[Resistance] She is decidedly more effeminate than she likes to think about. Her hair is down, though today she is decidedly jewelry free. It's not something people normally see- those wirethin burnmarks are more pronounced, easier to see against her skin. Boots are on, tank top on, and in a skirt.
She could run in a skirt. She didn't plan on running, though.
Kora asks if they're ready. Her attention flickers-
"I'm ready," she says.
[Roman Turner] He had never done this before and that fact made his belly tight with nerves and somewhere in the back of his head was a worried thought that maybe the belly cramps was the results of nerves combined with burrito and taco. This could be so embarrassing.
"Yessum."
He couldn't help but stare at the Ritemistress because he had yet to figure out exactly what happened to her to make her like she was now. So he stood there with a belly in knots and his eyes shadowed by the brim of his Stetson. As usual he was in stiff Wranglers that looked like they might stand in a corner all on their own.
[Sorrow] The rite is sacred, as all Garou rites are. The Ritesmistress performs it with the sort of reverence humans might reserve for pilgrimages to Rome, to Mecca, to the Ganges, to breathe in the dust of centuries, to dream their holiest dreams, to be purified in some enduring flame beyond the flesh.
The Garou - this mismatched trio, the pair of Gaian cousins and the lone Fenrir Skald, older than both but still cliath for all that - stand in their human skins in a place paved by humans, abandoned by humans, rediscovered by the Garou just a handful of years ago, where this endless, unknowable Maelstrom churns constantly, stained by the blood of the sacrifices made by them, by their brethern, and by their dead. They wear clothing stitched by human hands, decorate themselves in human ways - Fate in his stetson, Resistance in her skirts, Sorrow in her boots - as the world around them shifts.
It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening, even with the setting of the sun.
The Ritemistress finishes the rite and steps back. She tells them that their guide will come soon, and they will know to follow. And then she steps back further, her pale eyes on the glimmering north.
It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening -
- and the temperature is dropping around them. Fate is the first to feel the bite of the north wind. The first flakes of sifting snow.
---
In an eyeblink, Sorrow has dropped to the ground - her slender lupus form, eyes bright, her dark nose to the wind, the familiar hint of winter in the air.
[Roman Turner] "Well I'll be a three eyed pig, I see snow in August."
The words were spoken softly. His full attention was towards the North. No idea what was about to happen, though he greatly appreciated the air-conditioning blowing their way.
[Resistance] She's a subtle sledgehammer. Whatever she's thinking about, whatever comes across flickers through her eyes.
Their guide will come, and there is something that will come from the north. She might not be the most communicative of creatures, or the most deceptive, but it works well in her favor. She looks to the north, feels the cold, and seems almost out of place.
No, she does feel out of place. She's not the most in-tune with her wolf (she spent so much time hating it, accepting it now still seemed a little strange), but... we digress. She looks at Roman, catches Sorrow on all fours, in lupus, "c'mon..."
She takes her time, and she shifts down. They had to track something.
[Sorrow] They stand at the edge of the lake in the hottest season of the summer. The shallows are warm as bathwater, lapping quietly at the lakeshore, the soft slap of the minor waves - the wake of some passing ferry, some pleasure ship.
Then, the water is unmoving. Or rather, the sound of it recedes. The air conditioning becomes sharper and colder, and the lake begins to solidified, this narrow path of ice, snow collecting on it, wending north east and away from the lakeshore, out into the gathering darkness.
Roman says, Well, I'll be a three eyed pig and his Fenrir would-be Alpha nips at this heels as he stands and watches the shifting storm come in. It extends no more than three feet in either direction around them, but just here, in the midst of it, the temperature has dropped precipitously around them, from hot to warm to cool to frigid.
Resistance shifts into her lupus form - strange, she spent so much time hating it - and Sorrow brushes past her, both greeting and appreciation, feral and familiar. Her breath is steaming from her nostrils now, and the fur is a welcome addition to the flesh. The world changes, becomes pinpoint and immediate. They can all smell the horseflesh somewhere ahead, the outrider whose shadow they saw against the snow, blood and cinders in the air, cinders and blood.
Somewhere there, out on the lake, where the faintly solid path has coalesced, where snow swirls in faint, drifting squalls before being blown away into the lake on either side.
---
Sorrow takes the first steps onto the semi-solid lake. Her paws leave prints behind her in the snow, and her scent, which is both female and strong, is sharp in the air. The lake holds underneath her and she begins down the path, keeping to the middle road.
Somewhere, fifty or a hundred yards, three hundred, more - out in the midst of the lake, the path begins to rise away from the lake, peels away from the city, rising into the sky like every moonpath they've ever run.
Except colder.
[Roman Turner] He was the slow one, that one that clung to his birth form longest. When Sorrow nipped at his heels he did a modified two step to try and avoid those sharp teeth.
"I'm a coming, I'm a coming. Don't get your britches in a bunch."
Logic had it that his wolf form would weight less than his human and he really wasn't in to falling in to the water. So he began the shift and was assaulted with all his heightened senses brought to him at once. Keen hearing had his ears twitching like twin radar disks. So many scents had his nostrils flaring. He pulled himself together enough from the new wonders to follow the pair out on to the ice path. Thickly padded paw pads kept his feet from freezing to the ice and helped with his footing.
[Sorrow] [Stamina + athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
[Resistance] [stamina+athletics: roll 1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Roll 2?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [roll three!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [COME ON, REALLY?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
[Sorrow] The outrider ahead keeps a steady pace at first, as the path peels away from the human city like a strip of flesh, like a torn ribbon flung out against the dark night sky. They rise from the earth the way a jet climbs into the night for a long, transoceanic flight, from one end of the world to another.
