[Twilight] The diminished pack gathers in the shadow of the Wyrmpole, close to the Caern's heart. The moon above is slivered, shedding light and mass, waning slowly, waning surely, toward the new moon. The Wyrmpole is covered in trophies, carved with the names of the living and the dead, some so old they are little more than a memory written into the being of the bloodstained spirit that lives within, hungry for glory, glory and nothing more, others fresh, the carvings raw, the scent of clean water from the cleansing rites enacted on the enemy flesh still sharp and clear to lupine senses, below the stain of blood, old and new, in the air.
----
The moonbridge opens from the heart of the Caern, leading them up and away from the wyld heart of maelstrom in the weaver-sink of Chicago. Soon enough the bristling skyscrapers, wrapped in webbing, the vast molecular stain of the electrified city is far behind them. They follow the Godi here, single file or two abreast at most, in lupus for the ease of long-running. Then, at last, they arrive in the Battleground. The path beneath their paws is white as the moonbridge, without the glow - deep and opaque, a sifting, compact surface of crushed bone that smells of new blood and old death. The promise of violence charges the air; all around them they can hear the sounds of battle. Signposts creak and sway in every direction, promising fights from the mundane -
Eric Moore versus Patrick Keallor, Fat Patty's Bar
Troy.
Wilderness.
The Sack of Rome.
- to the epic. The confusion of signs is enormous. Every battle, ever fought can be found somewhere down the branching pathways. Every fight, every victory, every ignominious defeat, played out again and again. From where they stand, the confusion of a hundred thousand million clashes echoes in the distance, languages living and long dead eddy through the blood-stained air.
[Blood Summons] It's harder to find the Godi when the moon is a sharp sliver getting darker every night. He had been present when the Cliaths brought back the body of the fallen Adren, had stood towards the back and watched the proceedings without interrupting to speak or offer suggestions. He was not pack. Truth in Frenzy had a pack, and that pack stuck together even when their Alpha was destroyed. They made plans, they spoke of what needed to be done and by who, and they did so without interference from outsiders.
To them, Blood Summons is an outsider, and yet he has assisted them in the past. He has fought with their Alpha, has traveled the Underworld with their female Skald, had summoned the Outrider for their trip to fight alongside Hermodr. He has given them talens and healing during sparring matches, and has drank with one of them.
He doesn't ask why his presence is requested tonight. He can figure it out easily enough; they couldn't find the Cliath Godi who had been staying with Truth in Frenzy, or they need someone more experienced to make sure that they make it to the Battleground Realm unscathed. He looks like a homeless jazzman tonight, clad all in black with those ridiculous suspenders of his; a fedora was on his head at the Caern, but he isn't wearing it now. His hair is like his eyes: that is, light and wild, like that of an animal's. He isn't an animal, though, any more than he is human.
Regardless of who asked him, he agreed. He pushed a small sigil-laden crystal into each of their hands, tying it around their lupus necks if need be, and with word to the Warders as to where they are going, they left.
The Godi seems to know where he's going, or else their Rage is like a magnet to a realm where battle after battle after battle rages until the end of time, from the beginning. He is not an athletic creature, is more of a hard-hitter than a tank, but he keeps up a steady pace for the entirety of their trip, and when they arrive, he whuffles the scent of battle into his sinuses and closes his eyes.
His spiritual energy is the highest of the four of them, and it is that energy, that connection to the chaotic realm of the Others, that he focuses when they step off the moon bridge.
[Gnosis: WHERE YOU BE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 9 (Failure at target 8) [WP]
[Blood Summons] [No, seriously.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9) [WP]
[Blood Summons] Stala, stoita, stanga,ræra
Hvat say du da bunshka bæra
Hvat say du da bunnska bæra
Litera mae við drengi
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]
[Twilight]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]
[War-Handed] At first, their charge toward the distantly winking Realm had been exhilerating. And cause to watch the Fostern guiding them. Plans made, broken, remade in the bullish Modi's head. All as the glowing bridge had receeded more and more into the distance behind them.
Soon enough, the difference between the world he knows and loves and this strange, nowhere path they tread becomes close, and obvious. A joyful murderer in the world he knows.. Joe has strode more than one battlefield certain in the knowledge he ruled there. Unopposed. Unstoppable as only the Fenrir teach their Modi's to believe they are.
Here he is a shade. An infant. Something made of half-formed ideas and uncertainties.
Cowardice still finds no greater foothold than it ever has. The formidable Modi's senses shine delightedly in the face of field upon field of blood and carnage. The lust of an addict in a room made of cocaine, Joe's face twitches dreamily as he looks at the signs.
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 3 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]
[Gut Song] (Intelligence 3 + Garou Lore 2. Diff 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] They begin searching the paths, studying the signposts, following the branching trails of crushed bone, bleached white from some unseen sun, gone yellow with age. They pass other battles, other memories, other deathes, other lives, hear some terrible call, some cry of victory, some agonizing bellow of defeat - the stark crush of shattered bone, metal against metal, teeth against flesh, hooks against eyes - down the paths that grow and branch and branch and grow as organically ornate as bleached white corals blooming under some salted sea.
Each of them leads the compact group astray. Sorrow remains close by the Godi's flank as he pads through the haunted paths, relying on the straightened ties of their much-diminished totem to keep and call their pack back together when one or the other wanders off, lured by the spray of arterial blood, but the familiar stink of viscera laid open beneath an undiminished sun. In the end, though, they find the path they seek - one branch, then another, all the past battles - until ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT - is the only promise left, blood red letters on the old bone signpost.
[Gut Song] "...The War Sound."
It is the culmination of countless battles. Wars. Fights. Brawls. Sprawling Armageddons. Each culture, civilization or pantheon of rulers, emperors and kings has had their version of the end of the world and within each could be found this. This sound. The sound of glory and hate. The sound of violence and blood. The desperation of the woeful and the eagerness of the bloodlusting. Here, within the War Memory, the sound was as the Wind. Constant. Present. Sometimes at a lull but never far from hearing.
At once it is disquieting. At once, the Gut~Song is humbled.
The pallour of grief touches his features, ashen from exhaustion, raw nerves and wild eyes skating the dank mists that swirl and collect in the rust coloured airs, cloudbanks of brown smoke, whorling overhead. The stench of gunpowder, iron, blood, bile, piss and shit mingle with such pungency, it brings a hand up to cover his nostrils for a moment which slashes away from his features a second later, a feral snap of open jaws and tension of hunched body.
"...I remember this..."
