🐺 A Monster in the Woods | ☆ Request ☆ | The Witcher

Intro:

The air inside the tavern was thick with the foul, mingled stench of spilled cheap ale, wet sheepskin, and the unwashed sweat of local farmers taking refuge from the rain outside.

Geralt sat alone in the darkest corner of the room, tucked beside a soot-stained hearth that offered little actual heat. He was tired. The mud of the Velen bogs was still dried onto the steel plates of his armor, and the faint, coppery tang of drowner blood clung to his leather gloves despite his best efforts to wash it away in the river earlier that afternoon. The small pouch of coin tucked into his doublet was a pathetic reward for three days spent wading through filth, but it was enough for a warm meal, a dry bench, and a tall mug of whatever watered-down draft the house was serving.

He took a slow sip, his golden cat-like eyes scanning the room out of sheer habit. The locals gave him a wide berth, whispering behind their dirt-caked palms and casting fearful, suspicious glances at the twin sword hilts resting over his shoulder.

A heavy wooden mug slammed down on the scarred table in front of him, spilling a small wave of foam onto the wood. The tavern keeper, a portly, balding man with a greasy apron and a face that looked perpetually sour, pushed the fresh ale toward the witcher, leaning his thick forearms heavily on the table.

"You look like a man who kills things for money, stranger," the innkeeper grunted, his voice a gravelly, raspy murmur that tried, and failed, to sound quiet.

"I'm a witcher," Geralt replied evenly, his voice low and gravelly, barely lifting his eyes from his drink. "And I've already done my work for the week. I'm just drinking."

"Well, drink fast then, because there's better coin to be made here than whatever pittance the elder down the road threw at you," the tavern keeper spat, glancing over his shoulder toward a table of frightened, muttering villagers before leaning in closer. "We got a beast in the woods. A real nasty, unnatural cursed thing. It’s been coming down from the ridge under the cover of fog."

Geralt raised a single eyebrow, taking another slow draught of ale. "What kind of beast?"

"A demon, most likely!" the innkeeper hissed, his face red with theatrical terror. "Or a fiend! It sneaks into the pastures at night and tears open the sheep, leaving nothing but bones and blood behind. Three days ago, old Tom and two of our best hunters went into the deep woods with pitchforks and bows to track it down. Only Tom came back, his arm shredded to the bone and his mind completely gone! Said the cursed thing moves like a shadow through the trees, making sounds that would curdle fresh milk."

The witcher sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He knew how peasants exaggerated. A rabid wolf became a chort, a stray ghoul became an arch-demon.

"Has anyone actually seen it clearly?"

"It’s a monster, witcher! Isn't that enough?" The innkeeper hit the table again, his eyes wide. "It hunkers down deep in the dark ridge, where the trees grow too thick for sunlight. The village council put together a purse, forty crowns, plus full board for a week. Kill the wretched creature, bring back its head, and the coin is yours. Leave it, and we all starve before winter."

Geralt let out a low, breathy hum, contemplating the offer. Forty crowns was a solid purse for a simple beast hunt, even if the peasant’s dramatic tall tale was almost certainly an overstatement.

"Forty crowns," Geralt repeated, setting his mug down with a dull wooden thud. "And you double my food supplies before I set out at dawn. Deal?"

"Deal," the innkeeper rasped relievedly, backing away. "Just bring back its head."

The morning came cold and misty, the gray light barely cutting through the dense canopy of the ancient forest. Geralt moved through the underbrush like a specter, his boots making no sound against the damp carpet of pine needles and decaying leaves. The air grew thicker, heavy with the scent of damp moss, pine sap, and a faint trace of woodsmoke, a scent that immediately set the witcher’s keen senses on high alert.

Woodsmoke?

Monsters didn't light fires.

Geralt slowed his pace, his hand casually resting on the pommel of his silver sword as his cat-like eyes tracked the subtle signs in the terrain. Snapped twigs, drag marks in the dirt, and the clear footprint of a human boot, not the splay-toed print of a beast.

He rounded a massive, ancient oak tree, and there it was: a dark, gaping cave mouth carved into the limestone cliffside, draped heavily in thick curtains of green moss and creeping ivy.

Geralt drew his silver blade, the sharp metal ringing softly in the quiet woods. He smelled copper, blood, and damp wool, but underneath it was the distinct, unmistakable scent of a human being. Fear. Sweat. Pain.

Stepping quietly past the curtain of moss into the mouth of the cave, Geralt prepared for an ambush. But as his eyes adjusted to the dim, flickering light inside, the breath caught slightly in his throat.

There was no towering fiend. No dripping jaws, no curved claws, no demonic monstrosity.

Instead, tucked into the dry alcove of the moss-covered cave, was a small, fragile makeshift camp. A tiny, dying fire crackled weakly in a ring of stones, casting long, shivering shadows against the rock walls. Bedding made of stolen, blood-stained sheepskins sat crumpled in the corner, alongside a few stolen iron pots and half-eaten wild roots.

And sitting huddled beside the rocks, shivering violently with an improvised, blood-soaked bandage wrapped tight around his leg, was a man.

You looked exhausted, pale, and terrified. A crude, bloody hunting knife trembled in your hand as you pressed your back against the cold cave wall, your wide, frightened eyes locked onto the tall, white-haired Witcher standing at the entrance with a drawn blade.

Geralt looked at the small pile of sheep hides, then down at the bloody knife in your trembling hand, and finally at the deep, infected beast-wound tearing through your leg. The pieces immediately clicked together in his mind. The killed livestock to survive, the terrified hunters who had panicked and attacked an injured outcast, the strange sounds of a man dying of fever in the woods.

Slowly, deliberately, Geralt slid his silver sword back into its sheath across his back, the heavy metallic click echoing through the cave.

"You're making a lot of trouble for a monster," Geralt spoke softly, his deep, gravelly voice unexpectedly gentle in the quiet cavern as he took a cautious step forward, holding his open hands out in front of him. "That leg looks infected. Put the knife down before you hurt yourself."

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