Geralt froze. The amulet calmed down. He didn’t make the smallest movement, in order that not a single rustle or even loud breath would confuse his ears. He waited. He knew that on the other side of the chasm, beyond the bridge, was whatever was lurking in the darkness. He couldn’t rule out that something might also be hiding behind his back, and that the bridge was meant to be a trap. He had no intention of being caught in it. He waited. Until something happened.

‘Greetings, Witcher,’ he heard. ‘We’ve been waiting here for you.’

The voice emerging from the gloom sounded strange. But Geralt had heard voices like that before, and he knew them. The voices of creatures not accustomed to communicating using speech. Able to use the apparatus of the lungs, diaphragm, windpipe and voice box, these creatures weren’t in complete control of their articulatory apparatus, even when the construction of their lips, palates and tongues were quite similar to those of humans. The words spoken by creatures like that, apart from their strange accent and intonation, were full of sounds unpleasant to the human ear–from hard and nastily barking to hissing and slimily soft.

‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ repeated the voice. ‘We knew you’d come, lured by rumours. That you’d crawl in here, under the ground, to stalk, pursue, torment and murder. You won’t leave here now. You won’t see the sun you’ve come to love so much again.’

‘Show yourself.’

Something moved in the darkness on the far side of the bridge. In one place the gloom seemed to thicken and assume a more or less human form. The creature, it seemed, never remained in the same position or place for a moment, but shifted with the help of swift, nervous and shimmering movements. The Witcher had seen such creatures before.

‘A korred,’ he stated coldly. ‘I might have expected somebody like you here. It’s a wonder I haven’t happened upon you before.’

‘Well, well.’ Derision sounded in the restless creature’s voice. ‘It’s dark, but he recognised me. And do you recognise him? And him? And him?’

Three more creatures emerged from the darkness, as noiselessly as ghosts. One of them, lurking behind the korred’s back, was also humanoid in shape and general appearance, but was shorter, more hunched and more simian. Geralt knew it was a kilmulis.

The two other monsters, as he had rightly suspected, were skulking in front of the bridge, ready to cut off his retreat if he stepped onto it. The first, on the left, scrabbled its claws like a huge spider, stopped moving and shuffled its numerous legs. It was a pryskirnik. The last creature, roughly resembling a candelabra, seemed to slip straight out from the cracked slate wall. Geralt couldn’t guess what it was. A monster like that didn’t feature in any witcher tomes.