The plan was insanity. Geralt knew it as he guided Roach through the pre-dawn gloom, the manicured lands of Fen Hythe giving way to the wild, sucking fens of the Murkwold. He was not riding to a stealthy infiltration. He was riding to declare war.
Aldous's counter-agent rested against his hip, a tiny sun of potential. It would be useless if he couldn't reach the fragment. The workshop was now a fortress. His only chance was to make the fortress empty itself.
He found the place he needed an hour after dawn, as a sickly yellow light seeped through the perpetual mist. It was a derelict hunter's watchtower, a skeletal timber construction on the border of de Ruyter's mapped "Sector 3"—the sector that included Doln. It overlooked a vast, brackish mere, a place alive with the grumble of frogs and the skittering of water insects. It was also, according to the crude maps Aldous had copied from his old notes, near one of the primary drainage culverts that fed Fen Hythe's ornamental lake—and its workshop.
Geralt climbed the rotten ladder to the platform. From here, he could see the hazy suggestion of the estate's higher ground to the southeast. He unslung a heavy, oilcloth-wrapped bundle from Roach's saddle—not his swords, but the jar containing the remaining, uncatalyzed wyvern embryo extract. Aldous had been horrified when Geralt insisted on taking it.
"It is raw potential! Unstable! In these quantities, it could act as a beacon for every twisted thing in the fens!"
"That's the idea," Geralt had replied.
Now, he prepared the jar. Using his dagger, he carefully scored the lead seal around the lid, not breaking it, but weakening it. He then took a length of slow-burning fuse-cord, scavenged from The Crossroads, and embedded one end in a wad of sticky bog-resin against the seal. He positioned the jar in the center of the platform, surrounded by dry-rotted timber.
He was not making a bomb. He was making a dinner bell.
Wyvern embryo extract was a potent, primal substance. Its magical signature was one of violent, nascent life. Unleashed into the air, it would be like blood in shark-infested waters for any creature sensitive to chaos—especially those already mutated by related compounds. Like the failed Sentinels de Ruyter had released into these very fens.
Geralt lit the fuse with a whisper of Igni. It sputtered to life, a red eye in the gloom. He had about ten minutes.
He slid down the ladder, mounted Roach, and rode hard for a copse of twisted black willows half a mile away, directly between the tower and the estate's drainage culvert. He dismounted, looped Roach's reins loosely over a branch—she knew to stay or flee as danger dictated—and drew both his swords, planting them point-first in the peat. He would need his hands free.
He waited, his senses stretching into the fen. The medallion vibrated on his chest, a low, growing thrum.
The fuse reached the jar.
There was no explosion. A sharp crack as the seal broke, followed by a hiss as pressurized vapor escaped. Then, a wave of invisible energy rippled outwards. Geralt felt it pass through him—a greasy, compelling sensation, a promise of raw power and transformation. The very air seemed to quiver.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the fen woke up.
A guttural bellow echoed from the deep mere, followed by another, and another. The water churned. Hulking, grey-green shapes began hauling themselves onto the banks—more kikimora-workers, their chitinous backs glistening, their milky eyes fixed on the distant tower. But they were not alone. Other things, twisted by the fens' own poisons or by fallout from de Ruyter's earlier experiments, emerged: a giant, segmented water centipede with a humanoid, screaming face; a shambling mound of peat and rotting roots animated by foul magic. They were drawn, mindlessly, irresistibly, to the source of the signal.
The first creatures reached the tower. They scrabbled at its posts, tearing at the wood. The platform shook. The jar tipped, spilling its glowing, viscous contents down the timbers. The effect was instantaneous. The kikimora-workers shrieked, fighting each other to lick, claw, and consume the saturated wood. It was a frenzy, a riot of monstrous hunger.
Geralt watched, cold and detached. He had lit the beacon. Now he had to make sure it was seen.
From his pouch, he drew a fist-sized clay sphere—a firecracker, another Crossroads purchase. He lit its short fuse and hurled it in a high arc towards the melee at the tower. It landed with a crack and a bright, white flash, followed by a billow of acrid smoke.
The reaction at Fen Hythe was faster than he'd hoped. Within minutes, alarm bells clanged, their tinny panic carrying across the water. He saw distant movement on the estate walls, then the glint of morning sun on spear points as a column of guards—dozens of them—poured out of the main gate, led by men on horseback. They were heading straight for the tower, for the massive, obvious disturbance.
It was time for phase two.
As the guards splashed into the fens, engaging the frenzied monsters in a chaotic, shouting battle, Geralt turned and ran for the drainage culvert. The diversion was perfect; every eye and weapon was turned towards the riot at the tower.
The culvert's mouth was a dark opening in a low stone retaining wall. The water flowing out was warm and smelled of chemicals and algae. Geralt waded in, the water rising to his chest. He ducked into the tunnel. This was the outflow; he was going against the current, but it was weaker than the inflow on the other side of the estate. His progress was slow, strenuous. The medallion hummed a constant warning against the polluted, magical runoff.
He emerged inside the estate lake as the sounds of distant battle raged. The workshop compound was eerily quiet. Two guards had been left at the main door, their attention nervously fixed on the sounds of combat from the fens. Geralt slipped from the water, a specter of mud and vengeance.
He didn't go for the door. He went for the roof, using the same chimney and vent-pipe route. His injured shoulder protested with a sharp flare as he pulled himself up, but the Tawny Owl sharpened his focus, turning the pain into a mere signal. He crawled to the skylight. The new bars were there, but the view below was different.
The main lab was empty of assistants. Only Mastic was there, and he was not at his workbench. He was in front of the silver coffin, which now stood upright like a sarcophagus. Its lid was open. From within spilled a cold, blue light that pulsed in time with the frantic, jerking motions of the wraith fragment, which was suspended in the air before him. Mastic held a silver dagger in one hand and a small, crystal vial filled with dark liquid in the other—blood. The final component.
