Phobia roll
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightThe patrol they shared through the city was quiet. The beating heat of the afternoon then sunk into a long, hot, lingering evening, the threat of rain and thunderstorms constantly on the horizon. Strange to imagine how thoroughly the Guardians of Cold Crescent once inhabited these streets. How quickly they came when called, how they moved through the corridors between the skyscrapers downtown like water through the great canyons of the west, appearing where they were needed and when they were called within minutes.
For Reverance of the Dawn and Storm's Teeth the experience is much blinder, much stranger, and much more frustrating. Their only contact with the elder coordinating these patrols is by cell phone and their sense of the city is framed by the immediate information fed them by their senses. A day on the city streets and shadowing through its umbral reflection beneath the humming glow of Weaver's workings and no more than the hint of possible violence at the edges of their perception. Leads that go nowhere. Bleak, sudden spirals of scents that end at brick walls.
--
After, they are close to Avery's penthouse. She offers Erich - who has so far to go to return to his tinyhouse - hospitality. A meal or a drink or view of the city, breathless, exhilaring, from one of her two stories of balconies. This too, is uneventful: the ride up the elevator. The opening of the door.
It has not been tampered with.
But: there is light in the foyer that is on now, which was not on when Avery last left the space.
The print of a muddy boot print on her pristine floor.
The assertion of the noise of the city as it rises up from the streets below and a warm current of a breeze to match. Somewhere, a door or a window is open to the terrace.
A certain perfume in the air.
Reverence of DawnThey have fought nothing, found nothing. It is frustrating with the moon waning overhead, like the sky itself is trying to sap their rage from them, which only intensifies it. Avery is on edge, and though she never turned on the gift that illuminates her and her companions with silver light, she seems to be outlined in white from that frustration,
which turns instantly to fury when she returns to her den.
--
Erich is not covered in blood or ichor. He is not wounded. Avery invites him to come to her penthouse because they have roamed long and far through the night, and though she knows nothing of his particular ailment, she does know that she's seldom met an Ahroun who would turn down a slab of neatly seared beef if offered, and she would like him to know that she appreciates having him at her side or at her back even when they did not meet battle tonight.
They ride up in the elevator, not a short ride, and she introduces him into her hallway, talking about her lap pool outside and would he like to see the library and it's obvious that as frustrated as she was tonight by the lack of release, she does so love entertaining.
This is not her family's den. This is not her real 'home', per say, and not where she protects her father and brother and serving staff. It is something even more sacred. It is her most private domain, her most sacrosanct territory. When she sees the boot print, almost perfectly left as though someone wanted to get caught,
she nearly sets herself alight in that wash of Luna's white glow as rage floods her veins. She can almost feel the red cells burning, burning through her as her heart rate and breath instantly quicken. Breeze comes towards them, perfume comes towards them, and though Avery damn near snaps into hispo, instead she begins striding instantly towards her terrace, intending to take that bitch by the throat and throw her off the side of the building.
It won't be a long fall though. She might survive. That is until the wolf dives over the building's edge after her to finish her off.
Storm's TeethExcepting Melantha's hotel room at the Hay-Adams and Charlotte's grand Victorian, Erich hasn't been in very many Fancy Houses in his life. This one makes three, and he's rather amazed as he rides up the elevator, trying not to gawk. His new friend talks about her library, and her lap pool, and with every additional room in his imaginary map of her den his eyes get a little wider. He wonders what she'd think of the tinyhouse if -- when! -- he invites her over, but then he decides it didn't really matter. He doesn't think she'd think poorly of it, but even if she does; well, he still loves it. Charlotte and Melantha still love it! And that's what matters.
That's what he's thinking to himself as the elevator doors open. And then he's thinking holy shit because he's looking in on Avery's penthouse suite and its fifty windows, its terrace which is really more like a backyard except atop a building, its lap pool lit-up and cerulean-blue outside. He doesn't even notice the footprint there.
