[the oneiroi] [Jess's Rules, Take Two
I have no hope that this'll be resolved quickly. There's a skull. But it should be a star. Just don't botch a lot of times, okay? Then we're all good. Then the risk is so minimal it's like only your arm'll get torn off, okay? Minimal rolling, if there's combat, it's gonna be Jess-style combat. No post order unless it stops making sense/I am driven mad, and then I'll tell you to stop. Liz said she was going to be late, so Kora'll be NPCed for a bit.
Rule 1: Trust me.
Rule 2: Listen.
Rule 3: Seriously, man. That's all. Got a problem, go on.]
[Face of Death] [investigationatin' yer FACE!: int + investigation]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [wits + streetwise: C'mon, Kahseeno, you know you love me]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] A month ago, two bone-gnawers and a Get of Fenris stood outside of this building because Lila'd asked them to look into a problem. They'd all been separated from each other within minutes, but they'd found out what the problem was: spirits, wanting attention [adore me (give in to me)]. Spirits, who'd taken up residence in the dilapidated, falling-apart building that Hill House had bought and fixed up [funding (always need more)] as best it could and was now housing for people in transition, was now housing for people being helped, welfare babies, those who were on the down and out. Mostly down, according to those Spirits. So those spirits, whatever the fuck they were, with their goat-eyes, their sleek, quickness, their strange effect on the umbra, they'd been helping the residents Out.
Out of the picture. Out of their misery. Out, out, out of their fucking minds.
And those three garou, they'd left with information, but they'd also lost some things. Blood, sure. Dignity, maybe. An eye, the use of an arm. Gnosis, willpower. They'd sacrificed: had sacrifices torn from them.
Tonight, wee hours of the morning, the garou who're standing near the apartment building aren't the same. Just: the ragabash who'd, in the end, been the one to make the deal, who'd lost her eye, who'd promised: back next month, more attention, we'll work something out -
And: two theurges from two tribes with very different perspectives.
And: two galliards. Lila, who, after last time, wasn't going to let Joey go off and lose both of her eyes, who's just along to record events, hopefully, to aid where necessary. And Sorrow, who is wise, who - where she lacks wisdom - carries the wisdom of ancestors on her back, in her spine, in her eyes, and who'd been asked along by Lila, if not Joey, if not Blood Summons.
It's a different crew. So, of course, tonight'll go a little differently.
[Sorrow] wondertwin powers: activate!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)
to the oneiroi
[Sorrow] Sorrow, who stands outside the building, her hands in the front pocket of her worn jeans. These are the jeans she wears for all such events, ragged at the cuffs and waist, worn pale and washed soft at the thighs and the knees, the color a gradiant definition of indigo, from its palest to its most middling inflections. The jeans are only dark at the seams, where the panels are doubled, double-sewn, joined together with thread. The jeans are only dark at the seams because the blood gets between the tightly clustered stitches that hold the garment together. Because the blood there cannot be scrubbed out.
Sorrow, who stands outside the building, tall, taller, her spine straight and her shoulders neat and level inside the soft cotton of her old black t-shirt. Which says PIXIES in white letters on the black background. Which does not mean: the fae.
She is humming under her breath -
what's that floating in the water
oh neptune's only daughter
- the TV on the Radio version, mind you. All acoustic and interior, as if the song were a sacred chant, Navajo or Russian Orthodox, multipartite. she just has the one line, though, which stays level, low. This is because she is thinking. Those closest to her might feel the supple thread of promise in the air around her, some invocation of the spiritual, some call on that self, the part of the self that ties the fleshy body to this shadow world, umbilical. She's a guest here, though, the story teased out in pieces, fractured out, not unlike a puzzle.
"They've kept their side of the bargain?" - this is said to Lila, and the jerk of her head with the pronoun identifies its antecedent as the strange and mysterious they, the spirits infesting the house, driving the down-and-out, the on-their-way somewhere, transitional, which means: between - back down, into whatever was haunting them, into whereever they came from.
It has been a month. It has been a moon.
The old contract expires. A new one is due.
This things have meaning.
[Rain of Brass Petals] This is how a lot of bad jokes start.
Three Fenrir, a Child of Gaia, and a Fury walk into the umbra. She isn't thinking about these sorts of things, though. She isn't thinking of bad jokes, she's thinking of the fact that she had offered, once, to help Joey with this when she had heard about the little goat-legged men. The Spirits. Adam knew spirits.
She comes with them all of them, the different perspective. Not the voice of reason, but... different.
She waits, she listens to what people have to say. Her eyes fall on the dilapidated building. Over rocks and bricks and stone what-have-yous. This place could be great, could be wonderful and inspiring if... it had the right push.
"How many people live here?" she asks the other garou.
[Face of Death] Of the three who first went into this building, two are still alive. Joey's the only one here tonight. Nate wasn't asked along, wasn't informed of this latest excursion to the apartment building filled with pain. Joey wanted spirit talkers, Garou who might do better than a quick fix, a band-aid, something to relieve the residents temporarily. So while many by now know the story of why Laughs in the Face of Death sometimes walks around with a patch over her eye, why she most days stares at the world with one milk-white, blind eye, the only ones she said, "Sure, come with me to check this out," were the Theurges she knew. She doesn't object to Lila's presence, watching over the Cliath to ensure she makes it out tonight with the full use of her body. She doesn't object to Kora, who she hasn't spoken with in some time.
She talks to them now. Tells them what she's learned since she was here last, when she bargained with a spirit to spare the people who lived here. People Indira sacrificed herself to protect, too. Joey doesn't mention names. There are a lot of them. People she's met and spoken with, people she's tried to find out more about, who she's tried to get to open up to her. Mostly she just says what she said when she first showed up in The Brotherhood, missing an eye and not knowing if she'd ever regain the use of her right arm.
Joey wants to help these people, and while she would gladly give up pieces of herself to keep the spirits back, mostly what she wants is a chance to help the people directly. And she can't do that if they're being driven insane, if they're suddenly dying.
They're gathered in the Umbra, staring up at the reflection of the building where people looking for second chances sleep. Joey stands near Lila, her hands in the pockets of her worn purple hoody, bat bag slung across her torso. Her hair has been tugged back into a pair of messy buns. There is no patch to hide her missing eye, not tonight, not among other warriors.
"A few," Joey answers Adam first, giving room for Lila to answer Kora. Then, "They're not scared of the night anymore. People haven't gone mad or died like they were. And this looks different," she waves a hand at the building. "I think the contract's held."
[Face of Death] [percept + alert, diff 8]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 6, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] Over a month ago, a Fostern Ragabash had heard the story of what went down at this dilapidated house under Hill House's subsidiary and asked her peer why spirits were such assholes. He'd had an answer for her, a very stock, neutral answer that hadn't passed judgment, and it had seemed to placate her. At least, it hadn't riled her up, even if it hadn't helped her understand why her sister was now walking around with a useless arm and an eye that looked whited out from a storm none of them could see.
The weather is worse now than it was a month ago. Even in the Umbra, it's a cold, dreary day, yet the Godi is not dressed for cold weather. He's dressed as though the cold doesn't touch him, as though his Rage is enough to offset whatever chill might be in the air: combat boots, denim jeans, t-shirt, all black with red-and-green suspenders standing out and keeping his pants in place.
He's the only male in the group, the only mule. This is really apropos of nothing. They're here together, to help Joey, to help the people of this building. To do it without placation or sacrifice, to do it permanently.
Sorrow asks a question; Rain of Brass Petals.
Blood Summons is silent for now.
[Face of Death] [percept + alert, diff 9]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [laaa laaa laaaa!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] [Alertness+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Oooh?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 3 (Botch x 2 at target 9)
[Blood Summons] [Alertness+Perception 2: Electric Boogaloo.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Botch x 1 at target 9)
[Blood Summons] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Willpower!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Per + Alertness Dif 8
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: What? +1
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] Per + Alertness Dif 9
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 10 (Failure at target 9)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: What? +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 9) Re-rolls: 2
[Sorrow] rerolling mah 10s! x1
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5 (Failure at target 8)
[Sorrow] Rerolling mah 10s x 2
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Failure at target 9)
[the oneiroi] Blood Summons, She Who Offers Sorrow and Waking Dream all notice this: That the umbra, here -- although it looks as it should -- although it looks as if it's Weaver-calcified, as if it's touching very near taint, without quite being tainted, just the taint one expects from the city, besmirchment, everything faded, tarnished, bleak, but not lovely, desolate, but not clean -- it doesn't feel that way. The building, and some of the street around the building, which has an altogether-more-solid-than-expected presence, feels pure. That's it: purity. Like the whole place has been cleansed, again and again; like this is the closest to reverence the umbra, here, can get. Like the Gauntlet, it's not quite so thick, here, like it's thinning, like it's soap-bubble transparence, like it can pop at any moment.
In contrast, the urban wasteland behind them seems even darker than it should be. More foul. There are hints, on the umbral echo of a street, of some battle waged, fought, a couple of weeks ago. Churned up, subtle signs.
to a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow
[Face of Death] Even with just one eye, with vision halved, depth perception lost, Joey is still a perceptive creature. Months ago, she sat silently and watched the world around her without communicating with it, mostly. She's learned to look deeper, search harder, to not just look but see.
No sooner have the words, I think the contract's held, passed her lips than Joey blinks up at the building's face. She rubs at her right eye, squints up at it again. Cants her head at an angle, all the tricks she's learned over the years that sometimes work to help her look at things from a different angle without actually moving.
"Fuck." She looks at those who have gathered with her, who have come to help her with this, seeking out those who might be seeing what she sees.
"It's not different, just hidden," she says. And she notices the shadow. Shadows. The Rotagar slips to the rear of the group, faces out. They may be surrounded, but they won't be set upon unawares.
"We're surrounded."
[the oneiroi] They've kept their side of the bargain, Sorrow asks. And Lila's answer is succinct. "Yes. I believe they have. Joey will be able to confirm - " and a glance for the No Moon who's standing at the golden-haired creature's side, brief. Lila is wide-eyed, and Lila is dreamy, and she doesn't look like she's paying attention at all. Even here, she's otherworldly; dichotomy of flesh-and-spirit keeping her firmly in the camp of doesn't-quite-belong.
Then: tension touches the nape of her neck. "Incoming," she says, "Five shadows - they're dividing, circling - " We're surrounded, Joey says, and whereas Joey's slipped to the rear of the group, Lila's taken the front. Protective, theurges-in-the-middle, a nod for Kora, take that side. "I don't know what to expect," she says, low-voiced. "Are they shadows like the shadows that got your arm, Joey?"
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Take that side says Lila wordlessly; and wordlessly Sorrow takes that side, her eyes sharpening, her head swinging to follow the suggestions made by Joey and Lila. That they are surrounded, that five shadows are coming toward them, hungry, different: surrounded, being circled like sheep, herded by a pack-of-things.
Sorrow slips from her humanskin into her wolfskin. This is how she does it: oneskin, twoskin, until she is on her fourpaws, in her fur coat, her eyes dark now, but not blue, the gray fur marked by dark guardhairs, down her spine, tipping her ears, along her flanks. Another set of eyes. Or - at least - a different set of eyes.
[Rain of Brass Petals] There's a familiar, wide-eyed terror that creeps into her expression. They've all seen it before.
It is, however, swallowed down. And she paces. Takes a step forward, then back. She moves an arc, away from the building. She's suddenly tense, a little too in tune with something for her own comfort. Terror is replaced with longing, and she looks at the building. And whatever part of her is touched with instinct instead of reason tells her to stay.
So, she does.
We're surrounded.
The Fury grits her teeth, and lets out a low sound of obvious displeasure.
She's in the middle, and doesn't seem any less tense. Five of them.
"... what happens if we go in? I have a feeling they're going to try and herd us there."
[Blood Summons] For a moment, brief as a sneeze, Blood Summons looks stricken. His muscles tense up, his breathing halts, and he stares at the building as though it's started speaking to him; given his moon, his capabilities, that isn't completely beyond the realm of possibility, that the spirit of the building has started calling out to him, but it's as though whatever it's said has rattled him.
The metis is normally more perceptive than he is tonight. Blame it on the moon, on his thoughts being preoccupied, on the world calling to him from all sides. He doesn't notice the shadows until Joey says "Fuck," and maybe even not then.
He blinks and shakes his head as the Rotagar moves to the back of the group, facing outward. Instinctive--that is to say, without thinking--he moves to stand between Lila and Joey, keeping the Cliath Theurge in the center of the group.
Five shadows. Circling.
The Skald melts into her wolf skin, and Blood Summons fights the urge to follow suit.
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Mysterous Doom NPC +4]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Are they shadows liek the shadows that got your arm, Joey?
"I don't know," says Joey, adopting a defensive stance at the rear of the group. The Garou form a loose circle around Adamidas, protective of the younger, lower ranked Theurge. "And I wound up inside-" wound up, when her curiosity got the better of her and she had to get inside, had to see at all costs "-last time I was here. That's where I met the goat man."
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] Fight there - barks the wolf-formed Sorrow. Not dire-wolf, not monster-wolf, just wolf-wolf, indicating the surface of the street where the umbral has been churned up, the signs are subtle, difficult to read. This place feels right.
Right: she means, pure. She means, better than it should.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] she who offers sorrow wants to study one of the shadows very closely indeed. When she does, she is struck still-as-stone, immobile, un-moving, and there's a voice in her head, a murmuring thing, whisper, whisper, What do you want, it says, We'd like to help you, it says.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] "Don't shift."
He doesn't say it's a bad idea to shift right now, doesn't give any reasoning for why the Cliaths and his soon-to-be sister ought to stick to their human skins. Not to his face, he's been accused to being too damn taciturn, of being like most Get this way; he's been accused of not giving adequate reasoning for saying the things that he says or suggesting the things that he suggests, as though he expects his rank and his wisdom to make up for his lack of words. That's all they get from him: don't do it.
"We're going in."
[Rain of Brass Petals] "Oneiroi," she says, "fear and desire, dreams and nightmares..."
She stops. She regards the garou around her, and on the shadows that she can't... quite... touch...Can't quite focus on. Can't quite get. The female runs her tongue over her teeth, and she files through her memory banks to try and remember whatever else she might know about these spirits.
"They're messengers," she says to the garou, "and so long as there's some light, their shadows.. so long as there's some light we're in a vulnerable position."
A beat.
"They're not big fans of Furies."
[Sorrow] In the darkness, in the shadows, in the ring that they have created around Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow-the-wolf goes still. Still: so still that she is not moving. Her ears are not pricking, this way and that, swiveling to follow the sound as the other Garou speak, as Blood Summons offers his caution don't shift, which is too late for her impetuous wolfskinned self. Still: so still that her tail is held unnaturally straight, not the fine swish-swish of expectation, wariness. Not that. Just: unmoving, like a statue of a wolf. Like a memory of a photograph, painted into living flesh.
[Sorrow] You're the shadow. she thinks back, at the voice in her head, at the mind that has found its way beneath her skin. - does the light sing too? Do you speak to it? Or are you twins separated by a mirror, broken apart, into pieces.
Shadow: let me go and I will tell you what I want.
to the oneiroi
[Face of Death] Something tries to get into Joey's head. Her one-eyed gaze turns sharply, focuses on one shadow in particular. Is it you?
Adam explains what the shadows are. It doesn't really make Joey relax, doesn't make the tension in her lean frame ease. She slides one foot back, not turning just yet, not wanting to show her back to these shadows that put them in a vulnerable position if there's some light. They're not big fans of Furies. Despite herself, a corner of Joey's mouth twitches mirthlessly.
Don't shift, says the Fostern, which Joey had no intention of doing. There was a time, a long time ago, when her pack had a Designated Talking Guy. Someone who stayed in Homid even though that wasn't his birth form, because someone needed a human-shaped mouth with which to communicate. Joey doesn't intend to fill that role this time around, but still. She kept to her human skin the last time. She plans on keeping to it this time.
She slides her other foot back, still reluctant to turn when she notices Kora's unnatural stillness. It's the only thing, really, that could make her take her eyes off the shadows. "Somethin's wrong with She Who Offers Sorrow." A beat, a thought, a second to ponder. "Somethin' tried to get into my head. It might've gotten to her."
