[Kora] The air tonight is damp and sharply cold, with a chill mist rising from the lake to flood the streets of the city spidering away from the waterfront. The latest snowfall has begun to settle back into itself, and is glazed with a bright, crunchy skin where the top layer - melting under the direct light of the afternoon sun - has refrozen after sunset. The sidewalks here are trampled down to undulant fields of compacted ice except where the city's snowplows have past, scattering enough stray rock salt onto the sidewalks to melt the compacted snow away.
The moon is full, low in the west, half-shrouded by a curtain of icy mist but visible now and again among the drifting cloudbanks. Nevermind: they can feel it, gravid and full, an ageless pull.
Kora stands on the covered portico at the top of the steps leading up to the ruined cathedral her pack has made its home. She's bundled for the weather in a dark wool coat. The light is uncertain enough that the color is lost in the drab orange shadows. Just her face swims above it, the pale blond crown of her hair - bare headed tonight - as she lifts a steaming mug to her mouth and frowns up thoughtfully at the patchwork night sky.
[Hunter] Hunter has to walk in this weather, his bike doesn't approve of the ice.
She hears the soft tapping of his boots on the pavement, crunches as he steps on frozen, collected water that didn't manage to fade away during the horrible day and has since refrozen. He wears a thick brown coat, military in style with a black scarf wrapped many times around his neck, tucking into the front of it.
His hands are in his pockets, his head lowered.
When he walks up the front steps of the church towards Kora he seems quiet, reserved, not the Hunter she first met. Not the Hunter that protected her frozen body either. He stops one step lower than her, looks back the way he came, turns to regard her again and then takes the step up beside her.
If she greets him he doesn't say anything, if not? There is silence. For a time.
"You hear from Adam yet?"
[Kora] The sidewalk in front of the church is fairly clear of snow and ice, so are the wide steps leading up to the porch. The Skald drops her dark eyes from the sky when hears footsteps, and is watching steadily as he rounds into view. The mug held in her hand seems an afterthought, forgotten until she lifts it in a mild, ironic toast.
"Hey," she says, when it's clear he's stopping by, not passing through - somewhere between the icy sidewalk and the slaggard gate slumping off the derelict chain-link fence that surrounds the abandoned property. There are trees all around, wound up with dead vines, the bare limbs skeletal, dark against the stone walls. Ivy spiders up the sides, dead and mostly leafless, fingerlets disappearing into the stone.
"About the other night?" The question is nearly rhetorical. The creature's dark eyes remain level on his face, watching for the answers. "No," she finishes, with a shake of her pale head. "Not a thing." They're nearly of a height; he has maybe an inch on her, but she's used to looking up to her tribesmates without seeming to look up at them. And he remains one step down, for a moment, so her dark eyes are looking down at him, then drifting up, just so, as he takes the last step.
"You want a beer?" she says, a tip of her head back toward the heavy wooden doors by way of invitation.
[Hunter] He isn't passing through, she can tell straight away because he isn't smiling. He came here for a specific reason. About the other night? He nods, takes that last step up beside her and looks out over the Green. A beer gets offered and he doesn't hesitate to flag it off with a shake of his head and a slight wave of his hand. The hand comes out of his jacket pocket to do so, and then immediately delves back in.
"Nah, no thanks."
The Bone Gnawer declines a free drink.
"Don't know if'n ya' heard bout' any of it, but somethin' came outta' that botched ritual, somethin' bad." A pause. "We're goin' after it tomorrow night."
A pause.
"Think we got'a lead, though don't know the deets, Adam's on it."
[Kora] The mug's ceramic, not paper. In the cold air, even with his dulled human senses, Hunter can smell the hot soup she's drinking. Chicken noodle, the kind that comes in the paper packets, dried noodles and dehydrated vegetables, chicken bits the size of a halved green pea. Not precise the drink of choice among her forefathers.
The street's mostly dark. No one bothers to replace the streetlights when the bulbs go bad down here, not for months, sometimes years, but the city has its own strange glow, especially on winter nights the streets are wrapped in filthy snow - to reflect and refract the ugly, suffusing orange light.
"What came out?" Her voice is quiet, here, but sharp. She looks up at him, just, sidelong, her attention quick and absolutely direct, dark eyes tracing out his profile against the stone lining the porch. She tapes a sip of her soup, nearly meditative despite the moon in the sky; or maybe that's how she feels it, inside, holds it close.
The blond hair half-knotted at the base of her neck, coiled behind her ear pulls when she turns her head to follow his movement, but otherwise, she is still, holding the mug of soup somewhere over her solar plexus, close against her body. Kora has no obvious tattoos, and her leather necklace and bracelets are all hidden underneath her buttoned wool coat. There's a hood hanging out, down her back, but she's not pulled it up yet. Her only obvious adornment is an old piece of metal - a thick ring through the inner cartilage, an antique iron charm etched with runes hanging down.