Eyes shut as they step bast the nimbus of light that heralded their arrival, the moonbridge's departure a hollow thing, as the moorings that anchor it here give way. The path behind would not be trod again. Only the seeking of death could bring them to their Home and Bed once more. Only the fall, Rage churning new.
"...I remember this..."
Something shuddering in the Skald's voice, drifting left of the group, eyes out into the gloom that no gaze might penetrate. Sign posts dot the landscape, beckoning on travelers to War's and Battles yet unseen and his hand reaches out to Wooden posts, brushing fingers across the wooden struts. A flicker. A spasm. The sign post is nudged, a grim sneer lining the Skald's faces.
"...I remember this but not enough to recall. Dark smoke and brown stains. Smudges of existence torn away and lived again. A memory of the Fight and the Fall. Echoes given voices, bodies and blade. Gun and Fist. Echoes-..."
-his voice trails them, a humbled thing even as the snarl of mists parts before their movements and the next Sign post, after dozens more, flashes into view. Blood red title, carved by some errant hand, exhausted in war. His gaze lifts, head tilts.
"...War forever is no paradise, though the blood thrums and boils with each new rise." A grimness to join that sneer. "...No Valhalla for the glorious dead here. Shades and Echoes...."
[Blood Summons] The Godi seems drained by the time they start off in the direction of the fight they seek. His Rage eclipses his ability to control himself, and he bristles with frustration and mounting anger when he cannot come up with battles that he himself has not participated in himself. The female Skald has better luck, and she lifts her muzzle in the direction of the battle they seek. He chuffs, irritation raising his hackles and tightening his musculature, and they pass by a thousand temptations, a thousand conflicts that call like a siren to a sailor passing by. Sorrow remains at his flank, and before long--Gut Song ruminates along the way, the Fostern's ears cocked to take in what he says but his newly scarred throat silent--they make it to the battle they've come to witness.
ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT
He is not the first one inside. Not out of cowardice, not out of a need to pull himself together, but because this is Truth in Frenzy's pack. This is their battle. He stands off to the side to let the others enter first
[Gut Song] (Hoowah!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[War-Handed] BASEMENT
That word has to be important right now. In fact, it has to be all of the bullish Modi's vision. From 'B' to 'T' It is the whole world. That is what will keep out the rest. The scents and promises of a richly sown field. His own purpose, or its recounting- to left and right. The sign straight ahead.
Vengeance straight ahead.
Joe's face never twitches from its grim resolve. Chilling eyes simply flicker from the side to the field beyond in the instant before he strides past and into memory.
[Twilight] They are not the first to fight this battle. They are not are not the first to relive this battle. Again and again and again, six Garou enter a long dark tunnel - the two scouts ahead, the theurge, the three ahrouns behind - crawling down a narrow tunnel that could fit them two cronis or three hispo abreast.
The grade is steep, curving downward through the darkness towards a rising heat. In the distance, the sounds of capering banes echo back to them, laughter made wrong, metal on slate, growling like the the backwards grind of broken machinery.
None of them take Truth-in-Frenzy's place. They were his pack; they follow him - even his ghost, falling in naturally behind him, Thomas creeping in his wake like Banshee, to guard his back, War-Handed taking sklora-Myrgen's position, Sorrow at his flank, as his packmate, Cold Death - while Blood Summons finds himself at the center of the pack, as the theurge. They are followed by another Ahroun, Kire's ghostly echo, behind.
There are things that happen here.
There are things that always happen.
Every time, there is a blind curve ahead.
EVery time, an enormous centipede appears above them, waving an impossible number of legs, its carapace gleaming with some oily substance, skittering up the wall as if it had suckers on every one of its hundred feet. It turns, looks - a face of pale, soft flesh, with gleaming compound eyes and opens its mouth - both finely human and impossibly mandibular - to shriek an alarm.
Their alpha shouts: "Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!"
This is when Kemp and Iona [Thomas] step to the blind curve and wait for any backups that may arrive. This is when sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] and Soledad [Sorrow] leap for the bane, and in four hits, bring it down before it can utter a sound.
[Blood Summons] He'd heard the story of what happened that night, heard how Truth in Frenzy put himself in a position to protect a Fostern Theurge and a group of Cliaths, but it isn't until they step into the battleground's memory that he actually sees what happens, that he actually gets an idea of what the group was up against. He walks in the center of the group, feeling lighter and smaller than usual, feeling more attuned to his lupine essence, and then they come to a blind curve, and then that enormous centipede appears above them, and then:
Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!
The sentry Bane is taken down in seconds, Blood Summons' normal urge to throw himself into battle tamped down by the memory of this place. He doesn't throw himself forward. He prepares to summon.
[Gut Song] Detachment.
It is the first thing that comes with the overlaying of an echo, sifting through his memories and thoughts. A happening of moments existing within this moment of war. He was not the ragabash blacksmith, but her senses told him what was around and available. He saw with clarity and reached with effortlessness, through her movements and motions and tore away the flimsy reflexes of this ghost to replace them with his own.
A snarl creeps his lips, body flushing from the Homid skin to the ashen gray of the Crinos form, looming into same vicinity as the War Hero before him. Orders are dished and the flash of the Centipede is-
-Ignored. His gaze seems rapt with Kemp, watching the careful plod of movement. The scars littering shape and form, cutting swathes through grey fur and furrows over flesh. He follows each motion as if he could track the line of fate. Follow the thread to where the Rotagar led and that inevitable point in the stream that beckoned the snip of scissors. The ending of a life.
The War sound thrummed like drums in his head, even as the oppression of heat billowed up the tunnel to meet them. Nothing but echoes. Nothing but ghosts. He wades in the Adren's wake, his shadow and his memory. Something murmurs under his breath...
...lost in the Tumult.
[War-Handed] Beaten like a Sword, made to understand his place in the ebb and flow of combat, inwardly, Joe coils and leaps. The barks are barely out of Kemp's mouth before Joe, happily, responds. He'd missed that growl. The wracking jeer of some fuck- up being pointed out. Its reverberations in his head the fourth, or eighth, or eleventh time pulls the same thing from him. A leap into the teeth of the bane. Immediate reaction.
Happiness at things being as they should be.
Obedience is right. Being the leader oneself comes with far more than simple right or wrong. Far, far shakier ground. Nevertheless, he breathes the battle as Sklora-Myrgen had. But he looks for Vengeance. Someone to pick out. So that he can say to them later, again and again- 'you did it. you are to blame'
[Twilight] The centipede hits the ground before the alarum is sounded, its pale face going slack at the seams, sagging through the middle as if it were made of melted cheesecloth and watery papier-mache.