Except they are going higher than the world, and all its tears. Ahead, the scent of horseflesh, the iron-cold promise of war. The stars wheel and change above them as they run, shifting points of light in the blanket of the sky.
Roman and Resistance are behind her, but she has run this path before. Or another, like it, in the wake of her alpha and his beta, the former dead, the latter fled. The path changes, and the city disappears. There are stars, and the stars are bright, pointillistic, just glimpsed between the snow squalls.
They run for what feels like a day and a night and a day again, as the path opens beneath them. They are cushioned in darkness, punished by the cold. If Roman welcomed the air conditioning as he stood at the edge of the lake, he will perhaps think differently of winter after this run.
Sorrow does not flag, dogged and sure, night and day and night again. Fate finds himself falling behind once, his legs sore, his body aching from the neverending effort, his lungs burning with the cold. He could stop here, lay down, rest and renew himself. Resistance runs and runs, sure and unfailing - slowly losing pace with her to-be Alpha. At the last, she throws herself into it with the same determination that Fate finds inside his feral mind, sinking every more deeply into the rich, immediate world of instinct and motion.
Instead, he digs inside himself and pushes onward, surging forward, struggling through the moment of flagging failure to find his stride again.
--
Hours later. Days maybe - time is such a strange and elastic thing in the spirit realm - they see ahead of them some shore of dazzling white. It reminds Roman of some family trip to the white beaches of the southern Gulf Coast, the glittering blue ocean, so fine does it seem. Closer, closer, closer still though, and his dreams of white sand beaches dissolve into something else as the icepath underneath them lowers gradually to this new earth.
Not sand, but snow - this expanse of white, trackless and nearly formless except for the constant swirl of some howling storm.
Sorrow is the first to pass from path to realm, her paws sinking into the deep, shifting snow. The winds send drifting snow in every direction, swallowing her tracks moments after she leaves them. She does not go far, but waits for the others instead, her dark nose to the air.
The outrider cannot be seen through the squall, and his tracks disappear almost as soon as he makes them. He's out there, though. Sorrow circles her packmates to be and nudges Fate forward. No-Moon she tells him, in brief, short yips and barks. - track our prey.
[Roman Turner] He was freezing his cajolies off. His sides heaved with each frozen breath that came out of him on a white cloud. His spittle had formed to ice in the fur around his mouth where his tongue had lolled out. And when they finally hit the beach that turned out to be more snow, that same snow collected like dander on his chestnut pelt. They got snow at home, but they seldom got much and it was seldom this damned cold.
Track our Prey.
The order came and it had him sticking his nose to the ground where each labored breath puffed the snow like blowing against powder.
Per+PU
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6) [WP]
[Resistance] There's something to be said about thinking too much.
It's thought about movement, and finally just throwing herself into it. In the end, she catches up. In the end, she commits.Funny, when she actually transitions, makes the slip, she is there. Her eyes hit the sky, and her tail swishes from one side to the other. Slowly. One side... to the other side...
Sorrow doesn't flag, days pass.
There is snow.
She's all tawny browns and greys, and she doesn't quite blend into this scenery. She doesn't seem to notice... or care. They need to hunt something. Track our prey, she says. Sparrow waits- Roman will find it. If there is prey to be found, he'll find it.
[Roman Turner] His dark nose was to the ground a matter of a heart beat before he lifted his muzzle and sounded the call to send them racing off again. It was the chase that kept him going when his muscles said rest.
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Run!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] This is a quest. There is no rest. They run through the sky like an arrow unleashed from the earth, and land on other shores. There is an ocean behind them, dark and bound in ice. The wind scours in across the formless white expanse from behind them, bitter, and they will be lost if they stray too far, if they range away from the pack and steal off into the dark, cold night alone. Instead, Sorrow, spins in the trackless waste and nuzzles them, Fate and Resistance, feeding them her scent and stealing their own so that the they can rely on all their other senses to feel each other, running close like a pack, through the quickened howl of the gathering storm.
Then Roman has his nose in the cold drifting snow. He has never tracked prey in such circumstances, but he finds the trail immediately, and leaps off. He has the scent and will not lose it, though they will run for hours. So sharp are his feral senses that he brings them close enough to glimpse the outrider ahead - the flash of iron hooves running so fast they seem to cast sparks where they hit the odd rib of rock.
They run again. The landscape that seemed formless changes around them, rising from the lowlands at the edge of the icelocked sea by slow degrees to a tableland cracked by deep, running fissures they must leap over or - with the widest, deepest ones - forge their way through, picking their way down over steep pathway, scrambling back up over frozen cliffs.
The land rises ahead again. The scent of outrider - which is blood and iron, cinders and cold, nothing but war - sharpens with each strider. Roman finds him first, closing, this feral surge of triumph as he closes on that which he tracks at a promontory overlooking a vast plain.
This then, is their prey - a plain looking man with a mane of blonde hair riding a huge warhorse larger than any hispo Garou, whose coat is iron and whose mane seemes made of plumed white snow. He stands at the edges of the cliffs overlooking the vast pains opening below. The man - the Jotunn, for though his skin seems human, he is as large as a war-formed Garou, larger even - wears a thick mantle of furs, and sports a heavily braided beared. Beads reamed from carven bone cap each of his many warbraids, and he watches not the small pack but the distant horizon as their scramble up the last few feet to the headland.