[the oneiroi] You're the shadow, it says. You're between-things, can't trust a between-things thing, doesn't even do its job, doesn't even do anything, unless its paws are bloody, unless it's talons are dripping, where's the line, o Slaughterer. Doesn't sound angry, this the Shadow. Sounds, if anything, amused -- and distant, like listening to an old recording on a wax cylinder. Why should we let you go if we can just take what you want out've you when we've got you? Answer that riddle.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Joey says something's wrong with the Skald, and the Godi takes his attention off of their surroundings, they telling him nothing about the shadows circling them, to look at the wolf-statue behind him. His nostrils flare, his eyes narrow. His voice is gruff when he speaks.
"Sorrow." If she doesn't answer, he says it again: "Sorrow."
[Sorrow] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Rain of Brass Petals] She looks at Sorrow, and some part of her wants to articulate the rush of thoughts coming to mind. NOrmally, Adam is very good at saying whatever comes to mind. Right now, it's not working-
"They fell out of favor with the Wendigo, because they have a tendency to get pretty weaver-touched. They eat minds as payment for good deeds done. She... is there some way we-" she looks at her for a second, stares really hard at the talesinger. And plans formed. Oh, such plans!
[the oneiroi] [NPC to Kora: NO!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Because what you want cannot be taken, not-shadow. says Sorrow, answering the riddle with the only answer that comes to mind; with the only answer a Get of Fenris would know. - because what you want, Shadow, must be given. She cannot move, frozen in place, frozen in thought, frozen into the Shadow inside the realm of her thoughts; but she thinks this with the utter confidence of her animal form. This is my body. These are my teeth. This is my skin. This is the world in front of me.
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] "Roots in my head," Lila says, sounding surprised: "They want to get in. I think it was the shadows." Neither of the theurges have had this experience. Just: Lila, Joey. Maybe Kora. Kora, who is as still-as-stone -- Kora, who is immobile, Gorgon-frozen. If Lila had shifted, if Lila was in another shape, her ear would twitch toward Blood Summons or -- and -- Rain of Brass Petals, because she's listening, waiting for a cue from one of the theurges, wary of these things she doesn't understand, wanting to understand them. Blood Summons says they're going in, and Lila's reaction is pretty much okay, let's do this, except
Something's wrong with Sorrow. Sorrow's not moving. Sorrow's not moving at all, and something was trying to get into their heads. Lila moves so that, keeping her eyes on the shadows, who haven't moved either, which she can still faintly pick out, she is next to Sorrow, eases into a crouch so she can bump her shoulder against the wolf-wolf's flank, lightly.
[and WP for Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is simultaneously focused and nowhere. Blame the crescent moon in the sky, blame whatever you want to blame, she is there, and she is looking at Sorrow. A second of contact, a moment, and then an exertion of will. Something she learned back when talking wasn't quite an option. She's found other uses for the gift, but this... this is a different sort.
she almost expects to hear radio static; Sorrow is still. Truth is pacing.
"Don't touch her," she says. It's all she can say; her focus is very clearly split.
[Rain of Brass Petals] ... Kora? You in there?
to Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] (-1 WP!)
[Blood Summons] Lila moves to bump the wolf-statue with her hip, and as the Godi is drawing a breath to issue a warning that would come out far more monstrous and sharp than the Fury's, she beats him to it: don't touch her.
A rumble leaves his throat, and the Fostern breaks formation then, sidestepping around the cluster of Garou to come to crouch in front of the hip-level lupus. He talks to her, the words inconsequential, the purpose to break her away from whatever it is that's speaking to her, to bring her back to the present, to the now. There's the knowledge that if he fucks this up then he'll likely be contaminated himself, that it will be his body turning to stone next.
He lays a hand on her anyway.
[-1G: Activate Mother's Touch.
Medicine+Intelligence: DON'T FOLLOW THE LIGHTS!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 4) [WP]
[the oneiroi] [Lila: WP again. Lady, you should move back. Let the professionals handle this.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Sorrow] I'm here. her mind-voice is clear, strong, sure. So are the shadows. They say they want to help us. I bet they can hear everything we are saying.
I don't believe them. Wry. But we are negotiating. Whether they take what they want. Whether it must be given. All I have promised is: what I want in exchange for: letting me go.
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Face of Death] The other Garou cluster around Kora, or are looking at her, maybe looking away from the shadows. Joey sidesteps, and she stands guard, watching. She watches the one that's growing. She looks around at the other shadows, circles slowly, comes back to the one. The one that Kora's looking at.
"Did it work?" she asks, her attention diverting to the Godi before watching the shadows again. Looking for a sign that it might be going back down again, turning back into just-a-shadow. "If we're goin' in, we need to do it now. We need to get away from 'em."
[the oneiroi] It doesn't work. Kora tries to extricate herself from the shadow-thing's mind, but it doesn't work: the shadow-thing tightens its grasp, begins to go through her, to peel her skin away, layer-by-layer, and study some of her older memories, darker memories, memories of Some Thing under a city, right before Kora changed, memories of --
Then Blood Summons is touching her, and her bones feel light. She feels suffused with something, and it isn't light, but it's good. A drink she really needed, a stretch after holding position for far too long, a welcome kiss.
She can't move yet, but she can talk. Her throat is loose. She can turn her head. Then she can move her paw. Then -- then she can move entirely, shake it off, water-droplets, flick.
to Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] I wouldn't doubt it; in their own way there is a chance that they believe that what they are doing really is helping. There are stories of entire packs getting lost and dying because of things like this. It'll be fine... there's a way to fix it... like... I shouldn't say, they're probably listening.
to Sorrow, the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Adamidas tells Lila not to touch Kora, and Lila gives her a glance, then glances, instead, toward the encroaching shadows. Doesn't sit well with her, that's clear. She lifts her hand to tuck a lock of hair behind an ear, and then
doesn't move again.
[Blood Summons] [Gnosis -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Rain of Brass Petals] "She's still in there," she says, and sounds distracted. The female, instead, walks around to the front of her. Walks around to stand in front of Kora, hands on her hips and a bitter feeling in her mouth. She walks infront of Kora. She looks back at Lila-
Lila who is stone still. Her stomach falls.
"HEY! she all but yells at the wolf in front of her, glancing between Kora and Lila. She starts talking, and at that moment she starts talking fast. She thinks... they aren't fans of Furies, they aren't fans of Shadow Lords, either, "they need to look away. They need to look away and they need focus here. We need to make noise, we need to make it dark. If there's any bit of light we're vulnerable and if there's any bit of light filtering down they can attack us so if we make it dark we won't have this problem."
Talkative, this one.
Making noise.
[Sorrow] The Godi lays-on-hands; and if they are looking at her, at the wolf, at the frozen animal-statute, they all see her ease before she can move. They all see the change in her, the way her frozen muscles begin to return to good use, the flicker of an ear that comes before the tail is loosened, light and free, released - she is shaking herself upward, from wolf to human again then, moving, letting that self that was frozen go, finding her way back into herself.
"Thank you," says Sorrow, to the Godi, clearly then. To Rain of Brass Petals, too. There are so many different kinds of enemies. Some you cannot just kill.
Some you would prefer to just kill.
She turns, watches, Lila-who-is-still. Waits for her to return to herself after the Godi's touch. If not, she is prepared to engage in other negotiations.
[Face of Death] "Motherfucker." This from the eloquent Rotagar, who is keeping an eye (heh) out for her companions, for the shadows. Adamidas has noticed, too, that Lila has gone stock still.
They need to make noise. They need to make it dark.
"Can't you guys summon something? The Uktena have a Gift," she says, remembering Boy, "that makes it dark." She reaches back behind her, unzips her bag and removes a black-as-night Louisville Slugger. Aluminum composite. Joey swings it once over her head, then brings it crashing down to the ground, letting the sound of metal on concrete resound before doing it again.
[Blood Summons] "God damn it, Lila!"
This, if she can even hear him; this, shot through with more anger than a spirit-talker ought to possess at his age. His Rage rivals that of the talesingers', is rapidly approaching that of the average warrior's. It's a sign that he feels, that he loves, that he allows himself to get attached to things that will only end up dying. It's not necessarily a bad thing, his Rage. So long as he can control it.
He's wiping himself out tonight, draining himself of his self-control and his spiritual energy even though they haven't even made it inside yet. The Godi surges to his feet once Sorrow has her faculties back about her, once she can move, and he grabs the Child of Gaia by the shoulders, barely restraining himself from giving her a good shake before he brings her back.
[-1G: Activate Mother's Touch.
Medicine+Intelligence: I SAID, DON'T FOLLOW THE LIGHTS!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4) [WP]
[Sorrow] Perception + Alertness
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [and Lila: percept+alert +1 diff]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] Lila isn't still and stone for as long as Kora was, which wasn't, really, very long at all. This is why theurges are valued: they know things; they can change things. They can look at a problem and tell you what the problem is, what lies at the heart of the matter. Blood Summons takes her by the shoulders, resists the urge to shake, and -- and, just like with Kora, while Joey makes noise, while Adamidas makes noise, while they make noise to scare off the dark -- they can see a loosening, before she can move again. Finish tucking that strand of hair behind an ear, exhale.
"Thank you," she says. The galliards are polite. Lila looks disturbed, shaken, although not by the Godi. Something was in her head, and it said things.
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Summon-di-summoning summon!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Please don't be mad at me!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]
[Rain of Brass Petals] (hum dee dum, you don't see that WP there!)
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons doesn't let go of Waking Dream until she shows signs of stirring again, until her fingers complete that tucking motion, until she looks up at him. She has to look up--he's a full head taller than her, a muscular beast built for the sole purpose of killing, it seems, whereas she is small and light and yet not less. There is no murderous rage in his eyes or his body when she returns to herself, and he doesn't look as though he's about to hurt her or anyone else.
He huffs out a relieved breath when she thanks him moments after Sorrow does, then reaches up to scrub at his face with his ringless left hand.
"Christ," he curses, then seems to register that Joey had said something, had spoken of an Uktena Gift that allows the caster to shroud the world in darkness. His colorless eyes drift towards the house, dark and yet pristine, cared for, cleansed. It distracts him. It's clear that he wants to get inside, that he wants to confront the spirits within, that he's uncomfortable out here, but the Rotagar has a point.
Before he can speak to the Fury Theurge, she's chanting, calling forth the Night to aid them. He does not assist her, does not join in. He crosses his tattooed arms over his chest, and he watches, waiting to see if he needs to step in or if the Cliath can handle the task.
[Sorrow] Adamidas makes noise; now Sorrow does, too, humming a tuneless, airy little song, in her low, rich voice, whenever she isn't speaking. It's a song about promises. It's a song about pure-things-in-the-city and fights in the city and shadows eating shadows of things. In the middle, she cuts a look at Lila, cuts a dark-eyed look at her fellow Galliard and says, " - what did they say to you?" in a perfectly reasonable, perfectly ordinary, tone of voice.
She lets the theurges do their theurge-y things, calling the spirits to give them darkness, to swallow the light and make the shadows nill, null; shadows need light, light makes shadow. When she sees the shadows you-don't-see-this creeping, though, Sorrow stamps her feet and yells. Makes noise. "Hey." she says, loud-voiced, sure. "Hey - you, I see you." She says it again, stomping her booted feet on the ground, says it in other voices, other tongues; tongues long-dead and long lost, makes of it a game, a song. Dances out of the way, careful not just of the shadow, but of her own shadow, which is attached to her, a dark, distorted mirror of her physical self.
"They want our shadows." She says, too. In case the others did not see. "Don't let them have them. Pay attention to the shadow you cast."
[Face of Death] This feels like memory. Joey remembers standing in a stairway, talking to a spirit, attempting to match it riddle for riddle. She remembers the shadows that ripped at her own. When her shadow arm was severed, her real arm--
They want our shadows. Don't let them have them. Joey turns so that her shadow is in front of her, where she can see it. She crouches, making it smaller. And she continues to bang her bat against the ground, continues to make noise to try and scare off the shadows. Then she continues the warning. "If they (clang!) get your shadow, they (clang!) get you. It's (clang!) how I lost my arm." Not quite panic, not yet, and almost at the same moment Kora gives the same warning.
[Face of Death] [eh, delete that stuff after "not yet" ¨_¨]
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't particularly like night spirits. They always give her the creeps; something about their intentions always seemed rotten and horrid. However, tehse were spirits she could deal with, and if she summoned them, she might be calling the shots. Might be-
No, she's going to call the shots on this. She's not interrupted by the fostern, who is no doubt just as adept at summoning as she is. She knows their stories, she beckons them forth with that little bit of knowledge. In the legendary times, you walked the forests, groves, you walked freely as masters of your lands.,.. the gauntlet came, and drove you away. What nerve, what audacity, unaware of what you are. Truly. And Man drove you out, justified their fear with false reason. She speaks, she moves in a counter clockwise circle, she rattles her litany of knowledge about the spirit.
Not flattery. Fact.
Man broke your communion with the Fallen, but you lurk still... we offer you opptunity do do what you will. We offer you opportunity. You are needed, you are wanted, this is your time, so come forth and Claim. It.
She looks at the ground, she looks at the sky. She looks at the shadows cast. Alethea waits.
She reminds them.
Come forth and claim it.
This is your time.
Come forth and claim it
[the oneiroi] The Black Fury summons night [Night (oh night, beauty: night, in which all things creep, hunter-things, murderous-things, dark-things)]. And Night answers the call. Answers the call, looking like a flock of birds cut out've the nightsky, difficult to see at first, how it coalesces. Answers the call, stars-for-eyes, stars-outlining-feathers, stars-outlining-beak, little constellations, deeper colours within: evening colours, the pitchest of pitch blacks, and once, almost, very nearly, the most radiant of evening blues, so deep it hurts your teeth to look at. Flock of Night-shaped birds-that-aren't, surpassingly graceful, easy in the air, feathers-that-aren't brush against the Black Fury's head, brush against the Child of Gaia's shoulders, respectfully circle the fostern Godi, and ignore the hell out've the two Fenrir.
Adamidas lays it out for the Spirit. And the Spirit looks at Adamidas. Two of the 'birds' have perched on Lila's shoulders. One is on the ground near Blood Summons. Three more -- four more -- five more -- are circling Adamidas' head. Another is on the ground, in front of Adamidas. The Spirit looks thoughtful. They all have the exact same look.
What the heck.
Night says something in the language of Spirits. Neither Lila or Joey understand this.
[the oneiroi] - we think this will be helpful to you, Night says, and neither Joey or Lila understand what it's saying. Kora does, though. We don't mind covering this place in Dark. Smothering our brothers. It will be [delightful (fun)]. But what will you do in return?
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[the oneiroi] And also, You're loud.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[the oneiroi] Blood Summons is watching the cliath theurge (of an enemy tribe [diametrically opposed: two sea-faring peoples]), and Joey is crashing noise, holding panic in check, remembering how she felt when she thought she'd never be able to field a pitch again, never be able to throw, never be able to, and she who offers sorrow is stomping her feet at the shadows, and Lila is, too, although, as expected likely, it's a rhythmic thing, a game -- takes Kora's game, makes it into more; returns; keep-your-shadow-away, away, until Night comes crashing down. Kora wants to know what they said.
Lila says, even-voiced, low -- even when Night comes perching on her shoulders, startling her, pleasing her (spirits!) -- "They wanted to know what I wanted. They wanted to know if I wanted them to tell them where my father is or a secret about the Sept-that-was-before. They said they wanted to help. What did they say to you?"
[Blood Summons] It's expected, rote, that the spirits will want something in return for their services. Not a one of them has been taught how to cover the earth in ink-black on their own, and the shadows are growing restless, are looking for weakness; those who had felt the tugging at their psyche compare notes, and eventually, after much coaxing and cajoling, Rain of Brass Petals calls Night to them.
They look like bird-spirits, all dark wings and blackness, and Blood Summons stands up straight, stands up tall, as they circle him.
This is the Fury's show. Unless it's to divert disaster, the Fostern does not interfere. Perhaps he should; perhaps it's unwise to allow a Cliath to negotiate with spirits when he, more experienced and wiser, is standing right there. But he doesn't.
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She stands from a position of strength. They probably haven't seen her do this before; they probably have never seen her interact with spirits. She stands with presence, and she is very much in her element. The Fostern is watching her interact and function in a way they've never seen her before.
She speaks, and she is nothing but confidence. She knows what this spirit will like, she knows what would make things work.
Her lips upturn and she speaks, the words are indecypherable to Lila and Joey, the other three know what she's saying.
[-2 gnosis! Bein' nice!]
[Rain of Brass Petals] "Well," she starts, "what would you like? This, at first, and a secret later."
There's an exertion of will, of spiritual force, but it's so effortless for her.
"Or, conversely, what would you like?"