The tunnel continues to twist and turn ahead of them, the heat rising, humid and thick, the stench impossible to ignore, not the ripe, sweet vegetal rot one associates with southern marshes but some twisted cousin of it, blackened, made sulferous, death given over to death.
There is a pale green glow ahead of them, where the tunnel flattens toward the battlefield; they can catch the scents of two garou and three more things, deeply wrong, blood and bile, these, the afterbirth of the stink of fear.
Their Alpha crawls forward, all but vanishing into the shadows. Iona - Thomas - crouches in his wake, slinking slowly, tail curled as if she were wholly unseen, for all that she is clearly visible to all.
[There are other voices around them, half-intelligible, the high-tongue broken upon the alter of the Wyrm, remade in its image.
"...Anhkahahn [unintelligible] hurry. They're [??] pressed hard upstairs."
"What does [??] want? Going [??] as I can. Not like [?? ??] faster."
"Just hurry."
And then a squealing shriek.]
---
Then, they round the corner. The lambent green light illuminates the room, the bleak shadows that dark and whorl at the edge of the vortex of The wyrmhole. There are two Crinos Garou standing at the mouth of the vortex, pulling banes into being from the mouth of the hole, while three others - carapaces still wet from their birth - circle the room, patrolling, chittering in their dank, oleaginous language. Ahead, another is being pulled wet from the darkness of the vortex, the Black Spiral Dancers are peeling back the shadowed caul from its form, freeing it from the raw, shell of its creation.
---
This is what happens around them - these are the ghosts they follow:
Kemp and Iona [Thomas] scout to the lip of the tunnel, the younger ragabash unaware that she was not cloaked in shadows.
The Dancers turn together, descended on Iona who stands out stark against the darkness. The rest of the Garou rush down the tunnel, and the banes swarmed.
Soledad [Sorrow] and Kemp leap for the Dancers. Iona [Thomas] too. One manages to cut into Iona [Thomas] -- the only wound she sustained through the whole of the battle. Kemp takes another Dancer down in two hits, the first to fall. His body is shoved into the Wyrmhole; choking the great vortex. Iona [Thomas] and Soledad [Sorrow] have more trouble with the second spiral, but finally Soledad brings it down, all with one great bite.
Mama [Blood Summons] is in the center of the circle, chanting her summons, calling on a spirit to choke off the Wyrmhole. The four banes close on the group, intent on stopping the Theurge. One of the four breaks for Kire's ghost - who stands his ground and takes the hit.
The other three go for Mama [Blood Summons]. Soledad [Sorrow] and Iona [Thomas] do not defend her. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] does, taking two hits, wounding him badly. He returns the blows, tearing into one of the banes.
The battle plays out around them. The three banes charging the Theurge strike twice each. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] takes two; Kemp takes four hits. The first two don't scratch his thickened hide. The third wounds him.
The fourth kills him.
He does not rise.
---
REWIND
Their Alpha is cloaked in shadows at the mouth of the tunnel. Iona [Thomas] is visible there. The dancers turn from the mouth of the tunnel, hooks in hand, the chitinous bane slick with foul afterbirth. They charge forward.
Inits:
[sM [War-Handed] 17
Sol [Sorrow] 15
Kemp 14
Banshee [Thomas] 14
Banes 14
Kire 13
Mama [Blood Summons] 10
Dancers 8
Wyrmhole: effect init = 0. ]
[Twilight] [Dancers
Adam
1. Gouge Thomas with hook!
R1. Grapple with hook!
R2. Try to toss into Wyrmhole!
Ben
1. Finish helping Fred get born
R1. Bite Iona
Wyrmhole
...spits out one new bane per round]
[Blood Summons] [1: Summon Surtur.]
[Twilight] [Kire] 1. Guarding Mama
Adam, reflexive:
"Kill the [???] Theurge!"
Banes
Chad
1. Breaks rank and attacks Kire!
R1. Again!
Dan
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
El
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
Fred
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
[Gut Song] (Initial Action: Split:
1 a) Dodge Hook.
b) Claw Adam.
Rage 1: Dodge Adam.
Rage 2: Grapple Ben
Rage 3: Bite Ben)
[Twilight] [Kemp] Rushing in to try and get to one of the Dancers to kill the fucker and stop the birthing/pulling thing.
1a claw
1b claw
1 r claw
[Sorrow/Soledad] Reflexive - Resist Pain
1a. BITE DAN.
1b. BITE DAN.
Rage 1: BITE DAN
Rage 2: BITE DAN
- moving on to El if Dan goes down.]
[Twilight] Ooops! Ben changed actions.
Ben
Changing actions:
1. Drop hook, bite Kemp +1 diff
R1. Bite Kemp +1 diff
[War-Handed] (Crinos, Resist Pain)
First- Split:
1a: Block for BS, El
1b: Block for BS, Fred
1c: Block for BS, Fred
1r: Grapple Fred
2r: Bite El, called shot, something spicy like the neck.
[War-Handed] REDECLARE
Take hits from El, Fred aimed at BS.
1a: Floating block for rage actions.
1b: grapple El
1c: bite El, called shot neck
1r: grapple Fred,
2r: bite fred
[War-Handed] (Grapple El- dex/brawl is 8-3 for split= 5)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (Bite El! Pool now 4, diff 5-2 for grapple, assumed.)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[War-Handed] (Damage: str8+1 crinos bite, +2 dice for called shot, +1 for sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] El soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] 1a. BITE DAN -2
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] 1b. BITE DAN. -3
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] In seconds, chaos erupts. At the command from one of the Dancers --
"Kill the Theurge!"
-- the banes already birthed rise up in a vortex of fury, swarming straight at Blood Summons.
The Theurge isn't fazed. He closes her eyes. He summons. And War-Handed and Sorrow, ghosting in place of sklora-Myrgen and Soledad, charge forward in front of him.
War-Handed throws himself at one of the banes, Sorrow another.
Meanwhile, at the mouth of the tunnel, their Alpha tears out the throat of one of the Dancers, all at a go.
[Gut Song] (Split 1b) Claw Adam. Dex 5 + Brawl 3 - 3 Dice for split -1 for Weapon length. WP. Diff. 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]
[Gut Song] (Strength 6 + 1 Claw + 1 Sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Soak! correct pool.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [*officially flashes boobs*]
[Twilight] One of the four banes charges at Kire:
Chad
Attacking Kire
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-savior-] [Kire soaking!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[-savior-] First blood, hot and red, the only pure thing in these tunnels: Kire's, splashed out as a bane -- a skullface, straggle-haired, emaciated mockery of a human -- lashes at him with its talons.
