The Witcher: The Alchemist Who Walked the Witcher’s Road

The Land of a Thousand Fables was not actually very vast. According to Syanna, if one rode a unicorn eastward from the Goldilocks and the Three Bears set for about half a day, one would reach the edge of the world, an impassable wall of gray mist.

Yet despite being a finite space, it was still far larger than Victor had imagined beforehand.

The reason was that every fable set occupied its own separate stage, with at least half a forest between one and the next. As a direct result, the fantastical journey of the Magic Bean Expedition failed to reach its conclusion within a single day.

Fortunately, time flowed completely differently inside and outside this world, and Syanna was there to serve as his guide. Otherwise, by the time he finally escaped, the Third Nilfgaardian War might already have ended.

...

Time passed.

The outside world was already in autumn, but unless a particular set required a specific climate, the Land of a Thousand Fables always remained as warm as spring.

On the third night, beneath another sky filled with stars and surrounded by the chirping of cicadas, the knight and princess made camp in the wilderness.

"What a strange and beautiful place... You two must have loved it here when you were children." Victor tossed another dry branch into the fire.

Syanna shook her head. "At first, yes. But children get bored quickly. Even the princesses' afternoon tea parties became dull after we'd attended a few."

"Uh... I can imagine."

"Then we started playing pranks. Once, I threw a duck egg into a swan's nest. Anna Henrietta once stole the pea from beneath a princess's mattress. She finally got a good night's sleep that time..." A warm smile appeared on Syanna's face as she recalled those happy childhood memories.

Her profile was quite beautiful.

No wonder Dettlaff could never forget her, the witcher thought.

Then he blinked and lay back to gaze at the stars.

Over the past few days, the Magic Bean Expedition had traveled through the sets of The Three Little Pigs, Longlocks, and the world-famous Little Red Riding Hood, successfully collecting all three magic beans.

At The Three Little Pigs set, the straw house and wooden house had already been blown down by the Big Bad Wolf, while the brick house stubbornly refused to open its door for the witcher.

Left with no choice, Victor blasted the brick house apart with an Aard, then used Igni to turn the furious Three Little Pigs into roast pork.

Afterward, among the ruins of the brick house, he found the blue magic bean, which had indeed "not been left out in the open" and was "not guarded by three fellows."

The Longlocks set, meanwhile, told a rather sadder story.

The prince who was supposed to climb the long hair into the tower had unfortunately been ambushed by the now-uncontrolled pixies and dropped dead on the road to the castle before he could claim his bride.

Incidentally, the steel sword Syanna now carried for protection had once belonged to him.

After the duke's daughters grew up and the Land of a Thousand Fables fell completely out of control, Longlocks, who waited and waited but never saw her prince arrive, became unbearably lonely and decided to hang herself with her own hair.

After her death, her spirit continued haunting the castle where she had waited for her prince, becoming a terrifying wraith.

Victor forced her to materialize with the Yrden Sign, defeated her with his silver sword, then found the yellow magic bean in her bedside cabinet, hidden "deep beneath the earth" and guarded by "a bald farmhand who wasn't waiting for anyone."

As for the Little Red Riding Hood set, its fate was hardly any better than Longlocks'.

After suffering through the same story countless times, the Big Bad Wolf had completely lost control. He killed Little Red Riding Hood and the Hunter, threw their bodies into the well, then locked himself inside the house and refused to speak with either of the newcomers.

So Syanna put on Little Red Riding Hood's cloak and knocked on the door, using the rules governing this world to force the Big Bad Wolf to come outside and play his part.

"Oh, Grandma," she said, "what big ears you have."

"All the better to hear you with, my dear."

"But Grandma, what big eyes you have," Little Red Riding Hood asked again.

"All the better to see you with, my dear."

"Grandma, what big hands you have."

"All the better to hug you with."

"Grandma, why is your mouth so frighteningly big?"

"All the better to eat you in one bite!"

Having finished his line, the Big Bad Wolf prepared to leap forward and act out the part where he swallowed Little Red Riding Hood Syanna whole.