You have come this far - he says. His eyes are on the tracking no-moon, but he addresses Sorrow. There seems to be an echo underlying his voice, this resonance that cannot come entirely from within. If Roman and Sparrow think that they hear an edge of surprise underneath the outrider's resonant voice, they would not be wrong. and your no-moon tracks like a Rotagar. The host is ahead, daughter of Fenris. Who will be your champion?
Wordlessly, Sorrow nudges Resistance forward. They should be spent, but there is a renewed energy buzzing underneath their skin. They can hear the distance wardrums, feel the stirring pulse of rage within the cages of their chests.
Resistance Sorrow yips, circling the outrider to stand at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the wide plateau below.
Daughter of Gaia the outrider says, turning to the Ahroun. will your stand the challenge to come? There is a subtle edge of doubt remaining in the Jotunn's voice. Can you hold your own against a warrior of Fenris?
[Roman Turner] His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth in a constantly moving pink wave that pulsed up and down with each breath. And each of those breaths was announced in a white cloud as moist heated exhale met freezing air. His tail was held straight out, showing his intense focus. And there was no doubt that when his cousin was nudged forward his own tension rose. He wanted to go with her, it was clear in every line of his body. He wanted to fight as a Pack, as family. And this anxiousness came out on an anxious whine as he began to pace and circle.
[Resistance] She is, if nothing else, more perceptive of these things when she's not in homid. The subtle hints and edges in words. There is doubt there, doubt that she can't hold her own. Doubt is a powerful thing, and even though the moon wasn't full, there is a bristling of her fur, a tension in her muscles. Admittedly, looking at her? Resistance is not the most impressive of figures.
"I will stand this challenge," she replies to the outrider, "and I will hold my own."
Let it be said that what she lacks in being physically impressive, she makes up for in the fact that she is almost fearless. That she's stubborn as Hell. That she will do something she sets out to do. She stepped forward- she should be tired. And she is, but hiding that fact (playing through the pain, coach), is the only lie she can tell.
Sparrow steps forward.
[Sorrow] In the plains below, a teeming host made of all manner of monsters. There are giants and fire giants, dire wolves and great, craggy monsters that seem to have been made from the iron-gray bedrock somewhere underneath their feet. Frost-wraiths and Valkyries, on winged steeds to lead them. From a distance, the host seems like a carpet, moving just, woven tightly into the background, dark against white, smoke against the sky from the cookfires, bright points where the pennants flap and the trophies are raised on broken trees like banners against the darkness, promise and warning, together, to whoever would oppose them. From a distance, it seems like a carpet, some moving monolith, some singular thing.
The host is fractious, though - contentious and violent, boasting and prideful - gathered on the plains, fighting and casting lots, boasting and drinking and fighting and fighting and fighting as it awaits the call to war.
--
They stand in a small clearing, here. The remains of an old fire are evident now, in the sheltered lee of some nob of rock. Strange it is, that when Resistance steps forward, the natural circle just - forms amidst the snow and rock.
Roman paces, a high whine in the back of his throat. Sorrow pushes against his flank to still him and hold him back. She remains close to him, her tail thumping heavily against his flank, immediacy and reassurance as the pair stand just outside the forming circle in the snow.
We will see, daughter of Gaia, if you have the strength to follow one of Odin's sons. The outrider responds, shrugging off his mantle of furs onto the back of his massive steed. From somewhere underneath them, he produces a massive warhammer, the head worked in runes that seem to shift and move like worms underneath the skin.
You face me.
[Resistance] [Initiative: 9+1d10]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Sorrow] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[Roman Turner] Oh great the guy had a big ole war hammer. No fair!
Sorrow pushed against him and he nipped at her cheek and wound around her like a slinky. How could he hold still when he wanted to rip at the guy's hamstrings because he just pulled out a big ass hammer with every intent of braining his cousin?
[Sorrow] Resistance: 19
Outrider: 10
Outrider: 1. Hammer Sparrow. 2. Hammer Sparrow. 3. Bodyslam Sparrow.
[Resistance] [Action!: -1 rage (yay hispo!), -1 WP (resist pain)
1a: Falling touch for Mr. Outrider man
1b: biiiite hiiiiiim
R1: Seriously.
R2: I mean it!]
[Sorrow] (Note: Resistance can take hispo without spending rage to do so.)
[Resistance] [Dex4+hispo2+medicine3=9 - 2 = 7, diff 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7 (Failure at target 7)
[Resistance] [dex4+hispo2+brawl3= 9 - 3 = 6, diff 5. Bitiiiiing (freakin' failures!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Resistance] [This is embarrassing. str2+hispo3+hispobite2+1=8, diff 6]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Resistance] [Rar?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2
[Resistance] [Str2+hispo3+hispobite2+6=13]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Oww!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Rage 2: Go again!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 5) Re-rolls: 3
[Resistance] [[Str2+hispo3+hispobite 2: 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Damage: part 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] The battle is brief and ferocious. Resistance surges at the Jotunn, tearing into him again and again after her full-moon's trick fails her, her rage fed by the failure. He hits her once, then twice, each great swing of the war-hammer ringing through the clearing, her body shuddering with the impact. Then, at last, she frees herself from the last loops and whorls of her inhibitions, her human self inside the wolfskin, the girl who wore a skirt to a totemquest, who wears bangles and tries to live above, around, underneath her rage - launches herself at him, seizes, tears, opening him from neck to pelvis, a great torrent of hot blood, slithering organs, all unleashed as she tears into him. The outrider falls to his knees, and the ground cracks under his weight. Nerveless fingers release the haft of his hammer, it slips to the ground with a deep, ringing sound.
Through all the blood, he smiles, beard parting in this fierce expression that gives rise to a savage, abiding sort of laugh.