- who does not have a doppleganger in the fight.
[Twilight] Dan
Attacking Blood Summons -- deflected by whom?
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] This attack - by a chittinous bane - was originally deflected by sklora-Myrgen. They can see the ghost of the Silver Fang superimposed over the iron-gray fur of their own Modi, as he charges into the breach, preventing the bane from reaching Blood Summons, taking a grievous wound of his own.
[War-Handed] (Joe officially flashes his boobs too)
[Twilight] [-savior-] El
Going for Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp in the original fight.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +4]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] [Except, in this reality, El is currently grappled. He goes to break the grapple instead!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (strength/brawl pool currently 11. Good luck, fuggin' El.)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Twilight] [-savior-] Fred
Attacking Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp - originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
This time, by Joe.[/i]
8+2 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [1: Rituals+Wits: Summon Surtur Jaggling! OH CHRIST DON'T BOTCH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Blood Summons] [Gnosis: PLEASE BE HAPPY]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam: Gouge Thomas!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 7, 10 (Failure at target 7)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
R1: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El. -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing targets).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +2 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
R2: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El! -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing actions).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +5 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 1 BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 2: BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] This is their Alpha's last offense action:
[Truth in Frenzy] 1 r claw a fresh bane!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Truth in Frenzy] dam
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[-savior-] [chad soaks!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Bite Adam: Split action. -2 for split -1 for weapon length. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Rage 1: Bite. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Gut Song] (2nd Rage bite. Same)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (str 6 + 1 Bite + 5 sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Gut Song]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Rage 3; Bite El. + 1 Diff for action change. -2 for partial immobile.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] Their Alpha charges for the bane attacking the ghostly Glass Walker in their midst; he claws the bane, pulls up and turns flanking, ready to intercept the next round of hits from the ghostly crew.
Gut-Song turns, wheels on the second Spiral, and in three great bites - one of which misses - eviscerates the fallen thing. Intestines spill hot over the floor as Gut-Song surges up, throws the corpse back into the pulsing maw of the Wyrmhole and then turns, snapping at the bane his modi has grappled for him.
El Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] Now the banes turn again, attacking en masse, livid things, snarling, feral.
The first, wounded to near insubstantiality in their replay, surges toward Blood Summons. In the original, sklora-Myrgen, already wounded from intercepting the bane's first attack, interposes his body between the Theurge and the bane once more.
In this ghostly replay -
[-savior-] Dan
Attacking mama - deflected by sM originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-savior-] [dam +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] The next bane to launch itself at Blood Summons in the rewind is El. In the original, he surges forward, finally wounding their Alpha.
[-savior-] El
Attacking Mama, deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +5]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
This time around, though, War-Handed has the snarling beast grappled.
Break Grapple!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] The battle lurches onward; finally, they see what they came to see. The echoes around them seem to slow down - time dilates with expectancy, their own, nothing more. They see:
[-savior-] Fred
Deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-savior-] [Damage +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] dun dun dun....
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3 (Failure at target 8) [WP]
The fourth bane, the last bane surge toward Blood Summons. They see Truth-in-Frenzy, hispo-formed, once more interpose his massive body between the Theurge and the attacker. They smell the ichor on its mouth, the blood-haunted lust, the death-dusted promise of a creature forced of hate, spat back into the world by a vortex of corruption, still slimy from its birth - as it opens up their Alpha, with a hit so sure, so thunderous is breaks his spine, cuts through the vertebrae down nearly in two, sends the vital beast staggering forward to the floor, his front paws spasming, his hindquarters slack.
He falls.
He does not rise.
He does not rise again.
[Twilight] In one of the iterations of the battle, Sorrow surges forward in her Alpha's place. Every time they fight, she is already wounded.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] - and she falls, unconscious, but not dead.
[Gut Song] (Soak time, bitches! Full Health, 9 AGG.)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] In another iteration, Gut-Song takes the full brunt of the terrible hit that felled his Alpha. He falls, fails - awakens just outside the path to the realm, the deep, abiding ache of the wound that ended his Alpha, that ended this iteration of the battle for him - already fading, like spun sugar in the rain.
[Blood Summons] [Joe
COME ON YOU UGLY FUCK]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] They surge through again, playing out the motions now, they are crawling into the hole again, they know the motions, the scents, the feel of the ground beneath their feet. The repeat themselves, time and again - for just this moment -
- War-Handed intercepts the death blow. He is already so wounded that an errant breeze would kill him. He falls. Awakens outside.
[Blood Summons] [Bob
YOU TOO MOTHER FUCKER]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] Four battles; four ghosts. Two deaths, two fall insensate.
This is the battle they came to fight; this is the blow they came to know. Each of them feels it: the same angle, the same burn of fang and ichor, the same sudden shock as the blow takes them down, as it took him down.
One by one by one.
Four battles, four ghosts, two deaths, none of them real. Two fall, unmoving in the dream of a battle, until they are revived. Sorrow, by the hand of a Godi. Blood Summons, by a talen in Sorrow's hand.
---
One more time, all of it - they simply play their parts. The spirits arrived, the banes scrawl, the battle rages. They fall when their others fell, watch them rage back, watch them learn their
lessons
- that accrued after the death of their Alpha. Fight together; take a blow. Fall. Come back.
Die.
Be reborn.
[-savior-] By the end, none of them even know what the fuck is going on anymore. Four of them are frenzied. One is dead. One is still sane, still alive -- but it's too damn dark to see, and the air is fetid with blood, with visceral stink, with taint and corruption.
All they know is:
It's over. The throb of hate, hate, hate in their minds is gone. The source is closed. Overhead, the battle rages on, but none will come to replenish the ones killed now.
They've won. They've lost one of their most respected warriors, and nearly every single one of them has died and come back tonight, and nearly always for someone else's sake --
and they've won.
[Gut Song] ...The Brownish haze dims the realm, a distant Thunderstorm on the horizon, this limbo of thick turgid mists, bleak rolling landscapes and the promise of a Scab, pocked with black skies and artificial lights (Home sweet home) scathing the distance. Waking here comes with expectation. Being here comes with that vague ache that will remain for the time it takes him to go from the physical to the shores of Valhalla.
We will get there. Someday.
Kemp had said no hurry. No rush. He'd gone into war with fangs and claws and fallen as Fenris had said he would. The Wyrm had suffered for many long years under his efforts and if his pack had anything to say on the matter...
...It would continue to do so.
The Skald pulls himself up, settling to a wobbly stand. His jaws unhinge, clacking sharply, gaze traveling to Chicago's barren and eerie glow, then North and beyond the the purple veined clouds that hang above the Hive lands.
