Ornature

[Kora] The warm spring day is sinking into a cool spring night. The city is green now. Lawn crews have been out in the parks, grooming the growing grass, trimming the early growth from the trees and shrubs. There are pear trees in bloom, the blush of cherry trees in the air, and blazing displays of tulips and daffodils along the berms and medians, in the plazas and parks of city's wealthy neighborhoods. It is still cold enough to make a jacket a necessity, when the sun sinks below the horizon and the stars flare to life somewhere beyond the orange haze of light pollution.

Kora is not wearing a jacket, though. She is dressed sparely, in jeans and a t-shirt, so freshly washed that the scent of the detergent used to clean them is stronger than her own scent woven through the fibers. She is a stark, tall thing in the wash of lights in the lobby, her pale hair pulled back, plaited tonight, the braid tucked under and secured with elastic at the end. Black cotton against her pale skin, dark bracelets at her wrists, dark choker at her throat, her dark eyes and expressive mouth still tonight.

Her reflection stares back at her all the way up in the elevator, but she does not watch herself back. There are still shadows in her eyes, through the raw immediacy has gone. When she reaches the door to the apartment (counting back, remembering the singularity of the structure on the other side, the sticky consistency of the wrapped webbing, the spare weaver's song of the place), she knocks twice, then slides her hands into the front pockets of her jeans, waiting, quiet.

[Imogen] There is not a long wait before Imogen opens the door. She had already gotten up to answer the intercom, and had merely lingered in the foyer, her shoulders resting lightly against the wall.

When Kora knocks, Imogen straightens, pausing briefly before reaching for the deadbolt. It clicks softly before the kinwoman opens the door, stepping aside to let the other in.

Kora had not had the opportunity to enter or exit this way before. She had taken the Shadow, The foyer is on the edge of spacious, boasting a closet, a small side table, upon which a small bowl rests, holding Imogen's keys, her purse sitting beside it.

The kinwoman is dressed in jeans, a loosely fitted blouse. Her feet are bare, her hair is up.

"C'mon in," she says, by way of greeting, letting the Fenrir enter before she shuts the door behind her.

[Kora] "Thanks, doc." Kora returns the greeting quietly. Her hands remain in her front pockets, fitted up to the second knuckle, as she steps past the kinswoman into the spacious foyer, then precedes her into the spare living room of the expensive condominium. She is clean tonight, Kora. There is no blood on her hands; there is no blood on her thighs; the black cotton t-shirt is soft, and smells of some chemical company's idea of rain.

It smells nothing like rain, which has always smelled to her like sorrow, ozone and metal musk, some deeper suggestion of the falling sky written directly into the scent. Kora - call her Sorrow, now. Tonight, it is still her name - stands in the center of the living room, her shoulders and spine straight, her body taut underneath. The scent of sawdust in her hair.

She does not sit; not here. Instead, she stands in the center of the living room, a raw presence, for all that the moon is falling dark above them, leaving the beast in her quiet as it will ever be. She stands in the center of the living room, watches Imogen as she walks back in, the quiet slap of bare feet on the hardwood floor at odds with the heavier sound Kora's black boots make as she walks.

"We went to the Battleground," Kora's eyes are dark on the doctor's face, watching the minute movement of muscle beneath the other woman's face, feeling the inexorable pull of the woman's breeding somewhere deep in the feral part of her. "If you still want to hear the story, I'll tell it."

[Imogen] She follows Kora into the living room, but unlike her, does take a seat. It is not quite a comfortable one. She moves past the Garou and steps around the coffee table before perching herself on the arm of one of her leather sofa chairs.

She sits poised, one leg drawn in, the other stretched out, her point of balance, and watches the Fenrir. As Kora speaks, and her gaze latches unerringly on Imogen, the doctor keeps her own attention fastened. She does not flinch and does not turn away.

With her eyes on Imogen, Kora can perhaps catch the nuances of the woman's expression. The tension at the edge of her mouth, the tension at her brow. The kinwoman undoubtedly wears make up - the subtle kind which looks as much like her own skin as anything. Still, a day's wear has allowed the dark commas beneath her eyes to show through.

It has been a long week.

She is given a choice, Imogen is. In the end, she nods. She wants to hear the story.

[Kora] "You're familiar with the church," Kora begins. Her voice is low and rich; still, there is something hoarse beneath it. It is all but indetectable, except at the bottom of her register, the resonance dampened, burred. She waits just long enough for Imogen to affirm that she is. That she is familiar with the church; that she herself remembers it. " - in the Hivelands. It remains pristine, but the cursed ones and their allies built another structure on the adjoining land. A community center, with day care, a cafeteria, classes and a swimming pool, sports courts, a gym. The food was tainted; and the water, everything."

This is the story she tells.

"Just before the last full moon, the Sept sent scouts to the Church in the Hivelands, to investigate the Elk Grove Community Center. They discovered something dark in the basement on the other side, in the spirit-world - that's all Kemp-rhya and the rest knew, going in.

"They went in blind; through a long dark tunnel leading downward, black and foul. The air was humid, too. There were six of them. Kemp. Another ragabash, three full moons, and a theurge. My Alpha took point as they crept downward. There was a skirmish part-way down, a sentry spirit that they felled before it could sound the alarum." She says the word like that: alarum - as if it were a thing, a call. "Then they came to the mouth of the tunnel, where it opened into the basement. The place was thick with bane-spirits. There were a pair of cursed ones, too - pulling more bane-spirits out of the mouth of a vortex - a Wyrmhole - regularly birthing new banes.

"Kemp-rhya was a Rotagar; he was absolutely hidden as he crept to the mouth of the tunnel, surveyed the scene that the scouts before had failed to discover. Banshee followed him, stuck close to his side.

"She did not have his skill, though.
She was visible to all."

[Silence] A small improvement: he doesn't simply appear inside Imogen's apartment. He appears out in the goddamn hall and thumps on the door with the heel of his hand.

[Imogen] You're familiar with the church, Kora begins and waits for Imogen's response.

"I am."

Sorrow continues. Imogen listens.

A frown marks her brow as the Galliard pauses in her telling. "And then?" she prompts, though one imagines she can guess. that Banshee was seen. That Kemp is dead. It occurs to her that this is pointless. She does not care how or why this happened.

It doesn't matter.

The sound of pounding on her door turns her head. The heel of a palm is different than the rap of the knuckles, the sound more muted, broader.

"Excuse me."

Absent, to Kora, as the kinwoman gets to her feet and crosses to the foyer. After checking the peephole, she reaches for the doorknob. It is worthy of note that she had not locked the door after Kora's entrance. There is no sound of undoing the deadbolt, before she opens the door.

"Rohl," she greets him, stepping aside.

[Silence] At least there's this. He's cleaned up. He's changed out of the clothes that smelled of death. Washed, bathed, even razored his jaw. He looks lean and hungry, as though the rage that fills the room to the brim has eaten a hole in him.

"'Gen." He looks past her. "Kora." Not much surprise there.

[Kora] "Silence-rhya." Kora returns, standing in the middle of Imogen's living room, her hands in her pockets, down to the second knuckle. Her narrow-shouldered frame is cheated toward the door as Imogen pads down the hall to answer the pounding knock. She remains still, standing there - her hands forgotten in her pockets now - as Silence enters the room. She does not call him his human name. She cannot contain him in his human name.

Her wide mouth is still; a new tension has entered her frame, the line of her lean body taut beneath her dedicated clothing - black t-shirt, PIXIES across it in white letters - jeans, black boots laced up her calves. Her hair is pulled back in a French braid, clean - her dark eyes stark and wary, flashing over the Athro's face - the barest impression of his eyes entering her mind's eye - before leveling out somewhere between his chin and his mouth. She breathes out, turns stiffly to Imogen, lifting her gaze in the kinswoman's direction, then - a cool reservoir of breeding against the brutal rage burning through Silence, singing in the air.

"I can come back, Doc. If you'd like." Then, back to Silence. " - or stay, -rhya. If you want to hear this now, too."

[Imogen] Silence's entrance has created an abrupt change in the air. His rage sucks oxygen from the living room. It shakes what air is left, vibrating it until the very atoms seem to irritate the skin.

Imogen lets him past her as he steps in, turning away to shut the door. The rage at her back digs into her spine, igniting the nerves.

He enters the living room, and she is not far behind.

Her breeding must be a sweet balm compared to the rage. Or perhaps, worse, just another sensation to be felt in a cacophony of irritating sensations.

Kora addresses them both, and Imogen pauses before saying simply, "She and her pack went to the Battleground to see Kemp's death," to Silence, by way of further explanation. The explanation comes more or less easily. It would not have, even eight months ago.

"She's here to say what happened."

[Silence] Silence says nothing at all. His eyes follow Kora when she asks if she should stay or go. Imogen when she explains Kora's presence. Back to Kora, then, assessing, penetrating, until finally he nods -- a short, upward jerk of the chin.

He doesn't sit. Or even take his shoes off. He comes in just past the foyer and leans his shoulder to the wall, listening.

[Kora] Kora repeats herself. Imogen hears, again, the prologue. The church; the community center; the taint. The scouts who investigated, and who failed to find the Wyrmhole. The team that Wyrmbreaker assembled to descend into the basement. This time, though, she names the Garou who followed her Alpha into the tunnel, who descended into the blind heat of the basement: Ankle-biter. Banshee. sklora-Myrgen. Cold Death. Moving Mountain. The names are always strange in human tongue. Otherwise, the words she chooses are spare, plain and direct.

She tells Silence the same story she told Imogen, her narrow body turned toward him, her dark eyes respectfully lowered. Even so, it is difficult for her to look at him and see human skin; and see how human skin can contain so much rage.

The precipice is the same. When the retelling of the prologue is finished, Kora shifts her body language subtly to include Imogen in the telling. Her dark eyes move, minutely, from the kinswoman's direct gaze to Silence's face, without meeting his eyes - or even coming close.

"They saw Banshee at the mouth of the tunnel, and charged. There were two cursed Garou; four bane-spirits, more being born from the Wyrmhole. The cursed Garou charged at Banshee. Mama Ankle-biter was in the center of the group, the only theurge. She began summoning a spirit to close the Wyrmhole, and the banes swarmed her. My Alpha took down one of the cursed Garou. Banshee and Cold Death killed another - not before he ordered the bane-spirits to kill the Theurge. One of the banes attacked Moving Mountain, but the rest clawed toward Mama Ankle-biter.

"sklora-Myrgen and my Alpha threw themselves between the bane-spirits and the theurge. sklora-Myrgen took the brunt of two attacks, and was badly wounded.

"My Alpha took four blows. The first two did not touch him. The third wounded him.

"The fourth killed him. He did not rise."

