Four Weeks Ago – Commons, Telchar
“Maker have mercy…” whispered the old man between quavering lips. A cold sweat beginning to form beads along his pale wrinkled forehead. Even as a Witcher, Jaspar had never seen anything quite like what was before him. He felt something unusual, something foreign to him… he felt a shiver of fear. The man raised his rough calloused hands to his head and let his fingers glide through his dirty black locks, reaching the itchy scalp beneath. He had heard rumours of the killings, of the grim horror stories surrounding them – its what brought him to this wretched city after all – but he didn’t expect the stories to be so accurate.
Before him laid a dozen bodies, gorged to death, their entrails and sticky bits Strawn over the floors and furniture like seasonal decorations. Had he not known better, he might have thought such an attack would have required a pack of werewolves. But, despite the gory mess, there were no signs of fighting; no broken or misplaced furniture, no dulled or bloodied weapons, and what was left of the bodies laid in a circle around the centre of the room. Neighbours, from what he understood, did not hear any fighting either, just the wailing of a little girl.
“Well this must’ve been the poor girl” he grumbled as he trod through the mess to the centre of the room, his boots squelching with each step. In the centre laid one body which, unlike the others, had not been ripped apart. It was clear from her grotesque size, skin colouration, and clothing stains, that she had been the one responsible for eating the bodies around her. He swept away the blood stained blonde hair from her face for closer inspection. “Couldn’t have been any older than ten.” He guessed outloud whilst shutting her eyelids. The puke and mess leaking from her mouth suggested that her feasting was what killed her, “Her body obviously wasn’t made for eating raw flesh. Must have been a horrible slow death.”
He had seen carnivorous and cannibalistic monsters in the past, like Nekkers that had gotten so fat that they could hardly move. But this was different. Externally, she showed no signs of being non-human and moreover, his medallion wasn’t moving at all. His feline eyes scoured her body for signs of clues, but there was nothing – no marks, no scratches, no symbols, no defects at all save for the bloating. He tried using his nose, but aside from the expected stench of rotten flesh and human waste, there was nothing in the room that seemed to stick out. With no other options, Jaspar unsheathed a dagger from his belt holster and began a butcher-shop autopsy. Diving straight in at the gut and dragging his blade up towards her throat, he allowed the mass of gore to seep out, along with a fresher more repugnant scent. It was enough even to make the Witcher wince and hold his breath for a moment before digging around. Despite his thorough rummaging, Jaspar could not find anything that would give him answers. Her organs, though damaged through the gorging, seemed human. There didn’t even appear to be any drugs or magical items stuffed into her either.
“This isn’t right…” his bushy brows furrowed in irritation, “She is definitely human. Was she forced to eat her family? What could make her do that? What monster or creature would benefit from that?” Jasper continued his search, desperately looking for some sort of clue that would at least start him off in the right direction. So desperate was his search that he failed to hear the approaching sounds of footsteps outside until too late.
“What happened to the guards?!” exclaimed a coarse voice from outside, swiftly followed by a chorus of jeering and mumbling.
“Shit!” Jaspar hissed, quickly shooting upright and scanning the building for a second way out.
But it was too late.
With a mighty smash, the front door of the small house quickly caved in, allowing half a dozen figures to storm in. Each wore different armour, but one feature remained the same: a dark blue featureless mask. They were the Warriors of Manannan, the secret police of the local church, whose job was to hunt down witches and other abominations. “Halt fiend!” shouted the burliest of the lot, his sword poised and ready.
Jaspar, although a good fighter, was past his prime and knew better than to try and take the group on. “Woah. Easy there. I was just investigating. We’re dealing with something very nasty here.” He spoke softly as he slowly unstrapped the swords from his back and tossed them away. Even disarmed, the mess that covered his clothes and the room around them made him look dangerous. “I’m happy to comply and speak to your leaders.”
“Silence!” snapped a voice from the left, causing Jaspar to turn just the warrior threw dimeritium dust in his face. Jaspar recoiled as the metal fragments went into his eyes and let out a small gasp of pain. Dimeritium of course is a substance used to block magic, and so for Jaspar this was very problematic; not only did it mean that he would be unable to cast signs, but it also caused the charm which disguised his mutations to ware-off. His golden feline eyes now glaring angrily at his attackers. Without giving Jaspar a chance to react, another warrior stooped in to ensure that Jaspar would no longer be a threat, efficiently slicing his sword across the back of the mutant's heels and rendering him immobilised. Jaspar fell to the floor in a slump, blinded and writhing in pain, roaring like the monster his captors thought him to be.