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Sorrow] "They told me that, too - " Sorrow says, when Night has come crashing down, where their shadows no longer have shadows chasing them, when the game is less necessary. The rhythm of it remains, though, underneath her skin, one of those call-and-response things, singing low, some child's game made into a faery tale made into a child's game, some memory of the plague. "They told me that they wanted to help. They wanted to know what I wanted. I offered to tell them if they let me go, and they asked why they should let me go when they could take what they wanted."
"I suggested that the gift was better when given freely."This is low and matter-of-fact, though she looks up, now, at the blackwinged night spirits, listening to the exchange between theurge and the summoned. "I don't think they agreed." She might laugh her, Sorrow. Or she might give them the shadow of a laugh.
"Then," her voice does not hitch. It is, however, more grim. " - they started into my memories. It wasn't a pleasant feeling."
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[the oneiroi] A big secret. A secret about - a pause.
- Colton Lowry, Communes with Yggdrasil.
- Tongue Twister.
- Leaves No Trace.
Do we have a deal?
Spirits like asking for a lot.
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Something Rain of Brass Petals says makes Blood Summons close his eyes, like a wince, like not wanting to see what happens next. His attention is divided, unequally, between the conversation that the Moon Dancers are having and the exchange between the summoner and the Night-spirits. Were they bound under a totem together, his voice would be in her head right now.
He draws a breath, and opens his eyes again.
[Face of Death] Night falls at the Fury's beckoning, and Joey stops her clanging and banging. She straightens, looks around at the darkness that has stolen their shadows. Has taken away the messengers who might have tried to rend them limb from limb just by tearing apart their shadows. She slips her bat back into her bag, closes it back up again. Without it, her fingers twitch, yearning for a weapon, something with which to protect herself. But one doesn't bring weapons to peace negotiations, not openly anyway. And Joey is Garou. Push comes to shove, she and all of them are weapons.
Adamidas converses with the spirits. The Galliards talk amongst themselves. Joey keeps an ear to this conversation, but her attention is back on the apartment building. She takes a few steps toward it, a few steps away from the others, and stops. Hands pushed into the pockets of her hoody, Joey watches it, looking for the extra windows, the towers and turrets. Looking, perhaps, for faces in those windows. They're supposed to be expected, after all.
[Rain of Brass Petals] "My secrets, and no one else's. You are being invited to do what you would do naturally. Why these three? A follower of Fox, a no moon, and a son of the wyld," she muses. She is watching clearly.
The Fostern could simply tell the spirit what he wanted them to do, but this is her show, it seems. The Fury watches, and for a second she looks harsh, hard at the spirits in front of her. Her voice is suddenly not so sweet.
She looks to the side, catching a look at Bob, and she snaps back to the spirit.
"You realize, however, that this is simply a formality. I'll give of myself, a gift given freely, or you can have nothing, and I let the Fenrir take over. And I assure you, I am a much more lenient negotiator."
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[Rain of Brass Petals] The Fostern could simply tell the spirit what he wanted them to do, but this is her show, it seems. The Fury watches, and for a second she looks harsh, hard at the spirits in front of her. Her voice is suddenly not so sweet.
She looks to the side, catching a look at Bob, and she snaps back to the spirit.
[the oneiroi] [Night: YOU ARE SKEERED OF US.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] Night -- all the different fragments of Night, dark and star-strewn, darker, now, blacker, that part of Night, the more dangerous part -- lifts its wings, makes a sound that, to the Garou who don't understand Spiritspeech sounds like a rattlesnake's tail, an angry, volatile, I-will-fuck-you-up HISS. The 'birds' rattle their wings backandforthbackandforth, 'beaks' open and long, sharp tongues unfurling. They're menacing. Most of the menace is directed.
Lila, who has a pair of these Night-birds on her shoulders, looks less-than-thrilled with this development. She holds herself carefully still. Says, still low " - they remind me of - what were they called. That dinosaur from Jurassic Park. The one that greedy guy thought was so cute and stupid. Should I be worried?"
[the oneiroi] What Night is actually saying: YOU'RE THREATENING US WITH A FENRIR? Do you think that we're afraid of a Big Wolf? We are NIGHT. We are DARK.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] [I want willpower, please?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] "They want," Sorrow looks to Lila, to Joey, says this in English, in human-language, the tale-teller's voice, low and clear, " - secrets of other Sept-members in exchange for their aid. Adamidas tried to threaten them with Blood Summons, like Law and Order. This was not pleasing to them. I'm going to offer a secret of my own. If either of you have one to give Night - "
The creature looks up at the the darker pieces, hissing, rattling, opening, above them, wary and alert, braced but not afraid, not precisely, not yet. She does shoot a look at the Godi, then. She has not spoken to the spirit yet, but that tension is clear in her frame, and her intention is evident in her words to the Rotagar and Galliard.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She straightens up, and has a little more backbone than she had before. A little more than she had started out with, enough that she can stand strong. And she does. She isn't faltering, isn't openly backing down or caving in.
She does, however, know how negotiations work. You start out in extremes. You meet in the middle.
[Rain of Brass Petals] "And you expect me to bow on an unreasonable offer. I'm young, not stupid."
A beat.
"A son of Fox and Thunder would understand.... Leaves no Trace, and myself, and only that," she says.
to†Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[Blood Summons] The Godi's shoulders actually slump when the Fury makes her threat, and he lifts a hand to press it against his forehead as though to make sure that he hasn't lost his damn mind, that that had actually happened. It stays there for several seconds as the Night-spirits scritch and screech and do their surefire best to make sure that the teenage spirit-talker is intimidated.
Waking Dream asks if this is going to be like a scene in a movie he's never seen, and the Skald, the speaker, the tale-teller, explains what is going on while the Godi gets his wits back about him. There had been some amount of inherent trust in his standing aside while the Cliath performed the summoning and negotiated with the spirits, as though there was some lesson to be learned here, some nugget of knowledge, of power, to be taken away from the experience.
Then again, he had been trusting one of his own kinswomen the day that Moira and LÌadan snuck out the back of a damned burger joint rather than facing his ire, and look how that had turned out.
"Don't," he tells the Skald. There is no edge in his voice, no threat of violence if she continues on regardless. It's clear, even to those who don't understand the language of the spirits, that this is not going well, but the Godi does not step forward to try and salvage the exchange. "She should not have given Night a choice in what she was going to offer: don't undermine her by stepping in to help."
[the oneiroi] The night-spirits calm down, apparently. They're no longer making that dry-as-bones, clack-clacking against one another in the back of their throats. They're no longer hissing, no longer screeching. They go still, calm. They fold their wings again.
They say something.
Then: they explode upwards, a dark host [an un-shining thing (a cloud, an inverted halo)], feathers drifting to the ground, and where those feathers fall, darkness spreads, and they multiply, multiply a hundred times, blotting out all light, killing visibility, eating shadows, eating them up. The garou can see the Shadows fleeing back toward the House, ahead of dark, and then --
Then they can't see anything at all.
[the oneiroi] And Done! is what Night says.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] She inhales through her nose, then out her mouth. The Fury clenches her jaw, then her fists. The sky blacks out, there is nothing. Eating shadows, eating everything up until there's nothing visible. She exhales, and doesn't slump, doesn't pretend like something didn't go wrong or like she had made a mistake. Owns the decisions.
"... if any of you guys have a plan on what we should do now? Now might be a good time to go for it," she says.
And now? It's dark.
[the oneiroi] "Nothing has changed: we should go inside, careful, cautious; we should go with our hands open and our hearts ready. Joey, did they say anything, last time - a specific place to meet? It doesn't seem like they want to make it easy."
Lila's voice, clear, radiant-thing, in the dark. And she reaches out, because Blood Summons said not to shift, to take whoever's nearest's hands, so they don't get separated the way Word on the Street, Laughs in the Face of Death and Going Down did. Tug, forward, go forward. The apartment was that-a-way.
[Face of Death] "We need to find the spirits buggin' the tennants," Joey says, turning back to the building and it's normal faÁade, the one covering up what's really there. It's gone now, impossible to see in the pitch black. She makes no mention of her eye, as if that is some secondary thing, something unimportant to be dealt with later. Joey's first priority is helping the people living here, the tennants she wants to get to know better, that she wants to help.
"They didn't," Joey says. "I found 'em once on accident. I don't know if I can find 'em again on purpose, but I can sure as hell try."
[Rain of Brass Petals] {dex+athletics: Graceful!}
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Sorrow eyes Blood Summons when he cautions her don't. The look is watchful; speculative. Like a bond trader weighing the split-second decision making of another one in the pit. What does this cost. Is this worth while. Should I -
- and is silent, at least for now. The sense of agitation, liminal about her, eases when Adamidas returns to her negotation without threats, bargains more wisely than she had before, whittles down the number of necessary secrets in exchange for Night's aid.
"The Shadows - " says Sorrow, watching as they feel the Dark, " - ran back toward the House. That's where we need to go, right Joey-yuff? The spirits to whom you made your promise are there, too. Aren't they?"
In time with Lila, Sorrow takes up the hands of those nearest her, makes a wolf-girl/wolf-man chain of it, following the thread, remembering the path when it is not obvious.
[Hah. Insert this before Joey's post!]
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity: DON'T LAUGH]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [dex + ath, diff -2 (ability aptitude)]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Rain of Brass Petals] {per+alert: Observant!}
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Per + Primal-Urge [Observant!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Dex + Athletics!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Primal-Urge+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila:AthDex!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila:PerceptAlert!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Blood Summons] [Enigmas+Intelligence: VISION POOL]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to†the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] They're halfway to where they know the apartment building is -- indeed, they can sense its dark bulk up ahead, hulking; larger than it should be. Joey and Lila, they glimpsed some of what's actually ahead before, saw-through-the-illusion when the moon smiled just right, but the others are assailed by a sense of size beyond the scope of what their eyes told them to expect. More, though: they're halfway to where they know the partment building is when they -- all of them, every one -- understands this.
They're being stalked by something. They're being stalked by something quiet, something that moves serpentine-patterns, something that doesn't whisper, something - oh, something Quiet. This something, it doesn't have anything to do with the apartment, with the spirits. This something, it's dangerous.
The back of their necks: prickle, tack-tack-tack, monster nearby.
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Eeek!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [str +1 (yay Bear! *cuddles*)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [NOM NOM THEURGE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [NOM NOM RAGABASH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [DON'T NOM ME]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila, ack?]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]
[Sorrow] Anchoring both!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 6 (Failure at target 7) [WP]
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]
[the oneiroi] Adam and Joey both feel breath, ice-water cold, sea-heart dark and gleaming, panting at their sides, dogging their shadows, fogging up their clothes, the instant before something grabs them and pulls. They resist, but not well enough: it has them. Adamidas nearly slips out've Blood Summons's grasp, although he feels the tug, lends his strength to hers, pulls in; Joey very nearly slips out've Lila's grasp, too, although the Child of Gaia is determined that this should not happen, horror stories of being left holding a limb, dancing in her head, and she pulls in. Not enough, though, not with how strong they are, these things. Not enough -- but thankfully, incredibly, they're five tonight, and She Who Offers Sorrow falters once, the chain starts to come apart, then -- she provides an anchor. And it's enough.
A brief struggle, and then whatever it is that had the Fury and the Fenrir is gone. And they've got halfway to go, still.
Listen, shhh. Things: moving again.
[Blood Summons] [Wits!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] He knows: they -- the things -- they're about to leap for him, for Kora, for Lila. He knows, too, that ducking would be an excellent idea right now. Split-second, do it!
to†Blood Summons
[the oneiroi] [Lila: Eh ?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] Out of nowhere:
"Duck!"
[Athletics+Dexterity: Don't Laugh!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 8 (Failure at target 3)
[Blood Summons] [Reroll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Face of Death] [ack!: dex + ath, diff -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: erk?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Adam
[dex + ath: graceful]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark, +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7
[the oneiroi] [er...]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Dark Shark +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[the oneiroi] [DS+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Something is coming for them. Not of the house. Something hard and serpentine, something vicious and sure. They are being attacked. She has a sense of things just before they happen, just when Blood Summons shouts Duck and she ducks, still holding hands with her pseudo-pack, whipping their arms as if they were doing the wave, playing some came with the wyrm.
Red rover, red rover, send monsters right over.
Sorrow hits the deck and then -
[the oneiroi] They're under siege now. A serious, meant-to-hurt, meant-to-pick-them-off one-by-one siege. Blood Summons vocalizes what all three of the middle creatures understand, what they feel in their bones, and one by one, each garou -- swift, graceful, elegant, inelegant, lethal -- they make themselves smaller. They get down, still-holding-hands, and they all feel, passing over them, cold, cold air, air-colder-than-ice, darker-than-the-dark. Adam doesn't, though; Adam is still standing, or Adam is yoinked gracelessly downward by Blood Summons. Too slow, she can feel something cold, wet, burn her cheek.
Lila, then -- "Blood Summons, Joey, Adam. You get inside. We'll follow. I'm shifting."
Because this: is a threat. Because: Blood Summons can watch out for the other two. Because: the theurges need to be there, and Joey made the deal. Because: Joey can watch out for them.
[Sorrow] - shifts almost as soon as Lila announces her intentions, directs them ahead, to get into the house, to make the deal anew. There is a sensation of bulk, sudden presence, four-pawed and huge, as Sorrow hits the ground and changes, snarls a challenge at those hunting them in the dark, snarls a promise to them, too.
[Blood Summons] This time, Blood Summons doesn't issue an order not to shift, doesn't tell Lila that that is a Bad Idea, doesn't do so much as argue with her. He chuffs out his agreement, then releases Adam and Kora's hands.
"Go," he tells the younger Theurge, tells the Rotagar, his voice crackling as he begins to morph through forms en route to one larger, lither, better able to carry him across distance and space.
[the oneiroi] [How Many Dark-Sharks Are Circling?+3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't spend a lot of time in homid at that moment. She is standing still, and feels something cold, too cold, burn her cheek. She winces, but doesn't make a sound. She is yanked down, rather gracelessly, and shifts to lupus. She needs to run. She knows she's going to need to run. She needs the agility. She needs the grace. The Fury isn't two legged and teenaged anymore. No, on the contrary, she's four-legged and dark
She inhales, slowly, and takes the air in. What touched her?
[Rain of Brass Petals] [sensin' the wyrm, sensin' the wyrm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 9
[Face of Death] In the dark, Joey doesn't nod her understanding of this new plan. She doesn't vocalize. What she does to show Lila she understands is let go of the Galliard. There is a snapping and groaning of joints and muscles shifting as Joey morphs through her forms until she stands on four legs, a primordial wolf from history.
She sprints ahead of the others, snaps down to Homid when she reaches the building so that she can open the door, hold it for the others, watching behind them as best she can to cover their retreat inside. Adamidas hesitates, and Joey has to fight not to shout at her.
[Rain of Brass Petals] That is not Gaian, is all that she indicates before she hauls ass.
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity (+2): Go go go go!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [dex + 2(Hispo) + ath]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile, Lila: howl of I am going to rip you apart?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is running. Running like she knows how to run, running like she is aware of what she is doing, running like she was meant to run. Her mind doesn't wander; she tries to have faith that things will be okay. That things will work out, but she can't help but hear her mind wander off to horrible what ifs and she can't stand it.
Rain of Brass Petals runs. And tries to catch up to Joey, which she has little faith in thinking would happen.
[the oneiroi] This is what the Fenrir, one significantly fleeter than both of the others, one who leaps ahead, so quick, that she could out-run quickness itself if she was given half-a-chance, and the Black Fury hear behind. First, a howl: they all recognize Lila's howl-voice, by now, although they haven't all heard it lifted in this way: a half-savage promise of death; an eldritch, lovely paan to carnage-about-to-be-wreaked; an ode-to-the-necessity-of-spilling-blood, a threat. Then: battle met. They almost feel it, the slower two -- because they were still stalked. They started to run, and whatever-it-was-following-them, it ran too, and then: was taken down. They can hear teeth, and muted growls, and then --
Joey's at the apartment first. Night isn't quite so thick there. And the apartment doesn't look like it should, either. Looks vast, looks like it has rooms-piled-on-top-of-it, looks like it branches out. Inside, the rustle, murmur, come-to-us kiss of trees moving in the wind, even bird-song, something dawn-bright and shouldn't-be-here.
She's been here before. And, a little while after Joey makes it, Blood Summons and Adam join her.