She pauses, her generous mouth flattened, her body tense, her hands still sunk in the terribly ordinary pockets of her worn jeans. There is a flare of anger corded somewhere in the undertone of the words as she speaks them, as the story of the fight unfolds. It is the spark and hiss of a match; the flare of a candle, dwarfed by the modi's rage - but it is there underneath it all.

"We fought the battle five times. Once as they fought it. Then: four more. We each intercepted the blow that killed our Alpha.

"It killed War-Handed and Gut-Song. Blood Summons and I survived, but fell unconscious from the force of it.

"The rest fought better after that. They closed the Wyrmhole, eventually.

"That's the story."

[Imogen] Silence leans against the wall, barely inside Imogen's condominium, making no attempt to make himself at home.

It is perhaps a little disconcerting. Two Garou, both with their shoes on, both standing in her living room. And Imogen, crossing the room, her body slight, breakable and fragile.

She takes her seat again on the arm of the sofa chair, turned toward the Garou. She watches Kora while she speaks. She does not frown outright, but there is a tension to her brow, to her jaw, her mouth as the Skald speaks.

There is silence at the end, a stillness. Then Imogen stirs, straightening. Kora is more easily in her line of sight than Decker - she looks at the former, only.

"Thank-you."

Simple enough.

[Silence] Shrouded in so much rage, Silence is almost divorced from it; the way the sun will flame out a camera and leave a paradoxical darkness in its place. The heat-lightning of his primal presence crackles and lances around him, but the modi himself is expressionless, listening, his lips now and then twitching as though he wants to snarl. When he first heard of Kemp's death,

(James was freshly dead in the back of the Barracuda.)

he flung everything in his den at the walls, crushed it all, broke it. For a moment that same promise of violence is in the air, curdling it, turning it hard and cutting as blades. Near at hand: he could throw the kitchen table. He could batter the stereo system to plastic and metal in one or two punches. He could --

do what he does, which is nothing at all. Which is: to shift his weight faintly. Close and open his eyes, a slow blink. He knows he should feel grief. He knows he should mourn the man who was once a packmate to him. Who was a brother to him still; whom he loved, though he didn't even fucking like him. He knows he should have something more to say, something to ask. He should tease the details out. He should ask for the specifics. Who. When. Where. What did they do. Every iota. Every minutiae. Everything, until he can reconstruct the scene in his mind; until he can judge for himself

who was right
and who was wrong
and what the sum total of Kemp's death meant.

None of this comes to mind. He cannot summon the thoughts, the feelings. Silence doesn't say anything after all. He snarls -- a short, rough, coughing noise spat from a human throat, through bared human teeth. Then he levers off the wall, turns on his heel. The door's jerked open too fast. The tongue catches the groove and shakes the frame. When it slams shut behind him, it rattles the windows in their panes.

They can hear his heavy footsteps going down the hall toward the elevator. Short visit.

[Kora] This is what she does: witness the solar flare of rage around Silence, her eyes open, just averted from the center of the whirlwind. Her jaw is set, her lips drawn back against her teeth. Kora does not close her eyes, though she holds herself with the taut expectancy of someone anticipating a blow when he coughs out an inhuman snarl through his too-human through.

Then, the opens and slams shut. The windows rattle; in her mind's eye, in her imagination, the building itself shakes. That's how some would tell it - the tower itself shook from the force of his rage - though she is too plainspoken for such histrionics.

The truth is enough.
The truth is worse.

"Doc," - this is later, after the windows have stopped rattling, when the oxygen has returned to the room. When the rage that hung around them like a cloud of combustable sawdust awaiting the errant spark it requires to explode has leaked away. Kora turns stiffly back to the kinswoman, her muscles aching from the tense line in which she has held herself since she arrived, a different sort of afterburn. Her voice is quiet. It always is. " - the rite is tomorrow. I'll come for you, if you want to attend. Or take you later, after it is done, if you prefer that."

[Imogen] Her attention had turned as Decker had snarled, her eyes had followed him when he stalked toward the door. She had not flinched as the door had been whipped open, and slammed shut.

One of her neighbours is currently home and having a very bad night. Tense and unsure why, they turn on the television and try to find something cheerful to watch to cure them of hteir insomnia and soothe them from bad dreams.

Kora speaks, and the doctor turns to look at the Skald.

"I thought of something else yeh might want to burn with him," she says, as she gets to her feet. "Eggrolls."

A shadow of a pause, barely more than a breath. "I'll attend the rite."

[Kora] Her acknowledgment is spare, a faint tip of her pale head, the sweep of the lights across the crown, the intricate interweaving of the French braid in which she has secured it. Then, wetting her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, Kora reaches into the hip pocket of her blue jeans, pulls out a folded piece of paper, holds it out to Imogen as she rises.

"I found a letter among his things. If you'd like to read it." The paper is held between her fore and middle finger. If Imogen makes no move for it, it disappears quickly.

[Imogen] To refuse to attend the rite is weakness. She will attend, not because she wants to, but to say that she will not is tantamount to saying that she cannot bear to face it.

To refuse to read the letter would be much the same.

There is much that Imogen does simply because to do anything else would be weak.
She refuses to be that.

So, after a moment of looking at the letter held in Kora's hand, she steps forward, reaching out to take it. She does not open it or even glance at the handwriting, visible through the paper, and on one side where Kemp had labelled it.

"Give it back to you tomorrow, shall I?"

[Kora] "Sure." Kora says, quiet. Releasing the paper easily, looking away, toward the dark windows, their reflections evident on the rattled panes of glass as she does so. Her hands return to her pockets, the front ones, slide in to the first knuckle. " - 'night Doc. I'll see you tomorrow."

Then she steps neatly away from the kinswoman, circling the spare furniture of the living room to foyer.

She lets herself out, Kora.
Neither the windows nor the door rattle in their frames.

The door snicks quietly closed behind her.

[Imogen] "Goodnight," Imogen answers, simply. She lets Kora see herself out.

Alone in her condominium, she puts down the letter on the coffee table, unopened. Her fingers push through her hair. The elevator has long since risen to retrieve the Fenrir Skald, and begun its descent.

A little later, she leaves the apartment, herself, the weight of her guns cool against her back, settling her coat about her body as she steps out into the hallway, locking the door before heading for the lifts.

[Trent Brumby] Kora:

She doesn't fit in such a space. She stands just inside the door, watches him as he slips off his jacket, her dark eyes catching the light, but still bruised with shadow. She is quiet now, her stories finished, her body taut beneath her clothes. His apartment - his territory - is clean and orderly, it smells of green things, and him. There are windows, a rug, a well-made dining room table, more things that she has ever or will ever own.

Everthing is well-kept, considered, fits warmly together, like he does. She's wearing clothing - her old clothes, the dedicated clothes, the black PIXIES t-shirt and the worn old jeans - stiff at the hem and thighs with the blood of a dead man, and perhaps some of her own. It has been two nights since her Alpha died, and she has delivered the same news again and again, to other people who live in places like this, smelling of blood and rain.

He offers to take her jacket and she slips off her hoodie in an easy gesture, sliding her hands back into the front pockets of her jeans, her elbows held tight against her body as she walks into the living room, circles the well-made couch, surveys his territory with the sort of closely observed attention he has come to expect from her. When she has reached the other hend of the couch, though, she unearths her hands from her pockets, sits down on the edge of the couch in a fluid motion, and - quite deliberately - begins unlacing her own black boots.

[Trent Brumby] Hanging up his own coat along with her hoody, he left the door, locked, and walked into his apartment. While she circled around and found somewhere to sit, he set her bottle and paper on the coffee table. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?" he asks her, looking to where she's unlacing her boots. His keys jangle softly as he places them on the coffee table as well, his wallet and phone shortly to follow.

It's easy to pick up that most the furniture here is new. He's been here a couple of months now, and had purchased the lot of it to fill his apartment. Even though he was never sure how long he was staying for, he couldn't live in a cardboard box or out of the back of his car. There's still some boxes in his bedroom that hadn't been unpacked yet, stacked neatly in one corner. It was only down to three, now; three boxes that may never get unpacked.

[Kora] The city is dark and still outside. She has an impression of her ghost reflected in the mirror, imperfectly preserved, superimposed over the shadowy shapes of the building opposite, the street scene below framed against the darkness. The dark wood furniture recedes in the reflection but - moving - they stand out, blurred and inconstantly rendered by the glass, like the warped copy of an old reel of film left in the sun.

She unwraps the laces from the shank of her boots - old and black, battered, all the stiffness worn out of them over the years - loosening the crossed laces until the leather is loose around her calves, first right, then left. He asks if she wants something to eat or drink; and she gives him a glancing look, rising from her feet, her pale face framed by the loose weight of her hair, backlit by the glow of the interior light. It is the simplest question in the world, but in that moment - he has caught her out, unaware.

There's a quiet beat; she looks up at him, her head cant sidelong, her hands busy with the laces, the toe of her left boot on the heel of her right ready to lever her heel free. Then, " - yeah." The shadow, only, of her familiar wry grin, ghosts across her face. Her voice is raw, and the room is still. "I'll have a beer."

Of course she will.

[Trent Brumby] "Beer it is."

Leaving her at the sofa, he walks past the counter and into the kitchen. She can still see him in there for the most part, having a large opened area rather then cornered of living areas. Only when he's in the far corner does he disappear from view, where he's opening the fridge and getting out some bottles, a plate - pauses as he considers some other options hiding in the shelves. The door swings closed with a nudge from his leg, and he leaves the plate on the counter. He uses the edge of it to pop off the caps to both bottles before he walks into the living room again.

Two beers are set on the coffee table, without coasters - there is none. "I'm going to start a bath for you. Won't be a moment." He tells her, not waiting for protests or glimpse of disapproval. Instead he's walking in the opposite direction to the kitchen, into the darker, short hall where the other rooms of the apartment lead off. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a tiny laundry. The door right at the end is a closet for linens, it also holds his towels. It's there he grabs out a few, then opens the door to his left, flicking on the overhead, heated light. The exhaust fan turns on automatically, leaving a dull hum to echo in the room; a distant sound from where she's sitting.

Soon enough, water is running through pipes, beginning to fill the tub that doubles as a shower. The dark curtain hangs from a rail on large, clear rings. He's pulled it back, removing the ends of it from within the bathtub so it doesn't get wet. Chocolate towels are set on the space next to the wash basin and he stands there, contemplating which salts to use. He doesn't have anything flowery or feminine here. Fingers drum on the sink as he looks around with a slightly pursed mouth.

