Chapter 45

"My first monster hunting outing with you! This is so exciting!" Ivar said with uncontained enthusiasm, seemingly having gotten over the information Seltkirk told us of the Kaedweni's mad commander.

"Considering what we are hunting I could use your skill with a sling, but remember to stay close to me and follow everything I say since we are walking into legitimate danger here." I reminded him as I finished up my dozenth harpy nest bomb, the diagram and materials for which were provided by Master Baltimore. Pretty ingenious if in a rather simple way - precious metals attached to bombs are used to attract the attention of the harpies, whose kleptomania compels them to carry it back to their nests, where they detonate and destroy said nest. And usually said harpy too.

However, since it was on a fuse the harpy would have to bring it to nest within a minute which meant that one had to be close to plant the things in the first place. A dangerous prospect when you were in their main nesting ground.

The ghouls and rotfiends would be much easier by comparison since the latter were literal walking explosive hazards given the fumes they gave off. Set off a big enough spark near them and they will go off like fleshy firecrackers, taking anything nearby with them. Dancing Star bombs should be plenty good enough to take them out at range and whatever nests they have, especially with Ivar's aim.

"I aim to be professional, you have my word." Ivar said with a nod. "Still, the idea of these magic using celaeno harpies that steal the dreams of locals and binds them in crystals is absolutely fascinating! How do they do it? Why do they do such a thing? Is there an instinctive drive that makes them collect the dreams of others, or is it proto-cultural like with nekkers? So many new things to uncover! What I wouldn't give to talk to one!"

"I have a Sign that lets me send and receive simple telepathic messages from targets so I can ask for you, but I doubt I will get much beyond 'intruder', 'food', 'kill' or some combination of the three. Harpies are certainly smarter than your average beast, but then so is a monkey and no one will claim them to be equal to men." I said as I stuffed the bombs into a sack and threw it over my soldier.

"Anything we can glean will be an important clue for understanding them! Necrophages by comparison are much more boring, though still exciting in their own way. For example, are ghouls and rotfiend two separate species or are they the same one in different periods of their unique lifecycle? Many believe that necrophages are just dead bodies animated by magic or that have been improperly treated after death, and while it is true magic can create such things they fact that they make nests and move in groups implies that they breed, though no one has a record of such things." Ivar explained.

"To be fair, I don't think anyone would want to see that in action given what necrophages look like." I said with a grimace at the thought of the things going at it and popping out new smaller versions of themselves. I feel like they would be more likely to eat their young than raise them.

"It would be interesting if we could find evidence in their nests at least." Ivar said as we finally returned to our horses and mounted up. The inner gate was already opening for us to make our leave.

"Let's worry about killing them first before anything else. Seltkirk said the sightings of most of the necrophages is the near far side of the frontline area, before no man's land between the two armies. We'll swing by there and deal with as many nests as we can find before swinging by the quarry and dealing with the harpies on the return trip." I said.

"Excellent, let us work towards a fruitful endeavor!" Ivar said with a great deal of energy.

Let's hope it stays that way after all this.

---

"More than just ghouls and rotfiends. We got ourselves their bigger cousins in the form of a few graveirs and greater rotfiends." I said as I collapsed the spyglass.

It hadn't take long to ride to the frontline and with Seltkirk's stamped letter in hand it was easy to get the men manning it to direct us towards where they had seen our targets the most, dragging off mostly those that fell in the various skirmishes before they could recover them or harassing the camp by attacking nearby medic tents or even picking fights with healthy soldiers. We just followed along the line until we reached it's edge and from there me and Dogmeat tracked the necrophages by smell and their unique tracks.

I wanted to get a count of the nests and their occupants at range before anything else so that is what we did. Counted roughly half-dozen nests of at least a dozen members each all a respectful distance from each other, though they did sometimes growl and snap at each other on the edges of their territory. The human-faced but still beastial and walking rotting flesh piles were easy to see as your garden variety ghouls and rotfiends. It was the other minority additions that were more worrying.

