The Divine Hunter

Chapter 532: Behind the Mask of Cruelty

[TL: Asuka]

[PR: Ash]

The curtain of dusk was slowly drawing upon the isle of Hindarsfjall, the whispers of the sea breeze fluttering across the bushes and woods in the northern parts of the isle. A pair of ghostly eyes flickered within the forest, and something crunched near the floor.

The witcher had broken a twig, and he pulled back the blanket of leaves before him, revealing a glimmering pond behind it. The night was silent, save for the crickets of the bugs and the rustles of the willows beside the pond. Okay, this is the place carved on the necklace.

“We’re here, Mr. Pitt, but make haste. The wilds are dangerous at night. If we run into any wolves, bears, or even arachases, we’re never going to live to see tomorrow’s sunrise.”

“Calm down. As long as I’m around, no one can hurt you.” The soil underneath squelched as Roy took the first steps toward the pond, and he circled it. He then came to a stop before a willow tree, for his medallion had started buzzing.

The witcher poked at the air ahead of him, and a ripple spread, refracting the dim light that swam underneath. It’s an illusion?

“What are you trying to do, Mr. Pitt? Are you on a treasure hunt?”

“Shut it and stand aside.” Roy whirled around and quickly made a sign.

Krott shivered and walked stiffly toward a willow tree. He hugged the trunk and struck a pose not unlike a dog trying to pee, and he squirmed.

The witcher nodded and made the sign of Clamp, but this time, he didn’t summon his clone. Like a needle, the black rune poked a hole in the illusion, and everything melted away. The layer of soft mulch before the willow tree disappeared.

A trapdoor with a handle appeared in place of the mulch, and the witcher pulled it open. He stabbed Gwyhyr on the ground outside and cast two magical shields on himself. Carefully, he descended the wooden ladder into darkness.

Roy came into a dark, claustrophobic space with empty walls. Before him was a tightly shut door gleaming with the light of magic, and a groove was carved on the door. A groove that was probably a keyhole.

Roy hesitated for a moment, and he pushed the necklace into the groove. It was a perfect match, and something creaked. The witcher opened the heavy door and snapped his fingers. A sprout of flames danced on his fingers, illuminating the chamber.

The chamber was the size of a single room, but it was spacious. The walls were sturdy, and the insides were barely decorated. There was only a table in the corner, a silk bag, a xenovox for telecommunication purposes, and a magical lamp hanging on the ceiling.

Besides that, the room was empty. There were no vessels or machines for genetic modifications either, unlike what the witcher expected. The most conspicuous thing was the hexagram on the yellowing wooden floor, and ancient runes for sealing were drawn in every corner.

The moment Roy stepped into that hexagram, the mana in his body felt sluggish and chained. It felt like all the veins in his body were clogged, and his mind slowed to a crawl. At the same time, he was assailed by the stench of rotting flesh.

The witcher bit the tip of his tongue and furrowed his brows. He tried to stay as awake as possible and held his buzzing medallion. He then crouched and scooped up some of the white powder from the hexagram, and he took a sniff. Infused dust. “Is this a formation to seal some sort of powerful being? It’s already here for a year, and it’s still in effect.” Why did he create this chamber? What did he seal?

Roy turned on his Witcher Senses and saw a grey ribbon hanging in the air. A ribbon made of the stench of blood and rotting flesh. He followed the trail of the ribbon and came to the center of the hexagram, where the stench was the most intense. He then knocked on the ground, but a hollow sound came back.

“It’s hollow.” Roy made a blue Sign, and a blast of air crushed the wooden floorboard underneath. Splinters flew everywhere, and dust leapt into the air. As if stirred, the stench was getting stronger and stronger. The witcher thought he would hurl. He held his breath, and his eyes went wide.

What met his eyes was a skeleton, and a highly decayed one. A Skellige fur coat was draped around it, and only strips of flesh remained around the skeleton’s skull, its empty eye sockets staring back into the witcher’s eyes.