[Kora] Her boots are off when he returns, set aside - neatly done - beside the arm of the couch, damp white socks - thick, ordinary cotton - stuffed over the top of the shanks, left to hang over the tongues, the loosened tension of the crossed laces. Feet bare on the floorboards, she spreads out her toes and leans forward. Kora does not sit comfortably on his couch; he can still read the tension in her body; the way she feels out of place - outside herself, perhaps - in such a neat and well-ordered domestic space. She is already reaching for the bottle of beer before he sets it down on the glass-topped coffee table. There's a moment then, when she glances down, thumb rubbing idly across the label as she lifts the bottle to her mouth -

- and freezes it, half-way there, her raw dark eyes fixed on his broad back as he announces his intention to start a bath for her, then walks away without listening for objection. She is still sitting forward on the couch, at the edge of the cushion, her weight distributed between the couch and her feet on the floor, the bottle in hand. Alone in the room, her reflection mirrors every action. In the near distance, the pipes groan, water runs, the sound muted by the walls, the half-closed door. Except for the beer, which she drinks as if alcohol were as necessary as oxygen, draining the first third of the bottle in two great draughts, she does not move.

There is no one else in the room; but she feels as if she were being watched.

No: she feels as if she were being seen, which is a different thing, entirely.

Then, two minutes, or five later, he hears the soft slap of her barefeet on the hardwood floor, shadowing his path back to the bathroom. She has her beer in hand, held neatly between her thumb and index finger, a loose circular grip, and leans against the door frame, her eyes still bruised with shadow, her heart charged, beating fast in her chest, in her throat.

She is a still thing, raw. It is hard to imagine her wrapped in anything flowery or feminine. "What are you doing?" Her voice is husked, amber.


[Trent Brumby] He hers her coming and has already come to the conclusion that she can make these decisions herself. From the cabinet under the sink, he had pulled out a few optional products and began setting them in clear view, laid down on the towel which is neatly folded nearby. They are products of well known environmental companies that push natural, organic skin and hair cares on the people of the world. Trent uses these. Some of them are labeled for men, like the gel wash that smells of sandalwood, rosewood and patchouli. But others, like the bar of soap consists of oatmeal, honey, goats milk and olive oil. She'd have options, and although they are limited, it's better then chemicals that even he hates washing down the drain.

Rising up from where he's crouched, he has a clean muslin cloth in one hand, closing the cabinet door with the other. Looking over to where she's leaning in the doorway, he looks down to her beer them back up to her face. "I'm trying to figure out what you'd like to use on your skin," he tells her, as though it's perfectly ordinary. He looks away from her, only to put the cloth down on the corner edge of the bath, which is filling quickly with warm to hot water, leaving steam to rise from its surface. It won't be suffocating though, the exhaust fan is a modern addition and works well on high.

"There's a few things here." Looking back to her now, he motioned to where he's got everything set out. Behind him, there's ferns sitting on a ledge, and another large one in a pot that looks more like a palm plant, all bright green against the tiles of his bathroom. She'd find some shells here, holding small oatmeal and honey hand soaps, and a general beige and warm brown motif around her; including some already burn down candles he keeps for when he soaks himself. He likes these colours, these darker, warm colours. "I'll find you something to wear, so you feel good and clean when you're done. And if you still want me to," he adds, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, "I'll wash your hair when you're ready."

[Kora] The exhaust fan is a low constant hum in the room; like the background noise of traffic coursing through the living city, arterial, insistant. Once, she looks up, the startling image of her complete reflection in the mirror above the sink sings back at her. She does not meet her own eyes; she looks away. The self she sees is never reflected in such mirrors, and those glimpses are always startling to her. The mirror shows only one of her selves, the softest one, but she feels the rest of them inside her, the beast and the girl, the memory keeper and the soon-to-be memory.

Otherwise, her dark eyes remain fixed on him, downslanting as he crouches, laying out the soaps and oils, on the towel, lifting as he stands, filling the warm dark space. The steam in the air dampens and distorts the light until it is pulled up and away through the fan.

"I have this - " here is the half-hook of her smile, at odds with the still Thereshadows in her dark gaze, the keen thread of tension between the two possibilities, herself, her grief. " - bar of soap. This giant bar of homemade soap one of our kinswomen gave me, where I trained, yeah? It's shampoo, too. I think she was concerned I wasn't blonde enough. That's what I use."

There's a pause. She pushes away from the door frame, standing up, stepping into the bathroom, her elbow crooked, the beer bottle held loosely at the level of her waist.

"On my skin.

"So I think whatever you have - " her eyes are on his face. Beneath the dark cotton, her shoulders curl, narrow, forward, in a neat little shrug. " - well." She watches as his gaze falls, and as it rises again. The room is smaller, and she is brighter still, pale skin, pale hair stark against the warm dark colors his favors, her stiff, stained, dark clothes at absolute odds with the steaming warmth of the room, the rich, clean scents that rise with the billowing steam.

Then, the faint hook at the corner of her mouth drifts lower. Her breathing is slow, deliberate. If she still wants him to - he puts his hands in his back pockets. Her eyes drop, hook there. Remain there. - he'll wash her hair.

Kora does not look up this time. Instead, she reaches into her back pocket, pulls out a handful of things. It's a mirror of the way he emptied his pockets onto the table by the coat rack, though her possessions are fewer: a cheap cell phone. A handful of wadded bills and change. A passport. And a snapshot, folded in half, and half again. "I'd like that. " she tells him, looking back at him only when she's said it, the raw edge of her dark gaze spiked with a hunger he can read, too, in the movement of the pulse at the base of her throat.

[Trent Brumby] He likes the way he talks. Some part of him thinks its wrong, that he likes this while there's raw grief in her eyes, and blood stains on her clothes. But he does. He likes it like the way she wears bloodstains on her clothes, the way her hair tangles, wild and unkempt. There are times when he's looked at her and found one of her other sides looking out of her gaze, daring him to look back at her, and he likes that too. Times, like this; when she's walked closer to him, averted her gaze, looked at the hard line of his body or at the simple way his hands fit, with thumbs out, into pockets along the curve of his tough rump - they make him very aware of the tightness growing in his body and the way his pulse jumps to match the one thudding in the side of her neck.

Slowly, he slips his hands back out, frees them of his pants and lowers them loosely to his sides. She had previously been blocking the only exit to the room, and even now, her body - no, presence, takes up a good portion of the narrow space before him. "All of them are natural," he tells her, speaking back on the soaps as he swallows a little thicker, seeking to calm himself in the wake of knowing he's going to run his hands through her hair, wash and see her sparkle under clean water.

"I'll.. uh.." He clears his throat and manages a smile, more at himself and the way he's heating, which has nothing to do with the steam in the room or the overhead heated light, ".. I'm going to put together some food, give you some time to relax." Moving past her now, side stepping, he's still watching her face. "I'll get some clothes too." Nodding, firmly, as if it sounds like a solid plan, he seeks to give her space. Private time, without him gawking at her like he is, right then, right now, every bit male.

[Kora] The beer bottle is forgotten in her right hand. Her thumb and forefinger linger on the folded up snapshot, the last of the things she pulled - from deep in her left hip pocket. Her gaze is still averted, lingering on the line of his body, the strength she can see outlined by his dark clothes. This is how she listens to his plans: food, relaxation. Clothes. Something clean; something without the blood stiffening the fibers, without the damp stains of the rain in which she sat, at the shoulders, the hips and the thighs.

"No," she says, without looking up. He is at the door now. Her eyes are at the level of his waist. She remembers, then, the beer, looks away long enough to reach across the narrow line of her torso and set the bottle down atop her passport, beside the folded picture, amidst the dull gleam of well-used change and the unkempt handful of bills. "I want you to stay."

Hands free, she grasps crosses her arms, grasps the bottom hem of her blood-stiffened t-shirt and peels it up, pulling it off over her head, tugging it free of the heavy tangle of her haphazardly gathered hair. Underneath, she wears a black sports bra, cotton and lycra. Her jeans are low slung, fitted to the natural curve of her hips. Her torso is lean, narrow - strong, too, the shadow of muscle evident below her skin. This is not the deliberate, defined frame of someone who isolates each muscle group, works it to maximum efficiency in the stark confines of a Gold's Gym, but the long, compact strength of the animal she is underneath - who runs, who fights, who kills.

There is a battlescar, too - stark - which bisects her torso slantwise like the sash of a beauty contestant, from her left hip to her right breast, disappearing beneath both the sports bra and the waistband of her jeans. Miss Get of Fenris, maybe. The deep ridges are still congested, red and raw. In a year or two, the lines will fade, the skin will become silvered, faintly shiny - a memory of death written into her skin. In a year or two. If she lives a year or two.

"I don't need food." She drops the t-shirt on the floor. "I want you to stay."

[Trent Brumby] The slacks he wears are fitted enough that he doesn't wear a belt with them, not even for accessories. These are work pants that fit him comfortably, meeting the hem of his stretched black t.shirt. Its what is in the line of her sight, that trim, flat waist, until she's looking away. He had stopped the moment she said no, caught a little surprised by the directness of it. Having turned back to look at her, he's watching her profile as she explains how she wants him to stay. Demands, really.

Following her hands down to the bottom of the t.shirt, he watches fingers as she peels it from herself, exposes her skin, the muscles underlying, and the raw scar that is clear and bright against her pale complexion. It's even more noticeable than the black bra she wears, not because of the colour, but because how it reminds him of her vulnerability. She may be Garou, able to heal more than he can imagine, Rage back to life, but that scar proves she is far from invincible. Just like that rawness in her eyes, and why it's there in the first place.

His gaze doesn't linger though, it lifts and meets her gaze directly, nodding once, but slight. "Okay. I'll stay." Turning back into the room, he has a shoulder towards the opening of the door. He looks from her to the growing level in the bath and back again. "I'm still going to fetch a bowl to wash your hair." He will do that before he locks himself in the room with her. But he doesn't move to do that quite yet, those pale grays are back to taking in her expression, his own is serious with a little bit of wonder and a growing heat.

[Kora] Her expression is stark and open, her wide mouth still, lips just parted, her breathing slow and deliberate. He catches her gaze again, dark with want beneath the shadows of her grief. Between the steam, the direct slant of the light cast by the overhead fixture, her eyes are cast in shadow. It would be impossible to guess the color, if he did not already know them well.

He knows them well.

There is something thorough about the attention she gives him, even now. He looks at her and finds her looking back at him, direct and clear, without artiface. The space between them, in the confines of the small room, is minute and charged, electric. Still holding his gaze now, she reaches down, not-quite-blindly, and unbuttons her jeans. There are bloodstains at the waist and on the thighs; some are her own. Others are not. If he asked her, she would not be able to tell him which was which. The zipper opens with an errant flick of her fine thumb, and then she eases the waistband over her hips, shimmies then down her thighs, her calves, her long legs, stepping neatly out of them when they begin to bunch at her ankles, first the right foot, then the left.

