Chapter 6: Baptism in Filth
The giant’s kin were not quiet in their grief. Their roars echoed through the twisted trees, a guttural, chattering sound that was nothing like the first brute’s. It was the sound of broken glass grinding in a throat, multiplied by a dozen. Close.
“We can’t outrun them,” Geralt grunted, his eyes scanning the oppressive yellow foliage. The medallion was a constant, angry vibration against his chest.
“Your observational skills are, as ever, breathtaking,” Thorn hissed, leaning heavily against a tree whose bark was peeling away in sticky, sap-filled strips. Their leg was a solid bar of agony, the bandage already soaked through with a mix of blood and something darker. The compulsion they’d used in the shack had cost them the last of their strength. The glimmer was gone, their true form exposed and vulnerable.
Geralt’s gaze fell to a patch of unnaturally still water off the main path, covered in a scum of fluorescent green algae. It smelled of rancid eggs and poisoned metal. “The bog.”
Thorn followed his look. “Absolutely not. I’d rather be disassembled by those things than dissolve in that.”
“You won’t dissolve. But they won’t follow.” He didn’t wait for agreement. He grabbed Thorn’s arm, ignoring their sharp cry of protest, and half-dragged, half-carried them toward the water’s edge.
The water was shockingly cold, a thick, gelatinous slurry that clung to their legs. Thorn gasped as they submerged up to their chest, the toxic water instantly seeping through the bandages and into the stitched gash on their thigh. It was like having acid poured into an open wound. They choked back a scream, biting down on their own fist.
Geralt pulled them deeper, under the overhang of a gnarled, half-drowned root system. The chattering roars grew louder, accompanied by the sound of heavy bodies crashing through the undergrowth. They were at the water’s edge now.
Thorn pressed their back against the slimy roots, trying to control their breathing. The pain in their leg was evolving, spreading. A deep, invasive heat was leaching up through their muscle, into their hip. Their vision swam, the world tilting on a sickening axis.
Above them, the creatures snuffled and growled. One of them, a lanky thing with too many joints in its arms, prodded the water with a long, bony claw. The green algae sizzled where it touched. The creature recoiled with a pained shriek.
They waited. The minutes stretched, each one a lifetime of silent agony for Thorn. The heat in their leg was a fever now, pulsing in time with their heartbeat. The world began to take on a hazy, dreamlike quality. The chattering of the creatures faded, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in their ears.
Finally, Geralt moved. “They’re gone.”
He hauled Thorn out of the water. They collapsed onto the bank, vomiting a thin, bitter fluid onto the sickly yellow grass. Their whole body was shaking uncontrollably.
“Get up.” Geralt’s voice sounded distant, muffled.
“I… I can’t.” Their own voice was a stranger’s, thin and reedy.
Geralt knelt, his yellow eyes narrowed. He ripped the soaked bandage from Thorn’s leg. The skin around the stitches was an angry, violent red, streaked with lines of black that spiderwebbed up their thigh. The flesh was swollen tight, hot to the touch.
“Shit,” Geralt muttered. He looked from the wound to Thorn’s face. Their lilac skin had taken on a gray, waxy pallor. Their eyes, usually so sharp and shifting, were glassy, the pupils dilated wide.
“The water…” Thorn slurred. “It… it’s in me.”
Geralt said nothing. He pulled Thorn’s arm over his shoulder and lifted them to their feet. They were a dead weight, their legs buckling instantly. He adjusted his grip and started walking, dragging them away from the bog, deeper into the twisted heart of the swamp.
Thorn’s head lolled against his shoulder. The world was a smear of jaundiced green and brown. The gnarled trees seemed to lean in, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching. They could hear things—whispers that weren’t there, the sound of their own name hissed from the shadows.
“The toys are broken,” Thorn mumbled into his leather pauldron. “All the toys are broken now.”
Geralt kept walking, his pace relentless. He navigated the treacherous ground by instinct, his focus absolute. He could feel the heat of Thorn’s fever through his armor.
“Geralt?” Thorn’s voice was a ghost of its usual teasing lilt.
“What.”
“When you said ‘once’… back in the shack. Who was it?”
He didn’t answer. The swamp sighed around them, a wet, rotting breath.