Avery does, though. And that wash of white-hot rage off the Philodox draws Erich's attention, draws his curiosity. He looks up and down and all around and then, then, he sees the print. Smells the perfume, which makes his nostrils flare out, makes him sniff loudly and whuff it back out.
"Lemme guess," he says, hurrying to catch up, "you weren't expecting visitors."
Reverence of DawnAvery is not afraid to make noise in her own den. She is not trying to sneak up on anyone. She snarls the answer: "No." and shoves the terrace door wide open.
TwilightThe doors are glass for a reason. Tempered and perfectly framed and perfectly tinted, doubtless, to both translate and transfer the sunlight from outside to inside. To show off the city, day and night, to frame wide, expansive view of the front-range mountains as if the city were at your feet,
because it is.
One is open. Perhaps two if they are double doors.
There are other signs of subtle invasion though by now Avery may be too full of surging rage to note them. They are all minor.
A picture moved. Another left behind on a narrow table with delicate inlay and shapely legs. A brandy snifter on a mantle somewhere, no more than the dregs left behind.
Outside on the terrace she surges through those open doors, snapping with fury an electric arc all around her.
There are two figures immediately visible on the terrace. The first is a tall, musclebound man with a bald pate and a cauliflower ear and an oft-broken nose, crawling in tattoos. So crawling in tattoos that a few of those tattoos now seem to be crawling on his skin.
"Dey's here boss." He says as Avery shoves the terrace doors wide open. Then steps - forward, yes forward, into her path of movement. He is absolutely stuffed into a too-small suit. Nothing can contain the swell of his shoulders or the roll of his gut. "Dat's far enough lady."
A handful of steps away, a slender African-American woman of indeterminate though more-than-a-few years stands closer to the edge of the terrace, her eyes on the city below. She draws away from the edge and moves with a slim and deadly grace to also:
intercept.
There is an oily sheen to her gaze.
--
Perhaps twenty feet away, a slim blonde is kneeling on the terrace. Head bowed, her hands clasped, her body clad in a pastel Chanel suit with gold buttons. She is praying, murmurs the words with a fervent intensity and a rhythm that makes the two guarding her sway like cobras to the mesmeric song of a snake charmer.
She finishes a sentence. Breathes out a showy amen and then turns her head with an eerie smoothness to find the wolves and - and -
smile.
"Have you felt the movement of god across your soul?" This to Avery. The sudden flash of her teeth in the darkness. This gathering blade of a smile. "I have been praying for you for hours.
"God is waiting. He stands ready to cleanse you of all your false beliefs. His arms are still open to you." She is serene. She is the dark blaze of an eclipse.
"Aching for you. Who are you to stand against his Holy Name? Repent your sins against his servants and he will show you mercy you do not deserve and should never know."
She is sublime and demure, her hands folded in front of her.
She is lying through her fucking teeth.
"Refuse and I will show you how the world ends."
Storm's Teeth"Um," Erich says, looking warily at the tattoos on tattoo-man as tattoo-man moves to intercept.
And:
"Um," Erich says again, looking shiftily at the oil-skinned oil-woman as she too moves to intercept.
And:
"...UM," Erich says, just sort of aghast and lost-for-words, as the blonde in a Republican-running-for-office pantsuit finishes praying on a werewolf's terrace and turns around to inform that werewolf, plus her buddy, that she has been praying for their souls. "Thanks? But no thanks?" He glances at Avery. "Who the hell are these people and what are they doing in your yard? Why are they praying?"
Reverence of Dawnfar enough
Avery bares her teeth at him, growling once, harsh and rough and instant and coiled in her throat. It's a warning, daring him to get a little more in her path, urging him to take her from ready-to-kill to killing. She does glance at the other woman, but she knows that smell, and she's furious to find it here though, in truth,
she does know that she was waiting for it.
Avery feels the heated wall of Erich's rage behind her, at odds with his very young, very confused words. She doesn't take her eyes off of the people on her terrace, least of all the Whore of Babylon in pastel, but like many of her kind, she can always feel when the eyes of her people are upon her. She can sense when someone is looking to her to answer, to clarify, to lead.