Here are the rest of her unmentionables, white bikini briefs, cotton, as quotidian as her sports bra. He has little time to register the shape of her body beneath her clothes - in his peripheral vision, if he holds her level gaze as she undresses, or directly, if he drops her eyes to watch the movement of her hands at the level of her hips, her thighs, the movement of muscle under the pale skin of her bare thighs, her calves - because as soon as she steps out of the jeans she steps into his space, reaches up to push her fingers through the back of his hair, to cup his skull with her deft hands and pull his mouth down to hers.
The kiss is raw; brief. It leaves her holding him still close, breathing hot against his mouth. Her eyes are open, after, an unfocused downslant over the planes of his gruff features, so close that her lashes nearly brush his cheeks as she looks down, eyes open, the vague focus on their mouths, just parted. "You were going to get a bowl," she reminds him, her voice hitched in the middle, burred. She releases his head, then, touches his shoulder, slides her hand down his chest to rest against his abdomen, where his rib cage falls away like an inverted parabola. " - remember?"

- she reminds him, but doesn't move away.

[Trent Brumby] He really is not moving anywhere, not with how her hands travel downward to her jeans. He doesn't need to watch them to know what she's doing, the sound of fabric following the unzipping of metal. Even if he wanted to look down, to glimpse a naked thigh, he is disciplined in keeping his eyes above the shoulders. Her eyes are mesmerizing in their own way, the look in them.

Better yet is the way she grabs him, running fingers through his thicker, shorter hair, just enough to fill the spaces between the fingers and grab a good hold of, has his head tilting to her whim. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, a groan that vibrates deeply in his chest. Light touch of fingertips trail up her sides and around to her back, where his palm spreads and holds her lightly. There is plenty of strength to be found in him, across his chest, shoulders and in his arms. His thighs, even, are thick and solid, made lean by the length of his height.

There is no better way to kiss a man, a man like Trent, then to take charge of it. She already knew that from the first time on the bench, and again now, she's left him with deeper breathing, hotter skin and with eyes that are sharp and senses heightened. But he laughs then, a low, deeper sound, and his hands trail back around her waist, gently. "I'm not remembering much at the moment, Kora."

His eyes smile as much as his mouth does; honest.

"But if you say so, I'm not going anywhere. I am, however, going to check this water before turning it off." Moving carefully, mindful of his boots against her naked feet, he grasps her gently and steps as though in a dance, to get closer to the bath and reach across for it. His hand slips to her hip, his body stretches across steam and fingers trail into the deep tub, checking its not scalding before lifting a wet hand to turn off the faucets.

He rises then, wiping his hand on the back of his trousers and looks back to her. "Bath is ready, madame." There's humour in the way he says it, but not in the way he sneaks a longing glance to her mouth.

[Kora] The dance is a strange one; his hand on her hip, her torso curving as he reaches across her body, her feet bare on the tiled floor, his own still clad in heavy black boots. He is still fully clothed, and she is still curved, close against his body, rising to the balls of her feet to close the distance between her mouth and kissing him again, not deeply, but briefly - rough and hungry, then, the shadow of the wolf inside her imprinted on the kiss.

He isn't remembering much at the moment. Her mouth twists briefly wide; the suggestion of her white teeth clear behind the heartbreaking, half-broken smile, little more than an impression against his mouth, his jaw. "That's okay," if her reply, more than a little breathless, the twist of humor underneath a neat double helix of clear and dark. "I remember everything." It's her mind. It's her moon.

Her skin is warmer than his. It's just a degree, perhaps two, enough to make her skin feel feverish beneath the light touch of his hands. His hand is on her hip as he declares her bath ready, and she reaches back, curves her own hand over his, hooks her thumb through the elastic waistband of the inexpensive white cotton and pulls them down, his hand beneath her, gliding over the curve of her hip, halfway down the length of her thighs until she lets them fall onto the tile and steps neatly out of them, flicking them away, off into the corner, with a twist of her toes.

The sports bra is removed in much the same way: her hand over his, against her skin, guiding him to undress her, holding his hand close to her body the whole time. The raw battlescar begins at the undercurve of her right breast - and she holds his hand there when the constricting garment has been removed, cupped against the raw scar, against the soft flesh.

The bath declared ready, she steps into the hot water: right foot, then the left. There is nothing tentative; she doesn't test the temperature with her toes or ease her foot into the steaming water first. She turns back casts him a level look over her now bare shoulder, finds his eyes if he is looking at her levelly, and holds the look as she pivots, turning around, before sinking into the water.

"I like to look at you." Indeed, her eyes drop from his eyes, to his waist, to his thighs. " - and I like it when you look at me." A beat, before she sinks into the water. "Okay?"

[Trent Brumby] Fingers spread, allowing his palm to brush along her skin as she guides his hands across her hips and part way down her thighs. They flow up her torso, across her ribs and up to take the bra from her frame, leaving it in a pile of clothes like the others. His hands come back, urged by her own, to cup her skin, to brush thumb across scar and softer flesh. For most of the time his gaze watches her face, shifting when her hair threatened to get tangled in black garment, or when she found him looking at the curve of her throat and angles of her mouth.

His heart is beating so hard that he wonders if she can hear it. She certainly could see the blood pumping through his body, with the way it makes his skin glow and hardens muscles all through his core. When she steps away from him, his hands drop down to his sides, the memory of her skin on his fingertips. He's watching her getting into that tub, stepping, carelessly, into the water. He made it cooler then he would have himself, cool enough not to leave the skin bright red upon exiting, and still hot enough to steam and ease muscles under the skin.

She catches him with the look over her shoulder, his eyes having traveled down the back of her length and up again. But he doesn't look sharply back to her face, like he was caught doing something he shouldn't be, his gaze is steady and holds weight to it where it hadn't before. His quiet demeanor is shifting with what is held beneath, the compassion shifting into something far more bright, burning, smoldering the gray of his eyes.

"Yes ma'am," he finds himself saying. Not in the chided way either, but with a deep breath and a look that can be very flattering. He mirrors her hunger, as he assures her, "I like looking at you too." And for a moment he just stands there, watching her sink into the water in his bathtub.

Then, he begins moving, dropping down to tug at laces on his boots, making them loose enough to slide off his foot, along with dark coloured cotton socks. They're deposited outside the door, thumping carelessly beyond the room. He doesn't do more then that though, returning his attention to her, coming to kneel down by the other side of the bath. "You sure I can't get that bowl, Kora?" His eyes drift from her face over her hair. He's aching to get his hands on her, with the way he's eyes are lit up, it's like it's Christmas.

[Kora] She does not fit here either; not in the warm bath, fragrant, not in the warm bathroom, with steam in the air and the ferns on the shelves, the warm dark colors, the soft light slanting from the fixtures, the constant hum of the exhaust fan. There is still the suggestion of tension in the straight line of her shoulder girdle, in the way she holds her spine, keeps herself from sinking all the way back into the water, as if she had forgotten how to take a bath. Once she is in the water, she leans back in his bathtub, her pale hair still tangled behind her head like a cloud, damp from the steam now, and darker for it, wet where it has come loose from the mass, curled over the sharp cut of her collar bone beneath her skin, or clinging to the black choker she has not removed.

The light casts distorted reflections along the rippling surface of the bathwater. The impression of her body beneath is hazy, changing - more precise than an impressionist's rendering would be, closer to a watercolor, where shadow bleeds into light, tone into tone. Except when her limbs breach the surface: a knee here, a toe at the far end, resting on the metal faucet, peeling black paint on her toenails, too. Her arms rest along the length of the tub, the line cut neatly at the wrist by the bracelets she always wears, leather, suede, knotted shreds of rope, some of them, none wider than her pinky, black and brown against her pale skin.

She breathes slowly, carefully, her chest and shoulders rising and falling with each breath, so regular that she must be counting the rhythm somewhere inside her. He disappears to remove his boots, she looks away, dark eyes skimming to some thread of light reflected in the tile on the wall, lifting her chin and cutting him a slantwise look, hot, from beneath lowered lashes when he returns to knee at the edge of the tub.

"If you really want to wash my hair - " she pulls her feet in, closer to her body, both knees breaching the surface of the water, and leans forward, curving her shoulders downward in an echo of her posture when he first saw her tonight, in the park, on a bench, in the darkness between one spring downpour and another. The movement exposes her back, the long line of her spine, and the tangled mass of her pale hair, like an offering. Her eyes drop from his, to his mouth, to his hands. " - you can. Get the bowl."

[Trent Brumby] Gripping the sides of the bath, his fingers squeaked dully, as he watched her sit upright and draw herself into that ball again. When he releases the tub, its to reach out and brush water along her spine, lifting water from the surface to trickle it along her skin. "Do you want anything else while I'm gone? Another beer?" He keeps his voice low, light under the hum of the fan whirring overhead. Even out of the water she would not find it cold, the heating radiating from above keeps the room at a comfortable temperature.

Rising up from where he had knelt, smooth and easily, he glanced down her, waiting for her answer, and once he had it he had acknowledged with a nod before turning and leaving the room. For the brief instance the door is opened and then closed, it allows a breeze of cooler air from the hall into the room before it's shut out again.

He's not gone long, returning with a large bowl and whatever she had requested - if she had. Back in the bathroom, the door was closed over but not clicked shut all the way. He'd return to kneel by the bath, the mat beneath him designed to soak water from the dripping feet when done. It was warmer than the floor and cleaned, too. It cushioned his knees against the tiles. "Alright," he's smiling now, much easier then he was before. The brief time apart has allowed him to compose himself, and while he's still hungry for her, it's no longer worn on his sleeve. "No more stepping out." Leaving her alone, that is. He's confined himself to the bathroom at her wishes; his, too.

From there, he proceeds to wash her hair, taking it out from its tangled mess first, before water is poured down the length of it. His free hand brushes along her brow, pushing water through the strands. Trent takes his time, enjoying doing this for her, something she's never had done before. She'll find that his fingers work soaps into her hair and massages from her scalp right to the tips of her pale strands. He does this with with particular attention to detail. "You're very attractive," he tells her, quietly, under the pouring of water.

[Kora] The water runs in errant ribbons down her back, echoing but not mimicking the line of her spine tucked neatly between the symmetric architecture of bone and muscle, the neat cut of her shoulder blades pulling her pale skin taut as her shoulders curve forward, the long muscles below flanking her spine, her body tapering just at the waist, the supple flair of her hips distorted by the waterline. Her chin rests on her shoulder as he pours water down her back; she's watching him, close and direct, eyes dark in her face, her fine mouth still. Is there anything she wants? he asks, and she shakes her head, the mass of her tangled hair swinging with the gesture. No.

