Chomp.

Radiant Honor

[I believe Radiant Honor walks in wherever the hell she wants.]

Radiant Honor

[*Z-snap*]

Radiant Honor

Quite often, Ms. Avery Chase can be found in her office at Cold Crescent. Its sleek desk, its high windows, its cabinets full of both weaponry and items for gamecraft: not all challenges are martial. On one occasion she presided over a four-day-long game of chess. One of the chess sets was broken, but that is why a conscientious Master of Challenges keeps extras.

Often enough, Mr. Erich Reinhardt can be found wandering the hallways of the upper floors, on his way in or out from a patrol. He does not live in the tower, but he was perhaps the most vocal proponent of keeping the sept open; he has not wavered in his committment to patrolling its borders.

And not very often, but occasionally, and often near the full moon, one or both of them may happen upon each other and see a familiar gleam in the other's eyes or hear a familiar edge in the other's voice, and they will decide it is high time they went on a hunt.

Tonight they tracked a bane all the way from downtown Denver to the south suburbs, past the Park Meadows Mall, the end of the light rail lines. It was dispatched readily, quickly, a snap here and there and no real burn of effort or energy. No real relief from the heaviness of rage behind the eyes, thudding in the skull.

Avery, all gleaming white fur still, stretches, shaking out her coat. It is thickening with winter, growing ever whiter -- if such a thing is possible. Her tongue lolls, and she prances over to Erich, butting her head into the side of his ribs.

Son of Rage

Erich, whose fur does not exactly gleam, but whose fur is indeed thick and thickening with winter, and whose fur is dappled and grey-black-white-brown-everything, and whose fur is, despite not being all-agleam, full and healthy and impressive armor against cold and enemy-teeth alike,

is butted and lolls his tongue out as well. He is smiling; you can see it, the corners of his maw turn up. He blinks slowly, contentedly, but not-quite because there: there is that gleam. It's in his eyes, hot and not yet sated. This month's moon was so full, so strange, so blood-red that he can't help but feel it still in his veins.

He scratches his claws on the ground. Leaves rakes there, marks. It's a primitive thing to do: dominance, victory, territory. He stops shy of pissing over it, though, thinking perhaps Avery would not appreciate that. Instead: he turns on his haunches, rubs past his friend, and puts his nose to the ground again. Sniffsniffsniffs in a widening circle: surely there is more.

chomp

The bane was dispatched readily, easily. The bane somehow dissolved itself into a puddle of shadow on the umbral ground. It is no longer, or rather it is slumber, and its viscous substance is slowly dissolving into this kind of nether-substance of which so many things in the umbra seem to be "made" of -

Avery bumps Erich.

- and that shadow-puddle starts to, well, bulge outward. Like something pushing on, or through a membrane. Like something crossing over - like something coming through.

The first part is a ragged maw, all needle-teeth and blooded, lolling tongue. Scissoring into existance and snarl-snapping and -

chomp

Head 1: + 6, Head 2: + 4; Tail 1: +6; Tail 2: +4

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Son of Rage

[+19 CUZ HAH I AM IN HISPO.]

Son of Rage

[o right a roll.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Radiant Honor

Avery, wagging her tail, notices the puddle. She dances backward from it, fur standing up a bit, ears folding back. She growls, a warning and a call to Erich, and her fur bristles, her ears twisting agressively forward to listen, to sharpen, to attend.

[Already in Hispo

-1WP for ResistPain

-1WP for Fangs of Judgement

-1G for Luna's Armor.

First roll is for Luna's Armor, then will come init!

Stamina + Survival]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[mmph.

now init! +10]

Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (2) ( fail )

chomp

Erich: 24

Avery: 12

Tail 2: 11

Tail 1: 10

Head 2: 8

Head 1: 7

chomp

Head 1: 1. BITE AVERY. 2. BITE AVERY.

Head 2: BITE ERICH. 2. BITE ERICH.

Tail 1: Umbralquake!

Tail 2: LASH Erich.

Radiant Honor

[1a.

1b.

R1.

R2. -- all bites on Head 1, Switching to Head 2, Tail 2, Tail 1, in that order.]

Son of Rage

[erm, RETROACTIVE FROM BEFORE :D

-1wp resist pain

-1gn luna's armor]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Son of Rage

[1a. chomp head 1!

b. pin head 1 down for Avery's 1a/1b!

R1. bite

R2. bite

same kill order as Avery!]

Radiant Honor

[retracting fangs of judgement, I was not thinking clearly.]

Son of Rage

[-2 dice]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Son of Rage

[dam +2]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )

chomp

SOAK.

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[1a. bite head 1. dex + brawl -2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

Son of Rage

[-3; str specialty: sustained]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

chomp

SOAK. EDITED.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[Diff -2 for opponent being held; actual attack suxx = same!

DAMAGE]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 )

chomp

SOAK.

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[1b. dex + brawl -3 / diff -2]

Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 1, 2, 3, 8) ( success x 2 )

Radiant Honor

[damage!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Tail 2: LASH ERICH.

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Damage!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Son of Rage

[soak!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Tail 1: UMBRALQUAKE

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[dex + ath to stay standing!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Son of Rage

[keep footing!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Son of Rage

[soak 4!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[soak 4 bashing!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

chomp

Head 2: CHOMPPPP.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Damage!

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

Son of Rage

[NO FEAR!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )

chomp

Head 1: change action. Shake off hold.

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Son of Rage

[hold on!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Son of Rage

R1 CHOMP

Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 7 )

Son of Rage

[dam+6]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 12 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

chomp

Head 1: x.x

Radiant Honor

[R1. Nomfing Head 2!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Radiant Honor

[damage!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Head 2: CHOMP ERICH.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Damage!

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Son of Rage

[soak!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Son of Rage

[R2: CHOMP HEAD 2!]

Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 2

Son of Rage

[dam +7]

Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[R2!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[damage! I AM EATING YOU, HEAD 2. MUPPET HEAD.]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Erich: 24

Avery: 12

Tail 2: 11

Tail 1: 10

Head 2: 8

Head 1: x.x

chomp

Head 2: 1. CHOMP ERICH. 2. CHOMP ERICH.

chomp

Tail 1: 1. LASH AVERY WTF DID YO?U DO TO MY HEAD.

chomp

Tail 2: LASH ERICH LEAVE MAH HEAD ALONE.

Radiant Honor

[1a. Stay on Head 2.

1b. Kill it til it dies from it.

1c. +WP Seriously bite it. And if it dies or is dead (go Erich), move on to Tail 2 because it is meaner.

R1. Tail 2! EAT IT. Like lobster.]

Son of Rage

[dropping another 2 rage!

1a: spur claws on tail 1!

b. bite head 2!

R1/R2: bite head 2! then tail 2! then tail 1!]

Son of Rage

[spur claws: -1R

-2dice from splitting]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Son of Rage

[dam+3]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Son of Rage

[chomp!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 9, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Son of Rage

[dam+3]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

chomp

SOAK!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Radiant Honor

[1a. Bite on Head 2 / -2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Radiant Honor

[are you... are you serious.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )

Radiant Honor

[Re-doing 1a since I botched it! -3!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[PLEASE]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[1b. -4!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Radiant Honor

[you can have my slinky it is rainbow and has stars on it too]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[1c. -5] +WP!

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Radiant Honor

[strength + 1 + 1 + suxx -1 maybe kahseeno likes math]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

chomp

SOAK!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Tail 2: what the fuck am I doing do Erich!

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

chomp

Damage!

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Tail 1: LASH AVERY. +2 spur claws.

Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Son of Rage

[soak!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )

chomp

Damage!

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

chomp

HEad 2: CHOMMMP.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[SOAK]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )

chomp

Damage! ERICH.

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Son of Rage

[soak again!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Son of Rage

[R1: GRR KILL IT]

Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Son of Rage

[fine. fine. we send this one out to the old school:

HAIL KAHSEENO.]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[R1. only rage action!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 1

Radiant Honor

[HAIL!]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

chomp

Soak!

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

chomp

Head 2: x.x

Ergo: Tails: x.x

Ergo: BOOM

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 11 )

Radiant Honor

[oh my fucking god. HAIL!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Son of Rage

[HAIL KAHSEENO.]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )

Son of Rage

[aww, kahseeno. you do love me :]]] ]

chomp

That membranous bulge resolves itself into this amorphous blob of a two-tailed, two-headed, needle-toothed monstrous thing with slimey purple fur and these crowning antlers and spiked, barbed tails and immediately they are in the thick of battle again. The first head Erich holds down for Avery and they tear into it together and then he tears it fucking off. Black blood like a geyser behind it.

The second head: hard, more solid, snarling, stinking breath while the tails rain down blows and Son of Rage sheds his claws into the tail attacking his Silver Fang companion and together they tear into the head -

which comes off, almost cleanly from the body, while the tails are still lashing. This time ther eis no spurt of black blood, no geyser, just this sort of terrible internal spasm before the whole.

thing.

explodes.

A searing, vomitous torrent of burning-acid-black.

--

They are both still breathing in the aftermath.

Though one:

barely.

Son of Rage

Well.

That was unexpected.

In the aftermath, Erich-wolf -- who was about to lunge in again, about to grasp something in his great teeth and just CHEW IT TO BITS -- stands there with his forepaws spread for balance, his ears pinned back, and his eyes wide as saucers.

Seconds go by before the shock passes. Then he gives one long protracted shake of his fur: head to toe, flinging off bits-of-monster that have caught in the density. He bounds a little, then, celebratory, yipping and yelping until

he realizes

Avery is not celebrating with him. That is when he begins to nose through the slop. That is when he finds her, his friend, his sister-in-arms, beloved-of-Falcon and respected-by-all: singed and acid-burnt, in a sorry state indeed. Erich-wolf noses her, whining in his throat. He puts a paw on her and pushes, awkwardly, and when she doesn't rouse immediately he turns, he twists a small something from his fur and crunches it in his teeth over the Silver Fang.

[-1Gn! Heal for 4!]

