nessie.

[Wyrmbreaker] At night, with the precipitous drop of summer into winter, the lakewater is actually a few degrees warmer than the air. For all that, water is far more effective a heatsink than air, and when Lukas sloshes out of the lake --

Because that is what the Shadow Lord is doing. Sloshing out of the lake in great stomping strides, dragging something long and slithering and dead behind him.

-- he's shivering all over, so violently that the larger muscle masses of his back and his chest, his thighs, are nearly vibrating. He's unashamed of this, his body's natural defense against cold. He doesn't try to suppress it, or hide it.

And, he's grinning. Wyrmbreaker is in a great mood. Victorious and happy with his victory. The water drops to his waist, then his knees. The thing he's dragging comes out of the water: what appears to be an enormous sea-snake at first glance is, in fact, something closer to a centipede, horribly mutated. Dozens of tiny, humanoid arms run down the slick sides of the creature. The head is very nearly human, though the eyes are set to either side of the head. A fish's eyes, empty and dead.

"Hey!" he calls to the Garou on land. "Can any of you help me out with a Rite of Cleansing?"

[Muerte Fria] The night had been almost drab... until some crazy Shadow Lord dragged his water logged ass out of the lake, pulling a mangled massive centipede along with him, with human arms, a human face, a beast of nightmares torn asunder and made nothing but dead, tainted flesh.

He requested a Rite of Cleansing, and Soledad huffed and slid down from her perch on the dock railing to land her sneakered feet on the planks below. A sweater had been wrapped about her waist, knotted under the still very mild swell of her midsection, and she was undoing the knot as she approached Wyrmbreaker. When she reached him, she held out the plain black sweater to him to use either as a towel or to pull onto himself. It was ridiculously massive, probably drowned her when she put it on, an XL in men's. When she spoke, her voice was low and quiet, like she'd forgotten how to use it in the past week.

"Dry," was the first word, left alone as its own sentence. Her head bobbed toward the Sentinels. "Taggart can cleanse. I am unsure of his Theurge."

[Boy] His eyes snap from Marrick finally, to the figure of the man climbing out of frigid water. Boy's shoulders curl. His 'Hackles' raise, and as his eyes scan over the features of the thing he was hauling out of the water, his lips curl.

"That slimy bastard..."

[Hatchet] "Oh look," Hatchet says mildly, as Lukas sloshes out of the lake, "Wyrmbreaker found a wee sea monster."

A moment later. "Shut the fuck up, Sol," he snaps, suddenly and viciously, without looking at her. "You do not and have never spoken for me."

[Rory O'Bryne] (OOC: I'm sorry, I had to pick up my SO. )

[Charlie] Hey!

The metis cranes his neck towards the distant shore where the Alpha of the Unbroken is sloshing out of the ink-black waters with a strange trophy in hand. As if it had been his name called and not a general request for cleansing, the skinny Greek kid gets his hiking boots under himself and is working on standing up when Hatchet snaps at Sol without looking in her direction. That gives him brief pause, and he remains hunkered down as he hollers back, "I can do it!"

[Rory O'Bryne] He lays down the law, and who she will answer to. Him, or his packmate Curata. Her brows knit together briefly as she commits the name to memory, as well as where they live. The Brotherhood.

She nods. "I am in noom rine, for now."

She pauses, and might be about to take her leave, before someone drags a... sea monster? from the lake. Rory just stares - then remembers herself and drops her gaze, respectfully.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas looks at the proffered sweater curiously, peering at it through the gloom. Then he shakes his head and presses it gently back.

"No thanks. I'll be all right."

There's a rather sharp exchange between Hatchet and Soledad. Lukas, who has more than an inkling of the story behind them, looks from one to the other and says absolutely nothing. Then Charlie pipes up. Wyrmbreaker heaves the thing up higher, slinging it over his shoulder to drag onto the stony lakeshore.

"Actually," he remarks, "I think it's a wee lake monster." He grabs it by one of its plump little arms, heaves the rest of its length ashore. The arm snaps in his hand with an audible crack and henceforth flops emptily. "What do Stag's Galliards say, anyway, Hatchet? Does Nessie actually exist?"

And he throws the thing down. Twenty, thirty feet of slick, thin sea(lake)monster flops to the ground. Wyrmbreaker shakes slime off his hands.