When he stands, her eyes remain upon him until he disappears out through the door he has left half-opened, the cool ribbon of ambient air from the apartment drifting in, he can hear the rest of her response following him, low and raw but pitched to carry, above the drone of the fan, below the quiet sounds of the moving water. "Just you."

Then he returns, reaches out to untangle her hair, pulls the old ballpoint pen around which she had knotted it sometime in the last day or two out, which unfurls the weight down her back. The last handful of inches - 3 or 4, more or less, usually tucked up inside the twist she usually sports - are not blonde but faded black, the remnants of an old dye job that must be years old, given the length, which she has never bothered to cut.

Kora sits up straight as Trent washes her hair - straighter than straight - lifting her body at the shoulders and through the spine, tipping her chin upward, her head back so that her face is lifted to the ceiling. Her eyes are closed, but somewhere, far above, she can feel the pull of the sky through her body, the lure of the moon that rules her.

Her eyes are closed except when he speaks to her, quietly, while pouring water over her forehead, the crown of her head, down the length of her wet hair. She opens both eyes, but only fractionally, the dark weight of her gaze shadowed by the sweep of her blonde lashes. "Likewise," she tells him, low in response, her face tipped toward him, but only just, her hands loose at her side, fingers spread in the drifting water. "Come here."

[Trent Brumby] "If I come any closer, I'll be in the bath," he says it with a quiet laugh under his breath. The bowl is set aside, into the basin just behind him. Her hair is cleaned, washed out and conditioned. Later, he'd even dry it with a towel and comb it. But he's not thinking about that now, and more on the way she's looking at him from behind her lashes, with the long length of her throat bared and chin tilted up. A hand smooths down her hair, pushing excess water from the roots and down the length, leaving fingers to trail along her back in a light but purposeful caress.

His forearms are bare, the dark hair there wet, and the portion closest to his elbows now rests on the edge of the bath. Fingers are relaxed, hanging limp, but the rest of him is straight and tall on his knees, not protesting about the time he's spent on them. He is all eyes for her, watching her face openly now, with an air of contentment about him. Trent could walk away now and be happy for doing just this, to spend this time with her, intimate in his own bathroom. He need nothing else to be satisfied.

But that was not to mean that he didn't desire much more. An arm slides off the bath ledge and he reaches out across, leaning his body over the edge so that he's almost face to face with her. He could feel the heat come up through his shirt, making his skin beneath moist and the material damp. It was as close as he could get, leaning far across from his knees, without climbing in. "There," he says softer, looking from her eyes down her nose to her mouth. This time he doesn't wait or ask, his chin tilts and brushes his mouth across her lower lip - nothing more, but he lingers close. "Better?"

[Kora] There is a moment where she remains still, the cut of her smile like a razor below his lingering mouth, breathing, enjoying the heat of his body, which is different than the heat of the bath, the fading heat of his mouth on her lower lip. Then she lifts her chin, craning her neck to follow in his wake, kissing him with that same hungry confidence - not deeply this time, but thoroughly, hungrily. Her arms are wet, dripping she pulls her hands up from the bathwater, circles her arms around his neck as he leans in close to her, resting her elbows on his shoulders, turning to follow the angle of his body back to the edge of the bathtub.

The water sloshes as twists her body at the hips and rises to her knees, tucking first the right leg, then the left beneath her. The pressure of her elbows loose on his shoulders increases as she uses him for leverage against the slippery porcelain underneath. Then she's matched to him, leaning forward, still blistering his mouth with brief, hungry kisses that go astray, now and again, at the corners of his mouth, across his rough cheeks, underneath the line of his jaw.

Then, slowly, her arms untangle from around his shoulders. She reaches down - blindly, still following his mouth with her own, kissing him rough and sure - and twists the hem of his black t-shirt in one first, then the other, pulling it roughly upward, parting from him only long enough to yank it - laughing, for the first time all night at this, when it becomes caught, tangled between her arms and his - before she tugs it up, works it over his arms, neartly tearing it before she pulls it free.

This time, she leans her head forward until their brows touch. She does not kiss him again; her eyes are slanted downward, her cheek against his nose, the bridge of her own nose against his cheek, watching her hands as drift down from his shoulders over the solid planes of his chest, down toward his abdomen, his trim waist.

"You can join me," she murmurs, her voice still raw beneath the hunger, the memory of the death she wants to chase away. " - or, take me to bed." She turns her mouth back his, but does not kiss him this time. Instead, she speaks into his mouth, so deliberately that the motion should be a kiss. "I want you. I want to - "

She does not say the words, but he can feel them on her mouth against his, beneath the curve of a bruised sort of smile.

[Trent Brumby] Water seeps through his t.shirt, which is warm and damp already, but it's not this that has his attention, but the weight of her arms on his shoulders and the way they cradle the back of his neck. His attention is swept up by her mouth, the taste and feel of her upon his lips, and the way she rises and turns herself into him.

Hands slip from the bathtub completely and curl around the back of her. His arms don't so much embrace as his hands, a little cool from the porcelain, run down the length of her back and rise again, just before it goes beyond the small of it where flesh begins to curve back out. He slides them up between her shoulder blades, across her hair, clinging to her skin, and out towards the sides, pulling her into his broad chest.

The more she kisses him, the quicker his breath comes, and the more he wants her. He pulls back only when she reaches for his t.shirt, letting her pull it from him, even though he's sure he could do it quicker. She's laughing and it makes him smile instantly. With fabric free, his torso is bare. Unlike she, who is part animal and killer, his muscles are defined. He does attend a gym, almost daily, and works on groups of muscles at a time, to give him that definition of pectorals and abdominal. There's a trail of dark hair along his chest, thicker down by his navel, but softer there too. It disappears into the waistband of his pants, and if she were to guess, at another time, he does trim it. He's exceptionally vain in some cases. His back, though, is hairless and the muscles worked just as much as his front. Arms have enough solid mass to sport veins on the surface, and on the left is a clear patch of plastic stuck fast.

"I am taking you to the bedroom." She gave him a choice and he was going to run away with it, before she can change her mind. He kisses her, once, but almost swallowing her lip in the process. Pulling away then, slowly, his hands drift over her hips and grip the edge of the bath again, helping him push up from the floor to grab her a large towel.

[Kora] The bath is cooling now; the air in the small bathroom is still humid, warm. She has her own heat, too, her own blood, her own heart, beating fast and sure beneath her breastbone, safe within the cage of her ribs. He kisses her before he stands, and she lifts her face to follow the movement of his mouth until it is gone; just the taste of his mouth on her bruised lips, her tongue.

When he pushes himself to stand, though, her dark eyes cut sidelong again, studying the movement of his muscles beneath his skin, the pattern of dark hair on his chest, following the trail as it disappears beneath the waistband of his slacks before rising again to follow the cut lines of his obliques beneath his skin.

He turns back to her with a large towel held open. Steadying herself on the edge of the tub, she stands, water sluicing in gleaming rivulets down to the bathwater as each plane of her body break through the surface. The battlescar, red and raw cutting across her chest and stomach - the predator's musculature - lean and long, made for running, made for killing, made - sometimes - for dying - all dance with reflected light as the water runs down her body.

And she watches him, watching her, as she stands, as she steps neatly out of the tub onto the absorbant matt on which he had been kneeling. Then, in a neat twist, turns her back to him so that he can envelop her in the towel he holds at the ready.

[Trent Brumby] Opening the towel, which is still new enough to remain fluffy and soft, he watched her rise out of the water. He makes no apology for the way he looks at her now, glancing down the length of her body and watching the way water catches on curves and flows down lengths. He meets her gaze as she steps out of the bath, resisting the urge to reach out and help her, and remained standing in wait.

Smiling at her has a warmth to it, even though his blood is hot, and his skin is flushed, and he's aching for the Garou that's before him, he still has that; warmth, kindness. With her back turning, the towel is wrapped around her, as well as the weight of his arms. He holds onto her, hugging from behind, with the solid, hard length of him pressed into her back. Lips kiss at her skin, first her jaw and then her neck, down to her shoulder. His grip loosens enough to rub hands down her arms, beginning to dry her limbs and take some of the water from her skin.

Then he's walking her towards the door, reaching out around her to open it up and let out some of the humidity of the bathroom. He guides her, rather than marches her, out towards the hall. "Bedroom's just on the left here. Second door," he's telling her ear, reluctant to let her go completely.

[Kora] There's something terrible about his tenderness; the open way he meets her eyes, the way he smiles at her, both warm and hungry. The way he folds the towel around her narrow frame and buffs the water from her arms, her torso, her legs, holding her body back against his. She can feel the shape of his body, his broad chest and muscled arms, through the nap of the towel he has wrapped around her, between them.

When he leans forward, over her shoulder, to kiss her jaw, down the supple curve of her neck, over the sharp planes and valleys of her collar bone to the joint of her shoulder, she holds her breath - or nearly does, breathing sharply in through the nose, shallowly out through the mouth, as his scratchy jaw brushes her skin - soft, damp and warm and fragrant now, from the bath.

The last pair of days, the last pair of nights are washed away. Her skin is clean, luminous, her hair damp and soft and fragrant, blonder at the crown, but dark from the wash, pulled back from her brow, tucked behind her ears, falling down her back.

She stops him twice during the short walk down the hallway to kiss him; turning in the circle of his arms to push him up against the wall, her palms flat on his shoulders, the contraction of muscles in her core clear beneath his hands. If the towel stays up, it is only because he holds it there around her body, between them, as she kisses him raw and urgent now that the strange, imperfect, heated near-ritual of the bath is over. The air is sharper here, cool against her heated skin.

When they reach the bedroom door, she pushes him against it again, turning her body sidelong against his to wedge him there, checking him - just - her hip against his, her left arm around his shoulder as she reaches to turn the knob. The door swings open behind him; her stumble forward has to be deliberate as she pushes him inside, lifting her free hand to graze her thumb along the line of his jaw as her hot mouth follows.

[Trent Brumby] What he meant to be a slow walk, where he could dry her along the way, is nothing of what's on her mind. She pushes him into a wall, catches him by surprise, and finds him delighted. He responds with a new wash of urgency, meeting her mouth with his own. His hands keep the towel up, covering her body, but not all of it. It stays only because his hands are on her back, caressing along it with the soft cotton between them.

At the second stop, where he's pushed into the wall, his height drops a fraction, bending at the knees, and fingers curl around the back of a thigh, just shy of lifting a leg from the ground, to pull her up into him. But she's already moving them again, towards the bedroom door.