Namely the buff looking ghouls who were brighter red in color and had three bony combs on their head along with short but cruel, thick claws. They were happily bullying their ghoul cousins while they sucked at bones for their marrow. If rotfiends already looked like corpses that have undergone a great deal of decomposure than the greater rotfiends were just larger and even worse looking examples of them, their heads bloated masses that seemed ready to pop at the slightest touch.

All in all, just as disgusting as you could imagine necrophages.

"It's quite interesting to see the social hierarchy they seem to display, with the more common and weaker necrophages following the needs of their more impressive kin. That alone proves that there is more intelligence or at least animal instinct than being mindless corpse eaters see them as." Ivar said while watching through his spyglass as I prepared the ammo and bombs.

"Just be glad there are no alghouls or else they start acting like a wolf pack. You think you can make the shots?" I asked as I handed him some small ceramic jars filled with oil and Dancing Star Bombs.

"Easily." Ivar said with confidence as he brought out his sling and started judging windspeed and direction.

"Remember, you want to aim for the rotfiends when they are most grouped together. They shouldn't realize what's happening due to our position and distance, but they might scatter quickly after the attack starts so we don't want to lose the chance to take out as many as we can." I explained as Ivar placed the first oil shot in his sling's pouch.

"Just observe the result of many years of youthful fun and then lots of practice." Ivar said smugly, and as I soon learned for good reason.

I watched silently as he lobbed a few oil shots at each nest, his aim quite good as he focused solely on splashing the rotfiends and greater rotfiends with only slight corrections needed due to suddenly changing wind or a target moving a bit too much. His technique was quite interesting - from movies, I was used to people swinging the sling over their heads like a propeller, building up speed and momentum before letting go of one end of the sling. Ivar, instead, would bring his arm up and over vertically before letting the shot go at the apex of the arc. It was much faster, both in terms of delivering firepower and in the sheer speed behind the shot. Through the spyglass I acted as his spotter and watched the necrophage's behavior. They were certainly surprised at stuff raining down from them from seemingly nowhere, their anger having no clear target to direct towards. In fact, this confusion caused them to huddle near their nests more rather than spread out, likely falling back on some protective instinct for their lair in the absence of an enemy they could see.

That was decidedly the worst decision they could make as Ivar started raining down Dancing Stars at a rapid pace, putting them downrange at a rate of about one per five or six seconds. I had no idea that a skilled slinger could fire so many shots in quick succession.

So it was that the firebombs, combined with freshly applied oil and the flammable gases that the rotfiends produced while they were all grouped up… well the term bloody fireworks would not be out of place here.

I watched as the now flaming rotfiends blew up in bloody chunks, causing chain reactions with other rotfiends nearby that hadn't popped off yet themselves, and thus very much mulching other nearby necrophages in rather violent ways. Limbs went flying, midsections were blown in half, one graveir seemed to be turned entirely into crimson mist. A series of events that plagued all of the nests within seconds of each other. The carnage was beautiful in it's own disturbing way, something I believe even the Doom Slayer could appreciate.

And all of this was done by a scholar with only a sling, with some admittedly good help from his Witcher friend of course.

I refocused my spyglass a bit as the fleshly explosions died down, I'm sure the frontline heard them from here given the chain reaction, and did a look over on what necrophages were left. There were a few, but they were most certainly not in great shape, looking seriously injured and on death's door already. The only exception was a single graveir that was still moving at least decently, even if it was quite shaken itself.

"Hot damn, you sure got most of them Ivar." I said honestly impressed.

"But of course, I try to excel in all things I adore after all." Ivar said a little smugly.

"I have no doubt. Still a few stragglers that need to be put down." I said as I drew out my silver blade, oil and potions. "Should be done in a few minutes at most. You can back me up with your sling if you want, use the heavy lead shots for the most impact. After that we'll destroy the nests and you can have time with the remains."

"Then let us be off!" Ivar said with confidence as Dogmeat barked in agreement.