A Howl rises. Slow, steady, ominous and promising...
The Fenrir are coming. Brace yourselves.
[Twilight] [- and, scene!]
----
The moonbridge opens from the heart of the Caern, leading them up and away from the wyld heart of maelstrom in the weaver-sink of Chicago. Soon enough the bristling skyscrapers, wrapped in webbing, the vast molecular stain of the electrified city is far behind them. They follow the Godi here, single file or two abreast at most, in lupus for the ease of long-running. Then, at last, they arrive in the Battleground. The path beneath their paws is white as the moonbridge, without the glow - deep and opaque, a sifting, compact surface of crushed bone that smells of new blood and old death. The promise of violence charges the air; all around them they can hear the sounds of battle. Signposts creak and sway in every direction, promising fights from the mundane -
Eric Moore versus Patrick Keallor, Fat Patty's Bar
Troy.
Wilderness.
The Sack of Rome.
- to the epic. The confusion of signs is enormous. Every battle, ever fought can be found somewhere down the branching pathways. Every fight, every victory, every ignominious defeat, played out again and again. From where they stand, the confusion of a hundred thousand million clashes echoes in the distance, languages living and long dead eddy through the blood-stained air.
[Blood Summons] It's harder to find the Godi when the moon is a sharp sliver getting darker every night. He had been present when the Cliaths brought back the body of the fallen Adren, had stood towards the back and watched the proceedings without interrupting to speak or offer suggestions. He was not pack. Truth in Frenzy had a pack, and that pack stuck together even when their Alpha was destroyed. They made plans, they spoke of what needed to be done and by who, and they did so without interference from outsiders.
To them, Blood Summons is an outsider, and yet he has assisted them in the past. He has fought with their Alpha, has traveled the Underworld with their female Skald, had summoned the Outrider for their trip to fight alongside Hermodr. He has given them talens and healing during sparring matches, and has drank with one of them.
He doesn't ask why his presence is requested tonight. He can figure it out easily enough; they couldn't find the Cliath Godi who had been staying with Truth in Frenzy, or they need someone more experienced to make sure that they make it to the Battleground Realm unscathed. He looks like a homeless jazzman tonight, clad all in black with those ridiculous suspenders of his; a fedora was on his head at the Caern, but he isn't wearing it now. His hair is like his eyes: that is, light and wild, like that of an animal's. He isn't an animal, though, any more than he is human.
Regardless of who asked him, he agreed. He pushed a small sigil-laden crystal into each of their hands, tying it around their lupus necks if need be, and with word to the Warders as to where they are going, they left.
The Godi seems to know where he's going, or else their Rage is like a magnet to a realm where battle after battle after battle rages until the end of time, from the beginning. He is not an athletic creature, is more of a hard-hitter than a tank, but he keeps up a steady pace for the entirety of their trip, and when they arrive, he whuffles the scent of battle into his sinuses and closes his eyes.
His spiritual energy is the highest of the four of them, and it is that energy, that connection to the chaotic realm of the Others, that he focuses when they step off the moon bridge.
[Gnosis: WHERE YOU BE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 9 (Failure at target 8) [WP]
[Blood Summons] [No, seriously.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9) [WP]
[Blood Summons] Stala, stoita, stanga,ræra
Hvat say du da bunshka bæra
Hvat say du da bunnska bæra
Litera mae við drengi
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]
[Twilight]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]
[War-Handed] At first, their charge toward the distantly winking Realm had been exhilerating. And cause to watch the Fostern guiding them. Plans made, broken, remade in the bullish Modi's head. All as the glowing bridge had receeded more and more into the distance behind them.
Soon enough, the difference between the world he knows and loves and this strange, nowhere path they tread becomes close, and obvious. A joyful murderer in the world he knows.. Joe has strode more than one battlefield certain in the knowledge he ruled there. Unopposed. Unstoppable as only the Fenrir teach their Modi's to believe they are.
Here he is a shade. An infant. Something made of half-formed ideas and uncertainties.
Cowardice still finds no greater foothold than it ever has. The formidable Modi's senses shine delightedly in the face of field upon field of blood and carnage. The lust of an addict in a room made of cocaine, Joe's face twitches dreamily as he looks at the signs.
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 3 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]
[Gut Song] (Intelligence 3 + Garou Lore 2. Diff 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] They begin searching the paths, studying the signposts, following the branching trails of crushed bone, bleached white from some unseen sun, gone yellow with age. They pass other battles, other memories, other deathes, other lives, hear some terrible call, some cry of victory, some agonizing bellow of defeat - the stark crush of shattered bone, metal against metal, teeth against flesh, hooks against eyes - down the paths that grow and branch and branch and grow as organically ornate as bleached white corals blooming under some salted sea.
Each of them leads the compact group astray. Sorrow remains close by the Godi's flank as he pads through the haunted paths, relying on the straightened ties of their much-diminished totem to keep and call their pack back together when one or the other wanders off, lured by the spray of arterial blood, but the familiar stink of viscera laid open beneath an undiminished sun. In the end, though, they find the path they seek - one branch, then another, all the past battles - until ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT - is the only promise left, blood red letters on the old bone signpost.
[Gut Song] "...The War Sound."
It is the culmination of countless battles. Wars. Fights. Brawls. Sprawling Armageddons. Each culture, civilization or pantheon of rulers, emperors and kings has had their version of the end of the world and within each could be found this. This sound. The sound of glory and hate. The sound of violence and blood. The desperation of the woeful and the eagerness of the bloodlusting. Here, within the War Memory, the sound was as the Wind. Constant. Present. Sometimes at a lull but never far from hearing.
At once it is disquieting. At once, the Gut~Song is humbled.
The pallour of grief touches his features, ashen from exhaustion, raw nerves and wild eyes skating the dank mists that swirl and collect in the rust coloured airs, cloudbanks of brown smoke, whorling overhead. The stench of gunpowder, iron, blood, bile, piss and shit mingle with such pungency, it brings a hand up to cover his nostrils for a moment which slashes away from his features a second later, a feral snap of open jaws and tension of hunched body.
"...I remember this..."
Eyes shut as they step bast the nimbus of light that heralded their arrival, the moonbridge's departure a hollow thing, as the moorings that anchor it here give way. The path behind would not be trod again. Only the seeking of death could bring them to their Home and Bed once more. Only the fall, Rage churning new.
"...I remember this..."
