[Phlegethon]
What was once the western packhouse of the Eagles (called the kinhouse for a time for its many occupants) has now fallen into saddened state of disrepair. Every available surface is dusty, the bar put in by James neglected. A few of the windows have been shattered, and the side of the building spray painted.
Without the pack to hold it, their rage to discourage the denizens of the neighbourhood, there is little to stop the damage. It is not taking the neighbours long to reclaim it.
[Sorrow]
There is a small shrine to Sparrow in the muddy front yard. A concrete birdbath and a series of bird feeds scattered round. Inside the dusty, slowly decaying kinhouse - a small stash of supplies. The birdfood is sealed inside a pair of large rubbermaid containers tucked just inside the front door. There's still water here, from a rusting sink near the bar that James installed. Whatever booze remained is long since gone, but water is all Sparrow needs.
The evening is all deep shadows, and the interior is thick and hot and sluggish. Kora is crouched on her haunches, one of the rubbermaid containers open, using a plastic cup to refill one of the bird feeders she carted back inside. "There's water behind the bar. I try to change it every day, and keep the feeders filled up. Get the water for me, yeah?"
She lifts her chin toward the bar. "There's a sink back there."
[Roman Turner]
He looked around for a bucket to fill with water and ended up with the bottom half of a Styrofoam cooler that he carried back to the sink. Mostly he was looking around what remained of the place.
"I gotta admit Miss Kora, I'm mighty let down."
[Sorrow]
This time she doesn't correct the title. There is nothing about her deserving the appellation Miss, dressed as she is in old jeans, worn nearly through at the knees, frayed at the cuffs, the seams dark with blood that cannot be scrubbed out from underneath the doubled stitches, and an old t-shirt, her hair pulled sharply back from her face and twisted into a knot secured by the broken barrel of an old pen. So: Kora, a red plastic cup full of birdseed cracked to use as a funnel, glances up at Roman through the gloom, the hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.
It is dark in here, and dust floats through the air as Roman crosses the room.
"You were expecting the Ritz?" she asks in response, her dark eyes tracing a circuit around the dark room.
[Roman Turner]
"No ma'am, but I expected something more to live up to the legend of what was suppose to be a mighty Pack if all the talk is true. Instead, well this is like any ole run down place I done see since coming here."
He tilted the cooler to get a corner under the faucet and winced when he turned on the water to the squeaking sound of rusted faucets.
"I mean, I see nothing much in the way of history or mighty here."
[Sorrow]
Kora exhales a huff of air that stands in for a bark of laughter. The laughter lingers in her shoulders and her mouth, but it is full of irony, this. The dilapidated packhouse wouldn't have qualified as mighty even when it was in reasonable repair - and now, months after the last Eagle to call it home died alone in an alley, fighting for his life and then simply for an honorable death - it is worse.
There's just the sound of water in the rusty pipes, their own breathing, the night noises of the city a background haze, white noise.
The short, harsh little laugh is barely given voice. Instead, after a moment of silence during which she fixes the squirrel guard over the lid of the bird feeder, she returns - quiet but not soft. "You've been to the Caern, right? Walked among the graves?"
[Roman Turner]
"Yessum, and still it don't answer some things."
Blunt as an eraser he asked.
"Why did he leave, really? Why did he leave her here? I don't want to hear the duty story cause there's a Caern here that is under siege twenty four seven here, so that old excuse just don't float with me. Why would would someone leave her all alone like that? Like an old pair of shoes?"
[Sorrow]
"I don't fucking know." She curses rarely, and so when she finally does, the word seems larger, somehow, more sour on her tongue. There's a certain tautness underlying her lean frame now, a spark of response to the challenge ringing in Roman's litany of questions - even if none of that challenge was for her. "I share a tribe with him, and he is my elder, a modi so far above me in rank and power that I can't even challenge him in my dreams without feeling like an honorless cub. But I can't speak for him.
"I spoke with Silence-rhya three times. Once, he told me to stop coddling the modis. Once, he told me to shut up and stop apologizing. And once, I told him the story of Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya's death, and he watched me with such rage that I wasn't sure whether or not I'd find him waiting for me outside, for having the effrontery to be alive when my Alpha was dead.
"That's how I know him. That and the stories, Roman. And the stories are fucking glorious."
[Roman Turner]
"Ever notice that stories are somehow larger than the actual person?"
He was calm, he was uber calm. Lifting the cooler out of the sink, he started towards her.
"Ya ain't responsible for him. Ain't yer fault I challenge the logic of leaving a place where every hand is needed. And it ain't yer fault I question how ya leave a mate behind. I was just curious cause it don't make no sense."
[Phlegethon]
There is a broken window on the main floor. Shattered glass beneath it. From the opening, a breeze has moved through, giving them soft exhales of air, keeping the packhouse from being completely stuffy and closed off.
When the ruffles through Sorrow's hair, then, it is not entirely unexpected.
(per+alertness, please!)
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
Per + Alertness!
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
Per+Alert
[Sorrow]
"It's more complicated than that, Roman," the Skald returns, quietly. "The stories are only larger than the person because you don't hear them all shoved together into a mass. You hear them one at a time. You hear them as valedictories, as inspiration, because that is all we have of each other; all we have to memorialize our passing. They," she lifts her chin toward the open window, the passing breeze. Her voice is quiet, " - they'll never know our dead. They will never remember them - "
[Phlegethon]
to Roman Turner
He sees Sorrow's hair move in a sudden breeze, the strands fluttering loose from her haphazard bun. It moves in her face, heading past her. Except the one source of air in this room, the broken window, is behind her.
And he, standing in front of her, in the presumed path of the breeze, feels nothing at all.
[Phlegethon]
to Sorrow
She can feel the broken pen move in her hair, the locks of her haphazard style stirring. It hits her in the face, as she faces away from the broken window.
Roman's hair moves, not at all.
[Roman Turner]
"Ya believe in spooks Miss Kora?"
He added as he stood there with the cooler leaking in a steady dribble to soak into the top of one of his boots.
[Sorrow]
Then she goes still, quiet. This is abrupt enough that it seems stutter-shot, that it seems strobe-lit. If they were pack in truth, she would reach out and feel him in the back of her mind, touch that connection, send him an image, and impression. Instead, her sharp features go still, her mobile mouth, her dark eye. Kora is looking at Roman now, through the dusty gloom of the old Eagle's packhouse, the lid of the birdfood container held in her nerveless fingers lightly.
"I felt that." - she tells him quietly. "The wind hit me. Not you."
After a moment, a glance around the still dark room. "Something on the other side?" Nearly a whisper, her voice still carries. The umbra she means: the shadow-world.
[Roman Turner]
"Well I saw it in your hair, only it didn't come from the direction of the window there and it didn't reach me. So I vote for Spooks."
With his luck it was the missing Mate of Imogen's and he would die because he would ask why the guy left in the first place.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]
"Your vote," she says, quietly, her mouth still with tension, just quirking in response to Roman's comment. " - is duly noted. I'm going to see if I can look across." With that, she straightens, centers herself carefully, and both pulls/pushes against the thick gauntlet, straining for a glimpse across.
[Phlegethon]
to Sorrow
To look across the gauntlet, Sorrow's focus must be absolute. The real world recedes around her. Even if Roman speaks to her, or even touches her, she will not hear or feel it. All she knows now is the feel of the gauntlet as her gaze pierces it, and all she knows is the sight of the shadowy Umbra, the impressions which she can see.
Spiders crawl across her vision, across the building that surrounds them. There are a few sparrow spirits beyond, hopping about the concrete bird bath, chirping forlornly.
An air spirit spins and weaves, ducking and diving before twisting frantically, spinning into a useless dervish before diving in Roman's direction.
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow focuses her attention on the Gauntlet and beyond and loses all awareness of the real world. As she does, Roman sees her hair move, stirring again, this time setting the broken barrel of a pen askew in the messy knot, causing half her blonde hair to come undone over her shoulders.
This time, his hair ruffles as well, moving with a breeze of impossible origins.
[Roman Turner]
"I ain't sure whatcha doing Miss Kora but seems like that Spook likes your hair down."
He started to walk around her, carrying the cooler and leaving a wet trail behind him. Trying to figure out what was messing with Kora and with his sense of logic, he dipped his fingers in the water and flicked it towards her like he was blessing her as he went. What he was really doing was trying to see if the droplets hit her or stopped because something was there.
[Sorrow]
Sorrow pulls her vision back from the other side abruptly, drawing in a great, deep breath as if she had been underwater for some time, breathless, watching the world swim into focus through a porthole. It feels like walking backward through solid steel made slowly permeable, like an impression of a face against the pins of a desk sculpture.
"It's just - " she says, quiet, shaking her head not unlike a dog emerging from the water trying to free its coat of every drop of moisture. More of her hair falls loose around her, the barrel of the pen catches on the strands, though, like a forgotten hot roller. " - frantic, trying to get our attention." The faintest ghost of a smile in his direction.
"Come on," she sinks down again, careful to seal in the birdseed - the good stuff, this. Thistle. - then straightens, reaching into her back pocket to pull out a mirror. "We need to go across, see what it wants."
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Crossing the Gauntlet! -1 for shiny mirror]
[Roman Turner]
"What want's our attention, the Spook?"
She was pulling out her mirror so he pulled out the little flat metal mirror he carried in his back pocket.
"Hey now, wait for me!"
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow is across near immediately. She had heard Roman's cry to wait for him. She can see him now, a shadowy form slowly coalescing in the Shadow.