Victor, making a guest appearance as the Hunter, stepped directly in front of her, cheerfully drew his silver sword, and hacked the wolf to death on the spot.

And that's a wrap.

Cutting open the werewolf's belly, they retrieved the red magic bean. Sure enough, it "hadn't been swallowed," and the one who hadn't swallowed the bean was "the humanest human in the whole world."

After the desperate slaughter and suffocating pressure of every second before entering this place, Victor had been able to thoroughly unwind in this crumbling Land of a Thousand Fables.

He admitted that he was having a wonderful time.

And aside from the longer stories that rewarded them with magic beans, the journey also featured plenty of entertaining little episodes.

For instance, on the road they encountered The Emperor's New Clothes.

Wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, the Emperor of Nilfgaard, who had been cast as the king, rambled on endlessly.

"Come and look! Only those who are intelligent enough and sufficiently well educated can see my new clothes!"

It was the first time the witcher had ever seen Emhyr var Emreis.

The fact that the pixies had not hacked him to death could be considered extraordinarily good luck.

Elsewhere, there were the rooster, cat, dog, and donkey from The Musicians of Blaviken, stacked atop one another in their familiar formation.

They had been less fortunate. They were completely broken now, frozen motionless beside a cliff like statues.

Thumbelina, however, was still functioning normally.

The Magic Bean Expedition accepted her invitation and visited her home for afternoon tea. As they left, Syanna quietly told Victor that this had always been her favorite story because there were no princesses in it.

Looking back on this fantastical journey, objectively speaking, although Victor's initial impression of Syanna had been somewhat negative, spending several days together while pursuing the same goal had naturally made them far more familiar and comfortable with each other.

The princess quietly walked over to the knight, removed Little Red Riding Hood's cloak, spread it on the ground beneath herself, and lay beside him to gaze at the stars.

"At last... we finally collected all the magic beans. Tomorrow we can go to the pumpkin field and plant them... I never imagined I'd return here, Vic. I thought I'd never come back."

Hearing the emotion in her voice and sensing her desire to talk, Victor folded his hands behind his head.

"Speaking of which, what exactly happened when they drove you away back then?"

Syanna glanced sideways at the witcher's profile, then folded her hands behind her own head as well.

"Mm, nothing special... That year, Toussaint's noble knights took me out into the wilderness of Caed Dhu and abandoned me there. Snow was beginning to fall, frost was setting in, and I didn't have a single coin to my name, only a torn dress on my back.

"They assumed some wandering monster would eat me, or that I'd simply starve to death and spare everyone the trouble.

"But I refused to fulfill their expectations. I wandered lost through that forest for an entire week. I turned purple from the cold and survived by eating tree bark, but I still refused to die. Then, eventually, I saw a light between the trees...

"It was a campsite. There was a group of bandits there, bearded, covered in blood, and completely drunk. I thought they'd rape me, kill me... or rape me first and kill me afterward."

"Under normal circumstances, that would have been the most likely outcome... even though you were still just a little girl."

"Yet contrary to common sense, that was when I learned that sometimes bandits and murderers can be kinder than knights dressed in shining armor.

"They took me in, and I helped them make plans... I suggested that we move our operations into Nazair. As I grew older, my position among them rose very quickly. Eventually, I became their leader, with an entire band of brigands under my command."

"Quite the inspiring life story..."

"I think so too. But while I was suffering through all of that, my little sister was stomping grapes and fooling around with bards!

"I was furious that Anna Henrietta had actually forgotten about me, so I decided to return to Toussaint and began planning how to take back what belonged to me.

"But first, there was a witcher named Leo. His nose came dangerously close to sniffing out my trail, so I had no choice but to make Dettlaff drive him away and begin the Five Virtues Judgment ahead of schedule!

"And you know what happened next. Another infuriating witcher appeared, only this one was even stranger and more ridiculous. Based almost entirely on conjecture pulled out of thin air, he somehow deduced my existence."

"Tsk, tsk. What a tragedy... but I'm not apologizing for it."

"You don't need to."

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