"The way," he says to Sorrow, struggling to hold in the loops and whorls of his intestines, all his glistening viscera, "is clear. Be sure they know what they seek."
[Roman Turner] His cousin ripped the rider open and suddenly his concern went from his cousin to the being gutted that still smiled. His head cocked, ears flicking forward and then he yipped out.
"Hammers are slow, they require a wide swing, leaving your gut wide open."
[Resistance] There is blood everywhere. Everywhere, mostly the outrider's. And, mostly? It's on her. It makes her eyes stand out, and strangely enough? Makes her fit more into this landscape. Through all the blood, the outrider smiles. He'll be fine. Sparrow? Doesn't feel a thing except a pang of accomplishment. There's no jingling of bangles. There is no swish of fabric, just the moment. Satisfaction. Be sure they know what they seek.
[Sorrow] Some stories cannot be told in wolfskin. While the outrider pulls closed his terrible wounds, Sorrow shifts to Crinos. There is no pure blood in her, but her markings are the same as most of her tribe, iron-gray with black guard hairs, and a paler gray undercoat.
She leads them to the edge of the cliff, gestures to the host spread out over the plains. Now they can smell the meat on the cookfires, hear the ring of metal on metal, the roar of laughter as someone makes good on some reckless boast. The louder roar as another fails to make good on an even more reckless boast.
And so on.
"Baldr," Sorrow tells them, "was the loveliest and most beloved of Odin's sons. In the time before time, though, he was troubled by dark dreams of the world gone mad, the Wyrm risen, circling around Yggdrasil, swallowing the world-tree branch by branch by branch, until the canopy died, and the roots were dislodged, and the end of all things came.
"They stories say that Odin was so troubled by his favored son's sleeplessness that he traveled to the ends of the earth to find a witch who spoke only in riddles, and who read the truth of the future in the mirrors of the dead, in the pattern of blood on the snow. He brought her sacrifices nine times nine, and she promised him four questions and four answers, but so terrible was the last that she refused him it, and swallowed all her prophecy like a bitter tongue, disappearing into a crack in the earth.
"What he learned was that his son would die, never to be seen again until the end of the world.
"Neither Odin nor Frigg could bear to lose their best son. Together, all the Aesir traveled the world, extracting promising from all the made-things and the thought-things, all the growing-things and the dying-things never to harm Baldr, best of all things, the god of light. The Aesir traveled day and night, seeking out everything in the world, from the lowliest worm to the mightiest Frost and Fire Giants, and all pledged that they would never harm Baldr. But one thing did they overlook: mistletoe, so small and dependent, wrapped around the oaks like a parasite that none dreamed it might ever cause harm to the lowliest of the worms, let alone the greatest of the gods.
"They did not recken with the work of the Undoer-of-things, however.
"When the work was finished, the Aesir gathered on the plains to celebrate. Baldr called for all the assembled to attack him. With sword and hammer and shield, with dagger and club and greataxe, the great host of the gods attacked Baldr, one by one by one, but nothing on earth would harm him, and still he stood, unbent, unbroken, unbowed."
[Sorrow] "Then the undoer, wearing the guise of Loki, whispered into the ear of blind Hodr, Bladr's brother, the gentle giant, weak and dumb. He took Hodr's arrows of ash and gave him arrows of mistletoe, bade him unleash them at Baldr, who was safe from all things of the world.
"And Baldr fell, for mistletoe had been overlooked - too young, too weak, too clinging to be remembered, overlooked by all but the undoer. The mistletoe arrow pierced his heart, and Baldr feel, and a great darkness overcame the host. The sons of men and the children of the Aesir wept, so great was the sorrow of the world that the stars did not move in the sky for three times three days and three times three nights. Instead they remained fixed, glittering the trackless sky, weeping stardust back to the deepest folds of the earth.
"Frigg stood forward and called out to the assembled host, demanding that one among them go to Hel to free her favorite son. No matter the tears that slipped down her ageless face, none of the assembled giants, wolves and heroes stepped forward to her call, except for Hermóðr.
"While the gods built Baldr's funeral pyre, Hermóðr mounted Sleipnir to follow the Hel-reid, the road to the lands of the dead.
"For nine nights, Hermóðr rode down the dark road to the land of the dead, through a valley so deep he never saw the son. Unflagging, he continued through the darkness until he came to the bridge Gjallarbrú over the river Gjöll.
"There he met Móðguðr, the maiden who guarded the bridge. She noticed that the bridge creaked more under Hermóðr's weight than it had when five battalions of dead men crossed the day before, and concluded that Hermóðr was not yet dead. She refused to let him pass, for she guarded the way, but Hermóðr'd account of the grief of the gods moved her as she had never before been moved, and she opened the way. And so he rode, until he came to the gates guarding Hel, and there he did not slow, but spurred Sleipnir to leap the gates.
"And so he came to the lands of the dead.
"Hermóðr pleaded with Hel until she agreed to release Baldr to the lands of the living; but she would do so only when all the things of the earth wept for his return. Hermóðr stood watch as Baldr arrived in the lands of the dead, and visited his palace there, drinking the mead of poetry, the óðr-rerir, which means, battle-mover, and returned to the lands of the living with a heavy heart.
"The Aesir again scattered to all the ends of the earth, pleading with all living things to weep for Baldr, that he might be freed, but both Odin and Hermóðr knew too well the words of the seeress - that Baldr will not be freed until all the world weeps, until the world is seized by violence and the hosts gather. The gates of Hel will open when Ragnarok comes, and Baldr's halls will shine again only after the final battle, the world-ending Ragnarok, when the world will drown in darkness, or be reborn in Baldr's - and Gaia's - shining light."
