The millhouse by the Redfork looked more forlorn than ever. Autumn had stripped the last stubborn leaves from the vines choking the waterwheel, leaving a skeletal black geometry against the leaden sky. The blue glow from the windows, however, still pulsed with its steady, unnatural life.
Geralt approached with more caution than before. His last visit had been as a seeker of knowledge. This time, he was a bearer of dangerous cargo and a magnet for trouble. He knocked, the sound swallowed by the sigh of the river.
The viewing slit snapped open. Aldous's magnified eye blinked once. "You. I told you, I don't want—"
"I have the component," Geralt interrupted, his voice low. "The fresh wyvern embryo. And I need your help to end this."
The slit slammed shut. Geralt waited, hand resting near the hilt of his steel sword. After a long moment of clattering bolts, the door opened. Aldous looked harried, his grey hair wilder, his stained robe smelling more strongly of ozone and anxiety. He ushered Geralt in and barred the door behind them.
"Fool," Aldous hissed, though his eyes darted to Geralt's saddlebag with unmistakable hunger. "Do you have any idea the risk you've taken? If de Ruyter's agents are watching me…"
"Are they?"
Aldous deflated, shuffling to his workbench. "Not yet. But they will be. The… incident at the workshop has them rattled. Mastic is furious. He knows someone saw his work. It's only a matter of time before he traces my earlier involvement." He turned, his lens focusing on Geralt. "You broke in."
"I did."
"And you saw the Predator."
"I saw a fragment of a woman named Lenore Temes, being tortured into a weapon."
Aldous flinched as if struck. He turned away, fussing with a beaker. "A noonwraith. Of course. Malleable ectoplasm. A perfect, vile canvas." He shook his head. "I want no part of this, witcher. I told you."
Geralt set the heavy saddlebag on a clear space of floor. He carefully unwrapped the lead-lined jar. The pale, suspended form within seemed to glow in the dim light of the workshop. Aldous couldn't help himself; he drifted closer, his lens clicking as he adjusted it.
"A pristine specimen… late-term… the potential…"
"Potential for what?" Geralt pressed. "To create more Alba Corpus? To make more twisted things?"
"No!" Aldous snapped, straightening up. "Potential for understanding! For counter-agents! The catalyst works by forcing compatibility between disparate biological and spectral matrices. To undo it… one would need to understand the precise binding resonance." He began to pace, talking to the air. "The embryo is the active, life-seeking element. The powdered dimeritium is the stabilizer, the cage that holds the chaos in shape. Together, under the correct—or incorrect—formulae, they become a lock-pick for the very code of being."
Geralt cut through the lecture. "Can you make something to break the lock?"
Aldous stopped. He looked from the jar to Geralt's grim face. "You want an antidote. For a ghost."
"For the fragment. To purify it. To break Mastic's hold before he can finish his work."
"And then what?" Aldous threw his hands up. "You storm Fen Hythe, sprinkle my potion on the wraith, and ride off into the sunset? De Ruyter will have you killed. He will have me killed."
"He's already killing people," Geralt said, his voice dangerously quiet. "He's already tormented spirits and unleashed monsters on his own lands. He's planning to assassinate his liege lord. How many more deaths are you willing to carry because you're afraid?"
The word hung in the air. Afraid. It was the one accusation a scholar, a man of knowledge, could not bear.
Aldous's shoulders slumped. He looked old, tired, and terribly human. "You speak of carrying deaths. You have no idea. I… I was at the Academy when the first mutagens were being explored. I saw what happens when ambition outpaces ethics. I saw things… created… that begged for death. I left because I refused to become a parent to such suffering. And now, from a distance, I have helped parent it anyway." He gestured weakly to the jar. "Using this… to try and fix what was broken with its like… it is poetic. And it is dangerous."
"The Path is dangerous," Geralt said. It was a simple statement of fact.
Aldous stared at him for a long minute, then gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "Very well. The conscience is a heavier burden than any ledger. I will try. But I need time. And I need you to be my hands and eyes elsewhere. I cannot go poking around for the other component."
Geralt nodded. "What do you need?"
"The dimeritium powder. Mastic's supply. If I am to craft a counter-agent, I must know its exact grade, its origin. Dimeritium is inconsistent; mines produce ore with subtle variations in magical resonance. The catalyst must be tuned to it. I need a sample."
Steal from Mastic's workshop. Again. The most heavily guarded place on the estate now. Geralt felt the ghost of the arrow that had whistled by his ear. "Where would he keep it?"
"A sealed container, lead or silver. In his main lab, certainly. He would not trust it to an apprentice. It will be warded. Physically and magically."
Geralt absorbed this. "How much time do you need?"
"With the sample? Three days. Maybe four. The process is… delicate."
"I'll get your sample," Geralt said. He turned to leave.
"Witcher," Aldous called after him. He was holding the jar, his expression unreadable behind the lens. "Why? This is not a contract. There is no coin. Only risk."
Geralt paused at the door. He thought of Bor's hollow eyes as he spoke of the fine. Of Old Man Karel's trembling hand. Of Lenore's final, peaceful dissolution. Of the boy, Filip, drawing his first ragged breath by the fire.
"The coin's been paid," he said, and stepped out into the gathering dusk.
Fen Hythe was a fortress now. Geralt observed it from a rain-swept ridge a mile distant, through a collapsible far-eye he'd acquired at The Crossroads. The patrols had tripled. Guards with crossbows walked the walls of the manor itself. The workshop compound was lit by braziers that burned through the night, and he could see the dark shapes of hounds being led on leashes around its perimeter.
A direct approach was impossible. An unseen approach was nearly so. They would be expecting another infiltration.