The air here presses on her ears. It is oppressive and heavy. Only the breezes from the Airt spirit offers anything resembling relief as it spins and dives surging forward to burrow itself into Sorrow's hair, all the while chattering in the fluid language of spirits.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 5)
Sorrow sets her jaw and swallows hard, trying to pop her ears as if that might ease the pressure in the heavy air. The speeds with which she crossed this time is nearly dizzying, and she almost stumbles forward, humanskinned still but wary, alert to her surroundings. The air spirit dives into her hair; she circles slowly, looking for any signs of threat as she reaches to wake the spirit in the small fetish - the flat shaft of worked iron dangling from an iron ring pierced trough the inner cartilage of her right ear.
[Sorrow]
The world resolves itself differently, then. She hears things anew. The spirits chatter is no longer merely this sort of mindless rush of sibilant syllables strong together without reason or meaning. "Hey, hey - " she's reaching back now, as if the spirit had hair she could touch, caress, soothe. " - what is the matter?"
[Phlegethon]
Reaching out to touch the spirit is something of an anomaly. It is nothing like she's ever felt before. It is air coalesced into a cushion, so that it has resistance, but only so much. Her fingers sink into the spirit, the air cool then warm then cool again against her skin.
"Get help," spirit says, and it's hard to tell if it means it wants Kora to get help, or if that is what it is doing, so unfocused is its phrasing. "Get sacks of meat which become great and hairy sacks of meat and ask for help. Find, find find, search, search. Look for ones unblemished. Look, find, find, find, quick, hurry.
"Sacks of meat must help us," it murmurs, whispers really. "The river, the river, the fire is at the river and it is losing. We are at the river and we are losing. The river must not be lost."
[Roman Turner]
He sucked in a great lungful of air once he managed to push through. Of course he was none the wiser for what was going on, so started doing what he did so well.
"What's going on?"
Asking questions.
"Is it the Spook?"
[Sorrow]
"It's the Spook," Sorrow confirms to Roman as he pushes throgh the Gauntlet. Her voice is low, her eyes half-closed at the strangeness of pushing her fingers through strange resistance of the little spirit's form. It feels the way she would imagine sinking into a cloud in a cartoon might feel. But clouds are like rain, whiskering past the oval windows of a climbing plane. So: nothing, ever.
There's a certain tension to her when Roman comes through; and a certain animal cant of her head that reads as "listening" no matter her form, human or feral or in between. Kora's hair is loose, now, pale coils in the shadows. " - an air spirit, it wants the "sacks of meat which become great and hairy sacks of meat" to come help it's fellow. We're obviously the sacks of meat. It says the air and fire spirits are fighting something at the river, for the spirit of the river, and they're losing.
"We need to go." This is short, sharp - quickly to Roman. "Right now. When we're close, I want you to use what cover you can to gain advantage on the enemy, okay? We'll work together, and listen for me. If the spirits have something to say to us, I can understand them now. I'll pass it on. Yeah?"
[Phlegethon]
"Go now, sacks of meat?" mutters the spirit in Kora's ear. "Go now?"
[Roman Turner]
"Yessum, though it sure would be easier if we were closer so words weren't necessary."
He figured it was one of those critters that had attacked them before at the river.
[Sorrow]
"We'll find the Ritesmistress tomorrow, kid," Sorrow says, quietly, " - and fix that." Then, lifting her chin to the spirit muttering into her ear, the creature nods just once.
"Meat sacks," she responds to the air spirit in a low voice, made strange by the gift. She hears her voice and her words as her voice and her words, but the fetish dangles, brighted somehow, gleaming against her skin, glinting gray against the tangled mass of her straw-colored hair, "are completely at your service. Show us."
Without another word, she half-falls, half-jumps forward, shifting through the forms until she is in her direwolf skin, massive, deadly and fast. The blonde hair is gone, become iron-gray fur, the narrow shoulders are broad, now, the generous mouth quirked with a hint of irony is a maw capable only of the simple work of eating and fighting and tearing and rending.
[Roman Turner]
"Garou."
Meat sacks his furry behind. How would that invisible spirit like it if he called it a toot? Still mentally grumbling about the one sided conversation he followed suit and shifted, only he went lupus for the run.
[Phlegethon]
The air spirit whoops as suddenly its perch shifts forward and becomes a great and hairy meat sack. It sinks downward before catching itself on an updraft surging up again to hover a few feet above the two Garou. Though Roman cannot understand the spirit, the sound of its chattering glee and relief is undeniable.
It really does not matter what it says. What Kora hears is unimportant, merely babbles of its reaction before it remembers itself. "OH! WE MUST GO! GO GO GO."
And takes off toward the river.
The wolves follow as it leads them farther away from the questionable residential and cheap office neighbourhood and closer to the warehouse distract. The spaces between the buildings widens out, and cranes and other heavy equipment dots the land in between. The air spirit weaves and dives, bobbing and spinning as it leads the way.
Ahead, they can see the wide expanse of the river. Ahead, they can see an orange glow of fire, and something darker, blacker. The orange surges, then fades again. They can hear the distant sound of something yelling, but it is too far to hear, even for Kora with her ear scoop fetish and its translation of the spirit's language.
The air spirit, visibly, slows down and begins to deflate. It hovers near the ground weaving slowly and starting to inch forward again, reluctant to close the distance.
[Roman Turner]
He followed making sure he kept an even distance with Kora while the spirit chattered on in a language that was mostly noise to him. It wasn't till they managed to travel close enough to see the orange surges that he shifted to the same shape Kora was in and he reached for Blur so he could slink as she had requested.
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
blur
[Phlegethon]
2 suxx at diff 8.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]
The Fenrir runs, feels her muscles move underneath her skin, feels the blocks peel away behind her, the changing landscape ghostly and bare - spartan territory to claim by the standards of any Garou - except for shadows of weaver-things, the swinging cranes like the necks of a brontosaurus, the parked end-loader like an elephant, head low to the ground.
When they are close, she crawls forward and lifts her snout toward the battle, the oily darkness against the flame. You found us. Go, this to the air spirit that brought them here. find more great and hairy meat sacks, unblemished ones. Tell them to come, tell them to fight.
Then, dipping her head low, she summons takes a moment to center herself, tugs on her connection to her ancestors, before turning again, yipping at the blurred Roman before she begins off - swift-footed, but ready now, alert - toward the field of battle.
[Roman Turner]
He put some distance between them, not enough that he couldn't reach her quickly if need be, but enough to give him a little different angle from Kora to approach the battle. He still had no idea what was going on except some invisible air spirit wanted Meat Sacks to come to the river fast. And now he could see the orange flares and the darkness and while logic said dark was bad, he was stuck on the idea of air, fire and water, where was earth?
[Phlegethon]
As they draw closer, they see it is not only the flame against the darkness. Innumerable gafflings of air surround the fire elemental, feeding its flames with their air, shrieking and fleeing as the flame is attacked, but then marshalling their courage to band together and dive into the flame's centre. The fire bursts as that happens, scalding the oily black creature.
The creature: it has half a - well. one might say foot, but the thing has no feet to speak of. It is amorphous, congealed and an invertebrate. It remains, in part, in the water, a black darkness slowly spreading out into the river like a spill, like veins. The water elementals shudder and pull back. Blue sparks across the water as charms are activated, water elementals cleansing, cleansing, cleansing. One flickers and dies - out of its essence. Then, another.
The fire flares to life again and the oil creature lashes out, what was once nothing becoming an arm, smashing out to send the fire flying, air gafflings knocked loose, one or two tumbling downward, shocks of black showing through their translucent forms, like veins slowly leaking blood.
The air spirit hesitates, then it scurries away, fluttering through the air. In the distance, Sorrow can hear it call.
Sacks of MEAAAAAT! SACKS OF MEAAAAAT. HELP HELP.
Ahead of them, they can hear the fire. Kora can understand it. Telling the air gafflings to gather around. Telling the water to hold firm. Cleanse, cleanse. Don't let it touch!
--
Sorrow calls upon her ancestors to strengthen her muscles, to give her speed and accuracy to her blows. As she does, she feels the weight of One-Chance, a Fenrir Skald slide into her mind and displace memories and personality to make room for himself. His mind is calculating and quick. Everything is a weakness to be exploited, her body the weapon. She feels his strength fill her muscles and bones, fill her mind with confidence.
[Roman Turner]
He was none too keen on biting a bunch of oil, so with effort and thought he shifted towards Warform. Claws and arms made more sense to him. And what he was looking for as he moved in was where the black junk was coming from, did it have a center point?
[Sorrow]
The beast's body feels heavier, broader with the memories and strength of another filling up portions of her mind, displacing the memory of her first report card, maybe. Or the day she walked off the plane at Schipol, backpack heavy on her back, her eyes raw with sleep deprivation, every muscle stiff from sitting in he same position for nearly 8 hours. These things are lost for now. Maybe more: but all there is is the battle ahead.
Sorrow sorrows a challenge, low and wordless, at the battle-tableau spread out in front of them, then lifts her muzzle and barks at Fate. Looks foul. Use claws, not teeth unless I say bite. Then, the direwolf pads forward, shifting mid-way into her crinos form before joining the battle in full.
[-1 WP - Resist Pain!]
[Roman Turner]
Like Sorrow, he used WP to boost the Gift of Resist Pain. If ya got it, flaunt it, his ma said. The claws of his feet dug in to the earth as he pushed forward on two lean mean legs. A light dusting of chestnut fur coated his body. The fur, claws, muscles and muzzle and ears were something out of nightmares but to him it was just part of Warform.
Like Sorrow he was going in claws flashing for the icky black stuff.
[Phlegethon]
The spirit creature seemed to have a centre of gravity, or at least, at this moment, it had congealed more firmly in one point over any other. It does not appear to have a back or side, but that may have more to do with the fact it has no apparent eyes.
Still, as Sorrow shifts forward to her warform, the things weight shifts. Though there is no grin or mouth to speak of, she can hear the laughter of the thing, a dry clacking sound and imagine it's terrible glee.