“Tell me,” Thorn pleaded, the words thick with delirium. “I think I’m dying. You tell people things when they’re dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“Feels like it.” A shudder wracked their body. “My blood feels… thick. Wrong.”
The path began to slope upwards slightly. The trees were less dense here, the air a fraction clearer. Geralt spotted a rocky outcrop ahead, a jagged tooth of granite pushing through the swamp’s flesh. It offered some cover, a place to stop that wasn't actively trying to kill them.
He lowered Thorn against the cool, damp stone. They immediately slumped over, their breathing shallow and rapid. Their eyes were closed, but beneath the lids, they moved frantically.
Geralt rummaged in his pack for the last of his antiseptic salve. It was a futile gesture, and he knew it. This wasn’t a simple infection. The bog’s toxin was in their bloodstream, a magical poison. His potions were for witchers; they’d likely kill Thorn faster than the fever.
He looked down at them. The sharp, alien beauty of their features was softened by sickness, making them look terrifyingly young. The clever, mocking creature was gone, leaving only this dying thing in its place. A means to an end. That’s what he’d told them. The words felt hollow now, a lie he’d told himself.
Thorn’s eyes fluttered open. They were a dull, muddy crimson, like old blood. They focused on Geralt with immense effort.
“Was it worth it?” they whispered.
Geralt froze, his hand still clutching the jar of salve. “Was what worth it?”
“Your ‘once’.” A faint, bitter smile touched their cracked lips. “The person you were open with. Was the pain worth the… the before?”
The question hung in the toxic air, a direct hit to a wound Geralt kept buried deeper than any swamp. He looked away, toward the path they’d come from. The silence stretched, broken only by Thorn’s ragged breathing.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, stripped bare.
“Yes.”
Thorn’s smile widened, a tiny, triumphant thing. Then their eyes rolled back, and the last of the tension fled their body. They were unconscious, completely still but for the frantic, shallow pulse in their throat.
Geralt stood. He tossed the useless salve back into his pack. The keep was close now. He could feel it, a pressure in the air, a pull on his medallion. The source of the swamp’s sickness, and the only possible source of a cure.
He sheathed his sword. He lifted Thorn’s limp form, settling their dead weight over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Their head hung down, their short chestnut hair brushing against his back.
He started walking again, toward the heart of the curse. The fun was over.
The ground turned to a sucking, clay-like mud that clung to his boots with every step. Thorn’s dead weight was a fresh agony, a burning strain in his shoulders and back that mirrored the fever heat he felt through their clothes. Each ragged, wet breath they took was a countdown he could feel ticking against his spine.
The mist thickened, coiling around the twisted trees like a possessive lover. It deadened sound, until all he could hear was the squelch of his own footsteps and Thorn’s struggling lungs. The air itself was a physical presence, heavy with the taste of iron and spoiled meat.
“...cold…” Thorn’s murmur was a ghost against his back, so faint he almost missed it.
He adjusted his grip, heaving them higher. “I know.”
“The toys… are all broken.” Their voice was slurred, drifting. “Even the fun one.”
A branch snapped somewhere to their left. Geralt froze, his medallion humming a low, steady warning against his chest. He stood perfectly still, listening, but the sound didn't repeat. It was just the swamp, breathing.
He pushed on. The incline became steeper, the mud giving way to slick, moss-covered stone. His boots slipped, once, and he barely caught himself on a jutting rock, Thorn’s limp body swinging precariously. A sharp curse escaped his lips, swallowed by the fog.
“Geralt?” Thorn’s voice was suddenly, terrifyingly clear.
“What?”
“Don’t… don’t let them put me in the dark. Okay?”
The raw fear in their tone was a blade. It was nothing like their usual flirty bravado or seething anger. This was the core of them, laid bare by poison and delirium. A centuries-old creature, terrified of the dark.
He didn’t have a comfort to give. He had only a truth. “I won’t.”
The mist ahead began to thin, shredding like rotten cloth. The oppressive yellow light of the swamp faded, replaced by a cold, gray luminescence that had no discernible source. The gnarled trees fell away abruptly, as if they’d reached a line they dared not cross.
He took one more step, his boot landing on flat, solid flagstone.
The keep appeared.