"They are missionaries of the Wyrm," Avery mutters through her teeth. "They call the lost and misguided to their arms and drag them into filth. They seek the end of the world, the final battles, and the call it God's work."
Her eyes cut to Christina Black, a sharp look if Erich is watchful. "That one. Her voice is persuasive unless your will is strong. She sent her grunts to attack me and my friend in the park." Avery drags her eyes back to the tattooed man, then pin directly on Christina. Though she is still talking to Erich, her words are aimed at Christina's ears.
"Celduin and I killed them. I kept one of their skulls and have it in a hatbox to give away as a present. I sent her back a bit of her servant's skin."
Avery, hearing her own words, draws her shoulders back, straightens up, seems to calm a bit, though her rage doesn't abate. "I suppose in a way, that was an inscribed invitation," she tells Christina, her voice lighter than a growl now.
"Show me your god," she tells the woman, the words a warning. "I'll rip him apart, too."
Reverence of Dawn[Addendum: "unless your will is strong. I stood up to her, and she sent her grunts"]
Twilight"He was not my servant." There is a hush and a reverence to her voice and that hush and reverence give her even now a compelling countenance, a serene, near-inviolate presence in the space they are jointly occupying.
Now she is looking past Avery. Now she is standing, her hands clasped lightly in front of her body in a way that just creases the line of the suit and suggests the lithe, lean shadow of her body beneath. Walking forward, a step or two or three.
No, she is speaking to Erich. To Erich and directly to Erich and so directly to Erich that he has perhaps never known the balance of such attention. The weight and stain of it. There is something intent in her eyes.
"He was God's servant, and he stands at His right hand, at the vanguard of His army, awaiting the day of judgment when gates of heaven will be swept open and we will storm the gates of hell.
"There is such righteousness in you. Such potential. And I am here to free you from your illusions. To tear the scales from your gaze and allow you to see the truth that he has made me know in the secret chambers of my brightest heart:
"That we belong in the next world. It is, Brother, the devil who chains us here. Who binds us to this rotting tree. Who makes us wallow in this fleshy filth.
"But the time is coming when the righteous will fight for the soul of the world, and will rise up and tear down all his false works. You can stand with the forces of the Lord, young man. Or you can fall.
"She, I think," this small, sudden, regretful little smile. Wistful, dying even as it is born, " - regretfully, will have to die.
"Miss Chase, it is the only way to introduce you to the Lord."
Storm's Teeth[ACK! WP!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Reverence of Dawn[WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightBob + 4
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
TwilightJane +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
TwilightChristina: +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Reverence of Dawn[-1 R, snap-shift to hispo
-1 WP for Resist Pain
-1 WP for Fangs of Judgement because you guys have TOTALLY fallen from your original purpose as Gaia intended
INIT +9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Storm's TeethChristina Black's voice was enough to sway hundreds, that night at the banquet. Her presence, her authority, her charisma -- enough to sway millions. Sometimes that's the true terror of the Wyrm. Its insidious appeal, its subtle charm: the sense that maybe, just maybe, the great destroyer has a point.
Don't get it wrong, now. Erich feels that sway. He feels the tug of it, like waves washing sand away from beneath his feet. But that makes him think of Baja, makes him think of his sister Charlotte, his -- girlfriend? sort of? -- Melantha; makes him think of his tinyhouse and all the wholeness and rightness he feels when he's in it. And then he's sure, quite sure, that there's no way the side that Melantha picked, that Charlotte picked, could be the wrong one.
And besides: Avery warned him, didn't she? Her voice is persuasive unless your will is strong. And Erich isn't too sure about the strength of his will, but he is sure of the strength of his arms, the sharpness of his teeth, and he
claps his hands over his ears like a child, damps out most all of what she says until he sees her lips stop moving.