He spent a cold, wet day watching. He noted shifts, patterns, the one lazy guard who paused to drink from a flask, the moment when the kennel master took all the hounds to the kennels for feeding, leaving a ten-minute window. It wasn't enough. The door he'd broken would be repaired, reinforced, and likely booby-trapped.
His answer came from the land itself. Studying the lay of the estate, he noted the artificial lake. It was decorative, but it had an inflow and outflow—a stone culvert that ran under the southern wall, bringing water from a stream in the woods. It was narrow, half-submerged, and undoubtedly filthy. But it was a path.
That night, under a moon obscured by thick cloud and a persistent, icy drizzle, Geralt made his move. He left Roach deep in the woods, her reins loosely tied. He blackened his face and hands with mud, stripped down to his breeches and a tight-fitting dark shirt, leaving his leathers and swords hidden. He kept only a waterproof pouch for the sample, a dagger, and his witcher medallion, which he tucked inside his shirt to muffle its hum.
The stream was freezing, the water pulling the breath from his lungs. He waded in, letting the current carry him toward the dark mouth of the culvert. It was a tight fit, the rough stone scraping his back as he pulled himself through the submerged tunnel, holding his breath for long, dark moments. The medallion vibrated against his chest—not from magic, but from the sheer density of the earth and stone above him.
He emerged inside the estate in a reed-choked corner of the lake, shrouded by a decorative weeping willow. The workshop was fifty yards away, a bastion of light and activity. Even at this hour, figures moved behind the windows. Mastic was working through the night.
Geralt slipped from the water, his body trembling with cold. He used the landscaping—ornamental shrubs, a statue of some forgotten ancestor—as cover, moving with a silence that was second nature. He reached the shadowed back wall of the workshop, the one without windows. Here, the rhythmic thump-thump of the hydraulic press was a vibration in the stone.
His goal was not the door, but the chimney. It was stout, made of brick, and warm to the touch. Beside it, a metal pipe vented fumes from the alchemical forges. Geralt found finger-holds in the mortar, his enhanced strength allowing him to climb the rough wall until he could hook an arm over the lip of the roof. He hauled himself up, lying flat on the wet tiles.
From his vantage, he could see through the large, now-barred skylight he'd shattered. The scene below was one of intense industry. Mastic, a thin, sharp-featured man with oiled hair and a pristine leather apron, was directing two hulking assistants. They were not refining the wraith tonight. They were building a container.
On the central steel table lay a coffin-shaped vessel of hammered silver, etched with containment glyphs far more complex than those in the cell. It was a transport vessel, meant to hold something finished. Something ready for delivery.
The Viscount, Geralt thought, a cold knot forming in his gut. They were preparing the weapon for deployment.
His eyes scanned the lab. Shelves of ingredients. The locked cell door. And there, on a standalone pedestal of black marble near Mastic's personal desk, a polished silver cylinder, sealed with a wax seal imprinted with a stylized 'M'. It radiated a dull, magic-deadening aura. Dimeritium.
Getting to it would require dropping into the middle of a busy lab. Impossible.
But as he watched, Mastic barked an order. One of the assistants, a dull-eyed brute, picked up a ledger and carried it to the pedestal. He broke the wax seal on the cylinder, unscrewed the lid, and using a small silver scoop, carefully measured out a portion of fine, gunmetal-grey powder into a glass vial. He recorded the amount in the ledger, resealed the cylinder, and carried the vial back to Mastic, who was working at a delicate scale.
The process took less than a minute. The cylinder was unguarded for that time, but in plain sight. Yet, the assistant had left the ledger open on the pedestal. And the scoop was still beside the cylinder, a few grains of priceless powder clinging to it.
Geralt had no time for finesse. He backed away from the skylight, found the vent pipe, and felt its warmth. It was wide enough. He focused, drawing on the Sign of Igni. But not to create flame. To pull heat. To create a vacuum.
"Aard!" he whispered, but he twisted the sign, aiming it not as a blast of force, but as a directed suction down the vent pipe.
Inside the lab, the flames under Mastic's crucibles guttered and roared, bending sideways. Soot and a puff of noxious fumes belched from the forge. Mastic cursed, stepping back as smoke filled his workspace. The assistants coughed, waving their hands.
"Fools! Adjust the flue!" Mastic snarled, his voice muffled by the disruption.
In the confusion, Geralt moved. He slithered back to the skylight, found the new bars, and tested them. They were solid. But the putty sealing the glass panels around them was fresh. He drew his dagger, working quickly and silently, prying one small pane loose just enough to create a gap. He then took from his pouch a thin, flexible line of gut with a sticky, tar-like substance at its tip. He lowered it through the gap, aiming for the pedestal. He could barely see, guiding it by touch and the faint glow of the dimeritium's anti-magic field.
The tarred end touched the silver scoop. He let it sit for a second, then carefully, slowly, lifted it. The scoop came up, a few grains of powder stuck to it. He reeled in his line, heart pounding, as below, the smoke began to clear. Mastic was yelling about contamination, about ruined batches.
Geralt had the scoop. He secured it and the precious grains in his waterproof pouch. He had his sample.
But as he turned to go, he took one last look. Mastic, furious, was pointing at the cell door. "We accelerate the schedule! I want the binding finalized by tomorrow night! No more delays!"
Tomorrow night. The weapon would be ready.
Geralt slid down the roof, dropped into the icy lake, and fought his way back through the culvert. He emerged into the free air of the woods, shivering violently, his mission a success. But the victory was ash in his mouth. He had the sample for Aldous, but time had just run out. The final act was approaching, and he was shivering in the dark, armed with nothing but a few grains of powder and a promise to a ghost.