'Heh, rookies.' I mentally laughed.

Although after today, I wasn't sure how much that label could be applied to Ivar. He was certainly taking to the Witcher life with gusto, that was for sure.

---

"And that's the last one." I said as we got out from behind the rock we used for cover after the necrophage nest went up in dirt, fire, and bloody meat on whatever was still inside. The nests were these weird mounds made of overturned dirt, collected branches, and of course piles of body parts all covered in lots of blood. A couple of Dancing Stars into each hole made sure to kill whatever was inside and collapse them.

"Does that mean we are now free to examine what remains?" Ivar asked hopefully.

"Sure, go for it. I'm gonna gather what materials I can from the corpses. Only downside of how well you did is that lots of good parts went up in chunks." I chuckled a bit as I pulled out my carving knife and had at it on a ghoul.

"Sadly a common result of hunting any specimen. I would have loved to have studied the nests when they were whole but this will have to do." Ivar said a little sadly as he also got to work documenting what he could observe from the nests. Dogmeat was nearby sniffing corpses and peeing on stuff, though I did have to make sure she didn't chew on anything since last the thing I wanted was her getting sick.

Speaking of which after digging through corpses and nests we will need to clean up in Vergen before turning in contracts. Eh, this is a dwarf town - if they don't have clean hot water for bathing, then nobody does.

For about an hour we harvested the necrophages for usable parts, looted the nests of items of random worth from those bodies they dragged to them, sometimes a rather melancholy job, and burned the remains with oil and Igni so the necrophage corpses and food caches didn't attract just more of their kind. All in all it was rather boring up until the last nest and Ivar found something while examining it.

"Markus, I appear to have found something interesting here." Ivar called over from his crouched position nearby the nest remains. "It seems to be an Aedirnian scouting report. It's encoded, but it's only a simple substitution cipher. Seems like one poor fellow discovered a riverside path that lets people bypass Hensalt's camp defenses, however it is patrolled by the Kaedweni and is infested with harpies. It looks like he was injured by them and on the way back to Vergen quickly, thinking he could bypass the necrophages before his wounds did him in. Sadly he was incorrect." Ivar explained while holding up a bloody but still legible piece of paper he got from a pocket of what used to be a man's lower half, a quick look over made it clear that while I didn't see through the code Ivar did and had apparently figured it out all in his head.

Damn, I feel like I don't appreciate how smart Ivar is sometimes.

"We did promise we would return anything important we find to Seltkirk. Something tells me that he is going to be quite happy once the day is done." I mused.

After that we collected and burned what remained on the last nest, our sacks bulging with newly collected fresh monster parts and common loot. The latter wasn't too interesting - a few weapons, pieces of armor, and coin purses - but the former was quite esoteric, if a little mundane by Witcher standards. Ghoul bone and teeth, samples of blood, a graveir jaw, rotfiend blood and other bits of their body that I could use in alchemy and crafting.

No longer would the Aedirnians have to worry about being harassed by these necrophages for a while. Now it was time to hunt down some birds.

---

After passing back through the frontline, assuring the soldiers that the necrophages were cleared out and telling them how to better prevent more from coming back by quickly burying bodies if not burning them, we made our way back near Vergen and onto the old quarry where our next, most likely harder contract awaited.

We found the hut near the entrance to the quarry thankfully abandoned, so we hitched our horses there while we went the rest of the way on foot. Ivar and I equipped ourselves with sling and crossbow respectively while keeping our eyes to the sky. Harpies loved dive bombing people from the air in groups so we had to keep our eyes peeled.

I also brought out one of the first nest bombs to be tossed out on a moment's notice. The quarry looked almost exactly like it did in the game - a large semi-circular hole in the ground with a road heading down to the bottom, switching back and forth three or four times before arriving at the bottom of the quarry. From the color and texture of the stone, it looked like the dwarves had mined granite and gravel alike from here.

