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Chapter Text

The vodka went down smoothly, the burning trail of it feeling alien in his throat.

Olgierd nodded silently at the innkeeper to leave the bottle and threw some coins on the bar before swiping his glass and the bottle off the counter. The light was waning outside, making the surrounding oak and beech trees cast long swaying tendrils of shadow over the small wooden houses clumped together with the inn at the centre. Although the tavern wasn’t very busy yet, Olgierd still opted for a remote chair and table in the corner next to a small window with the leather-covering rolled back to allow for air and light. He poured himself several shots of vodka and knocked them back while silently following the retreat of sunlight on a warm summer’s day that had been as splendid as anything he could ever remember experiencing. Despite this, his thoughts were as gloomy as a day of rainstorms.

He had left Geralt on the steps leading to the Temple of Lilvani, and purposefully traversed the cave to head straight for the Pontar below the temple. The weight of his sabre was gone, but had been replaced with something vastly more precious, but exceedingly heavier. The trade of his weapon had been undeniably necessary, even if it fell laughably short as payment for what the Witcher had done for him.

His slow stride increased its pace as he neared the embankment, plucking his dagger and knife from his person and dropping them to the ground haphazardly as he went, his belts and sash soon following. His booted feet sank into the sand as he reached the small beach, and he stopped abruptly and became almost frantic in his effort to pull off his boots and socks, throwing them to the side. He closed his eyes, allowing pale and freckled feet to sink into the cool sand, his toes wriggling to burrow deeper to savour the sensation; to savour that he even had any sensation at all.

His hands came up to slide off his brocade robe and drop it into a heap next to the discarded footwear as he continued forward. He glanced down at his once-white linen shirt, stained as it was with blood and sweat, traces of his past life, before shucking it at the water’s edge. Wading into the water, bare-chested, the water soon rose to his leather-clad thighs and he dived under, the water still slightly cool from the waning night. Every broad stroke forward had water rushing in his ears and streaming through his hair and over his skin, the river a soothing caress.

Olgierd’s lungs burned when he finally emerged, drawing several full breaths of crisp morning air. The golden dawn fell over the river like so many newly-minted coins, the light stretching as if to touch his scarred chest over his miserable heart. Something uncanny twisted his guts and hitched in his chest, forcing a strangled gasp from his throat. He gritted his teeth against the swell within him.

Who was to say it wasn’t the drops of the Pontar that slid slowly over his cheeks?

The absence is the clue
Displaced by what we knew
A half-remembered dream
A fleeting something in the seam
- Odradek, Maraton, 2022

When Olgierd had left the inn in that Velenese hovel behind the day before, he had put away his robe and jewellery in favour of a somewhat cleaner linen shirt and leather riding pants. He had also acquired a hooded cape before taking off, and though he’d snorted at his actions and wryly muttered to himself – Old habits, indeed – he had silently argued that his need was greater. As it always had been.

Evening had descended as he passed through Oxenfurt, and yet he hadn’t stopped for food or drink in the city. He thought to pass on lodgings as well, not feeling quite at leisure to show his face in public just yet. Instead, he continued onwards through the meandering streets, the market place empty except for a few stragglers hurrying towards merry diversions or the warm hearth of home. He passed below the arches of the Novigrad gate and onwards toward Gustfields, choosing instead to stop at a well-known, if minor, tavern on his way northwards.

The next morning, he had awoken in his room and packed his meagre belongings. When he had left his men to meet up with Geralt at the temple, he could not possibly have foreseen the outcome. In fact, his thoughts had been highly sceptic, unable to even think that the terms of the contract could possibly be fulfilled, and much less in his favour.
Now, he had little more than the clothes on his back, his old finery, a curved dagger and a long hunting knife at his waist, as well as a damnably heavy purse full of blood money.

He had washed his face in the washbasin in his room, catching a look at his countenance in the mirror above the basin, and had stopped short. He thought he knew what he looked like, and hadn’t thought much of it for a long time, but looking at his visage now had been a foreign and sobering experience. It was an exploration of time and consequence, and, for the first time, he properly traced his scars; from the minor one slashing his right eyebrow to the fork in his left cheek, and onto the deep furrows of the spectacularly tentacled scar on the left side of his head.

He pushed his tongue along the inside of his cheek to examine the movement of the scar, disdainfully scoffing at the pure luck of the bugger, who had caught his face with a backhanded swipe of his knife and opened his face like the flap on a tent.

The large scar on his head, that of an obvious deathblow, had come at the hands of an equally fortunate group of angry pissants. While out carousing with his men at a tavern, a group of lowly peasants had had admittedly great timing as they decided to dishonourably gang up on him while he had gone for a solitary piss outside in the alley.

The peasants had objected to the state in which Olgierd and his men had left their homes when they had been passing by for a jovial visit. Apparently, they had decided to follow the Company and meter out their own judgment. As he was shaking off the last droplets, a barrel-chested peasant with dark hair had clobbered Olgierd about the head with a metal-tipped cudgel. Blood had spurted everywhere, and parts of what should have been on the inside was spread on the outside, spraying the peasants and Olgierd’s newly acquired robe in blood and bits from his skull.

No matter, he had thought at the time, excepting the ruination of his clothes: He had repaid them all in kind. The rumours that followed this incident carried the Redanian Free Company through many a successful raid as well as encounters in battle, where the odds seemed laid out in their favour. It seemed that no one could help but fear the undying demon with flaming red hair, who laughed, wildly and completely unhinged, at having his brains bashed straight out of his head. The scars were visual mementos of careless and callous violence that had meant nothing to him then, except, perhaps, as a means to an end, as well as a warning to others, but as he looked on the old scars now, they weren’t what arrested him.

What drew his attention were the myriad of lines on his face. The vertical grooves on his forehead, the deep lines around his eyes and the furrows between his brows, the lateral gouges around his mouth. Every one of them were all a part of what made up a permanent expression of scepticism and contempt on his face.

Gods, he looked grim, and without even trying. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, completing his survey, and deemed it an ungenerous mask he struggled to glean even so much as the ghost of a smile from. He bared his teeth at his reflection, but only succeeded in conjuring up a bitter grimace, and he wondered how often Iris had had to suffer this ‘smile’ and his attempts at humanity.
Looking away, Olgierd had felt at once grateful that Vlodimir had never been around to see it shape its way into existence.

Olgierd shook this morning’s self-examination from his mind. He could easily imagine Vlodimir with his hands on his hips and one eyebrow lifted in distaste at Olgierd’s dour thoughts. Vlod would have slapped him in the chest and told him to ‘wipe that poxy scowl off his kisser’ and smell the bloody roses. Incorrigible optimist, that one, Olgierd thought fondly, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

He led his horse off the path and stopped to get off. He hobbled the horse and attached the reigns to the branches of a tree near the gates to the family crypt. He murmured softly to calm the horse and stroked its neck, mindful that animals often withdrew from this place. He drew a bottle of vodka from his saddlebags and a single shot glass along with it. He always carried the shot glass with him, scuffed and worn as it was from use and travel.

He sighed deeply and steeled himself, as he drew up the steps to the crypt entrance at the back of his family’s estate. He had known he would have to come back here, eventually, even if his steps felt much heavier this time than it had done for decades of coming here. Being free of Gaunter O’Dimm did not equate being free of what had once bound him to this world with much happier and much lovelier attachments.

The crypt proper was dark as pitch as he descended into the gloom, but he walked confidently, his body knowing every step and cracked edge. He stepped over to a small niche in the wall of the stairways that held several small candles. He lit one with his flint to bring it with him into the darkness below. He lit several more candles by Vlodimir’s sarcophagus, the warm glow seeming to set alight the two sabres that had belonged to his brother. Olgierd reached out his hand to touch the sword edge, careful not to cut himself; they were still as sharp as the day Vlod had been put to rest. He drew out a small piece of oilcloth and wiped the dust from the sabres before replacing them.

Olgierd picked up an equally dusty shot glass from the ledge next to the swords and rubbed it in his shirt before pouring a bit of vodka over it to clean it off. He put the glass back on the ledge along with his own and filled them both to the brim. He saluted the grave before knocking back his own shot and immediately refilled it.

“Greetings, brother. To your health,” he said to the gloom, sincerity lacing his voice.

He sat down with his back to the grave, poured another shot and drank it before forcefully scrubbing both of his hands over his face and expelling a bone-deep sigh.

“I thought of you today, Vlod. I was riding along the Pontar, and I saw this homestead in Velen. It was nothing but charred wood and lingering smoke. It reminded me of that time, when Vizimir had us rustling up Temerian villages, you remember? Finest raiding spree we ever done, and Foltest’s guards were pissin’ themselves with fear. Remember we were all of us ahorse and thundering onwards, screaming like banshees – ah! The absolute mayhem of it all!! I broke my finger on that recalcitrant arse of a guard captain, who wouldn’t tell us where they kept the goods. Gods, that skull of his was thick, my damn hand hurt for days.”

Olgierd barked a mirthless laugh into the silence, pouring out another shot and knocking it back.

“Could have easily lost more than the use of my hand, if you hadn’t been there to stop his men from bearing down on me while I was otherwise indisposed with rearranging his face.” The smile faded quickly from his face, and his voice became thick as he quietly said, “You always had my back, brother.”

Olgierd swallowed thickly and made a grimace before hurrying to knock back yet another shot, the vodka slowly losing its soothing quality, and he found it hard to swallow. He felt as though his entire chest cavity was brimming with rolling black smoke. The sensation was jarring and he found himself shrugging his shoulders as if his shirt was too tight to be comfortable.

“I beg your pardon, brother, I fear I am not much the company you’ve come to expect today. I—”

He rubbed his hand over his mouth again, once more shifting his shoulders to abate the tightness of his shirt. On one hand, the discomfort was both new and unexpectedly raw, but on the other, it felt a lot like greeting an old antagonist he hadn’t expected to ever face down again, but who was back once more to needle him as relentlessly as before. In truth, it felt like a master torturer pushing every little respective spike into his innards, one slow and deliberate millimetre at a time, and Olgierd was helpless to escape it. Worst of all, he couldn’t avoid the feeling that he deserved every prick.

No matter how many times he had stood in this place, he had never been able to say the words of apology and remorse out loud, despite the dead being notoriously adept at keeping their secrets. For so many nights, he had wanted to tell his brother the story of what had happened with O’Dimm, to perhaps explain the choices he had made, to acknowledge what he had done to Vlodimir himself, what he had done to Iris, but the words would never come. Not even as Olgierd knew he should be begging for his brother’s forgiveness, even if it was much, much too late. As time passed, Olgierd had stopped craving that forgiveness, had stopped needing it, even if he hadn’t stopped thinking about it, and it had come to nothing.

Olgierd leaned his head back against the stone shelf that held Vlod’s remains, his only and much beloved brother, for whom he would have fought kings and wrestled monstrous Fiends, and the thought that he had used Vlod as a mere bargaining chip for material riches sank its claws into him.