Radiant Honor

There is a period of the battle when Avery is bristling, thinking of the dishonor of a pretended defeat, and then a period when she is not thinking at all. She is instinct and reaction; strategy lives in her bones and her nervous system and requires no conscious thought to be put in action. Erich holds down the throat of their enemy and she bites at it.

Truth be told, she will reflect later that they could have done better. Been more clever, perhaps. Used tactics. But truth be told, she will also reflect later that at no point did she feel afraid, or concerned that Erich would turn his back on her, or leave her to fight one enemy while he fought another. She trusts him.

And that is a good thing.

Because at the end of the battle, she has nothing left but her life. Bear's gift guards her from pain, the searing and all-encompassing, mind-shredding pain she would feel, but she knows what is happening to her. She knows that her fur is burnt off in a split second; she knows that the skin underneath is charred to nonexistence in many places, knows that blood is trickling, burning, turning black in the crevices of areas that should never see light. She feels the ichor of the two-headed, two-tailed creature clinging to her, burning and burning and burning. Some part of her wants badly to roll on the ground, try and get it off, dry it off, scrub it off with the earth as her ally but whether she feels the pain or not, her consciousness is slave to her body.

It submits. She does not know that she twitches, or that she breathes; she is emptied out, and if she were aware enough to realize it, she would be grateful.

--

The first thing she feels after that is cleanliness, and she is grateful for that, too. A washing, even though the water is only a sprinkle. It feels like a flood. She breathes the suddenly clean air, unable for a few seconds to smell the carcass of the thing they just dispatched. Skin reforms, as though it was never gone; burnt and dried flesh flakes away, pushed off of her by the new skin she grows by the good grace of Gaia.

And a little slip of a Theurge that Avery is particularly fond of, even when she isn't being blessed by that Theurge's work.

Avery opens her eyes, glassy but clear, and saturated with blue color. She looks at Erich and determines that he is... all right, enough. She has regrown fur, and it thickens as she rolls to her paws, shaking out a bit. She leans toward Erich, sniffing at his muzzle. Finds a bit of gourd stuck in his fur and nudges it away, grooming him. Standing right beside him, close enough that they might look like pack, she looks past him at the black spot where the thing was, and where its pieces are.

She chuffs a breath. Her tail wags. She seems to be saying:

we did quite well, didn't we?

But this is followed by a nuzzle, a tucking of her head against his ruff for a moment. That seems to say something else. That something else is thank you.

Elementary.

Éva

The building itself is redbrick, solid, three stories, foursquare, with stone lintels over the doubledoors leading inside and framing in all the oversized windows. An old elementary school transformed into low income apartments with grants and redevelopment. The money did not go all the way to ripping out the old asphalt playground and installing the parklike setting that was shown on the diorama presented to the Denver Housing Authority to show how beautifully the place would be finished out, so the building proper is surrounded by a weedy asphalt and the rusting A-frames of old fashioned swingsets. The swings long, long gone.

The lighting is shit and half the streetlights are out and dusk comes ever-earlier. It is already September, and once the heat of the day is gone there is a distinct chill in the air.

Saturday.

There are kids on the corner, two blocks down, young enough that they should be playing, old enough that in this neighborhood one is certain that they are doing no such thing. We'll call it work, instead.

They pull up in a mid-2000s Chevy, dark and completely unremarkable, slightly dented, the sort no one would care to bother with. Not even here.

Éva kills the engine, sits for a moment with her hands on the wheel, watching sunset flood the sky with its peculiarly bloodied light and gives Erich, in profile, the sort of smile that feels both false and absolutely real.

"I don't want to spook Ramón if we can avoid it. I don't mind company inside, but if he's in, perhaps you should wait outside while we talk."

Erich

Erich doesn't really know what he's doing here, truth be told. Which might imply that he's not pleased to be here, or that this wasn't his idea, or that he didn't come here for a reason, but none of that is true. He wants to be here. He's sort of even pleased that he is here, because that means Eva -- that paragon of Shadow Lord-ness -- has deigned to accept his help. He also came here for a very good reason, and that reason is simply:

Eva is going somewhere bad, and

Eva is his kin, and

therefore Erich should Do Something.

But therein lies the question. What, precisely, is he to do? He has never played bodyguard before. He thought perhaps he should stand over her shoulder and glower and generally look menacing, but then: no, she tells him that is exactly what he doesn't want to do. He thinks; he looks out the window at the building which was once a school and is now what might simply be termed A Project, as in A Low Income Housing Project, as in The Projects. He looks over at Eva, all cool and self-possessed and efficient and Thunder, Thunder, Thunderous.

"Should I walk you to the door then? Or just sit here? I think sitting here would make me pretty useless. If I'm supposed to be useful, I mean."

Éva

Erich's question makes her smile, quite suddenly. Quick and sure and unselfconscious. She slides the keys out of the ignition and turns them over in her hand. There are just three on the ring, and only one works.

She does not know why they keep the others there.

"Come with me inside. Be alert. Nothing's going to happen. I do this all the time. But you'll be close then, in case."

A pause. She is slipping the keys into the right pocket of her jacket.

She is opening the driver's door.

"All right?"

Erich

His door pops open as soon as the word inside leaves her mouth. Erich climbs out of the mid-2000s Chevy, which even Erich knows isn't her usual car, shutting the door with the heel of his hand as he stretches the kinks out of his legs.

"Right," he affirms. Then a quirk-grin: "Funny you're the one reassuring me that nothing's going to happen. Isn't that my line?"

Tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and, unlikely duo that they are, follows Eva building-ward.

Éva

Per + Alertness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Erich

[per+PU]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Éva

At this hour even in the heart of the city there should be birds singing. Erich cannot hear a one.

Éva

Éva takes in his quirking grin with a side glance that is composed enough that it could be taken as supercilious, quite nearly sly, except for the supple threads of humor that she allows to leak through, like light from inside a shuttered window, diffused and redirected by the slats.

And she is out of the car as well, pulling an attache case from the back seat before closing the door behind her.

The weekend. She wears sleekly fitted jeans and a soft white blouse with a pinstripe beneath a dark gray jacket, with menswear details and menswear styling. And books, a well-worn black, without much of a heel at all and just enough of a retort on the sidewalk that one knows that she is coming.

They walk in the building's shadow, following the line of the old fence, which was topped with failing coils of razor wire no one bothered to take down when this became a series of residences rather than a reform school.

Except for the retort of her heels on the pavement, it is quiet.

They climb the steps, from the sidewalk into the asphalt schoolyard. Éva's eyes narrow on the windows as they walk.

"Someone in there is watching us," Éva tells him, lifting her chin subtly in the direction of one of the blanket-covered windows on the second story. "Could be their cable's been cut, for non-payment."

A quick, subtle little smile.

"Could be they haven't sensed you yet, and we look like prey."

Erich

"Like you're not a predator, yourself," Erich retorts,

which may just be the most astute thing he's ever said about Eva. They climb the stairs together. His sneakers do not click smartly on the pavement; they make little enough sound at all, cushioning his long stride, the agile animal motion coiled under his affable nebraska-boy facade. He knows well enough not to look right at the window as soon as Eva points it out, but he does, after a while, flick his eyes up that way. And again.

Then they're at the door. Erich's last step up is a bound, taking him ahead of Eva. He pulls the door open and -- apparently having forgotten all his mama's manners -- barges in ahead of her.

Éva

A doorway.

A stairwell.

Industrial and clinical, made to be used. Wide-open steps rising a half-flight to the first floor and sinking a half-flight to the darkened basement. On the wall: a row of locked mailboxes that seems equal to the vintage of the school and must have been salvaged from a tear-down somewhere.

Flyers litter the floor. For cheap pizza and cheaper pho. Specials on plasma donations. Get an extra five bucks on every fifth visit!

"You have me wrong," she tells him, as she walks in after him. Her voice is quietly composed and her humor is strange and is dark and she means it too, though perhaps in this she is utterly incorrect.

A flick of a glance up the stairwell.

The old fixtures were taken out. Left behind: naked bulbs hanging from wires, an ugly wash of too-white light.

One of the bulbs is strobing.

"Ramon is on the second floor," she tells him as she starts to climb. Fingertips trailing on the balustrade.

A moment later, "You weren't born to us, were you?"

Erich

A startled glance. If she'd meant to turn the spotlight squarely back to him, take it off herself, she's succeeded. If she's trying to make conversation -- and an odd time for conversation it would be -- she quite fails. He's so taken aback that he pauses a second, his footsteps faltering on the stairs. Then he trudges on, making no attempt to disguise his gait. On these hollower steps, he's quite audible. It's still moments before he speaks again.

"Nope." Forced-light, that. "Blond hair, blue eyes, and I hulk out like nobody's business. I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count."

They pass that strobing light. Erich thinks of smashing the bulb. Maybe a real Fenrir would. He, however, passes it; leaves it be.

Éva

A sore point.

She apologizes with silence, you understand. She does not guess. They circle the first floor landing and glance at one of the fire doors, propped open, and keep walking. The noise echoes remarkably in this open space. Close to the railing and in the center as well, the hollowed grooves worn by thousands of feet into the stairs.

They have rounded the landing between the first and second stories, still in silence. Erich still leading the way, when Eva's voice floats up from behind.

"Ellie's father was - " a mildly ironic pause. Who knows who may be listening. "Nordic. I don't think he was born to them, either."

The firedoors leading to the second-story hallway are not propped open. They creeeeaaaak as Erich pushes them. The hinges want oiling.

Inside: a long hallway, dark and stuffy. One light at the end of the hall casts an ugly white pool of illumination on sickly sea-green paint. A door half-way down stands open, warmer light from within.

"We're looking for 2-C."

Erich

"Huh." Interest, a glimmer. "What was he born to, do you think?"

They're looking for 2-C. Right. Eyes on the ball. Eyes on the prize. Erich turns around. He's gotten ahead of her again: because that's all he knows to do, see. Stand in front of the weaker. Shelter them, protect them, tear anyone that tries to get to them to little bloody pieces. He hulks out like nobody's business.