She could run in a skirt. She didn't plan on running, though.
Kora asks if they're ready. Her attention flickers-
"I'm ready," she says.
[Roman Turner] He had never done this before and that fact made his belly tight with nerves and somewhere in the back of his head was a worried thought that maybe the belly cramps was the results of nerves combined with burrito and taco. This could be so embarrassing.
"Yessum."
He couldn't help but stare at the Ritemistress because he had yet to figure out exactly what happened to her to make her like she was now. So he stood there with a belly in knots and his eyes shadowed by the brim of his Stetson. As usual he was in stiff Wranglers that looked like they might stand in a corner all on their own.
[Sorrow] The rite is sacred, as all Garou rites are. The Ritesmistress performs it with the sort of reverence humans might reserve for pilgrimages to Rome, to Mecca, to the Ganges, to breathe in the dust of centuries, to dream their holiest dreams, to be purified in some enduring flame beyond the flesh.
The Garou - this mismatched trio, the pair of Gaian cousins and the lone Fenrir Skald, older than both but still cliath for all that - stand in their human skins in a place paved by humans, abandoned by humans, rediscovered by the Garou just a handful of years ago, where this endless, unknowable Maelstrom churns constantly, stained by the blood of the sacrifices made by them, by their brethern, and by their dead. They wear clothing stitched by human hands, decorate themselves in human ways - Fate in his stetson, Resistance in her skirts, Sorrow in her boots - as the world around them shifts.
It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening, even with the setting of the sun.
The Ritemistress finishes the rite and steps back. She tells them that their guide will come soon, and they will know to follow. And then she steps back further, her pale eyes on the glimmering north.
It is ninety degrees in the shade this evening -
- and the temperature is dropping around them. Fate is the first to feel the bite of the north wind. The first flakes of sifting snow.
---
In an eyeblink, Sorrow has dropped to the ground - her slender lupus form, eyes bright, her dark nose to the wind, the familiar hint of winter in the air.
[Roman Turner] "Well I'll be a three eyed pig, I see snow in August."
The words were spoken softly. His full attention was towards the North. No idea what was about to happen, though he greatly appreciated the air-conditioning blowing their way.
[Resistance] She's a subtle sledgehammer. Whatever she's thinking about, whatever comes across flickers through her eyes.
Their guide will come, and there is something that will come from the north. She might not be the most communicative of creatures, or the most deceptive, but it works well in her favor. She looks to the north, feels the cold, and seems almost out of place.
No, she does feel out of place. She's not the most in-tune with her wolf (she spent so much time hating it, accepting it now still seemed a little strange), but... we digress. She looks at Roman, catches Sorrow on all fours, in lupus, "c'mon..."
She takes her time, and she shifts down. They had to track something.
[Sorrow] They stand at the edge of the lake in the hottest season of the summer. The shallows are warm as bathwater, lapping quietly at the lakeshore, the soft slap of the minor waves - the wake of some passing ferry, some pleasure ship.
Then, the water is unmoving. Or rather, the sound of it recedes. The air conditioning becomes sharper and colder, and the lake begins to solidified, this narrow path of ice, snow collecting on it, wending north east and away from the lakeshore, out into the gathering darkness.
Roman says, Well, I'll be a three eyed pig and his Fenrir would-be Alpha nips at this heels as he stands and watches the shifting storm come in. It extends no more than three feet in either direction around them, but just here, in the midst of it, the temperature has dropped precipitously around them, from hot to warm to cool to frigid.
Resistance shifts into her lupus form - strange, she spent so much time hating it - and Sorrow brushes past her, both greeting and appreciation, feral and familiar. Her breath is steaming from her nostrils now, and the fur is a welcome addition to the flesh. The world changes, becomes pinpoint and immediate. They can all smell the horseflesh somewhere ahead, the outrider whose shadow they saw against the snow, blood and cinders in the air, cinders and blood.
Somewhere there, out on the lake, where the faintly solid path has coalesced, where snow swirls in faint, drifting squalls before being blown away into the lake on either side.
---
Sorrow takes the first steps onto the semi-solid lake. Her paws leave prints behind her in the snow, and her scent, which is both female and strong, is sharp in the air. The lake holds underneath her and she begins down the path, keeping to the middle road.
Somewhere, fifty or a hundred yards, three hundred, more - out in the midst of the lake, the path begins to rise away from the lake, peels away from the city, rising into the sky like every moonpath they've ever run.
Except colder.
[Roman Turner] He was the slow one, that one that clung to his birth form longest. When Sorrow nipped at his heels he did a modified two step to try and avoid those sharp teeth.
"I'm a coming, I'm a coming. Don't get your britches in a bunch."
Logic had it that his wolf form would weight less than his human and he really wasn't in to falling in to the water. So he began the shift and was assaulted with all his heightened senses brought to him at once. Keen hearing had his ears twitching like twin radar disks. So many scents had his nostrils flaring. He pulled himself together enough from the new wonders to follow the pair out on to the ice path. Thickly padded paw pads kept his feet from freezing to the ice and helped with his footing.
[Sorrow] [Stamina + athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics - Kora]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
[Resistance] [stamina+athletics: roll 1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Roll 2?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [roll three!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [COME ON, REALLY?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
[Sorrow] The outrider ahead keeps a steady pace at first, as the path peels away from the human city like a strip of flesh, like a torn ribbon flung out against the dark night sky. They rise from the earth the way a jet climbs into the night for a long, transoceanic flight, from one end of the world to another.