The fire jaggling has faded to a shadow of itself, a few flames licking the air. An air spirit tumbles forward nudging it gently. The fire's flames are fanned, burning brighter. Another air spirit joins, then another, all the gafflings cooing softly as they try and coax the fire jaggling back to life. For the moment, it has fallen back, out of the beast's reach.
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
Init +8
[Phlegethon]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
Oil Slick - (+7)
[Phlegethon]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
Fire elemental + co +5
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
There is no need for stealth. Sorrow shifts from direwolf to Crinos, running full speed; the great oily beast turns, clacking an chattering its pleasure as the Garou arrive. Briefly, she takes in the scene, the flagging fire jaggling, and gives passing consideration to assisting in its revival -
- but she is a Fenrir. Instead, she howls as she runs, the swelling crescendo of the anthem of war.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[Init! +8]
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow - 15
Oil Slick - 13
Fate - 9
Fire Elemental - 8
Fire elemental: Recovering
[Roman Turner]
He was going for the thickest part with his claws.
1a claw
1b claw
1r claw
[Phlegethon]
Oil Slick -1. Hit roman
2. Glomp Kora
[Sorrow]
1a. Claw. 1b. Claw. 1c. Claw. Rage 1. Also: claw! Rage 2. AND A CLAW CLAW.
[Sorrow] 1a. Claw! Dex + Crinos + Brawl + Ancestors Sux -3.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage! Str + Crinos + Claw + Sux -1
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] 1b. -4
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage! 8+2
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] SOAK!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] 1c -5!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Hit Roman!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] 1a claw
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Roman Turner] 1b
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 3
[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 1! Claw!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] The oil slick twists, surges forward, arching upward then forward, washing toward and over Sorrow expanding to attempt to swallow her bulk.
The smell is noxious. It is not only oil. It is river poison. River foetid remains. Poisoned fish and rotting seaweed.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] 1r claw
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soakity soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 2!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soak-soak-soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Sorrow is swift, her ancestor giving her muscles and sinews that added bit of accuracy. She tears great chunks of poison and oil from the beast. It is not merely congealed liquid. There is a solidity to it. A mismatched bone structure. As the Fenrir tears chunks of foetid and congealed mess, she sees the flash of a licence plate, the sheared face of a discarded doll, its hair a mess of gunk and grime.
Her next blow misses. A grumble in the back of her mind, her ancestor's disappointment. The monster-beast lashes out, its mass gathering to create weapon like a club, roundly smacking Fate upside the head. Where the blow hits, he can feel his skin beginning to scald, blisters raising and bursting, painless due to his gift.
Fate slashes and misses, slashes and hits, tearing a small measure from the thing. Sorrow strikes again, and misses. This time her ancestor's response is a snarl, the shame of it, or perhaps the frustration stoking her rage higher.
The oil slick's centre of balance shifts, rolls and slides. Its bulk stretches. Expands and explodes, surging forward like water pouring from an open drain pipe. It swallows Sorrow whole. It sucks the air from her lungs. Fills her nostrils, her mouth if it is open. Blocks her eyes. She sees nothing. Feels no air. Breathes no air.
She feels her fur singe, her skin hiss in irritation, but nothing yet penetrates. She attacks once more, her claws catching, hitting and tearing, but ultimately, remains trapped within her bubble, suffocating, blind and surrounded by poison.
The fire elemental's flames have lit bright again, orange, blue, white. It rolls toward the battle, surrounded by air gafflings making faint sounds, alternating between fear and support. Behind them, in the lake, the water flashes blue as the water elementals fight to keep their foothold.
[Roman Turner] He let loose with a howl of pure fear mixed rage when Sorrow was swallowed whole. Pass experience had taught him that things swallowed sometimes burst back out, but who had room for that kind of thought? In the same moment he howled he dove in with claws flashing.
[Sorrow] Trapped, sightless - surrounded by filth and foul disease - and there is a surging moment of panic underneath the rage. Some image in her mind - the La Brea tar pits - statues of long dead dinosaurs sunk in the bubbling ooze, the white hot heat of a California summer day, trailing behind and staring at the oozing, potted filth as the rest of the family surged forward, looking for ice cream.
That is a flash; mostly, she is a beast. Mostly: Sorrow is a monster and she gathers herself to surge forward, rending again and again, sight and sound lost. Just filth, and darkness, and the strain of her body of air.
[Sorrow] [+8]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Roman Turner] Init +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[Phlegethon] Oilslick +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Phlegethon] Firedude!
+5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Phlegethon] Oil slick - 15
Fire elemental - 15
Fate - 13
Sorrow - 12
[Sorrow] Sorrow: 1. Fight free! Rage 1: Fight free! Rage 2: Fight free!
[Roman Turner] 1a claw
1b claw
1r claw
[Phlegethon] Fire elemental: BURN!
[Phlegethon] Oil slick:
1. SQUEEEEZE
2. Hit Roman
[Phlegethon] Squeeze damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Spirits are creatures which do not follow the rules that the Garou have set down. They do not have the same value of life which others might, they, creatures who reform repeatedly after death.
They do not care as much for the sacks of meat, even when sacks of meat come to their aid.
HELP ME!
The cry is not for Fate, but for the air gafflings, a peremptory command. The airt spirits dive downward, their air fuelling the fire, which grows hotter by the second. The very air begins to shimmer. The heat is excrutiating.
Fate's fur catches fire.
Then the oil slick does.
(six damage. to both Roman and the oil slick. Soakable)
[Phlegethon] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Roman Turner] Chicken Fried
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow] WP
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 9)
[Sorrow] +2 Str
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Action change, as Roman is now on the ground! Also, fire is scary.
Blast fire!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 1: Break free!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] x_x
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Sorrow feels the thick viscous body tighten around her like a vice. She feels something hard press against her body, straining against it, fighting against it. She feels it ease, then feels the vicious heat, scalding her even through the monster's coating.
The beast shudders.
It is all that she knows.
--
Fate dives at the monster, his claws bared, his throat raw with his howl. From the corner of his eye, he sees an orange burn, a bright orange light. Perhaps he feels relief that the fire elemental has joined the fight. Perhaps he thinks nothing at all, except that it is growing hot, as if the very air might catch on fire.
Then his fur does. He's alight, burning, scalding, his lungs searing.
He falls...
In the darkness, he feels his body surge, fighting against the dying of his neurons, of his cells. He feels a spark of life - but it is only just enough. It keeps his heart beating. Keeps his lungs moving. Nothing else. Not even consciousness.
The water laps higher than it had, slowly seeping up onto the shore, extinguishing the flames and subsuming him until only his mouth and nose remain above the water. He is human-formed now, just a boy, covered with burns that no one would ever survive.
--
Sorrow fights again and again to free herself, her lungs screaming, her eyes filled with poison. Suddenly, all around her, the beast shudders. The monster suddenly loses its cohesion, spilling down all about her, oil and poison, a bicycle tire, an old tennis racket, the strings gone. A single tennis shoe and a twisted Barbie doll. A toilet seat and plastic bags, utensils and an old camping cup. Plastic and debris sticks to her fur. Oil and toxin and poison.
Pain knifes through her chest like a blade. Her heart seizes, clamps down and her vision goes black. She feels her organs clench themselves raw, vomit rising in her throat.
(3 agg - poison)
[Roman Turner] The tips of his toes bobbed, just sticking out of the dirty water. There where his belly would be was an old bike tire with a plastic Wal-Mart bag tangled around it. Up further part of his face just broke the surface as it rose and fell gently with the lapping of the water. What a way for a kid from Kansas to end up.
[Sorrow] Everything is absent. Just blackness, this noxious poison and utter darkness all around. Sorrow's lungs are screaming for air; her body, her blood, her beating heart. Maybe breathing doesn't matter here in the umbra, where she's spirit in a sack of great and hair meat, but her body remembers the motion of it, all reflexive. She pushes and there is no given, just this impression of heat against her body, through the vicious fluid and all the trash suspended within, like some makeshift skeleton, all the detritus that could be consumed from the boggy bottom of the polluted river. She pushes and there is no give, as if she were fixed - she thinks of the tar pits again, a flashing image, and them concrete wet, fixing slowly dry. The ancestor spirit joined to her is raging, snarling impossibly creative curses in a language the folds of her mind remember only now, because he is here, enervating them, displacing that which is essentially her with that which is essentially him and then -
- there is no more coherence. The thing dissolves in a great flood of trash and poison, her eyes are streaming, her chest is burning, she has breathed and swallowed the viscous black ooze, and now the Crinos beast staggers forward two half-steps, retching onto the ground, and thin stream of black bile. The sight is absolutely incongruous - the massive warformed Garou heaving its shoulders, handpaws on its thighs with a decapitated barbie doll caught in the fur of its ruff by one twisted hand.
When the world returns, when the first wave of nausea has receded, Sorrow spins in a great arc, searching for Roman -
- and spies him, human-formed, bobbing in the water.
Fuck!
The curse is human. It's thoughtless, shot through with a spike of rage that blisters her throat as surely as the poison she breathed and swallowed did. Without thought, she scrambles down the bank toward the river, wading until she has to shift to Glabro to swim toward the boy.
She does not know whether he's unconscious or dead.
[Phlegethon] He's alive. She knows before she even reaches him. She can hear the harsh sound of his breathing, laboured and rasping through seared nostrils and mouth. His skin is blackened and weeping serum from breached blisters.
If he were human, he'd be dead by now. As it is, he is just barely alive.
The water of the river is rising, washing over the oil, sparks of blue and brightness as water elementals begin to cleanse, bubbling softly to each other. The fire elemental has retreated backwards slowly, but makes a command of the air spirits. Their numbers are diminished: they had been giving their energies to the greater jaggling, and many have faded away. Still, those which are left begin to dive toward the oil slick, their bodies pulsing with effort as they begin to cleanse as well.
