The Path: A witcher's tale

Chapter 4

Toussaint is a beautiful place, too bad the way over there isn't as nice as the place itself. Maybe it's because I stopped for work along the way and I was no leisurely passenger, but my trip was not for leisure and enjoyment, it was to look for someone. Along the way I passed by a couple notice boards with some contracts, a ghoul's nest here, a drowner den there. The only contract that posed a real challenge was a contract on a fiend hiding out in a nearby cave. This was also one of the more lucrative contracts, as the mountain of muscle that is a fiend isn't all that easy to kill.
Once that was done I finally arrived at Toussaint, at the city of Beauclair. This little duchy, famous for wines such as Everluce and Sansretour Chardonnay, had more than enough work for witchers in the area. The duchy just happened to be the first place vampire-kind landed following the Conjunction of the Spheres, a magical cataclysm that stranded monsters, magic, and various other beings in this world. It also happened that vampires liked the taste of the blood of those who have quaffed the wines that Toussaint is famous for, so they decided to stay in the area.
While wandering around the duchy, I stumbled upon a vineyard owner who seemed to be in trouble, so I stopped to help. The man told me that his grounds had been infested with some large man-eating plants, and if I helped him he'd reward me handsomely. I decided not to turn down the poor guy, given his description of the problem, I could tell the monsters on his grounds were archespores that made the grounds their home.
These monsters spit a type of digestive acid to help kill its prey, along with being able to move from place to place via pods that it created and they kill their prey with a flower bud-like head that diced meat with several rows of sharp teeth. To a normal man, the presence of these monsters is quite unnerving, but to a witcher, this is nothing more than a usual job, so I completed the contract swiftly and efficiently.
When I returned to the man, he said that at the moment he was up to his knees in debt, but he would give me his vineyard if I was generous enough to give him 65% of the profit from the wine made on the grounds, I gladly obliged, as killing monsters is good enough money on its own. He also decided to tell me that he had another witcher visit him recently and saw them leaving towards the Caboreta woods.
I traveled there and found not much to go on, of course the woods had more than its fair share of monsters, but there were no tracks for me to follow, so I decided to go to my house at the vineyard when my majordomo told me he did some digging and found out that this mystery witcher had sailed north to the Skellige isles, and that if I was looking for a lucrative contract, there was a nearby manor with a beast living under it. I thanked him for the information and went to the manor in the morning.
I arrived and met with a very impatient nobleman, he told me to watch what I say because there was a considerable difference between us. I've met some pricks in my time as a witcher, people always ostracize us witchers, treating us as freaks and mutants, despite the fact that we're always saving their sorry hides from monsters, but this bastard topped the list. I told the prick that there was a major difference between us, but it's not in status, it's the fact that I have two swords on my back while he has none.
He shut up and let me investigate his cellar, when I did, I went into some tunnels that housed some kikimores, insectoid monsters that have toxic flesh, blood, and claws. I killed the workers and incinerated their nest and killed the dominant warrior that protected the nest. That earned me a bonus, but there was no way kikimores bored these tunnels, the tunnels were simply too big. I went down the tunnels and found a large monster den, given the corpses in there, both fresh and old, killed by heavy blows, I concluded the beast must be a shaelmaar, a large monster that's like a living boulder.
I made some bait from mushrooms and human blood and waited. I heard the rumbling, greased my silver blade and got ready with aard. The monster rolled through a tunnel and ended up right in front of me. I eyed it up and down, it had a stone like grey carapace, no eyes, a mess of teeth, and the size of a bloody barn. Because shaelmaars are blind, they hunt by hearing and smell, so they can be tricked into rolling into walls and exposing their soft and vulnerable underside. It came rolling at me like a boulder down a mountain and I just barely dodged out of the way and sent the beast into a wall. I gave it some good slashes and stabs at its belly, but the damn thing wouldn't die. As it got back up, it was loosing a considerable amount of blood but it managed to hold its ground, but I used aard to throw it off balance and stun it, then I sent a slash right through a chink in its stone-like armor and hit an artery, leaving it bleeding heavily.
All it took was a slam into a wall and one more thrust through the beast's heart to kill it. The body dropped like boulder, causing the cavern to tremble, so I hastily took the beast's head and bolted towards the exit. Once I left I noticed the caverns collapsed behind me. When I got to the nobleman and collected my reward, I returned to my house and told my majordomo that I was going to leave the duchy for the winter, I was leaving to the only home I've ever known, Kaer Morhen, to meet up with my old friends who endured the trials by my side to discuss our experiences on the Path over the past year.