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Eskel checks that he has an ample supply of Northern Wind and dimeritium bombs strung on his belt and Philter in his potions bandolier, shifts his grip on his sword so it’s perfectly balanced in his hand, and shapes his fingers into Quen so he can cast without even a breath of hesitation.
Then and only then does he stride up the haunted cottage’s front step and very carefully nudge the door open with the toe of his boot.
The hinges creak menacingly as the door swings open; Eskel takes a moment to be amused at how extremely appropriate everything about this haunted cottage is. There are cobwebs in the windows and all over the chimney, the shutters hang at odd angles, the door creaks properly, the front step is off-kilter - really it would be hard to design a house that looked more haunted.
Nothing lunges at him from within, so he steps warily inside. The interior is one big room - or at least that’s how it appears at first glance - with a battered old table near one wall and a rocking chair covered in cobwebs on the hearth. Bundles of ancient dried herbs hang from the ceiling and there’s a crumbling basket of ancient yarn near the rocking chair. The floorboards creak beneath his boots like dying leshen.
Again, Eskel has to admire the sheer atmosphere of the place.
He makes his way step by slow step into the center of the room. His medallion is thrumming against his chest: something here is magical. Nothing seems likely, though. He’s starting to have the sinking suspicion that he’s going to need to just burn the whole cottage.
The medallion’s shivering grows stronger as he nears the table - no, as he nears the trapdoor beneath the table, a plain sturdy thing that probably leads to a cellar such as most cottages have.
Eskel isn’t terribly fond of cellars. They tend to be rather cramped, and it’s hard to fight in them. But if the haunting is in the cellar, then down he’ll have to go. He pushes the table aside with one foot, then goes down on one knee behind the trapdoor and lifts it quickly, sword at the ready to strike at whatever might emerge.
Nothing does. Not even a smell of rot.
He props the trapdoor open and eases around until he can peer down into the hole, discovering an unsurprisingly rickety set of wooden stairs leading down into the darkness. With a sigh, he gestures an Igni, letting the flame dance just above his palm, and starts down. The stairs creak ominously under his weight, and he has to duck almost double to fit beneath the edge of the floor. It would be a perfect time for something to attack him, but nothing does.
The cellar is definitely in keeping with the aesthetic of the cottage. There are wooden shelves along the walls adorned with copious cobwebs, holding jars of what look to be eyeballs and severed fingers and other such unsavory objects.
Actually - that’s odd. Eskel has seen more cobwebs than in an arachas den, but he hasn’t seen any spiders. And when he peers more closely at one of the jars, the eyeballs look a lot like hardboiled eggs in some sort of brine. And the fingers are a type of mushroom he recognizes, too.
His medallion is still thrumming, though, so something is definitely odd here. There aren’t any obvious doors out of this cellar - aside from the trapdoor he came in by - but since whatever he’s sensing isn’t here or up in the cottage proper, which didn’t even have a loft, there must be another way out.
If Eskel were setting up a deeply creepy cottage to conceal something, he would put the thing he was hiding in the creepiest spot possible.
Very warily, he moves one of the jars of eyeballs that’s sitting in the most cobwebbed, dank, and generally disgusting corner of the lowest shelf, and sure enough, there’s a keyhole hidden in the shadows.
Eskel kneels down and sets his sword where he can grab it again in an instant, and pulls out the set of lockpicks Lambert brought back as a midwinter gift some decades ago. He got one for each of his brothers, and then spent the rest of the winter training them to use the damn things - with unexpected expert help from Vesemir, of all people - and now all the Wolves are capable of picking locks, if not quickly then effectively.
This one is not a complicated lock - well, it hardly needs to be, squirreled away like this. Eskel has to work on it entirely by feel, of course, since he has to drop the Igni to use both hands, but as soon as he feels the lock click open he’s back on his feet, sword in hand and Igni in the other, lockpicks clattering to the floor as the entire wall swings aside.
Nothing jumps out at him. Eskel gives it three long beats before he bends down to scoop the lockpicks up and bundle them into his belt-pouch - he’ll put them away properly later - and ventures slowly into the revealed passageway.
He makes it five steps before something moves in the shadows, a white shape, low to the ground, that darts from one side of the corridor to the other and then up the wall and through a gap near the ceiling. Eskel gets a single glimpse of it - it’s fast, whatever it is - and has to stop and frown to himself for a moment, because what it looked like was an arrangement of bones.