The water begins to wash away the poison from Sorrow's skin, causing the oil and poison to slowly seep around her. Blue illuminations begin to intensify about her as the water elementals set to work - on the water, not herself and not her packmate.
Her heart misses another beat. Her organs seize once more. Blood has begun to mix in with the oil, weeping from her pours, dripping from her mouth.
(one additional agg)
[Roman Turner] His legs were slightly apart. Both arms were limp, slightly spread like his legs as he gently rocked in the water like a forgotten fishing bobber. If his cousin could see him now she would swear he was Chicken Fried, only they forgot to dip him in breading first. He was a burned up mess that kind of looked like it might of been human once. Kinda looking like when a hotdog falls off the grill in to the flames and bubbles up, charring. Somewhere in that mess a heart struggled like a trapped butterfly on it's last leg.
[Sorrow] This is what she feels - just the stutterstep of her heart, the way her stomach turns, the background of nausea as her organs fail, as her body weeps blood. She breathes out a fine spray of it as she struggles through the water to Roman's body. The sound of his breathing - close now - is enough to spike through the rage burning under her skin. She grabs him by an ankle first, skin sloughing off in her hands like paper from the burns.
Turns him like that until she can slide one arm under his right shoulder, holding him across her body like a lifeguard as she turns back and kicks off toward the shore, swimming through the water as the elementals begin cleansing - the water, the river, the droplets of oil scattered with the death of the beast.
Not them.
At the river's edge, she pulls him and pushes him up onto the muddied shore, and ducks under the water once before rising again. The pain is distant, blood is slick on her forearms, her hands, it weeps from the pores of her face, fills the back of her throat, mixes with the water and is washed away.
Sorrow spits out another mouthful of blood, and starts to haul herself from the river onto the shore, keeping herself between the Ragabash and the retreating fire elemental. On the shore - on all fours - she takes a moment to gather herself, breathing heavily, feeling the way her body is slowly breaking down.
[Roman Turner] He gained weight when he was hauled up out of the water to lay like a charred rag doll in all it's bubbled, cracked, burned flesh glory. What was left of his hair was sticking up in tiny little patches on his burned skull. Faint wet sounding breaths rattled from between blistered, cracked lips.
[Phlegethon] The water sparks blue all around them, great washes of it, brilliant enough to blind the eye for a moment.
Sorrow leaves the water, oil and blood dripping from her as she does. She is not yet clean, but is cleaner than she was. The poison leaves her woozy, her breath coming fast and deep as if she cannot quite get enough oxygen. Vertigo assaults her, the ground seeming to move beneath her feet.
She stays between the fire elemental and the Garou. The fire elemental has receded almost entirely, starting to slide away from the water and everything it hates.
The water has completely covered the remains of the oil spill. Their efforts to cleanse, to heal the land and ground turn the water a brilliant and vibrant blue around the source of greatest taint, the body itself.
The effects of the poison appear to be slowing. It has been seconds, and she feels no worse.
[Sorrow] Gnosis!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Sorrow] There she remains for another half-minute, the world spinning around her, water streaming from her hair. She looks like some monstrous, pre-historic version of a human woman assaulted by a child's toy. The broken Barbie doll is still tangled - now in blonde hair, long in this form, wiry and coarse, too. Vertigo is as unfamiliar a sensation as nausea; she blinks a half-dozen times, keeping her gaze trained on the ground between her hands, until the spinning stops well enough for her to shift her weight, to settle against the bank.
The handful of talens she has are tucked behind the rubbermaid containers in the old Eagle packhouse, in a brown corduroy messenger bag. The water glows turquoise - like some tropic island, like the glittering Mediterranean waters around Majorca - and the oil slowly disappears under the surface of the water.
Sorrow scoots further down the bank, dipping her feet back into the water. With a faint hum in the back of her throat, the subtle glow of the earring against her pale skin, the world reorients itself again, every sussurrent whisper has meaning, here.
Usually, she listens. To the wind and the rain, or the song of the sky, the chatterings of lunes: listens.
Then: more than her ankles. Sorrow slips back into the water, standing thigh deep now. Her clothing is already soaked, both soaked and befouled. She reaches down and cups her hands, pulling them up dripping, two palmfuls of water seeping back into the river between her closed fingers, the slaps the surface lightly until she has the attention of one of the efficient little gafflings cleansing and healing the poisoned waters.
"Heal him." That's what she says, her low voice ringing, gutteral in this form, spirit shaped. Even if Roman were awake, he would not understand the words. "I am she who offers sorrow and this is Fate. Heal him. We came to your call, we fought to save the River, the two of us, Fenrir and Child of Gaia. The air spirits came to find us on the other side, and we felt the breeze and we came across, and we ran to your aid. We came, and we fought, and we fought with you to destroy it.
"Heal him, please - hear me. He lies here because he came to fight for you."
[Phlegethon] "Here," bubbles the gaffling. "Bring it here."
It is all that it says. If Sorrow, now Kora, complies, it bubbles quietly to itself, a low slow murmur of sound as it slides over Roman's inert and scorched body. It whistles softly to itself as it caresses over his face, causing the unconscious boy to sputter and cough.
After a moment, the creature flares bright blue, the colour of the spirit world, the colour of gnosis as it is spent or used.
It does its, wee thing.
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Phlegethon] The wounds close briefly, just slightly and the gaffling makes a sound of disappointment. It floats away. Perhaps Sorrow thinks it to have abandoned them.
Moments later, though, it has returned, the water moving with a greater disturbance. The gaffling is bubbling and babbling explaining to the jaggling as it tug-pulls-cajoles it over. The jaggling pauses, but does not move immediately.
Its body shapes itself to a head-like apparatus, lifting out of the water, its own liquid cascading down like a waterfall, cycling back up as if it were a fountain, as if it were driven by anything but its own weight. It has no eyes, but it appears to be studying the burnt and damaged Garou.
"Things of mostly water will stay still." As if Kora were about to move him.
Blue glows bright and sparks and the surge of water shifts, cascading over Roman's body, down, then up again, to fall again.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Phlegethon] Romans' skin half heals now, in the harsh pink of new flesh. The burns are raw but no longer charred. He is able to breathe more easily. He can stand, himself, his muscles gathering themselves close to the bone. The scar is fresh and visible in his skin, across the front of his shoulder, extending over the collar bone, just kissing the curve where his shoulder meets his neck. The scar is hideous, puckered and shiny with new flesh.
Only just healed of his wyrm-marks and now, Roman has scars all his own.
Kora feels her body jolt, her organs jerking and clenching within her body, a fresh wave of nausea assaulting her. The water jaggling slowly begins to sink back into the water, bubbling and burbling as it does.
"Things of mostly water will wash," it says.
[Phlegethon] (+1 agg)
[Roman Turner] When he came to it was with a choking cough. He gulped at the air and his first ehale came out as rapasy gasp.
"Kora?"
He hurt everywhere. A tub of aloe would no help this kind of pain.
[Sorrow] "Thanks," Kora manages, as the jaggling begins to bubble back. "Thank you - " in the wake of the gaffling too - indistinguishable from the rest by now, as if human courtesy mattered to these things.
Roman's floating now, breathing, sputtering back to consciousness. They are both standing in water up to their waists, perhaps deeper. He is floating on the surface, and she holding him against her body, but releases him when he comes to consciousness, turns bends over, coughing as the poison asserts itself against her body, turning it back against itself.
"Hey kid," she says when Roman wakes up. "The monster's dead. And we're still alive. Wash yourself off - " she is a bloodied mess, blood is weeping from her pores, dripping down into her eyes. And she turns away to spit another stream of blood from her mouth. "In the water when you've got your bearings. Then we're going back, okay? We'll need a rite of cleansing, too. But first, wash."
Once Kora is certain that Roman has his bearings and his feet she ducks back under the surface of the water, scrubbing whatever she can of the oil from her body, taking a mouthful, spitting it back out, again and again as if she were rinsing with mouthwash.
[Roman Turner] There wasn't going to be scrubbing going on. He might go under the water, but he wasn't going to touch those burn scars because they hurt worse than the worse sunburn already and moving just pulled the skin that much tighter
He was still kind of out of it, managing to slur out.
"What happened?"
[Phlegethon] They begin to wash the oil and poison from their skin. Around them, the water spirits begin to bubble and burble, gathering around as blood and foetid blackness begins to slough off Kora's body.
Blue flashes bright around them, the water around them bubbles and boils without heat. The blood and oil, the poison, the foetid clumps of what is best not thought of - it all begins to fade away.
Still gravely injured, blood dripping from her body, Kora finds the nausea easing a little, the vertigo fading away. The poison washed from her skin and she is no longer assaulted by it.
Later, the spirits all begin to fade away, less now than there were before. Some have faded away entirely in the efforts of cleansing the river, their energies expended. Those that are left return from whence they came, carried by currents throughout the river.
[Sorrow] She comes back up for air, water sluicing down over her face and hair. Here and there, droplets of blood comingle with the water, tinting it pink. "I don't know what happened," she says, more than a little bit breathless now. "I was swallowed up by the spirit. I couldn't see anything, couldn't breathe, couldn't hear. I just shoved through. Once, I felt this blast of heat through the - the filth, the foulness, yeah? When I came back out, you were floating in the river, all burned up.
"C'mon," they're cleansed now, she's at the water's edge, closing her eyes against a lesser wave of nausea, or the memory of the unfamiliar sensation, breathing through her nose, water coursing down her body. She plants her hands in the muddied bank and pushes herself out of the water, turning to offer Roman her hand. " - I'm going to feel this soon. I'd like to be someplace rather more safe when that happens."