Except they are going higher than the world, and all its tears. Ahead, the scent of horseflesh, the iron-cold promise of war. The stars wheel and change above them as they run, shifting points of light in the blanket of the sky.
Roman and Resistance are behind her, but she has run this path before. Or another, like it, in the wake of her alpha and his beta, the former dead, the latter fled. The path changes, and the city disappears. There are stars, and the stars are bright, pointillistic, just glimpsed between the snow squalls.
They run for what feels like a day and a night and a day again, as the path opens beneath them. They are cushioned in darkness, punished by the cold. If Roman welcomed the air conditioning as he stood at the edge of the lake, he will perhaps think differently of winter after this run.
Sorrow does not flag, dogged and sure, night and day and night again. Fate finds himself falling behind once, his legs sore, his body aching from the neverending effort, his lungs burning with the cold. He could stop here, lay down, rest and renew himself. Resistance runs and runs, sure and unfailing - slowly losing pace with her to-be Alpha. At the last, she throws herself into it with the same determination that Fate finds inside his feral mind, sinking every more deeply into the rich, immediate world of instinct and motion.
Instead, he digs inside himself and pushes onward, surging forward, struggling through the moment of flagging failure to find his stride again.
--
Hours later. Days maybe - time is such a strange and elastic thing in the spirit realm - they see ahead of them some shore of dazzling white. It reminds Roman of some family trip to the white beaches of the southern Gulf Coast, the glittering blue ocean, so fine does it seem. Closer, closer, closer still though, and his dreams of white sand beaches dissolve into something else as the icepath underneath them lowers gradually to this new earth.
Not sand, but snow - this expanse of white, trackless and nearly formless except for the constant swirl of some howling storm.
Sorrow is the first to pass from path to realm, her paws sinking into the deep, shifting snow. The winds send drifting snow in every direction, swallowing her tracks moments after she leaves them. She does not go far, but waits for the others instead, her dark nose to the air.
The outrider cannot be seen through the squall, and his tracks disappear almost as soon as he makes them. He's out there, though. Sorrow circles her packmates to be and nudges Fate forward. No-Moon she tells him, in brief, short yips and barks. - track our prey.
[Roman Turner] He was freezing his cajolies off. His sides heaved with each frozen breath that came out of him on a white cloud. His spittle had formed to ice in the fur around his mouth where his tongue had lolled out. And when they finally hit the beach that turned out to be more snow, that same snow collected like dander on his chestnut pelt. They got snow at home, but they seldom got much and it was seldom this damned cold.
Track our Prey.
The order came and it had him sticking his nose to the ground where each labored breath puffed the snow like blowing against powder.
Per+PU
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6) [WP]
[Resistance] There's something to be said about thinking too much.
It's thought about movement, and finally just throwing herself into it. In the end, she catches up. In the end, she commits.Funny, when she actually transitions, makes the slip, she is there. Her eyes hit the sky, and her tail swishes from one side to the other. Slowly. One side... to the other side...
Sorrow doesn't flag, days pass.
There is snow.
She's all tawny browns and greys, and she doesn't quite blend into this scenery. She doesn't seem to notice... or care. They need to hunt something. Track our prey, she says. Sparrow waits- Roman will find it. If there is prey to be found, he'll find it.
[Roman Turner] His dark nose was to the ground a matter of a heart beat before he lifted his muzzle and sounded the call to send them racing off again. It was the chase that kept him going when his muscles said rest.
[Sorrow] [Stamina + Athletics]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Run!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] stam+ath
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] This is a quest. There is no rest. They run through the sky like an arrow unleashed from the earth, and land on other shores. There is an ocean behind them, dark and bound in ice. The wind scours in across the formless white expanse from behind them, bitter, and they will be lost if they stray too far, if they range away from the pack and steal off into the dark, cold night alone. Instead, Sorrow, spins in the trackless waste and nuzzles them, Fate and Resistance, feeding them her scent and stealing their own so that the they can rely on all their other senses to feel each other, running close like a pack, through the quickened howl of the gathering storm.
Then Roman has his nose in the cold drifting snow. He has never tracked prey in such circumstances, but he finds the trail immediately, and leaps off. He has the scent and will not lose it, though they will run for hours. So sharp are his feral senses that he brings them close enough to glimpse the outrider ahead - the flash of iron hooves running so fast they seem to cast sparks where they hit the odd rib of rock.
They run again. The landscape that seemed formless changes around them, rising from the lowlands at the edge of the icelocked sea by slow degrees to a tableland cracked by deep, running fissures they must leap over or - with the widest, deepest ones - forge their way through, picking their way down over steep pathway, scrambling back up over frozen cliffs.
The land rises ahead again. The scent of outrider - which is blood and iron, cinders and cold, nothing but war - sharpens with each strider. Roman finds him first, closing, this feral surge of triumph as he closes on that which he tracks at a promontory overlooking a vast plain.
This then, is their prey - a plain looking man with a mane of blonde hair riding a huge warhorse larger than any hispo Garou, whose coat is iron and whose mane seemes made of plumed white snow. He stands at the edges of the cliffs overlooking the vast pains opening below. The man - the Jotunn, for though his skin seems human, he is as large as a war-formed Garou, larger even - wears a thick mantle of furs, and sports a heavily braided beared. Beads reamed from carven bone cap each of his many warbraids, and he watches not the small pack but the distant horizon as their scramble up the last few feet to the headland.
You have come this far - he says. His eyes are on the tracking no-moon, but he addresses Sorrow. There seems to be an echo underlying his voice, this resonance that cannot come entirely from within. If Roman and Sparrow think that they hear an edge of surprise underneath the outrider's resonant voice, they would not be wrong. and your no-moon tracks like a Rotagar. The host is ahead, daughter of Fenris. Who will be your champion?
