The Path: A witcher's tale

Prologue

The beast's body hit the ground with a thud, as I went to take its head, I reflected on how my life on the Path began. I think it all started when my father stumbled into hole, one night on the way home. Apparently the hole was dark and wet and there was a clicking sound coming from all sides. Something in the hole came up to him, and he caught a glimpse of just what was in that hole. It was endregas: large, insect-like monsters with hideous pincers and mandibles dripping with an acidic fluid. He yelled for help, with no means of defense at hand, and it just so happened a witcher that was passing by jumped into the monster nest and starting hacking at the monsters with his silver blade. The witcher's blade was a blur in his hands, and the witcher himself was a whirlwind, almost too fast for the eye to follow. Almost. Once that was finished my father came home with soiled robes, a missing staff, and a sullen face. He recited the infamous words "give me the first thing you see when you get home," the law of surprise. As fate would have it, I went to greet my father after his harrowing experience. The next day, that witcher came to our house to collect his reward, me. That witcher was of a slim, but muscular build, his stony, and emotionless face was marked by what seemed to be like old burns and he had a black beard that could've hid more scars from previous hunts. Then there were his eyes, cold, calculating, and unnaturally calm, they shined in the darkness, and his pupils were vertical slits, like a viper and I was afraid to look into those eyes. Little did I know that I would end up like him, walking a similar path. My parents and I exchanged our final farewells and I rode with the witcher to Kaer Morhen, the headquarters of the school of the wolf.
I was gathered with all of the other young boys taken from their homes or the streets, I wasn't sure which. The main instructor, an elder witcher named Eskel explained to us what we would go through, our first trial to survive was the Choice, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to test the mettle of possible witchers through intense and grueling physical training. An optional choice for this first trial (one I chose to take, thanks to the instructors who guided me) was to consume the typical witcher diet of mushrooms and herbs. There was a lot of vomit, constant fever, and shit, but it helped me survive the later trials. Once the Choice was completed after several weeks, we were told that we were to face another, even deadlier trial, the trial of the Grasses. Our veins were lanced and tubes were interested in them, and the Grasses were put into our bodies intravenously. I remember hearing the screams of my comrades-in-arms as they expired in agony alongside me. Not many of us survived, but those of us who did received our witcher medallions, bearing the insignia of a wolf baring its fangs, that we had yet to activate. We felt stronger and more resilient.
The last thing I remember before the application of the Grasses, was Eskel going around to every one of us and telling us good luck by name, Eskel reached me and said "good luck Andrezej." I survived and pushed my new body to new limits by doing even more intense training, like the pendulums I saw the more experienced witchers-in-training do to sharpen and hone their skills. After this span of a month or so, we were put through the trial of the Dreams, which gave us viper-like eyes and much sharper senses, these mutations allowed us to do a new type of training that wasn't all the swordplay, fitness, alchemy, and bestiary training we did before, it was working with magic. Simple magic called signs, druids and mages taught us to do quen; a magic shield, axii; a type of hypnosis, yrden; a magic trap, igni; a basic form of pyrokinesis, and aard; a telekinetic blast of force. Then came the final trial, the trial of the Medallion, where we went to the circle of elements and activated our medallions to sense magic to alert us of curses and such. The way to the circle of elements was perilous, harpies lurked among the mountains, we had to navigate around a lake, that was swarming with drowners, water hags, and foglets, then there were the caverns, dark as hell and there were trolls around the outside, I used axii to get past the trolls and my sword for the rest. And afterwards we were congratulated on our survival, handed our silver blades, and I decided to name mine, "Bloede Bleidd", elder speech for bloody wolf, I learned some of the elder speech from my father. And we were sent off on the Path. That's how my life as a witcher on the path started.