What was once the western packhouse of the Eagles (called the kinhouse for a time for its many occupants) has now fallen into saddened state of disrepair. Every available surface is dusty, the bar put in by James neglected. A few of the windows have been shattered, and the side of the building spray painted.
Without the pack to hold it, their rage to discourage the denizens of the neighbourhood, there is little to stop the damage. It is not taking the neighbours long to reclaim it.
[Sorrow]
There is a small shrine to Sparrow in the muddy front yard. A concrete birdbath and a series of bird feeds scattered round. Inside the dusty, slowly decaying kinhouse - a small stash of supplies. The birdfood is sealed inside a pair of large rubbermaid containers tucked just inside the front door. There's still water here, from a rusting sink near the bar that James installed. Whatever booze remained is long since gone, but water is all Sparrow needs.
The evening is all deep shadows, and the interior is thick and hot and sluggish. Kora is crouched on her haunches, one of the rubbermaid containers open, using a plastic cup to refill one of the bird feeders she carted back inside. "There's water behind the bar. I try to change it every day, and keep the feeders filled up. Get the water for me, yeah?"
She lifts her chin toward the bar. "There's a sink back there."
[Roman Turner]
He looked around for a bucket to fill with water and ended up with the bottom half of a Styrofoam cooler that he carried back to the sink. Mostly he was looking around what remained of the place.
"I gotta admit Miss Kora, I'm mighty let down."
[Sorrow]
This time she doesn't correct the title. There is nothing about her deserving the appellation Miss, dressed as she is in old jeans, worn nearly through at the knees, frayed at the cuffs, the seams dark with blood that cannot be scrubbed out from underneath the doubled stitches, and an old t-shirt, her hair pulled sharply back from her face and twisted into a knot secured by the broken barrel of an old pen. So: Kora, a red plastic cup full of birdseed cracked to use as a funnel, glances up at Roman through the gloom, the hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.
It is dark in here, and dust floats through the air as Roman crosses the room.
"You were expecting the Ritz?" she asks in response, her dark eyes tracing a circuit around the dark room.
[Roman Turner]
"No ma'am, but I expected something more to live up to the legend of what was suppose to be a mighty Pack if all the talk is true. Instead, well this is like any ole run down place I done see since coming here."
He tilted the cooler to get a corner under the faucet and winced when he turned on the water to the squeaking sound of rusted faucets.
"I mean, I see nothing much in the way of history or mighty here."
[Sorrow]
Kora exhales a huff of air that stands in for a bark of laughter. The laughter lingers in her shoulders and her mouth, but it is full of irony, this. The dilapidated packhouse wouldn't have qualified as mighty even when it was in reasonable repair - and now, months after the last Eagle to call it home died alone in an alley, fighting for his life and then simply for an honorable death - it is worse.
There's just the sound of water in the rusty pipes, their own breathing, the night noises of the city a background haze, white noise.
The short, harsh little laugh is barely given voice. Instead, after a moment of silence during which she fixes the squirrel guard over the lid of the bird feeder, she returns - quiet but not soft. "You've been to the Caern, right? Walked among the graves?"
[Roman Turner]
"Yessum, and still it don't answer some things."
Blunt as an eraser he asked.
"Why did he leave, really? Why did he leave her here? I don't want to hear the duty story cause there's a Caern here that is under siege twenty four seven here, so that old excuse just don't float with me. Why would would someone leave her all alone like that? Like an old pair of shoes?"
[Sorrow]
"I don't fucking know." She curses rarely, and so when she finally does, the word seems larger, somehow, more sour on her tongue. There's a certain tautness underlying her lean frame now, a spark of response to the challenge ringing in Roman's litany of questions - even if none of that challenge was for her. "I share a tribe with him, and he is my elder, a modi so far above me in rank and power that I can't even challenge him in my dreams without feeling like an honorless cub. But I can't speak for him.
"I spoke with Silence-rhya three times. Once, he told me to stop coddling the modis. Once, he told me to shut up and stop apologizing. And once, I told him the story of Truth-in-Frenzy-rhya's death, and he watched me with such rage that I wasn't sure whether or not I'd find him waiting for me outside, for having the effrontery to be alive when my Alpha was dead.
"That's how I know him. That and the stories, Roman. And the stories are fucking glorious."
[Roman Turner]
"Ever notice that stories are somehow larger than the actual person?"
He was calm, he was uber calm. Lifting the cooler out of the sink, he started towards her.
"Ya ain't responsible for him. Ain't yer fault I challenge the logic of leaving a place where every hand is needed. And it ain't yer fault I question how ya leave a mate behind. I was just curious cause it don't make no sense."
[Phlegethon]
There is a broken window on the main floor. Shattered glass beneath it. From the opening, a breeze has moved through, giving them soft exhales of air, keeping the packhouse from being completely stuffy and closed off.
When the ruffles through Sorrow's hair, then, it is not entirely unexpected.
(per+alertness, please!)
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
Per + Alertness!
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
Per+Alert
[Sorrow]
"It's more complicated than that, Roman," the Skald returns, quietly. "The stories are only larger than the person because you don't hear them all shoved together into a mass. You hear them one at a time. You hear them as valedictories, as inspiration, because that is all we have of each other; all we have to memorialize our passing. They," she lifts her chin toward the open window, the passing breeze. Her voice is quiet, " - they'll never know our dead. They will never remember them - "
[Phlegethon]
to Roman Turner
He sees Sorrow's hair move in a sudden breeze, the strands fluttering loose from her haphazard bun. It moves in her face, heading past her. Except the one source of air in this room, the broken window, is behind her.
And he, standing in front of her, in the presumed path of the breeze, feels nothing at all.
[Phlegethon]
to Sorrow
She can feel the broken pen move in her hair, the locks of her haphazard style stirring. It hits her in the face, as she faces away from the broken window.
Roman's hair moves, not at all.
[Roman Turner]
"Ya believe in spooks Miss Kora?"
He added as he stood there with the cooler leaking in a steady dribble to soak into the top of one of his boots.
[Sorrow]
Then she goes still, quiet. This is abrupt enough that it seems stutter-shot, that it seems strobe-lit. If they were pack in truth, she would reach out and feel him in the back of her mind, touch that connection, send him an image, and impression. Instead, her sharp features go still, her mobile mouth, her dark eye. Kora is looking at Roman now, through the dusty gloom of the old Eagle's packhouse, the lid of the birdfood container held in her nerveless fingers lightly.
"I felt that." - she tells him quietly. "The wind hit me. Not you."
After a moment, a glance around the still dark room. "Something on the other side?" Nearly a whisper, her voice still carries. The umbra she means: the shadow-world.
[Roman Turner]
"Well I saw it in your hair, only it didn't come from the direction of the window there and it didn't reach me. So I vote for Spooks."
With his luck it was the missing Mate of Imogen's and he would die because he would ask why the guy left in the first place.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]
"Your vote," she says, quietly, her mouth still with tension, just quirking in response to Roman's comment. " - is duly noted. I'm going to see if I can look across." With that, she straightens, centers herself carefully, and both pulls/pushes against the thick gauntlet, straining for a glimpse across.
[Phlegethon]
to Sorrow
To look across the gauntlet, Sorrow's focus must be absolute. The real world recedes around her. Even if Roman speaks to her, or even touches her, she will not hear or feel it. All she knows now is the feel of the gauntlet as her gaze pierces it, and all she knows is the sight of the shadowy Umbra, the impressions which she can see.
Spiders crawl across her vision, across the building that surrounds them. There are a few sparrow spirits beyond, hopping about the concrete bird bath, chirping forlornly.
An air spirit spins and weaves, ducking and diving before twisting frantically, spinning into a useless dervish before diving in Roman's direction.
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow focuses her attention on the Gauntlet and beyond and loses all awareness of the real world. As she does, Roman sees her hair move, stirring again, this time setting the broken barrel of a pen askew in the messy knot, causing half her blonde hair to come undone over her shoulders.
This time, his hair ruffles as well, moving with a breeze of impossible origins.
[Roman Turner]
"I ain't sure whatcha doing Miss Kora but seems like that Spook likes your hair down."
He started to walk around her, carrying the cooler and leaving a wet trail behind him. Trying to figure out what was messing with Kora and with his sense of logic, he dipped his fingers in the water and flicked it towards her like he was blessing her as he went. What he was really doing was trying to see if the droplets hit her or stopped because something was there.
[Sorrow]
Sorrow pulls her vision back from the other side abruptly, drawing in a great, deep breath as if she had been underwater for some time, breathless, watching the world swim into focus through a porthole. It feels like walking backward through solid steel made slowly permeable, like an impression of a face against the pins of a desk sculpture.
"It's just - " she says, quiet, shaking her head not unlike a dog emerging from the water trying to free its coat of every drop of moisture. More of her hair falls loose around her, the barrel of the pen catches on the strands, though, like a forgotten hot roller. " - frantic, trying to get our attention." The faintest ghost of a smile in his direction.
"Come on," she sinks down again, careful to seal in the birdseed - the good stuff, this. Thistle. - then straightens, reaching into her back pocket to pull out a mirror. "We need to go across, see what it wants."
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Crossing the Gauntlet! -1 for shiny mirror]
[Roman Turner]
"What want's our attention, the Spook?"
She was pulling out her mirror so he pulled out the little flat metal mirror he carried in his back pocket.
"Hey now, wait for me!"
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow is across near immediately. She had heard Roman's cry to wait for him. She can see him now, a shadowy form slowly coalescing in the Shadow.
The air here presses on her ears. It is oppressive and heavy. Only the breezes from the Airt spirit offers anything resembling relief as it spins and dives surging forward to burrow itself into Sorrow's hair, all the while chattering in the fluid language of spirits.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 5)
Sorrow sets her jaw and swallows hard, trying to pop her ears as if that might ease the pressure in the heavy air. The speeds with which she crossed this time is nearly dizzying, and she almost stumbles forward, humanskinned still but wary, alert to her surroundings. The air spirit dives into her hair; she circles slowly, looking for any signs of threat as she reaches to wake the spirit in the small fetish - the flat shaft of worked iron dangling from an iron ring pierced trough the inner cartilage of her right ear.
