The Enemy Within (WHF Witch Hunter Quest)

III - A Twisted Mirror

If there is one justification for your existence, for the existence of your entire order, it is this: when monsters prowl the forests and screams ring out through the night, you are there.

"With me," you say tersely, swinging yourself out of your saddle and down onto the muddy road, because if there is one thing your old tutors impressed upon you it was to never try riding a horse at speed through dense terrain, "Coachman, look after my steed, and if we do not return take the lady and ride for the nearest town."

The man stammers out some form of agreement, but you don't have the time to stick around and listen, for the forest beckons and with grim purpose you allow it to swallow you whole. Dark pines and gnarled oaks rise in all directions like the bristles of some wild beast, and the mud underfoot is twisted and contoured by a thousand grasping roots. You push through at a steady pace, trusting in your leather coat to keep the bristles and brambles from your flesh, and to your rear Phillipe keeps pace with professional ease. You wonder briefly how the forests of Bretonnia compare to those of your home, then banish the thought and focus on the fight to come.

To your mild surprise, after less than a minute the forest opens up once again, another road cutting through the dense foliage and running off towards the west. Did the dead man you saw earlier flee through the forest only to be run down, or did the mutant drag his corpse there for some unknown reason? Regardless, you have found the rest of his band and the source of the attack both, for on the far side of the road a coach lies overturned with a broken axle, bodies littering the road around it like leaves fallen from the branch. Two of the horses are still alive, trapped in their twisted harnesses, while a third is currently being butchered by the methodical blows of a woodsman's axe in the hands of a hunchbacked brute in a heavy leather apron.

"I count five," Phillipe murmurs, pressing his back against the trunk of an old oak tree and peeking out for a moment, "you concur?"

"Aye," you growl, crouching behind an overturned log as you survey the scene. Aside from the butcher, you can see two lean forms stalking among the dead to pocket their possessions, while two more hunch down by the flank of the overturned coach. The screams, it seems, were coming from that last pair - it is hard to make out the details from this distance, but you think one of them must have been wounded in the ambush, for the other is crouched by its side with a long length of fabric that it is attempting to apply as a crude tourniquet. "Start with the looters. I'll take the one on the left."

Your chosen target is, you would guess, the leader of this little band of outcasts and monsters. Certainly it is the best equipped among them, clad in a full set of leather armour and carrying a loaded crossbow in one hand, and were it not for the thick green scales covering it from head to toe you could almost mistake it for the soldier it likely once was. Curiously, it isn't actually looting the dead bodies like you initially assumed. Instead it seems to be inspecting them, moving to each one in turn and rolling them over with a booted foot before looking back at a piece of paper in its left hand.

"On three, then…" Phillipe murmurs, as the two of you rise from your positions and level your pistols at the unsuspecting mutants, "One… two… three!"

The Bretonnian's bullet strikes his target square, pitching a cloven-hoofed looter over onto his back in the mud with a choked scream, but some foul instinct warns your target and it lurches aside at the last second. Your bullet whistles past its ear, but it merely drops to one knee and brings its crossbow up to his shoulder.

"Ambush!" it roars, golden yellow eyes scanning the treeline, "There, at the smoke! Terenz, Johann, get them before they can reload!"

"Ah, a professional. I hate fighting professionals," Phillipe growls, already pulling a bag of powder out of his belt pouch and feeding it down the muzzle of his pistol. You don't have time to respond, for at their leader's command the creature butchering the horses and the one that was bandaging the other's wounds both turn and begin charging across the open ground towards you.


Your thoughts race, facts clicking into place like the pieces of a puzzle. Your pistol is empty, as is Phillipe's. He is reloading, but there is no chance you will be ready before the mutants reach you. The enemy has a crossbow and the weight of numbers, if allowed to gain the momentum they will swiftly become more than you can handle. Decisive action is called for, and so you stow your pistol and draw your sword.

"Wait, what are you…" Phillipe begins as you step out of cover, the crossbow bolt hissing like a serpent as it skims past your left arm, but you are already advancing. Ideally a duelist of your education would have a rapier in one hand and a swordbreaker in the other, but in a pinch the silvered blade of a templar and a simple dagger will do just as well.