They pass 2-B. Loud music blasted out of shredded speakers. Erich rolls his head on his shoulders. He's wearing his throwed-rolls t-shirt again; thinks to himself he should've left it at home. Wouldn't want to get bloodstains on it. Eva says she's done this a thousand times and nothing's gone down, but Erich: Erich likes to be ready for trouble. Erich attracts trouble. Erich is trouble, sometimes.

Éva

"Nothing," she says, quietly. There is a thread of speculation in her voice, a coil of it, which has the tincture of nostalgia and the weight of a rope. This is: far in the past, and yet the past is ever-present in us.

Not precisely a weight.

Perhaps it is even a lightness.

"That was always my guess anyway." Her voice contrapuntal against the bass blaring from that room. That noise, that too-human noise is not precisely enough to disarm her, but it does ease the tension that has crept in to the facet joints of her spine. "The truth is I don't know."

2-C.

The door stands open.

And Erich is going ahead because he knows nothing else; because that is what he does: he shields the weak. The weak-er.

"Wait," she says. "Let me."

And Éva knocks, lightly on the open door. It is hard to hear over the noise from the stereo in 2-B, so she repeats the knock, and then decides to let herself in.

The door is open, after all.

Erich

Oh the curiosity.

Oh the burning questions.

Erich's too polite to ask, but Eva's too astute not to notice the curious gleam in his eyes. Who what where why when how. Okay, maybe not the how. No, not the how, he doesn't want to know the how of Eva's acquaintance with the father of her first child, that would be way too much information. But still: the who what where why when. The why, especially; someone she knows so little of, not even a history, not even a birth tribe. A guess, that's all. Erich ponders, briefly, what it would be like to be born of that sort of skimming uncertainty. Erich ponders, briefly, what it would be like to be associated with that sort of skimming uncertainty. A one-night stand. Has he had them? He supposes he has, by definition. But they felt different; awkward and fumbling and few and far between. They weren't really one night stands. They were girls he liked who liked him until they were scared away.

Anyway.

All that in the past now. He has Melantha. Right? Only no one ever really has Melantha, except herself. She is free and wild as the wind. As honey harvested from the summer blossoms.

Now they are at 2-C. He has no time for questions, anyway. he is about to go ahead -- but she stays him. He pauses, turns his head, his profile so fucking -- how did she put it? Nordic. All deep brow and strong nose and those lean cheeks, that strap of muscle from zygomatic arch to angle-of-jaw. He steps back, and so she steps ahead. She lets herself in and he hesitates;

hangs back. For now.

Erich

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Éva

He has the briefest view of her profile as she slips past him. The sweep of her winged brows, the quiet slant of her gaze. The tension light and fine as it frames her dark eyes. The faint webs of lines in her skin, made more prominent by the angle of light coming from inside the apartment.

High ceilings recede into shadows. A narrow corridor illuminated a lamp at its end.

The watery reflection of an unseen television in the dark windows. The shifting sunset framed beyond.

Éva walks down the hallway. She is not trying to sneak up on her quarry. She does not want to be shot for an unannounced intruder. Her step is deliberate and she calls out the man's name - "Ramon?" in a fair approximation of its actual Spanish origin as she goes.

She disappears around the corner into what must be the living room, reaching a hand beneath her jacket to the weapon holstered there as she goes - just in case.

It feels so strangely quiet in here.

--

The air is still. Erich hangs back, for now. Watching.

The bass next door throbs.

The floorboards creak beneath Eva's weight as she moves. He notices something that he is just starting to process as blood smeared on the plate framing the lightswitch inside the narrow hallway when he sees Éva reflected in the windows sink to a crouch somewhere in the living room. Saying again, "Ramon?" this time with a very specific note of inquiry in her voice.

Something is wrong.

He knows, something is very, very wrong.

Erich

Wrong.

It beats in his blood like a pulse. Wrong: the silence. No birdsong. Wrong: the blood on the baseplate. Wrong: no answer inside. His kinswoman's cautious-confident stride, coming around, swinging around. If this were a horror movie it'd be time for the fast zoom. The close-up of some horrid murder, some terrible distortion.

This isn't a horror movie. This is his life, and something is wrong, and Erich, who never was one to stop and think anyway, shoves that door open so hard it dents the wall. Catches up to Eva in the space of three, four strides, inserts himself between her and --

whatever it is he might find.

Éva

Erich charges down the hallway, that wrongness beating a thread in his pulse that seemes to match the bass from next door. Cheap particle board bisecting the old classroom to make that hall, nothing on the walls except for stains, the smear of something just over waist high and he rounds the corner and finds -

- Éva, crouched over the body of a dead man, sunk down to her haunches. Weapon in her hand but held carefully, the safety still on, alert. Bloodstains on the cheap shag carpet someone slung over the linoleum, all the cheap cabinets in the kitchen open, the door to the bathroom open, dark inside, the television mute and inane, this hum hum humming noise coming from somewhere,

and nothing, nothing there. Nothing for him to shove himself in front of. Nothing at all.

She is cursing beneath her breath, trying to check his pulse, but she is no doctor, breathing out sharply as Erich comes in behind her, glancing up at him, as his shadow spreads over the scene.

"I think he's dead." Quiet. "Be careful what you touch."

Something is wrong. Something is wrong wrong wrong.

Erich

"He's dead all right."

That at least he's certain about. He doesn't need to check a pulse. All Erich needs do is take a breath.

He sinks to his haunches. His knees don't pop. Garou genes. Jeans too, if we're being witty. He's reaching out toward -- something, maybe some speck of blood or something, but again Eva's word stays him. He withdraws his hand.

"Was he important? Any idea who did it?" The questions are half-assed. He's restless, craning his head around. What is that sound. "Do you hear that?"

Éva

"You know Darling Annie?" He may know her; he may not. A bone gnawer kin, sometime stripper, occasional prostitute currently facing the death penalty for murdering a cop 2 or 3 years ago. "Prosecution finally turned over the logs of the investigators interviews. He was on it. I hoped he'd be able to corroborate her story that the officer attacked her. Because right now we're not getting any traction - "

And she is explaining, and she has no idea who did it, and she is shifting in place, frowning down at the body, then glancing blankly over the depressingly cheap apartment, speaking in that low murmur that slides beneath the hum hum humming and above the reverb of the bass next door, reaching back to reholster her weapon -

when the dead man starts to move.

Erich

[inits! +17 cuz fostern ahroun]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Éva

Ramon +7

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Éva

Eva +7

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Éva

Order:

Erich: 20+

Eva: 14

Ramon: 11

Éva

Ramon:

1. Bite Eva.

Rage 1: Bite Eva.

Éva

Eva: 1a. Dodge. 1b. Shoot Ramon.

Erich

[-1 for resist pain!]

Erich doesn't know Darling Annie. Erich doesn't know the trial, doesn't know the story, doesn't know the sentence.

Erich does know, suddenly and with the fierce-bright burn of conviction:

that they are fighting for justice. So when the dead man starts to move -- well. He turns, rage crackles in the air like lightning, he falls on the not-dead man like a sack of bricks.

[3 rage.

1. tackle ramon to prevent chomping on eva!

R1. bite it!

R2. some more!

R3. he's not very creative: bite!]

Erich

[oh i should have also noted: 1 rage to hispo.

str+brawl!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )

Éva

Ramon: uhm, str + ath to escape?

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Éva

Eva: holds action b/c she is afraid of shooting Erich. He is giant and Ramon is small.

Éva

Ramon: change action to bite Erich! +1 dif to change action. +2 dif because held.

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

Éva

Damage!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Erich

[soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Erich

[CHOMP!]

Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 9 )

Erich

[dam]

Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 9 )

Éva

Soak?

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Éva

Ramon: Rage 1. Dif 8

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Éva

Damage!

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Erich

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 4) ( fail )

Erich

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )

Erich

[CHOMP MOAR]

Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) Re-rolls: 2

Erich

[dam]

Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Éva

Soak?

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Erich

[SRSLY, CHOMPING NOW]

Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 13 ) Re-rolls: 3

Éva

Éva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.

It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.

Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.

The thing staggers. Erich leaps.

It goes down.

Another three heartbeats.

And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.

"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."

Éva

Éva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.

It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.

Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.

The thing staggers. Erich leaps.

It goes down.

Another three heartbeats.

And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.

"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."

Éva

STOP.

Éva

Éva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.

It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.

Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.

The thing staggers. Erich leaps.

It goes down.

Another three heartbeats.

And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.

"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."

Erich

He's hurt. He's hurt? Erich-wolf laughs; it comes out a snarl. He struggles; so hard to speak like this. So much easier to bite-bite-bite-kill.

"I maybe hurt. He very dead."

Point made, he shakes out his fur. Takes a long damn time of it too, all that thick musk-pungent fur foofing out this way and that: head to toe he shakes, and as he does his pelt -- that dappled pelt, more grey than black, mostly grey with splashes of black, white, brown, cream -- takes on a glow, takes on a light of its own.

He chuffs his agreement. Well, sort of. He chuffs but he eyes the hallway and he wants to stay wants to bitebitebitekill but then he is not alone, and Eva has kids, and he has some sense of responsibility and so:

"You ... stay behind."

He starts toward the hallway.

[-1gn! for luna's armor. here is a roll.]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Éva

"Wait." There is a degree of authority in her voice; she incises it into the moment. Tells him to: wait, you understand, - and she is on her feet now, still holding the weapon, scanning the space, licking her lips because she finds them - and her throat - suddenly dry.

"The window. We're alone and you don't now what's out there. How many.

"We can get out the window. You can come back with a pack."

Erich

A low twisted-twisty sound in his throat, somewhere between whine and growl. Tastes so much like retreat, this. Tastes so much like tuck-tail-and-run. Erich wavers; Eva can see it. He looks between door and window and his body leans this way, then that.

Then he decides. He wheels around, massive, heavy, big paws lifting and body swiveling and big paws coming back down, one-eighty. He trots toward the window -- his passage is a small earthquake -- he noses it open or, if necessary, he dashes it asunder with his paws.