[Sorrow]
The world resolves itself differently, then. She hears things anew. The spirits chatter is no longer merely this sort of mindless rush of sibilant syllables strong together without reason or meaning. "Hey, hey - " she's reaching back now, as if the spirit had hair she could touch, caress, soothe. " - what is the matter?"
[Phlegethon]
Reaching out to touch the spirit is something of an anomaly. It is nothing like she's ever felt before. It is air coalesced into a cushion, so that it has resistance, but only so much. Her fingers sink into the spirit, the air cool then warm then cool again against her skin.
"Get help," spirit says, and it's hard to tell if it means it wants Kora to get help, or if that is what it is doing, so unfocused is its phrasing. "Get sacks of meat which become great and hairy sacks of meat and ask for help. Find, find find, search, search. Look for ones unblemished. Look, find, find, find, quick, hurry.
"Sacks of meat must help us," it murmurs, whispers really. "The river, the river, the fire is at the river and it is losing. We are at the river and we are losing. The river must not be lost."
[Roman Turner]
He sucked in a great lungful of air once he managed to push through. Of course he was none the wiser for what was going on, so started doing what he did so well.
"What's going on?"
Asking questions.
"Is it the Spook?"
[Sorrow]
"It's the Spook," Sorrow confirms to Roman as he pushes throgh the Gauntlet. Her voice is low, her eyes half-closed at the strangeness of pushing her fingers through strange resistance of the little spirit's form. It feels the way she would imagine sinking into a cloud in a cartoon might feel. But clouds are like rain, whiskering past the oval windows of a climbing plane. So: nothing, ever.
There's a certain tension to her when Roman comes through; and a certain animal cant of her head that reads as "listening" no matter her form, human or feral or in between. Kora's hair is loose, now, pale coils in the shadows. " - an air spirit, it wants the "sacks of meat which become great and hairy sacks of meat" to come help it's fellow. We're obviously the sacks of meat. It says the air and fire spirits are fighting something at the river, for the spirit of the river, and they're losing.
"We need to go." This is short, sharp - quickly to Roman. "Right now. When we're close, I want you to use what cover you can to gain advantage on the enemy, okay? We'll work together, and listen for me. If the spirits have something to say to us, I can understand them now. I'll pass it on. Yeah?"
[Phlegethon]
"Go now, sacks of meat?" mutters the spirit in Kora's ear. "Go now?"
[Roman Turner]
"Yessum, though it sure would be easier if we were closer so words weren't necessary."
He figured it was one of those critters that had attacked them before at the river.
[Sorrow]
"We'll find the Ritesmistress tomorrow, kid," Sorrow says, quietly, " - and fix that." Then, lifting her chin to the spirit muttering into her ear, the creature nods just once.
"Meat sacks," she responds to the air spirit in a low voice, made strange by the gift. She hears her voice and her words as her voice and her words, but the fetish dangles, brighted somehow, gleaming against her skin, glinting gray against the tangled mass of her straw-colored hair, "are completely at your service. Show us."
Without another word, she half-falls, half-jumps forward, shifting through the forms until she is in her direwolf skin, massive, deadly and fast. The blonde hair is gone, become iron-gray fur, the narrow shoulders are broad, now, the generous mouth quirked with a hint of irony is a maw capable only of the simple work of eating and fighting and tearing and rending.
[Roman Turner]
"Garou."
Meat sacks his furry behind. How would that invisible spirit like it if he called it a toot? Still mentally grumbling about the one sided conversation he followed suit and shifted, only he went lupus for the run.
[Phlegethon]
The air spirit whoops as suddenly its perch shifts forward and becomes a great and hairy meat sack. It sinks downward before catching itself on an updraft surging up again to hover a few feet above the two Garou. Though Roman cannot understand the spirit, the sound of its chattering glee and relief is undeniable.
It really does not matter what it says. What Kora hears is unimportant, merely babbles of its reaction before it remembers itself. "OH! WE MUST GO! GO GO GO."
And takes off toward the river.
The wolves follow as it leads them farther away from the questionable residential and cheap office neighbourhood and closer to the warehouse distract. The spaces between the buildings widens out, and cranes and other heavy equipment dots the land in between. The air spirit weaves and dives, bobbing and spinning as it leads the way.
Ahead, they can see the wide expanse of the river. Ahead, they can see an orange glow of fire, and something darker, blacker. The orange surges, then fades again. They can hear the distant sound of something yelling, but it is too far to hear, even for Kora with her ear scoop fetish and its translation of the spirit's language.
The air spirit, visibly, slows down and begins to deflate. It hovers near the ground weaving slowly and starting to inch forward again, reluctant to close the distance.
[Roman Turner]
He followed making sure he kept an even distance with Kora while the spirit chattered on in a language that was mostly noise to him. It wasn't till they managed to travel close enough to see the orange surges that he shifted to the same shape Kora was in and he reached for Blur so he could slink as she had requested.
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
blur
[Phlegethon]
2 suxx at diff 8.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]
The Fenrir runs, feels her muscles move underneath her skin, feels the blocks peel away behind her, the changing landscape ghostly and bare - spartan territory to claim by the standards of any Garou - except for shadows of weaver-things, the swinging cranes like the necks of a brontosaurus, the parked end-loader like an elephant, head low to the ground.
When they are close, she crawls forward and lifts her snout toward the battle, the oily darkness against the flame. You found us. Go, this to the air spirit that brought them here. find more great and hairy meat sacks, unblemished ones. Tell them to come, tell them to fight.
Then, dipping her head low, she summons takes a moment to center herself, tugs on her connection to her ancestors, before turning again, yipping at the blurred Roman before she begins off - swift-footed, but ready now, alert - toward the field of battle.
[Roman Turner]
He put some distance between them, not enough that he couldn't reach her quickly if need be, but enough to give him a little different angle from Kora to approach the battle. He still had no idea what was going on except some invisible air spirit wanted Meat Sacks to come to the river fast. And now he could see the orange flares and the darkness and while logic said dark was bad, he was stuck on the idea of air, fire and water, where was earth?
[Phlegethon]
As they draw closer, they see it is not only the flame against the darkness. Innumerable gafflings of air surround the fire elemental, feeding its flames with their air, shrieking and fleeing as the flame is attacked, but then marshalling their courage to band together and dive into the flame's centre. The fire bursts as that happens, scalding the oily black creature.
The creature: it has half a - well. one might say foot, but the thing has no feet to speak of. It is amorphous, congealed and an invertebrate. It remains, in part, in the water, a black darkness slowly spreading out into the river like a spill, like veins. The water elementals shudder and pull back. Blue sparks across the water as charms are activated, water elementals cleansing, cleansing, cleansing. One flickers and dies - out of its essence. Then, another.
The fire flares to life again and the oil creature lashes out, what was once nothing becoming an arm, smashing out to send the fire flying, air gafflings knocked loose, one or two tumbling downward, shocks of black showing through their translucent forms, like veins slowly leaking blood.
The air spirit hesitates, then it scurries away, fluttering through the air. In the distance, Sorrow can hear it call.
Sacks of MEAAAAAT! SACKS OF MEAAAAAT. HELP HELP.
Ahead of them, they can hear the fire. Kora can understand it. Telling the air gafflings to gather around. Telling the water to hold firm. Cleanse, cleanse. Don't let it touch!
--
Sorrow calls upon her ancestors to strengthen her muscles, to give her speed and accuracy to her blows. As she does, she feels the weight of One-Chance, a Fenrir Skald slide into her mind and displace memories and personality to make room for himself. His mind is calculating and quick. Everything is a weakness to be exploited, her body the weapon. She feels his strength fill her muscles and bones, fill her mind with confidence.
[Roman Turner]
He was none too keen on biting a bunch of oil, so with effort and thought he shifted towards Warform. Claws and arms made more sense to him. And what he was looking for as he moved in was where the black junk was coming from, did it have a center point?
[Sorrow]
The beast's body feels heavier, broader with the memories and strength of another filling up portions of her mind, displacing the memory of her first report card, maybe. Or the day she walked off the plane at Schipol, backpack heavy on her back, her eyes raw with sleep deprivation, every muscle stiff from sitting in he same position for nearly 8 hours. These things are lost for now. Maybe more: but all there is is the battle ahead.
Sorrow sorrows a challenge, low and wordless, at the battle-tableau spread out in front of them, then lifts her muzzle and barks at Fate. Looks foul. Use claws, not teeth unless I say bite. Then, the direwolf pads forward, shifting mid-way into her crinos form before joining the battle in full.
[-1 WP - Resist Pain!]
[Roman Turner]
Like Sorrow, he used WP to boost the Gift of Resist Pain. If ya got it, flaunt it, his ma said. The claws of his feet dug in to the earth as he pushed forward on two lean mean legs. A light dusting of chestnut fur coated his body. The fur, claws, muscles and muzzle and ears were something out of nightmares but to him it was just part of Warform.
Like Sorrow he was going in claws flashing for the icky black stuff.
[Phlegethon]
The spirit creature seemed to have a centre of gravity, or at least, at this moment, it had congealed more firmly in one point over any other. It does not appear to have a back or side, but that may have more to do with the fact it has no apparent eyes.
Still, as Sorrow shifts forward to her warform, the things weight shifts. Though there is no grin or mouth to speak of, she can hear the laughter of the thing, a dry clacking sound and imagine it's terrible glee.