Something shuddering in the Skald's voice, drifting left of the group, eyes out into the gloom that no gaze might penetrate. Sign posts dot the landscape, beckoning on travelers to War's and Battles yet unseen and his hand reaches out to Wooden posts, brushing fingers across the wooden struts. A flicker. A spasm. The sign post is nudged, a grim sneer lining the Skald's faces.
"...I remember this but not enough to recall. Dark smoke and brown stains. Smudges of existence torn away and lived again. A memory of the Fight and the Fall. Echoes given voices, bodies and blade. Gun and Fist. Echoes-..."
-his voice trails them, a humbled thing even as the snarl of mists parts before their movements and the next Sign post, after dozens more, flashes into view. Blood red title, carved by some errant hand, exhausted in war. His gaze lifts, head tilts.
"...War forever is no paradise, though the blood thrums and boils with each new rise." A grimness to join that sneer. "...No Valhalla for the glorious dead here. Shades and Echoes...."
[Blood Summons] The Godi seems drained by the time they start off in the direction of the fight they seek. His Rage eclipses his ability to control himself, and he bristles with frustration and mounting anger when he cannot come up with battles that he himself has not participated in himself. The female Skald has better luck, and she lifts her muzzle in the direction of the battle they seek. He chuffs, irritation raising his hackles and tightening his musculature, and they pass by a thousand temptations, a thousand conflicts that call like a siren to a sailor passing by. Sorrow remains at his flank, and before long--Gut Song ruminates along the way, the Fostern's ears cocked to take in what he says but his newly scarred throat silent--they make it to the battle they've come to witness.
ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT
He is not the first one inside. Not out of cowardice, not out of a need to pull himself together, but because this is Truth in Frenzy's pack. This is their battle. He stands off to the side to let the others enter first
[Gut Song] (Hoowah!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[War-Handed] BASEMENT
That word has to be important right now. In fact, it has to be all of the bullish Modi's vision. From 'B' to 'T' It is the whole world. That is what will keep out the rest. The scents and promises of a richly sown field. His own purpose, or its recounting- to left and right. The sign straight ahead.
Vengeance straight ahead.
Joe's face never twitches from its grim resolve. Chilling eyes simply flicker from the side to the field beyond in the instant before he strides past and into memory.
[Twilight] They are not the first to fight this battle. They are not are not the first to relive this battle. Again and again and again, six Garou enter a long dark tunnel - the two scouts ahead, the theurge, the three ahrouns behind - crawling down a narrow tunnel that could fit them two cronis or three hispo abreast.
The grade is steep, curving downward through the darkness towards a rising heat. In the distance, the sounds of capering banes echo back to them, laughter made wrong, metal on slate, growling like the the backwards grind of broken machinery.
None of them take Truth-in-Frenzy's place. They were his pack; they follow him - even his ghost, falling in naturally behind him, Thomas creeping in his wake like Banshee, to guard his back, War-Handed taking sklora-Myrgen's position, Sorrow at his flank, as his packmate, Cold Death - while Blood Summons finds himself at the center of the pack, as the theurge. They are followed by another Ahroun, Kire's ghostly echo, behind.
There are things that happen here.
There are things that always happen.
Every time, there is a blind curve ahead.
EVery time, an enormous centipede appears above them, waving an impossible number of legs, its carapace gleaming with some oily substance, skittering up the wall as if it had suckers on every one of its hundred feet. It turns, looks - a face of pale, soft flesh, with gleaming compound eyes and opens its mouth - both finely human and impossibly mandibular - to shriek an alarm.
Their alpha shouts: "Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!"
This is when Kemp and Iona [Thomas] step to the blind curve and wait for any backups that may arrive. This is when sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] and Soledad [Sorrow] leap for the bane, and in four hits, bring it down before it can utter a sound.
[Blood Summons] He'd heard the story of what happened that night, heard how Truth in Frenzy put himself in a position to protect a Fostern Theurge and a group of Cliaths, but it isn't until they step into the battleground's memory that he actually sees what happens, that he actually gets an idea of what the group was up against. He walks in the center of the group, feeling lighter and smaller than usual, feeling more attuned to his lupine essence, and then they come to a blind curve, and then that enormous centipede appears above them, and then:
Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!
The sentry Bane is taken down in seconds, Blood Summons' normal urge to throw himself into battle tamped down by the memory of this place. He doesn't throw himself forward. He prepares to summon.
[Gut Song] Detachment.
It is the first thing that comes with the overlaying of an echo, sifting through his memories and thoughts. A happening of moments existing within this moment of war. He was not the ragabash blacksmith, but her senses told him what was around and available. He saw with clarity and reached with effortlessness, through her movements and motions and tore away the flimsy reflexes of this ghost to replace them with his own.
A snarl creeps his lips, body flushing from the Homid skin to the ashen gray of the Crinos form, looming into same vicinity as the War Hero before him. Orders are dished and the flash of the Centipede is-
-Ignored. His gaze seems rapt with Kemp, watching the careful plod of movement. The scars littering shape and form, cutting swathes through grey fur and furrows over flesh. He follows each motion as if he could track the line of fate. Follow the thread to where the Rotagar led and that inevitable point in the stream that beckoned the snip of scissors. The ending of a life.
The War sound thrummed like drums in his head, even as the oppression of heat billowed up the tunnel to meet them. Nothing but echoes. Nothing but ghosts. He wades in the Adren's wake, his shadow and his memory. Something murmurs under his breath...
...lost in the Tumult.
[War-Handed] Beaten like a Sword, made to understand his place in the ebb and flow of combat, inwardly, Joe coils and leaps. The barks are barely out of Kemp's mouth before Joe, happily, responds. He'd missed that growl. The wracking jeer of some fuck- up being pointed out. Its reverberations in his head the fourth, or eighth, or eleventh time pulls the same thing from him. A leap into the teeth of the bane. Immediate reaction.
Happiness at things being as they should be.
Obedience is right. Being the leader oneself comes with far more than simple right or wrong. Far, far shakier ground. Nevertheless, he breathes the battle as Sklora-Myrgen had. But he looks for Vengeance. Someone to pick out. So that he can say to them later, again and again- 'you did it. you are to blame'
[Twilight] The centipede hits the ground before the alarum is sounded, its pale face going slack at the seams, sagging through the middle as if it were made of melted cheesecloth and watery papier-mache.
The tunnel continues to twist and turn ahead of them, the heat rising, humid and thick, the stench impossible to ignore, not the ripe, sweet vegetal rot one associates with southern marshes but some twisted cousin of it, blackened, made sulferous, death given over to death.
There is a pale green glow ahead of them, where the tunnel flattens toward the battlefield; they can catch the scents of two garou and three more things, deeply wrong, blood and bile, these, the afterbirth of the stink of fear.