[Hunter] Tanned skin, though it's beginning to fade as the winter of Chicago goes on and on. He looks like he comes from warmer climates, though how warm can it really be for a Bone Gnawer anywhere? What came out she wants to know and Hunters chin turns swift to place his eyes on her, staring right back at her. The two creatures size each other up subconsciously.
Hunter pulls his hand back out of his jacket pocket, undoes a button and reaches inside. His hand comes out holding a piece of paper folded in half. He hands it across to her before doing up his buttons again and stuffing his hands back in his pockets.
"Only me was the one that saw it. Was too many of them god damn snakes, me'n JoJo couldn't keep em' out for long enough. Killed so many but they just kept fuckin' comin'. Anyway, ritual broke, whole place fuckin' explodes and everyone goes down for the count cept me."
He points to the piece of paper that he had just given her.
"That's what came out."
-------------
The draw is crude, thick black pencil and hardly a work of art. It could have been done by an eight year old. It was done by Hunter.
A frame, humanoid and yet disproportioned, with forearms thicker than biceps and hands like mallets, with thick stony digits. Her back is a ridged and bony monstrosity, while a tattered cloth about her waist snaps almost uselessly. As if a decoration. Her hair is long wet mass of tangled tendrils and in her hand she carries a huge single bladed axe. In the picture she is cutting something, slicing through thin air and rending a crack in the space in front of her.
[Kora] Kora reaches out for the drawing. Gloves off, her fingers are bare, the nails clipped short, the nailbeds clean. When she first came to Chicago she still sometimes polished them - black or orange, dark purple, some Halloween color from a former life - while sitting with her spine up against the corrugated walls of the Fenrir Jarl's - storage locker. A few mattresses on the concrete slab; Kemp's bikes.
She sold them, after. Sent the money to the folks raising the kid he'll never see again. And though it's cleaned out, Kora still pays the rent on the storage locker, just in case they ever need a bolt-hole. Just in case.
While he tells his story, however truncated, she watches him. The way muscles move underneath his skin; the way the light his his brow. The minute changes of expression, all of it, with a close-eyed, quiet attention. He finishes, and her dark eyes drop from his face to the drawing, mobile mouth settling into a narrowed frown.
After several moments, Kora breathes out a long, low breath. Not quite a whistle, though there's a note underscoring the breath, like the movement of the wind through broken branches.
"It's a Naug," she tells him, changing grip to point to the wrongness of the frame. " - white skin, yeah? Dead white? I've not seen one, but I've heard stories. Cursed Garou kidnap kinfolk, torture them, break them, then induce a murderspirit to fill them up. Strong as a Garou. Stronger, sometimes - utterly hungry for war.
"Though in the stories I've heard, they needed a theurge to get through the Gauntlet."
[Hunter] A flicker of the eyes, a twitch of the lip, a pulse through the neck.
This is Hunters response when she says It's a Naug. He stares unblinkingly, nodding his head when she questions of the skins colour. "Yea, dead white." He doesn't look at the picture though, he stares off into the city. Surely it can't just be this that has him on edge. They go after it tomorrow, but Hunter Matthews isn't known to be the sort of man who lets his fear over-come him. And fear he has, most certainly, only a fool is without fear. But he does what he has to do anyway.
"Don't need no theurge.. I think.." He pauses, remember red eyes and the way it looked at him. "I dunno.. this was different.. it just.. it just cut through the gauntlet with it's fuckin' axe. Just cut a hole and stepped right through!"
It's obvious that despite his lack of knowledge in the mystical side of the nation, this fact disturbs him. That something could just cut it's way through the Gauntlet so easily.
[Kora] "Shit." Kora's curse is quiet, under her breath. Her grip on the drawing tightens, enough that she pierces the paper near the bottom with the blunt edge of her thumb, but otherwise she's still. The paper rustles as she folds it neatly in half before passing it back to him. "The stories I've heard are old ones, not new. The cursed Garou used to tend them like - cattle, yeah? Herd them in the shadow, then pull them out and point them towards their enemies.
"If this one came in response to a botched ritual - was channeled here, or something - it should be alone, but we can't count on that," she continues, sliding her hand back into her pocket for warmth. The fog continues to drift, icy and opaque, nearly as dead-white as the thing's skin. "It's the beast of war that drives them. Some say that they can bring out frenzy, too. There's a story about a pack of Garou who tore each other apart when they lost control in the face of one. They're not - cunning, though. Yeah? They don't skulk about. Find the trail of destruction and follow it."