It wasn't a structure that had been built so much as it had been grown, or perhaps vomited from the earth itself. Its walls were a seamless, slick black stone that seemed to drink the light, twisting into jagged spires that pierced the low-hanging sky. No windows broke its surface, no banners flew from its peaks. It simply was, a silent, brooding sentinel at the heart of the rot.
The air outside the keep was still and cold, devoid of the swamp’s constant whisper. Geralt shifted Thorn’s dead weight on his shoulder, their feverish heat a stark contrast to the chill emanating from the black stones. He approached the seamless wall, running a hand over its unnaturally smooth surface, finding no crack or seam to indicate a door.
“Hello?” Thorn mumbled incoherently, their head lolling. “Is it dark yet?”
“Not yet,” Geralt replied, his voice low. He paced the perimeter, his medallion humming with a steady, oppressive frequency that promised ancient magic at work. There was no entrance he could force, no weak point to exploit; the keep was a fortress, and it was closed.
After a full circuit, he conceded that brute force wouldn’t work, not with Thorn fading fast. He retreated from the wall, finding a shallow recess where the stone met the earth, offering some shelter from the elements. It would have to do.
He laid Thorn down as gently as he could on the damp ground. Their skin was clammy, the black streaks from the wound now spiderwebbing up to their hip. He checked the pulse in their neck; it was a frantic, fragile flutter against his fingertips.
For three days, he waited. He forced water past Thorn’s cracked lips when they were conscious enough to swallow, which was rare. He kept the wound as clean as possible with what little clean water he had, watching the infection rage through their body. Their dreams were fitful, filled with muttered pleas about broken toys and the dark.
Geralt didn’t sleep. He watched the unmoving keep and the shifting mist, his swords always within reach. The fever burned through Thorn like a fire, their body trembling and sweating until the pre-dawn chill of the fourth day.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fever broke. The harsh rasp of Thorn’s breathing eased into something deeper, more natural. The terrible heat left their skin, leaving behind a profound weakness, but a steady calm.
Thorn’s eyes opened. They were a pale, exhausted lilac, focusing on Geralt’s face with sluggish confusion. “You’re still here,” they whispered, their voice rough from disuse. “I thought you’d have traded me for a better model by now.”
“The selection was poor,” Geralt said, handing them the waterskin.
Thorn took it with a trembling hand, drinking shallowly. A faint, familiar smirk touched their lips. “So you just sat here? Watching me sleep? That’s a bit creepy, even for you.”
“You were dying.”
“A minor detail.” They tried to sit up taller, wincing as the movement pulled at their healing leg. “All that time alone with me, helpless. And you didn’t even try to peek under my glimmer? I’m almost offended.”
Geralt didn’t rise to the bait. He just watched them, seeing the genuine strength slowly returning to their gaze.
Thorn’s smirk softened. They looked away, towards the imposing black wall of the keep, then back at Geralt. The playful tone drained from their voice, replaced by something quieter, more real. “Thank you, Geralt. For not leaving me in the dark.”
He gave a single, short nod. The silence between them was no longer heavy, but alive with unspoken things.
The silence between them was no longer heavy, but alive with unspoken things.
Thorn tried to stand, their body obeying with the reluctant stiffness of a rusted hinge. They swayed, catching themselves on the slick black stone of the keep. “Well, this is a decidedly undignified recovery.”
“You need food. Proper supplies.” Geralt’s gaze was already scanning the path they’d taken, evaluating the route back. “There’s a village a few hours east. We’re going.”
“A village?” Thorn’s nose wrinkled, their lilac eyes flashing with distaste. “Full of people who smell of fear and stale bread? I’d rather chew on my own boot.”
“Your boot won’t restitch your leg or fill your stomach.” He began repacking his kit with economical movements. “We’re out of everything but stubbornness.”
“I have plenty of that,” Thorn retorted, pushing off the wall and taking a shaky step. Their leg held, but the muscle trembled with the effort. “I don’t need a village. I just need a few more hours. Maybe a week.”
Geralt didn’t argue. He simply stood, slung his pack over one shoulder, and waited. His silence was a wall.
Thorn took another step, then another, each one a small victory of will over failing flesh. They made it ten paces before their knee buckled. Geralt’s arm was there instantly, a solid bar of support under theirs.
“I can walk,” Thorn seethed, though their body was already leaning into his strength.