Their Alpha crawls forward, all but vanishing into the shadows. Iona - Thomas - crouches in his wake, slinking slowly, tail curled as if she were wholly unseen, for all that she is clearly visible to all.
[There are other voices around them, half-intelligible, the high-tongue broken upon the alter of the Wyrm, remade in its image.
"...Anhkahahn [unintelligible] hurry. They're [??] pressed hard upstairs."
"What does [??] want? Going [??] as I can. Not like [?? ??] faster."
"Just hurry."
And then a squealing shriek.]
---
Then, they round the corner. The lambent green light illuminates the room, the bleak shadows that dark and whorl at the edge of the vortex of The wyrmhole. There are two Crinos Garou standing at the mouth of the vortex, pulling banes into being from the mouth of the hole, while three others - carapaces still wet from their birth - circle the room, patrolling, chittering in their dank, oleaginous language. Ahead, another is being pulled wet from the darkness of the vortex, the Black Spiral Dancers are peeling back the shadowed caul from its form, freeing it from the raw, shell of its creation.
---
This is what happens around them - these are the ghosts they follow:
Kemp and Iona [Thomas] scout to the lip of the tunnel, the younger ragabash unaware that she was not cloaked in shadows.
The Dancers turn together, descended on Iona who stands out stark against the darkness. The rest of the Garou rush down the tunnel, and the banes swarmed.
Soledad [Sorrow] and Kemp leap for the Dancers. Iona [Thomas] too. One manages to cut into Iona [Thomas] -- the only wound she sustained through the whole of the battle. Kemp takes another Dancer down in two hits, the first to fall. His body is shoved into the Wyrmhole; choking the great vortex. Iona [Thomas] and Soledad [Sorrow] have more trouble with the second spiral, but finally Soledad brings it down, all with one great bite.
Mama [Blood Summons] is in the center of the circle, chanting her summons, calling on a spirit to choke off the Wyrmhole. The four banes close on the group, intent on stopping the Theurge. One of the four breaks for Kire's ghost - who stands his ground and takes the hit.
The other three go for Mama [Blood Summons]. Soledad [Sorrow] and Iona [Thomas] do not defend her. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] does, taking two hits, wounding him badly. He returns the blows, tearing into one of the banes.
The battle plays out around them. The three banes charging the Theurge strike twice each. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] takes two; Kemp takes four hits. The first two don't scratch his thickened hide. The third wounds him.
The fourth kills him.
He does not rise.
---
REWIND
Their Alpha is cloaked in shadows at the mouth of the tunnel. Iona [Thomas] is visible there. The dancers turn from the mouth of the tunnel, hooks in hand, the chitinous bane slick with foul afterbirth. They charge forward.
Inits:
[sM [War-Handed] 17
Sol [Sorrow] 15
Kemp 14
Banshee [Thomas] 14
Banes 14
Kire 13
Mama [Blood Summons] 10
Dancers 8
Wyrmhole: effect init = 0. ]
[Twilight] [Dancers
Adam
1. Gouge Thomas with hook!
R1. Grapple with hook!
R2. Try to toss into Wyrmhole!
Ben
1. Finish helping Fred get born
R1. Bite Iona
Wyrmhole
...spits out one new bane per round]
[Blood Summons] [1: Summon Surtur.]
[Twilight] [Kire] 1. Guarding Mama
Adam, reflexive:
"Kill the [???] Theurge!"
Banes
Chad
1. Breaks rank and attacks Kire!
R1. Again!
Dan
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
El
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
Fred
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!
[Gut Song] (Initial Action: Split:
1 a) Dodge Hook.
b) Claw Adam.
Rage 1: Dodge Adam.
Rage 2: Grapple Ben
Rage 3: Bite Ben)
[Twilight] [Kemp] Rushing in to try and get to one of the Dancers to kill the fucker and stop the birthing/pulling thing.
1a claw
1b claw
1 r claw
[Sorrow/Soledad] Reflexive - Resist Pain
1a. BITE DAN.
1b. BITE DAN.
Rage 1: BITE DAN
Rage 2: BITE DAN
- moving on to El if Dan goes down.]
[Twilight] Ooops! Ben changed actions.
Ben
Changing actions:
1. Drop hook, bite Kemp +1 diff
R1. Bite Kemp +1 diff
[War-Handed] (Crinos, Resist Pain)
First- Split:
1a: Block for BS, El
1b: Block for BS, Fred
1c: Block for BS, Fred
1r: Grapple Fred
2r: Bite El, called shot, something spicy like the neck.
[War-Handed] REDECLARE
Take hits from El, Fred aimed at BS.
1a: Floating block for rage actions.
1b: grapple El
1c: bite El, called shot neck
1r: grapple Fred,
2r: bite fred
[War-Handed] (Grapple El- dex/brawl is 8-3 for split= 5)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (Bite El! Pool now 4, diff 5-2 for grapple, assumed.)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[War-Handed] (Damage: str8+1 crinos bite, +2 dice for called shot, +1 for sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] El soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] 1a. BITE DAN -2
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] 1b. BITE DAN. -3
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] In seconds, chaos erupts. At the command from one of the Dancers --
"Kill the Theurge!"
-- the banes already birthed rise up in a vortex of fury, swarming straight at Blood Summons.
The Theurge isn't fazed. He closes her eyes. He summons. And War-Handed and Sorrow, ghosting in place of sklora-Myrgen and Soledad, charge forward in front of him.
War-Handed throws himself at one of the banes, Sorrow another.
Meanwhile, at the mouth of the tunnel, their Alpha tears out the throat of one of the Dancers, all at a go.
[Gut Song] (Split 1b) Claw Adam. Dex 5 + Brawl 3 - 3 Dice for split -1 for Weapon length. WP. Diff. 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]
[Gut Song] (Strength 6 + 1 Claw + 1 Sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Soak! correct pool.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [*officially flashes boobs*]
[Twilight] One of the four banes charges at Kire:
Chad
Attacking Kire
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-savior-] [Kire soaking!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[-savior-] First blood, hot and red, the only pure thing in these tunnels: Kire's, splashed out as a bane -- a skullface, straggle-haired, emaciated mockery of a human -- lashes at him with its talons.
- who does not have a doppleganger in the fight.
[Twilight] Dan
Attacking Blood Summons -- deflected by whom?
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] This attack - by a chittinous bane - was originally deflected by sklora-Myrgen. They can see the ghost of the Silver Fang superimposed over the iron-gray fur of their own Modi, as he charges into the breach, preventing the bane from reaching Blood Summons, taking a grievous wound of his own.
