An aura brimming with vitality gradually spread to every corner of the reception hall. Green shoots began sprouting from the once-dried roots, the elves' pain and hunger eased, and even the pale faces of the two witchers and the mage seemed to gain a rosy tinge.
These were the Waters of Brokilon. This was the miracle of life.
In the more than one hundred and twenty years Old Graz had lived, and his eighty years as a mage, he had heard countless times about this miraculous water from Brokilon-the Forest of Death.
There were even rumors that it could grant spellcasters the ability to have children.
Yet however much they longed for this miraculous water, spellcasters had not rashly ventured into Brokilon to seek it, because according to a mage who had once escaped the Forest of Death by sheer luck...
There, the magical abilities spellcasters took such pride in were suppressed to the utmost. The stronger the spellcaster, the more keenly they felt that oppression-the terror of facing the entire land as an enemy, the assault of nature's will.
Now this legendary water sat squarely before Old Graz, filling him with longing despite himself. His noble character, however, still allowed him to shake off the greed continually welling up within him.
He hurriedly stoppered the bottle and returned it to Miley.
"Was this what Lowell traded with you for, Lady Miley?" Old Graz sounded somewhat excited.
Miley nodded. "I only gave him one drop and told him to dilute it with water before using it."
Witt frowned at this, recalling something. "I remember that even when diluted, the Waters of Brokilon are fatal to humans, especially men."
"That's right," Miley replied. "But Lowell proposed it himself, and I told him the price of drinking it was death."
Witt understood. He now knew why the missing people from White Mist Village were all men in their thirties and forties. It seemed Lowell had been experimenting on them, though unsurprisingly, his experiments had failed.
Magic was all Lowell sought. If the Waters of Brokilon had truly granted him magic, he would not have subsequently sought help from the Cult of the Lionhead Spider. Witt had not forgotten the wounds on his back that had yet to heal. Those must have been inflicted recently.
"What about the griffin egg? Did you give him that too?" Geralt asked.
"What griffin egg?" Miley sensed something amiss in their scrutinizing gazes and guessed why the witchers were hunting griffins.
Perhaps that fool Lowell had believed some nonsense from the cultists and experimented with a griffin egg to acquire magical power, bringing disaster upon the village and thereby drawing the witchers there.
"We wouldn't provoke a pair of griffins in their prime, and griffins wouldn't hunt in a forest this dense."
"I'm sorry for suspecting you. Thank you for your honesty, Miley."
After some discussion, Witt and Geralt decided to head immediately to the griffins' nest on the mountaintop and eliminate the threat completely, lest further complications arise from delay.
Miley volunteered to guide the two witchers. Old Graz did not accompany them, choosing instead to remain in the elven ruins and study through the night. The griffins' appeal to him was not worth mentioning compared with the elven ruins.
The two were blindfolded again, and only after Miley had led them around in several circles and away from the area of the elven ruins were they allowed to remove their blindfolds.
With Miley guiding them, the three skirted the traps the elves had laid and headed up the mountain.
Along the way, Miley repeatedly looked back at Witt behind her, thinking about the question that had been troubling her since earlier, while Geralt brought up the rear a short distance from them.
"Is something wrong, Miley?" The female elf's staring made Witt somewhat uneasy, and he could not help asking.
"You..." Miley hesitated, seemingly gathering her words. "Before you became a witcher, what... did you do?"
She really did not know how to ask. Surely she could not ask Witt whether he had been human before becoming a witcher?
"Uh..." Paying no mind to Miley's strange tone, Witt replied, "Before I became a witcher, I was just an ordinary abandoned child. Papa Vesemir found me, and that was how I became a witcher."
Witt was unwilling to lie unless necessary. He usually used ambiguous answers like these to sidestep certain questions.
"Where did he find you?" Miley asked hurriedly.
"Near the Yaruga River."
"When?"
"When I was still a child."
"Then do you remember anything that happened before that?"
"No. Perhaps something traumatic happened and I lost my memories from before then." Witt shook his head. This was also one of the purposes of his journey.
Miley's questions came in an unbroken stream. "Then did your papa, Vese... mir, ever mention whether you had any keepsakes with you when you were born?"
"..." Witt was speechless.
He could not help wondering, Is it necessary to ask so many questions?
Seemingly realizing her own rashness, Miley flushed a little. "I sensed something familiar about you, but I don't know where that feeling comes from, so I wanted to ask about your past. I think you might be a half-elf, or have a quarter elven blood."
Miley had not considered the possibility of Witt coming from Brokilon at all, because no one would believe a little boy could walk out of the Forest of Death. Even the most extravagant bard would not compose a poem like that.
Witt froze, instinctively touching his ears. Their rims were still rounded like a human's, unlike an elf's pointed ears.
"But I don't have..."
Before Witt could finish, Miley interrupted him. "I've met male half-elves without pointed ears before. My former teacher said pointed ears are a recessive trait in male half-elves."
"Is that so..." Witt nodded. This was something he had never heard before; even Vesemir had never mentioned it.
It seemed to shed some light on his origins. If he had an elven mother, then as a half-elf, it was possible he could have survived an encounter with Brokilon's dryads.
Witt looked at Miley and seemed to sense a trace of familiarity too. He did not know whether it was merely an illusion, because he had not found that familiar feeling in any of the elves in the reception hall.
"The Yaruga River is very long. You must be from Lyria, right? Then your mother must have been an elf from the Valley of Flowers?" Miley said.
She did not consider at all that Witt's elven blood might have come from a male elf, because virtually all male elves were exceedingly proud and loathed human women.
"What a pity. A little farther west, and we might even have been related." Miley smiled and shook her head, gradually lowering her guard toward Witt, who might also have elven blood.
"Oh?" Witt asked curiously. "Where are you from, then?"
"I can even produce the Waters of Brokilon. Of course I'm from the Forest of Death!" As Miley spoke, she gathered a lock of hair and held it out toward Witt. "Look, this gray-green hair is the mark of the dryad blood in me. My mother is a dryad. I'm the only half-dryad, half-elf in the camp."
Hearing that Miley came from Brokilon, Witt could not help freezing in place.
So it was still... Brokilon?
Miley looked at the dumbstruck Witt and waved a hand in front of his eyes, smiling. "What? Even a famous witcher fears the name of the Forest of Death, Witt of Lyria?"
At that moment, Geralt appeared behind Witt just in time, patted his shoulder, and helped him out. "Of course, elven lady. The dryads in the Forest of Death aren't as beautiful as you."
"Hmph! I have dryad blood flowing through me too!" As soon as Miley saw Geralt approach, her face fell, and she turned and stalked off indignantly.
She was only fifty this year. In the long span of an elf's life, fifty was merely the beginning of adulthood.
As he watched Miley walk away, the smile instantly vanished from Geralt's face, and he looked at his companion with concern.
Witt also came back to his senses then and waved a hand to indicate that he was fine.
Geralt nodded, and the two resumed following Miley as she led the way.