He doesn't get to open it. She's pushed him against it, checked him, as it were, which has only served to get him further riled. It becomes harder to reign that in, to discipline himself, and maybe that's what she wants. But as they stumble into the room, he's hands are sure on her waist, his bare feet catching the floor more steadily. He won't let her fall, even if it's subconsciously, the way he handles her in that moment.

It's dark in the bedroom and cooler than both the bathroom and the hallway. His scent is heavier in here than anywhere else in the house. It's where he spends nearly half of his time sleeping. Though linen is clean, his smell still lingered there, and in the clothes hanging in the closet, folded neatly in draws - like the hint of cologne that clings to clothes already put through the wash. He doesn't put it on here, but in the bathroom, that now smells like her skin, her hair, and products used to clean them.

The towel is discarded, he no longer wants it between his hands and her skin. Caressing her warmth, his fingers and palms are firmer now, no longer light and soft, but sure and certain. One, slipped across her hip to her back, pressing her in, and the other reached up to tangle against the wet strands of her scalp, turning his head to kiss her again, and again, until she's making his head tilt back, leaving trails of her lips across his stubble jaw. His neck is offered out to her, his eyes are closed, and his heart races, pounding in his chest.

[Kora] There are her hands at his waist, working roughly at the buttons of his slacks, the zipper. The latter catches with a sharp sound, metal against metal, and she inhales sharply, pulling her body back at the hips just long enouth to ruck his slacks down over his hips and his boxers, his briefs, thereafter. The whole time, her mouth remains on his bared throat, her teeth scrapping his Adam's apple, her nose pressed against the rough stubble under his jaw, her mouth, wide and sure and hot against his skin.

The cooler air in the bedroom sends a glancing shiver up and down her spine; he can feel the way her muscles contract, constrict beneath his hand. Or perhaps that isn't the cooler air in the bedroom; maybe that's the way she reacts to the heavier layer of his scent in the room, to the bed somewhere close, in the cool dark. She touches him; finds his mouth with her own as she does so and smiles into his mouth as she kisses him again and again and again, pushing him inexorably back to the bed, where she presses him down beneath her.

The sex is not tender; it isn't sweet. Underneath her skin, she's a beast sometimes, her grief raw, her failing moon bright in the night sky, turning somewhere above them, in the dark over the earth. She is hungry, her heart is beating a tidal rhythm, her blood is piqued for him. She fucks him, the first time, with a raw, spiraling urgency, pulling him up after her sometimes, or pushing him down, back onto the bed.

For all that she is a creature who loves words - does not speak except, sometimes, to murmur urgently into his mouth, onto his skin - there or more. Otherwise, she holds her breath in, swallows her cries, speaks to him with urgent rhythm her body, or the staccato pattern of her breath of her breath, an interrupted gasp; a sudden inhalation, a long deep breath expelled warm onto his skin.

Later, under the covers, she pulls him over her, wraps her thighs around his hips, closes her eyes and kisses him then, as if she were dying, as if his lungs held her last breath.

Later still, she falls asleep in his bed - an animal sleep, this - exhausted, spent, her long hair tangled around their bodies, the scent of sex in the air.

[Trent Brumby] He wears boxers, the sort worn close to the skin, snug and fitted. But that doesn't matter, they're discarded like his slacks, and he's back onto the bed. There's no protest from him. He likes it like this. Her forceful nature, her demanding mouth, or hands, sometimes even the words that encourages him the way she likes it, the way she wants it. They are alike, in a way, that they both are keen and attentive to details, and he is here, too, all for her.

There is only one question he asks, in all of this, it had been a quiet murmur, making her pause enough to give him a clear answer before he'd continue. He'd take her at her word though, making it her decision, on whether or not he was getting condoms from the top draw by his bed, or leaving them lay, locked away where they were. Either way, he knows the responsibility and the consequences.

They are matched again, with their quietness. The difference being that his seems so much louder when he does make sound, a harder, harsher breath, or a low groan that seems to echo under and around the bed. He doesn't ask her questions, does not give demands or guidance. There's no need, he enjoys what he feels, sees and hears all around him. Her, a Get of Fenris, seeking to bury him in his bed with the soft of her flesh, grind of her hips and the biting of her teeth.

He is not spent easy. Endurance in and out of the bedroom is something he has, like the carefully cultivated skills he has learned in his many years, studying, serving, and worshiping women - for that is what he does; worships them as supreme over his own gender. They are creatures of marvel and mystery, and the one that sleeps in his bed, deep and exhausted, is one that he has the pleasure to know, to curl his arm around and spend a night with, knowing, if only for a moment, a little while, he's made her feel something other then grief or pain.

[Kora] Later, much later, mid-morning, she's gone. He finds an empty glass of milk on his kitchen counter. And a post-it note, written in the neat, blocky script of an inveterate journal keeper.

Remember him.

[Twilight] The diminished pack gathers in the shadow of the Wyrmpole, close to the Caern's heart. The moon above is slivered, shedding light and mass, waning slowly, waning surely, toward the new moon. The Wyrmpole is covered in trophies, carved with the names of the living and the dead, some so old they are little more than a memory written into the being of the bloodstained spirit that lives within, hungry for glory, glory and nothing more, others fresh, the carvings raw, the scent of clean water from the cleansing rites enacted on the enemy flesh still sharp and clear to lupine senses, below the stain of blood, old and new, in the air.

----

The moonbridge opens from the heart of the Caern, leading them up and away from the wyld heart of maelstrom in the weaver-sink of Chicago. Soon enough the bristling skyscrapers, wrapped in webbing, the vast molecular stain of the electrified city is far behind them. They follow the Godi here, single file or two abreast at most, in lupus for the ease of long-running. Then, at last, they arrive in the Battleground. The path beneath their paws is white as the moonbridge, without the glow - deep and opaque, a sifting, compact surface of crushed bone that smells of new blood and old death. The promise of violence charges the air; all around them they can hear the sounds of battle. Signposts creak and sway in every direction, promising fights from the mundane -

Eric Moore versus Patrick Keallor, Fat Patty's Bar
Troy.
Wilderness.
The Sack of Rome.

- to the epic. The confusion of signs is enormous. Every battle, ever fought can be found somewhere down the branching pathways. Every fight, every victory, every ignominious defeat, played out again and again. From where they stand, the confusion of a hundred thousand million clashes echoes in the distance, languages living and long dead eddy through the blood-stained air.

[Blood Summons] It's harder to find the Godi when the moon is a sharp sliver getting darker every night. He had been present when the Cliaths brought back the body of the fallen Adren, had stood towards the back and watched the proceedings without interrupting to speak or offer suggestions. He was not pack. Truth in Frenzy had a pack, and that pack stuck together even when their Alpha was destroyed. They made plans, they spoke of what needed to be done and by who, and they did so without interference from outsiders.

To them, Blood Summons is an outsider, and yet he has assisted them in the past. He has fought with their Alpha, has traveled the Underworld with their female Skald, had summoned the Outrider for their trip to fight alongside Hermodr. He has given them talens and healing during sparring matches, and has drank with one of them.

He doesn't ask why his presence is requested tonight. He can figure it out easily enough; they couldn't find the Cliath Godi who had been staying with Truth in Frenzy, or they need someone more experienced to make sure that they make it to the Battleground Realm unscathed. He looks like a homeless jazzman tonight, clad all in black with those ridiculous suspenders of his; a fedora was on his head at the Caern, but he isn't wearing it now. His hair is like his eyes: that is, light and wild, like that of an animal's. He isn't an animal, though, any more than he is human.

Regardless of who asked him, he agreed. He pushed a small sigil-laden crystal into each of their hands, tying it around their lupus necks if need be, and with word to the Warders as to where they are going, they left.

The Godi seems to know where he's going, or else their Rage is like a magnet to a realm where battle after battle after battle rages until the end of time, from the beginning. He is not an athletic creature, is more of a hard-hitter than a tank, but he keeps up a steady pace for the entirety of their trip, and when they arrive, he whuffles the scent of battle into his sinuses and closes his eyes.

His spiritual energy is the highest of the four of them, and it is that energy, that connection to the chaotic realm of the Others, that he focuses when they step off the moon bridge.

[Gnosis: WHERE YOU BE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 9 (Failure at target 8) [WP]

[Blood Summons] [No, seriously.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9) [WP]

[Blood Summons] Stala, stoita, stanga,ræra
Hvat say du da bunshka bæra
Hvat say du da bunnska bæra
Litera mae við drengi
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]

[Twilight]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]

[War-Handed] At first, their charge toward the distantly winking Realm had been exhilerating. And cause to watch the Fostern guiding them. Plans made, broken, remade in the bullish Modi's head. All as the glowing bridge had receeded more and more into the distance behind them.

Soon enough, the difference between the world he knows and loves and this strange, nowhere path they tread becomes close, and obvious. A joyful murderer in the world he knows.. Joe has strode more than one battlefield certain in the knowledge he ruled there. Unopposed. Unstoppable as only the Fenrir teach their Modi's to believe they are.

Here he is a shade. An infant. Something made of half-formed ideas and uncertainties.

Cowardice still finds no greater foothold than it ever has. The formidable Modi's senses shine delightedly in the face of field upon field of blood and carnage. The lust of an addict in a room made of cocaine, Joe's face twitches dreamily as he looks at the signs.
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 3 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]

[Gut Song] (Intelligence 3 + Garou Lore 2. Diff 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Twilight] They begin searching the paths, studying the signposts, following the branching trails of crushed bone, bleached white from some unseen sun, gone yellow with age. They pass other battles, other memories, other deathes, other lives, hear some terrible call, some cry of victory, some agonizing bellow of defeat - the stark crush of shattered bone, metal against metal, teeth against flesh, hooks against eyes - down the paths that grow and branch and branch and grow as organically ornate as bleached white corals blooming under some salted sea.

Each of them leads the compact group astray. Sorrow remains close by the Godi's flank as he pads through the haunted paths, relying on the straightened ties of their much-diminished totem to keep and call their pack back together when one or the other wanders off, lured by the spray of arterial blood, but the familiar stink of viscera laid open beneath an undiminished sun. In the end, though, they find the path they seek - one branch, then another, all the past battles - until ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT - is the only promise left, blood red letters on the old bone signpost.

[Gut Song] "...The War Sound."

It is the culmination of countless battles. Wars. Fights. Brawls. Sprawling Armageddons. Each culture, civilization or pantheon of rulers, emperors and kings has had their version of the end of the world and within each could be found this. This sound. The sound of glory and hate. The sound of violence and blood. The desperation of the woeful and the eagerness of the bloodlusting. Here, within the War Memory, the sound was as the Wind. Constant. Present. Sometimes at a lull but never far from hearing.

At once it is disquieting. At once, the Gut~Song is humbled.