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons may be able to move faster than Rain of Brass Petals, but he does not charge ahead leaving her to fend for himself. He falls behind, nipping at her heels if he has to. Whether or not he wants to leave his tribeswoman and his roommate, his would-be-sister, his friend behind, want has nothing to do with it. Joey needs to be inside, Adam needs to be inside, and sending those two in alone is not an option.
He doesn't look back as Waking Dream looses that terrible howl, doesn't stop to see how the two Moon Dancers fare against the agents of evil lurking in the darkness. He shepherds the other Theurge inside, letting Face of Death hold the door open for them, and then he shakes out his fur, eyes their surroundings.
Inside, it looks larger than it did in the half-light of dusk. It looks vast, looks sprawling, and it takes him a moment to get his bearings. The Godi sniffs the air, his nose telling him more than his eyes ever could, and looks to the Rotagar as if to make sure she's still there.
She's been here before.
[Note!! I missed the posts for the fight with Lila, Kora and the bad guys.]
[Dark Shark Attack] [Lila: wits.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [Again?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Attack!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 9, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] Lila: defend Kora! what, i'm getting hurt? eh?
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9
[Dark Shark Attack] [Damage!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] (takes away TN)
[Sorrow] Rage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] [Stamina, also!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 8, 8, 9, 9
[Dark Shark Attack] [Rage!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] [Do reinforcements come?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Dark Shark Attack] [Dark Shark: DEATH BLOW? on Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [DEATH-BLOW, on Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [Stamina!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] This happens.
They are on she who offers sorrow in less than seconds. Two of them. They're furious, and their fury makes them more deadly, more brutal, more efficient, but they did not count on the surpassing quality of grace which Kora has, and she evades them deftly, almost effortlessly, fish-slipping-through-a-net, then turns, again, on them. It takes two claws, before one is killed; the second never gets to bite her, never gets to grab her, because the Child of Gaia has brought it down, although, although, the creature which went for the Child of Gaia manages to wound her. The wounds close. That's just what happens. Then, the garou are fast. They're given Rage to do Gaia's holy work, see. They're given Rage to effect change. And they use it, now. Waking Dream finishes off the creature beneath her claws, and she who offers sorrow completely decimates the other. Both, though -- both death-sing, death-song, make a sound, low, horrifying, a sound that'll give them nightmares for a month, and it hurts to hear. Hurts them, hurts them bad, and when it's stopped, Lila soaks, but Kora -- Kora can still feel herself injured, feel herself in pain.
[the oneiroi] Adam and Joey both feel breath, ice-water cold, sea-heart dark and gleaming, panting at their sides, dogging their shadows, fogging up their clothes, the instant before something grabs them and pulls. They resist, but not well enough: it has them. Adamidas nearly slips out've Blood Summons's grasp, although he feels the tug, lends his strength to hers, pulls in; Joey very nearly slips out've Lila's grasp, too, although the Child of Gaia is determined that this should not happen, horror stories of being left holding a limb, dancing in her head, and she pulls in. Not enough, though, not with how strong they are, these things. Not enough -- but thankfully, incredibly, they're five tonight, and She Who Offers Sorrow falters once, the chain starts to come apart, then -- she provides an anchor. And it's enough.
A brief struggle, and then whatever it is that had the Fury and the Fenrir is gone. And they've got halfway to go, still.
Listen, shhh. Things: moving again.
[Blood Summons] [Wits!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila: Eh ?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] Kora: knows that it -- they -- the things. They're just about to leap for her, for Blood Summons, for Lila: she has a split-second to react. To duck, to get out've-the-way, somehow.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Out of nowhere:
"Duck!"
[Athletics+Dexterity: Don't Laugh!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 8 (Failure at target 3)
[Blood Summons] [Reroll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Face of Death] [ack!: dex + ath, diff -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: erk?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Adam
[dex + ath: graceful]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark, +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7
[the oneiroi] [er...]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Dark Shark +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[the oneiroi] [DS+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Something is coming for them. Not of the house. Something hard and serpentine, something vicious and sure. They are being attacked. She has a sense of things just before they happen, just when Blood Summons shouts Duck and she ducks, still holding hands with her pseudo-pack, whipping their arms as if they were doing the wave, playing some came with the wyrm.
Red rover, red rover, send monsters right over.
Sorrow hits the deck and then -
[the oneiroi] They're under siege now. A serious, meant-to-hurt, meant-to-pick-them-off one-by-one siege. Blood Summons vocalizes what all three of the middle creatures understand, what they feel in their bones, and one by one, each garou -- swift, graceful, elegant, inelegant, lethal -- they make themselves smaller. They get down, still-holding-hands, and they all feel, passing over them, cold, cold air, air-colder-than-ice, darker-than-the-dark. Adam doesn't, though; Adam is still standing, or Adam is yoinked gracelessly downward by Blood Summons. Too slow, she can feel something cold, wet, burn her cheek.
Lila, then -- "Blood Summons, Joey, Adam. You get inside. We'll follow. I'm shifting."
Because this: is a threat. Because: Blood Summons can watch out for the other two. Because: the theurges need to be there, and Joey made the deal. Because: Joey can watch out for them.
[Sorrow] - shifts almost as soon as Lila announces her intentions, directs them ahead, to get into the house, to make the deal anew. There is a sensation of bulk, sudden presence, four-pawed and huge, as Sorrow hits the ground and changes, snarls a challenge at those hunting them in the dark, snarls a promise to them, too.
[Sorrow] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 3, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]
to the oneiroi
[Blood Summons] This time, Blood Summons doesn't issue an order not to shift, doesn't tell Lila that that is a Bad Idea, doesn't do so much as argue with her. He chuffs out his agreement, then releases Adam and Kora's hands.
"Go," he tells the younger Theurge, tells the Rotagar, his voice crackling as he begins to morph through forms en route to one larger, lither, better able to carry him across distance and space.
[the oneiroi] [How Many Dark-Sharks Are Circling?+3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't spend a lot of time in homid at that moment. She is standing still, and feels something cold, too cold, burn her cheek. She winces, but doesn't make a sound. She is yanked down, rather gracelessly, and shifts to lupus. She needs to run. She knows she's going to need to run. She needs the agility. She needs the grace. The Fury isn't two legged and teenaged anymore. No, on the contrary, she's four-legged and dark
She inhales, slowly, and takes the air in. What touched her?
[Rain of Brass Petals] [sensin' the wyrm, sensin' the wyrm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 9
[Face of Death] In the dark, Joey doesn't nod her understanding of this new plan. She doesn't vocalize. What she does to show Lila she understands is let go of the Galliard. There is a snapping and groaning of joints and muscles shifting as Joey morphs through her forms until she stands on four legs, a primordial wolf from history.
She sprints ahead of the others, snaps down to Homid when she reaches the building so that she can open the door, hold it for the others, watching behind them as best she can to cover their retreat inside. Adamidas hesitates, and Joey has to fight not to shout at her.
[Rain of Brass Petals] That is not Gaian, is all that she indicates before she hauls ass.
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity (+2): Go go go go!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [dex + 2(Hispo) + ath]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile, Lila: howl of I am going to rip you apart?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is running. Running like she knows how to run, running like she is aware of what she is doing, running like she was meant to run. Her mind doesn't wander; she tries to have faith that things will be okay. That things will work out, but she can't help but hear her mind wander off to horrible what ifs and she can't stand it.
Rain of Brass Petals runs. And tries to catch up to Joey, which she has little faith in thinking would happen.
[the oneiroi] This is what the Fenrir, one significantly fleeter than both of the others, one who leaps ahead, so quick, that she could out-run quickness itself if she was given half-a-chance, and the Black Fury hear behind. First, a howl: they all recognize Lila's howl-voice, by now, although they haven't all heard it lifted in this way: a half-savage promise of death; an eldritch, lovely paan to carnage-about-to-be-wreaked; an ode-to-the-necessity-of-spilling-blood, a threat. Then: battle met. They almost feel it, the slower two -- because they were still stalked. They started to run, and whatever-it-was-following-them, it ran too, and then: was taken down. They can hear teeth, and muted growls, and then --
Joey's at the apartment first. Night isn't quite so thick there. And the apartment doesn't look like it should, either. Looks vast, looks like it has rooms-piled-on-top-of-it, looks like it branches out. Inside, the rustle, murmur, come-to-us kiss of trees moving in the wind, even bird-song, something dawn-bright and shouldn't-be-here.
She's been here before. And, a little while after Joey makes it, Blood Summons and Adam join her.
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons may be able to move faster than Rain of Brass Petals, but he does not charge ahead leaving her to fend for himself. He falls behind, nipping at her heels if he has to. Whether or not he wants to leave his tribeswoman and his roommate, his would-be-sister, his friend behind, want has nothing to do with it. Joey needs to be inside, Adam needs to be inside, and sending those two in alone is not an option.
He doesn't look back as Waking Dream looses that terrible howl, doesn't stop to see how the two Moon Dancers fare against the agents of evil lurking in the darkness. He shepherds the other Theurge inside, letting Face of Death hold the door open for them, and then he shakes out his fur, eyes their surroundings.
Inside, it looks larger than it did in the half-light of dusk. It looks vast, looks sprawling, and it takes him a moment to get his bearings. The Godi sniffs the air, his nose telling him more than his eyes ever could, and looks to the Rotagar as if to make sure she's still there.
She's been here before.
[Face of Death] Joey popped into her Homid form when she reached the door. There's enough time between the reaching and the waiting for the others for her to look inside the door she holds for them to race through. She listens to the sounds that don't belong inside this building, Umbral or not.
Then the others are there, they're inside, and Joey follows them through. Before she lets the door close, she looks back to see if Lila and Kora are following. If they are, she waits for them. If not, she steps forward into the fast open insides that don't fit with the exterior, that don't match what exists on this spot realmside.
She looks up at the trees, and around, searching for a door, for some clue that will guide them to where they need to go. The spirits haunting this place are not going to make it easy, but Joey found them once before. On accident. She'll try again.
[Face of Death] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] [WP -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Oh?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [She looks around, inhaling the air and feeling it all play against her fur. She bristled, briefly, and paid attention. She isn't as fast as the other two- she's not a natural athlete or a seasoned runner. She watches Joey, though. Watches the two Fenrir and is trying to pick up subtle cues. Her tail flicks from one side to the other, a slow swish.
The spirits that are haunting the place don't make this any easier. She tries to catch cues from the other two. She isn't having much luck. Though, her body posture does indicate that she's more alert than she usually seems.
[the oneiroi] The inside of the apartment building.
First of all it looks normal. Looks decrepit. There is a revolving door. There is a door for people who are afraid of revolving doors next to the revolving door. Beyond the revolving door, there is apparently a lobby. Except, it's clean; this place is pure; this place feels right. This makes feels, almost, very nearly, like being out in the wild -- it almost sparkles, it's so fucking clean. There is evidence that this is not always the case. There is evidence that taint, that tarnish, creeps in easily, is tracked in very easily -- there's a light, flickering like moth-wings. There's a spirit, grinning at them with a man's pretty face and a cat's body, on a couch in the lobby. There are shadows, but they're shadows of trees-that-aren't-there, trees-that-are-just-felt.
Last time, Joey found the spirits on the way down to the basement. This time?
[the oneiroi] [Are y'all about to be Doom-Crushed?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[Face of Death] The last time, Joey was almost drawn to the revolving door. She found her way through a different one, in a different direction. This time.
This time she wants to try the revolving door. She wants to see what's on the other side, wants to know what lurks there, what dangers or wonders will be found. She wants to know if there's food there, or if she'll be food.
Joey's brows constrict as she looks at that door, that irresistible revolving door. And she starts toward it, hand stretched and ready to push her way through it.
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile. Erk. Mother's Touch?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 5 at target 3) [WP]
[Blood Summons] It's a good thing there's an extra door for people who aren't all about the revolving edition. Blood Summons eyes the circular structure for several seconds as if it's a test, as if it's some strange new device that he's never seen before. Waking Dream had watched him attempt to make his way up an escalator over a month ago and found him, if not practiced, then at least not terrified of the thing. At least he hadn't tripped on the top step.
He doesn't waste time trying to figure out how to get himself through that contraption right now. He goes through the regular white-bread door, waiting for the Rotagar and the Black Fury on the other side.
"Does this spirit we're looking for have a name?" he asks.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She finally comes back from her lupus form to something decidedly more two-legged. She looks at the recolving door. She looks at it long and hard, and then she looks at Joey. She inhales, swallows, and is stuck with trusting her judgment.
"Joey? You sure about that door?" she asks. She's eying the thing, "'cus if you are, I'm taking it with you."
That said, if Joey continues on, the Fury follows her.
[Face of Death] [WP: C'mon, Oliver, don't be dumb!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Adam: Soak This!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] Soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Face of Death] Blood Summons takes the other door, asks a question that Joey can barely hear. It's enough, barely, to begin to sow the seeds of distraction. Seeds that take root when Adam comes up to her, tells her that she'll take the revolving door, too.
Joey frowns. She turns and looks at the Fury with that mismatched, half-blind stare. Then she looks back at the revolving door. Examines the other one leading away. And she remembers this from before.
Shaking her head, she says, "No. No, I'm not takin' that door. This other way's familiar."
The Rotagar steps through after the Godi, pausing to make sure Adam is following her in this direction instead. She looks at the cat-man spirit on the couch, tilts her head as she regards it before looking away again.
"I think this was the way I went before. There's a room of stairs. That's where I met the goat man."
[Sorrow] The battle and the siege - this happens in an eyeblink. She is touched and her nerves sing nightmares and her body, her frame, sizzles inside somehow, this hot promise of pain under her skin, all self-propagating, nerveless, nightmarish - and then that, too, is gone, in a shimmer of gnosis, a certain flare of white light, like the corona around some cool-hot star. Whatever had them under siege is down, beneath their claws, beneath their mouths, and Sorrow-wolf snarls a raw challenge toward all comers, bounding up the steps and turning, bristling, teeth bared at the street, waiting for something else, promising death-and-darkness to all possible foes. Then, just so - she turns - and when/if she is certain that the threat without is cleared away, she melts back into her humanskin.
Finds the door.
Opens it,
and goes in.
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] The Lila-creature, Lila-monster, had brushed herself across wounded-Sorrow, and then: then it was well, then it was as it should be. Sorrow-wolf, wolf-Sorrow snarls, lopes the rest of the way to the apartment, bounds up to the door, spins and regards the darkness, uncompromising. Waking Dream coalesces out've the darkness a moment later, similarly alert, wary, readied --
But nothing's coming for them again. Whatever they killed lies dead, so Lila takes her human-shape, says " - we'll cleanse after."
Kora opens the door, goes inside. And: they're in a foyer, a little hall. There is a revolving door. There is a regular door next to the revolving door. There is a cat-spirit with the face of a very, very pretty young man purring in and out of the pizza-slice section of the revolving door open in the lobby that door would (apparently) take them into. It looks at them, cocks its head. Feline.
to Sorrow
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Kora: has a healthy distrust of both doors. This place is clean, is purified; it's also dangerous. The revolving door feels like more of a trap. There's something very disconcerting about the lines of the hall: about the sounds she hears that shouldn't be.
to Sorrow
[the oneiroi] [Hi again, Adam!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [int + med]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Medicine+Intelligence]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] This is what she says: to the cat-spirit, standing in the revolving door, purring in and out of the slice that opens into the lobby. "I'll give you three strange words if you tell me where the key is. Three more if you tell me which door the other Garou took. And a song, if you tell me what's on the other side of the revolving door."
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Joey is close to Adamidas, looks her over carefully, but she can't tell what's wrong with her, can't tell whether she's really hurt, her-somewhere-deep-inside, somewhere-bad, some-way bad, or -- or. Maybe it's because all of her knowledge of the body comes from a spirit, comes from wise-Bear, thoughtful-Bear, Bear-who-brings-things-to-life, dishonored-Bear. Maybe that's why Blood Summons looks at Adamidas, and he knows, looking her over, that she's hurt far worse than it looks like she's hurt. He knows, knows, just how badly wounded she is.
Very. She might not survive another blow [came from where? and why?].
[the oneiroi] [Commercial Break, yo!]
I have no hope that this'll be resolved quickly. There's a skull. But it should be a star. Just don't botch a lot of times, okay? Then we're all good. Then the risk is so minimal it's like only your arm'll get torn off, okay? Minimal rolling, if there's combat, it's gonna be Jess-style combat. No post order unless it stops making sense/I am driven mad, and then I'll tell you to stop. Liz said she was going to be late, so Kora'll be NPCed for a bit.