The flames on the candles by his feet flickered momentarily as he gasped painfully, unable to keep the emotion inside. He got up off the floor and faced the grave. He placed his shaking fingers over his lips before passing it onto the top of the sarcophagus, pressing his digits into the stone as if trying to make an impression into the surface with his love and regret, useless as it was to the both of them now.

“I’m sorry, Vlodimir,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and fraught. Olgierd refilled his glass and knocked back Vlod’s vodka before replacing the glass with the bottom up. He emptied his own and pocketed it.

Unbeknownst to Olgierd, a ghostly hand arranged itself to hover over his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Vlodimir had always awaited his brother’s visits unreservedly, happy to just have him here and listen to his stories, but this moment he felt more desperate than ever to be corporeal.

“I know, brother,” Vlodimir remarked seriously, though he knew Olgierd wouldn’t hear it. “T’is nothing. Being dead isn’t so bad as all that. Besides, the old family rogues make for quite the diversion on occasion! Dear old grandpapi Kestatis has plans for us on the solstice to see if we can’t scare some peasants out of their wits! What a lark it shall be, and perhaps I might blow a breeze to disturb a skirt or two as well!”

His loud laughter rippled through the crypt on his side of the veil, while only a very faint ghostly echo made it across for Olgierd to hear had he listened for it.

“Only…” Vlodimir faltered, as he watched Olgierd’s slightly hunched back retreating to the steps, “Only it does get rather bleak here without you by my side.”

We catch it and it's gone
A strange and fading song
- Odradek, Maraton, 2022

Olgierd hadn’t known what he expected. The gate in the eastern wall surrounding the manor was rusted into place; it was bent, immovable and overgrown, and barring his way to boot. The manor and its grounds had once held the symbolism of home and possibility, but it had been corrupted and twisted into the epicentrum of his boundless cruelty. Now Nature had reclaimed it and repurposed it into a messy green trellis, as if it knew to cover up and renew the many-layered devastation beyond it.

He shook the gate, the metal screaming its protest at having its joints rattled after so much inertia. Knowing he couldn’t physically force it open, had Olgierd already conjuring up his dark energy. For so long, he had been so at ease to circumvent even minor obstacles with magic or might, but something in him let it fizzle into nothing. He was as yet unsure of what kind of man he wanted to be, and, furthermore, he hadn’t even considered if that man would still invoke goetia, especially for something so minor as traversing a doorway, but for now he couldn’t bear the thought of perhaps taxing his hard-won soul for such an insignificant shortcut.

He followed the bulwark and made a disgusted noise when he saw the breach in the wall. After a moment of inspection, it was clear to him that the stones had been broken down by blunt force rather than them crumbling under the weight of time or lack of maintenance, which meant that someone had sought to force their way into the courtyard. Thieving plebs and blasted scunners, Olgierd thought.
As he climbed through, he hoped that Iris had not had to suffer them encroaching on her privacy, and a part of him felt glad that he had summoned the Caretaker to deal with the grounds in his absence.

Olgierd could scarcely remember when he had last been here. The manor towered above him, a behemoth on a plinth, casting long shadows over the garden. Despite the sun casting the front into a darker silhouette, it didn’t escape his notice that the roof was dilapidated with its broken and missing tiles and bare wooden beams sticking out like a jagged halo crowning the manor’s general decrepitude. In the wall of the manor, it was clear to see that the mortar and plaster had steadily crumbled in several places and the once pristine paint was fractured and flaking. The windows on the top floor seemed to him like dark eyes in the face of the house, its irises made of dark green mold and algae that tapered into long black streaks as if left by the tears shed by its inhabitant.

Olgierd couldn’t quite contain the shiver that went through him at the sight. He averted his eyes as he walked towards the easternmost part of the grounds, accidentally kicking a shallow mound of freshly turned earth as he went. He looked down to notice that there were, in fact, several mounds among the flowerbeds with crude wooden crosses raised above them, and he knew at once that they were the graves of intruders.

Every one of them were put to rest, nameless and anonymous, row upon row, all of them monuments to the never-ending consequences of the decisions he had made. Even so, Olgierd struggled to feel entirely sympathetic towards the scoundrels who had entered his home to take what belonged to him. He did, however, feel an acute twist in his guts at what the courtyard had been turned into. Remorse washed over him anew, knowing that Iris had had to live in this fortress of death, the graves of the unknown yet another testament to his heartlessness, and a daily reminder to her of the coldness and distance she had had to suffer alone, comfortlessly surrounded by his demons, both literal and figurative.

Olgierd swallowed as he came level with the stables on his left, his pace slowing to a halt. Although Olgierd had instructed the Caretaker to handle the property with care in his absence, he supposed the demon might have taken that particular instruction literally and only dealt with the actual land on the property, but not what stood on top of it, which would explain the state of both the manor itself as well as the smaller structures surrounding it, including the stables. But of course, Olgierd thought caustically to himself; he should have known better than to leave anything to interpretation when dealing with a bloody demon.

Weeds had taken over and flourished where once there was a small enclosure for the horses to be fed and watered. The tiled roof overhang had broken off the wooden pillars to lie forlornly on the ground covered in the vines of both ivy and bindweeds, another proof of nature’s attempt to grow something new from an old wound. Vlod would have been loath to see the state of this.

Vlodimir had always had a love of horses, and he had taken to riding them at an even younger age than Olgierd had. As a young child, perhaps at five or six years of age, Vlodimir had spurred his horse into a furious gallop in the paddock outside the manor before climbing to his feet on the back of the snorting horse, screaming with glee at his success, shouting at Olgierd to look, to see what he had done, the absolute marvel that he was. Even back then, Vlod’s laughter was boisterous, and, even though Olgierd felt obligated to needle his younger brother, Vlod’s laughter was also entirely infectious and he couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

When they grew into young men, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years of age, Vlodimir had made it his mission to try out ever more hazardous tricks on horseback, insisting it was to make a lasting impression on what he liked to call nubile and suggestible young women. Vlod had always been a fool about women, and he never apologised for it.

“She will love it!” Vlodimir exclaimed confidently after a particularly daring trick involving standing on the back of the horse and swinging around the saddle at full gallop. When he was done, he rode the horse over to where Olgierd was standing, and promptly swung off it and landed gracefully next to him, as the horse raced on without him.

“I think you would more credibly run off with the circus than that maid’s heart,” Olgierd quipped dryly.

“Bah!” Vlodimir waved a hand dismissively, a hearty grin on his face. “You read too much poetry, brother; not everything must be about fickle hearts and lofty words of love. Perhaps she could be convinced of other ways to while away a lovely afternoon with me, such as picking out shapes in the clouds, or maybe counting straws in a secluded haystack.”

Vlod was tilting his head in an attempt at endearment, but a rather shit-eating grin was spreading across his face, ruining the effect of his otherwise innocent smile. Olgierd crossed his arms across his chest in a mock-attempt at a foreboding stance and levelled his younger brother with a narrow-eyed stare.

“Rake,” Olgierd said pointedly.

“Apt.” Vlod nodded solemnly.

Olgierd could almost see the memory play out in front of him, the decay before him almost hidden behind his opaque imagination. For some reason, his mind insisted that the sun always shone in the memories he carried of his brother, even if that memory was one that had grated his nerves at the time.

Back when Olgierd had begun courting Iris, he had always felt torn about it. Although he felt warmth and mirth in her company, time apart left him to think of her father, Lord Bilewitz, and his obvious lack of approval of him, which in turn led to brooding on how that might affect their plans for a future together. After a particularly disheartening visit with Iris’ father, Olgierd had been morose, but Vlod was not having it.

Wishing to lift Olgierd’s spirits, Vlodimir had dared him to a wild horse race through underbrush of the nearby woods, which was wrought with dangerous tree-limbs ready to swipe at the eyes or unseat them completely. The race continued through peasant fields that, in turn, could lead them to run afoul scattered peasant tools for deforestation or scythes hidden among the barley stalks, or perhaps the hooves of their horses might catch on the surrounding stone fences as they jumped them at full speed, possibly resulting in a tumbling fall that could cripple both horse and rider!

Needless to say, Olgierd could not refuse the challenge. To both of them, any one thing was rarely as sweet nor as tempting as high speed laced with the very real threat of harm, and they agreed that the winner would be the first one to cross through the gates into the manor’s courtyard.

Vlodimir was first to clatter over the cobblestones, a whole horsehead length ahead of Olgierd, his laugh loud and mirthful, before raucously proclaiming himself the winner.

“Methinks, dear brother, that you may have ridden this course before. A time or two, I would say,” Olgierd said, as they both got off their horses. He eyed his brother, while rubbing the raised skin on one cheek left by the swipe of a twig that he was fairly certain Vlod had grabbed and released as he galloped straight ahead of him through the trees.

“Are you calling me a cheat?!” Vlod retorted, indignant at the accusation.  

“Certainly not,” Olgierd said, his voice affecting mock-admiration. “I only wonder at how nimbly you avoided all obstacles, but I see I must, in fact, praise your observational skills, the sharpness of mind, the acute—”

“Alright, alright!” Vlodimir cut him off, laughing. “Although I do know you for a sore loser, so—”

Olgierd pushed Vlodimir’s shoulder good-naturedly, both grinning at one another for a moment. Olgierd was first to look away, his smile dropping off his face.

“I have to make reparations to him. Albeit, I cannot fathom what I might’ve said this time to irk him so—”

Vlodimir groaned, prolonged and loudly, drowning out Olgierd’s words, as he theatrically threw his arms over the back of his horse and buried his face in its flank.

“Well, aren’t we dramatic today,” Olgierd observed drily, one eyebrow raised. Vlodimir turned around and leaned against his stallion, giving Olgierd a long unreadable stare.

“I want you to be happy,” Vlod finally said. “If Iris is the one to make it so, I wish nothing more for you than your heart’s desire, and may the sun, the moon and the stars and all that is holy and unholy pave the way to that most sacred of destinations.”

“Laying it on a bit thick there,” Olgierd interjected.

“But!” Vlodimir continued loudly, cutting across Olgierd’s words. “But throwing yourself at Bilewitz’s feet, begging and scraping before him... It’s all over you, you know, that bloody misery, every time you leave his presence.”

Olgierd returned Vlodimir’s look with a stare of his own, his eyes narrowing slightly in reproof. He crossed his arms over his chest, straightening his back and tilting his chin upwards.

“If you have something to say to me, brother, I rather feel you better say it… or choke on it.”

Vlodimir huffed, mirroring his brother and folding his arms over his own chest. He wanted to press the matter further, because he felt that Olgierd needed to hear it, but Vlod could also tell that his older brother was unwilling to hear what he had to say at present. If Olgierd’s posture wasn’t already something to go by, then his worded threat definitely was a clear indication.

