He walked on, slowly, straight ahead, into the gloom, between the columns of stone. He knew he was being watched.

He felt the lack of the sword on his back intensely, importunately and distinctly–like the lack of his recently knocked-out tooth.

He slowed.

What a moment earlier he had taken as rounded boulders lying at the foot of some stalagmites now goggled great, glowing eyes at him. Great maws opened and conical fangs flashed in the matted mass of grey and brown shaggy, dust-covered hair.

Barbegazis.

He walked slowly, and stepped cautiously. Barbegazis of all sizes were everywhere. They lay in his way, with no intention of yielding. Though they had behaved extremely peacefully until that moment, he was nonetheless uncertain as to what would happen if he trod on one of them.

The stalagnates were like a forest, so there was no way of walking straight; he had to weave around them. Above, water dripped from the ceiling bristling with needles of stalactites.

The barbegazis–more and more of them were appearing–accompanied him as he walked, waddling and rolling over the cave floor. He could hear their monotonous babbling and puffing. He smelled their pungent, sour scent.

He had to stop. In his way, between two stalagmites, in a place he couldn’t pass around, lay a large echinops, bristling with masses of long spines. Geralt swallowed. He knew only too well that the echinops was capable of shooting its spines a distance of ten feet. The spines had a peculiar property–once stuck into the body they broke off and the sharp tips penetrated and worked they way in deeper and deeper until they finally reached a sensitive organ.

‘Stupid witcher,’ he heard in the gloom. ‘Cowardly witcher! He’s frit, ha, ha!’

The voice sounded odd and weird, but Geralt had heard similar voices many times. Creatures not accustomed to communicating using articulated speech spoke like that, they accented and intoned strangely, drawing out the syllables unnaturally.

‘Stupid witcher! Stupid witcher!’

He refrained from comment. He bit his lip and carefully moved past the echinops. The monster’s spines swayed like a sea anemone’s tentacles. But only for a moment, then the echinops stopped moving and once again seemed nothing more than a clump of bog grass.

Two immense barbegazis waddled across his path, jabbering and growling. From the ceiling came the flapping of webbed wings and a hissing cackle, unerringly signalling the presence of vampyrodes and vespertyls.

‘He’s come here, a murderer, a killer! A witcher!’ The same voice which had spoken previously reverberated in the gloom. ‘He’s come down here! He dared! But he has no sword, the killer. So how means he to kill? With his gaze? Ha, ha!’