Hey again humanoid creatures,

Back again and this time significantly less lazy, I actually have a chapter of Cur, one I’ve been promising for ages and it’s probably one of my least favourite chapters so far. I mean it’s not bad it’s just not as good as either the chapter before it or after it. It’s sort of a connective tissue chapter, a set up to something else. Just like this spiel is just a set up to an inevitable rant about the witcher haha.
I feel like there’s more I can do with this chapter and I most certainly will in the near future when it comes time to revisit it for editing and what not.

I was thinking of going in to a doctor to get a referral to see if I have aspergers but I’ve been putting it off because I just hate the idea of being a victim or being probed in any way just to have someone write it on a piece of paper. I want to know but I just don’t want to go outside haha. If only it could be done indoors and I could just print my “I’m a retard” certificate and hang it on my wall.

I dunno it’s kind of depessing, feels like I’ve been lying to myself this whole time, promising myself a normal happy life I was never equipped to have. Living like a character from a Lovecraft story (or even Lovecraft himself) and telling myself “One day” maybe eventually I’ll have the things these normal happy people have. I watched a documentary on the plane on the way back about it and it just made me miserable knowing that was out of reach for me.

But in a way it made me feel thankful that I have some good things in my life, even if it’s just the tiny spec of happiness and a future, it’s better than nothing and I can keep living another day.

Well that got heavy fast, quick pivot to the witcher.

The thing I hate most about the witcher is that I love the witcher.

I love the premise of the witcher that was sold to me in the game and also in the very first short story in the book.

It was basically a pulp detective story but fantasy, a little like Solomon Kane. There was very little dialogue, it was stark, gritty, great action. All about a monster hunter tracking down and killing monsters and all the story surrounding it. This is what I thought the books were going to be like.

As a premise that really worked but as a premise it was dropped like a ten tonne weight in the subsequent books. In four books he might have killed maybe three monsters. A book series about a monster slayer who seems completely disinterested in hunting monsters.

The books basically toss the fact he’s a witcher around as a backstory fill like you would if someone was a vietnam vet, simply to signify he’s tough and can handle himself. But he never engages in slaying monsters.

Instead the books are mostly about really boring politics of a really boring war and how disinterested Geralt is about getting involved in said war.

And then it pivots again into being a story about Ciri having prepubescent lesbian sex with an elf. The story just has no grounding, it’s boring and wordy and convoluted and just seems to be going nowhere.

It astonishes me how well CD projekt red took the mantle of the premise and really ran with it. They relegated the boring war into the background where it belongs just to focus on Geralt hunting monsters and then interlaced a plot around it. And also they made the characters more likeable and relate-able on the whole. I can’t say I like or care about any of the characters in the book. Even so Geralt even in the game is sort of a generic bad ass, he’s more fun than he is in the books.
In the books he’s supposed to be like this brooding serous guy but it makes him come off as a weird whiner.
I just think it’s amazing that they took such a dull uninspired series which I’ve come to believe is actually a rip off of the elric series because apparently the guy who wrote the witcher series worked on the marketing for the polish translation of Elric. They took this sort of go nowhere series and they turned it into this conqueror of the games industry.

And I’m just really hoping they can do the same magic with Cyberpunk when they finally release it. I’m hearing really good things about it.

That’s about all.

If you’re on my mailing list the free copies of my stuff went out today so you should have them already, if not, let me know.

See you…

–

The dying embers of the fire fizzled and cracked and resonated through the cave. The sounds of birds chirping arrogantly outside petered in and rang in the druidess’ pained ears as she lay flat on the cave floor.

 

She forced one eye open and moved her face off the ground, rocks and debris sticking to it. Her face covered in red indentations from the rubble she lay prone on all night. The light that came through the tunnel was unwelcome and unkind and drove sharp slivers of pain to her head and neck.

 

Something dawned on her suddenly; she clutched at her side and felt it wanting. The sword was gone, what little money she had, her wrist too was bare, her magical torque swindled by that damn shape shifter and the ogreous dead man.

 

She rose to a sitting position and thanked the goddess that she was at least still dressed and felt undisturbed. Having thankfully not been violated in her sleep by those vile miscreants she had the bad luck to encounter.

 

The druidess sitting rubbed all the parts of her head that pained her which seemed like all of them. Her head feeling like a pig’s stomach full of broken clay pot that someone had violently shaken.

 

Her senses returned and she could smell the fire and hear a distant soft humming, her feet scraping on the cave floor as she labored to her feet.

 

The old man was still there pottering about, he blinked as he saw the young girl and smiled, she couldn’t tell if that meant he remembered her or not.

 

“Those men that were here?”

 

“Men?” He aped absentmindedly as if the word were foreign to him and lacked all meaning.

 

“The shape shifter and the dead man.”

 

“Dead man?”

 

“The Firbolg” She felt silly even saying it, as if she was playing in to some sort of delusion, the firbolg didn’t exist anymore.