Even the servants going about their work in the courtyard had noticed the change in atmosphere as well. Several had slowed their pace as they went about their work, and one or two had even stopped, keeping their heads close together, clearly pretending to talk when they were actually gossiping. Vlod glanced to the side, and thought wryly that the gardener’s absentminded work with his trowel in the nearby plot more accurately resembled archaeological excavation rather than botany. The air had grown tense and awkward. Vlod let out a silent sigh.

“Forget it, brother,” Vlodimir said after another moment, forcing a smile to his lips and bravado into his voice. “I know you’re only posturing because you lost the race, and I am not the type of man who kicks a poor sod when he’s already down. Besides,” he slapped his hand onto Olgierd’s shoulder companionably and leaned towards him as he continued conspiratorially, “You’re scaring the fillies.” Vlodimir’s eyes slid knowingly over the young maid with long dark plaits who was slowly passing by them.

The girl was carrying a heavy pail of water in one hand, and, to carry the strain, her body was angled in a way that pushed out her chest against the thin linen of her dress. Vlodimir eyed the sight appreciatively and grinned at the girl who smiled back at him before hurrying on. Olgierd had no doubts as to where Vlod’s thoughts had gone. He was glad of the change of subject, but unable to hold back a scoff.

“Bit preoccupied, are we?” Olgierd asked.

Vlod wasn’t even looking at Olgierd anymore, but unabashedly staring after the maid. “You’ll have to excuse me, brother. Something’s just come up,” he said, before walking off in the direction of the girl.

As the memory faded, Olgierd thought to himself that, even if Vlodimir might have been half-witted around women, Olgierd himself had been a complete idiot on the whole. His pride had prohibited anything getting through to his thick head, and he wished he had not also been so bloody-minded about it, as well.

When they had lost everything due to an extended series of extremely unfortunate events, Vlodimir, too, had struggled with the change, but unlike Olgierd, he had tried to find the proverbial silver lining in their depressingly grey cloud. The only thing Vlod had been unable to hide was his keen displeasure at the loss of the stables, and he had often complained of the stables on the road, disclaiming their deficiencies.

After having struck his deal with Gaunter O’Dimm and regained their home, among other things, Olgierd had spent a fair amount of coin on the stables to honour Vlodimir’s memory. And what an honour that was, he thought sarcastically. The stables had quickly become a monument to shame and loss, and the irony that Vlodimir would have never been able to even lay his eyes upon the accommodations, much less live to appreciate them, never escaped his notice.

Even though he had spared no expense, Olgierd soon started avoiding going in there, and, as he looked at the dilapidated building, he had a strange moment of gratitude that he had not been able to tap into the burning shame he now felt at the sight of it. At least now, he thought to himself, the building looked a more fitting representation of what he had done, rather than his former attempts to assuage the wicked wretchedness of his own actions with inconsequential finery. Had he been around at the time, Vlod would have shrewdly made a joke about Olgierd’s efforts being not unlike polishing a turd, and he would have been right.

Olgierd found himself opening his mouth to apologise again, but found it awkward to utter the words to the debris and broken pillars, and kept quiet instead. Why had he even come here? But he knew he must; he needed to face what he had wrought, and accept his responsibility even if he could expect no redemption. The Witcher may have exorcised the haunted grounds, but only Olgierd himself could put his ghosts to rest, and so he turned away from the remains of the stable and towards the manor, taking the steps of the stairs two at a time, and pushed open the heavy oak doors of what had once been his home.

Chapter Text

“Someone’s here.”

The Black Cat had already leapt from the raised plateau, leaving the Black Dog to stand alone by the fountain. It slid quietly into a cluster of hollyhocks to get a closer look at their newest intruder, knowing it was only a matter of time before more humans would scamper through and pick, unhindered, at the carcass that was the Von Everec Family Dynasty.

The Black Cat padded ahead stealthily to get a better view of the newcomer as he came through the opening in the crumbled wall. Neither the Black Cat nor the Black Dog nurtured high hopes of providence, as it seemed highly unlikely to them that they should be visited by a human capable of delivering them from their imprisoned existence in any foreseeable future. The fact that the Witcher could have ever succeeded in getting one over on the Caretaker and surviving it, much less that he would have faced Iris unscathed, seemed to them a miracle of an unmatched degree of singular happenstance… That is to say absolutely improbable and rather impossible, and yet, here they were: The grounds were silent and bereft of any existence except their own.

Even though the Black Cat was not given to emotional outbursts of any kind, or, indeed, any show of emotion at all, there was a slight thrumming within its being the moment it spied the broad back of a human male with flaming red hair. Still, it was strange, the Black Cat thought to itself, because it easily recognised the appearance of the man, but not his presence.

“It’s him,” the Black Dog stated, as it came to sit beside the Cat among the flowers, both of them out of sight of the human behind the flower stalks.

“Not exactly. There is something more,” the Cat said dispassionately.

“Mm,” the Black Dog assented.

“He feels wrong. Different.” The Black Cat said unnecessarily; the Black Dog felt it, too.

“He is too late,” said the Black Dog after a moment of watching the human run a hand over the stable door.

“He knows.”

Their heads turned slowly and simultaneously as their gazes followed his passing in the courtyard.

Did it take hold
Did it change you
Did it make you something else
Something new
Can you feel it
Can you tell the difference
- A Body of Your Own, Maraton, 2022

Having already observed the state of the courtyard, Olgierd might have guessed that the house would not have fared any better, but he was still taken aback at the sight that met him when he stepped into the entrance hall. The wrought iron chandelier had fallen to the floor, renting the rug and breaking the worn flagstones beneath it. All around him he saw broken pieces of furniture, shattered glass and trinkets, as well as several toppled wax candles. The debris was interspersed with ripped up books and pieces of paper strewn all about the floor. Despite the wreckage, it was dwarfed by the massive destruction of the eastern staircase above him. Next to it, he saw that the once-pretty lead-framed windows were blown out as well. The warm sunlight that fell in through the openings framed the splintered wood and the few remaining shards in the most unpleasant way, like a maw full of sharp and irregular teeth.

Olgierd’s mouth had fallen open as he looked around him and he scrubbed his hand over his face in shock. He found it a jarring sight how much the entrance hall had changed for the worse since last he was here, and his experience of it snagged on an unusual feeling of dread. True, he had seen his share of violence and destruction, not to mention that which was of his own making, but a long-forgotten part of him didn’t fancy thinking too hard on what could possibly have broken the stairwell like that, and with Iris still inside…

Something cold slicked down his spine when he heard a quiet, throaty sigh to his right from within the gloom of the parlour.

“Hello? Show yourself,” Olgierd demanded. His voice sounded much more confident than he felt, and he rolled his shoulders back and tilted his chin upwards as his hand fell to the sword at his hip – except his hand kept falling. He’d forgotten for a moment that he no longer had his sabre and silently cursed himself for not arming himself properly before coming here. Even if the inhabitants had never formerly been a threat to him, that didn’t mean that new threats hadn’t arrived since the Witcher came through here.

Olgierd kept completely still for a few moments to listen for any other sounds, staring intensely into the shadowy parlour and trying to will the unknown to step forward, but nothing happened. He swiped a fat candle off the floor before hurriedly digging out his flint and lighting it.

How curious it was to walk this world for decades, invulnerable, and therefore unafraid, and now he felt his heart – he felt his heart – stutter in his chest all because of an old house screaming in its death throes; after all, it was only the house that was falling apart, wasn’t it? His heart had never felt as light or as heavy as it did after it was returned to him, and the sensations it brought forth were at once intimately familiar and impalpably foreign to him. In all that he had done, he hadn’t suffered any of the consequences or exigencies a feeling heart might have, and now he was simply unaccustomed to it. He was unsure of how he felt about that, even as he thought that it must be for the better.

As Olgierd moved into the parlour, the light fell ahead of him, bringing more debris into view. He held the light aloft to look for a bracket bearing a torch, but found none. Instead, the light illuminated several toppled bookshelves, splintered wooden boards, fallen paintings and yet another broken staircase, this one leading to the gallery. He was moving toward the stairs when his gaze fell on something so out of place in this uninhabitable residence that he felt like someone had emptied a bucket of water over him.

In the middle of the room sat a chair, and next to it stood a small round table. Both were unscathed and oddly clear of dust. Atop the small table someone had spread a decorative silk doily across it and put down a polished silver candlestick bearing three tall wax candles, presumably to light the pages of the well-read book lying beside it. The book lay open as if it had only been put down for a moment.

Olgierd forced himself to draw a deep breath and pick up the book. When he saw the title, he breathed more easily as he recognised the book as one of his own; a favourite, in fact. The gilded lettering on the front had almost been scrubbed away entirely, but he easily recognised The Spirit from the Steppe, so often had he read and reread it that he had had the binding repaired several times.

But why was it here? Iris had loved to read, but she had never been particularly taken with this specific title. He turned the book over, reading from the page the book had been opened to when he picked it up.

Might man yet learn his neck to bend?
Ha! Behold how that noble race,
Doth year by year its birthright rend,
Its promised lands fast lay to waste.

He had always interpreted the poem to be about foolhardy misuse of wealth, power and property as well as the unfair consequences of greedy men’s actions – mostly the kind that had been directed toward himself – and had often seen it come to pass at the hands of their noble peers. Olgierd had often related to the text and thought how contemptuous it had been that their peers had so easily spurned his family when unfortunate economic endeavours and crop-destroying weather had left them destitute – and by no fault of their own to boot! He had been so angry about it back then, and he had felt no small amount of righteousness when he had taken his revenge on them once O’Dimm had ‘granted his wishes’ and returned to him his rightful estate and fortune.
To be fair, Olgierd still thought himself righteous, but now, somehow, it suddenly didn’t align as perfectly with what he felt about his neighbours anymore.

Even though he still knew the poem by heart, he reread the paragraph and tried to contemplate the reason for why Iris would have taken an interest in it. Perhaps he had been wrong about the righteousness of his cause, wanting to bend the necks of those who would oppose him, judging others for acting only in self-interest and greed. Perhaps Iris had read it differently than he, and what she saw might have been that Olgierd was the one who was unable to bend his neck, not to force or conquest, but to love and to the ability to cherish what is. That it was not his antagonists who had lain his world to waste, but himself, for finally giving up and taking the easy way out, instead of dealing with his and Vlodimir’s money problems head-on.

In his thoughts, he was still doubtful, but when he read on, he felt as if this favoured poem had a touch of prophesy to it that he had not previously comprehended. His heart sank and he already felt gutted by the end of the first line:

Hearts grown cold, brothers brothers spurn,
The rich grow fat, while poor grow thin.
Some hoard bread, others can but yearn,
Then rise, en masse, to slay their kin!