"Thank you," he says to Charlie as the Theurge approaches.

[Muerte Fria] Soledad's sweater is pressed back, and she rolled slim shoulders in dismissal and tossed it behind her again to catch an arm and knot it at her front once more.

But Hatchet just has to go and open his big. fat. mouth.

Rage snaps and sizzles like water hitting a pan full of hot oil, and the Ahroun turned her head, teeth bared, to snap back at Hatchet.

"Wasn't speaking for you, was I? Stating a fact."

The words are bland, void of swear words and insults, but her voice was pure venom, her expression contorted with Rage and Hate. What love might have been there was long evaporated and gone now, it seemed.

[Hatchet] He could cleanse. He could have offered. Gaia knows he has enough respect for Wyrmbreaker, even if he would love to throw Katherine into Maelstrom. But Charlie is a Theurge, and Hatchet only ever learned the rite out of necessity. Charlie is the one who is supposed to do this sort of thing, and so Charlie -- who aims for Keeper of the Land, and this is the Land he would Keep -- hops up to go help the Alpha of the Unbroken.

Hatchet watches. And his brows tug together fiercely, as though in pain, as he watches the Fury jog over.

He turns to Rory. "The Kinfolk who run the Brotherhood are of our tribe. We don't make a fuss about that. They take care of themselves. We take care of the Brotherhood. As long as they're treated with respect, that is. So... try to keep bloodshed on their second floor to a minimum."

He looks back to Lukas and smirks. "They say that she's a tease and a fattie, more fae than mortal, more Wyld than Wyrm. I haven't met her myself, but I'm inclined to agr-- shut the FUCK up, Sol!" he roars, this time snapping his head around to scowl at her.

[Rory O'Bryne] Muerte Fria says something, Buried Hatchets snaps back, and the hatred between them has Rory flinching - visibly. But he's telling her things, and she listens carefully.

Minimal Bloodshed on the second floor. "Yessir."

She hides a grin at the way he talks of Nessie, dipping her chin so that her hair slides forward from the confines of her hood, her expression lost beneath it. He snaps at Sol again, and there's another flinch, try as she might to hold it back. She hugs her knees tighter to her chest, and keeps her gaze firmly lowered, until she shifts her position slightly to watch Charlie instead as he moves to Wyrmbreaker and his lake monster.

[Boy] Boy's scowl at Lukas and his prize monster turns to a scowl aimed at Soledad, and then Even at Hatchet as the poisonous exchange continues.

"C'mon, lets get out of here." He says to Marrick, and the two move off to leave.

"If I ever talk to you like that, just stick my head up my own ass, alright?"

[Charlie] Once his offer of assistance has been accepted--and for all anyone could tell, all it was was an offer: Theurge or not, challenging for Keeper of the Land or not, there are certain Fosterns, even certain Cliaths, who would not accept help from a mule, and Charlie had to have been mentally preparing himself for the Lord to turn him down in favor of someone else--Charlie springs to his feet and starts off down the shore, his hiking boots sinking into the sand and his gait loose. He's all loose limbs and bony joints, tall and doomed to die with a teenager's build, and he doesn't do so much as blink as his packbrother roars at the Uktena behind him.

Charlie cants his head to the side as he comes upon the long trophy, and he rolls his skinny shoulders with a crackle of vertebrae as he crams his hands into his pockets.

"That thing's huge," he says, as if Wyrmbreaker has no inkling of the size of the creature he'd just slaughtered. "If you help me get it across the Gauntlet I'll do the cleansing on the other side."

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's pale eyes flick between Hatchet and his once-packmate. And he leaves them be.

His hands free now, Wyrmbreaker pushes his hair back from his forehead, wipes his face on his forearm. The Ahroun is still shivering so hard droplets of water flick off his skin. He paces away a few steps as Charlie examines the carcass, going to wash himself off in the lake. When he's finished, he sloshes ashore again, wringing his clothes -- what remains of them, which is to say, his dedicated underclothes -- out the best he can.

Then he shifts to his wolf shape. And plants his paws wide, shakes, water flying off his thick fur in all directions, the sodden and plastered strands bursting upright in short, damp spikes.