Moving bones are usually a bad, bad sign.
He eases forward, tapping each flagstone before resting weight on it, every sense alert for movement or Chaos from any direction. But he doesn’t encounter anything at all, and at last the surprisingly long corridor ends in a simple wooden door.
It’s closed and locked, of course. But it also has a little flap cut into it, with a piece of thick leather hanging down. Eskel stares at the flap for a long moment before realizing that it’s about the right size for a small animal to go in and out - a cat or a terrier or something like that.
It’s certainly not big enough for Eskel, though.
There’s a wall sconce next to the door which has a tiny stub of candle in it; Eskel flicks the Igni from his palm to the candle’s wick and pulls his lockpicks out again. Nothing leaps on him while he has his hands full, but just as the lock clicks open, he hears a very soft rustle behind him.
He drops the lockpick and grabs his sword and whirls, Quen flaring gold around him; something skitters back into the shadows. Eskel edges to the side so he can keep an eye on the door and the shadow where the skittering thing vanished, and waits, still as stone, for ten long heartbeats.
And then the skittering thing comes slinking just barely out of the shadows, hunkered low to the ground, wariness in every line of its posture, and Eskel’s jaw sags in astonishment.
It’s a cat. Or rather, the skeleton of a cat, every bone pristine save for little smudges of dust here and there, held together by invisible Chaos. There’s the very, very faint suggestion of a shape around the bones, like the memory of a cat’s form made out of shadow and cobweb.
Eskel has never seen anything like it before.
Oh, he’s seen plenty of cats - usually for a brief moment before they hiss and run away, but still, he’s seen them. And he’s seen a moderately horrifying number of skeletons, some of which definitely were moving, usually to try to kill him. But he’s never seen a skeleton that’s behaving so much like the creature it used to be.
He has no idea how to interact with a cat, as it happens, except for a very faint memory of being very small and having his pudgy little hand guided to pat soft fur with immense care and gentleness.
“Nice kitty?” he tries. The skeleton cat flinches back at the sound of his voice, then eases forward again, almost-invisible ears pricked forward and tail held low.
It doesn’t seem dangerous. Eskel knows as well as any witcher how much seeming harmlessness can conceal, but it isn’t making any aggressive movements.
He eases to the side again until he can pull the door open, keeping half an eye on the skeleton cat.
Light flares. Eskel flinches back, raising his sword, but nothing leaps at him out of the newly illuminated room past the half-open door. Golden light, friendly and warm, pours out into the dim corridor. So does the smell of rot.
Eskel peers into the room. It’s so dramatically different from the rest of the cottage that it’s rather jarring: there’s a thick carpet on the floor, figured in crimson and azure, with richly upholstered chairs drawn up before a newly lit fireplace and a long table against one wall, laden with the sort of glassware used in alchemical brewing. Shelves above the table hold jars of ingredients Eskel recognizes, all in pristine condition, with no cobwebs to be seen. A door in another wall stands ajar, revealing a glimpse of a heavily-curtained bed.
There’s another skeleton cat sleeping in one of the chairs, curled up in a neat ball with its skull resting on its tailbones. A third is draped along one of the shelves, one bone paw and its tail hanging down. A fourth is just barely visible behind the nearest bed-post.
There aren’t any people in the room, as far as Eskel can tell, but his medallion is nearly dancing a jig.
He steps through the doorway. Immediately, all the sleeping skeleton cats perk up, skulls turning towards him; the one on the chair arches its back and opens its jaw to let out a soundless hiss. “Nice kitty,” Eskel says, trying to make his voice as low and soothing as it will go.
He eases further into the room, and as his boot touches the carpet, his medallion thumps against his chest and an oddly echoey voice from the bedroom calls, “Who’s there?”
Eskel goes still. “I am Eskel of the Wolves,” he replies, holding Quen as hard as he can. “I was hired to investigate the haunted cottage.”
“Oh!” says the voice, and a gods-be-damned ghost comes drifting out through the bedroom doorway.
It’s a woman, possibly of middle years, in a nightgown and with her hair up in a bonnet. She’s beautiful in the way that says mage, even in death. Eskel hasn’t encountered many mage-revenants, but he has the sinking feeling that she still has access to her Chaos, given that his medallion is dancing a jig against his chest.
“A witcher!” she says, sounding delighted. Usually when revenants sound pleased to see a witcher, it’s a very bad sign. Eskel braces himself. “I have been wondering if one of you would come along. I set up the entrance to keep people away so they wouldn’t disturb me while I was working, but it seems to have been a little too effective!”
