Witchers," Vesemir elaborated, wondering if she even had any idea about what she was.

A faint memory came back to the girl's mind, remembering briefly about how her father mentioned a Witcher once, monster-hunters, or something along those lines it wasn't like she had paid much attention at the time as she had been far too busy hovering a string in the air for her cat to play with.

"I'm Thalia," she introduced herself after what felt like years of waiting, reaching out to the man.

As he moved to envelope her tiny palm in his much larger one, Vesemir thought to himself that she had come to terms with his arrival very easily. Right up until a steel dagger was being thrust directly towards his face. Although her courage was admirable, Thalia was no match for the trained fighter and he disarmed her with ease before hauling the kicking and screaming adolescent over his shoulder.

Essentially, he kidnapped her that day and took her to a battered castle known as Kaer Morhen, the place that in many years to come she would refer to as her home.

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A/N: I'll be honest, I wrote this prologue after a night out when I was still drunk which might explain why it's so short. At this point I just don't want to change it though haha