"How ... you jump?"

Éva

She has already started fumbling with the frame, which is badly hinged, reluctant, the sashes stiff as corpses when Erich comes back down the hallway to the wide, wide windows overlooking the dark, weedy asphalt that was once the recreational area for the juvenile delinquents. The metal frames of the old swingsets. All of it.

It goes up like a dream when he noses it open.

She is at his side, wary and aware, glancing behind him down the narrow apartment hallway, toward the yawningly dark opening beyond.

"I'll try to climb," she tells him, exhaling. "And if I can't climb, I'll try to fall as well as I can. The lower I am the less likely I am to break something badly. Alright? If I hurt myself when I fall, I'll need your help to get to the car. We don't want to be found here."

Erich

It crosses his mind to offer -- he doesn't even know -- a ride? Piggyback? Horseback? Crinos-back? Something. He doesn't. He wouldn't presume, he wouldn't dare, it would be so fucking humiliating for the both of them. He chuffs again, which is easier than speaking, and then

that enormous wolf-beast rears up on his hindlegs, paws on the windowsill. He looks out over the would-have-been playground, schoolyard. His ears swivel -- that noise behind, whatever it is that lies without. Violence and rage and death beckon him, but he doesn't turn around.

He jumps. Just as smooth-swift as that first time he met Charlotte, that first step-step-leap he took that launched him up, up onto that fountain. He launches himself out of the window, parabolic, reaching the top of that arc and hanging for an endless breath before he drops,

lands with a grunt on the pavement below.

Éva

Climbing down. Str (2) + Ath (3). She needs 6 success to make it all the way down, and can have a second roll if she gets successes on the first.

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Éva

And again.

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Éva

Fall damage the last 10 feet.

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Éva

Soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Erich

[soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Éva

He jumps. Falls, that perfect arc, that perfect, impossible atheleticism.

She does not have such gifts. She holsters her weapon and climbs over the windowsill and picks up her attache case and drops it over the edge, down into darkness.

Then she starts to climb, eases herself over the lintel, strains for toeholds against the brick. Feels the mortar crumbling beneath her fingers, cannot breathe and regularly reminds herself to remember to keep doing it.

Her fingertips are raw and her shoulders are number and her arms feel like water before they finally give out. She misses a hold and overcorrects and cannot hold her own weight with just one hand and so -

she falls, the last ten feet to the solid asphalt, twisting her ankle badly with the impact that sends her rolling into another prone corpse.

Which is: awakening.

This one Erich dispatches with one great snap of his jaws, quite literally tearing the head from the body and throwing it like a child's beachball, up up and away.

Eva has regained her feet - and her briefcase - by the time Erich wheels around. She is standing on her left leg, favoring the right. "I think you're going to have to drive."

There are: more noises from within, which she quite resolutely tries not to hear.

Erich

Okay. One risen corpse: that's just a risen corpse. Two? Three, four, more inside? THE PENNY DROPS. They're standing on a goddamn zombie farm. Or something.

Erich is down there, giving little hops of his forepaws in excitement-or-something at the realization, when Eva slips-misses-falls and his heart goes hammering into his throat and in that split-instant when Eva is in the grip of gravity Erich's life is flashing before his eyes, or at least:

the images of Eva's little kids and the thought of going to them and saying I'm so sorry but your mommy died because she fell out a window oh god the inglory and then he'd have to tell them why he couldn't just give her a crinosback ride.

But then she lands, and it is not a pleasant landing, and perhaps there are noises of pain but regardless: she is moving. She rolls into another corpse and the corpse is moving too and Erich is dispatching it with brutal, nearly joyful efficiency, and then Eva,

Eva is getting up and he will not be telling her next of kin after all, and

he is so delighted that he headbutts her, gently, but it is still a headbutt from a direwolf. The top of his head solid and thud against her midriff.

Then they have an escape to complete. She thinks he's going to have to drive. He sniffs at her ankle, delicately, and then he turns and pushes off and flows upward and then he is an Erich again. A very hirsute, slope-browed, cro-magnon Erich, but close enough. There is blood oozing from two deep bites to his shoulder and neck, but already it is slowing.

There is no blood in his mouth. His mouth tastes of ashes and decay.

"I'll drive," he agrees. Very agreeable boy, Erich. "Do you -- uh. Need a shoulder to lean on?"

Éva

"Please."

Her voice is tight from the pain, but beyond the mild, natural strain there are few signs. She swallows them. Maneuvers herself somewhat awkwardly as she pulls her keys from her right pocket and hands them to him and then - one arm draped around his hulking shoulders - hobbles with him toward the car.

--

She is a tall woman, but still, he will have to put the seat back once she is safely deposited in the passenger's seat and he has taken the driver's side. While they drive she pulls out her phone to call the Sept.

They will be met in the parking garage, underground though not so deep underground as the pit against which they are there to guard - the city and the world from whatever lies on the other side. A small pack ready to return to the apartment block with Erich, to clean up.

the nameless house

wake

It is the dream. It is the dream it is always the dream the dream moves and the dream opens and the dream grows and the dream lives and the dream breathes and the dream beats like a drum and the dream does not change.

Except when they change it.

--

It is always winter here. Spring and spring and the sense of summer young and warm in the air when they wake whereever they wake but it is winter here. The sky is painted with the thinnest edge of light that is either dying or dawning, and snow spits from desultory clouds clotting the sky.

--

This is where they are.

Melantha tackles the boy-named-Jack and the boy from her dreams is the boy from the smiling photograph attached to the folded box where the occasional patron tosses in the odd bit of change. She tackles him to the ground and I miss you she whispers and

I miss everything, he whispers back.

He is crying, too.

Melantha can taste his tears.

--

Tamsin waves and Tamsin tells stories and Tamsin wants to feel his heart: how is it beating, what is its speed, how fast does it pound, and Tamsin is in a strange place with a strange taste on her tongue and George Eldred is gone and down below two young men emerge from a house (a white house) onto a sidewalk (a gray sidewalk) and somehow the morning light is gone. Somehow the morning is gone.

Somehow the morning,

shifts.

Two young men are coming out of a house, they are named Thomas and they are named Erich and they hear a young woman shouting:

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA."

from up above.

--

And then there is one young man.

The other is gone. The other is gone and the morning is gone and there is a kind of

movement

in the ground beneath them.

Something slithering to wakefulness, somehow beneath the skin of everything. Everything. Everything.

--

"Did you feel that?" The boy asks Melantha, stilling abruptly. His breath is warm against her skin. "It's waking up."

Erich

Erich has run down that street a hundred times, or at least a few dozen. He has run down that slope and seen the woods and seen Melantha there ahead of time so so so so so frustratingly many times, and sometimes he sees someone ahead of him and sometimes he sees someone beside him and sometimes he sees none of them except the woods, the smoke, Melantha.

It is different. Tonight is different from all other nights. Tonight is different because there is Melantha, there is the woods, there is someone beside him and then the someone-beside-him is gone; there is someone ahead of him and the someone-ahead-of-him is Tamsin. None of that is why, though. Tonight is different because:

Melantha is there

and Erich does not wake

and Erich's dream-brother is there too. Melantha tackles him and hugs him or maybe just tackles him to the ground; Erich is too far away to see. And Erich does not wake.

A ferocious joy and anticipation bursts in his Ahroun's heart. He bursts out of his skin, quite literally: hits the ground on four paws, a big shaggy dapple-furred wolf that lopes, that bursts down the slope at full tilt. He rushes past Tamsin, uttering a low urgent joyful bark, does not pause to see if the Fianna follows or not. That is Melantha there, and she has not disappeared and he has not awoken. So he runs. He runs as fast as his legs can carry him, down the slope, past that dreadful house, toward one of his two best friends in the whole wide world and toward the boy who said he was his brother.

Melantha

Somewhere between leaping upon him and dragging him down and something waking, Melantha's tackle turns into a strange embrace. She is holding him, little boy Jack who is in a coma, and she knows now he's not one of her brothers, he's not hers at all, but still she misses him. And he misses everything. She cries, too, soft, soundless, and sniffs roughly as her arms shift around him.

On the breeze she hears her name echoing, and Erich's. Her spine tenses, and she props herself on one elbow, her other arm still holding Jack in case he vanishes. Or tries to. He speaks; she looks at him, taking a breath. "What is it?" she asks him, like he knows.

She hasn't seen Erich yet, but soon enough she hears paws thundering against the ground and flinches, grabs Jack closer. "Stay, stay," she tells him, urgently, begging. "I won't let anything hurt you. I promise. I think --"

but she doesn't know. This is a dream, and she can't promise that the wolf that looks like Erich isn't going to hurt them.

Tamsin

Up on the rise, then, before The House, ax for chopping wood in hand but no more nice old man. The house is the house where the dead go, where nobody goes except for sometimes the boy, the house she coaxed George Eldred into bringing her to -- and then he died. He died out there he died like a real person dies he died for good. Who knows how real people die? They don't even know. They're dead. That's nothing.

Tamsin's moon is waning, always, dragging her toward the dark of things, dragging her toward the shadow,

and what does she do, the Galliard-girl? The Fianna-wolf? Does she shed her own young woman's shape to race past the house to the kinfolk she hadn't noticed yet, there in the wood-dark? Notices now with an Ahroun trailing exuberance, clutching someone or something; can she really see from where she is on the rise? Is that a boy?

THE boy, maybe?

The existence of a THE BOY might decide her against going into the house immediately; something is moving under the ground. Good! Good! Move! Whatever you are! Yelling-thing, maybe! Tamsin stomps the ground back. Threat threat threat.

What does she do, other than menace the ground, stomp stomp STOMP enough of that stupid GROUND? Tamsin does follow Erich's general trajectory, but she only looks to see where he went, to get a better look at Melantha and the boy in the kinwoman's arms, to call, "Hey! Do you need me? Because I swore I was going in and so I am!"

And so she does and so she will.

wake

"It's waking up." Jack tells Melantha again, more urgently this time. His breath is harsh and his heart beats fast and his name is something else. Something else something else something else but they call him

Jack.