Olgierd dropped the book on the table as if it had burned his hand, not wanting to deal with the new interpretation that had surfaced as he read the second verse. He turned away to stalk out of the parlour but stopped abruptly in his tracks as he caught sight of the large painting before him. He hadn’t paid the image any attention on his way in, as it had been too dark to see, but as the light of the candle fell over it, it arrested him.

He had been wrong when he, mere moments before, had thought that there was only one thing out of place in this room: Nearly as large as life, the painting was an impeccably kept and newly dusted self-portrait. The frame was beautifully carved ash wood that had been gilded with a burnished gold, and it shone prettily in the light from the candle he had left on the table in his haste. The subject was a person, but the picture was made in dark colours, and it was hard to tell the shapes apart in the gloom. Olgierd grabbed at the frame, wondering for a moment if he could bring it with him into the light, but besides it being stuck firmly to the wall, it also spurred something in him. That something had stirred his sense of self-preservation and lifted the hairs on the back of his neck, as well as leaving a tingling feeling in the hand that had touched the frame, not entirely unlike what he felt after calling forth goetia.

Olgierd’s reservations towards the book were forgotten as he went back to pick up the lit candle and bring it over to the portrait. As he came closer, the picture became clear to him and he recoiled from it. It was a beautiful self-portrait with a horrifying expression in terms of the physical representation and choice of colour. Olgierd had no doubt that this was made by Iris, and that the woman on the canvas was herself, but her eyes were deep dark pits of hollow black and half her face seemed to have been burnt straight off the canvas, if the irregular black blotches and its fringes of melted paint was anything to go by. When he briefly touched the canvas, his fingers came away sooty and tingling.

At first glance, the image of Iris had taken up all his attention, but as he looked the canvas over once more, he noticed the dark shapes in the background; shadowy figures peeking at him from below their black-as-pitch cowls. He could barely make out their eyes and yet he felt their gazes on him. Though the painting had been treated with some kind of magic and the eyeless stare from the shapes on the canvas unnerved him, nothing had happened after his interaction with the portrait.

She hadn’t always been this dark, had she? When he searched his memory, he didn’t associate Iris with darkness and shadows, but as someone who added light and warmth to his world. He adored her humour and wit, and found her self-expression mirrored his own. She wanted to be authentic. This was clearly reflected in much of the art she made, which he felt was often both beautiful and haunting, even sad at times, but then she could immediately turn around and face him with a vivacious spirit and a quip brimming with innuendo, making his laughter ring out and his heart squeeze.

Looking at the self-portrait now, he wondered if it wasn’t Iris who had been the haunted one, transferring pieces of herself through paint and onto the canvas. Her face had been burned away, the eyes were black pits, and something or someone crept around her in the shadows. She had made this awful thing and hung it.

Revisiting his old book and trying to see it through Iris’ eyes, as well as studying this painting she had created in his absence, made his focus return to the creeping and unpleasant realisation that he had made her miserable, and perhaps even more than he had thought.

He had left her because she hated him. He had gone away from her, because he thought that that was what she wanted. It wasn’t even because it was unbearable to him, and it wasn’t because it hurt him – at all – but because he knew deep down that he didn’t care anymore, even as he tried to hide it and pretend otherwise. He left because of the way she looked at him, incredulously, with a mix of confusion, hurt and contempt lacing every stare, and yet she had still been warm and damned to care, unrequited, as long as he was around to torment her with an ideal that no longer existed and no longer could.

Olgierd was unable to stop himself from looking away, even if he didn’t have a right to. He felt a flare of anger and disappointment at himself: He hadn’t come here to turn his face away again, but when he looked at the awfulness that was the expression of this self-portrait, he found his insides roiling like scared rats spilling from a sewer pipe. How selfish of him to cower at his own discomfort in the face of Iris’ pain and isolation. That was what was truly unbearable.

He felt he couldn’t stay in this spot for another moment and turned towards the stairwell, careful to step over the miscellaneous debris. The sun still fell onto the stairs and the entryway, relentless and happy, not caring a whit for the brooding state of his mind or the heaviness of his heart. As he went up the stairs, another golden glint caught his eye next to the banister, and he lifted his candle to dispel the gloom.

It was another portrait, but this one depictured a young man, in his late twenties, his face clean-shaven except for a well-groomed moustache, and wearing an ornate robe. He had worn that exact robe the day he left her. Olgierd couldn’t remember ever having modelled for this portrait. In fact, he was certain he hadn’t, and it made him all the more awestruck by her skill. She painted it from memory alone.

He studied the portrait, marvelling at her work. Each stroke of her brush seemed careful and deliberate, and it gave him the impression that she hadn’t painted his likeness as much as she had unearthed him directly from the canvas. She had captured every minute detail of his face, replicating every line and freckle, the exact hue of his hair, the straight line of his brows, the careful twirl of his moustache; he almost felt like he might as well have been looking into a mirror – except time had passed, of course.
There were no whiskers on his cheeks to hide the fact of how concave they had become, and there was no trace of any of the gruesome scars, nor the dark circles under his eyes. She had also omitted the deep lines, all of which he had studied at the inn this very morning.

Instead, she had painted him gallant, youthful and handsome, his family heirloom sabre at his side, his eyes clear and his expression unapologetic and fierce. His brow furrowed as he wondered why she would have chosen to paint him in this way if she had wanted to be free of him, if she truly thought that the man, she had married didn’t exist any longer.

But then he thought of what the Witcher had told him as he handed him the piece of canvas bearing her likeness, and the awful realisation set in that she had painted him as she saw him, how she thought of him, how she still wanted him to be. How he had once been.
It was honest, at least. Even discounting all the lost potential of this version of him, she still saw through him to his core: He was unbending and unrelenting, just like the poem said. Of course, the true tragedy of it all was that he had come to turn these core traits on her, as well.

Above him, he heard the creaking of a floorboard and was shocked out of his reverie. He knew it couldn’t possibly be her, and yet he couldn’t restrain himself from calling out. “Iris??” he shouted, as he thundered up the steps, broken glass crunching under his boots, but the landing was quite empty and nothing moved as he looked around him.

His eyes scanned the walls and saw yet another self-portrait of Iris straight ahead of him. This one was just as gruesome, but in a slightly different way. In this one, her entire face had been painted over chaotically in nuances of white, pink and black where parts of it had been viciously scratched out, perhaps with a paint knife. The black dress she wore had an almost golden hue, and in her lap lay her hands, gently folded over the stem of a violet rose. His violet rose.

Although this portrait wasn’t home to any more of the shadowy and cowled figures, it instilled in him an acute sadness. He had been the one to condemn her to this, he had even told her she couldn’t leave, and that she must stay here, alone, even after he left.

Some people might have looked at the state of the house, their history and what was represented in the portraits he had seen so far and called her obsessive, but he would staunchly disagree. Her obsession with things that were clearly symbols of himself and their marriage was not signs of fanatic devotion: How else could she possibly have spent her time in this house? What else could she possibly have focused her attentions on? Looking around, he could easily envision the ghosts of memory walking across the halls; here in soft remembrance, there in frustrated quarrels. It was easy to imagine that the very wood of this structure had simply soaked up and accumulated the growing frustration, anger and despair emanating from them and between them, and he had simply left her to wallow in it. Every surface had contained them, and every interaction she had with him was a testament to how he had continued to slip further away from her, and from himself.

With a cold realisation ripping through him, he knew that he was responsible, that he had created her like this, and he wondered, frantically, how on earth she could have possibly held out any affection for him after all this? He grabbed blindly for the rolled-up canvas cut-out that the Witcher had brought him in lieu of the rose he had asked for. Geralt had told him, mere days ago, that she still loved him and that she just wanted to be close to him! Who could possibly stay in such misery if they hadn’t been forced?!

His heart was hammering hard in his chest and his breath was coming out in harsh gasps. He felt his body shake, and his eyes itched. He clenched his teeth and tried to hold his breath against the flood of sorrow he felt, when he suddenly heard a sob from down the hall towards their old bedroom.

He strode through the double doors to the left of the painting and into the hallway beyond, trying in earnest to tamp down on the foolish hope he felt pressing behind his ribs, fluttering like a timid blue jean. As he rushed on, he wasn’t surprised to see another self-portrait, and he faltered. Her face was blotted and scratched out, and her otherwise careful method of painting was turbulent and blotchy with globs of paint trailing from what would have been her face and onto the tidy brushwork below it. Underneath the frame, atop a low chest of drawers, lay several heads of dried flowers, chrysanthemum and carnation. These were the type of blooms he had brought her, many and often, with his love when he courted her before his heart wilted.

Was this what she had seen in the mirror? Was this what she had been reduced to? A mournful, yearning shadow of what she had once been? He had truly been a damned fool, if he genuinely thought that his keeping her here, under some misguided idea of protecting her, from himself and the world outside, was not really him exerting his power and confounded need for control in an attempt to preserve her.
Looking back, he had never forgotten what the searing jealousy had felt like, nor how long-winded it had been. Not even when he couldn’t strictly feel the jealousy in earnest any longer, it had still haunted him, and by then it had become some misplaced question of honour that he acted out in a near-automatous fashion.

Olgierd had been jealous of the toad, even after he had had the Ofieri princeling cursed and banished, and after that, he was still jealous of the man’s wealth and his easy charm, and how easily he had been afforded Bilewitz’s acceptance and encouragement. The misfortunes of his own father had been Olgierd’s and Vlodimir’s to inherit, not foregoing the loss of good standing among their peers. He had become a noble paper tiger, who was deemed persona non grata, as well as a useless lout who didn’t have anything to offer lest he brought status and coin to the table, and plenty of it! He had wanted pull his hair and scream; it angered him so much!

Even thinking about it now made him huff contemptuously, his jaw and fists clenching so tight he could feel the strain while his nails dug painful sickles in the palms of his hands. When he had been free to love, he had not been taken merely with Iris for her looks, much less the potential of her dowry or the reputation of her name, as if he were some odious coxcomb. Iris was a true beauty and a woman of multiple delightful layers, and he had cherished her wit, and her spirit of mischief and joy. She loved art as he did, her paint strokes were masterful enough to rival the greats, and she flourished when she made things grow: It was a prerequisite for her soul to soar, and, still, he had clipped her wings and caged her with his jealousy and desperate need to regain control of his life. He felt fit to explode in a rage, but when he realised that there was nobody to blame but himself, he despaired, unable to cope with it. He roared madly as he kicked a broken three-legged chair across the hallway, panting with mounting anger.

As his heart had hardened back then, all he had left to feel was anger, but even that emotion eventually left him, too. He remembered how he used to react, how Bilewitz had riled him, unfailingly, at every encounter, even long after Iris and himself had been married. Now he knew he had barely even cared at the time, and yet he had continued to act the role of Olgierd Von Everec, proud and affronted. It had become a matter of principle, defending his honour, and as always, Iris was the only one who was caught up in it all and hurt by what was said and done.