“You’re walking,” Geralt said, his voice flat. “Just not well.”
They moved like that through the thinning mist, a stilted, three-legged race through the decaying swamp. Thorn’s breath came in sharp gusts, their focus narrowed to the next painful placement of their foot. The journey was a blur of acid-green foliage and the squelch of mud.
“You know, for a man who complains about people, you’re awfully keen to walk into a town full of them,” Thorn grunted, swatting a fat, buzzing insect away from their face.
“I don’t complain. I observe.” He adjusted his grip, taking more of their weight as they navigated a fallen log slick with fungus. “And I need supplies to finish the job.”
“Right. The job.” Thorn’s laugh was a brittle sound. “The keeper in the shiny black box. I haven’t forgotten.”
The landscape began to change. The twisted trees gave way to straighter, healthier pines. The air lost its metallic tang, replaced by the simple scent of damp earth and resin. A narrow, well-trodden path appeared underfoot.
The village announced itself first by smell—woodsmoke, roasting meat, and the underlying pungency of a midden heap. Then came the sounds: the distant bark of a dog, the cry of a child, the rhythmic chop of an axe.
Thorn stopped at the tree line, their body going rigid. “I can wait here.”
“You’ll attract wolves. Or worse.” Geralt’s tone brooked no argument. He nudged them forward. “Keep your glimmer up. And try not to look at anyone like they’re a toy.”
“No promises,” Thorn muttered, but they took a sharp breath. The air around them shimmered faintly, the sharp angles of their features softening, their lilac skin paling to a more human hue. The change seemed to cost them, a flicker of pain crossing their now-green eyes.
They entered the village like a strange tide, Geralt’s imposing presence parting the way and Thorn’s unsettling aura sealing it shut behind them. Conversations died. Faces turned, then quickly looked away. A woman pulled her child inside, the door clicking shut with finality.
“They love you here,” Thorn whispered, their voice tight with the effort of maintaining the illusion.
“They tolerate me. It’s a transaction.” He guided them toward a squat building with a faded sign of a mortar and pestle. The apothecary.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of dried herbs and bitter roots. A wizened old man looked up from grinding something with a pestle, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of them.
“Witcher,” the man said, his voice a dry rasp. He glanced at Thorn, who was leaning heavily against a barrel of dried lavender, their face a mask of strained nonchalance. “And… companion. What do you need?”
“Antiseptic. Stitching gut. Clean bandages.” Geralt laid a few coins on the counter. “And food. Travel rations.”
The apothecary nodded, gathering the supplies with practiced efficiency. His eyes kept drifting back to Thorn, who was examining a jar of pickled newts with a look of profound disgust.
“You’re hurt,” the old man said, not unkindly, to Thorn.
“It’s nothing,” Thorn snapped, their gaze still fixed on the floating amphibians. “A scratch.”
Geralt took the bundled supplies and shoved them into his pack. He then picked up a small, wax-paper-wrapped cake of hard travel bread and a wedge of yellow cheese and held them out to Thorn.
Thorn stared at the offered food as if it were a dead rodent. “I’m not hungry.”
“Eat it,” Geralt said, his voice low.
“I don’t need you to mother me, Geralt.”
“You’re shaking.” It was a simple observation, devoid of emotion.
Thorn looked down at their own hands, which were indeed trembling faintly. A flush of anger or shame colored their human-disguised cheeks. They snatched the bread and cheese from him. “Happy?”
“No.” He turned and walked out of the shop, leaving Thorn to hobble after him.
They found a relatively quiet spot on a stump near the village well, away from the staring eyes. Thorn picked at the cheese, eventually taking a small, reluctant bite. They chewed slowly, as if the act itself was a defeat.
“I could have managed,” they said quietly, not looking at him.
Geralt took a long swallow from his waterskin, his eyes scanning the perimeter of the village. “I know.”
“Then why? Why the… the insistence?” Thorn’s voice was frayed, the glimmer around them flickering for a second to reveal the exhausted, pained creature beneath.
Geralt lowered the waterskin. His yellow eyes met theirs, holding their gaze for a long, silent moment. The memory of their delirious plea in the swamp hung between them—Don’t let them put me in the dark.
He didn’t answer with words. He simply shrugged one shoulder, a minute, almost imperceptible gesture, and went back to watching the village.