“This guy’s been dead for at least a year and three months.” Roy took the skeletal remains out of the hole and checked the skeleton’s teeth and pelvic bones. There was still rotting flesh hanging off them. “Male, thirty-five years old. About six feet tall, grey hair. Fits the description of Yank’s father. Ortolan must’ve killed him not long after he took the guy away. Knew that money was payment for his life. And there are fractures around his calves, ribs, arms, and nose. More than a few dozen in total.”

Roy clicked his tongue. “Must’ve gone through unimaginable torture before he died.” Roy’s face fell. Anything involving torture when it came to magic meant at least an evil ritual. “Guess I should’ve expected nothing less from a master in the field of biology.”

Roy shook his head and sighed. He bent over deeper into the hole and hauled another corpse out. This one had an orange blouse draped over it, and a cape made of fox fur covered her shoulder. “Twenty-eight years old. About five-foot-six. Female. Bone fractures in many locations as well. This one was tortured before she died too.”

The third corpse wore a verdant jacket. “Thirty years old. About five-foot-seven. Female. Tortured before she died.”

The fourth wore a white jacket made of fur and a nightgown made of velvet. “Twenty-nine years old. Five-foot-seven. Female. Tortured before death.”

Roy gazed at the broken, decaying remains in the hole, and he inhaled sharply, falling into his thoughts. “Ortolan tortured and killed the gambler and prostitutes. All of them. I can imagine how they must’ve felt before they died.”

Roy looked around, his eyes flaring with alert, and something popped in his head. “Could he have used human agony to create some sort of monster and locked it in this chamber with that hexagram?” But the door was tightly shut. No signs of it being broken. Roy was sure he was the only one in the room. There was nothing else in here with him.

He then looked at the silk bag on the table as well as the xenovox on its side. An image crystal was embedded on the tripod. The witcher approached the table and touched the crystal gently, giving it a surge of mana.

And then the same thing that happened in the underground lab happened again. The crystal glimmered and formed a screen in the air, and then a man appeared on that screen. He was in a grey scholar’s robe, and he was in his forties. His hair was golden and cropped short, his eyes were filled with wisdom and history, and a perfectly-kept mustache and goatee hung around his lower face. He looked nothing short of a university professor.

The look on his face was icy, however.

No one would believe that this man killed four innocent souls. He then started to speak, his voice deep. “It was the year of 1261. I had bade goodbye to Rissberg, where I spent more than two hundred years working. It was in this castle I achieved numerous glorious achievements, including but not limited to: assisting Alzur and Malaspina in the creation of witchers, researching the elixir of eternal life with fifteen colleagues, and creating and improving a hundred and twenty-five types of creatures. I thought I would live my whole life researching magic until the day I died of old age or a workplace hazard. However, on my three hundred and fiftieth birthday, I felt a sense of exhaustion coming deep from my soul. I was tired of all this. I had a feeling death was coming for me. At most, I have forty years left to live, and so, I made my boldest decision ever. I left Rissberg and returned to my childhood home—Ard Skellig. I was born on the isles and grew up as a regular human until I was eighteen. It was in this place I met my first love, and it was something I could never forget. When I saw the scenery of this isle once more, I knew this shall be my final resting place. No more experiments and no more research. I shall live a peaceful life as a lonely old man. I shall enjoy my days of sunshine and beaches. And of course, surfing the seas and feasting on seafood.”

Light started to shine in the man’s eyes, and no longer was he speaking with a monotone voice.

“It was June 1261. I saw her when I was fishing on the shores. A young lady hauling her catch of the day. She was young, beautiful, and in the pink of health. Her skin was perfect, flawless, just like a diamond shining under the sun. For a moment, I was harkened back to a time when I was much younger. To the moment I first met Eledy. They looked the same, Eledy and this young lady, especially their beauty mark. I felt life surging in my wasting body, and my heart which had numbed after so many experiments started beating quickly. I couldn’t believe it. I, a three-hundred-year-old man, the cruel and merciless Ortolan, finding himself falling for someone? If Algernon or Idarran caught wind of this, they’d think someone altered my mind.”