He remembered often sitting in the wine cellar, nursing his vodka and his tobacco, brooding on how to change his deal with O’Dimm. There were only few servants left by then, and both they and Iris avoided him when he was drunk and moody, which suited him just fine; he abhorred the inconsequential horseshit that the chattel brayed, and Iris was the only person who could still reach into his heart and scrape painfully at the last remnants of it, which only served to make him more angry, drunk and brooding.

One fine evening, and, frankly, Olgierd couldn’t remember if it had really been a fine one, or, indeed, whether it had been evening, at all, Iris had come down into his dungeon accompanied by her father, Lord Bilewitz.

“Get to the point, father,” Olgierd grated out the words, not entirely able to keep the drunken slur out of his voice. His voice was deep and nasal, as he quietly stated: “My patience runs thin.”

Bilewitz looked up from the marriage contract he had been citing, his eyes widening incredulously for a moment, before hardening into a glare. “Gladly!” Bilewitz spat, the word dripping with venomous sarcasm. “On Iris’ request, I declare this marriage null and void!”

Bilewitz ripped the contract in two in front of him and threw the pieces at Olgierd’s feet. Olgierd stared down at it, feeling his temper rise, sensing yet another scratch on his honour, like death by a thousand cuts. He absolutely refused to tolerate it, and turned his rage on Iris.

“You vowed to remain with me ‘till death do us part’,” Olgierd growled, the accusation in his voice clear.

Even while hugging her herself protectively, Iris rounded on him, immediately, her voice dispassionate and neutral: “And I’ve held to my vow. The Olgierd I married is no more.”

Olgierd paused for a moment, his eyes narrowing, and softly said: “Breaking a word once given does not come that easy,” and then his voice churned out his next words like gravel: “Believe me.”

As he thought back, Olgierd realised that this was the moment he had said the fateful words. He had cared more about wounded pride and the loss of control than he had Iris, or what she wanted. Anything soft that might be left in his heart was buried, or long gone. All that was left was his ire and despair, and he should have known that strong emotions, even if he only had the worst of them left, could intertwine vehement words with fickle magic and make it take form.

Olgierd had shot from his chair and stepped towards her in a menacing posture. “You shall stay here. Forever.” His voice low and certain, like assuring her of a malicious promise.

Olgierd remembered clearly what came after, how he was nothing but a bared nerve reacting, no longer thinking, only doing. He hadn’t meant for the scuffle with Bilewitz to be fatal, but afterwards he certainly hadn’t minded it, either.

The memory felt shameful beyond words to him now. A small but ever-foolish part of him had wanted to pretend that, coming back to this place after everything that had been said and done, might be akin to some sort of penance, or that it would be the start of some kind of absolution.

How embarrassingly naïve of him.

Olgierd wanted to close himself off against the blistering shame and remorse he felt at that recollection. He was the type of man who moved through the world by practical means, but no manner of intangible repentance could ever take back what he had done, and nothing he could ever do would ever ameliorate the fall-out of those actions.
Iris had been right: In truth, he had left her long before she even tried to leave him. In addition, he had kept her like fireflies forced into a jar with barely a slit for air. Olgierd looked down at the crunching sound coming from his hand. Unconsciously he had picked up one of her flowers atop the chest of drawers and crushed it in his tightly curled fist.

He dropped the crumbled petals as he moved towards their bedroom. The door screamed on its hinges as it swung open. Olgierd stepped through, but immediately threw his arm up to cover his nose and mouth with his sleeve. The smell of death permeated the room; despite the wind blowing in through cracks in the walls and around the windows, the stink saturated the furniture and bedding. It wasn’t quite the stench of rot, but rather it seemed to him as if the room had been imbued with sadness, loss and despair, like a death scream frozen in time. The atmosphere stirred up the goetia in him, and he knew there was more to it than just the smell.

Olgierd moved closer to the bed and his breath hitched at the sight. The bed had a clear indentation like that of a body resting in the same spot, night after night. The bedding was darkened within the shape and the linen felt stiff to the touch. Olgierd shivered at the thought of what that implied. Once more, he felt the sting behind his eyes as his breath began to come in short, shallow bursts. His heart beat a staccato in his chest as his throat tightened, and an unmistakable sob forced its way up and out of him. He took a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself, fighting to hold back what felt like the horrible rise of an inevitable tidal wave within him. He withdrew the piece of canvas Geralt had given him, recalling his words that claimed that she had still wanted him, that, after all this time, she still wanted to be close, and the dam within him broke painfully.

After several long moments, he fought hard to get his breathing under control again and wiped away his tears, holding his breath and clenching his jaw against another salvo. A flat voice behind him broke the silence.

“She isn’t here, anymore.”

Olgierd’s head snapped up mid-gasp and he whirled around towards the voice, shocked out of his grief at the appearance of the Black Cat that he himself had summoned so long ago.

“He buried her,” stated the Black Dog as it slipped from the shadows to sit next to the Black Cat.

A mirthless breath of laughter escaped Olgierd. “Then… why are you still here?”

Chapter Text

The grave still appeared freshly dug. The dirt was still dark and slightly moist from being turned as it lay in the shade of a blossoming wisteria tree. Looking it over, Olgierd determined that it had been barely three days since the Witcher had disturbed the soil to give his beloved Iris the final rest she so deserved. Even though Geralt had barely spoken to him of Iris’ fate, Olgierd had gleaned more from the words that went unsaid. As Olgierd laid eyes on the physical evidence of her passing, he realised that he had been woefully unprepared for it, despite knowing deep down that his Iris wasn’t of this world any longer.
Her tombstone, a frameless canvas, rose above the head of the grave. It was a painting that Iris had made, depicting the front of the manor-house in the earlier days with immaculately kept buildings and fresh paintjobs, and in the foreground lay the sprawling grounds awash in sunlight and blooming flowers. A square of canvas was missing, which Geralt had, presumably, cut out, ruining the overall effect of the painting.

He stood solemnly at the foot of the grave with his household demons flanking him. His hands were clasped in front of him, his knuckles white with the strain of clenching them tightly. His teeth hurt from clamping his mouth shut and his eyes were glazed and prickly. He had struggled to rein himself in, even when he had thought himself alone in their bedroom, but the presence of the unearthly pets at his side precipitated a further clamming up on his part, so there he stood, at the end of a great tragedy, with mostly dry eyes and a stoic mien. A part of him thought it was preposterous to even attempt pretence at this point, but his shame of being the reason for this grave was so intense that it felt like someone was stamping their way across his shoulders and back with a hot branding iron. Once more he was staunchly holding his breath to keep himself from falling apart again.

“My beloved Iris, at peace at last,” Olgierd finally said, unable to countenance the uncomfortable and drawn-out silence.

“Our mistress has no peace,” the Black Cat said.

“She lingers,” the Black Dog supplied in tandem.

“Well, I certainly haven’t missed the convoluted speech of your kind,” Olgierd remarked drily. The silence resumed and wore on, gratingly, as Olgierd awaited some kind of clarification from the demons, but of course none was forthcoming. Annoyed and resigned, he gave in to his curiosity, and asked them wryly: “And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean?”

“It means she lingers,” the Black cat said by way of explanation. “We are bound to her, as you well know.” Although Olgierd couldn’t exactly detect it in the Black Cat’s tone, he certainly noticed the presence of accusation in its words. He had bound them in service to Iris, and if they were still here, then some part of her was also still bound to this place.

“What did the Witcher do when he came here?”

“He defeated the Caretaker,” the Black Dog answered.

“And the spirit of the Mistress,” joined the Black Cat.

“What?”

“Then he took her from the house,” the Black Dog droned on dispassionately.

“And he dug this grave, and put her body to rest.”

Olgierd blinked. The now-familiar feeling of resignation welled up in him again as he realised that he would have to ask more questions he was slightly fearful to hear the answer to, and yet he knew he must.

“… And?” Olgierd finally prompted.

“Then he invoked her,” the Black Cat said without affect.

Invoked her? Avoiding the company of demons for so long, Olgierd had almost forgotten that talking with their kind always had a tendency to create lots more questions than it provided answers. He stared down at the Black Cat for a moment before irritably rubbing a hand over his mouth and sighing in exasperated abandonment.

Leaving behind the maddeningly enigmatic demon pets, Olgierd stepped closer to the painting while reaching into the leather contract holder at his waist and once more drew out the piece of canvas that Geralt had given him at the Temple of Lilvani. Despite himself, he held up the small piece to check if it would really fit into the hole that Geralt had cut, but as the materials touched one another, they seemed to meld back together seamlessly. The semblance of Iris in front of the house, her hands carrying the violet rose and her beautiful face bearing an expression of sadness, was once more resettled into the painting.

Powerful energy rippled from withing the canvas and made Olgierd draw back from it as pale green lights undulated across it, much like rippling water in a pond, until the light settled into a slowly roiling shimmer. In spite of it all, Olgierd found that he was not at all surprised; after all, the paintings in the manor had had the same sense of inexplicable energy.

“We would have never thought it possible…” the Black Cat began quietly, but trailed off as it stared at the painting. Neither it, nor the Black Dog wanted this existence, and neither had thought that anything short of near-cataclysmic powers could change their circumstances now. Although time was a little less relevant to their kind than humans, it was hardly worth their talents to simply stand guard over a grave for eternity.

“What now? What did Geralt do?” Olgierd asked, his gaze still locked on the painting, slightly mesmerised by the ripples across it.

“Who?” The Black Dog enquired.

“Geralt! The Witcher!” Olgierd snapped, his eyes wide with disbelief as he forced his gaze away from the painting to glare back at the demon dog.

“Misery loves company,“ the Black Dog replied, cryptic as ever. It seemed completely unbothered by Olgierd’s acerbity.

“You need only touch the picture. Longing will take care of the rest,” the Black Cat said.

Longing? He knew that spirits could linger, and he knew, first hand, how strong emotions could manifest and become corporeal, and also that the effects were rarely desirable. He should have asked Geralt more questions about what the latter had seen and done here, but at the time, Olgierd had needed to get away from anything and everything to do with Gaunter O’Dimm. Now he stood in front of a magical painting that he felt certain was actually beckoning him, but he was reluctant to run head-first into the unknown. The miniscule part of him that could still feel naïve and hopeful wanted to believe that he would be running into loving arms full of sympathy and forgiveness on the other side, but his hard-won and well-earned scepticism bid him be careful.

In the end, he stepped forward and put his fingertips to the canvas – how could he not?