Rule 1: Trust me.
Rule 2: Listen.
Rule 3: Seriously, man. That's all. Got a problem, go on.]
[Face of Death] [investigationatin' yer FACE!: int + investigation]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [wits + streetwise: C'mon, Kahseeno, you know you love me]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] A month ago, two bone-gnawers and a Get of Fenris stood outside of this building because Lila'd asked them to look into a problem. They'd all been separated from each other within minutes, but they'd found out what the problem was: spirits, wanting attention [adore me (give in to me)]. Spirits, who'd taken up residence in the dilapidated, falling-apart building that Hill House had bought and fixed up [funding (always need more)] as best it could and was now housing for people in transition, was now housing for people being helped, welfare babies, those who were on the down and out. Mostly down, according to those Spirits. So those spirits, whatever the fuck they were, with their goat-eyes, their sleek, quickness, their strange effect on the umbra, they'd been helping the residents Out.
Out of the picture. Out of their misery. Out, out, out of their fucking minds.
And those three garou, they'd left with information, but they'd also lost some things. Blood, sure. Dignity, maybe. An eye, the use of an arm. Gnosis, willpower. They'd sacrificed: had sacrifices torn from them.
Tonight, wee hours of the morning, the garou who're standing near the apartment building aren't the same. Just: the ragabash who'd, in the end, been the one to make the deal, who'd lost her eye, who'd promised: back next month, more attention, we'll work something out -
And: two theurges from two tribes with very different perspectives.
And: two galliards. Lila, who, after last time, wasn't going to let Joey go off and lose both of her eyes, who's just along to record events, hopefully, to aid where necessary. And Sorrow, who is wise, who - where she lacks wisdom - carries the wisdom of ancestors on her back, in her spine, in her eyes, and who'd been asked along by Lila, if not Joey, if not Blood Summons.
It's a different crew. So, of course, tonight'll go a little differently.
[Sorrow] wondertwin powers: activate!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)
to the oneiroi
[Sorrow] Sorrow, who stands outside the building, her hands in the front pocket of her worn jeans. These are the jeans she wears for all such events, ragged at the cuffs and waist, worn pale and washed soft at the thighs and the knees, the color a gradiant definition of indigo, from its palest to its most middling inflections. The jeans are only dark at the seams, where the panels are doubled, double-sewn, joined together with thread. The jeans are only dark at the seams because the blood gets between the tightly clustered stitches that hold the garment together. Because the blood there cannot be scrubbed out.
Sorrow, who stands outside the building, tall, taller, her spine straight and her shoulders neat and level inside the soft cotton of her old black t-shirt. Which says PIXIES in white letters on the black background. Which does not mean: the fae.
She is humming under her breath -
what's that floating in the water
oh neptune's only daughter
- the TV on the Radio version, mind you. All acoustic and interior, as if the song were a sacred chant, Navajo or Russian Orthodox, multipartite. she just has the one line, though, which stays level, low. This is because she is thinking. Those closest to her might feel the supple thread of promise in the air around her, some invocation of the spiritual, some call on that self, the part of the self that ties the fleshy body to this shadow world, umbilical. She's a guest here, though, the story teased out in pieces, fractured out, not unlike a puzzle.
"They've kept their side of the bargain?" - this is said to Lila, and the jerk of her head with the pronoun identifies its antecedent as the strange and mysterious they, the spirits infesting the house, driving the down-and-out, the on-their-way somewhere, transitional, which means: between - back down, into whatever was haunting them, into whereever they came from.
It has been a month. It has been a moon.
The old contract expires. A new one is due.
This things have meaning.
[Rain of Brass Petals] This is how a lot of bad jokes start.
Three Fenrir, a Child of Gaia, and a Fury walk into the umbra. She isn't thinking about these sorts of things, though. She isn't thinking of bad jokes, she's thinking of the fact that she had offered, once, to help Joey with this when she had heard about the little goat-legged men. The Spirits. Adam knew spirits.
She comes with them all of them, the different perspective. Not the voice of reason, but... different.
She waits, she listens to what people have to say. Her eyes fall on the dilapidated building. Over rocks and bricks and stone what-have-yous. This place could be great, could be wonderful and inspiring if... it had the right push.
"How many people live here?" she asks the other garou.
[Face of Death] Of the three who first went into this building, two are still alive. Joey's the only one here tonight. Nate wasn't asked along, wasn't informed of this latest excursion to the apartment building filled with pain. Joey wanted spirit talkers, Garou who might do better than a quick fix, a band-aid, something to relieve the residents temporarily. So while many by now know the story of why Laughs in the Face of Death sometimes walks around with a patch over her eye, why she most days stares at the world with one milk-white, blind eye, the only ones she said, "Sure, come with me to check this out," were the Theurges she knew. She doesn't object to Lila's presence, watching over the Cliath to ensure she makes it out tonight with the full use of her body. She doesn't object to Kora, who she hasn't spoken with in some time.
She talks to them now. Tells them what she's learned since she was here last, when she bargained with a spirit to spare the people who lived here. People Indira sacrificed herself to protect, too. Joey doesn't mention names. There are a lot of them. People she's met and spoken with, people she's tried to find out more about, who she's tried to get to open up to her. Mostly she just says what she said when she first showed up in The Brotherhood, missing an eye and not knowing if she'd ever regain the use of her right arm.
Joey wants to help these people, and while she would gladly give up pieces of herself to keep the spirits back, mostly what she wants is a chance to help the people directly. And she can't do that if they're being driven insane, if they're suddenly dying.
They're gathered in the Umbra, staring up at the reflection of the building where people looking for second chances sleep. Joey stands near Lila, her hands in the pockets of her worn purple hoody, bat bag slung across her torso. Her hair has been tugged back into a pair of messy buns. There is no patch to hide her missing eye, not tonight, not among other warriors.
"A few," Joey answers Adam first, giving room for Lila to answer Kora. Then, "They're not scared of the night anymore. People haven't gone mad or died like they were. And this looks different," she waves a hand at the building. "I think the contract's held."
[Face of Death] [percept + alert, diff 8]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 6, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] Over a month ago, a Fostern Ragabash had heard the story of what went down at this dilapidated house under Hill House's subsidiary and asked her peer why spirits were such assholes. He'd had an answer for her, a very stock, neutral answer that hadn't passed judgment, and it had seemed to placate her. At least, it hadn't riled her up, even if it hadn't helped her understand why her sister was now walking around with a useless arm and an eye that looked whited out from a storm none of them could see.
The weather is worse now than it was a month ago. Even in the Umbra, it's a cold, dreary day, yet the Godi is not dressed for cold weather. He's dressed as though the cold doesn't touch him, as though his Rage is enough to offset whatever chill might be in the air: combat boots, denim jeans, t-shirt, all black with red-and-green suspenders standing out and keeping his pants in place.
He's the only male in the group, the only mule. This is really apropos of nothing. They're here together, to help Joey, to help the people of this building. To do it without placation or sacrifice, to do it permanently.
Sorrow asks a question; Rain of Brass Petals.
Blood Summons is silent for now.
[Face of Death] [percept + alert, diff 9]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [laaa laaa laaaa!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] [Alertness+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Oooh?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 3 (Botch x 2 at target 9)
[Blood Summons] [Alertness+Perception 2: Electric Boogaloo.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Botch x 1 at target 9)
[Blood Summons] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Willpower!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Per + Alertness Dif 8
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: What? +1
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] Per + Alertness Dif 9
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 10 (Failure at target 9)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: What? +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 9) Re-rolls: 2
[Sorrow] rerolling mah 10s! x1
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5 (Failure at target 8)
[Sorrow] Rerolling mah 10s x 2
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Failure at target 9)
[the oneiroi] Blood Summons, She Who Offers Sorrow and Waking Dream all notice this: That the umbra, here -- although it looks as it should -- although it looks as if it's Weaver-calcified, as if it's touching very near taint, without quite being tainted, just the taint one expects from the city, besmirchment, everything faded, tarnished, bleak, but not lovely, desolate, but not clean -- it doesn't feel that way. The building, and some of the street around the building, which has an altogether-more-solid-than-expected presence, feels pure. That's it: purity. Like the whole place has been cleansed, again and again; like this is the closest to reverence the umbra, here, can get. Like the Gauntlet, it's not quite so thick, here, like it's thinning, like it's soap-bubble transparence, like it can pop at any moment.
In contrast, the urban wasteland behind them seems even darker than it should be. More foul. There are hints, on the umbral echo of a street, of some battle waged, fought, a couple of weeks ago. Churned up, subtle signs.
to a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow
[Face of Death] Even with just one eye, with vision halved, depth perception lost, Joey is still a perceptive creature. Months ago, she sat silently and watched the world around her without communicating with it, mostly. She's learned to look deeper, search harder, to not just look but see.
No sooner have the words, I think the contract's held, passed her lips than Joey blinks up at the building's face. She rubs at her right eye, squints up at it again. Cants her head at an angle, all the tricks she's learned over the years that sometimes work to help her look at things from a different angle without actually moving.
"Fuck." She looks at those who have gathered with her, who have come to help her with this, seeking out those who might be seeing what she sees.
"It's not different, just hidden," she says. And she notices the shadow. Shadows. The Rotagar slips to the rear of the group, faces out. They may be surrounded, but they won't be set upon unawares.
"We're surrounded."
[the oneiroi] They've kept their side of the bargain, Sorrow asks. And Lila's answer is succinct. "Yes. I believe they have. Joey will be able to confirm - " and a glance for the No Moon who's standing at the golden-haired creature's side, brief. Lila is wide-eyed, and Lila is dreamy, and she doesn't look like she's paying attention at all. Even here, she's otherworldly; dichotomy of flesh-and-spirit keeping her firmly in the camp of doesn't-quite-belong.
Then: tension touches the nape of her neck. "Incoming," she says, "Five shadows - they're dividing, circling - " We're surrounded, Joey says, and whereas Joey's slipped to the rear of the group, Lila's taken the front. Protective, theurges-in-the-middle, a nod for Kora, take that side. "I don't know what to expect," she says, low-voiced. "Are they shadows like the shadows that got your arm, Joey?"
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Take that side says Lila wordlessly; and wordlessly Sorrow takes that side, her eyes sharpening, her head swinging to follow the suggestions made by Joey and Lila. That they are surrounded, that five shadows are coming toward them, hungry, different: surrounded, being circled like sheep, herded by a pack-of-things.
Sorrow slips from her humanskin into her wolfskin. This is how she does it: oneskin, twoskin, until she is on her fourpaws, in her fur coat, her eyes dark now, but not blue, the gray fur marked by dark guardhairs, down her spine, tipping her ears, along her flanks. Another set of eyes. Or - at least - a different set of eyes.
[Rain of Brass Petals] There's a familiar, wide-eyed terror that creeps into her expression. They've all seen it before.
It is, however, swallowed down. And she paces. Takes a step forward, then back. She moves an arc, away from the building. She's suddenly tense, a little too in tune with something for her own comfort. Terror is replaced with longing, and she looks at the building. And whatever part of her is touched with instinct instead of reason tells her to stay.
So, she does.
We're surrounded.
The Fury grits her teeth, and lets out a low sound of obvious displeasure.
She's in the middle, and doesn't seem any less tense. Five of them.
"... what happens if we go in? I have a feeling they're going to try and herd us there."
[Blood Summons] For a moment, brief as a sneeze, Blood Summons looks stricken. His muscles tense up, his breathing halts, and he stares at the building as though it's started speaking to him; given his moon, his capabilities, that isn't completely beyond the realm of possibility, that the spirit of the building has started calling out to him, but it's as though whatever it's said has rattled him.
The metis is normally more perceptive than he is tonight. Blame it on the moon, on his thoughts being preoccupied, on the world calling to him from all sides. He doesn't notice the shadows until Joey says "Fuck," and maybe even not then.
He blinks and shakes his head as the Rotagar moves to the back of the group, facing outward. Instinctive--that is to say, without thinking--he moves to stand between Lila and Joey, keeping the Cliath Theurge in the center of the group.
Five shadows. Circling.
The Skald melts into her wolf skin, and Blood Summons fights the urge to follow suit.
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Mysterious Doom NPC Roll +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Mysterous Doom NPC +4]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Are they shadows liek the shadows that got your arm, Joey?
"I don't know," says Joey, adopting a defensive stance at the rear of the group. The Garou form a loose circle around Adamidas, protective of the younger, lower ranked Theurge. "And I wound up inside-" wound up, when her curiosity got the better of her and she had to get inside, had to see at all costs "-last time I was here. That's where I met the goat man."
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Sorrow] Fight there - barks the wolf-formed Sorrow. Not dire-wolf, not monster-wolf, just wolf-wolf, indicating the surface of the street where the umbral has been churned up, the signs are subtle, difficult to read. This place feels right.
Right: she means, pure. She means, better than it should.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] she who offers sorrow wants to study one of the shadows very closely indeed. When she does, she is struck still-as-stone, immobile, un-moving, and there's a voice in her head, a murmuring thing, whisper, whisper, What do you want, it says, We'd like to help you, it says.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] "Don't shift."
He doesn't say it's a bad idea to shift right now, doesn't give any reasoning for why the Cliaths and his soon-to-be sister ought to stick to their human skins. Not to his face, he's been accused to being too damn taciturn, of being like most Get this way; he's been accused of not giving adequate reasoning for saying the things that he says or suggesting the things that he suggests, as though he expects his rank and his wisdom to make up for his lack of words. That's all they get from him: don't do it.
"We're going in."
[Rain of Brass Petals] "Oneiroi," she says, "fear and desire, dreams and nightmares..."
She stops. She regards the garou around her, and on the shadows that she can't... quite... touch...Can't quite focus on. Can't quite get. The female runs her tongue over her teeth, and she files through her memory banks to try and remember whatever else she might know about these spirits.
"They're messengers," she says to the garou, "and so long as there's some light, their shadows.. so long as there's some light we're in a vulnerable position."
A beat.
"They're not big fans of Furies."
[Sorrow] In the darkness, in the shadows, in the ring that they have created around Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow-the-wolf goes still. Still: so still that she is not moving. Her ears are not pricking, this way and that, swiveling to follow the sound as the other Garou speak, as Blood Summons offers his caution don't shift, which is too late for her impetuous wolfskinned self. Still: so still that her tail is held unnaturally straight, not the fine swish-swish of expectation, wariness. Not that. Just: unmoving, like a statue of a wolf. Like a memory of a photograph, painted into living flesh.
[Sorrow] You're the shadow. she thinks back, at the voice in her head, at the mind that has found its way beneath her skin. - does the light sing too? Do you speak to it? Or are you twins separated by a mirror, broken apart, into pieces.
Shadow: let me go and I will tell you what I want.
to the oneiroi
[Face of Death] Something tries to get into Joey's head. Her one-eyed gaze turns sharply, focuses on one shadow in particular. Is it you?
Adam explains what the shadows are. It doesn't really make Joey relax, doesn't make the tension in her lean frame ease. She slides one foot back, not turning just yet, not wanting to show her back to these shadows that put them in a vulnerable position if there's some light. They're not big fans of Furies. Despite herself, a corner of Joey's mouth twitches mirthlessly.
Don't shift, says the Fostern, which Joey had no intention of doing. There was a time, a long time ago, when her pack had a Designated Talking Guy. Someone who stayed in Homid even though that wasn't his birth form, because someone needed a human-shaped mouth with which to communicate. Joey doesn't intend to fill that role this time around, but still. She kept to her human skin the last time. She plans on keeping to it this time.
She slides her other foot back, still reluctant to turn when she notices Kora's unnatural stillness. It's the only thing, really, that could make her take her eyes off the shadows. "Somethin's wrong with She Who Offers Sorrow." A beat, a thought, a second to ponder. "Somethin' tried to get into my head. It might've gotten to her."
[the oneiroi] You're the shadow, it says. You're between-things, can't trust a between-things thing, doesn't even do its job, doesn't even do anything, unless its paws are bloody, unless it's talons are dripping, where's the line, o Slaughterer. Doesn't sound angry, this the Shadow. Sounds, if anything, amused -- and distant, like listening to an old recording on a wax cylinder. Why should we let you go if we can just take what you want out've you when we've got you? Answer that riddle.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Joey says something's wrong with the Skald, and the Godi takes his attention off of their surroundings, they telling him nothing about the shadows circling them, to look at the wolf-statue behind him. His nostrils flare, his eyes narrow. His voice is gruff when he speaks.