The fire jaggling has faded to a shadow of itself, a few flames licking the air. An air spirit tumbles forward nudging it gently. The fire's flames are fanned, burning brighter. Another air spirit joins, then another, all the gafflings cooing softly as they try and coax the fire jaggling back to life. For the moment, it has fallen back, out of the beast's reach.
[Roman Turner]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
Init +8
[Phlegethon]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
Oil Slick - (+7)
[Phlegethon]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
Fire elemental + co +5
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
There is no need for stealth. Sorrow shifts from direwolf to Crinos, running full speed; the great oily beast turns, clacking an chattering its pleasure as the Garou arrive. Briefly, she takes in the scene, the flagging fire jaggling, and gives passing consideration to assisting in its revival -
- but she is a Fenrir. Instead, she howls as she runs, the swelling crescendo of the anthem of war.
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[Init! +8]
[Phlegethon]
Sorrow - 15
Oil Slick - 13
Fate - 9
Fire Elemental - 8
Fire elemental: Recovering
[Roman Turner]
He was going for the thickest part with his claws.
1a claw
1b claw
1r claw
[Phlegethon]
Oil Slick -1. Hit roman
2. Glomp Kora
[Sorrow]
1a. Claw. 1b. Claw. 1c. Claw. Rage 1. Also: claw! Rage 2. AND A CLAW CLAW.
[Sorrow] 1a. Claw! Dex + Crinos + Brawl + Ancestors Sux -3.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage! Str + Crinos + Claw + Sux -1
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] 1b. -4
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage! 8+2
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] SOAK!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] 1c -5!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Hit Roman!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] 1a claw
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Roman Turner] 1b
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 3
[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 1! Claw!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] The oil slick twists, surges forward, arching upward then forward, washing toward and over Sorrow expanding to attempt to swallow her bulk.
The smell is noxious. It is not only oil. It is river poison. River foetid remains. Poisoned fish and rotting seaweed.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] 1r claw
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Roman Turner] damn
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soakity soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 2!
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soak-soak-soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Sorrow is swift, her ancestor giving her muscles and sinews that added bit of accuracy. She tears great chunks of poison and oil from the beast. It is not merely congealed liquid. There is a solidity to it. A mismatched bone structure. As the Fenrir tears chunks of foetid and congealed mess, she sees the flash of a licence plate, the sheared face of a discarded doll, its hair a mess of gunk and grime.
Her next blow misses. A grumble in the back of her mind, her ancestor's disappointment. The monster-beast lashes out, its mass gathering to create weapon like a club, roundly smacking Fate upside the head. Where the blow hits, he can feel his skin beginning to scald, blisters raising and bursting, painless due to his gift.
Fate slashes and misses, slashes and hits, tearing a small measure from the thing. Sorrow strikes again, and misses. This time her ancestor's response is a snarl, the shame of it, or perhaps the frustration stoking her rage higher.
The oil slick's centre of balance shifts, rolls and slides. Its bulk stretches. Expands and explodes, surging forward like water pouring from an open drain pipe. It swallows Sorrow whole. It sucks the air from her lungs. Fills her nostrils, her mouth if it is open. Blocks her eyes. She sees nothing. Feels no air. Breathes no air.
She feels her fur singe, her skin hiss in irritation, but nothing yet penetrates. She attacks once more, her claws catching, hitting and tearing, but ultimately, remains trapped within her bubble, suffocating, blind and surrounded by poison.
The fire elemental's flames have lit bright again, orange, blue, white. It rolls toward the battle, surrounded by air gafflings making faint sounds, alternating between fear and support. Behind them, in the lake, the water flashes blue as the water elementals fight to keep their foothold.
[Roman Turner] He let loose with a howl of pure fear mixed rage when Sorrow was swallowed whole. Pass experience had taught him that things swallowed sometimes burst back out, but who had room for that kind of thought? In the same moment he howled he dove in with claws flashing.
[Sorrow] Trapped, sightless - surrounded by filth and foul disease - and there is a surging moment of panic underneath the rage. Some image in her mind - the La Brea tar pits - statues of long dead dinosaurs sunk in the bubbling ooze, the white hot heat of a California summer day, trailing behind and staring at the oozing, potted filth as the rest of the family surged forward, looking for ice cream.
That is a flash; mostly, she is a beast. Mostly: Sorrow is a monster and she gathers herself to surge forward, rending again and again, sight and sound lost. Just filth, and darkness, and the strain of her body of air.
[Sorrow] [+8]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[Roman Turner] Init +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[Phlegethon] Oilslick +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[Phlegethon] Firedude!
+5
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[Phlegethon] Oil slick - 15
Fire elemental - 15
Fate - 13
Sorrow - 12
[Sorrow] Sorrow: 1. Fight free! Rage 1: Fight free! Rage 2: Fight free!
[Roman Turner] 1a claw
1b claw
1r claw
[Phlegethon] Fire elemental: BURN!
[Phlegethon] Oil slick:
1. SQUEEEEZE
2. Hit Roman
[Phlegethon] Squeeze damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Spirits are creatures which do not follow the rules that the Garou have set down. They do not have the same value of life which others might, they, creatures who reform repeatedly after death.
They do not care as much for the sacks of meat, even when sacks of meat come to their aid.
HELP ME!
The cry is not for Fate, but for the air gafflings, a peremptory command. The airt spirits dive downward, their air fuelling the fire, which grows hotter by the second. The very air begins to shimmer. The heat is excrutiating.
Fate's fur catches fire.
Then the oil slick does.
(six damage. to both Roman and the oil slick. Soakable)
[Phlegethon] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Roman Turner] soak
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Roman Turner] Chicken Fried
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Sorrow] WP
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 9)
[Sorrow] +2 Str
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Action change, as Roman is now on the ground! Also, fire is scary.
Blast fire!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Sorrow] Rage 1: Break free!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] x_x
[Sorrow] Stamina!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Phlegethon] Sorrow feels the thick viscous body tighten around her like a vice. She feels something hard press against her body, straining against it, fighting against it. She feels it ease, then feels the vicious heat, scalding her even through the monster's coating.
The beast shudders.
It is all that she knows.
--
Fate dives at the monster, his claws bared, his throat raw with his howl. From the corner of his eye, he sees an orange burn, a bright orange light. Perhaps he feels relief that the fire elemental has joined the fight. Perhaps he thinks nothing at all, except that it is growing hot, as if the very air might catch on fire.
Then his fur does. He's alight, burning, scalding, his lungs searing.
He falls...
In the darkness, he feels his body surge, fighting against the dying of his neurons, of his cells. He feels a spark of life - but it is only just enough. It keeps his heart beating. Keeps his lungs moving. Nothing else. Not even consciousness.
The water laps higher than it had, slowly seeping up onto the shore, extinguishing the flames and subsuming him until only his mouth and nose remain above the water. He is human-formed now, just a boy, covered with burns that no one would ever survive.
--
Sorrow fights again and again to free herself, her lungs screaming, her eyes filled with poison. Suddenly, all around her, the beast shudders. The monster suddenly loses its cohesion, spilling down all about her, oil and poison, a bicycle tire, an old tennis racket, the strings gone. A single tennis shoe and a twisted Barbie doll. A toilet seat and plastic bags, utensils and an old camping cup. Plastic and debris sticks to her fur. Oil and toxin and poison.
Pain knifes through her chest like a blade. Her heart seizes, clamps down and her vision goes black. She feels her organs clench themselves raw, vomit rising in her throat.
(3 agg - poison)
[Roman Turner] The tips of his toes bobbed, just sticking out of the dirty water. There where his belly would be was an old bike tire with a plastic Wal-Mart bag tangled around it. Up further part of his face just broke the surface as it rose and fell gently with the lapping of the water. What a way for a kid from Kansas to end up.
[Sorrow] Everything is absent. Just blackness, this noxious poison and utter darkness all around. Sorrow's lungs are screaming for air; her body, her blood, her beating heart. Maybe breathing doesn't matter here in the umbra, where she's spirit in a sack of great and hair meat, but her body remembers the motion of it, all reflexive. She pushes and there is no given, just this impression of heat against her body, through the vicious fluid and all the trash suspended within, like some makeshift skeleton, all the detritus that could be consumed from the boggy bottom of the polluted river. She pushes and there is no give, as if she were fixed - she thinks of the tar pits again, a flashing image, and them concrete wet, fixing slowly dry. The ancestor spirit joined to her is raging, snarling impossibly creative curses in a language the folds of her mind remember only now, because he is here, enervating them, displacing that which is essentially her with that which is essentially him and then -
- there is no more coherence. The thing dissolves in a great flood of trash and poison, her eyes are streaming, her chest is burning, she has breathed and swallowed the viscous black ooze, and now the Crinos beast staggers forward two half-steps, retching onto the ground, and thin stream of black bile. The sight is absolutely incongruous - the massive warformed Garou heaving its shoulders, handpaws on its thighs with a decapitated barbie doll caught in the fur of its ruff by one twisted hand.
When the world returns, when the first wave of nausea has receded, Sorrow spins in a great arc, searching for Roman -
- and spies him, human-formed, bobbing in the water.
Fuck!
The curse is human. It's thoughtless, shot through with a spike of rage that blisters her throat as surely as the poison she breathed and swallowed did. Without thought, she scrambles down the bank toward the river, wading until she has to shift to Glabro to swim toward the boy.
She does not know whether he's unconscious or dead.
[Phlegethon] He's alive. She knows before she even reaches him. She can hear the harsh sound of his breathing, laboured and rasping through seared nostrils and mouth. His skin is blackened and weeping serum from breached blisters.
If he were human, he'd be dead by now. As it is, he is just barely alive.
The water of the river is rising, washing over the oil, sparks of blue and brightness as water elementals begin to cleanse, bubbling softly to each other. The fire elemental has retreated backwards slowly, but makes a command of the air spirits. Their numbers are diminished: they had been giving their energies to the greater jaggling, and many have faded away. Still, those which are left begin to dive toward the oil slick, their bodies pulsing with effort as they begin to cleanse as well.