The last remark is accompanied by a supple twist of her mouth as she looks back at him. "If there's some spirit Adam can summon, some talen she can make to protect against that sort of frenzy, well. That might help. I'll try to find her before the hunt," Kora finishes, lifting her mug'o'soup by way of toast. "Thanks for the heads up, though." A tip of her pale head back toward the church. "You sure you don't want a beer?"
The moon is full, low in the west, half-shrouded by a curtain of icy mist but visible now and again among the drifting cloudbanks. Nevermind: they can feel it, gravid and full, an ageless pull.
Kora stands on the covered portico at the top of the steps leading up to the ruined cathedral her pack has made its home. She's bundled for the weather in a dark wool coat. The light is uncertain enough that the color is lost in the drab orange shadows. Just her face swims above it, the pale blond crown of her hair - bare headed tonight - as she lifts a steaming mug to her mouth and frowns up thoughtfully at the patchwork night sky.
[Hunter] Hunter has to walk in this weather, his bike doesn't approve of the ice.
She hears the soft tapping of his boots on the pavement, crunches as he steps on frozen, collected water that didn't manage to fade away during the horrible day and has since refrozen. He wears a thick brown coat, military in style with a black scarf wrapped many times around his neck, tucking into the front of it.
His hands are in his pockets, his head lowered.
When he walks up the front steps of the church towards Kora he seems quiet, reserved, not the Hunter she first met. Not the Hunter that protected her frozen body either. He stops one step lower than her, looks back the way he came, turns to regard her again and then takes the step up beside her.
If she greets him he doesn't say anything, if not? There is silence. For a time.
"You hear from Adam yet?"
[Kora] The sidewalk in front of the church is fairly clear of snow and ice, so are the wide steps leading up to the porch. The Skald drops her dark eyes from the sky when hears footsteps, and is watching steadily as he rounds into view. The mug held in her hand seems an afterthought, forgotten until she lifts it in a mild, ironic toast.
"Hey," she says, when it's clear he's stopping by, not passing through - somewhere between the icy sidewalk and the slaggard gate slumping off the derelict chain-link fence that surrounds the abandoned property. There are trees all around, wound up with dead vines, the bare limbs skeletal, dark against the stone walls. Ivy spiders up the sides, dead and mostly leafless, fingerlets disappearing into the stone.
"About the other night?" The question is nearly rhetorical. The creature's dark eyes remain level on his face, watching for the answers. "No," she finishes, with a shake of her pale head. "Not a thing." They're nearly of a height; he has maybe an inch on her, but she's used to looking up to her tribesmates without seeming to look up at them. And he remains one step down, for a moment, so her dark eyes are looking down at him, then drifting up, just so, as he takes the last step.
"You want a beer?" she says, a tip of her head back toward the heavy wooden doors by way of invitation.
[Hunter] He isn't passing through, she can tell straight away because he isn't smiling. He came here for a specific reason. About the other night? He nods, takes that last step up beside her and looks out over the Green. A beer gets offered and he doesn't hesitate to flag it off with a shake of his head and a slight wave of his hand. The hand comes out of his jacket pocket to do so, and then immediately delves back in.
"Nah, no thanks."
The Bone Gnawer declines a free drink.
"Don't know if'n ya' heard bout' any of it, but somethin' came outta' that botched ritual, somethin' bad." A pause. "We're goin' after it tomorrow night."
A pause.
"Think we got'a lead, though don't know the deets, Adam's on it."
[Kora] The mug's ceramic, not paper. In the cold air, even with his dulled human senses, Hunter can smell the hot soup she's drinking. Chicken noodle, the kind that comes in the paper packets, dried noodles and dehydrated vegetables, chicken bits the size of a halved green pea. Not precise the drink of choice among her forefathers.
The street's mostly dark. No one bothers to replace the streetlights when the bulbs go bad down here, not for months, sometimes years, but the city has its own strange glow, especially on winter nights the streets are wrapped in filthy snow - to reflect and refract the ugly, suffusing orange light.
"What came out?" Her voice is quiet, here, but sharp. She looks up at him, just, sidelong, her attention quick and absolutely direct, dark eyes tracing out his profile against the stone lining the porch. She tapes a sip of her soup, nearly meditative despite the moon in the sky; or maybe that's how she feels it, inside, holds it close.
The blond hair half-knotted at the base of her neck, coiled behind her ear pulls when she turns her head to follow his movement, but otherwise, she is still, holding the mug of soup somewhere over her solar plexus, close against her body. Kora has no obvious tattoos, and her leather necklace and bracelets are all hidden underneath her buttoned wool coat. There's a hood hanging out, down her back, but she's not pulled it up yet. Her only obvious adornment is an old piece of metal - a thick ring through the inner cartilage, an antique iron charm etched with runes hanging down.