The pallour of grief touches his features, ashen from exhaustion, raw nerves and wild eyes skating the dank mists that swirl and collect in the rust coloured airs, cloudbanks of brown smoke, whorling overhead. The stench of gunpowder, iron, blood, bile, piss and shit mingle with such pungency, it brings a hand up to cover his nostrils for a moment which slashes away from his features a second later, a feral snap of open jaws and tension of hunched body.

"...I remember this..."

Eyes shut as they step bast the nimbus of light that heralded their arrival, the moonbridge's departure a hollow thing, as the moorings that anchor it here give way. The path behind would not be trod again. Only the seeking of death could bring them to their Home and Bed once more. Only the fall, Rage churning new.

"...I remember this..."

Something shuddering in the Skald's voice, drifting left of the group, eyes out into the gloom that no gaze might penetrate. Sign posts dot the landscape, beckoning on travelers to War's and Battles yet unseen and his hand reaches out to Wooden posts, brushing fingers across the wooden struts. A flicker. A spasm. The sign post is nudged, a grim sneer lining the Skald's faces.

"...I remember this but not enough to recall. Dark smoke and brown stains. Smudges of existence torn away and lived again. A memory of the Fight and the Fall. Echoes given voices, bodies and blade. Gun and Fist. Echoes-..."

-his voice trails them, a humbled thing even as the snarl of mists parts before their movements and the next Sign post, after dozens more, flashes into view. Blood red title, carved by some errant hand, exhausted in war. His gaze lifts, head tilts.

"...War forever is no paradise, though the blood thrums and boils with each new rise." A grimness to join that sneer. "...No Valhalla for the glorious dead here. Shades and Echoes...."

[Blood Summons] The Godi seems drained by the time they start off in the direction of the fight they seek. His Rage eclipses his ability to control himself, and he bristles with frustration and mounting anger when he cannot come up with battles that he himself has not participated in himself. The female Skald has better luck, and she lifts her muzzle in the direction of the battle they seek. He chuffs, irritation raising his hackles and tightening his musculature, and they pass by a thousand temptations, a thousand conflicts that call like a siren to a sailor passing by. Sorrow remains at his flank, and before long--Gut Song ruminates along the way, the Fostern's ears cocked to take in what he says but his newly scarred throat silent--they make it to the battle they've come to witness.

ELK GROVE COMMUNITY CENTER - BASEMENT

He is not the first one inside. Not out of cowardice, not out of a need to pull himself together, but because this is Truth in Frenzy's pack. This is their battle. He stands off to the side to let the others enter first

[Gut Song] (Hoowah!)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[War-Handed] BASEMENT

That word has to be important right now. In fact, it has to be all of the bullish Modi's vision. From 'B' to 'T' It is the whole world. That is what will keep out the rest. The scents and promises of a richly sown field. His own purpose, or its recounting- to left and right. The sign straight ahead.

Vengeance straight ahead.

Joe's face never twitches from its grim resolve. Chilling eyes simply flicker from the side to the field beyond in the instant before he strides past and into memory.

[Twilight] They are not the first to fight this battle. They are not are not the first to relive this battle. Again and again and again, six Garou enter a long dark tunnel - the two scouts ahead, the theurge, the three ahrouns behind - crawling down a narrow tunnel that could fit them two cronis or three hispo abreast.

The grade is steep, curving downward through the darkness towards a rising heat. In the distance, the sounds of capering banes echo back to them, laughter made wrong, metal on slate, growling like the the backwards grind of broken machinery.

None of them take Truth-in-Frenzy's place. They were his pack; they follow him - even his ghost, falling in naturally behind him, Thomas creeping in his wake like Banshee, to guard his back, War-Handed taking sklora-Myrgen's position, Sorrow at his flank, as his packmate, Cold Death - while Blood Summons finds himself at the center of the pack, as the theurge. They are followed by another Ahroun, Kire's ghostly echo, behind.

There are things that happen here.
There are things that always happen.
Every time, there is a blind curve ahead.

EVery time, an enormous centipede appears above them, waving an impossible number of legs, its carapace gleaming with some oily substance, skittering up the wall as if it had suckers on every one of its hundred feet. It turns, looks - a face of pale, soft flesh, with gleaming compound eyes and opens its mouth - both finely human and impossibly mandibular - to shriek an alarm.

Their alpha shouts: "Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!"

This is when Kemp and Iona [Thomas] step to the blind curve and wait for any backups that may arrive. This is when sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] and Soledad [Sorrow] leap for the bane, and in four hits, bring it down before it can utter a sound.

[Blood Summons] He'd heard the story of what happened that night, heard how Truth in Frenzy put himself in a position to protect a Fostern Theurge and a group of Cliaths, but it isn't until they step into the battleground's memory that he actually sees what happens, that he actually gets an idea of what the group was up against. He walks in the center of the group, feeling lighter and smaller than usual, feeling more attuned to his lupine essence, and then they come to a blind curve, and then that enormous centipede appears above them, and then:

Shut it the fuck up and ward the Theurge!

The sentry Bane is taken down in seconds, Blood Summons' normal urge to throw himself into battle tamped down by the memory of this place. He doesn't throw himself forward. He prepares to summon.

[Gut Song] Detachment.

It is the first thing that comes with the overlaying of an echo, sifting through his memories and thoughts. A happening of moments existing within this moment of war. He was not the ragabash blacksmith, but her senses told him what was around and available. He saw with clarity and reached with effortlessness, through her movements and motions and tore away the flimsy reflexes of this ghost to replace them with his own.

A snarl creeps his lips, body flushing from the Homid skin to the ashen gray of the Crinos form, looming into same vicinity as the War Hero before him. Orders are dished and the flash of the Centipede is-

-Ignored. His gaze seems rapt with Kemp, watching the careful plod of movement. The scars littering shape and form, cutting swathes through grey fur and furrows over flesh. He follows each motion as if he could track the line of fate. Follow the thread to where the Rotagar led and that inevitable point in the stream that beckoned the snip of scissors. The ending of a life.

The War sound thrummed like drums in his head, even as the oppression of heat billowed up the tunnel to meet them. Nothing but echoes. Nothing but ghosts. He wades in the Adren's wake, his shadow and his memory. Something murmurs under his breath...

...lost in the Tumult.

[War-Handed] Beaten like a Sword, made to understand his place in the ebb and flow of combat, inwardly, Joe coils and leaps. The barks are barely out of Kemp's mouth before Joe, happily, responds. He'd missed that growl. The wracking jeer of some fuck- up being pointed out. Its reverberations in his head the fourth, or eighth, or eleventh time pulls the same thing from him. A leap into the teeth of the bane. Immediate reaction.

Happiness at things being as they should be.
Obedience is right. Being the leader oneself comes with far more than simple right or wrong. Far, far shakier ground. Nevertheless, he breathes the battle as Sklora-Myrgen had. But he looks for Vengeance. Someone to pick out. So that he can say to them later, again and again- 'you did it. you are to blame'

[Twilight] The centipede hits the ground before the alarum is sounded, its pale face going slack at the seams, sagging through the middle as if it were made of melted cheesecloth and watery papier-mache.


The tunnel continues to twist and turn ahead of them, the heat rising, humid and thick, the stench impossible to ignore, not the ripe, sweet vegetal rot one associates with southern marshes but some twisted cousin of it, blackened, made sulferous, death given over to death.

There is a pale green glow ahead of them, where the tunnel flattens toward the battlefield; they can catch the scents of two garou and three more things, deeply wrong, blood and bile, these, the afterbirth of the stink of fear.

Their Alpha crawls forward, all but vanishing into the shadows. Iona - Thomas - crouches in his wake, slinking slowly, tail curled as if she were wholly unseen, for all that she is clearly visible to all.

[There are other voices around them, half-intelligible, the high-tongue broken upon the alter of the Wyrm, remade in its image.

"...Anhkahahn [unintelligible] hurry. They're [??] pressed hard upstairs."
"What does [??] want? Going [??] as I can. Not like [?? ??] faster."
"Just hurry."

And then a squealing shriek.]

---

Then, they round the corner. The lambent green light illuminates the room, the bleak shadows that dark and whorl at the edge of the vortex of The wyrmhole. There are two Crinos Garou standing at the mouth of the vortex, pulling banes into being from the mouth of the hole, while three others - carapaces still wet from their birth - circle the room, patrolling, chittering in their dank, oleaginous language. Ahead, another is being pulled wet from the darkness of the vortex, the Black Spiral Dancers are peeling back the shadowed caul from its form, freeing it from the raw, shell of its creation.

---

This is what happens around them - these are the ghosts they follow:

Kemp and Iona [Thomas] scout to the lip of the tunnel, the younger ragabash unaware that she was not cloaked in shadows.

The Dancers turn together, descended on Iona who stands out stark against the darkness. The rest of the Garou rush down the tunnel, and the banes swarmed.

Soledad [Sorrow] and Kemp leap for the Dancers. Iona [Thomas] too. One manages to cut into Iona [Thomas] -- the only wound she sustained through the whole of the battle. Kemp takes another Dancer down in two hits, the first to fall. His body is shoved into the Wyrmhole; choking the great vortex. Iona [Thomas] and Soledad [Sorrow] have more trouble with the second spiral, but finally Soledad brings it down, all with one great bite.

Mama [Blood Summons] is in the center of the circle, chanting her summons, calling on a spirit to choke off the Wyrmhole. The four banes close on the group, intent on stopping the Theurge. One of the four breaks for Kire's ghost - who stands his ground and takes the hit.

The other three go for Mama [Blood Summons]. Soledad [Sorrow] and Iona [Thomas] do not defend her. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] does, taking two hits, wounding him badly. He returns the blows, tearing into one of the banes.

The battle plays out around them. The three banes charging the Theurge strike twice each. sklora-Myrgen [War-Handed] takes two; Kemp takes four hits. The first two don't scratch his thickened hide. The third wounds him.

The fourth kills him.

He does not rise.

---

REWIND

Their Alpha is cloaked in shadows at the mouth of the tunnel. Iona [Thomas] is visible there. The dancers turn from the mouth of the tunnel, hooks in hand, the chitinous bane slick with foul afterbirth. They charge forward.

Inits:

[sM [War-Handed] 17
Sol [Sorrow] 15
Kemp 14
Banshee [Thomas] 14
Banes 14
Kire 13
Mama [Blood Summons] 10
Dancers 8

Wyrmhole: effect init = 0. ]

[Twilight] [Dancers
Adam
1. Gouge Thomas with hook!
R1. Grapple with hook!
R2. Try to toss into Wyrmhole!

Ben
1. Finish helping Fred get born
R1. Bite Iona

Wyrmhole
...spits out one new bane per round]

[Blood Summons] [1: Summon Surtur.]