I’ve become the unseen color
Watch me with your undressed eyes
I need to come alive before I can die
- Unseen Color, Maraton, 2022

White lights flashed brightly, blinding him, as he stepped through to the other side. The darkness of night, where Olgierd had ended up, was a stark contrast to the brightness of his passing and he kept blinking hard to dispel the white dots in his vision. For a moment, there was no manner of rubbing his eyes that succeeded in making the surroundings any clearer. Trying to stare about him, he was still unable to determine whether the objects around him were close or far away. He waved a hand in front of his face experimentally and realised that his own hand was in perfect focus, but that it was the world that he had entered that was visually odd with its shimmery dots and strips of colour, and yet the shapes were abnormally familiar. The view made him strangely lightheaded and his hand shot out to grip something, anything, with which to stabilise himself. His fingers closed around the leaves and twigs in the bush next to him and he was perplexed by what he was seeing. The startlingly recognisable feel of the leaves warred within his mind with how they optically appeared, as if he was holding the strokes of a paintbrush in his palm.

He stared around him and found that he could suddenly comprehend what he was seeing. His brain had finally accepted what it saw and could now discern one object from another. He was quite literally inside the painting! He marvelled for a moment, feeling excited at this new experience, and expelled a sharp incredulous laugh at the singularity. Although he had seen many things as Ataman, and even more strange and curious oddities in his studies on O’Dimm, demons and goetia, nothing could quite rival the existence of what he saw before him. No wonder that the painting by Iris’ grave had exuded such power!

Olgierd couldn’t stop himself feeling almost childishly excited. For decades he had sought one extreme after another, craving a sensation that never came, and now he was in the most extreme location that was rife with an entirely different mode of stimulation to his senses – how utterly marvellous! It was akin to walking consciously through a dream, and yet feeling completely lucid. Excepting the Witcher’s gamble against O’Dimm, and thereby winning both their souls, this was the first time that he had felt such an intense sense of gratitude at having his feelings restored.

He wanted to explore and touch everything around him, but, as the initial wonder faded ever so slightly, he felt the scattering of dread trickle from his hairline at the back of his neck and over his shoulders. He spun around quickly, having the distinct impression that he was being observed from the shadows. Taking quick stock of his surroundings, he recognised the back garden of the manor house and realised that he was standing in the alternate reality of his own back yard. As he looked to his right, he expected to find the gazebo, which he did, and it looked exactly as it had done when he was a newlywed. Ahead of him were the marble steps that lead down to a broad garden path in the middle with neat and tidy rows of hedges on either side. Looking slightly to the right, he saw the fountain that rose out of the middle of a small square of trimmed hedges. Bewitching as the garden was, the feeling of being watched still tickled at the back of his mind, and he drew his long hunting knife as he warily stepped down the stone steps towards the house, alert and watchful of the oppressing presence that had caught his attention.

Here, closer to the ground and farther from the dapple of moonlight that highlighted the flora all around him, Olgierd found that the shapes in the shadows were even harder to distinguish from one another than they would have been in his own world. He felt his muscles draw taut on instinct as his marvelling at this place subsided entirely, replaced by cautious attention. The toe of his boot nudged something heavy in the underbrush and he stepped aside to allow the moonlight to fall over the object. After a moment, Olgierd finally identified it as the corpse of a massive arachnid, not unlike the kind that inhabited dark and dank caves, or whom roamed about in the deep woods in northern Redania. He had never come across them, even when he was immortal, and therefore had never seen one up close before, and now he felt keenly that he really never wanted to, either.

Even though he and his company might have taken down one of the bloody bugs, it would still have taken a fair bit of luck and skill to do it. But then Olgierd knew that these creatures rarely lived alone, and, if what he had heard about them was true, they were faster and more agile than what one could possibly expect from the arachnid’s size. In addition, despite the fact that their attacks were expedient, the death of their victims were usually drawn out and extremely agonising. Even if he was still immortal, he found that he was not particularly keen on facing these monstrosities due to the likely risk of being taken alive and into captivity by them.

He immediately shuddered to think about his immortal body being an endless buffet of human flesh to multiple generations of arachnids, all the while being incapacitated and catatonic by way of webs and venom, and yet still being completely conscious as they feasted on his regenerating corpus. By now, he was beginning to feel intensely worried that there might be more of them, and he spun around to try and spy the hulks lurking around the bend of foliage, listening for the clicking of pincers or the scattering of legs over the patio, but all was thankfully quiet… Struggling not to mentally unravel on the spot, he peered upwards, just in case any of the leggy sods were trying to get the jump on him by quietly sliding down their spider silk from above. Luckily, there was nothing to see except the clear night sky painted in a smattering of indigo and black suffused with the great silver orb of the moon.

Arachnids still on his mind, he glanced up at the house as he silently stalked forward, and was reminded of Iris’ fear of spiders. He had removed spiders from the house countless times for her, endlessly, in fact, even though it was simply impossible to be completely rid of them in such an old house as the manor. When she had at first moved in, he had chuckled benevolently at her fright and gladly removed all the spiders that he could find. However, as his curse had worn on, her phobia had come across as gratingly irrational to him, and it had begun to irk him something fierce. Even worse, she had also acquired an impressive propensity for untimely disturbance, seeing as she would always come running every single time that he had been in the middle of something important, which he seemed to be all the bloody time.

Gods.

By then, Olgierd had begun to begrudgingly acquiesce to her request by demonstrably flattening the affronting spider to the wall with whatever he had to hand, looking at her all the while with an expression of pointed resignation. After a short while of this, she had stopped asking him for the favour entirely.

He gritted his teeth at the memory. Callous prat.

He reached the door leading from the leisure garden to the kitchen in the back of the house, and slipped through the doorway into the parlour. The fire was crackling merrily in the hearth at the other end of the room and candles flicked brightly in sconces along the walls. How strange it was to see the parlour whole as it had once been in merrier times: The long dining table was laid with silver candlesticks and jugs with bouquets of wild flowers down the middle, the stairway to the gallery was whole and functional, and the walls were lined as always with books and art. There was a certain air of relaxed complacency about the place that led him to sheathe his knife as he walked further into the room.

As he approached the hearth, he was once more struck by the otherworldly texture of this realm. In a bizarre way, this painted world seemed somehow more animated and stimulating to his senses due to the fact that every surface shimmered and appeared almost fluid as he moved about, where normally it would be mostly static in his own world. Glancing at the living flames around the parlour, he noticed that they glittered with small extraordinary bursts that dissipated into the room like a myriad of fireflies leaving the hive.

As he stared into the flames in the hearth, he wondered whether Iris would truly be here, and whether she would be as he remembered, or if she would be something else altogether. He was rather reluctant to consider the prospect, and neither did he care to contemplate the finality that having seen her grave implied. As awful pictures started roaming his thoughts, they appeared to transfer into the flames before him, performing in front of him in the shape of a taunting and seductive demoness, a true copy of Iris’ form, that beckoned him with a curled finger. As he watched himself approach her within the fire, Olgierd felt saddened to think that the figure’s hidden blade might come in use.

Huffing, Olgierd rubbed his eyes one-handed and pinched his nose in a fluid motion, attempting to shake the images from his mind. To be rather blunt about it, such an instance almost didn’t bear thinking about, did it? Was he really only here to put Iris out of her misery, once and for all? Would that constitute a selfless act, or would he actually be visiting upon her his own selfish needs once again? If she truly was here, somewhere in this house, would she even want him to disrupt this dream of hers that was so clearly constructed with such a fervent degree of care and need intertwined? What had he even expected would come from his entering the painting? He had seen the grave, and the demon pets had divulged something about Geralt defeating her spirit, but if the latter had truly done that, how could there possibly be anything left of her? If he even found her, would she want to leave with him? And even if she did want to leave here, would she be able to?

Still deep in thought, a dark shadow caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. His muscles tensed emphatically in preparation as he swung around to face what appeared to be a shapeless cluster of black smoke rolling towards him like the all-encompassing arrival of a dense fog. Every single hair on his body stood up as fear of this unknown struck him, but decades of experience in combat made his body automatically unsheathe his knife as he gracefully slid into a defensive posture. Ready for a fight, be it physical or magical, he awaited the onslaught when the warmly lit room was abruptly plunged into total darkness.

Sensing something in front of him, Olgierd struck blindly in an arch through the pitch black, hoping to hit where he thought the shadow might be, but his knife passed through the air without resistance. He stepped back, expecting his lower back to meet with the edge of the grand oak table, and almost fell when he continued further backwards. Panic slowly started worming its way into his consciousness as he tried to get his bearings by allocating the table, a bookshelf or perhaps the mantle above the fire, but he soon realised that he was only stumbling around blindly in the dark, waving his knife aimlessly in a place he could not see or touch.

Luckily, disorientation in deadly situations wasn’t a new experience to him. He roared angrily as he planted both of his feet and expelled his panic by drawing his magic around him, the familiar red energy of goetia shining out from every inch of his being like a bloody halo in the dark.

“Face me, you dog!!” He shouted fiercely, actively hardening himself against the threat, when a flame suddenly sputtered into existence right in front of him, lighting up his surroundings.

He was standing in front of the fireplace once again, staring into the flames with wide eyes, his mind both alert and furious. He spun away from the hearth, and was shocked to find that the room had changed completely.

He was standing in a large room that was unlike any that could be found in his house. Every surface, floor to ceiling, was covered shoddily with bare planks of light-coloured pinewood. There was none of the usual furnishings of rugs, tables or chairs, and the walls had no windows or doors. As he gazed about him, his eyes were drawn to the appearance of several dark and twisting shades, undulating like the smoke above burning houses. His knuckles turned white as he gripped his knife tighter and made ready to use his power at a moment’s notice when the shades promptly dissipated and left behind the slumped forms of six bodies scattered haphazardly about the floor.

When none of them rose to attack, Olgierd stepped a little closer to examine them, but kept himself at a safe distance. At a glance, he noticed that the bodies weren’t painted like the garden and parlour had been, but they looked to be as real as he was. Furthermore, the bodies all looked the same and were all in a similar state of undress, and they all wore eyeless hoods over their heads, not unlike the ones worn by those condemned to death by hanging or beheading. Every one of the six corpses were male and naked, except for strips of cloth hiding their privates, and they were all curiously wrapped in a criss-cross style about the torso and neck with a long piece of standard hemp rope. The bodies had clearly been horribly mangled before their death, as was attested by the unnatural angles of their limbs and the state of their skin. The skin of every corpse was lined with furrow after furrow of open and bloody gouches, as if strips had recently been torn away by a metal-tipped flogger. Even more extraordinary was the fact that every one of them also held an Ofieri sabre of good quality in their hands.

The fire crackled behind him in the dead quiet, its light glinting in the brass details on the sword hilts and on the still-fresh blood on the corpses. Olgierd didn’t want to spend another minute among the sharp steel and maimed flesh, but a quick glance around the room reminded him of the lack of an exit. His gaze slid reluctantly over the walls toward the far end of the room, as if he didn’t really want to look in that direction. That part of the cavernous room had an unnerving and unfocused quality to it, and as he walked towards the back wall, it seemed to darken and become blurrier the closer he got to it, and yet he didn’t seem to get any closer at all. Unwillingly, Olgierd forced himself to look back at the bodies, suddenly uncomfortably certain that taking a closer look at them would probably show him the way out of here.