The first mutant, the one that was butchering the horse and still carries the bloodstained axe in one hand, at first seems to have no head at all. It is only when its leather coat hangs open that you spot the face growing like a cancerous tumour out of its chest, and with it the livid blue-and-yellow bruise that spreads across the chest. It has already been injured, struck a hefty blow by someone fighting in defence of the earlier coach, and that injury provides a perfect vulnerability for you to exploit. You step in and ram your blessed sword straight through the displaced cheek, already turning to lash out with the dagger in a follow up attack against the second mutant. This one features great growths of bone that have burst out from beneath its skin like coral, and the edge of your knife deflects from one of those just enough to leave a bleeding cut instead of an open gut.

"Bastard!" the mutant cries out, hacking wildly at you with a length of wood it wields like a club as you dance backwards out of the way, "Templar scum! Come on, Terenz, get up, quickly!"

Terenz, as you assume the other mutant must be called, cannot reply. It is too busy choking on its own blood, thrashing around on the floor, and you see the moment the realisation enters the bone-clad mutant's head, for it howls in abject despair and presses forward once more. Somewhere behind you there is a roar of gunfire as Phillipe opens fire once more, but you cannot take your gaze off your current assailant long enough to watch.


"Damn it, damn it, damn it all!" The bony mutant curses, flailing wildly at you with its club, eyes casting desperately around, "Knud, you coward, get back here and-"

The distraction provides the opening you need, and with a quick step and sharp thrust you put your blade through the creature's chest. A templar's sword is blessed in the light of Sigmar to bring death to even the unreal and the undying, but a mutant requires no such potency to slay. It has a heart like any other man, and when pierced falls dead at your feet like a puppet with its strings cut.

You pivot on your heel, lifting your blades into a classical duelist's pose to meet the next challenger, but it proves unnecessary. The remaining pair of mutants are fleeing, the scaled man afflicted with a painful looking limp, the strange canine looking creature stumbling on three limbs and using the fourth to hold the bandages around its midriff in place. Already, they are all but lost from view between the trees.

"Victory, it seems," Phillipe says in a cheerful tone, stepping up next to you, "Shall we pursue?"

"On foot, through the forest? No," you shake your head, marking the look of the two mutants in your mind. If they survived long enough to begin preying on coaches they almost certainly have a camp or redoubt somewhere nearby, and that is a threat you and a single Bretonnian mercenary are ill-equipped to face. "We have done what we ought. Let us check the bodies - there may yet be survivors."


Alas, it seems the mutants took no chances when they launched their ambush, and save for the two horses still tangled up in their harnesses, nothing here survived their fury. You find the corpses of three tradesmen and an initiate of Sigmar among the ruins, the last bearing a bloodstained hammer that clearly saw use in that final, desperate defence. Murmuring a prayer to your shared lord, you pull the novice and his fellow travellers away from the wreckage and lay them out beside the road. Such savagery is unusual; in your experience, even the most ruthless of bandits will give at least some thought to ransom, and mutants who survive any length of time are rarely so keen as to draw the state troops down on their heads through indiscriminate massacre.

Struck by a sudden thought, you walk back across the road to where the scale-skinned mutant with a crossbow was standing where the battle began. Sure enough, the parchment he was consulting is still there, stained in blood and mud but still legible. You pick it up and brush away the worst of the stains, then turn it over and almost choke in surprise. The top half of the paper is given over to a map of the local area, the intersection between this road and the route your own coach was travelling circled in red, but the lower half contains a crude yet instantly recognisable drawing of your own face.

"What in Sigmar's name…" you murmur, staring at the parchment as though it might disappear before your very eyes. Were the mutants after you, then, and struck the wrong coach by accident? No, that cannot be the case, for while you were en route to Altdorf it was only the business with Heidi that saw you come this way now instead of in a few days more.

"Ah, Lady have mercy… Markus?" Phillipe calls out, incredulity mixing with alarm in his tone, "You may wish to see this."

Somehow, part of you knows what you are going to see before you even look. Sure enough, Phillipe has found another corpse, the body of the one passenger who managed to run far enough to make it a few dozen paces down the road after the coach was overturned. A crossbow bolt protrudes from his back, just below the neck, and you can see where he fell to the ground and then clawed his way forward the last few desperate feet before the blood loss claimed him. His face, twisted in death and the fear that preceded it, is entirely and wholly familiar.

"Do you… have a brother, monsieur?" Phillipe asks cautiously, as though you might be about to break down in tears or roar in fury at the heavens, but you can only shake your head. The resemblance is uncanny: this is no mere familial relation you are looking at, but a veritable copy, as if you were simply plucked from your bed one day and dressed in foreign clothes. He even wears his hair the same way.