"Sorrow." If she doesn't answer, he says it again: "Sorrow."
[Sorrow] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Rain of Brass Petals] She looks at Sorrow, and some part of her wants to articulate the rush of thoughts coming to mind. NOrmally, Adam is very good at saying whatever comes to mind. Right now, it's not working-
"They fell out of favor with the Wendigo, because they have a tendency to get pretty weaver-touched. They eat minds as payment for good deeds done. She... is there some way we-" she looks at her for a second, stares really hard at the talesinger. And plans formed. Oh, such plans!
[the oneiroi] [NPC to Kora: NO!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Because what you want cannot be taken, not-shadow. says Sorrow, answering the riddle with the only answer that comes to mind; with the only answer a Get of Fenris would know. - because what you want, Shadow, must be given. She cannot move, frozen in place, frozen in thought, frozen into the Shadow inside the realm of her thoughts; but she thinks this with the utter confidence of her animal form. This is my body. These are my teeth. This is my skin. This is the world in front of me.
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] "Roots in my head," Lila says, sounding surprised: "They want to get in. I think it was the shadows." Neither of the theurges have had this experience. Just: Lila, Joey. Maybe Kora. Kora, who is as still-as-stone -- Kora, who is immobile, Gorgon-frozen. If Lila had shifted, if Lila was in another shape, her ear would twitch toward Blood Summons or -- and -- Rain of Brass Petals, because she's listening, waiting for a cue from one of the theurges, wary of these things she doesn't understand, wanting to understand them. Blood Summons says they're going in, and Lila's reaction is pretty much okay, let's do this, except
Something's wrong with Sorrow. Sorrow's not moving. Sorrow's not moving at all, and something was trying to get into their heads. Lila moves so that, keeping her eyes on the shadows, who haven't moved either, which she can still faintly pick out, she is next to Sorrow, eases into a crouch so she can bump her shoulder against the wolf-wolf's flank, lightly.
[and WP for Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is simultaneously focused and nowhere. Blame the crescent moon in the sky, blame whatever you want to blame, she is there, and she is looking at Sorrow. A second of contact, a moment, and then an exertion of will. Something she learned back when talking wasn't quite an option. She's found other uses for the gift, but this... this is a different sort.
she almost expects to hear radio static; Sorrow is still. Truth is pacing.
"Don't touch her," she says. It's all she can say; her focus is very clearly split.
[Rain of Brass Petals] ... Kora? You in there?
to Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] (-1 WP!)
[Blood Summons] Lila moves to bump the wolf-statue with her hip, and as the Godi is drawing a breath to issue a warning that would come out far more monstrous and sharp than the Fury's, she beats him to it: don't touch her.
A rumble leaves his throat, and the Fostern breaks formation then, sidestepping around the cluster of Garou to come to crouch in front of the hip-level lupus. He talks to her, the words inconsequential, the purpose to break her away from whatever it is that's speaking to her, to bring her back to the present, to the now. There's the knowledge that if he fucks this up then he'll likely be contaminated himself, that it will be his body turning to stone next.
He lays a hand on her anyway.
[-1G: Activate Mother's Touch.
Medicine+Intelligence: DON'T FOLLOW THE LIGHTS!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 4) [WP]
[the oneiroi] [Lila: WP again. Lady, you should move back. Let the professionals handle this.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Sorrow] I'm here. her mind-voice is clear, strong, sure. So are the shadows. They say they want to help us. I bet they can hear everything we are saying.
I don't believe them. Wry. But we are negotiating. Whether they take what they want. Whether it must be given. All I have promised is: what I want in exchange for: letting me go.
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Face of Death] The other Garou cluster around Kora, or are looking at her, maybe looking away from the shadows. Joey sidesteps, and she stands guard, watching. She watches the one that's growing. She looks around at the other shadows, circles slowly, comes back to the one. The one that Kora's looking at.
"Did it work?" she asks, her attention diverting to the Godi before watching the shadows again. Looking for a sign that it might be going back down again, turning back into just-a-shadow. "If we're goin' in, we need to do it now. We need to get away from 'em."
[the oneiroi] It doesn't work. Kora tries to extricate herself from the shadow-thing's mind, but it doesn't work: the shadow-thing tightens its grasp, begins to go through her, to peel her skin away, layer-by-layer, and study some of her older memories, darker memories, memories of Some Thing under a city, right before Kora changed, memories of --
Then Blood Summons is touching her, and her bones feel light. She feels suffused with something, and it isn't light, but it's good. A drink she really needed, a stretch after holding position for far too long, a welcome kiss.
She can't move yet, but she can talk. Her throat is loose. She can turn her head. Then she can move her paw. Then -- then she can move entirely, shake it off, water-droplets, flick.
to Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] I wouldn't doubt it; in their own way there is a chance that they believe that what they are doing really is helping. There are stories of entire packs getting lost and dying because of things like this. It'll be fine... there's a way to fix it... like... I shouldn't say, they're probably listening.
to Sorrow, the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Adamidas tells Lila not to touch Kora, and Lila gives her a glance, then glances, instead, toward the encroaching shadows. Doesn't sit well with her, that's clear. She lifts her hand to tuck a lock of hair behind an ear, and then
doesn't move again.
[Blood Summons] [Gnosis -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Rain of Brass Petals] "She's still in there," she says, and sounds distracted. The female, instead, walks around to the front of her. Walks around to stand in front of Kora, hands on her hips and a bitter feeling in her mouth. She walks infront of Kora. She looks back at Lila-
Lila who is stone still. Her stomach falls.
"HEY! she all but yells at the wolf in front of her, glancing between Kora and Lila. She starts talking, and at that moment she starts talking fast. She thinks... they aren't fans of Furies, they aren't fans of Shadow Lords, either, "they need to look away. They need to look away and they need focus here. We need to make noise, we need to make it dark. If there's any bit of light we're vulnerable and if there's any bit of light filtering down they can attack us so if we make it dark we won't have this problem."
Talkative, this one.
Making noise.
[Sorrow] The Godi lays-on-hands; and if they are looking at her, at the wolf, at the frozen animal-statute, they all see her ease before she can move. They all see the change in her, the way her frozen muscles begin to return to good use, the flicker of an ear that comes before the tail is loosened, light and free, released - she is shaking herself upward, from wolf to human again then, moving, letting that self that was frozen go, finding her way back into herself.
"Thank you," says Sorrow, to the Godi, clearly then. To Rain of Brass Petals, too. There are so many different kinds of enemies. Some you cannot just kill.
Some you would prefer to just kill.
She turns, watches, Lila-who-is-still. Waits for her to return to herself after the Godi's touch. If not, she is prepared to engage in other negotiations.
[Face of Death] "Motherfucker." This from the eloquent Rotagar, who is keeping an eye (heh) out for her companions, for the shadows. Adamidas has noticed, too, that Lila has gone stock still.
They need to make noise. They need to make it dark.
"Can't you guys summon something? The Uktena have a Gift," she says, remembering Boy, "that makes it dark." She reaches back behind her, unzips her bag and removes a black-as-night Louisville Slugger. Aluminum composite. Joey swings it once over her head, then brings it crashing down to the ground, letting the sound of metal on concrete resound before doing it again.
[Blood Summons] "God damn it, Lila!"
This, if she can even hear him; this, shot through with more anger than a spirit-talker ought to possess at his age. His Rage rivals that of the talesingers', is rapidly approaching that of the average warrior's. It's a sign that he feels, that he loves, that he allows himself to get attached to things that will only end up dying. It's not necessarily a bad thing, his Rage. So long as he can control it.
He's wiping himself out tonight, draining himself of his self-control and his spiritual energy even though they haven't even made it inside yet. The Godi surges to his feet once Sorrow has her faculties back about her, once she can move, and he grabs the Child of Gaia by the shoulders, barely restraining himself from giving her a good shake before he brings her back.
[-1G: Activate Mother's Touch.
Medicine+Intelligence: I SAID, DON'T FOLLOW THE LIGHTS!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4) [WP]
[Sorrow] Perception + Alertness
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [and Lila: percept+alert +1 diff]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] Lila isn't still and stone for as long as Kora was, which wasn't, really, very long at all. This is why theurges are valued: they know things; they can change things. They can look at a problem and tell you what the problem is, what lies at the heart of the matter. Blood Summons takes her by the shoulders, resists the urge to shake, and -- and, just like with Kora, while Joey makes noise, while Adamidas makes noise, while they make noise to scare off the dark -- they can see a loosening, before she can move again. Finish tucking that strand of hair behind an ear, exhale.
"Thank you," she says. The galliards are polite. Lila looks disturbed, shaken, although not by the Godi. Something was in her head, and it said things.
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Summon-di-summoning summon!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Please don't be mad at me!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]
[Rain of Brass Petals] (hum dee dum, you don't see that WP there!)
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons doesn't let go of Waking Dream until she shows signs of stirring again, until her fingers complete that tucking motion, until she looks up at him. She has to look up--he's a full head taller than her, a muscular beast built for the sole purpose of killing, it seems, whereas she is small and light and yet not less. There is no murderous rage in his eyes or his body when she returns to herself, and he doesn't look as though he's about to hurt her or anyone else.
He huffs out a relieved breath when she thanks him moments after Sorrow does, then reaches up to scrub at his face with his ringless left hand.
"Christ," he curses, then seems to register that Joey had said something, had spoken of an Uktena Gift that allows the caster to shroud the world in darkness. His colorless eyes drift towards the house, dark and yet pristine, cared for, cleansed. It distracts him. It's clear that he wants to get inside, that he wants to confront the spirits within, that he's uncomfortable out here, but the Rotagar has a point.
Before he can speak to the Fury Theurge, she's chanting, calling forth the Night to aid them. He does not assist her, does not join in. He crosses his tattooed arms over his chest, and he watches, waiting to see if he needs to step in or if the Cliath can handle the task.
[Sorrow] Adamidas makes noise; now Sorrow does, too, humming a tuneless, airy little song, in her low, rich voice, whenever she isn't speaking. It's a song about promises. It's a song about pure-things-in-the-city and fights in the city and shadows eating shadows of things. In the middle, she cuts a look at Lila, cuts a dark-eyed look at her fellow Galliard and says, " - what did they say to you?" in a perfectly reasonable, perfectly ordinary, tone of voice.
She lets the theurges do their theurge-y things, calling the spirits to give them darkness, to swallow the light and make the shadows nill, null; shadows need light, light makes shadow. When she sees the shadows you-don't-see-this creeping, though, Sorrow stamps her feet and yells. Makes noise. "Hey." she says, loud-voiced, sure. "Hey - you, I see you." She says it again, stomping her booted feet on the ground, says it in other voices, other tongues; tongues long-dead and long lost, makes of it a game, a song. Dances out of the way, careful not just of the shadow, but of her own shadow, which is attached to her, a dark, distorted mirror of her physical self.
"They want our shadows." She says, too. In case the others did not see. "Don't let them have them. Pay attention to the shadow you cast."
[Face of Death] This feels like memory. Joey remembers standing in a stairway, talking to a spirit, attempting to match it riddle for riddle. She remembers the shadows that ripped at her own. When her shadow arm was severed, her real arm--
They want our shadows. Don't let them have them. Joey turns so that her shadow is in front of her, where she can see it. She crouches, making it smaller. And she continues to bang her bat against the ground, continues to make noise to try and scare off the shadows. Then she continues the warning. "If they (clang!) get your shadow, they (clang!) get you. It's (clang!) how I lost my arm." Not quite panic, not yet, and almost at the same moment Kora gives the same warning.
[Face of Death] [eh, delete that stuff after "not yet" ¨_¨]
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't particularly like night spirits. They always give her the creeps; something about their intentions always seemed rotten and horrid. However, tehse were spirits she could deal with, and if she summoned them, she might be calling the shots. Might be-
No, she's going to call the shots on this. She's not interrupted by the fostern, who is no doubt just as adept at summoning as she is. She knows their stories, she beckons them forth with that little bit of knowledge. In the legendary times, you walked the forests, groves, you walked freely as masters of your lands.,.. the gauntlet came, and drove you away. What nerve, what audacity, unaware of what you are. Truly. And Man drove you out, justified their fear with false reason. She speaks, she moves in a counter clockwise circle, she rattles her litany of knowledge about the spirit.
Not flattery. Fact.
Man broke your communion with the Fallen, but you lurk still... we offer you opptunity do do what you will. We offer you opportunity. You are needed, you are wanted, this is your time, so come forth and Claim. It.
She looks at the ground, she looks at the sky. She looks at the shadows cast. Alethea waits.
She reminds them.
Come forth and claim it.
This is your time.
Come forth and claim it
[the oneiroi] The Black Fury summons night [Night (oh night, beauty: night, in which all things creep, hunter-things, murderous-things, dark-things)]. And Night answers the call. Answers the call, looking like a flock of birds cut out've the nightsky, difficult to see at first, how it coalesces. Answers the call, stars-for-eyes, stars-outlining-feathers, stars-outlining-beak, little constellations, deeper colours within: evening colours, the pitchest of pitch blacks, and once, almost, very nearly, the most radiant of evening blues, so deep it hurts your teeth to look at. Flock of Night-shaped birds-that-aren't, surpassingly graceful, easy in the air, feathers-that-aren't brush against the Black Fury's head, brush against the Child of Gaia's shoulders, respectfully circle the fostern Godi, and ignore the hell out've the two Fenrir.
Adamidas lays it out for the Spirit. And the Spirit looks at Adamidas. Two of the 'birds' have perched on Lila's shoulders. One is on the ground near Blood Summons. Three more -- four more -- five more -- are circling Adamidas' head. Another is on the ground, in front of Adamidas. The Spirit looks thoughtful. They all have the exact same look.
What the heck.
Night says something in the language of Spirits. Neither Lila or Joey understand this.
[the oneiroi] - we think this will be helpful to you, Night says, and neither Joey or Lila understand what it's saying. Kora does, though. We don't mind covering this place in Dark. Smothering our brothers. It will be [delightful (fun)]. But what will you do in return?
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[the oneiroi] And also, You're loud.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[the oneiroi] Blood Summons is watching the cliath theurge (of an enemy tribe [diametrically opposed: two sea-faring peoples]), and Joey is crashing noise, holding panic in check, remembering how she felt when she thought she'd never be able to field a pitch again, never be able to throw, never be able to, and she who offers sorrow is stomping her feet at the shadows, and Lila is, too, although, as expected likely, it's a rhythmic thing, a game -- takes Kora's game, makes it into more; returns; keep-your-shadow-away, away, until Night comes crashing down. Kora wants to know what they said.
Lila says, even-voiced, low -- even when Night comes perching on her shoulders, startling her, pleasing her (spirits!) -- "They wanted to know what I wanted. They wanted to know if I wanted them to tell them where my father is or a secret about the Sept-that-was-before. They said they wanted to help. What did they say to you?"
[Blood Summons] It's expected, rote, that the spirits will want something in return for their services. Not a one of them has been taught how to cover the earth in ink-black on their own, and the shadows are growing restless, are looking for weakness; those who had felt the tugging at their psyche compare notes, and eventually, after much coaxing and cajoling, Rain of Brass Petals calls Night to them.
They look like bird-spirits, all dark wings and blackness, and Blood Summons stands up straight, stands up tall, as they circle him.
This is the Fury's show. Unless it's to divert disaster, the Fostern does not interfere. Perhaps he should; perhaps it's unwise to allow a Cliath to negotiate with spirits when he, more experienced and wiser, is standing right there. But he doesn't.
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She stands from a position of strength. They probably haven't seen her do this before; they probably have never seen her interact with spirits. She stands with presence, and she is very much in her element. The Fostern is watching her interact and function in a way they've never seen her before.
She speaks, and she is nothing but confidence. She knows what this spirit will like, she knows what would make things work.
Her lips upturn and she speaks, the words are indecypherable to Lila and Joey, the other three know what she's saying.
[-2 gnosis! Bein' nice!]
[Rain of Brass Petals] "Well," she starts, "what would you like? This, at first, and a secret later."
There's an exertion of will, of spiritual force, but it's so effortless for her.
"Or, conversely, what would you like?"
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Sorrow] "They told me that, too - " Sorrow says, when Night has come crashing down, where their shadows no longer have shadows chasing them, when the game is less necessary. The rhythm of it remains, though, underneath her skin, one of those call-and-response things, singing low, some child's game made into a faery tale made into a child's game, some memory of the plague. "They told me that they wanted to help. They wanted to know what I wanted. I offered to tell them if they let me go, and they asked why they should let me go when they could take what they wanted."