When Olgierd kneeled beside one of the stripped and tortured bodies, his olfactory senses were immediately assaulted by the sickly-sweet stench of rot and decay. The corpse in question seemed to be lying face-down with its arms and legs lying crookedly as if the bones had been broken in several places. It bore the irregular cuts and stabs that Olgierd recognised as made by a sword, and he highly suspected that he might know exactly who had dealt out the bloody blows. He touched the sabre in the cadaver’s hand and tried to pick it up, but the latter held the hilt in an unbreakable death grip and would not let go of it. Corpse-hand still attached, he resignedly lifted the weapon up to the light and gasped quietly at what he saw; he could have sworn it looked exactly like the one he had bestowed upon Geralt a few days before, and, even though he was quite assured of the rare quality of his family heirloom, the resemblance was rather uncanny.

Putting down the sabre, and certain that the person in front of him was quite dead, he reached out to turn the body onto its side. The corpse’s copious chest hair was matted and bloody, and the shredded skin was marred further with angry red rope burns, which signalled that the man had been in captive bondage for a long time before death. As the skin of Olgierd’s palm made contact with the flesh before him, he half-expected the skin to fall apart at his touch, but it was oddly firm and, even more unsettling, it didn’t seem quite as cold as he would have expected it to be. He became conscious of his own racing heart and that his pulse was beating loudly and insistently in his ears. He didn’t need knowledge of magic to sense, to know that these corpses were simply wrong, and that he had better stay away from them… And yet, he couldn’t stop his eyes from sneaking glances at the hooded head of the corpse. Something inexplicably awful lay beneath the rough cloth, he was certain of it, but despite the icy fingers that had begun slicking coldly down his spine as well as the terror that was growing in his guts, he knew he had to know the secret it hid.

He gently nudged the body all the way onto its back, the blood and perspiration on its skin resulting in a soft slap as it hit the floor. The head lolled awkwardly on its thoroughly broken neck, bopping obscenely by way of the muscle tissue and sinews that still attached the head to the rest of the body. Disgusted and quite averse to the idea, Olgierd reached out his hand to grip the top of the black hood while his body warred with the wisdom of the decision. Nervous perspiration had sprung forth on his forehead, his mouth had gone dry, his heart thundered deafeningly in his ears and his terror had seemed to multiply, becoming a screaming choir of foreboding.

As if in nightmarish slow-motion, his eyes followed the hem of the cloth as it revealed, inch by slow inch, the bloody countenance underneath, until he finally ripped it off entirely, letting lank and bloody hair flop free from its cover. He immediately found himself shouting wordlessly in horror as he scrambled gracelessly backwards to get away from what he had unearthed: The corpse wore his own face!! The skin might have been deeply lined, decaying and flaky, with a split lip and missing teeth, and the eyes might be entirely white and staring, but he had no doubt as to whom he was looking at.

Gulping down great breaths of air like a man trying to survive from drowning, he frantically looked around him at the other corpses, suddenly terrified that they might become reanimated upon his discovery and rise from their rest. Alas, all was still and quiet, excepting the fire that crackled on, merciless and unapologetic, and absolutely unaffected by the dread that had engrossed him so completely.

Olgierd forced himself to crawl on hands and knees to a second corpse, ripping off its hood without ceremony only to find that it was all the same as on the first one: A leering death mask in the fashion of his own countenance atop a mangled, half-rotten carcass with its hand fused to the hilt of a sabre – his sabre! He pushed himself away from the second corpse, scuttling from body to body, panic laughing maniacally inside him and doubling with each body that he unhooded, until he had searched every last one of them, and found them to be horribly exact copies of one another and, worst of all, of himself.

His insides were roiling as if innumerable fat white maggots were feasting on the soft tissue within his chest cavity, while bile rose thick and burning in his throat. His lungs were working like a blacksmith’s bellows and the back of his eyes burned with salty panicked tears of distress. Scrubbing his face violently to dispel what he had seen, he let his hand fall onto his chest above his heart, unable to distract himself from the fact that his heart was pounding against his fingertips from within with a force that reminded him of a cavalry of Friesian warhorses thundering across a battlefield.

It felt the same, too. It felt like impending doom.

He tried to rub the feeling out of his fingers against the skin of his bare chest, when he noticed that he was no longer wearing his shirttails, or his leather riding pants, for that matter. Shocked, he forced his gaze downwards over himself as every atom of his being trembled in dread anticipation: There was no shirt, there were no pants or boots, only his naked skin, familiarly scarred, with a dirty grey loincloth slung around his hips while hemp ropes slithered like so many constrictor snakes up and around his calves and thighs and further upwards, a sickening caress on his clammy skin. For a brief second, he wondered wildly if they could smell him, like snakes could, tasting his fear in his sweat.

Dumbstruck, Olgierd could only watch, wide-eyed, as the ropes completed their climb, wrapping themselves ever tighter about his body, bruising his skin with their abrasive fibres and squeezing firmly, cutting off the bloodstream to his limbs. Desperately, he began yanking at the ropes to get them off, but a voice in the back of his mind whispered knowingly that it was much, much too late for that. He struggled to scream as the ropes drew agonisingly taut around his throat, silencing him. A second later, he toppled hard onto the floor as he lost control over the use of his constricted legs, his scream muffled by the pressure from the ropes.

He didn’t know whether it was the brightness of the flames in the fireplace that was dimming or whether it was the light in his mind, but the room darkened considerably as black spots dotted his vision. His heart beat ever more slowly as the ropes stemmed his blood flow, while desperate thoughts raced through his mind: Is this how it will end for me? Strangled to death inside the nightmare of the woman I loved and destroyed?!

No.

Below all his fear, he heard the small but infinitely certain voice. Olgierd clung to it, using the last moments of consciousness to dig down deep inside of him, down below the cacophonous layer of frantic, naked panic, to grab hold of his power and use it to beat down this hysteria he had been possessed by. For what felt like an eternity, all he could sense was the immense charge of red goetia energy that was building up in him, tinting the vague shapes in the dark in red shades as if he was caught up in a rage of bloodlust.

He felt the tide turn the second the hysteria was unexpectedly flushed out of his system. He lay still and panting on his back, sensing the return of a steady heartbeat in his chest. Olgierd stared upwards toward the ceiling as his eyes adjusted to the reappearance of light. The shape of a chandelier hanging above him came into clear focus as he blinked hard, and his feet suddenly started to feel warmer. Lifting his head to look around, he realised that he was lying face-up on the floor in front of the fireplace in his old study on the first floor of the manor, but he was still in the painted world. He patted himself down, his hands roaming over his chest and hips and, thankfully, found himself clothed and whole with nary a rope in sight.

He had never used goetia like this before, and now he felt at once both emboldened and weak, as if the otherworldly magic had both bestowed a gift, but also taken more than its pound of flesh in payment.  Closing his eyes tight and letting his head fall back onto the carpet with a soft thud, he thanked his lucky stars and sighed with relief. That had been a little too close for comfort.

Chapter Text

I caught you weak
In that blinking eye
You're mine to take
- A Body of Your Own, Maraton, 2022

Finally, he was here.

For the second time today, Olgierd found himself standing outside the double doors leading to his and Iris’ bedroom, although this time he was in the peculiar and really rather terrifying alternate reality painted in all the hues and nuances of Iris’ pain and fears.

His walk from his study and toward the bedroom across the landing opposite the study had happily been uneventful, and in all honesty, Olgierd thought he had had quite enough of nightmares to last several lifetimes. He put his hand on the door in front of him, sliding his fingertips over the varnished oakwood, hesitant to go in. He was afraid of what he might or might not find on the other side, and it staid his hand.

I’ve come this far, though…

Drawing in a deep breath and steeling himself against the unknown on the other side, he pushed down the handle and let the door swing open. The room was warmly lit, but the texture of the room wasn’t anything like what had come before, but rather it looked exactly as he remembered from when he had still lived here together with Iris. As he stepped inside, he noticed that the washbasin sat where he remembered, the same books lined shelves, the rugs laid where they once had, even the bedding was the same, but there was no Iris to be found.

Slightly nervous that there might still be more trials for him to traverse, he walked to the small ensuite to his left, which Iris had used as her atelier. Pushing open the door, a solitary candle stood on a small round table of raw wood next to a canvas that faced away from him. Even though he had acquired a slight wariness of portraits, he was still too curious not to take a closer look, and what he found unexpectedly warmed his heart to its core. The portrait depicted the two of them, Iris perched on an ottoman and smiling, gazing happily and lovingly up at Olgierd as he stood above her holding the violet rose, his head inclined down towards her.

He studied it for a while, trying to imprint the picture into his mind as he felt something in his throat constrict slightly. Coughing to clear his throat, he reluctantly pulled himself away, adamant that he must find her. He came back into the bedroom, not finding her, but not really expecting to. He glanced out onto the landing of the great staircase, but didn’t see her. He walked through the bedroom exited through to the back hallway, onwards into the guest room, and further out onto the outdoor terrace, that led back into his study, but he still didn’t find her.

Coming back onto the landing, he went through the servant door leading to a modest stairway that led directly into the kitchen. He stuck his head into the parlour on his left, but it was empty. Continuing through the length of the kitchen in the back of the house, he entered into the great hall, where he once again found not so much as the trace of her.

Olgierd rubbed a hand over his mouth in consternation as he gazed around the room one more time in the hopes that Iris might have decided to sprout from the woodwork. To be fair, it had always been easy to miss one another in this house because of all of the connected hallways, rooms and stairways. He couldn’t count the number of times that their blessed father had chased Vlodimir and himself through the house to instil what he called a modicum of discipline in them, which of course was learned at the end of a cane. Olgierd smiled in spite of himself, fondly remembering that his brother and he had turned it into a game, and they had both laughed heartily as they had effectively played hide-and-go-seek with their father – albeit quite against their father’s will, – and at times even calling out to him to alert him of their positions.

Gods, he missed Vlod. He was the best man he ever knew.

Olgierd sighed. He resolved to not lose heart just yet. He exited the great hall through the double doors that led to the entrance hall and loped up the grand stairwell, silently giving thanks that he hadn’t run into any more of the ghastly shades. He did another tour through the first-floor rooms, starting in the bedroom and going around until he arrived back at the bedroom which was still silent and empty.

Staring unblinking at the bed in the total quiet, he couldn’t take it anymore. His resolve crumbled away like ashes flaking off of firewood. He didn’t bother holding anything back this time, panting in his mounting fury and letting lose a frustrated scream, his head tilted towards the ceiling. All that he had gone through to get here, only to find absolutely nothing. His anger at having put himself through this trial, only to have it reduced to a mere exercise in futility, was inflamed. Furthermore, he was angry at himself for daring to hope, even for a second, that some part of what he had lost could be restored to him.

But of course, he didn’t deserve that. Why should he be given anything free of charge after everything he had done?