He was beginning the targeting ritual.
Geralt had no time for subtlety. He stood on the roof, braced himself, and focused. "AARD!"
The blast of force was not aimed at the skylight bars, but at the roof around them. Tiles shattered, wooden supports snapped, and a large section of the roof directly over the lab caved in with a thunderous crash. Geralt rode the collapse down, landing in a crouch amidst a shower of splinters, dust, and broken glass.
Mastic screamed, stumbling back, the vial of blood flying from his hand to shatter on the floor. The wraith fragment shrieked, its form distorting with the sudden disruption.
"You!" Mastic hissed, his face a mask of rage and fear. "The witcher! Guards!"
But the guards were half a mile away, fighting monsters. They were alone.
Geralt drew the phial of counter-agent. "It's over, Mastic."
"Fool! You have no idea what you're interrupting! This is transcendence! The subjugation of spirit to will!" Mastic raised his silver dagger, which began to glow with the same sickly blue as the binding glyphs. He wasn't a fighter, but he was armed with something dangerous.
The wraith, confused and in agony, lashed out instinctively. A wave of freezing despair washed over Geralt. He gritted his teeth, shaking off the psychic assault. He had to cast Yrden, but Mastic was between him and the fragment.
The alchemist lunged, not with skill, but with desperate anger. The dagger swept towards Geralt. Geralt parried with his steel sword, but as the blades met, a shock of nullifying energy shot up his arm—the dagger was imbued with dimeritium. It deadened his muscle response for a critical second. Mastic slashed again, opening a shallow line across Geralt's chest.
The pain was sharp, clean. It cleared his head. He dropped his sword, grabbed Mastic's wrist with his free hand, and twisted. Bones snapped. Mastic howled, the dagger clattering to the floor. Geralt threw him aside. The alchemist crashed into a shelf of glassware, which collapsed on him in a cascade of shards and smoking chemicals. He did not get up.
No time. The wraith was coiling, the blue veins within it burning brighter, reacting to its master's distress. The empty targeting space within it was a void screaming to be filled.
Geralt raised his right hand, focusing his will, drawing on the deep well of chaotic energy within him. His shoulder screamed in protest, a white-hot wire of disruption in the flow. He pushed through it.
"YRDEN!"
He slammed his palm onto the stone floor. A complex, violet glyph erupted from the point of impact, lines of crackling power spreading out to form a perfect circle ten feet across. The air within it thickened, hummed. The wraith's jerking movements slowed, becoming viscous. The raging blue light stabilized, became a map Geralt could read.
At the center of the specter's form, he saw it—a knot of concentrated darkness, a cancer of bound hatred. The nexus.
His left hand brought the phial up. With his thumb, he popped the crystal stopper. A scent like ozone and fresh rain filled the Yrden field. He tilted the phial over the nexus.
A single, pearlescent drop fell.
It struck the darkness and did not vanish. It spread, a liquid star consuming shadow. The blue veins reacted violently, thrashing like poisoned snakes, but within the stabilizing field of Yrden, they could not explode. They began to bleach, to brittle, to unravel.
The wraith stopped shrieking. Its form softened, the sharp edges of artificial rage melting away. The blue light faded, leaving only the original, mournful white of Lenore's stolen sorrow. The binding glyphs etched in the air flickered and went out, one by one.
Geralt held the Yrden, his entire body trembling with the effort. Sweat poured down his face, mixing with the blood from his chest. The wound in his shoulder felt like it was full of molten lead. He could feel the sign straining, wanting to collapse. He held.
The fragment, now purified, hung in the air, a tiny, sad luminance. It pulsed once, gently. Then, as Aldous's scrying pool had predicted, it streamed upward, a wisp of gentle light that passed through the hole in the roof and was gone, seeking its whole.
Geralt released the Sign. The violet glyph vanished. He sank to one knee, gasping, the empty phial falling from his numb fingers. It was done.
The sound of shouting and splashing from the fens was getting closer. The guards would be returning, having driven off or slain the diversionary creatures. He had minutes, perhaps less.
He looked at the silver coffin, now just an empty shell. He looked at Mastic, moaning in a pool of glass and chemical burns. The evidence was here, but it was not enough. De Ruyter would simply blame Mastic, call him a rogue actor.
Then his eyes fell on the ledger, still open on the pedestal next to the dimeritium cylinder. The ledger detailing the Predator Series. The orders. The payments.
He stumbled to it, snatched it up. He also grabbed the silver cylinder of dimeritium powder. Proof of component, proof of intent. He shoved them into his bag.
As he turned to flee back through the roof, a weak, gurgling voice stopped him.
"He… will… burn… everything…" Mastic whispered, one eye open, glaring with dying malice. "You've… won… nothing…"
Geralt didn't answer. He climbed the rubble of the collapsed roof, his muscles shrieking in protest. As he emerged into the daylight, he saw the first of the returning guards stumbling from the tree line, bloodied and exhausted. They saw him, a white-haired figure on the shattered roof, and shouts of alarm rose again.
He dropped behind the workshop, splashed back into the lake, and vanished into the culvert. He had the ledger. He had the catalyst. He had freed the fragment.
But as he fought his way through the dark, rushing water, Mastic's last words echoed in his mind. He will burn everything.
De Ruyter had lost his weapon and his alchemist. But he was still a lord, with lands, soldiers, and a ruthless ambition. He would not take this defeat lightly. The real battle, Geralt realized as he emerged gasping into the free air of the outer fens, was only just beginning. He had struck a blow, but he had not slain the beast. The beast was still in its manor, and it was now wounded, and cornered.