Beyond Hill and Dale...

Geralt had not at first planned to free Syanna. He had focused his efforts on forcing Dettlaff to reveal himself and fight. But then Geralt changed his mind. I cannot rightly say why. It's possible Regis persuaded him, though it's just as likely the witcher had concluded he would not slay a sentient creature, all the more so because said creature had been betrayed…

Just as Damien had advised, Regis and Geralt went to the playroom at the Ducal Palace. It seemed a strange choice for a prison, but Anna Henrietta was known to have oft unusual ideas.

The witcher and the vampire searched the room but found no sign of Syanna. They deduced she had to be concealed inside an illusion. The mage Artorius Vigo had created it years earlier, for the ducal daughters when they were but children. It was a fairytale land one could enter through the room…

The Land of a Thousand Fables was an extraordinary place. Now, it was also extraordinarily dangerous. For Artorius Vigo's spell, cast many years earlier, had begun to degenerate, change and grow wild. This was the result of something called magic entropy. The world's fairytale characters had grown unpredictable and aggressive - something the witcher got a taste of soon into his adventure there.

Despite these difficulties, he found Syanna. The witcher and the duchess' sister now shared a goal - both trapped in this magical land, they needed to find the way out. They joined forces. Syanna knew the exit from the Land of a Thousand Fables lay hidden among the clouds overhead. Their first task was to find magic beans that would help them ascend.

The witcher and Syanna found all the beans at last. They planted them and climbed the stalk that sprouted into the clouds. High in the sky they spied a castle, then the giant who called it home. "A giant," you might say, then tremble in your boots. But the witcher and his companion defeated it post haste.

As Regis later told it, Syanna and Geralt seemed sheepish upon returning to our world. What's more, the witcher's leggings were laced up all wrong. I leave it to you, readers, to divine the cause of this state of affairs.

Geralt and Syanna finally left the Land of a Thousand Fables. Meanwhile in the city, the massacre had raged unchecked. Yet Syanna had returned, so hope burned anew. If Dettlaff and his former lover could be made to meet, the vampires' rampage in the city could come to an end.

A boy named Joss would know where to find the magic beans. Yet Joss - who obsessively cried "Wolf!" - was known by all to be a pathological liar. He proved hard to pin down, for his convoluted clues were the exact opposite of the truth.

By Joss' reckoning the red bean "had not been swallowed," though the one who had not swallowed it was the "most humany human in all the land." The blue bean, on the other hand, "lay out in the open" watched over by "nobody" times three. The yellow bean, in turn, could be found "deep underground," a "bald farm-hand" its guard and keeper.