"You know," he says when she's done -- because he's polite, goddammit, he's not going to interrupt the villain's Monologue, "I can see you really believe what you're saying. And I respect that. It's better to believe in a wrong cause than to waffle around and not believe anything at all. But if we're both trying to save the world, then I'm pretty sure I'm already on the right side, and you're kinda ... not.
"I hope your god forgives you for going so far off-track when you see him, though. Which," an apologetic shrug here, "might be pretty soon."
Reverence of DawnAvery is not having it.
This woman tried to warp her mind and the mind of someone she's rather fond of. This woman sent goons after her life, and that fond friend's life, and had them shoot at her from above like cowards, like assassins. Avery has been waiting for her, and has kept herself ready, mind and body, and her spine is iron when Christina turns her eyes on Erich.
Avery steps back to Erich's side, close enough that her arm touches his arm. Shoulder to shoulder, or as close as they can be with the height differential. She doesn't look at him, doesn't lay a hand on his arm and urge him with her words not to listen. She just stands next to him, solid and real and pure and summoning her will and rage both as that. woman. keeps. talking.
In her den.
Erich does the simplest and perhaps one of the most effective things he can: he just covers his ears, and Avery nearly bites back a laugh but instead she lets it out. She laughs, which does not kill her rage but by god it kills any power that woman might have had over her mind. She laughs in Christina Black's face because she's going to tear her to pieces.
They. They're going to tear her to pieces.
He tells her, at the end: it might be pretty soon. And at that, Avery descends into a form most savage. A form for hunting, shredding. For defending her den. Her teeth gleam as white as her fur, her eyes a pristine blue. She lunges.
Storm's Teeth[-1R to hispo!
-1W for resist pain!
+9!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Twilight[Inits:
Avery: 19Christina: 18Erich: 15Bob: 10Jane: 9]
Twilight[Inits:
Avery: 19
Christina: 18
Erich: 15
Bob: 10
Jane: 9]
TwilightJane: 1. Oilslick. 2. Tackle Erich.
Twilight
Bob: 1. Tackle Avery. 2. Bite Avery.
Storm's Teeth[1. spur claws on jane! stoppit!
R1 - bite bob!
R2 - bite bob!
R3 - let's bite him again!]
TwilightChristina. Reflexive: Shadow of God. 1. Voice of the Siren.
Reverence of Dawn[1a.1b.R1. -- kill Christina until she dies from it.GET OFF MY LAWN]
Reverence of Dawn[uh, those are bites]
Reverence of Dawn[1a. -2!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Reverence of Dawn[Damage! Str + 1 +1 (Hispo) +2 (FoJ) + Suxx -1]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
TwilightSOAK
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Reverence of Dawn[1b. -3!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Reverence of Dawn[Ehrmagherd drmerj!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightVoice of the Siren -5
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Storm's TeethDice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Reverence of Dawn[WP!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Storm's Teeth[spur claws on shiny oil lady!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1
Storm's Teeth[dam+2!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightOIlslick:
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Storm's Teeth[yee, soak!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
TwilightBob: Tackle!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Reverence of Dawn[NOPE]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightDice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Reverence of Dawn[YAY SOAK! :D]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )
Reverence of DawnThe fat man with the tattoos collides into Avery. She can barely see straight, she's so furious. She bristles her spine, rolling her shoulders, twisting and shoving at him until she pulls herself free, feeling -- for a moment -- the tug on her bones that should mean pain, could even mean injury, were she not inured to it by the spirit of Bear. Avery lunges again, silent though she wants to roar, intending to put this woman down.
[R1!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Reverence of Dawn[Damage!]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightSoak.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightDice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Reverence of Dawn[Soak! WTF IS HAPPENING]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Storm's Teeth[rage 1! chomping bob! +1 diff]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Storm's Teeth[dam +2]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightBob soak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6, 6) ( success x 3 )
Storm's Teeth[rage 2! more of the same!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 2
TwilightJane: tackle Erich!