I wish they put in more safety fences on the side rather than just wooden platforms jutting out from the rock, but then again these were the same dwarfs who made the most shady looking wooden pathway along the side of a mountain according to the Netflix show.

"There's one!" Ivar shouted out and I turned my head quickly to see a bird-like figure gliding overhead, a quick look showing how it had hands and a human-like face as well. It had spotted us but it was circling a bit before deciding to do anything it seems.

Well… I did promise Ivar I would try talking to one. I focused on the beast and then let loose a Xiil Sign. 'Hello, how are you today?'

'Dumb prey! Flockless! Wingless! Weak!' screamed in my mind. 'Shiny bits! Fleshy bits! MINE!!!' And with that, it folded its wings back and dived towards us, legs outstretched and claws flexed in anticipation of bringing us to the ground.

Whelp, that's all I needed. I followed up with a Sign that I instinctively knew and that was from the books but hadn't had good reason to make use of yet. I signed out Somne and watched as the harpy's controlled dive went completely off target as it fell asleep in midair and pasted itself on the wall of the quarry above us with a wet smack before falling to the ground, body broken and quite dead.

"Well Ivar, I have good news and bad news. Good news is that harpies are intelligent enough to have some kinda conversation with. The bad news is that all they want to talk about is killing us, eating our meat, and stealing our shiny things." I informed my companion as Dogmeat ran up to sniff the harpy's body.

I watched Ivar sigh deeply. "That is rather disappointing. Still, a discovery is a discovery I suppose. Let us gather what we can from this one and move on then." Ivar said a little dejected as he examined the filthy monster's body and I got out my carving knife.

A few minutes later and as we were about to go Dogmeat looked up into the sky and growled.

Looking up revealed several more harpies circling much more aggressively above us and seeming quite put off by what we did with their flock mate. So it came to no surprise that they started to attack us as well… to similar results. Harpies being so used to dive bombing their prey in numbers they really didn't have a good counter to those that could use that against them.

I went mad with my Signs. Somne to get them to fall asleep in midair to fall to their deaths, Veoth to mess up their flight path and crash into the earth or each other, and when a group got close some Aard to blow them back. I used my crossbow as well when they got close, but I was quite happy to let Ivar do most of that work with finely aimed stones from his sling smacking harpies out of the air with the force of a small pistol, crippling their ability to fly if not outright killing them.

All in all it was quite the turkey shoot, pardon the pun.

As it was made clear how their usual tactics weren't working the cowardly creatures decided that discretion was the better part of valor and started flying off. Seeing an opportunity I lit the fuse of the nest bomb with a small amount of Igni and tossed the thing into the quarry. I actually grinned as a retreating harpy dived down and grabbed it before it could even touch the ground before continuing flying off, attracted by the sunlight glinting off the various "shiny" bits covering it. Nice to see the oversized magpies could still loot even when they were in fear for their lives.

"That seems like just adding insult to injury." Ivar commented by my side.

"I didn't force them to take it with them, now did I?" I asked him.

"I suppose not. I am still not sure how I feel knowing that they will drop it off in a nest of their young given their apparent intelligence." Ivar said a little sadly.

A muffled Boom came from the cliffs above, sending a spray of feathers and gravel into the air to settle to the ground below. A good sign that the bomb worked at least.

"Their instincts are too strong and they were a threat to the people of Vergen. They have to be culled, if not exterminated at least. How about I tell you the story of one mage's doomed dream to create a 'Royal Redanian Air Force'?" I said.

"Air… Force?" Ivar tasted the unfamiliar word. "A force of flying soldiers? Wait! Someone tried raising harpies to fight for Redania?!" Ivar asked in shock.

"Yep. Well… in another timeline I suppose. He might still do it unless your essays convinces him how stupid the idea is later." I went off to explain both the story and the idea of alternate timelines/realities more in depth as we carved up harpies and made our way further into the quarry until we finally arrived at the runic door barring our way to where most of the harpies laired.

It was a rather long talk.