 

“Oh yes” The old man nodded “I remember them; things were peaceful for a time after they were done killing each other.” He laughed. “But that was a long time ago, I’m three thousand years old, did I mention that?” He said ditheringly.

 

She brushed it off again having no time for his fantasy “Do you remember the sword I had?”

 

“Yes, the singing sword of the lesser demon”

 

“Lesser demon what are you talking about?”

 

“Tethra, I think his name was” The old man mused.

 

The girl shook her head sick of playing the old man’s silly games. “Do you know where they went?” She motioned with her hands as she described them. “The tall man and the man with the red hair”

 

He squinted.

 

“The man who can turn into a dog”

 

“Oh the young lad, he came later, his people didn’t last long but they were before even the Firbolg. I was the first on this island though, me and my wife, until I turned into a fish” He waffled on.

 

“Do you know where they went?” She said through tight lips.

 

“Aren’t you some kind of a witch or something? You don’t have a magic potion you can use to find him” The old man laughed.

 

“Hmm I could try scrying for them if I had something of theirs and I knew where I was on a map.” She pinched her chin.

 

“That can be arranged” The old man laughed.

 

–

 

“I greet you noble assassin, you may know me. Gwenton assistant of Abartach of Slaverghty, Abertach is very sorry he couldn’t meet you in person, but I have been sent in his stead.

 

Cur and the messenger met at a traveller’s camp off the road to Banagher near Lough Derg. A heavily wooded area that sung with the sickly sweet sound of birds chirping and woodpeckers pecking. They sat across from each other, an unkindled fire pit black with the warm ashes of the previous night and stinking with the smell of rotten game.

 

The messenger was a young looking half-blood elf with a ridiculous haircut. The sides of his head shaved but for a floppy quaff of hair that fell in front of his face. His features more rounded than an elf’s but he was taller than that of a dwarf. Thin but trying to compensate by wearing the thick leather armor of a thief weighed down with pockets. He carried the vomitus arrogance of a noble dabbling at thuggery.

 

“I’m no assassin” Cur spat “Assassins kill for pay, I would kill an elf for a hot meal” He grinned wickedly staring at the half elf hungrily.

 

The elf gulped loudly and shrunk behind his leather armor. “Quite” He said trying to laugh it off. “I bring you your reward in silver” He said hoping it would cool tensions that suddenly flared. He reached out his hand with which a large hide pouch dangling from it. The dog at Cur’s side barked at him and Cur ground his teeth.

 

“The woman” Cur growled not looking at the purse.

 

“Ah yes well, Abartach needs you to do one last jo-!” Cur caught him by the wrist and yanked him off his feet and through the fire pit, the bag of silver split and poured out all over the ground. Cur stepped on his chest and pulled his arm up uncomfortably as if he might rip it out of its socket. The last embers of the night before felt through his leathers.

 

The elf completely overpowered groaned vacantly as he lay dazed his head swimming. Silver coins marked with the ulster symbol of the hand on the shield as his pillow, the dog by his ear growling a steady heat rising at his back.

 

“The one before and the one before that were also ‘the last’.” Cur applied more pressure with his foot and the half elf groaned. “I played your games because they amused me, I grow weary of them.”

 

“Abartach!” The half elf gasped as he tried to get more air in his lungs than Cur’s heavy foot would allow “He lied- to you!”

 

“I know” Cur laughed. “What do dwarves do but lie and count coin? And now he sends a boy to meet me.” He held the young man’s hand to his face. “But there’s more?”

 

“Yes, there’s someone who might know!”

 

“Speak!”

 

“There’s a woman who lives in the woods of Tallaght, it might be her.” Cur pressed harder on his chest, the heat at his back now slowly searing and a smell like overcooked beef filled his nostrils. “-Or else she might know where your woman is”

 

“Tallaght?” Cur said it as if he’d said it before.

 

The dog barked and growled at hearing the name.

 

“It’s not far from here, a half a day’s walk no further. You don’t remember it, Abertach sent you there before now. Damn near slaughtered half the village, a plague gripped it after you left and narry a soul remains. As if overnight, only bones now. Some say it’s some bloodsucker’s curse but its utter nonsense. A single monster couldn’t devour a whole village, with no one to tell the tale, it’s not possible. Maybe you did it” The elf spat defiantly.

 

Cur grinned.

 

Cur pressed his back harder into the hot ash and he cried out like a branded calf and foamed at the mouth.

 

“Is that all? Cur asked, the dog teeth flashed in his vision

 

“Yes I swear it!”

 

Cur pulled him still clutching jealously at the envoys hand pulling him closer and breathing heavily into his face. Smiling that malevolent smile.

 

“You are a messenger yes?”

 

“Yes” the messenger replied reticent.

 

“You will take a message back to your master.” Cur grinned wide.

 

“What message?”

 

Cur opened his mouth wide and with a vicious speed he bit off all the messengers’ fingers on one hand.

 

He screamed as jets of white blood sprayed out of the sides of Curs grinning devil mouth.

 

–

Read the full chapter on Inkiit

Storm King