And there's resistance in his arms, resistance in his body, resistance in his blood when she clasps him close, sudden stiff and also yearning, stubborn, mulish.

And there's this kindling fear in his eyes that has nothing to do with the wolf loping toward them over snowdusted pineneedles, nothing to do with the girl with the moon-dark eyes stomping the thing moving beneath the ground. Everything to do with that ripple that seems to shake and shudder and expand out from some impossibly defined center-of-purpose and,

yes,

that house.

Where the dead go.

--

"It won't hurt me," the boy is still twisting in Melantha's arms, trying to get up but he isn't running away and he isn't scared of any old wolf, no matter how big and bad it appears to be. This is a dream and he knows the dream, knows every pattern of it, every cranny and every nook, and there's this quietly grim assurance when he makes that declaration, which is not at all like the declaration of a boy's bravado, but rather something darker and grim and knowing, see. It won't hurt him.

It will hurt everyone, everyone, else.

"You should go." He tells Melantha, turning into her, urgency in his voice. He means it. "You should all go. I know you're sleeping. I know you're just sleeping so maybe you can wake up. Maybe it won't even remember - "

See? Melantha he's not running, the boy Jack, The Boy Jack, there is not the tension in his body to run, but he is half-rising in her arms, getting himself to his feet, turning with a quick breath to take in Tamsin and Erich-wolf loping over the rise.

"You should all go. Wake up. Run. Run."

Erich

Erich-wolf,

who looks big and shaggy and yes, rather bad(ass), though the big stupid floppy-tongued grin he's wearing detracts a bit from that,

has by now reached Melantha-and-the-boy. He skids to a stop, paws flinging up bits of grass and detritus. His tail is wagging ferociously side to side, he stamps his paws and bounds around girl-and-boy and over their totem link -- if indeed they still have a totemlink here -- there is a vague running commentary, a sense of see! see, i told you i'd find you! i told you we were sharing a dream! even if he's never actually told her any of that. Also a sense of brother! that's my dream-brother! that's my dream-brother and you know him too, and now we're together, and and and and

happy! Lots of happy. Erich-wolf bounds and bounds and rubs his heavy sides against the two and seems quite unbothered by his dream-brother telling him to run, and someone's talking about coma and someone else is talking about going inside and Erich really has no fucking idea what is going on except that he's found Melantha, he has, he's so smart, he found her.

He comes to a stop, standing beside Melantha. He is a large wolf, adult but still young enough to remember puppyhood and adolescence. His withers come to her waist. He is a hot, breathing, muscular mass leaning so heavily against her that he could bowl her over if she's not careful. His tongue lolls; his eyes -- pale blue even in this form -- blink amiably up at her. He does not seem about to run anywhere.

Melantha

Melantha is curled up on the earth, holding Jack-the-boy closely, tightly, both because she thinks he might run away and because she does not know if this wolf pounding towards them will hurt the boy.

Erich sees it in her eyes again, something he hasn't seen for a year, more than a year now: that savagery, that ferocity that gleams in her blue eyes, the way she looked when she talked of burying some motherfucker in the Senate. But it's not that gleeful destruction of the Wyrm and its influence now. It's something else, protective and powerful, as though every ounce of the energy he saw when she was screaming drunkenly in the woods could and would be turned on him if it meant that the little dream-boy in her arms might be okay, might be safe. She'd burn up the world. Her ancestors would be proud.

She might kick him in the face. Which would actually hurt.

--

But he gets closer, and he's wagging his tail sososososososososohappilyYAY and she hears him in her mind the way she often hears him. He's so proud and ridiculous and SEE I TOLD YOU and she blinks and a weird smile twists over her lips, lopsided and wonky. He's all but bouncing on his paws as he comes closer, rubbing against her side, but she's trying to counter what he's saying with what she can hear, out loud, from Jack-the-boy.

She's on the ground, and Erich's fur is warm, and he's more likely looking down at her than up, but no matter. She looks at Jack, still holding way too tightly, but she doesn't trust him at all because he's a kid and also a boy. She blinks at him. He knows they're sleeping. He keeps talking about 'it' and she's not sure now if he's talking about Erich -- it won't hurt me -- or something else entirely,

it won't even remember.

"Jack," she calls him, as he's rising. She loosens a bit, still holding, getting up with him because damned if she's letting go now. "Look, you have to slow down and act like I'm dumb or something. You know what's going on here but none of us do. So share with the class and tell me what's going on or I'm going to hold onto you and we're staying right here and I guess then we're all screwed, you hear me?"

And for Erich, who she momentarily puts her hand on top of as she's getting to her feet:

sorry I totally just used your back for leverage. HI.

Erich

it's totally cool you could probably even ride on my back if you wanted to just make sure you sit up near my shoulderblades or else you might give me swayback HI.

That is what Erich-wolf thinks back at Melantha. And then, since she's on her feet, he leans against her side. And is heavy and overwarm and generally very happy to see everyone. Also: ears perking upright, all listening-like.

Tamsin

"Ugh," Tamsin says, like there's blood in her throat and she's got to cough it out. She isn't happy; she's still holding the ax for chopping up wood in her hand, like she'd even know how to use it with any sort of precision, like something that's more've a weapon doesn't sleep in her bones.

The house where the dead go has a door or a window or a gap through which to crawl; that's where Tamsin is, having drifted while listening hard for an answer.

The boy wants them to run because something's not going to hurt him but it'll hurt them and he knows they're just sleeping and --

This isn't the time for questions, but it's always the time for questions. Tamsin says, "Is it yours? Didja find it first?"

Eldred said the boy does what he wants here. Tamsin's thinking that maybe an imaginary friend got too attached; became something more than imaginary, shaped itself up and out; Tamsin's thinking -- oh, she doesn't know.

"You gonna be upset when it gets hurt?"

wake

"It's not mine." Says Jack-the-Boy to Tamsin-the-Wolf, this defensive edge to his tone. He and Melantha are both on their feet now and she's still holding on to him, fiercely, and Tamsin has an axe and somehow something in her hands remembers how to use an axe and Erich is a wolf and the boy is also his brother,

the sun splashed floorboards. The bright joy of waking every morning to the sounds of a full homestead humming all around.

Here they are at the edge of the dark wood, the boarded up and boarded-over clapboard house all derelict on this rise looking down over the town, with its marching rows of white houses and its silent windows and its wisps of smoke and its old sort of solid dereliction.

" - not mine exactly," the boy hedges, glancing from Melantha to Tamsin to the wolf and back again. "It was already here. It was always here. I found it when I was - " There is a kind of interrupted passion there, an urgency, but then an abrupt cessation of that animation, and instead he whispers,

" - when we were dying. I held on and held their hands so they wouldn't go they said they wouldn't go they said they said they said but it came and it took them and it takes everyone and everyone and I want them to stay here with me but it takes them all and shreds them to pieces and grinds them up in its teeth and I told the old lady that we should burn them when they pass over so it couldn't have them but it calls them anyway

"even when it's sleeping.

" - and now it's waking up.

"It lives in the house. In the basement of the house. I hear it inside my head.

"It wants you. It wants all of you.

"But I don't want you to go."

Erich

Okay so there's a limit to how much one can convey as a wolf, at least when one is attempting to converse with non-wolves. And that limit is essentially: you get the basics across. You get across that you are happy! or you are angry! or you are frightened! or you are worried! or you are hungry! but the details, the subtleties: that is lost.

So: Erich gives up on being-a-wolf. One moment he is leaning against Melantha, his tail still waggingwaggingwagging and his tongue still lolling, and the next

he is changing, he is shifting, he is briefly HUGE AND MONSTROUS and then he is just Erich. Pushing up off his hands, dusting his palms off as he stands up. Now he's a lot taller than the boy, and taller than Melantha too, who he immediately puts his arm around and squeezes against his side. Because yay. Because he found her.

"Lots of stuff want to shred me and grind me up and stuff," he says to his not-brother. "So far none's succeeded. Though I suppose if someone succeeded I wouldn't be standing here, so that's kind of a moot point. Still.

"I don't think we should run away. I think we should stay and fight. 'Cause if we run, it'll just catch up to us. I mean that's what I do to like, rabbits that run from me when I'm hungry.

"What's your story, anyway? You said you were my brother but I don't think you are. No offense; I think you'd be a great brother."

Melantha

By now Melantha has noticed Tamsin, farther away, at a... house? that Melantha has never seen before. Her brow stitches for a moment at the axe Tamsin holds, and her hand rests on the boy's shoulder where they stand. When he mentions dying, she looks down at him, though. Tamsin and Erich can take care of themselves. Melantha can take care of herself.

Jack is just a kid. And he is talking about his family dying, and how they tried to hold on, and 'it' took them. She looks from Jack to Erich, and her eyes are sharp and intelligent and she is piecing this together from her own dreams and from her own thoughts on death and dying and what happens in the underworld.

Erich shifts. Melantha is hugged, but she is distracted; her mind does that to her, goes into overdrive, pushes everything else down and away. She doesn't reject the hug, she just looks down at Jack after Erich is done talking and tells him:

"This is what we do, Jack," she says, and she is starting to let him go. She says 'we' and not 'they', not Tamsin and Erich. But then: "Tamsin and Erich, more than me, at least when it comes to going into basements and fighting things that sleep and things that eat and tear apart.

"But I'll stay with you, if you want. And if it takes Erich and Tamsin and grinds them up in its teeth, we'll figure something else out." There is a beat. "I'm really smart. So I'll stay with you, if you want."

Tamsin

The ground hasn't moved again; maybe it's waking up slowly, like a giant wakes; like the Wyrm probably woke the first time, in increments, stretching itself up against this thing called Creation, curiously --

or maybe it felt that stomp stomp stomp and rightfully settled down. So there. The Fianna-girl lifts her chin at that exactly like uh huh see, and Tamsin was an only child, had to be an only child, but there's still something siblingesque about that knowing look.

But then the sad story;

and it is a sad story.

