The Path: A witcher's tale

Chapter 3

     I returned to the village to see if I could track down this alleged was criminal, something about the description of this person gave me the feeling that I should look for them. I searched the grounds and found some small and light footprints that no normal person would see, meaning that this individual is no ordinary person, meaning that they would be extremely difficult to track down. I decided to just leave them alone and hope they cross my path eventually. I kept traveling in the part of Velen known as No Man's Land, looking for contracts and one notice in particular caught my attention. It was a yellowed sheet of paper that  simply said: "Witcher wanted! Beast prowling the streets of Novigrad!" The large city of Novigrad has many wealthy and prosperous merchants, so I figured someone ought to pay a pretty good amount of coin to get rid a monster scaring away investors and customers.
     I met up with the contract issuer and I was surprised by who was giving the contract; it was a local noblewoman, she had a slender build, black hair that showed no signs of old age, an accent that I couldn't say where she was from, and eyes that seemed like they pierced into what was left of my soul, who wanted to get rid of the beast. This was an irregular request, nobles usually don't give a shit about the regular population of citizens of a city. Even when I tried to haggle and get a higher pay, she was extremely generous and said I could even take any memento I wished from the house. I thought I shouldn't push my luck and settled on a reward of 700 crowns and a memento. Given how generous the offer was, I was starting to think that this would be no easy task, nobody would pay a witcher that much money unless they were either sure the witcher would die trying to slay the monster or they thought they could get away with cheating the witcher.
     I went to local morgue to observe the corpses, each had puncture wounds around arteries, especially in the neck arwa and not much blood was left in them. I talked to witnesses and they all said that what they saw was something vanishing and the bodies dropped, each of the victims left a local tavern, the kingfisher, meaning that these kills occurred in the relatively classy part of town. However, one detail that was suspiciously consistent was that a woman in a cloak leaving each murder scene. The lady was always seen going towards the outer area of the city, the rural part of the city.
     I concluded the monster was a vampire, given the location of the wounds and the odd somatic anomalies on the corpses. I followed the trail of the monster to an isolated house, away from the population. The monster wasn't there, but there were plenty of birds and my medallion was reverberating in their presence, meaning they were no ordinary birds. The only vampires that can do this are Bruxae, higher vampires that can pose as humans, become invisible, and are fond of birds. The more intelligent ones can sometimes integrate into society, but they usually prefer to lead isolated lives away from people.
     I waited in the house until the Bruxa showed, I drank some Black Blood, I grimaced as I felt my blood boil in my veins, and my grip tightened around the hilt of my trusty silver sword. The faint sound of light footsteps  began to echoe through the house and I jumped out of my hiding spot and lunged at the Bruxa, sword in hand. The moment I was seen, she turned invisible and hid away somewhere, trying to trick me and kill me from behind my back. I heard the scratching of fingernails against wood from beams under the ceiling in the moonlight and threw a moondust bomb to outline the monster so I could see her. That didn't do me much good though, she speeded towards me and delivered a good slash to my side, the cut hindered my abilities but not to the point where I could be killed. I used yrden to and axii to slow it down, afterwards I hit it with a sideways swing of my blade and left it on the floor, I was going to deliver the killing blow, but she got away, luckily I had a crossbow I won in a game of gwent before the hunt and shot a couple bolts into her back. She decided to make one last effort and jumped on me and bit my carotid artery, Black Blood saved me as it did its thing and wrought havoc on the body of the Bruxa. It collapsed and died within a few minutes, I dropped next to it due to blood loss, in the morning I took a trophy and went to reap my reward.
     I went to the house of the noblewoman and surprisingly received a warm welcome, most nobles throw me out on my arse after seeing I did my job. She gave me my gold and told me to take a memento, I noticed that she had some witcher medallions lying about, she had a cat, manticore, and viper medallion. When I asked about them she said I could take them all, she told me they were painful remnants of the past. When I asked why, she reluctantly told me that she is a Bruxa herself, and those medallions belonged to witchers who were hired to kill her. She kept the medallions to commemorate them and vowed to give up stealing the blood of others and reformed her nightmarish ways. I knew I had to burn each medallion to let each witcher's soul rest at last. I thanked her for her generosity and hospitality and was about to leave until she told me she knew about the person I sought.
     She informed me that she knew I was looking for someone just by looking into my eyes, which had a sort of longing behind them. I told her that this person is a supposed war criminal and I wanted to help them. I told her how the Nilfgaardians described them and she told me that this person was last seen heading south to Toussaint, the land of blood and wine.