The water begins to wash away the poison from Sorrow's skin, causing the oil and poison to slowly seep around her. Blue illuminations begin to intensify about her as the water elementals set to work - on the water, not herself and not her packmate.
Her heart misses another beat. Her organs seize once more. Blood has begun to mix in with the oil, weeping from her pours, dripping from her mouth.
(one additional agg)
[Roman Turner] His legs were slightly apart. Both arms were limp, slightly spread like his legs as he gently rocked in the water like a forgotten fishing bobber. If his cousin could see him now she would swear he was Chicken Fried, only they forgot to dip him in breading first. He was a burned up mess that kind of looked like it might of been human once. Kinda looking like when a hotdog falls off the grill in to the flames and bubbles up, charring. Somewhere in that mess a heart struggled like a trapped butterfly on it's last leg.
[Sorrow] This is what she feels - just the stutterstep of her heart, the way her stomach turns, the background of nausea as her organs fail, as her body weeps blood. She breathes out a fine spray of it as she struggles through the water to Roman's body. The sound of his breathing - close now - is enough to spike through the rage burning under her skin. She grabs him by an ankle first, skin sloughing off in her hands like paper from the burns.
Turns him like that until she can slide one arm under his right shoulder, holding him across her body like a lifeguard as she turns back and kicks off toward the shore, swimming through the water as the elementals begin cleansing - the water, the river, the droplets of oil scattered with the death of the beast.
Not them.
At the river's edge, she pulls him and pushes him up onto the muddied shore, and ducks under the water once before rising again. The pain is distant, blood is slick on her forearms, her hands, it weeps from the pores of her face, fills the back of her throat, mixes with the water and is washed away.
Sorrow spits out another mouthful of blood, and starts to haul herself from the river onto the shore, keeping herself between the Ragabash and the retreating fire elemental. On the shore - on all fours - she takes a moment to gather herself, breathing heavily, feeling the way her body is slowly breaking down.
[Roman Turner] He gained weight when he was hauled up out of the water to lay like a charred rag doll in all it's bubbled, cracked, burned flesh glory. What was left of his hair was sticking up in tiny little patches on his burned skull. Faint wet sounding breaths rattled from between blistered, cracked lips.
[Phlegethon] The water sparks blue all around them, great washes of it, brilliant enough to blind the eye for a moment.
Sorrow leaves the water, oil and blood dripping from her as she does. She is not yet clean, but is cleaner than she was. The poison leaves her woozy, her breath coming fast and deep as if she cannot quite get enough oxygen. Vertigo assaults her, the ground seeming to move beneath her feet.
She stays between the fire elemental and the Garou. The fire elemental has receded almost entirely, starting to slide away from the water and everything it hates.
The water has completely covered the remains of the oil spill. Their efforts to cleanse, to heal the land and ground turn the water a brilliant and vibrant blue around the source of greatest taint, the body itself.
The effects of the poison appear to be slowing. It has been seconds, and she feels no worse.
[Sorrow] Gnosis!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Sorrow] There she remains for another half-minute, the world spinning around her, water streaming from her hair. She looks like some monstrous, pre-historic version of a human woman assaulted by a child's toy. The broken Barbie doll is still tangled - now in blonde hair, long in this form, wiry and coarse, too. Vertigo is as unfamiliar a sensation as nausea; she blinks a half-dozen times, keeping her gaze trained on the ground between her hands, until the spinning stops well enough for her to shift her weight, to settle against the bank.
The handful of talens she has are tucked behind the rubbermaid containers in the old Eagle packhouse, in a brown corduroy messenger bag. The water glows turquoise - like some tropic island, like the glittering Mediterranean waters around Majorca - and the oil slowly disappears under the surface of the water.
Sorrow scoots further down the bank, dipping her feet back into the water. With a faint hum in the back of her throat, the subtle glow of the earring against her pale skin, the world reorients itself again, every sussurrent whisper has meaning, here.
Usually, she listens. To the wind and the rain, or the song of the sky, the chatterings of lunes: listens.
Then: more than her ankles. Sorrow slips back into the water, standing thigh deep now. Her clothing is already soaked, both soaked and befouled. She reaches down and cups her hands, pulling them up dripping, two palmfuls of water seeping back into the river between her closed fingers, the slaps the surface lightly until she has the attention of one of the efficient little gafflings cleansing and healing the poisoned waters.
"Heal him." That's what she says, her low voice ringing, gutteral in this form, spirit shaped. Even if Roman were awake, he would not understand the words. "I am she who offers sorrow and this is Fate. Heal him. We came to your call, we fought to save the River, the two of us, Fenrir and Child of Gaia. The air spirits came to find us on the other side, and we felt the breeze and we came across, and we ran to your aid. We came, and we fought, and we fought with you to destroy it.
"Heal him, please - hear me. He lies here because he came to fight for you."
[Phlegethon] "Here," bubbles the gaffling. "Bring it here."
It is all that it says. If Sorrow, now Kora, complies, it bubbles quietly to itself, a low slow murmur of sound as it slides over Roman's inert and scorched body. It whistles softly to itself as it caresses over his face, causing the unconscious boy to sputter and cough.
After a moment, the creature flares bright blue, the colour of the spirit world, the colour of gnosis as it is spent or used.
It does its, wee thing.
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Phlegethon] The wounds close briefly, just slightly and the gaffling makes a sound of disappointment. It floats away. Perhaps Sorrow thinks it to have abandoned them.
Moments later, though, it has returned, the water moving with a greater disturbance. The gaffling is bubbling and babbling explaining to the jaggling as it tug-pulls-cajoles it over. The jaggling pauses, but does not move immediately.
Its body shapes itself to a head-like apparatus, lifting out of the water, its own liquid cascading down like a waterfall, cycling back up as if it were a fountain, as if it were driven by anything but its own weight. It has no eyes, but it appears to be studying the burnt and damaged Garou.
"Things of mostly water will stay still." As if Kora were about to move him.
Blue glows bright and sparks and the surge of water shifts, cascading over Roman's body, down, then up again, to fall again.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Phlegethon] Romans' skin half heals now, in the harsh pink of new flesh. The burns are raw but no longer charred. He is able to breathe more easily. He can stand, himself, his muscles gathering themselves close to the bone. The scar is fresh and visible in his skin, across the front of his shoulder, extending over the collar bone, just kissing the curve where his shoulder meets his neck. The scar is hideous, puckered and shiny with new flesh.
Only just healed of his wyrm-marks and now, Roman has scars all his own.
Kora feels her body jolt, her organs jerking and clenching within her body, a fresh wave of nausea assaulting her. The water jaggling slowly begins to sink back into the water, bubbling and burbling as it does.
"Things of mostly water will wash," it says.
[Phlegethon] (+1 agg)
[Roman Turner] When he came to it was with a choking cough. He gulped at the air and his first ehale came out as rapasy gasp.
"Kora?"
He hurt everywhere. A tub of aloe would no help this kind of pain.
[Sorrow] "Thanks," Kora manages, as the jaggling begins to bubble back. "Thank you - " in the wake of the gaffling too - indistinguishable from the rest by now, as if human courtesy mattered to these things.
Roman's floating now, breathing, sputtering back to consciousness. They are both standing in water up to their waists, perhaps deeper. He is floating on the surface, and she holding him against her body, but releases him when he comes to consciousness, turns bends over, coughing as the poison asserts itself against her body, turning it back against itself.
"Hey kid," she says when Roman wakes up. "The monster's dead. And we're still alive. Wash yourself off - " she is a bloodied mess, blood is weeping from her pores, dripping down into her eyes. And she turns away to spit another stream of blood from her mouth. "In the water when you've got your bearings. Then we're going back, okay? We'll need a rite of cleansing, too. But first, wash."
Once Kora is certain that Roman has his bearings and his feet she ducks back under the surface of the water, scrubbing whatever she can of the oil from her body, taking a mouthful, spitting it back out, again and again as if she were rinsing with mouthwash.
[Roman Turner] There wasn't going to be scrubbing going on. He might go under the water, but he wasn't going to touch those burn scars because they hurt worse than the worse sunburn already and moving just pulled the skin that much tighter
He was still kind of out of it, managing to slur out.
"What happened?"
[Phlegethon] They begin to wash the oil and poison from their skin. Around them, the water spirits begin to bubble and burble, gathering around as blood and foetid blackness begins to slough off Kora's body.
Blue flashes bright around them, the water around them bubbles and boils without heat. The blood and oil, the poison, the foetid clumps of what is best not thought of - it all begins to fade away.
Still gravely injured, blood dripping from her body, Kora finds the nausea easing a little, the vertigo fading away. The poison washed from her skin and she is no longer assaulted by it.
Later, the spirits all begin to fade away, less now than there were before. Some have faded away entirely in the efforts of cleansing the river, their energies expended. Those that are left return from whence they came, carried by currents throughout the river.
[Sorrow] She comes back up for air, water sluicing down over her face and hair. Here and there, droplets of blood comingle with the water, tinting it pink. "I don't know what happened," she says, more than a little bit breathless now. "I was swallowed up by the spirit. I couldn't see anything, couldn't breathe, couldn't hear. I just shoved through. Once, I felt this blast of heat through the - the filth, the foulness, yeah? When I came back out, you were floating in the river, all burned up.
"C'mon," they're cleansed now, she's at the water's edge, closing her eyes against a lesser wave of nausea, or the memory of the unfamiliar sensation, breathing through her nose, water coursing down her body. She plants her hands in the muddied bank and pushes herself out of the water, turning to offer Roman her hand. " - I'm going to feel this soon. I'd like to be someplace rather more safe when that happens."