[War-Handed] (Joe officially flashes his boobs too)
[Twilight] [-savior-] El
Going for Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp in the original fight.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +4]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] [Except, in this reality, El is currently grappled. He goes to break the grapple instead!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[War-Handed] (strength/brawl pool currently 11. Good luck, fuggin' El.)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Twilight] [-savior-] Fred
Attacking Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp - originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
This time, by Joe.[/i]
8+2 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [1: Rituals+Wits: Summon Surtur Jaggling! OH CHRIST DON'T BOTCH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Blood Summons] [Gnosis: PLEASE BE HAPPY]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam: Gouge Thomas!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 7, 10 (Failure at target 7)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
R1: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El. -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing targets).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +2 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Joe
R2: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El! -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing actions).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +5 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 1 BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 2: BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] This is their Alpha's last offense action:
[Truth in Frenzy] 1 r claw a fresh bane!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Truth in Frenzy] dam
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[-savior-] [chad soaks!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Bite Adam: Split action. -2 for split -1 for weapon length. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Rage 1: Bite. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Gut Song] (2nd Rage bite. Same)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (str 6 + 1 Bite + 5 sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Gut Song]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Gut Song] (Rage 3; Bite El. + 1 Diff for action change. -2 for partial immobile.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Twilight] Their Alpha charges for the bane attacking the ghostly Glass Walker in their midst; he claws the bane, pulls up and turns flanking, ready to intercept the next round of hits from the ghostly crew.
Gut-Song turns, wheels on the second Spiral, and in three great bites - one of which misses - eviscerates the fallen thing. Intestines spill hot over the floor as Gut-Song surges up, throws the corpse back into the pulsing maw of the Wyrmhole and then turns, snapping at the bane his modi has grappled for him.
El Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Twilight] Now the banes turn again, attacking en masse, livid things, snarling, feral.
The first, wounded to near insubstantiality in their replay, surges toward Blood Summons. In the original, sklora-Myrgen, already wounded from intercepting the bane's first attack, interposes his body between the Theurge and the bane once more.
In this ghostly replay -
[-savior-] Dan
Attacking mama - deflected by sM originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-savior-] [dam +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] Sorrow: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] The next bane to launch itself at Blood Summons in the rewind is El. In the original, he surges forward, finally wounding their Alpha.
[-savior-] El
Attacking Mama, deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[-savior-] [damage +5]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
This time around, though, War-Handed has the snarling beast grappled.
Break Grapple!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] The battle lurches onward; finally, they see what they came to see. The echoes around them seem to slow down - time dilates with expectancy, their own, nothing more. They see:
[-savior-] Fred
Deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-savior-] [Damage +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Truth in Frenzy] dun dun dun....
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3 (Failure at target 8) [WP]
The fourth bane, the last bane surge toward Blood Summons. They see Truth-in-Frenzy, hispo-formed, once more interpose his massive body between the Theurge and the attacker. They smell the ichor on its mouth, the blood-haunted lust, the death-dusted promise of a creature forced of hate, spat back into the world by a vortex of corruption, still slimy from its birth - as it opens up their Alpha, with a hit so sure, so thunderous is breaks his spine, cuts through the vertebrae down nearly in two, sends the vital beast staggering forward to the floor, his front paws spasming, his hindquarters slack.
He falls.
He does not rise.
He does not rise again.
[Twilight] In one of the iterations of the battle, Sorrow surges forward in her Alpha's place. Every time they fight, she is already wounded.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Twilight] - and she falls, unconscious, but not dead.
[Gut Song] (Soak time, bitches! Full Health, 9 AGG.)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Twilight] In another iteration, Gut-Song takes the full brunt of the terrible hit that felled his Alpha. He falls, fails - awakens just outside the path to the realm, the deep, abiding ache of the wound that ended his Alpha, that ended this iteration of the battle for him - already fading, like spun sugar in the rain.
[Blood Summons] [Joe
COME ON YOU UGLY FUCK]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Twilight] They surge through again, playing out the motions now, they are crawling into the hole again, they know the motions, the scents, the feel of the ground beneath their feet. The repeat themselves, time and again - for just this moment -
- War-Handed intercepts the death blow. He is already so wounded that an errant breeze would kill him. He falls. Awakens outside.
[Blood Summons] [Bob
YOU TOO MOTHER FUCKER]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Twilight] Four battles; four ghosts. Two deaths, two fall insensate.
This is the battle they came to fight; this is the blow they came to know. Each of them feels it: the same angle, the same burn of fang and ichor, the same sudden shock as the blow takes them down, as it took him down.
One by one by one.
Four battles, four ghosts, two deaths, none of them real. Two fall, unmoving in the dream of a battle, until they are revived. Sorrow, by the hand of a Godi. Blood Summons, by a talen in Sorrow's hand.
---
One more time, all of it - they simply play their parts. The spirits arrived, the banes scrawl, the battle rages. They fall when their others fell, watch them rage back, watch them learn their
lessons
- that accrued after the death of their Alpha. Fight together; take a blow. Fall. Come back.
Die.
Be reborn.
[-savior-] By the end, none of them even know what the fuck is going on anymore. Four of them are frenzied. One is dead. One is still sane, still alive -- but it's too damn dark to see, and the air is fetid with blood, with visceral stink, with taint and corruption.
All they know is:
It's over. The throb of hate, hate, hate in their minds is gone. The source is closed. Overhead, the battle rages on, but none will come to replenish the ones killed now.
They've won. They've lost one of their most respected warriors, and nearly every single one of them has died and come back tonight, and nearly always for someone else's sake --
and they've won.
[Gut Song] ...The Brownish haze dims the realm, a distant Thunderstorm on the horizon, this limbo of thick turgid mists, bleak rolling landscapes and the promise of a Scab, pocked with black skies and artificial lights (Home sweet home) scathing the distance. Waking here comes with expectation. Being here comes with that vague ache that will remain for the time it takes him to go from the physical to the shores of Valhalla.
We will get there. Someday.
Kemp had said no hurry. No rush. He'd gone into war with fangs and claws and fallen as Fenris had said he would. The Wyrm had suffered for many long years under his efforts and if his pack had anything to say on the matter...
...It would continue to do so.
The Skald pulls himself up, settling to a wobbly stand. His jaws unhinge, clacking sharply, gaze traveling to Chicago's barren and eerie glow, then North and beyond the the purple veined clouds that hang above the Hive lands.
A Howl rises. Slow, steady, ominous and promising...
The Fenrir are coming. Brace yourselves.
[Twilight] [- and, scene!]
Post a Comment