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( fail )
Storm's Teeth[dam+4]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightBob soak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Storm's Teeth[rage 3! chomp jane too!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2
Storm's Teeth[dam+5]
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 12 )
TwilightDice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Storm's Teeth[owie.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
TwilightThe world explodes. Christina Black does not die with a prayer on her lips. Not to God. Not to any God of which they have heard. Not to a God of men or a God of wolves. She is praying to something else entirely, and it is coalescing around her, coagulating around her, a cloak of shadow that is black as tar and slick as motor oil and fiery as the pits of hell to which she should surely now descend.
Reverence of the Dawn surges forward, snarling, brilliant and gleaming white and pure, brighter somehow against the darkness with which Christina Black cloaks herself. Tears into her, again and again and then at last again - ripping the skin from her bones and with it the shadowskin which seems to Avery that it goes up like the fuse of a stick of dynamic, from the falling corpse in a brilliant, burning line right into her mouth and throat and lungs and gullet. Her insides are blistered, burning, boiled. The only visible wound will be a certain redness to her mouth. A certain caustic blistering of her lips.
The bodyguards move to her defense as the fight is engaged Neither is fast enough to stop the Silver Fang's surging attack. The larger one turns with a shout of protest and flings himself after the direwolf, and grapples but cannot hold her and is soon,
eviscerated, in two precise bites,
by the unhinged jaw of the Shadow Lord.
Then Storm's Teeth turns to the remaining creature.
Somehow, he literally bites the woman almost-in-half. Her blood was as black as the viscous substance she spewed from her mouth moments ago and spatters his muzzle, whithers and chest, burning through fur and skin and all the dermal layers to scour and scorch the great striations of muscle below.
Silence, after.
The noise of the city filtering up below.
A radio is on, somewhere in the house. Tuned to a new station at the end of the dial, one neither of them might have found on their own.
A stranger's voice, preaching about the end of the world, and salvation. Dulled by distance, by the imperfect reception, but crawling with the resonance of deep and abiding conviction.
Calling the faithful to war.Calling the faithful, home.
Reverence of DawnThis should be another day, another battle, with not a mark left on her but the blood of her enemies. It is not.
Erich handles the two lackeys with brutal efficiency. When one of them breaks away to attack Avery, he is there in the grunt's face a second later, teeth bared and already bloodied. If Avery could see him she would applaud and she would mean it she would praise him and praise him and feed him prime rib and send him home with T-bones to share with his pack. Avery can barely see anything, though. Anything but Christina Black, some of her flesh still unbroken.
Until it splies apart, and erupts, fire coming from inside of her, leaving her vile mouth and charring her from within. Avery stands for a long time staring at her, listening to the sick wet thump of the pieces of another enemy falling to the terrace floor. Blood is splattered on leaves and on flagstones and all over Avery's fur. It takes her a long time to realize that some of that blood is her own, burnt down to flesh, because she does not feel the pain.
Her ears twitch at a sound from inside. She sniffs the air, but through the smells of death and battle she does not smell another enemy. She rounds her massive shoulders downward, blood sliding slick off her fangs.
Storm's TeethThey should be proud of themselves. They carved their enemies to bits in a matter of seconds, tore them apart, shredded them to scraps. They stood strong against some of the more potent mindbending to come their way: cliaths that they are, inexperienced wolves of the nation that they are -- even if Avery already shines with the purity of character and strength of purpose of a true leader. They did well, they did good.
Yet in the aftermath there's only that silence, that wind through the foliage; the harsh sound of their breathing. And that distant, eerie radio transmission, cut by static and whining interference; the drone of some stranger's voice on some strange new frequency.
Erich-wolf noses the remains of the enemies. He whuffs distastefully, and then he leans his shoulder into Avery-wolf's flank, stretching out his neck to sniff at the hinge of her jaws. Then he shifts, taking it slow, form by form, until he's a midwestern boy of unmistakable nordic descent again; until he's crouching on the terrace of his other silver fang friend, tracing his fingers through the unpleasant goo left behind by her unwelcome visitors.
"If you need someplace to stay tonight," he offers, "you can crash with me and my pack. We live in a tinyhouse."
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