Wordlessly, Sorrow nudges Resistance forward. They should be spent, but there is a renewed energy buzzing underneath their skin. They can hear the distance wardrums, feel the stirring pulse of rage within the cages of their chests.
Resistance Sorrow yips, circling the outrider to stand at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the wide plateau below.
Daughter of Gaia the outrider says, turning to the Ahroun. will your stand the challenge to come? There is a subtle edge of doubt remaining in the Jotunn's voice. Can you hold your own against a warrior of Fenris?
[Roman Turner] His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth in a constantly moving pink wave that pulsed up and down with each breath. And each of those breaths was announced in a white cloud as moist heated exhale met freezing air. His tail was held straight out, showing his intense focus. And there was no doubt that when his cousin was nudged forward his own tension rose. He wanted to go with her, it was clear in every line of his body. He wanted to fight as a Pack, as family. And this anxiousness came out on an anxious whine as he began to pace and circle.
[Resistance] She is, if nothing else, more perceptive of these things when she's not in homid. The subtle hints and edges in words. There is doubt there, doubt that she can't hold her own. Doubt is a powerful thing, and even though the moon wasn't full, there is a bristling of her fur, a tension in her muscles. Admittedly, looking at her? Resistance is not the most impressive of figures.
"I will stand this challenge," she replies to the outrider, "and I will hold my own."
Let it be said that what she lacks in being physically impressive, she makes up for in the fact that she is almost fearless. That she's stubborn as Hell. That she will do something she sets out to do. She stepped forward- she should be tired. And she is, but hiding that fact (playing through the pain, coach), is the only lie she can tell.
Sparrow steps forward.
[Sorrow] In the plains below, a teeming host made of all manner of monsters. There are giants and fire giants, dire wolves and great, craggy monsters that seem to have been made from the iron-gray bedrock somewhere underneath their feet. Frost-wraiths and Valkyries, on winged steeds to lead them. From a distance, the host seems like a carpet, moving just, woven tightly into the background, dark against white, smoke against the sky from the cookfires, bright points where the pennants flap and the trophies are raised on broken trees like banners against the darkness, promise and warning, together, to whoever would oppose them. From a distance, it seems like a carpet, some moving monolith, some singular thing.
The host is fractious, though - contentious and violent, boasting and prideful - gathered on the plains, fighting and casting lots, boasting and drinking and fighting and fighting and fighting as it awaits the call to war.
--
They stand in a small clearing, here. The remains of an old fire are evident now, in the sheltered lee of some nob of rock. Strange it is, that when Resistance steps forward, the natural circle just - forms amidst the snow and rock.
Roman paces, a high whine in the back of his throat. Sorrow pushes against his flank to still him and hold him back. She remains close to him, her tail thumping heavily against his flank, immediacy and reassurance as the pair stand just outside the forming circle in the snow.
We will see, daughter of Gaia, if you have the strength to follow one of Odin's sons. The outrider responds, shrugging off his mantle of furs onto the back of his massive steed. From somewhere underneath them, he produces a massive warhammer, the head worked in runes that seem to shift and move like worms underneath the skin.
You face me.
[Resistance] [Initiative: 9+1d10]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Sorrow] 8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[Roman Turner] Oh great the guy had a big ole war hammer. No fair!
Sorrow pushed against him and he nipped at her cheek and wound around her like a slinky. How could he hold still when he wanted to rip at the guy's hamstrings because he just pulled out a big ass hammer with every intent of braining his cousin?
[Sorrow] Resistance: 19
Outrider: 10
Outrider: 1. Hammer Sparrow. 2. Hammer Sparrow. 3. Bodyslam Sparrow.
[Resistance] [Action!: -1 rage (yay hispo!), -1 WP (resist pain)
1a: Falling touch for Mr. Outrider man
1b: biiiite hiiiiiim
R1: Seriously.
R2: I mean it!]
[Sorrow] (Note: Resistance can take hispo without spending rage to do so.)
[Resistance] [Dex4+hispo2+medicine3=9 - 2 = 7, diff 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7 (Failure at target 7)
[Resistance] [dex4+hispo2+brawl3= 9 - 3 = 6, diff 5. Bitiiiiing (freakin' failures!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Resistance] [This is embarrassing. str2+hispo3+hispobite2+1=8, diff 6]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Resistance] [Rar?]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2
[Resistance] [Str2+hispo3+hispobite2+6=13]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Hammer!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Oww!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Rage 2: Go again!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 5) Re-rolls: 3
[Resistance] [[Str2+hispo3+hispobite 2: 7]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Resistance] [Damage: part 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] The battle is brief and ferocious. Resistance surges at the Jotunn, tearing into him again and again after her full-moon's trick fails her, her rage fed by the failure. He hits her once, then twice, each great swing of the war-hammer ringing through the clearing, her body shuddering with the impact. Then, at last, she frees herself from the last loops and whorls of her inhibitions, her human self inside the wolfskin, the girl who wore a skirt to a totemquest, who wears bangles and tries to live above, around, underneath her rage - launches herself at him, seizes, tears, opening him from neck to pelvis, a great torrent of hot blood, slithering organs, all unleashed as she tears into him. The outrider falls to his knees, and the ground cracks under his weight. Nerveless fingers release the haft of his hammer, it slips to the ground with a deep, ringing sound.
Through all the blood, he smiles, beard parting in this fierce expression that gives rise to a savage, abiding sort of laugh.