"Do you really want to stay here forever? Do you really want us to stay forever? Did you bring us here?"

"This place isn't good for people. The thing waking in the basement might be bad, too, but this place - it's amazing if I'm understanding right; but do you really want it?"

wake

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 11 )

wake

"If you wake up," the boy is informing Erich quite seriously when he says that if they run it will follow, it will harry, the way Erich himself harries rabbits, " - it can't follow. It can't find you during the daytime. It can't find you when your eyes are open.

"That's why I wanted waking-people. I saw you drifting by and I stitched you in because I thought you'd stay. I thought you could all be here and be there too because here wasn't the only place left for you to be."

Then Erich asks him, what's your story and Jack gives him a very odd and very adult look.

"I'm dying. Everyone here is except for you and you and you. Your friends woke up. I bet they won't come back. They took themselves out, see. They unstitched the stitch I made inside their ears and took themselves away. But everyone else - "

Jack the Boy gives Tamsin a look. A Look, and he shakes his head rather fiercely, and somehow in the midst of all this his hand has found Melantha's and his grip tightens in hers.

"I don't want to stay here forever but I can't go anywhere else and I want people here it's terrible when you're alone and there's nothing, all the houses empty and no one to hear you so you don't even know if you can hear yourself and I did bring you here I thought you'd stay I thought you wouldn't die I saw you at the edges and I brought you over and stitched you in.

"I thought you'd stay. I thought - "

Then he glances back at Melantha. "It won't hurt me. It can't hurt me. I don't want you to go. But I don't want you to - "

There is a deep shudder below the earth. Something liquid to the movement. A certain concavity and ahead of them the house with the boarded over windows and the boarded over doors shudders and half-collapses, like a man falling to his knees, sinking into the earth.

Something - oh, oozes from the ruin. Black, oleaginous, hungry. So filthy it was never meant to see the light of day.

Melantha

[willpower!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )

Tamsin

[wp]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Erich

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Melantha

Melantha holds Jack's hand. Of course she holds his hand, she would never let go. She holds him tightly, just as tightly as he holds her. He doesn't want to say, and he can't -- she wants to interrupt and tell him he can, he can, one day, but maybe not she's not a doctor -- so she takes a breath. She squeezes him back.

She looks down at him. "First: "

There's nothing after that. The ground erupts, shakes, and Melantha's head is pounding suddenly, like icepicks jammed in her ears. Her eyes fly wide, her free hand grabbing at her skull but her other hand only holding Jack tighter. She gives a shake, bracing her legs, grasping mentally for Volcano, hoping it can hear her, which it must -- she holds her footing and holds onto Jack and does not fall. She looks toward the house, toward the ooze, her mouth and eyes wide open.

Erich --

but really, what is she going to say? That's the Wyrm, kill it. God, please, kill it. Do what your mother told you. There aren't words for it. That's just the feeling that pulses at him through that bond they share with Charlotte. Go, go, please, be good.

Melantha grips Jack's hand and steps closer to him, moves closer. "Your family is trying to help you and get you out of here, Jack," she tells him, though there's a faint trickle of blood in one of her ears and they're ringing and her voice is too loud. "We'll get you out of here. You won't be alone."

Erich

Now that.

was not.

okay.

It's bad enough that whatever shook the earth damn near knocks Erich off his feet -- and, in fact, knocks Tamsin off her feet. Look at her: there she goes, up on the hill near the Scary House. It's bad enough that whatever shook the earth REALLY HURT HIS FUCKING EARS, made them actually literally bleed the way we think our ears are gonna bleed when we hear something awful. That's all bad and awful and whatnot, but

whatever shook the earth also. made. Melantha's ears bleed. And that is just NOT FUCKING KOSHER, the way it was NOT FUCKING KOSHER when those weird gross dudes down in Baja came and snuck up on the tinyhouse where he and Charlotte were living and were spying on them with binoculars and we're digressing.

The point is: it's not okay. And Erich is totally not okay with it. And Melantha is sort of thinking hey go deal with it omg but really she hardly needs to because Erich has both hands over his ears and he's kind of just yelling, just bellowing wordless WTF-rage, and then:

and then he's really wish he had a hammer or a cinderblock or something to throw. And also: something to throw it all. Since he has neither, he grabs Melantha and the boy and kinda gives them each a squeeze on the shoulder that says nothing and says everything. Then he turns and pops into his wolf shape again and goes running up the hill toward Tamsin, and toward the house.

"Wait! If you're going in, I'm going with you!"

Tamsin

Tamsin's gaze shades to something pitying, perhaps, something understanding, something that wants to salvage the boy, wants to know more about what happened and why, what courage it took and what courage it didn't, where the line is drawn, where the mystery is held, the why of it and the heart of it. And of course there's still the smoulder-coal knot of something furious, within, something that is furious not Rageful. Her hand is shielding her eyes as if there's light falling from above, getting into them, and she opens her mouth to say something and

the earth shifts again, greater than before, much greater, and she falls hard on her ass, bruises the bone deep and loses her grip on the axe and the scary house has begun to collapse in on itself, sink further into the ground, the ground yawning up like a grave and this black ichorous ooze bubbling out splashing out and Erich's running

if you're going in I'm going with you

and Tamsin's shifting, because that's just fine; because it seems that now is a time to fight, to go into the house where only death go, to snap at the shadow-filth pouring out and go and go and go and go

and go for its filthy fucking death-taking

heart.

wake

And they

wake

up.

The burning man.

wake

Morning light like a waking stain on the wood.

It is a chopping block, she reminds herself. And that is why it smells so thoroughly of blood.

"The first death follows another," he says, quietly, his voice warm in the back of her mind. She always remembers the shape of his mouth. "Everyone who says differently is a liar - "

--

The house casts a deep and slanting shadow over the sere yard. It is winter here; winter everywhere. Spare winter, always. Dry and broken grass, dirtied snow. The fallow garden harrowed but not yet seeded. The bitter wind drives away any hint of warmth that might radiate down from the wan sun.

The wood is soaked with blood.

There is blood on her hands, caked beneath her nails.

Someone will come, soon.

She tells herself it is a mercy.

In the dream, she always does.

Keisha

She hates these dreams, truth be told. Yes, they're dreams and she can wake up and everything fades away, but it doesn't really. Even if she weren't a Theurge and one of Themis the Dream-Weaver's supplicants, she's sure that it would stick with her. These mean something more, more so than most dreams. She knows that simply because she knows that she isn't alone.

She looks at that stump, the blood-saturated thing, and she looks at her hands. The sight of her extremities so soaked chills her to the bone, more so than even the winter would do to her. And she knows that someone will come. Before then, she crouches in front of the stump and reaches out to put blood-encrusted hands on a blood-encrusted piece of wood.

"Who were you?" she asks quietly. The words push through a lump in her throat, pass underneath eyes that are rimmed with the pain of seeing this. "Who did I do this to?"

wake

There is a shadow of smoke against the sky somewhere and the whisper of fir trees in the wind. A marching darkness to them, a certain irreducible sameness, a spare sort of immediacy, the richly textured shadows that pool around their trucks. The wood seems impenetrable, the sky so far away.

The house is lone; it stands alone. Intact, though it feels somehow both abandoned and impervious to time or ruin or rot: always here. Always failing, never fallen.

Someone has tacked up roughly planed wooden planks over the lower windows. Curtains - old, lace - frame in the dark view of the wavy glass in the upstairs windows, only shadows inside.

Keisha crouched in front of the stump; sinks to her haunches, already mourning. There are no answers, just the echo of her voice against the peeling clapboard. The mournful rattle of the windows in their casements.

The block is too small for a human head, she realizes, this close.

They have to leave something of themselves behind.

--

Someone will come, she knows. They always do.

Keisha

She runs her hands over the block of wood. It's not an adoring touch of course, but neither is it hatred either. It's a simple act of committing it all into her tactile memory. Her fingers trace the lines of the rings, catch the natural divots and edges and roundings of the object. And then she stands up from it, takes a step back. The chill has settled into her bones and she's driven by it, quietly propelled that step away.

She looks up and around. There's that smoke out there in the distance, somewhere in the forest. She wants to go to it, see who is there. Just like she wants to go into the house. Keisha needs answers, a conclusion to draw that could lead her to knowing why, why, why. But she doesn't go to either at this moment, because Someone Will Come.

And she wants to know who that someone is before she goes off into those woods. Someone who comes is someone who may have answers for her.

wake

So she waits.

--

Someone always comes. She knows that the way she knows his mouth, the way she remembers his smile, the way she wears the skin of the winter beneath and around her skin. The way she knows the wood now, knows the skin of its stained skin with the skin of her stained skin.

Someone always comes.

Someone always comes.

Someone always comes.

It might be days; it might be centeries but: someone always comes.

They cannot stay away. Someone strays, someone falls, someone rises: someone comes.

So she waits.

--

Waiting has its own rhythm and its own pattern and its own time and Keisha waits and waits and waits and the light does not change; the light does not move. There is the suggestion of the sun behind a scrim of clouds but the sun is, unmoving. We are always at the edge of things. We are always incised. We are always -

--

No noise but the sound of her own breath; no movement but the wind in the trees, except once - just once - the sudden flush of a wide and dark-winged bird from the depths of the woods.

The acrid scent of smoke creeps into her consciousness. First a few strange tendrils, then more, then more.

This is where the dead come. He is still wearing his winding cloth, his shroud. It is on fire.

He is burning.

Keisha

She's patient; she can wait. As much as her Rage wants her to push onward and take action, it is low in this one; she knows that sometimes it is the details that are left behind which are important. And in a dream, these kinds of things are significant. If someone will come, you should find out who because they are coming for a reason. And while this isn't your standard dream...

Well. It's still a dream. And so she waits, and things are static. Garou are creatures who hate stasis; even outside of the Weaver they are built for change, for cycle. The changing of the moon, the changing of their forms. Calls to action and the drive to prevent the Wyrm's Apocalypse from coming. The rise in rank, the rise and fall of Warriors great and small. And even for someone as calm as Keisha, this galls her a little. But still she waits.