A self-deprecating smile twisted Ortolan’s lips.

“But it was fate. A great chance appeared. The waves took her under the sea, and I cast a spell to save her. Without hesitation too. I then took her home, and it was there I found out that her name was Eva. I can’t remember why I smiled at her warmly. A wish welled within me. My only wish was to marry her. It was to give back what I owed to Eledy. Despite not many years remaining in my body, I started courting her.”

***

“July of 1261. The innocent Eva couldn’t resist my advances. I have money, inexhaustible stamina, and a deep well of knowledge. I am, as I have told her, a rich but retired merchant from Lan Exeter.” There was confidence brimming within Ortolan’s body.

“She married me, and I’ve decided to move to Hindarsfjall. It is quieter there, and no one will interrupt our quiet life. November of 1261. Four months had gone by since the wedding, and life was like a dream. I felt so much younger, my body filled with vitality and vigor. We stayed in a stark but clean house, and we spent so much time together on that little bed, but it never seemed like enough.”

The ice-cold look faded, replaced by a small smile. “We merged in body and soul, and I knew her more and more with every passing day. She was an innocent lady who trusted me with all her heart and soul, and she melted my ice-cold heart. She looked just like Eledy, but I was starting to realize that she was not Eledy; she was Eva. She was a special and unique woman. And I accepted her truly. Then came December. I took notice of her bizarre change in emotions. Her smiles were fading, and sometimes she would stare vacantly into the skies, a depressed look coloring her face.”

Ortolan’s face fell, and his voice took a chilly turn, as if dropping the temperature around him by a few centigrades. “I found the reason. She was infected by the datt. That was a great mistake of mine. The datt must’ve left Rissberg along with him. The datt was a special evil spirit. A modified hym, so to speak, and it was cunning. It never showed itself after I left, for it knew it could not triumph against my soul. However, when I saved Eva, her soul and will were at their lowest points, so the datt possessed her and started whispering doom into her heart.”

He explained, “From my repeated experiments, I found that the corruption was slow but steady. In a year at most, the corruption would drive her to insanity, and her symptoms were worsening, yet I could provide her no relief or explanation. The more she knew, the more holes it would create in her heart, and the datt would fill those holes with nightmare and agony. The more concern I showed her, the more the datt would torment her. The spirit loathed me, its creator, after all. And so I started neglecting her in an attempt to make the datt mistake that I was already tired of her.”

Ortolan shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry, Eva. The only thing from me that’ll be with you from now on shall be the necklace.”

***

“March of 1262. For four months I’ve been going back and forth between Rissberg and home. I’ve used more than twenty types of elixirs to goad the spirit out. I’ve used the exorcism contraption, but none of them worked.”

Ortolan looked exhausted, and his voice was laced with dejection. “We’ve made the datt too powerful. Not even the necklace could stop Eva’s depression and agony from getting worse. The hallucinations have started. Left with no choice, I went with the ancient ways the witchers usually employ against hymns. I used another weak soul driven by negative emotions as a lure for the datt, and I have set my eyes on a certain man. A gambler called Flanden who lives in another village.

“He gambled all his family’s money away and hurt his wife and son badly. For that, he’s always felt guilty, but he never showed it. Instead, he gave up on his own soul and fell into the depths of darkness. I gave him a chance to redeem himself, and he, like a drowning man, grabbed onto that chance. I used magic to intensify the guilt festering in his heart, and while Eva was asleep, I brought him to her.”

Ortolan shook his head, sighing. “I did that for nearly a week, but the plan didn’t work. The datt didn’t care for Flanden’s soul at all. It didn’t care about ordinary souls. The reason it possessed Eva was to torture me, its creator. It was only interested in my soul.”