“It’s very good at discouraging people,” Eskel allows warily. “The cobwebs are a very nice touch.”
“I found a way to make them alchemically,” the revenant explains eagerly, drifting a little further forward. “I had to - my darlings kept eating all the spiders!”
“I see,” Eskel says, glancing at the skeleton cats. One of them is winding around the revenant’s insubstantial legs.
“Aren’t they sweet? I’ve always liked cats, but I was dreadfully allergic,” the revenant says, leaning down to run a hand over the cat’s spine, her fingers going right through the bones. “Couldn’t do a thing about it even with magic. But I’m not allergic to bones, and a surprising number of cats don’t wish to go on to whatever comes after, if you offer them an alternative! A tenth life, if you will.” She strokes the cat again and straightens. “I didn’t want to go on myself, and leave them alone, you see. They’ve been loyal companions to me for many years.”
“I see,” Eskel says slowly.
“If you will take them with you, witcher, and give them a new home, I would be grateful,” the revenant continues. “There is gold beneath the hearthstone, and you may help yourself to my alchemical materials, for payment.”
Eskel looks down at the skeleton cats. There are five of them lined up in front of the revenant’s feet now, their tails curled around their paws, their skulls cocked as they peer curiously up at him with empty eyesockets.
What is he going to do with five skeleton cats? He can’t think of anyone who would willingly take such creations into their homes -
Wait.
As Geralt might say, Hm.
“You said they hunted the spiders. Do they also hunt mice and rats?” he asks.
“Oh, eagerly,” the revenant says. “They don’t eat them, of course; they used to bring them to me very proudly, though.”
Eskel takes a deep breath. Vesemir is going to give him such a look. But Kaer Morhen can’t keep cats - not with how they hate witchers - and no one’s gotten a dog of surprise in a long time. But if these cats can be convinced not to flee from the keep…
He hunkers down slowly and offers his free hand. “Nice kitties?”
“Go on, darlings,” the revenant encourages them. “Say hello to the nice witcher.”
The skeleton cats glance at each other, and then the smallest of them gets to its feet and comes slinking forward, flinching back every few steps, until it reaches Eskel’s outstretched hand. It appears to sniff it all over, and then after a moment it nudges the strangely warm curve of its skull into the palm of his hand.
Eskel strokes his hand over the knobs of its spine, and it leans into the caress.
“Alright,” he says to the revenant. “I’ll find them a place.”
“Thank you,” the revenant says fervently. “I did not want to leave my darlings entirely alone, or at the mercy of the townsfolk.” To the skeleton cats she adds, “You go with Master Eskel, now, darlings; be good for him, and don’t claw at the furniture too much.”
Eskel goes down on one knee, and the skeleton cats come padding warily over to him, hopping up one by one from knee to shoulder; they don’t weigh much, and having all five of them draped among the spikes on his gambeson is only slightly unwieldy.
“Be good to my darlings, witcher,” the revenant murmurs as he rises. There’s an expression of grief on her lovely, translucent face, but also something else - a strange shining relief, and an odd silvery glow that seems to come from all around her.
“I will,” Eskel promises.
“Then fare you well,” the revenant says, and the silvery glow intensifies until Eskel has to put up a hand to shield his eyes; when it fades, he is somehow unsurprised to see that the revenant, too, is gone.
His medallion is only vibrating a little, and he suspects that is because of the skeleton cats.
“Alright,” he says. “I’m going to give your mistress a proper burial, and take the coin she promised me, and then I suppose we can be on our way.”
He’ll have to train them to hide in his pack when they’re around people - what sort of rumors they might elicit about witchers doesn’t bear thinking about - but he’s on his way north for the winter anyhow.
He sheaths his sword and sets about his work, the cats meowing silently from his shoulders as he goes.
They do, in fact, prove to be excellent mousers, and Kaer Morhen’s grain stores have never been so free of vermin. And if Eskel occasionally catches one of his brothers with a skeleton cat in an improbable heap of bones on their lap, one hand stroking gently over the smooth knobs of a spine - well, he doesn’t mention it, any more than they mention the small skeleton cat perched on his shoulder and commenting soundlessly on everything he does.
And Eskel holds the record for the absolute strangest contract reward for quite a few years, up until Geralt goes and brings home an actual princess, the overachieving bastard.