Unable to deal with the rage and despair that welled up within him, he swept the washbasin off the sideboard, barely noticing the sound of crockery breaking on impact with the floor, and then he grabbed hold of the sideboard and forcefully tipped it over and onto the floor. He rounded on the bed, kicking it so hard that one leg was now askew, after which he tore off the bedding from the bed. In his efforts, he became entangled in the sheets, which only served to anger him even further. Frantically and awkwardly, he unwrapped himself, bundling up the sheets and furiously threw them on the floor, never once stopping to consider the futility of trying to punish the bedding for his unfulfilled hopes. Utterly at the end of his rope, Olgierd threw himself onto his knees in front of the bed and buried his face in the mattress, huffing and angrily sobbing over his own powerlessness.

In fact, he was so intent on his despair that he failed to notice the sound of a floorboard creaking.

“Oh, you’re back—” a familiar voice said, before making an audible gasp.

Olgierd’s head snapped up at the sound, his eyes widening at the sight of Iris entering the room. He quickly wiped his eyes.

“Olgierd,” Iris breathed as her eyes became wide with shock. “Is it… Is it really you?” Her voice sounded frail and in disuse. The look on her face said she almost didn’t dare believe he was really there.

“Iris…”

Olgierd was still on his knees and Iris stood stock-still just inside the double doors leading out to the grand staircase. All that any of them could do was stop and stare, both drinking in the other in the event that the other might suddenly disappear, a mere mirage appearing just to taunt and torment them.

“I thought it was the Witcher come back—”

“Iris?” Olgierd cut her off, as he slowly got to his feet.

“Yes?” she breathed, her body swaying ever so slightly towards him.

“Are you—is this real, are you real?”

She wasn’t painted like the spiders in the backyard had been, no, she looked real, solid. Her black hair was sharply contrasted by her pale, pale skin. Her skin had always been fair, but she looked ghostly pale as she stood stupefied before him. Her eyes, however, were as green and beautiful as they had ever been, but the light he had known so well had gone out of them. She looked sad and pained, and his heart squeezed in recognition of it. He wanted to make it better and to kiss the trail of tears that had made the kohl around her eyes run onto her cheeks.

He wanted nothing more than to touch her, to hold her, to apologise and throw himself at her mercy. Despite what the Witcher had told him about Iris’ feelings, he felt increasingly doubtful of it as he stood rooted in the silence between them. He wanted to take her into his arms and tell her how beautiful she was, what an unforgivable fool he had been, what a miserable blackguard he had been towards her, how he cherished her, wanted her, loved her, still.

He took a tentative step forward, gauging her reaction all the while, but she didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, so he dared to take another step, and another and another, until he stood right in front of her, close but tentative. He wanted to leave it to Iris to decide what would come next, and he tried to give her room to choose whether to stay or leave. However, as the silence wore on, it occurred to him that she might want the same from him, or at the very least proof of his intentions, and awaited his move in return.

Slowly, as if approaching a wild deer, Olgierd lifted a hand to gently cup her soft cheek. When she didn’t pull away, but rather closed her eyes and turned her faced into his palm, he felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes.

“Iris, my dearest… my beloved,” he whispered with such tenderness that a tear escaped down her cheek.

He drew her to him without any resistance, cradling her head against his chest with one hand as her arms came around him and bunched the shirt on his back tightly in her hands, pulling him even closer.

“I thought I would never see you again,” Iris said, her voice small and breaking.

The sound of it made his heart break all over again. She nuzzled her face into his body and squeezed him tighter to her as if holding on for dear life. He slipped his hand gently down her cheek and under her chin so that he could lift her eyes to meet his own.

“Me neither. I am never going to leave you alone ever again,” he swore as he looked deep into her lovely green eyes.

The corners of Iris’ lips quirked momentarily as she let one hand trace the scars on his scalp and face before turning her head again and burying her face in his shirt once more.

“No,” she whispered, “You won’t.”

For a long, long while, they stood like this, wrapped in each other’s embrace, trying to make up for even an iota of the time that they had lost. Olgierd had forgotten how well their bodies fit together, and he relished the feel of her, the smell of her transfixing him, binding him in this moment. He could swear that he felt his heart beat in time with hers, even if the rhythm was oddly fast-paced and erratic. He drew in a long shaky breath and sighed quietly, emptying his lungs entirely, feeling warm and calm for the first time since his contract with Gaunter O’Dimm was dissolved.

“I’m so sorry,” Olgierd began, “I didn’t know, I couldn’t understand—."

“Hush, now, love. You are here now, and we will never part again,” Iris interjected with quiet certainty. “Just hold me close.”

He did for a moment longer, but he still couldn’t understand how she could just forgive him after everything.

“I didn’t understand what was happening before it was too late,“ he tried again, “Gaunter O’Dimm—.”

“Hush,” Iris said, as she held him tighter. “No need for apologies now, just hold me close.”

“But… How can you forgive me so easily?” he said, feeling both incredulous and underserving.

Iris was quiet for a moment before answering: “Do you not feel punished enough for what you did? You’ve already lost everything – you have precious little left to lose. All I ask now is that you stay with me.”

For a moment, his body trembled so much at her words, as well as at the forgiveness and understanding that she gave so freely, that he had a hard time truly comprehending it. The relief he felt almost drowned out the sliver of resistance that surfaced at her odd phrasing. Almost.

“Wait, did you say ‘stay’? Here, you mean?” Olgierd’s thoughts had suddenly become quite muddled as his heartbeat sped up noticeably.

Iris leaned slightly away from him, looking up at him with slightly furrowed brows and tilting her head in something akin to sympathy. She cupped his face with one hand and slid the other up the side of his head and gently sifted her fingers through his mop of red hair before sliding it down to cup his other cheek, effectively cradling his face between her hands. She looked into his eyes and smiled lovingly at him.

“My clever Olgierd, always too smart, too shrewd for your own good,” she said almost chidingly. “Kiss me, my love. I’ve become sadness in your absence, but now there will only ever be the two of us. Forever.”

She tilted her head up towards his own and raised herself on tip-toes to better reach his lips as she forcibly kissed him. Any concern for his muddled thoughts or feeling of resistance was blown out of his mind the second their lips met. In fact, he barely noticed the frantic thumping of his pulse in his ears, nor the violently agonizing pain in his chest that accompanied the kiss. Even the goetia that Iris seemed to be stirring up inside him went ignored and forgotten by his consciousness, which seemed to be steadily slipping away from him.

All he knew was the sensation of her lips against his, the taste of her mouth and the feel of her body against his own – a perfect fit.

The Black Cat and the Black Dog had been waiting by the grave of their Mistress ever since Olgierd had passed through to the painted world, eyeing the canvas and being watchful of the Master’s return. The shimmering light across the painting flickered and disappeared. The demons looked at each other.

“Did you feel—?” the Black Cat began.

“Yes,” the Black Dog affirmed, a fraction of real elation creeping into his voice.

“At last,” the Black Cat breathed, before they both dissolved in a shimmer to return home.

“Did I ever tell you about the drum I had, Grandfather? It for sure made the blood of the peasants run cold with fear when the sound of that drum announced our arrival, I’ll tell you!” Vlodimir said, slapping his thigh and laughing. “The first time we used it, it was as a distraction. You see, a gang of bandits had been following the Company in the hopes of stealing into our camp at night and doing away with the hard-won goods that we had accumulated in our travels. Of course, it was foolish of us to carry so much at one time, but we had the luck of the Gods upon us during our raiding foray deep into Temerian territory.”

Vlodimir automatically swung out his hand to grab hold of a tankard to wet his throat that had become dry from story-telling, when he remembered that there was no tankard to grab, nor a thirst to quench in this ghostly existence. His grandfather eyed him with a sardonic smile.

“Never going to get used to that, are you?”

“No,” Vlodimir admitted, “Probably not. Especially not after that wedding, recently. But as I was saying, the unconscionable brigands had taken what was ours, and Olgierd and I were set on getting it back.”

“Of course, and so you should,” said grandfather Kestatis firmly. “Thievery is punishable by death, after all.”

“Ah! How wonderful it is to talk to another connoisseur of war!” Vlodimir said and clapped his grandfather on the shoulder with a slap. “Anyway, when we found our way to their camp, we realized that they weren’t just any little old band of marauders, oh no, they were in fact a rather large hansa hidden in the deep forests to the east of Oxenfurt. This, of course, complicated matters somewhat, seeing as we had split off a goodly size of the Company to return safely with a part of the riches we were lugging so as not to be too easy a target. Olgierd, my blessed brother, and I counted us out to be half as many as the bandits amassed in this aggregate. This is where the drum came in, you see.”

“Yes, yes, Vlodimir; on with the story, man!” another member of the Von Everecs cut in.

“Alright, alright! Picture it!” Vlodimir said, as he gestured broadly with his hands and arms. “There we were, in the darkest of night, waiting for the full moon to rise to add to our ruse. We knew that there had not been any sightings or rumours of unnatural unrest in the area, but the fear of leshys holds strong to the core of every Redanian. As we closed in on the poor sods – yes, I almost pitied them! – I beat the drum lightly, all the while keeping a close watch on their guards’ reaction. When they started to notice the low beat, I slowly started thumping it a bit harder as several good men in the Company howled like wolves in the night and cawed like a murder of crows, and when I tell you!” Vlod was laughing as he spoke. “The shrill screams from the guards, Gods, the sound almost made me piss myself with laughter!”

Vlodimir made an impression of a rather lady-like and undignified scream to the great appreciation of his guffawing and sniggering kin.

“And they were all running about like frantic ants on a boiled anthill, shrieking, calling bloody murder, wailing about ghosts in the trees and leshen come to get them! Why, we barely had to kill any of them, scared out of their wits as they were, but of course we had to take down some of them – nobody gets away with stealing from the Von Everecs!”

“Truer words have not been spoken!”

“Rightly so!”

“Quite right!”

“Too bloody true!”

Several Von Everecs shouted and cheered at the same time about the fact that no one should be allowed to tarnish the family’s honour unpunished. When the shouting and laughing had quieted down, Vlodimir stepped forward with a sly smile on his lips.

“And that, my dear family, is how ‘The Story of the Wind*’ came about!” Vlod said loudly, grinning from ear to ear.

“Bah!!”

“Horse. Shit. Vlodimir!”

“Addle-pate!”

“That story was about when I was alive!”

“Easy does it, grandpapi!” Vlodimir laughed loudly as he nimbly avoided the swiping hands of his elder kin trying to clout his ear as they protested his claim to fairy tale fame.

“What’s this?” A voice came from behind Vlod as the latter, still grinning widely, hid from the onslaught of his family behind the stone brazier in the middle of the crypt.

“Brother,” Vlodimir greeted warmly as he turned around to face the newcomer. “Too soon, Olgierd, but I can’t say it’s not good to lay eyes on you. Welcome home.”

THE END