And then the dead comes. She sees the bird, and she lets that go. Keeps it in mind. Dark birds, she thinks. Sparrows, crows, ravens. They are death but also knowledge; that which should not be known. But here, perhaps they are just death. Ferriers across into the Dark Umbra. She keeps it in mind.

And then the smell of smoke. The burning man. She knows that if he's walking, still wearing his shroud than perhaps the fire won't hurt him. He's already dead, after all. But she is someone who doesn't let harm come to others; she heals. And even the dead can be hurt.

She moves toward him, running quickly. Along the way she leans down, scoops up snow in one hand. It will be a poor substitute for water but it might help. And she moves to rip the shroud away, see if the burning is mostly on the shroud or if he is entirely engulfed himself.

wake

If he has a face he does not remember it she does not remember it they do not remember. Listen: the flames do not touch the wood; do not touch the low-hanging branches, do not scorch the trees as he passes through from the place where the pyre was laid to the place where the end comes but: Keisha throws her handful of snow at him and pulls it away and oh,

oh,

her hands burn.

He does not stop; he is walking, the slow-shuffling gait of a sleepwalker and beneath somehow he is spare, refined. Fading. Not burning but still - consumed, the way flames consume anything, everything. Transfigured, see.

He does not stop; her hands are burning and he does not seem to notice the gesture. The flaming shroud flares and then disintegrates itself into these heavy flakes of ash-like-snow, that rise to the sky and begin to fall. His path continues, through the snow, through the wood, toward chopping block.

When he arrives he looks back at her, over one shoulder although he does not seem to have registered her presence, not precisely.

Oh, he is ordinary, ordinary.

He seems so tired.

He is ready to go.

"Strange," he tells her, "The things you forget to remember."

Perhaps she opens her mouth but -

Keisha wakes up.

Keisha

The pain...it happens. Which isn't to say she doesn't feel it or doesn't care; it's her hands burning away and she is agonized by it, feels every bit of it. But she expected the pain; it is a necessary sacrifice when you're trying to help someone. They have to leave something of themselves behind and Keisha certainly does that.

And in some ways, though she is dismayed that it doesn't seem to help, it wasn't about the result so much as the act. Like protesters, it is the act that matters as much as the result. You always try to accomplish something, but the fact that you acted; that's important. And so she sears her hands and he doesn't seem to notice, but she tried nonetheless.

The things you forget to remember. That's important, too. It means something, something deep and buried perhaps, long forgotten. Something in the woods? Remember all this, Keisha. She knows she will, but still she forces it. She'll need it later.

And she does open her mouth to ask What, why, who and yet she's suddenly awake. And in her mind there is still pain in her hands, even though there aren't any burns.

She gasps for breath, and then sits up and runs into the bathroom. First to throw up (the smell, the blood) and then to run her hands under cool water. Tactile memory, it goes both ways.

George

wake

Why does that still clear lake remind her of the sea. Why does she stand on the scree at its edge with the wind scouring down from the heights, raw and bitter in the – failing light? Dawning light? – in the slanting light that consents to touch only the edges of this dark valley. Why does she long for it. Why does that longing –

ache

in her throat. The rip-tide roar of fire through the still-green wood. The wood is always green; it has no time to cure. The dead don’t know. It’s only the living. The water is skinned with ice, but she knows where the ice is thinnest, and when she takes the hatchet in hand -

---

she is dreaming. This is the dream, the same dream that she always dreams. The same sky, the same waters. The same wind, the same cold. Where she lives it is spring now, and warmth gathers in the lowlands, radiant, but when she dreams, the pale mountain lake is still framed with ice.

Cinder Song

The girl fey-blooded with a wolf under her skin and a wolf in the marrow of her bones and a monster that men and women should and do run screaming from run mad away from that girl here she is in a dream again the same dream it is always the same dream and they who share it or seem to share it have discussed it yes and the Fianna tries to pull meaning from the slant of light from a premonition of disaster from bitter salt on her tongue that stayed for weeks that she could not cease tasting although this is not a sea-place but she has yet to pull meaning, does she, and here she is with a hatchet in hand and it is about to splinter as it always does before she wakes but instead she doesn't wake and it doesn't splinter because she doesn't sink it into what ice perhaps or more wood. The wind takes her hair and blows it into her face and she cups one hand around her mouth and yells into it - " - what do you know? Where are you?"

wake

Everything in the dream is always the same until it is not, and then it changes; or it ends. Everything rises and then falls see and the last change that was not her own was a voice, shouting, insistent, absolutely insistent that they had ruined EVERYthing and should get OUT GET OUT get OUT and now the voice is gone,

and she is here again, axe in hand.

There is a half-cord of wood piled on the spare graveled flats of the shallow lake and the sky reflected on its icy surface, this mottled melange of many-colors of raw grays and choked corals, every stage of filtered, impermanent golds.

She shouts:

there is no answer; just the echo of her voice against the high peaks, which narrow into a couloir that leads to this glacial lake, which in turn trickles further down the slope, beneath the low-swept, shrouding branches of a dark wood. Fir trees, that perfect and impenetrable green, too dark to suggest anything like spring. No: no cycle here. Just a sort of wintry permanence to the wood, the light scrawl of snow across the narrow track that leads -

down.

Smoke somewhere, and she can smell it. It tickles the back of her throat.

And this too; and this somehow, and this:

this sense (when she shouts) of awareness, all around her. Above, below, within.

Waiting. Waiting.

From below, the sound of footsteps. Climbing up the track.

Cinder Song

"I know you're - " Tamsin begins to say, shout, Fianna-thing wants words, wants to speak wants a tongue to unriddle and unrule everything, but then there is the crunching and crunching of footsteps and she knows that there's a fire and she knows that there were matches bought by somebody else and she knows that somewhere else there was a light-filled room full of anticipation and she knows there was a path of thresholds with ash falling and sorrow and she knows:

not who the crunching footsteps belongs to but isn't that an answer of sorts to where are you. Maybe it's Erich or Melenatha or Thomas or Keisha; Tamsin doesn't set the ax down but she quick quick takes a pocket mirror from her pocket and unsnaps it to look herself in the eyes; to find her eyes, arrest herself still for a moment wondering what will happen if; then hurry toward the track and the sound and -

"Is that finally you?"

wake

A man: pale-skinned, shadow-eyed, older than he looks, older than you'd think. Tired but with a threaded determination that Tamsin can sense somewhere beneath the threshold of his skin, a sort of grit that has not made itself entirely manifest here. That is sloughed-off and held back; that is dammed but not damned. He has a yoke over his shoulders from which fall two rough-hewn and hempen ropes, and two roughly shaped buckets.

Bristle on his face is gray and dark. The hair on his head, too: iron-threaded and his hands are old and his knuckles are oft-broken and his nails are split and dirty.

"Aye," he says, as he emerges from the track and the dark march of trees to the spare shore of the icy-choked lake. He always says that.

He always says this, too, after a long moment's winding pause. Somehow it startles him. The frame or shape of it, but - "Were you waiting long?"

Cinder Song

"Hours," she says, and it is strange, remembering things as she does in these dreams, this sort of knowing which is beneath her skin and does not mean knowledge; just a visceral knowing.

"I fell asleep and had a terrible dream," she says: "A wood was on fire; people died or were going to die and I didn't know who I was. I opened my mouth and I tasted the sea and I wanted to cry; maybe that's what I was tasting."

"Did you yell at me?"

wake

"I don't remember my dreams anymore." The man returns, a wry sort of shrug cresting over the shadow of his mouth in the shadow of his beard. His eyes are weary, bloodshot. The closer they are the worse he looks.

And he's working while he speaks. Lifting the yoke from his shoulders and the empty buckets with it, lowering them - with a degree of care that must come from regular repetition - to the ground.

"They were so intrusive when I first came here." And here, a moment's odd consideration. He - smiles - but it is as spare as the land feels, and older than it seems like he might ever be. Older than the trees that shiver over the flanks of the peak. Older than the bones of the earth beneath.

Old as a dream.

Knowing.

Known.

A breath out; his breath mists in the cold air and this is laughter, wry. "They seemed to devour the edges of everything. Now, though, I can hardly remember what they were. This hallway that moved like water. The lights above my head, rushing, with this rhythm like a train. That intercepted regularity. Anyway - "

And he shrugs, and he gets to work, carries the buckets to the lake's edge, where she has broken through the ice with her small, splintering hatchet. Where water skims over the ice through a small, jagged hole.

"I didn't yell at anyone and there's no one up here. Could've come from the house, though. Sound travels strange up here."

Cinder Song

"You look like you could use some sleep," Tamsin says, now that he's close; now that she's looking into his eyes. Her own eyes are still somewhat narrowed; watches the yoke and the bucket without offering to help. Perhaps she has no idea what the hell they're for, city girl that she is; or she thinks he's some sort of sisyphus and he's going to go down to the smoke or this house and then -

He's still an answer. Even if he says he didn't yell at anyone. They ruined something. Maybe -

- her eyes are dark. This wary alertness cupped within them. Tamsin does stay at the man's side, pacing him to the lake's edge. He looks like he could use some sleep.

"Maybe you are still dreaming and that's why you don't remember them anymore. Maybe you came here and your body said finished lay me down this is a good bed of bones. You know, um, what's better than sleep?" she says. He looks like the kind of person who'd say work, so she cuts that off at the pass with: "Stories."

Wistful: "Will you tell me a story? Tell me a story about me. About us. Me n' you."

wake

His laughter and it is a kind of laughter is also: nothing more than a breath, exhaled, a sort of sliding sigh, a sort of sighing slide. He is kneeling, somehow, one knee down and the other bent, rough hands ripping the lip of the bucket beneath the water, and doesn't this feel like rote, like ritual, like a prayer to the heavens.

Pauses in his work to hold out his rough hands. Swollen red knots at his knuckles.