"I suggested that the gift was better when given freely."This is low and matter-of-fact, though she looks up, now, at the blackwinged night spirits, listening to the exchange between theurge and the summoned. "I don't think they agreed." She might laugh her, Sorrow. Or she might give them the shadow of a laugh.
"Then," her voice does not hitch. It is, however, more grim. " - they started into my memories. It wasn't a pleasant feeling."
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[the oneiroi] A big secret. A secret about - a pause.
- Colton Lowry, Communes with Yggdrasil.
- Tongue Twister.
- Leaves No Trace.
Do we have a deal?
Spirits like asking for a lot.
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Something Rain of Brass Petals says makes Blood Summons close his eyes, like a wince, like not wanting to see what happens next. His attention is divided, unequally, between the conversation that the Moon Dancers are having and the exchange between the summoner and the Night-spirits. Were they bound under a totem together, his voice would be in her head right now.
He draws a breath, and opens his eyes again.
[Face of Death] Night falls at the Fury's beckoning, and Joey stops her clanging and banging. She straightens, looks around at the darkness that has stolen their shadows. Has taken away the messengers who might have tried to rend them limb from limb just by tearing apart their shadows. She slips her bat back into her bag, closes it back up again. Without it, her fingers twitch, yearning for a weapon, something with which to protect herself. But one doesn't bring weapons to peace negotiations, not openly anyway. And Joey is Garou. Push comes to shove, she and all of them are weapons.
Adamidas converses with the spirits. The Galliards talk amongst themselves. Joey keeps an ear to this conversation, but her attention is back on the apartment building. She takes a few steps toward it, a few steps away from the others, and stops. Hands pushed into the pockets of her hoody, Joey watches it, looking for the extra windows, the towers and turrets. Looking, perhaps, for faces in those windows. They're supposed to be expected, after all.
[Rain of Brass Petals] "My secrets, and no one else's. You are being invited to do what you would do naturally. Why these three? A follower of Fox, a no moon, and a son of the wyld," she muses. She is watching clearly.
The Fostern could simply tell the spirit what he wanted them to do, but this is her show, it seems. The Fury watches, and for a second she looks harsh, hard at the spirits in front of her. Her voice is suddenly not so sweet.
She looks to the side, catching a look at Bob, and she snaps back to the spirit.
"You realize, however, that this is simply a formality. I'll give of myself, a gift given freely, or you can have nothing, and I let the Fenrir take over. And I assure you, I am a much more lenient negotiator."
to†a brick, Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[Rain of Brass Petals] The Fostern could simply tell the spirit what he wanted them to do, but this is her show, it seems. The Fury watches, and for a second she looks harsh, hard at the spirits in front of her. Her voice is suddenly not so sweet.
She looks to the side, catching a look at Bob, and she snaps back to the spirit.
[the oneiroi] [Night: YOU ARE SKEERED OF US.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] Night -- all the different fragments of Night, dark and star-strewn, darker, now, blacker, that part of Night, the more dangerous part -- lifts its wings, makes a sound that, to the Garou who don't understand Spiritspeech sounds like a rattlesnake's tail, an angry, volatile, I-will-fuck-you-up HISS. The 'birds' rattle their wings backandforthbackandforth, 'beaks' open and long, sharp tongues unfurling. They're menacing. Most of the menace is directed.
Lila, who has a pair of these Night-birds on her shoulders, looks less-than-thrilled with this development. She holds herself carefully still. Says, still low " - they remind me of - what were they called. That dinosaur from Jurassic Park. The one that greedy guy thought was so cute and stupid. Should I be worried?"
[the oneiroi] What Night is actually saying: YOU'RE THREATENING US WITH A FENRIR? Do you think that we're afraid of a Big Wolf? We are NIGHT. We are DARK.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] [I want willpower, please?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] "They want," Sorrow looks to Lila, to Joey, says this in English, in human-language, the tale-teller's voice, low and clear, " - secrets of other Sept-members in exchange for their aid. Adamidas tried to threaten them with Blood Summons, like Law and Order. This was not pleasing to them. I'm going to offer a secret of my own. If either of you have one to give Night - "
The creature looks up at the the darker pieces, hissing, rattling, opening, above them, wary and alert, braced but not afraid, not precisely, not yet. She does shoot a look at the Godi, then. She has not spoken to the spirit yet, but that tension is clear in her frame, and her intention is evident in her words to the Rotagar and Galliard.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She straightens up, and has a little more backbone than she had before. A little more than she had started out with, enough that she can stand strong. And she does. She isn't faltering, isn't openly backing down or caving in.
She does, however, know how negotiations work. You start out in extremes. You meet in the middle.
[Rain of Brass Petals] "And you expect me to bow on an unreasonable offer. I'm young, not stupid."
A beat.
"A son of Fox and Thunder would understand.... Leaves no Trace, and myself, and only that," she says.
to†Blood Summons, Sorrow, the oneiroi
[Blood Summons] The Godi's shoulders actually slump when the Fury makes her threat, and he lifts a hand to press it against his forehead as though to make sure that he hasn't lost his damn mind, that that had actually happened. It stays there for several seconds as the Night-spirits scritch and screech and do their surefire best to make sure that the teenage spirit-talker is intimidated.
Waking Dream asks if this is going to be like a scene in a movie he's never seen, and the Skald, the speaker, the tale-teller, explains what is going on while the Godi gets his wits back about him. There had been some amount of inherent trust in his standing aside while the Cliath performed the summoning and negotiated with the spirits, as though there was some lesson to be learned here, some nugget of knowledge, of power, to be taken away from the experience.
Then again, he had been trusting one of his own kinswomen the day that Moira and LÌadan snuck out the back of a damned burger joint rather than facing his ire, and look how that had turned out.
"Don't," he tells the Skald. There is no edge in his voice, no threat of violence if she continues on regardless. It's clear, even to those who don't understand the language of the spirits, that this is not going well, but the Godi does not step forward to try and salvage the exchange. "She should not have given Night a choice in what she was going to offer: don't undermine her by stepping in to help."
[the oneiroi] The night-spirits calm down, apparently. They're no longer making that dry-as-bones, clack-clacking against one another in the back of their throats. They're no longer hissing, no longer screeching. They go still, calm. They fold their wings again.
They say something.
Then: they explode upwards, a dark host [an un-shining thing (a cloud, an inverted halo)], feathers drifting to the ground, and where those feathers fall, darkness spreads, and they multiply, multiply a hundred times, blotting out all light, killing visibility, eating shadows, eating them up. The garou can see the Shadows fleeing back toward the House, ahead of dark, and then --
Then they can't see anything at all.
[the oneiroi] And Done! is what Night says.
to†Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[Rain of Brass Petals] She inhales through her nose, then out her mouth. The Fury clenches her jaw, then her fists. The sky blacks out, there is nothing. Eating shadows, eating everything up until there's nothing visible. She exhales, and doesn't slump, doesn't pretend like something didn't go wrong or like she had made a mistake. Owns the decisions.
"... if any of you guys have a plan on what we should do now? Now might be a good time to go for it," she says.
And now? It's dark.
[the oneiroi] "Nothing has changed: we should go inside, careful, cautious; we should go with our hands open and our hearts ready. Joey, did they say anything, last time - a specific place to meet? It doesn't seem like they want to make it easy."
Lila's voice, clear, radiant-thing, in the dark. And she reaches out, because Blood Summons said not to shift, to take whoever's nearest's hands, so they don't get separated the way Word on the Street, Laughs in the Face of Death and Going Down did. Tug, forward, go forward. The apartment was that-a-way.
[Face of Death] "We need to find the spirits buggin' the tennants," Joey says, turning back to the building and it's normal faÁade, the one covering up what's really there. It's gone now, impossible to see in the pitch black. She makes no mention of her eye, as if that is some secondary thing, something unimportant to be dealt with later. Joey's first priority is helping the people living here, the tennants she wants to get to know better, that she wants to help.
"They didn't," Joey says. "I found 'em once on accident. I don't know if I can find 'em again on purpose, but I can sure as hell try."
[Rain of Brass Petals] {dex+athletics: Graceful!}
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Sorrow eyes Blood Summons when he cautions her don't. The look is watchful; speculative. Like a bond trader weighing the split-second decision making of another one in the pit. What does this cost. Is this worth while. Should I -
- and is silent, at least for now. The sense of agitation, liminal about her, eases when Adamidas returns to her negotation without threats, bargains more wisely than she had before, whittles down the number of necessary secrets in exchange for Night's aid.
"The Shadows - " says Sorrow, watching as they feel the Dark, " - ran back toward the House. That's where we need to go, right Joey-yuff? The spirits to whom you made your promise are there, too. Aren't they?"
In time with Lila, Sorrow takes up the hands of those nearest her, makes a wolf-girl/wolf-man chain of it, following the thread, remembering the path when it is not obvious.
[Hah. Insert this before Joey's post!]
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity: DON'T LAUGH]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [dex + ath, diff -2 (ability aptitude)]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Rain of Brass Petals] {per+alert: Observant!}
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [percept + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Per + Primal-Urge [Observant!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Dex + Athletics!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Primal-Urge+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila:AthDex!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila:PerceptAlert!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Blood Summons] [Enigmas+Intelligence: VISION POOL]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to†the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] They're halfway to where they know the apartment building is -- indeed, they can sense its dark bulk up ahead, hulking; larger than it should be. Joey and Lila, they glimpsed some of what's actually ahead before, saw-through-the-illusion when the moon smiled just right, but the others are assailed by a sense of size beyond the scope of what their eyes told them to expect. More, though: they're halfway to where they know the partment building is when they -- all of them, every one -- understands this.
They're being stalked by something. They're being stalked by something quiet, something that moves serpentine-patterns, something that doesn't whisper, something - oh, something Quiet. This something, it doesn't have anything to do with the apartment, with the spirits. This something, it's dangerous.
The back of their necks: prickle, tack-tack-tack, monster nearby.
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Eeek!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [str +1 (yay Bear! *cuddles*)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [NOM NOM THEURGE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [NOM NOM RAGABASH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [DON'T NOM ME]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] [Lila, ack?]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]
[Sorrow] Anchoring both!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 6 (Failure at target 7) [WP]
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]
[the oneiroi] Adam and Joey both feel breath, ice-water cold, sea-heart dark and gleaming, panting at their sides, dogging their shadows, fogging up their clothes, the instant before something grabs them and pulls. They resist, but not well enough: it has them. Adamidas nearly slips out've Blood Summons's grasp, although he feels the tug, lends his strength to hers, pulls in; Joey very nearly slips out've Lila's grasp, too, although the Child of Gaia is determined that this should not happen, horror stories of being left holding a limb, dancing in her head, and she pulls in. Not enough, though, not with how strong they are, these things. Not enough -- but thankfully, incredibly, they're five tonight, and She Who Offers Sorrow falters once, the chain starts to come apart, then -- she provides an anchor. And it's enough.
A brief struggle, and then whatever it is that had the Fury and the Fenrir is gone. And they've got halfway to go, still.
Listen, shhh. Things: moving again.
[Blood Summons] [Wits!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] He knows: they -- the things -- they're about to leap for him, for Kora, for Lila. He knows, too, that ducking would be an excellent idea right now. Split-second, do it!
to†Blood Summons
[the oneiroi] [Lila: Eh ?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Blood Summons] Out of nowhere:
"Duck!"
[Athletics+Dexterity: Don't Laugh!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 8 (Failure at target 3)
[Blood Summons] [Reroll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Face of Death] [ack!: dex + ath, diff -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: erk?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Adam
[dex + ath: graceful]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark, +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7
[the oneiroi] [er...]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Dark Shark +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[the oneiroi] [DS+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Something is coming for them. Not of the house. Something hard and serpentine, something vicious and sure. They are being attacked. She has a sense of things just before they happen, just when Blood Summons shouts Duck and she ducks, still holding hands with her pseudo-pack, whipping their arms as if they were doing the wave, playing some came with the wyrm.
Red rover, red rover, send monsters right over.
Sorrow hits the deck and then -
[the oneiroi] They're under siege now. A serious, meant-to-hurt, meant-to-pick-them-off one-by-one siege. Blood Summons vocalizes what all three of the middle creatures understand, what they feel in their bones, and one by one, each garou -- swift, graceful, elegant, inelegant, lethal -- they make themselves smaller. They get down, still-holding-hands, and they all feel, passing over them, cold, cold air, air-colder-than-ice, darker-than-the-dark. Adam doesn't, though; Adam is still standing, or Adam is yoinked gracelessly downward by Blood Summons. Too slow, she can feel something cold, wet, burn her cheek.
Lila, then -- "Blood Summons, Joey, Adam. You get inside. We'll follow. I'm shifting."
Because this: is a threat. Because: Blood Summons can watch out for the other two. Because: the theurges need to be there, and Joey made the deal. Because: Joey can watch out for them.
[Sorrow] - shifts almost as soon as Lila announces her intentions, directs them ahead, to get into the house, to make the deal anew. There is a sensation of bulk, sudden presence, four-pawed and huge, as Sorrow hits the ground and changes, snarls a challenge at those hunting them in the dark, snarls a promise to them, too.
[Blood Summons] This time, Blood Summons doesn't issue an order not to shift, doesn't tell Lila that that is a Bad Idea, doesn't do so much as argue with her. He chuffs out his agreement, then releases Adam and Kora's hands.
"Go," he tells the younger Theurge, tells the Rotagar, his voice crackling as he begins to morph through forms en route to one larger, lither, better able to carry him across distance and space.
[the oneiroi] [How Many Dark-Sharks Are Circling?+3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't spend a lot of time in homid at that moment. She is standing still, and feels something cold, too cold, burn her cheek. She winces, but doesn't make a sound. She is yanked down, rather gracelessly, and shifts to lupus. She needs to run. She knows she's going to need to run. She needs the agility. She needs the grace. The Fury isn't two legged and teenaged anymore. No, on the contrary, she's four-legged and dark
She inhales, slowly, and takes the air in. What touched her?
[Rain of Brass Petals] [sensin' the wyrm, sensin' the wyrm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 9
[Face of Death] In the dark, Joey doesn't nod her understanding of this new plan. She doesn't vocalize. What she does to show Lila she understands is let go of the Galliard. There is a snapping and groaning of joints and muscles shifting as Joey morphs through her forms until she stands on four legs, a primordial wolf from history.
She sprints ahead of the others, snaps down to Homid when she reaches the building so that she can open the door, hold it for the others, watching behind them as best she can to cover their retreat inside. Adamidas hesitates, and Joey has to fight not to shout at her.
[Rain of Brass Petals] That is not Gaian, is all that she indicates before she hauls ass.
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity (+2): Go go go go!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [dex + 2(Hispo) + ath]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile, Lila: howl of I am going to rip you apart?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is running. Running like she knows how to run, running like she is aware of what she is doing, running like she was meant to run. Her mind doesn't wander; she tries to have faith that things will be okay. That things will work out, but she can't help but hear her mind wander off to horrible what ifs and she can't stand it.
Rain of Brass Petals runs. And tries to catch up to Joey, which she has little faith in thinking would happen.
[the oneiroi] This is what the Fenrir, one significantly fleeter than both of the others, one who leaps ahead, so quick, that she could out-run quickness itself if she was given half-a-chance, and the Black Fury hear behind. First, a howl: they all recognize Lila's howl-voice, by now, although they haven't all heard it lifted in this way: a half-savage promise of death; an eldritch, lovely paan to carnage-about-to-be-wreaked; an ode-to-the-necessity-of-spilling-blood, a threat. Then: battle met. They almost feel it, the slower two -- because they were still stalked. They started to run, and whatever-it-was-following-them, it ran too, and then: was taken down. They can hear teeth, and muted growls, and then --
Joey's at the apartment first. Night isn't quite so thick there. And the apartment doesn't look like it should, either. Looks vast, looks like it has rooms-piled-on-top-of-it, looks like it branches out. Inside, the rustle, murmur, come-to-us kiss of trees moving in the wind, even bird-song, something dawn-bright and shouldn't-be-here.
She's been here before. And, a little while after Joey makes it, Blood Summons and Adam join her.
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons may be able to move faster than Rain of Brass Petals, but he does not charge ahead leaving her to fend for himself. He falls behind, nipping at her heels if he has to. Whether or not he wants to leave his tribeswoman and his roommate, his would-be-sister, his friend behind, want has nothing to do with it. Joey needs to be inside, Adam needs to be inside, and sending those two in alone is not an option.
