Monster Contract

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Monster Contract

fandom: The Witcher - ship: none - rating: general

Geralt is working a monster contract - must be Tuesday (case fic)

715 words, you can only see them if you click here:

Monster Contract

One paper pinned to the notice board was different from the others. Pristine. It appeared to have been ironed. The writing on it looked in contrast to that rather ridiculous – although it wasn’t the most clumsy, scrawley lettering Geralt had ever seen put up on these boards.

“Looking for a Witcher!” it said. “A swamp mora has moved into our house! Help! We have gold!”

The most unusual part wasn’t even that the type of monster had already been determined – that might just be a guess – nor the exclamation marks; but mentioning freely the contract giver’s financial means on the notice board in the middle of the village, for all the neighbours and potential thieves to see.

Geralt took the note and almost felt apologetic when he folded it in half to tuck it away.

._.

The house was the last one in the hamlet. Its little garden was skirted by birches; beyond that copse the marsh spread out its arms, moist rivulets and squelching ruts overgrown with treacherous brownish vegetation. But the house looked improbably proper, its walls had been recently white-washed, the roof was in excellent repair, the garden neat and fertile.

The woman in the garden, trying to disentangle a hopelessly knotted mass of yarn, almost started to cry when she saw Geralt. “No, no, Melitele, no! Please don’t harm us! We don’t have nothing to pay you with and we aren’t pinning them notes!”

She eventually calmed down when Geralt didn’t get angry at her and explained to him how this had been going on for some time now; that it must be a practical joke and they’d been anxious an actual witcher passing through might not find it funny either.

“So you don’t have a swamp mora problem?” Geralt eyed the yarn. It probably had been hung outside to dry after having been dyed and now it would take a lot of work for it not to be ruined.

“We don’t know what that even is!” the woman winced.

“A mischievous spirit from the swamps playing malevolent tricks on people,” Geralt explained.

The woman sighed. “Well our luck has certainly run out. Every day is just one accident after the other. But I haven’t seen anything uncanny and I’m afraid we can’t pay you; never been rich and everything breaks and spoils lately, it’s costly.”

Geralt hummed, half in thoughts. “Had your house renovated recently? Looks new.”

The woman snorted, a little bashful. “No, we get asked that a lot. Haven’t had to fix anything in years – husband says it’s probably the swamp air keeping the paint fresh. Must be something like that.”

Geralt hummed again.

._.

In the night he sneaked back into the garden, quietly sat on the ground with his back against a birch, and waited for his clients.

“Witcher!”, “Is it a witcher?”, “Well look at him!”, “Are you a witcher?”, “Are you going to help us?”

Geralt kept his eyes on the ground. That way he could see fast moving shapes in the periphery of his visual field. If you looked directly at the domovoy, they were invisible. “I’ll help you,” Geralt promised. “Couldn’t you get rid of a swamp mora yourselves? I thought domovoy–”

“We're Kraśnięta!” A tiny red cap flew into Geralt’s face.

“I apologise.” Geralt put the cap on the ground somewhere in the vicinity from where it had been launched. “You’re pretty powerful yourselves, though.”

“YES we are!”, “You bet!”, “Ha, we could whip her arse!”, “We are strong!”, “But the Leshy would destroy our house!”, “You’ll also have to fight her Leshy.”

Geralt groaned. Clients – they all did this, regardless of species.

“We have gold!”, “Yes, we can pay you!”, “No problem!”, “You can decide which coins you want!”, “We find things!”, “Those with the suns are pretty!”

Geralt grinned. “Alright, I’ll get rid of the Leshy tomorrow. See you again tomorrow night – or, well. Talk to you.”

“Thank you!”, “Yes! Yes!”, “We’ll get rid of the mora ourselves then!”, “We’ll have your coins ready!” More red, pointy caps flew through the air and Geralt got up carefully to get back to the barn he’d paid for to stay the night at.

Better meditate for the remainder of the night if he had to fight a Leshy in the morning.

I hope I did not make it cringe for people who actually KNOW about those household spirits. (Slavs, not witchers.)

What I know is from the internet - apparently domovoy (Russian lore) are "married" to kikimori, and swamp kikimori are married to Leshen. Now, CDPR made kikimori into giant bugs (and water hags, kinda) so I reverse engineered that into calling those spirits just "mora".

Kraśnięta are domovoy / brownies / Heinzelmännchen in the region of Poland my poor mutual is from who I asked for the term, and they wear red pointy hats. :)