"Pretty sure I wouldn't get chillblains from a dream. You sound like - "

But he does not have a word for what she sounds like and he glances back at her; the lifting look has his irises briefly framed in the slanting light, all illumined, all illuminated. His breath, doesn't it suddenly feel rattly, as if he were drowning, as if he were already drowned.

"A story."

Another laugh. Another smile - genuine - as bright as the light in his eyes, but also so polished-worn around the edges that if seems to below to an age ago. Two. Three.

"A story," indulgent though. See: he wants to please her, wants to satisfy that wistful note in her voice. " - alright, a story. Let's see."

Pause.

"Let's see."

He's glancing away from her, the moment spooling out from him, and a note of consideration slips between his brows. He looks like somone remembering everything he has forgotten or nothing that he has forgotten but merely the act of forgetting, the fact of forgetting.

Brows narrow together and he gives her a glance, skinned and strange. Inhales.

"Well. I climbed up with the buckets and you were here with the axe. You cut the wood and you cut the water and I climb up after to ferry the water and the wood back to town. They use it to wash the dead or sometimes the living. For the hearths or the pyres. That's the story about us.

"That's what we do." Another noise in the back of his throat. "Strange, that's the only one I remember."

Cinder Song

Tamsin reaches for and picks up one of the buckets. The one he hasn't dipped into the lake already; maybe she's going to help. He did just tell her a story, watch it thread chill into her eyes more surely than the wind; a spark of anxiety, sublimated by a little persuasive crescent moon sharpness of a smile -

" - you made it sound like a fairytale. You didn't give us names. You should give us names."

Tamsin still has that axe; now she has an axe and a bucket. She looks at both, considering.

wake

He gives up the bucket easily enough; lets it go, allows it to be taken from his hand. It is cold up here, and his breath mists and the lake mists and the seems to be wreathed in it; or is that smoke. How do you tell the difference, except for the flame.

The ash in the back of your throat.

The flash of his teeth in his rough-hewn face, the way that expression settles into the remarkable network of lines framing his eyes. The depth of the look.

"I'm George Eldred." His catches her eyes, still smiling. He knows her. He has always known her. He has known her since time before time and in measure beyond measure. They have always been here; she is as familiar as his shadow, and as changeable. He knows her, he meets her eyes with that knowledge in his, and opens his mouth, and looks away, away, away -

"You're - " another glance back; such recognition. And yet, " - you know, I don't know your name."

Cinder Song

"I'd like it if you called me Éowyn - no! Idril Celebrindal," Tamsin says, and then her shoulders hunch forward. "But it's Tam actually." See how cagey she is: just part of her name. And she would like to be called Idril. "Somebody did yell at me; maybe it was from the house. Let's go there right now!"

Tamsin reaches like she's going to help George Eldred stand but her hand's are full, aren't they - she frowns at the bucket but keeps it - keeps it - then throws it onto the ice as far as she can.

"I'll do the work later. Double. Just once." The just once tacked on quickly like just in case the devil's listening and it's a contract. "I mean um double the amount of work the one time."

wake

"Well, alright [name-slew]," George Eldred seems relieved to have a name, to have three names, to have any names to give to the girl at his side, but also all the more tired. There's no way for Tamsin to know what name he gave her, what name he named her. Éowyn or Idril or Tam, any or all of the above. When he says her name to her, whatever her name, it all smears together like a word-sludge.

"Except, we don't go to the house. The boy does sometimes, no one can stop him, but even he doesn't get close. No

"You know where it is. You can't see it from town, but it's just over the rise. No one does.

"Except the dead. But we can't stop them.

"No. I'll do my work. That's what I'm here to do."

Cinder Song

"Don't you want to remember another story?" Tamsin says, urgent, reaching out to pluck at his shirt - cautiously: "Please come with me, George Eldred; please? Come away from here just once. If you went away from here, you'd be there to do something too, you know?"

Cinder Song

[Manip + Expression! Manip Specialty: Persuasive. C'mon bro. You're clearly in an evil dream trap or something.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

wake

He's standing up.

George Eldred is standing up, there's a creak in his knees and a crick in his back but he is, listen, rising. Watching her cantwise and then cutting a glance back to the rough-hewn bucket as it skitters across the thin-ice of that glacier-fed lake and breathing out see like a sigh or a song. He regrets the loss of that bucket.

It will be back the next time he dreams this dream.

Or - no, see. Come away from here just once she says and something plaintitive in her voice cuts through the fog of his awareness, and he feels like if he comes away from here just once he might cease to exist, he might disappear or he might die, his heart might be carved through with a thousand wormling holes and filled and then retracted, sapped, collapsed. He might consume himself, he might be consumed, he might find himself devoured he might -

It is painful for him and Tamsin can read all of his in the framework of his body and thw twist of his mouth, but - but -

A deep sigh out.

"Alright. I'll come with you as far as I can."

Cinder Song

Tamsin doesn't smile bright; she isn't a bright sunlight girl, somebody with a hearth burning in her bones. Tamsin was born as the light waned from the moon; leeched into darkness, but still full enough to slant poetry across the land - and her smile is a quiet thing, and the caution in her fingers when she plucked at his shirt is behind her smile, the plaintive whatever, that's there too, a certain darkness which is aware of what she can read in the wry twist of his mouth and his body; but she's glad he said he'll come anyway. She doesn't think he'll disappear. She doesn't know what she thinks except she wants him to come with her and maybe he's caught and maybe well she doesn't know - yet?

"Thank you. You'll see. It'll be good to do I bet. Over the rise you said? That one there?" she gestures to it with her chin and, another lick of caution, offers George her hand, the axless one. Maybe she thinks he's so old he needs it; that's what she read from his shape.

Once he indicates yes or no off she (they) set.

"What boy goes sometimes? Do people try to stop him?"

wake

"The boy. No on tries to stop him. He does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, here."

No. No, not over that rise there.

They have to go down before they can climb.

They have to descend before they can rise,

and so they do, down the narrow track beneath the weight of the limbs of the fir-trees, the heavy branches, the steep slope, the suggestion of a streambed gamboling alongside. Down they go to a place where the track intersects with another, a place of crossing, a cross-roads. This road is wider, is made for more than two men to walk abreast. Three or perhaps four could comfortably walk here and the woods are silent all around them, except for the occasional flush of a bird from the treets.

The birds are always crows: the beat of great black wings against the snow.

There is a fire somewhere close and now she can smell it, and they have been walking for hours or days or moments, three beats of her heart, time slews until it has no meaning beyond the immediate: this is now, this is now, this is now.

--

And the track descends as the road descends and perhaps they speak, perhaps Tamsin tells George Eldred some stories, perhaps she tells him old stories or made-up stories or faerie stories. He feels, he tells her half-way down, very, very strange. Light-headed and contrary but maybe, he is thinking, maybe this is right, correct, proper. Maybe -

The road descends, see, through the woods still, shouldering it on either side, down to a long, spare line of white clapboard houses all same-like, marching in rows and wreathed in mist, and if it was winter above, doesn't it feel like autumn here, the neverending edge of it, wet pavement, strange skies. Here are there, silent faces in the windows, behind the doors.

And here, here, after they have descending so far, here is the ridge. Here is the rise, beyond the houses, behind them, rising, see, the shoulder of another mountain that sweeps upward and casts half the long-hollow in shadow. They are climbing, climbing, climbing, George slower, and slower.

Up there, he tells her.

Just let me catch my breath.

---

Down below, in the town, a door swings open.

Two young men emerge from the house,

at a run.

--

When Tamsin turns around, George Eldred, he is gone.

Cinder Song

Tamsin wants to know how the boy looks. How old the boy is. What boy? Tamsin doesn't remember a boy; she describes Thomas and Erich, testingly, but that was as they were descending.

Tamsin does tell George Eldred stories since he only has one. She makes something up; then the made-up something becomes a fairy story that First Light told her the night they met; then it becomes something quoted from Tolkien because she loves Tolkien because Tolkien, man, because fighting against impossible odds and darkness. It's hard for George Eldred to leave his work; he doesn't want to; feels he might disappear. Tamsin; she can't leave her work either, really, and she is disappearing; she doesn't want to do it. It's hard.

The point is: she does talk.

Her eyes are narrow on the faces in the windows; her eyes are narrow on the crows, which she tries to count. Her eyes are even narrow on the town; she waves to somebody to see what happens. Looks for Keisha, Melantha, Erich, Thomas -

George Eldred feels very strange. Tamsin asks him if it's his heart. Wants to feel it; she doesn't know how to heal anybody but maybe if his heart is beating fast that'll tell her one thing maybe if it's slow it'll tell her another thing.

He wants to catch his breath; below, in the town, two young men emerge from the house at a run.

Up there. The house where the dead go? Where nobody goes? Tamsin does turn to look at it; when she turns around, he's gone and she almost drops the axe, a lick of rage-fury-alarm, breath sucked in suddenly -

- she spins around in a tight circle, looking for some sign, something, and then she shouts,

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." Another beat. Her grip on the axe tightens; up there, he'd said, and Tamsin squares her shoulders: sucks in another lungful of air - autumnal air.

She's going to go into the house; going to go up there. Going to disappear, too? It's just a dream but it feels so real and she still wants to go to the house that maybe the insistent shout earlier came from. She calls - deliberately; seething, rimmed in tension the way the lake, see, was rimmed in ice -

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Cinder Song

ooc: shit, there should be "THOMAS?" pause. "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." in that post.

wake

Tamsin waves and Tamsin tells stories and Tamsin wants to feel his heart: how is it beating, what is its speed, how fast does it pound, and Tamsin is in a strange place with a strange taste on her tongue and George Eldred is gone and down below two young men emerge from a house (a white house) onto a sidewalk (a gray sidewalk) and somehow the morning light is gone. Somehow the morning is gone.

Somehow the morning,

shifts.

Two young men are coming out of a house, they are named Thomas and they are named Erich and they hear a young woman shouting:

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA."

from up above.

--

They wake.

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Tamsin wakes.

With, yes, a sense of loss. Something shifting. Something changed. Something moving underneath. Something, somewhere, slumbering see:

but waking up to her presence, too.