“Gag it and take it to the Temple! The Bishops will want to interrogate it!”
Three Weeks Ago – Central Main Square, Telchar
Hordes of humans, elves and dwarves alike littered the public square, cheering merrily, and shouting for the show to begin. To the outside eye it would have looked like some kind of public festival – and truth be told, that wasn’t far off. Due to the diligence of the Church over the last half a century, these sort of spectacles had become a rarity in the city of Telchar, and so when such an event came around, the public savoured the opportunity and gave in to some of their more primal instincts.
“Nothing like a good ole monster burning, eh lad?” came the intoxicated slur of an almost stereotypical rowdy bearded dwarf, who held in his hand a flagon almost as big as his head. “I’d heard bad things about these foreign Witchers, but I didn’t realise they were capable of the shit that’s been happening recently.”
The gentleman that had the pleasure of hearing these delightful insights was one of the local guard captains, a young blonde haired man by the name of Artorias. The young guard was a bastion of discipline, with short cropped hair, a freshly shaved face, and shining plate armour. Artorias did not respond to the dwarf and instead kept his eyes fixed on the stake in the near distance. Whatever he thought of monsters, mutants and witches, he hated the idea of making anything suffer unnecessarily. To make a public event of burning a sentient being alive? It did not sit with him well, but he felt obliged to be there to keep the peace. Such was the duty of a guard.
“Oooo! It’s *hic* starting!” squealed the dwarf in delight.
At the edge of the square four Warriors of Manannan began to tie the broken body of Jaspar the Witcher to the stake, a large beam of wood that rose from what would soon be a large pyre. His legs were mangled and his body torn and scarred in such a way that it even hurt to look at. Clearly, he had only survived the torture this long due to being a Witcher and the genetic mutations he had received. Still there was a fight in his animalistic eyes, a burning fire within.
As the warriors continued to prepare the Witcher, one of the Church’s Bishops took to the raised podium to address the crowd. He wore rusty blue coloured scale armour beneath darker blue tattered robes. Unlike the Warriors, his face was unobscured and showed off an angry elderly face, with an unkempt grey beard and tattered long wiry hair. In any other city his appearance would have led one to believe that he was a raving madman, or perhaps some sort of soothsayer, but in the fine city of Telchar it signaled that he was one of the Church’s five leaders. “Good citizens of Telchar! I see that once again you have come out in waaaves to support the Church! To praise Manannan!” The Bishop paused for a moment to let the crowd cheer, “Know that he is proud! For today we burn a vile monster! A beast known as a Witcher! The same beast that has killed so many innocent families over the last few months! Finally, we can have retribution!”
“You fool! I am not the monster you seek! There is a darkness that lurks this city, a darkness far more dangerous than me! Your fucking sea God is more of a monster than me!” The coarse beaten voice of Jaspar rang out surprisingly loud, as if he had saved all his remaining strength for that moment.
“Heretic! You will not speak another word!” The Bishop yelled back, pointing his old knobbly finger in the Witchers direction. “You will be burned and fed to the sea! Like all the damnations that dare threaten our great city!”
As if on cue, the four Warriors of Manannan finished tightening the bonds and walked over to a nearby brazier, each picking up a flaming torch.
"Oh great conqueror, absolver, and savior!" boomed the Bishop in prayer, the crowds repeating after him in devout chorus.
The four Warriors walked slowly over to the pyre, each taking position on a corner.
"To you we give our thanks! And to us you give your Mercy!"
The Warriors slowly dropped to a knee and held the torches up in prayer.
"To you we offer the wicked! May we burn the sin from our city! We may save our souls!"
The Bishop turned to the pyre, a bloodthirsty smile across his face, and slowly raised his hands as if rising the flames himself. "Praise be to Manannan!"
With that the warriors set alight to the pyre which, due to the oils, quickly rose and engulfed Jaspar. Vivid tones of orange and purple swirled around in an almost majestic way that seemed to detract from an otherwise awful seen. Though hard to see through the flames, the Witchers body quickly began to melt and boil, the special oils preventing him from simply being charred. The last inhumane cries of pain and terror were quickly drowned out by the cheering of the crowd, who watched on with bloodlust in their eyes.
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