He doesn't look back as Waking Dream looses that terrible howl, doesn't stop to see how the two Moon Dancers fare against the agents of evil lurking in the darkness. He shepherds the other Theurge inside, letting Face of Death hold the door open for them, and then he shakes out his fur, eyes their surroundings.
Inside, it looks larger than it did in the half-light of dusk. It looks vast, looks sprawling, and it takes him a moment to get his bearings. The Godi sniffs the air, his nose telling him more than his eyes ever could, and looks to the Rotagar as if to make sure she's still there.
She's been here before.
[Note!! I missed the posts for the fight with Lila, Kora and the bad guys.]
[Dark Shark Attack] [Lila: wits.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [Again?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Attack!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 9, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] Lila: defend Kora! what, i'm getting hurt? eh?
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9
[Dark Shark Attack] [Damage!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] (takes away TN)
[Sorrow] Rage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] [Stamina, also!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 8, 8, 9, 9
[Dark Shark Attack] [Rage!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10
[Dark Shark Attack] [Do reinforcements come?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Dark Shark Attack] [Dark Shark: DEATH BLOW? on Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [DEATH-BLOW, on Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] [Stamina!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Dark Shark Attack] This happens.
They are on she who offers sorrow in less than seconds. Two of them. They're furious, and their fury makes them more deadly, more brutal, more efficient, but they did not count on the surpassing quality of grace which Kora has, and she evades them deftly, almost effortlessly, fish-slipping-through-a-net, then turns, again, on them. It takes two claws, before one is killed; the second never gets to bite her, never gets to grab her, because the Child of Gaia has brought it down, although, although, the creature which went for the Child of Gaia manages to wound her. The wounds close. That's just what happens. Then, the garou are fast. They're given Rage to do Gaia's holy work, see. They're given Rage to effect change. And they use it, now. Waking Dream finishes off the creature beneath her claws, and she who offers sorrow completely decimates the other. Both, though -- both death-sing, death-song, make a sound, low, horrifying, a sound that'll give them nightmares for a month, and it hurts to hear. Hurts them, hurts them bad, and when it's stopped, Lila soaks, but Kora -- Kora can still feel herself injured, feel herself in pain.
[the oneiroi] Adam and Joey both feel breath, ice-water cold, sea-heart dark and gleaming, panting at their sides, dogging their shadows, fogging up their clothes, the instant before something grabs them and pulls. They resist, but not well enough: it has them. Adamidas nearly slips out've Blood Summons's grasp, although he feels the tug, lends his strength to hers, pulls in; Joey very nearly slips out've Lila's grasp, too, although the Child of Gaia is determined that this should not happen, horror stories of being left holding a limb, dancing in her head, and she pulls in. Not enough, though, not with how strong they are, these things. Not enough -- but thankfully, incredibly, they're five tonight, and She Who Offers Sorrow falters once, the chain starts to come apart, then -- she provides an anchor. And it's enough.
A brief struggle, and then whatever it is that had the Fury and the Fenrir is gone. And they've got halfway to go, still.
Listen, shhh. Things: moving again.
[Blood Summons] [Wits!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila: Eh ?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Wits!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[the oneiroi] Kora: knows that it -- they -- the things. They're just about to leap for her, for Blood Summons, for Lila: she has a split-second to react. To duck, to get out've-the-way, somehow.
to Sorrow
[Blood Summons] Out of nowhere:
"Duck!"
[Athletics+Dexterity: Don't Laugh!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 8 (Failure at target 3)
[Blood Summons] [Reroll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Face of Death] [ack!: dex + ath, diff -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[Sorrow] Dex + Ath
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[the oneiroi] [Lila: erk?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] Adam
[dex + ath: graceful]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Face of Death]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark, +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[the oneiroi] [Dark-Shark +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7
[the oneiroi] [er...]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Dark Shark +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[the oneiroi] [Lila]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[the oneiroi] [DS+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Something is coming for them. Not of the house. Something hard and serpentine, something vicious and sure. They are being attacked. She has a sense of things just before they happen, just when Blood Summons shouts Duck and she ducks, still holding hands with her pseudo-pack, whipping their arms as if they were doing the wave, playing some came with the wyrm.
Red rover, red rover, send monsters right over.
Sorrow hits the deck and then -
[the oneiroi] They're under siege now. A serious, meant-to-hurt, meant-to-pick-them-off one-by-one siege. Blood Summons vocalizes what all three of the middle creatures understand, what they feel in their bones, and one by one, each garou -- swift, graceful, elegant, inelegant, lethal -- they make themselves smaller. They get down, still-holding-hands, and they all feel, passing over them, cold, cold air, air-colder-than-ice, darker-than-the-dark. Adam doesn't, though; Adam is still standing, or Adam is yoinked gracelessly downward by Blood Summons. Too slow, she can feel something cold, wet, burn her cheek.
Lila, then -- "Blood Summons, Joey, Adam. You get inside. We'll follow. I'm shifting."
Because this: is a threat. Because: Blood Summons can watch out for the other two. Because: the theurges need to be there, and Joey made the deal. Because: Joey can watch out for them.
[Sorrow] - shifts almost as soon as Lila announces her intentions, directs them ahead, to get into the house, to make the deal anew. There is a sensation of bulk, sudden presence, four-pawed and huge, as Sorrow hits the ground and changes, snarls a challenge at those hunting them in the dark, snarls a promise to them, too.
[Sorrow] Ancestors!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 3, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]
to the oneiroi
[Blood Summons] This time, Blood Summons doesn't issue an order not to shift, doesn't tell Lila that that is a Bad Idea, doesn't do so much as argue with her. He chuffs out his agreement, then releases Adam and Kora's hands.
"Go," he tells the younger Theurge, tells the Rotagar, his voice crackling as he begins to morph through forms en route to one larger, lither, better able to carry him across distance and space.
[the oneiroi] [How Many Dark-Sharks Are Circling?+3]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Rain of Brass Petals] She doesn't spend a lot of time in homid at that moment. She is standing still, and feels something cold, too cold, burn her cheek. She winces, but doesn't make a sound. She is yanked down, rather gracelessly, and shifts to lupus. She needs to run. She knows she's going to need to run. She needs the agility. She needs the grace. The Fury isn't two legged and teenaged anymore. No, on the contrary, she's four-legged and dark
She inhales, slowly, and takes the air in. What touched her?
[Rain of Brass Petals] [sensin' the wyrm, sensin' the wyrm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 9
[Face of Death] In the dark, Joey doesn't nod her understanding of this new plan. She doesn't vocalize. What she does to show Lila she understands is let go of the Galliard. There is a snapping and groaning of joints and muscles shifting as Joey morphs through her forms until she stands on four legs, a primordial wolf from history.
She sprints ahead of the others, snaps down to Homid when she reaches the building so that she can open the door, hold it for the others, watching behind them as best she can to cover their retreat inside. Adamidas hesitates, and Joey has to fight not to shout at her.
[Rain of Brass Petals] That is not Gaian, is all that she indicates before she hauls ass.
[Blood Summons] [Athletics+Dexterity (+2): Go go go go!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Face of Death] [dex + 2(Hispo) + ath]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile, Lila: howl of I am going to rip you apart?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rain of Brass Petals] She is running. Running like she knows how to run, running like she is aware of what she is doing, running like she was meant to run. Her mind doesn't wander; she tries to have faith that things will be okay. That things will work out, but she can't help but hear her mind wander off to horrible what ifs and she can't stand it.
Rain of Brass Petals runs. And tries to catch up to Joey, which she has little faith in thinking would happen.
[the oneiroi] This is what the Fenrir, one significantly fleeter than both of the others, one who leaps ahead, so quick, that she could out-run quickness itself if she was given half-a-chance, and the Black Fury hear behind. First, a howl: they all recognize Lila's howl-voice, by now, although they haven't all heard it lifted in this way: a half-savage promise of death; an eldritch, lovely paan to carnage-about-to-be-wreaked; an ode-to-the-necessity-of-spilling-blood, a threat. Then: battle met. They almost feel it, the slower two -- because they were still stalked. They started to run, and whatever-it-was-following-them, it ran too, and then: was taken down. They can hear teeth, and muted growls, and then --
Joey's at the apartment first. Night isn't quite so thick there. And the apartment doesn't look like it should, either. Looks vast, looks like it has rooms-piled-on-top-of-it, looks like it branches out. Inside, the rustle, murmur, come-to-us kiss of trees moving in the wind, even bird-song, something dawn-bright and shouldn't-be-here.
She's been here before. And, a little while after Joey makes it, Blood Summons and Adam join her.
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons may be able to move faster than Rain of Brass Petals, but he does not charge ahead leaving her to fend for himself. He falls behind, nipping at her heels if he has to. Whether or not he wants to leave his tribeswoman and his roommate, his would-be-sister, his friend behind, want has nothing to do with it. Joey needs to be inside, Adam needs to be inside, and sending those two in alone is not an option.
He doesn't look back as Waking Dream looses that terrible howl, doesn't stop to see how the two Moon Dancers fare against the agents of evil lurking in the darkness. He shepherds the other Theurge inside, letting Face of Death hold the door open for them, and then he shakes out his fur, eyes their surroundings.
Inside, it looks larger than it did in the half-light of dusk. It looks vast, looks sprawling, and it takes him a moment to get his bearings. The Godi sniffs the air, his nose telling him more than his eyes ever could, and looks to the Rotagar as if to make sure she's still there.
She's been here before.
[Face of Death] Joey popped into her Homid form when she reached the door. There's enough time between the reaching and the waiting for the others for her to look inside the door she holds for them to race through. She listens to the sounds that don't belong inside this building, Umbral or not.
Then the others are there, they're inside, and Joey follows them through. Before she lets the door close, she looks back to see if Lila and Kora are following. If they are, she waits for them. If not, she steps forward into the fast open insides that don't fit with the exterior, that don't match what exists on this spot realmside.
She looks up at the trees, and around, searching for a door, for some clue that will guide them to where they need to go. The spirits haunting this place are not going to make it easy, but Joey found them once before. On accident. She'll try again.
[Face of Death] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Blood Summons] [WP -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Oh?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [She looks around, inhaling the air and feeling it all play against her fur. She bristled, briefly, and paid attention. She isn't as fast as the other two- she's not a natural athlete or a seasoned runner. She watches Joey, though. Watches the two Fenrir and is trying to pick up subtle cues. Her tail flicks from one side to the other, a slow swish.
The spirits that are haunting the place don't make this any easier. She tries to catch cues from the other two. She isn't having much luck. Though, her body posture does indicate that she's more alert than she usually seems.
[the oneiroi] The inside of the apartment building.
First of all it looks normal. Looks decrepit. There is a revolving door. There is a door for people who are afraid of revolving doors next to the revolving door. Beyond the revolving door, there is apparently a lobby. Except, it's clean; this place is pure; this place feels right. This makes feels, almost, very nearly, like being out in the wild -- it almost sparkles, it's so fucking clean. There is evidence that this is not always the case. There is evidence that taint, that tarnish, creeps in easily, is tracked in very easily -- there's a light, flickering like moth-wings. There's a spirit, grinning at them with a man's pretty face and a cat's body, on a couch in the lobby. There are shadows, but they're shadows of trees-that-aren't-there, trees-that-are-just-felt.
Last time, Joey found the spirits on the way down to the basement. This time?
[the oneiroi] [Are y'all about to be Doom-Crushed?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[Face of Death] The last time, Joey was almost drawn to the revolving door. She found her way through a different one, in a different direction. This time.
This time she wants to try the revolving door. She wants to see what's on the other side, wants to know what lurks there, what dangers or wonders will be found. She wants to know if there's food there, or if she'll be food.
Joey's brows constrict as she looks at that door, that irresistible revolving door. And she starts toward it, hand stretched and ready to push her way through it.
[the oneiroi] [Meanwhile. Erk. Mother's Touch?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 5 at target 3) [WP]
[Blood Summons] It's a good thing there's an extra door for people who aren't all about the revolving edition. Blood Summons eyes the circular structure for several seconds as if it's a test, as if it's some strange new device that he's never seen before. Waking Dream had watched him attempt to make his way up an escalator over a month ago and found him, if not practiced, then at least not terrified of the thing. At least he hadn't tripped on the top step.
He doesn't waste time trying to figure out how to get himself through that contraption right now. He goes through the regular white-bread door, waiting for the Rotagar and the Black Fury on the other side.
"Does this spirit we're looking for have a name?" he asks.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She finally comes back from her lupus form to something decidedly more two-legged. She looks at the recolving door. She looks at it long and hard, and then she looks at Joey. She inhales, swallows, and is stuck with trusting her judgment.
"Joey? You sure about that door?" she asks. She's eying the thing, "'cus if you are, I'm taking it with you."
That said, if Joey continues on, the Fury follows her.
[Face of Death] [WP: C'mon, Oliver, don't be dumb!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[the oneiroi] [Adam: Soak This!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Rain of Brass Petals] Soak?
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Face of Death] Blood Summons takes the other door, asks a question that Joey can barely hear. It's enough, barely, to begin to sow the seeds of distraction. Seeds that take root when Adam comes up to her, tells her that she'll take the revolving door, too.
Joey frowns. She turns and looks at the Fury with that mismatched, half-blind stare. Then she looks back at the revolving door. Examines the other one leading away. And she remembers this from before.
Shaking her head, she says, "No. No, I'm not takin' that door. This other way's familiar."
The Rotagar steps through after the Godi, pausing to make sure Adam is following her in this direction instead. She looks at the cat-man spirit on the couch, tilts her head as she regards it before looking away again.
"I think this was the way I went before. There's a room of stairs. That's where I met the goat man."
[Sorrow] The battle and the siege - this happens in an eyeblink. She is touched and her nerves sing nightmares and her body, her frame, sizzles inside somehow, this hot promise of pain under her skin, all self-propagating, nerveless, nightmarish - and then that, too, is gone, in a shimmer of gnosis, a certain flare of white light, like the corona around some cool-hot star. Whatever had them under siege is down, beneath their claws, beneath their mouths, and Sorrow-wolf snarls a raw challenge toward all comers, bounding up the steps and turning, bristling, teeth bared at the street, waiting for something else, promising death-and-darkness to all possible foes. Then, just so - she turns - and when/if she is certain that the threat without is cleared away, she melts back into her humanskin.
Finds the door.
Opens it,
and goes in.
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] The Lila-creature, Lila-monster, had brushed herself across wounded-Sorrow, and then: then it was well, then it was as it should be. Sorrow-wolf, wolf-Sorrow snarls, lopes the rest of the way to the apartment, bounds up to the door, spins and regards the darkness, uncompromising. Waking Dream coalesces out've the darkness a moment later, similarly alert, wary, readied --
But nothing's coming for them again. Whatever they killed lies dead, so Lila takes her human-shape, says " - we'll cleanse after."
Kora opens the door, goes inside. And: they're in a foyer, a little hall. There is a revolving door. There is a regular door next to the revolving door. There is a cat-spirit with the face of a very, very pretty young man purring in and out of the pizza-slice section of the revolving door open in the lobby that door would (apparently) take them into. It looks at them, cocks its head. Feline.
to Sorrow
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Kora: has a healthy distrust of both doors. This place is clean, is purified; it's also dangerous. The revolving door feels like more of a trap. There's something very disconcerting about the lines of the hall: about the sounds she hears that shouldn't be.
to Sorrow
[the oneiroi] [Hi again, Adam!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Face of Death] [int + med]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Blood Summons] [Medicine+Intelligence]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] This is what she says: to the cat-spirit, standing in the revolving door, purring in and out of the slice that opens into the lobby. "I'll give you three strange words if you tell me where the key is. Three more if you tell me which door the other Garou took. And a song, if you tell me what's on the other side of the revolving door."
to the oneiroi
[the oneiroi] Joey is close to Adamidas, looks her over carefully, but she can't tell what's wrong with her, can't tell whether she's really hurt, her-somewhere-deep-inside, somewhere-bad, some-way bad, or -- or. Maybe it's because all of her knowledge of the body comes from a spirit, comes from wise-Bear, thoughtful-Bear, Bear-who-brings-things-to-life, dishonored-Bear. Maybe that's why Blood Summons looks at Adamidas, and he knows, looking her over, that she's hurt far worse than it looks like she's hurt. He knows, knows, just how badly wounded she is.
Very. She might not survive another blow [came from where? and why?].
[the oneiroi] [Commercial Break, yo!]
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