[Twilight] [Kire] 1. Guarding Mama

Adam, reflexive:
"Kill the [???] Theurge!"

Banes
Chad
1. Breaks rank and attacks Kire!
R1. Again!

Dan
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!

El
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!

Fred
1. Attack Blood Summons!
R1. Again!

[Gut Song] (Initial Action: Split:
1 a) Dodge Hook.
b) Claw Adam.
Rage 1: Dodge Adam.
Rage 2: Grapple Ben
Rage 3: Bite Ben)

[Twilight] [Kemp] Rushing in to try and get to one of the Dancers to kill the fucker and stop the birthing/pulling thing.

1a claw
1b claw
1 r claw

[Sorrow/Soledad] Reflexive - Resist Pain

1a. BITE DAN.
1b. BITE DAN.
Rage 1: BITE DAN
Rage 2: BITE DAN

- moving on to El if Dan goes down.]

[Twilight] Ooops! Ben changed actions.

Ben
Changing actions:
1. Drop hook, bite Kemp +1 diff
R1. Bite Kemp +1 diff

[War-Handed] (Crinos, Resist Pain)
First- Split:
1a: Block for BS, El
1b: Block for BS, Fred
1c: Block for BS, Fred

1r: Grapple Fred
2r: Bite El, called shot, something spicy like the neck.

[War-Handed] REDECLARE

Take hits from El, Fred aimed at BS.

1a: Floating block for rage actions.
1b: grapple El
1c: bite El, called shot neck

1r: grapple Fred,
2r: bite fred

[War-Handed] (Grapple El- dex/brawl is 8-3 for split= 5)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[War-Handed] (Bite El! Pool now 4, diff 5-2 for grapple, assumed.)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3)

[War-Handed] (Damage: str8+1 crinos bite, +2 dice for called shot, +1 for sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] El soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] 1a. BITE DAN -2
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] 1b. BITE DAN. -3
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Twilight] Dan soaks!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Twilight] In seconds, chaos erupts. At the command from one of the Dancers --

"Kill the Theurge!"

-- the banes already birthed rise up in a vortex of fury, swarming straight at Blood Summons.

The Theurge isn't fazed. He closes her eyes. He summons. And War-Handed and Sorrow, ghosting in place of sklora-Myrgen and Soledad, charge forward in front of him.

War-Handed throws himself at one of the banes, Sorrow another.

Meanwhile, at the mouth of the tunnel, their Alpha tears out the throat of one of the Dancers, all at a go.

[Gut Song] (Split 1b) Claw Adam. Dex 5 + Brawl 3 - 3 Dice for split -1 for Weapon length. WP. Diff. 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Gut Song] (Strength 6 + 1 Claw + 1 Sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] Soak! correct pool.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Blood Summons] [*officially flashes boobs*]

[Twilight] One of the four banes charges at Kire:

Chad
Attacking Kire
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[-savior-] [damage +2]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[-savior-] [Kire soaking!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[-savior-] First blood, hot and red, the only pure thing in these tunnels: Kire's, splashed out as a bane -- a skullface, straggle-haired, emaciated mockery of a human -- lashes at him with its talons.

- who does not have a doppleganger in the fight.

[Twilight] Dan
Attacking Blood Summons -- deflected by whom?
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-savior-] [damage +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[War-Handed] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Twilight] This attack - by a chittinous bane - was originally deflected by sklora-Myrgen. They can see the ghost of the Silver Fang superimposed over the iron-gray fur of their own Modi, as he charges into the breach, preventing the bane from reaching Blood Summons, taking a grievous wound of his own.

[War-Handed] (Joe officially flashes his boobs too)

[Twilight] [-savior-] El
Going for Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp in the original fight.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[-savior-] [damage +4]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] [Except, in this reality, El is currently grappled. He goes to break the grapple instead!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[War-Handed] (strength/brawl pool currently 11. Good luck, fuggin' El.)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[Twilight] [-savior-] Fred
Attacking Blood Summons, deflected by Kemp - originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

This time, by Joe.[/i]

8+2 damage
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Blood Summons] [Joe
Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Blood Summons] [1: Rituals+Wits: Summon Surtur Jaggling! OH CHRIST DON'T BOTCH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Blood Summons] [Gnosis: PLEASE BE HAPPY]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] Adam: Gouge Thomas!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 7, 10 (Failure at target 7)

[Blood Summons] [Joe
R1: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El. -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing targets).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)

[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +2 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Blood Summons] [Joe
R2: Brawl+Dexterity (+1): Bite El! -2 diff (grappled), +1 diff (changing actions).]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 4)

[Blood Summons] [Damage: Strength +4 (Crinos) +1 (bite) +5 (suxx).] [A]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] El - Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 1 BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] Sorrow: Rage 2: BITE DAN
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Twilight] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Twilight] Dan Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Twilight] This is their Alpha's last offense action:

[Truth in Frenzy] 1 r claw a fresh bane!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Truth in Frenzy] dam
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[-savior-] [chad soaks!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Gut Song] (Bite Adam: Split action. -2 for split -1 for weapon length. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Gut Song] (Rage 1: Bite. +1 Diff.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Gut Song] (2nd Rage bite. Same)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Gut Song] (str 6 + 1 Bite + 5 sux)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Gut Song]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Twilight] Adam Soaketh!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Gut Song] (Rage 3; Bite El. + 1 Diff for action change. -2 for partial immobile.)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)

[Gut Song] (Str 6 + 2 sux + 1 bite)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Twilight] Their Alpha charges for the bane attacking the ghostly Glass Walker in their midst; he claws the bane, pulls up and turns flanking, ready to intercept the next round of hits from the ghostly crew.

Gut-Song turns, wheels on the second Spiral, and in three great bites - one of which misses - eviscerates the fallen thing. Intestines spill hot over the floor as Gut-Song surges up, throws the corpse back into the pulsing maw of the Wyrmhole and then turns, snapping at the bane his modi has grappled for him.

El Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Twilight] Now the banes turn again, attacking en masse, livid things, snarling, feral.

The first, wounded to near insubstantiality in their replay, surges toward Blood Summons. In the original, sklora-Myrgen, already wounded from intercepting the bane's first attack, interposes his body between the Theurge and the bane once more.

In this ghostly replay -

[-savior-] Dan
Attacking mama - deflected by sM originally.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[-savior-] [dam +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Twilight] Sorrow: soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Twilight] The next bane to launch itself at Blood Summons in the rewind is El. In the original, he surges forward, finally wounding their Alpha.

[-savior-] El
Attacking Mama, deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[-savior-] [damage +5]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

This time around, though, War-Handed has the snarling beast grappled.

Break Grapple!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] The battle lurches onward; finally, they see what they came to see. The echoes around them seem to slow down - time dilates with expectancy, their own, nothing more. They see:

[-savior-] Fred
Deflected by Kemp
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[-savior-] [Damage +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 9 at target 6)

[Truth in Frenzy] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Truth in Frenzy] dun dun dun....
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3 (Failure at target 8) [WP]

The fourth bane, the last bane surge toward Blood Summons. They see Truth-in-Frenzy, hispo-formed, once more interpose his massive body between the Theurge and the attacker. They smell the ichor on its mouth, the blood-haunted lust, the death-dusted promise of a creature forced of hate, spat back into the world by a vortex of corruption, still slimy from its birth - as it opens up their Alpha, with a hit so sure, so thunderous is breaks his spine, cuts through the vertebrae down nearly in two, sends the vital beast staggering forward to the floor, his front paws spasming, his hindquarters slack.

He falls.
He does not rise.
He does not rise again.

[Twilight] In one of the iterations of the battle, Sorrow surges forward in her Alpha's place. Every time they fight, she is already wounded.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Twilight] - and she falls, unconscious, but not dead.

[Gut Song] (Soak time, bitches! Full Health, 9 AGG.)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Twilight] In another iteration, Gut-Song takes the full brunt of the terrible hit that felled his Alpha. He falls, fails - awakens just outside the path to the realm, the deep, abiding ache of the wound that ended his Alpha, that ended this iteration of the battle for him - already fading, like spun sugar in the rain.

[Blood Summons] [Joe
COME ON YOU UGLY FUCK]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Twilight] They surge through again, playing out the motions now, they are crawling into the hole again, they know the motions, the scents, the feel of the ground beneath their feet. The repeat themselves, time and again - for just this moment -

- War-Handed intercepts the death blow. He is already so wounded that an errant breeze would kill him. He falls. Awakens outside.

[Blood Summons] [Bob
YOU TOO MOTHER FUCKER]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Twilight] Four battles; four ghosts. Two deaths, two fall insensate.

This is the battle they came to fight; this is the blow they came to know. Each of them feels it: the same angle, the same burn of fang and ichor, the same sudden shock as the blow takes them down, as it took him down.

One by one by one.

Four battles, four ghosts, two deaths, none of them real. Two fall, unmoving in the dream of a battle, until they are revived. Sorrow, by the hand of a Godi. Blood Summons, by a talen in Sorrow's hand.

---

One more time, all of it - they simply play their parts. The spirits arrived, the banes scrawl, the battle rages. They fall when their others fell, watch them rage back, watch them learn their

lessons

- that accrued after the death of their Alpha. Fight together; take a blow. Fall. Come back.

Die.
Be reborn.

[-savior-] By the end, none of them even know what the fuck is going on anymore. Four of them are frenzied. One is dead. One is still sane, still alive -- but it's too damn dark to see, and the air is fetid with blood, with visceral stink, with taint and corruption.

All they know is:

It's over. The throb of hate, hate, hate in their minds is gone. The source is closed. Overhead, the battle rages on, but none will come to replenish the ones killed now.

They've won. They've lost one of their most respected warriors, and nearly every single one of them has died and come back tonight, and nearly always for someone else's sake --

and they've won.

[Gut Song] ...The Brownish haze dims the realm, a distant Thunderstorm on the horizon, this limbo of thick turgid mists, bleak rolling landscapes and the promise of a Scab, pocked with black skies and artificial lights (Home sweet home) scathing the distance. Waking here comes with expectation. Being here comes with that vague ache that will remain for the time it takes him to go from the physical to the shores of Valhalla.

We will get there. Someday.

Kemp had said no hurry. No rush. He'd gone into war with fangs and claws and fallen as Fenris had said he would. The Wyrm had suffered for many long years under his efforts and if his pack had anything to say on the matter...

...It would continue to do so.

The Skald pulls himself up, settling to a wobbly stand. His jaws unhinge, clacking sharply, gaze traveling to Chicago's barren and eerie glow, then North and beyond the the purple veined clouds that hang above the Hive lands.

A Howl rises. Slow, steady, ominous and promising...

The Fenrir are coming. Brace yourselves.

[Twilight] [- and, scene!]