Triss must have sensed it, too,” Geralt thought to himself. His witcher medallion twitched on his chest. Some kind of magic nearby, or some creature from another sphere. Either one spells trouble. So why hasn’t she said anything? “We’re here! And not a moment too soon – my saddle sores were about to incite an uprising.” Dandelion always complained in his performing voice, to make sure his woes registered in the cheap seats.

This time his whining seemed especially loud, as though he were shouting to something in the darkness. Perhaps the cave’s inhabitants were his intended audience. A profitable gold mine at one point, the caverns had been a gloomy, monster-infested place for decades. Villagers who wandered too close would vanish without a trace.

Lately, though, the gloom had receded, and no one had disappeared for months. The village elders knew someone who knew Geralt and had offered him a fat purse if he’d gather a party to look into it. The elders claimed that the calm had disrupted the village’s status quo. Yarpen stroked his beard and muttered something under his breath. He had suspected from the start the elders weren’t telling them something. But he had agreed to come anyway. Why? And Triss – why was a court sorceress willing to abandon her post for a romp in an old mine? What was so special about this cave? As soon as they plunged into the darkness, Geralt knew he would have to wait for an answer – the hungry look of the ghouls crawling out of the void promised to keep him busy for a while.