Ortolan’s face fell, and he said cruelly, “I might have some affection for Eva, but I am the cruel Ortolan, not some knight guarding over a princess. It is time to leave. Time to move somewhere else and live the remainder of my days out.”

The footage disappeared, and a long bout of darkness later, the screen lit up again. “Her stomach churned, and she retched today. I checked on her.” The look on Ortolan’s face was peculiar. He stared vacantly at the air, a smile cracking his lips. His voice started to shake with nervousness and surprise.

“And she’s already a few months pregnant. I’ve been working around too much the last few months to notice. When I first embarked on the path of magic, I went through a magical neutering so as to empower my resolution. It was supposed to be an irreversible process. The impregnation should’ve been impossible, but I checked with magic again, and the child she bears is related to me by blood, but I’m not sure if it is blessed with a talent for magic. This is nothing short of a miracle.”

Ortolan’s eyes were starting to shine brightly, his usual serenity replaced by a big smile. “Life is full of wonders. Creating a child with a woman is akin to expanding my own life and soul. I am the cruel Ortolan, and I have created more than a hundred types of modified creatures. Every time I made a new type of creature, I would always be filled with delight and a sense of achievement, but this time, I feel bliss and happiness.”

Something flared in his grey eyes, and he solemnly swore, “Nothing can hurt Eva or my child.”

***

“I gave Flanden a sum of money. A payment for his life. I then summoned him to this chamber and murdered him. Broke every single one of his bones before he died. He screamed and howled for two hours, begging for mercy. Alas, his cries and death did nothing to elicit any emotion from me.”

The blissful smile on Ortolan’s face was replaced by a frigid expression.

“I was too naive. Torturing and murdering a regular human could never make me guilty or sad. All my human experimentation should have been enough to prove that I am a man with a heart of stone. The only people I care about are Eva and the child. For the first time in my life, I feel like having a steadfast soul is a sin.”

***

“April of 1262. I was in Lan Exeter’s library, searching for a way to save my family. I ran into a prostitute on the streets, and at first glance, I mistook her for Eva. The look from her back, the outline of her face, her nose… Everything was just like Eva, and thus, I came up with an idea to lie to myself. I gave her a huge sum of money so she could leave it to her family, then I took her back to the island. I spent two weeks with her and gained a sliver of affection for the prostitute. A lot of times, I mistook her for Eva, and I knew it was time to act. I took her to this chamber and murdered her after putting her through torture.

“And in that moment, for the first time in a few hundred years, I felt guilt and pain and anguish. The more guilt and pain I felt, the bigger the hole in my heart would be. When I went home that day and approached Eva, the datt was tempted. I felt the chaos energy hanging in the air stirring along with it. However, it was not enough. The spirit wouldn’t come out, fearing it couldn’t conquer my soul and spirit.”

***

“May of 1262. I called in a lot of favors and spent most of my savings, but in the end, I found two more fake Evas. How foolish of me. I was supposed to be a sorcerer searching for magic and the ultimate truth, and yet I started lying to myself.” A bitter smile hung on the lips of Ortolan, but the look in his eyes was of determination and calmness. “As usual, I spent some time with the two of them, taking them as Eva. Once I built up enough affection for them, I tortured them and took their lives.”

The screen dimmed, and it flared up again, but this time, Ortolan looked different. His hair was unkempt, his face filled with grime, and his clean robes looked creased and covered in soil. Ortolan would cry at one moment and grin the next.

He laughed with sorrow. “I’ve killed ‘the person I love the most’.” He laughed again. “And I feel sorrow. Guilt. Every cut I make on her skin is like a cut I make to myself. And I killed my own child! I got back home at my lowest, and Eva tried to take her own life. Fortunately, the necklace helped me keep an eye on her. And my plan worked. I was weak enough, and the datt left Eva without hesitating. It possessed me instead. Me, the creator it hated the most. I did it!” He laughed.