[Hunter] Tanned skin, though it's beginning to fade as the winter of Chicago goes on and on. He looks like he comes from warmer climates, though how warm can it really be for a Bone Gnawer anywhere? What came out she wants to know and Hunters chin turns swift to place his eyes on her, staring right back at her. The two creatures size each other up subconsciously.
Hunter pulls his hand back out of his jacket pocket, undoes a button and reaches inside. His hand comes out holding a piece of paper folded in half. He hands it across to her before doing up his buttons again and stuffing his hands back in his pockets.
"Only me was the one that saw it. Was too many of them god damn snakes, me'n JoJo couldn't keep em' out for long enough. Killed so many but they just kept fuckin' comin'. Anyway, ritual broke, whole place fuckin' explodes and everyone goes down for the count cept me."
He points to the piece of paper that he had just given her.
"That's what came out."
-------------
The draw is crude, thick black pencil and hardly a work of art. It could have been done by an eight year old. It was done by Hunter.
A frame, humanoid and yet disproportioned, with forearms thicker than biceps and hands like mallets, with thick stony digits. Her back is a ridged and bony monstrosity, while a tattered cloth about her waist snaps almost uselessly. As if a decoration. Her hair is long wet mass of tangled tendrils and in her hand she carries a huge single bladed axe. In the picture she is cutting something, slicing through thin air and rending a crack in the space in front of her.
[Kora] Kora reaches out for the drawing. Gloves off, her fingers are bare, the nails clipped short, the nailbeds clean. When she first came to Chicago she still sometimes polished them - black or orange, dark purple, some Halloween color from a former life - while sitting with her spine up against the corrugated walls of the Fenrir Jarl's - storage locker. A few mattresses on the concrete slab; Kemp's bikes.
She sold them, after. Sent the money to the folks raising the kid he'll never see again. And though it's cleaned out, Kora still pays the rent on the storage locker, just in case they ever need a bolt-hole. Just in case.
While he tells his story, however truncated, she watches him. The way muscles move underneath his skin; the way the light his his brow. The minute changes of expression, all of it, with a close-eyed, quiet attention. He finishes, and her dark eyes drop from his face to the drawing, mobile mouth settling into a narrowed frown.
After several moments, Kora breathes out a long, low breath. Not quite a whistle, though there's a note underscoring the breath, like the movement of the wind through broken branches.
"It's a Naug," she tells him, changing grip to point to the wrongness of the frame. " - white skin, yeah? Dead white? I've not seen one, but I've heard stories. Cursed Garou kidnap kinfolk, torture them, break them, then induce a murderspirit to fill them up. Strong as a Garou. Stronger, sometimes - utterly hungry for war.
"Though in the stories I've heard, they needed a theurge to get through the Gauntlet."
[Hunter] A flicker of the eyes, a twitch of the lip, a pulse through the neck.
This is Hunters response when she says It's a Naug. He stares unblinkingly, nodding his head when she questions of the skins colour. "Yea, dead white." He doesn't look at the picture though, he stares off into the city. Surely it can't just be this that has him on edge. They go after it tomorrow, but Hunter Matthews isn't known to be the sort of man who lets his fear over-come him. And fear he has, most certainly, only a fool is without fear. But he does what he has to do anyway.
"Don't need no theurge.. I think.." He pauses, remember red eyes and the way it looked at him. "I dunno.. this was different.. it just.. it just cut through the gauntlet with it's fuckin' axe. Just cut a hole and stepped right through!"
It's obvious that despite his lack of knowledge in the mystical side of the nation, this fact disturbs him. That something could just cut it's way through the Gauntlet so easily.
[Kora] "Shit." Kora's curse is quiet, under her breath. Her grip on the drawing tightens, enough that she pierces the paper near the bottom with the blunt edge of her thumb, but otherwise she's still. The paper rustles as she folds it neatly in half before passing it back to him. "The stories I've heard are old ones, not new. The cursed Garou used to tend them like - cattle, yeah? Herd them in the shadow, then pull them out and point them towards their enemies.
"If this one came in response to a botched ritual - was channeled here, or something - it should be alone, but we can't count on that," she continues, sliding her hand back into her pocket for warmth. The fog continues to drift, icy and opaque, nearly as dead-white as the thing's skin. "It's the beast of war that drives them. Some say that they can bring out frenzy, too. There's a story about a pack of Garou who tore each other apart when they lost control in the face of one. They're not - cunning, though. Yeah? They don't skulk about. Find the trail of destruction and follow it."
The last remark is accompanied by a supple twist of her mouth as she looks back at him. "If there's some spirit Adam can summon, some talen she can make to protect against that sort of frenzy, well. That might help. I'll try to find her before the hunt," Kora finishes, lifting her mug'o'soup by way of toast. "Thanks for the heads up, though." A tip of her pale head back toward the church. "You sure you don't want a beer?"
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