"The way," he says to Sorrow, struggling to hold in the loops and whorls of his intestines, all his glistening viscera, "is clear. Be sure they know what they seek."
[Roman Turner] His cousin ripped the rider open and suddenly his concern went from his cousin to the being gutted that still smiled. His head cocked, ears flicking forward and then he yipped out.
"Hammers are slow, they require a wide swing, leaving your gut wide open."
[Resistance] There is blood everywhere. Everywhere, mostly the outrider's. And, mostly? It's on her. It makes her eyes stand out, and strangely enough? Makes her fit more into this landscape. Through all the blood, the outrider smiles. He'll be fine. Sparrow? Doesn't feel a thing except a pang of accomplishment. There's no jingling of bangles. There is no swish of fabric, just the moment. Satisfaction. Be sure they know what they seek.
[Sorrow] Some stories cannot be told in wolfskin. While the outrider pulls closed his terrible wounds, Sorrow shifts to Crinos. There is no pure blood in her, but her markings are the same as most of her tribe, iron-gray with black guard hairs, and a paler gray undercoat.
She leads them to the edge of the cliff, gestures to the host spread out over the plains. Now they can smell the meat on the cookfires, hear the ring of metal on metal, the roar of laughter as someone makes good on some reckless boast. The louder roar as another fails to make good on an even more reckless boast.
And so on.
"Baldr," Sorrow tells them, "was the loveliest and most beloved of Odin's sons. In the time before time, though, he was troubled by dark dreams of the world gone mad, the Wyrm risen, circling around Yggdrasil, swallowing the world-tree branch by branch by branch, until the canopy died, and the roots were dislodged, and the end of all things came.
"They stories say that Odin was so troubled by his favored son's sleeplessness that he traveled to the ends of the earth to find a witch who spoke only in riddles, and who read the truth of the future in the mirrors of the dead, in the pattern of blood on the snow. He brought her sacrifices nine times nine, and she promised him four questions and four answers, but so terrible was the last that she refused him it, and swallowed all her prophecy like a bitter tongue, disappearing into a crack in the earth.
"What he learned was that his son would die, never to be seen again until the end of the world.
"Neither Odin nor Frigg could bear to lose their best son. Together, all the Aesir traveled the world, extracting promising from all the made-things and the thought-things, all the growing-things and the dying-things never to harm Baldr, best of all things, the god of light. The Aesir traveled day and night, seeking out everything in the world, from the lowliest worm to the mightiest Frost and Fire Giants, and all pledged that they would never harm Baldr. But one thing did they overlook: mistletoe, so small and dependent, wrapped around the oaks like a parasite that none dreamed it might ever cause harm to the lowliest of the worms, let alone the greatest of the gods.
"They did not recken with the work of the Undoer-of-things, however.
"When the work was finished, the Aesir gathered on the plains to celebrate. Baldr called for all the assembled to attack him. With sword and hammer and shield, with dagger and club and greataxe, the great host of the gods attacked Baldr, one by one by one, but nothing on earth would harm him, and still he stood, unbent, unbroken, unbowed."
[Sorrow] "Then the undoer, wearing the guise of Loki, whispered into the ear of blind Hodr, Bladr's brother, the gentle giant, weak and dumb. He took Hodr's arrows of ash and gave him arrows of mistletoe, bade him unleash them at Baldr, who was safe from all things of the world.
"And Baldr fell, for mistletoe had been overlooked - too young, too weak, too clinging to be remembered, overlooked by all but the undoer. The mistletoe arrow pierced his heart, and Baldr feel, and a great darkness overcame the host. The sons of men and the children of the Aesir wept, so great was the sorrow of the world that the stars did not move in the sky for three times three days and three times three nights. Instead they remained fixed, glittering the trackless sky, weeping stardust back to the deepest folds of the earth.
"Frigg stood forward and called out to the assembled host, demanding that one among them go to Hel to free her favorite son. No matter the tears that slipped down her ageless face, none of the assembled giants, wolves and heroes stepped forward to her call, except for Hermóðr.
"While the gods built Baldr's funeral pyre, Hermóðr mounted Sleipnir to follow the Hel-reid, the road to the lands of the dead.
"For nine nights, Hermóðr rode down the dark road to the land of the dead, through a valley so deep he never saw the son. Unflagging, he continued through the darkness until he came to the bridge Gjallarbrú over the river Gjöll.
"There he met Móðguðr, the maiden who guarded the bridge. She noticed that the bridge creaked more under Hermóðr's weight than it had when five battalions of dead men crossed the day before, and concluded that Hermóðr was not yet dead. She refused to let him pass, for she guarded the way, but Hermóðr'd account of the grief of the gods moved her as she had never before been moved, and she opened the way. And so he rode, until he came to the gates guarding Hel, and there he did not slow, but spurred Sleipnir to leap the gates.
"And so he came to the lands of the dead.
"Hermóðr pleaded with Hel until she agreed to release Baldr to the lands of the living; but she would do so only when all the things of the earth wept for his return. Hermóðr stood watch as Baldr arrived in the lands of the dead, and visited his palace there, drinking the mead of poetry, the óðr-rerir, which means, battle-mover, and returned to the lands of the living with a heavy heart.
"The Aesir again scattered to all the ends of the earth, pleading with all living things to weep for Baldr, that he might be freed, but both Odin and Hermóðr knew too well the words of the seeress - that Baldr will not be freed until all the world weeps, until the world is seized by violence and the hosts gather. The gates of Hel will open when Ragnarok comes, and Baldr's halls will shine again only after the final battle, the world-ending Ragnarok, when the world will drown in darkness, or be reborn in Baldr's - and Gaia's - shining light."
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