“The blasted spirit can never threaten Eva or my child anymore. I don’t feel anything special this time. Perhaps the datt can’t control me due to my already dark emotions.” He cackled maniacally, but a tear welled in the corner of his eyes. “And I started healing Eva with magic. If I can hold on and keep the datt’s corruption at bay, I can live with her until my child is born. Until they grow up. Decades are nothing to me. No longer do I have to neglect Eva, and I’ve even told her what we’ll name the child. If it’s a boy, he’ll be Arthur, but if it’s a girl, she’ll be Dora.”

***

Ortolan was sickly, and his eyes were bulging. He caressed the air lovingly, making a cradling posture as if he were holding a baby. He looked almost mad. “Please, Eva, let me stay with you just for a moment longer. And you too, my child. A pity. I was delighted when I created the datt, and now it’s tormenting me beyond my darkest imagination. My will was already crumbling to begin with, and it crushed it completely. Created hallucinations and controlled my dreams, striking at my mind. The guilt and dark emotions I feel are boiling over like hot water.

“Only three days had gone by since I came back to Eva, and already I couldn’t control my actions. When I woke from my meditation, I was standing before Eva, knife pointed at her belly. I was an inch away from killing her and my child, and I would have, if it weren’t for my unease waking me up. The datt read my mind and knew my weakness. It wished to inflict more pain on me, forcing me to take the lives of those I love the most.

“But I wouldn’t let that wretched spirit win.” Ortolan bared his teeth and roared hysterically, “I’ll destroy it myself! So I left home and came back to this chamber, intent on sealing myself along with the datt. As its creator, I know full well there are only two ways to destroy it. One, I purge it from my body forever and kill it, but it would never let go of its grasp on me. Nothing is more enticing to it.”

Ortolan sat down cross-legged, then he raised his head, his sickly-white face filled with despair and determination. “That leaves the second avenue: I shall disappear along with it, but suicide is not an option. If my flesh crumbles, the datt will be free to engulf my spirit. It’ll become stronger. Strong enough to leave this circle and go back to harm Eva. I must destroy my own soul along with it. Three hundred years is more than enough for me. I’m just ending my retirement, but I have to find a good way to carry out this plan.”

***

“June of 1262. Idarran contacted me. He claimed to be in possession of a way to destroy souls, and it was fitting for a sinner like me.” Ortolan no longer had the serenity of a sorcerer. He was gaunt, his cheekbones protruding, and he had nothing but strips of cloth covering his body. He was like a ghost haunting this dark lab. Still, there was tenderness in his eyes. He stared at the screen and spoke softly.

“My child, if you can find this pond, see through the illusion, and enter this chamber, then that’s a testament to your intelligence. Should you be able to turn on this crystal, then you would have inherited my talent for magic as well. You may take the talisman and register yourself at Ban Ard in Kaedwen. You may use the check in the silk bag to claim ten thousand crowns in any Vivaldi’s Bank. It should be enough for five years’ worth of tuition. Or you can use it to live a normal life should you want that.”

One last message. “Oh, and one last thing. If there’s one thing I did right in my life, that would be marrying your mother, Eva. She should have remarried by now and made a happy family for herself. Quite a few lads in the village fancy her. Eji and Fahd are among them, but judging by her character, she should marry the more honest Fahd. She deserves a better husband.”

And he broke into cries and laughter again, but then he swooped down and stuck his face as close as possible to the screen, leaving mere inches between him and the witcher. His eyes were bloodshot, but he was staring intently ahead for at least ten seconds, as if he wished to see his yet unborn child.

And then two tears streamed down his cheeks.

Roy held his breath.

“My child, you’re forevermore, the greatest creation I have ever made in my life. My time is almost up. I should be going now. Forever loving you, the cruel Ortolan signing out.”

And the screen fizzled out, plunging the chamber back into darkness.