"No. Well, yes, but Rikard is shorter, younger, with my mother's pale hair," you mutter, staring down at the corpse and comparing it to the letter in your hand, "The von Bruner family is old, and we have cousins across Reikland and beyond, but this is… unless I was somehow born a twin, and nobody told me?"

It would not be the strangest thing your father did, nor the most pointlessly cruel, but even for him this would seem far out of line. You kneel by the corpse, rubbing your jaw in hopes of understanding, and so are close enough to spot a bloodstained sheath of papers protruding from your doppelganger's doublet. The first is a signed affidavit, a document you are passingly familiar with, confirming that the bearer is a man by the name of Kastor Lieberung of Nuln. The signatories are a lawyer and two priests, and though you have never been to Nuln you expect you could track down the individuals in question easily enough.

The second document is a letter.

Article:

Messrs Lock, Stock & Barl
Civil Lawyers, Commissioners for Oaths, etc.
Garten Weg
Bögenhafen

Dear Herr Lieberung,
After many lengthy researches, we have come to believe that you are the only living relative of one Baronet Lieberung, late of the town of Ubersreik. This being the case, and any other heretofore unknown and pertinent factors notwithstanding, I am herewith charged to inform you that you are the sole beneficiary of the late Baronet's last will and testament (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part), as well as to the entail of his title and all lands and estates attached thereunto.

I, the undersigned, acting in my capacity as legal executor of the aforementioned document of the party of the first part, do therefore urge you to make your way with all convenient speed to my offices at the address superscribed to this letter. Thereupon, and upon your production of a signed and twofold witnessed affidavit confirming your identity as Kastor Aloysius Lieberung, we shall be pleased to place into your hands the title deeds to Lieberung Manor and all attached lands and estates, and the bequeathed sum of twenty thousand gold crowns, Imperial.

I remain, your most humble and respectful servant,
Dietrich Barl. K.C., LL.B. (Alt)
Signed this tenth day of Nachhexen, in the two thousandth, five hundredth and twelfth year of the Empire.

"You know, I am new to these lands," Phillipe says in a thoughtful kind of way, "But it occurs to me that twenty thousand gold crowns… this is a lot of money, no?"

"A very great quantity, yes," you mutter, rising back to your feet and considering the matter. Even you, who were born noble and raised in the very lap of luxury, have never reckoned with such great wealth before. "One could train and outfit an entire company of knights for such a fee, and likely build a fortress for them to dwell within at that. To say nothing of the noble title…"

A baronet is among the very lowest kind of noble title, it must be said, but for most within the Empire even such a modest rank would represent a near incomprehensible increase in their fortunes. Indeed, there are a great many nobles who might leap at the chance to inherit a title of their own, even one so meagre as that, instead of relying solely on their family's largesse.

"Yes indeed, money enough to drive a man to many things," Phillipe murmurs, his voice distant, "And all to be bestowed on the man who arrives at this address and presents this letter, then?"

You look up at him then, one hand going to the hilt of your sword. "You are not thinking of impersonating the man, I trust?"

Phillipe shrugs, hands open and away from his sides. "The thought did occur. I could raise and equip a full company of my fellows for even a fraction of that fee, or perhaps simply retire to a life of ease. And you… it is not as if you men of Sigmar are sworn to poverty, no?"

"That is not the point," you say through gritted teeth, wondering if you are going to have to draw your blade on an ally once again, "to commit such fraud would be a severe crime. To do so merely in the interests of personal gain…"

"Who said it would be for that alone, mm? Not I," Phillipe says carefully, a sharp gleam in his eye, "Think of it, Markus. This Baronet, he has perished already, his one heir now dead on the road. There is no victim here, and surely you could do great things with the coin, no? A grand temple, perhaps, or a hospice for the poor. An orphanage, maybe, or a school… even a band of your own, to follow you into battle against Sigmar's foes!"

He isn't wrong. You could do a great deal with such coin, great works of charity and military might… Even if you simply donated it all to the Cult, that would in turn have a far mightier impact than simply letting the coin rest in legal limbo, but… does that make it acceptable? And if it does not… what of Phillipe, who is quite transparently weighing his options?

Article:

How do you wish to proceed?

[ ] Claim the Inheritance. The good you could do with such wealth far outweighs the victimless crime required to claim it. The gods have placed this opportunity in your path for a reason.

[ ] Spurn the Inheritance. You will not give in to greed, nor commit a crime such as this no matter the temptation. The gods are testing you, and you will not fail.