"When a person is alone, that's when you can best judge what they're truly made of." A saying from Bell Town described the witcher apprentice's torment perfectly.
If it were only the three ghouls enjoying their "banquet of men's bodies," he was confident he could deal with them using just a silver sword—after a long, grinding melee.
But if, in the middle of that melee, several more decided to join the fun, he'd be forced to rely on the School of the Wolf's secret arts to solve the problem.
He didn't want to use them.
Using Grapeshot would be too loud—the blast would draw attention, and it was easy to leave traces that would reveal the presence of a finely crafted bomb. And he was even more unwilling to use Dancing Star: the key ingredient, Zerrikanian blasting powder, had been mostly consumed dealing with the archespores. He wanted to keep a few finished incendiary bombs for the day he truly had no other choice.
The other reliable method was potions. Blizzard, Thunderbolt, and Tawny Owl—the classic three-bottle burst set. Drink them down, coat the silver sword with a vial of Necrophage Oil, and he could handle far more than three. Even if four or five leapt out to throw a party, he could still manage.
Unfortunately, that ran into the same problem: he wanted to conserve his potions.
Blizzard and Thunderbolt both required rare materials. Thunderbolt needed endrega embryos. Blizzard needed a golem's heart—or kikimore glands as a substitute. And those two ingredients weren't just unavailable on the market; he hadn't even heard of any near Vizima. Which made the whole situation painfully awkward.
So in just a few minutes, Victor understood a weakness of his own.
He wasn't only a thrifty man. When Lambert or Angoulême weren't at his side, he also lacked that brutal courage—the fearless stubbornness that let you wade in without blinking.
He'd fought before, but he still leaned toward Eskel's guidance: when we have a choice of methods, we always choose the safest one.
So, with the same steady steps he'd used coming in, he began backing away, one step at a time, putting distance between himself and the feast. He'd already planned what he'd do tomorrow: set a dozen bear traps for them, every tooth coated in Necrophage Oil, and casually drop every ghoul in the cemetery. A method so safe it was almost boring—and he could pull it off for under two hundred orens.
But at that exact moment, Victor suddenly heard a low, huffing, wet breath behind him—hoarse and heavy.
A cold sense of death shot from the base of his spine straight into the back of his skull.
…
No—
Angoulême jerked awake from a nightmare and sprang upright in bed. Catherine, perched on the roost by the window, was startled by the sharp sound and flapped to the bedside, chirping anxiously, trying to calm the sweat-soaked girl down.
Realizing she was in her own bed, that it was only a dream, Angoulême let out a long breath and gently hugged her companion.
"Gods… that was terrifying. Catherine, do you know? I just had a horrible nightmare."
"Hrmm… hrmm…" Catherine rumbled softly.
"What? You want to know what I dreamed?"
Angoulême panted for a moment, then her heartbeat slowed.
"…Fine. I'll tell you. Just for you.
"I dreamed… that the captain and I were in some desolate cemetery, surrounded by an army of ghouls. Endless—no matter how many there were, there were always more. Drool dripping, fangs bared, claws out, throwing themselves at us nonstop. We kept chopping and chopping, fighting like mad, until finally—when we couldn't hold on anymore—
"Vic suddenly shouted, 'I'm done being human!'"
"And then lightning struck from the sky, and the captain's whole body blasted out steam—bang—and he swelled up into a totally naked, super huge giant. The normal ghouls weren't even as big as his nostrils. Then the captain just started slapping them into meat paste, one palm at a time. One of the fatter ones even got hung upside down and torn in half…"
"Caw!" Catherine made a short, innocent sound, as if the dream had so many things wrong with it she didn't even know where to begin complaining.
And Angoulême's slow, detailed nightmare narration still wasn't showing any signs of stopping.
…
The current situation matched that line sages love to say: this is terrible, but everything is still under control.
Victor slowly turned around.
The ones behind him—huffing and panting—were two ordinary ghouls that had missed the chance to join the "banquet of men's bodies."
They opened their mouths, drool sliding over their teeth, and growled low in challenge, as if confused why living prey had appeared. Sure, he didn't smell as heavenly as a rotting corpse… but he still smelled good.
Victor stayed calm. This was the same as facing a wild beast: panic or flight would only trigger their aggression instantly—and might even lure the three feeding nearby over to join in.
He quietly drew a real, finished Dancing Star from his herb pouch. Not loose powders that needed mixing, but a masterwork—Zerrikanian blasting powder, sulfur, saltpeter, Stammelford's dust, and other components fused together into a refined product of improbable alchemical craftsmanship.
With an elegant motion, Victor lightly tossed the Dancing Star behind him—toward the three ghouls still eating with their heads down.
When a thunderous blast erupted behind him, a real man never looks back at the explosion.
He drew his silver sword and, while the two ghouls in front of him were distracted by the flare of firelight, he stepped in like a flash and struck with a clean ambush—successfully taking an entire arm off one of them.
Then, before the first snow could fall, the body memory drilled into him by countless repetitions of the "comb-post" exercise and "windmill" footwork kicked in. The instant his strike landed, Victor pivoted and withdrew, slipping away from the other ghoul's lunging bite and restoring the standoff.
The one that had lost a claw—blood gushing like a fountain—didn't shrink back. Instead, it fell into a frenzy, roaring and trembling with the urge to leap again.
Victor wasn't alarmed. He was pleased.
A creature from another world was still a creature. "Seeming" unaffected by injury was only "seeming." If a ghoul panicked and ran, Victor would have to worry it would race back to its nest and come charging back with friends.
Good. Stay like that. Let's end this quickly.
He lifted the sword hilt above his head, the blade angled upward and slightly back—high guard.
When he first learned this "high-guard opening," Victor—warped by overconfidence—had pointed the tip too far behind him, even straight down. Vesemir taught him a harsh lesson for it. And when winter came and Lambert and Eskel returned, they laughed at the stance the old master demonstrated for half a month—laughing so viciously they'd bare their teeth the moment they saw the apprentice.
Hilt above the head, blade angled up and slightly back: if the opponent charges in blindly, the high-guard opening lets you finish the fight with a fast, heavy cleaving blow.
Most opponents understand that and adapt. But a berserk ghoul didn't belong to that category.
Facing the monster's mindless pounce, in this moment Geralt, Vesemir, Eskel, and Lambert were with him.
The silver sword came down in a brutal, two-handed chop—
Season's greetings.
…
The rest of the one-on-one wasn't worth describing. The only thing to say was that, because Victor wanted to keep the ghoul's blood, teeth, monster liver, and venom extract as fresh as possible, the last ghoul didn't get the mercy its frenzied companion received.
It did not die quickly.
A few days ago the crescent moon had been bright. Tonight the moonlight was worse. Fortunately, the three ghouls caught in Dancing Star drove back the darkness—burning themselves to light the graves, and light Victor's sight.
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