Seconds later he's back beside the creature and the Theurge. He whuffs an affirmative, lowering his head to grip the thing between his jaws. A moment later the Ahroun's shape becomes indistinct, translucent, gone.

Umbralside, the Caern is a place of purity and power. This close to the Caern's heart, they can almost feel the spirit energy humming in the air. Charlie, Theurge that he is, can feel it.

Wyrmbreaker's fur seems darker still on this side: a deep night-black, solid and pure. His eyes burn with rage like lightning. He drops the dead thing, licking his tongue in and out a few times to rid himself of the taste. And then he sinks to his haunches beside it, apparently deciding to include himself in Charlie's cleansing ritual.

[Muerte Fria] Hatchet roars at Soledad again.
Soledad keeps a hard, searing, almost quivering glare on Hatchet.

A few tense seconds slide by, and the Ahroun's muscles shake almost as Wyrmbreaker's do, except for a very different reason. But rather than ratchet herself into Hispo and make the charge, rather than pour the Philodox's blood on the Caern ground or die trying, the Uktena snapped her teeth at air, turned, and walked inland.

Away.

[Ewan Selwyn] *Ewan strolled though the umbral reflection of the caern. He'd been patroling the outter edges of the bawn, checked in with the guardians and was now heading back towards the middle. Seeing other garou ahead he turned and moved that way.*

[Rory O'Bryne] Wyrmbreaker and his kill disappear, and Charlie presumably follows. She has yet to be dismissed by her Elder, and as such remains where she is - crouched with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, waiting for Hatchet and Muerte Fria to erupt into combat, despite the fact the later walked away.

She says nothing, which is hardly surprising now that they have heard how she speaks. She simply waits, quietly, instead, for anything else Buried Hatchet might have to tell her.

[Charlie] Anyone who says he's more comfortable in the Umbra than on the other side of the Gauntlet is a few steps closer to madness than the average person. The Umbra is a place of wonder, sure, it's more vibrant and alive than the realm where most of the life the Garou know happens, but it's also mostly uncharted, patently dangerous, and more likely to take the lives of those who do not treat it with respect than it is to simply teach a valuable lesson before spitting the defeated back across the Gauntlet.

The Fostern and the metis step across to the Penumbra in different forms, Wyrmbreaker in his wolf skin and Lights Out in homid, and once there they find that the moon overhead is that much brighter, the stars are that much more luminescent, the air is crisper and what grass and sand and stones there are to be found that much more colorful. The Theurge takes a deep breath once they're across, shakes his head as if to clear water out of his ears, and strides off to retrieve the items that he needs for a successful cleansing as Wyrmbreaker attempts to get the taste of the many-armed fish monster out of his maw.

Lights Out doesn't go far, just ducks around the side of one of the hangars for a few moments to collect the accoutrements necessary for the rite, the willow branch and the lighter, and as he comes back, his dark eyes take in the approaching form of Obsidian Data's Alpha, of Wyrmbreaker perched beside his trophy.

There are no more words from the metis as he sparks the willow branch alight. His eyes go faraway, as if he's simultaneously reaching out and in to tap that part of himself born for this, and then he starts to walk a circle around the monster and its captor.

[-1 Gnosis.
Rituals+Charisma: Cleansiiiing!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 7)

[Charlie] [I'm rerolling. This is bullshit.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5 (Botch x 3 at target 8)

[Ewan Selwyn] (( oh god))

[Charlie] [Stamina]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 3 (Botch x 1 at target 8)

[Ewan Selwyn] (( Oh god!!))

[Charlie] [I quit.]

[Ewan Selwyn] *Ewan pauses a respectful distance back. He grew up in garou society. He knew a rite when one was going on. A flicker of his lupine ear and the black wolf sniffed the air. Watching the Fury Theurge perform the rite.

He was silent and respectful as the rite started. Watching and listening*

[Charlie] [The ground is hard.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Charlie] [Soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Hatchet] The Alpha of the Unbroken and the supposed Omega of cross the Gauntlet together to cleanse the centipede-like lake monster that Lukas just killed, and rather than snapping her jaws or not Shutting the Fuck Up, Soledad turns and walks away. Hatchet shakes his head in something like disgust, or disappointment, and turns back to contemplating the water. Rory is still beside him, and after awhile he takes a breath.

"Welcome to Chicago."

[Rory O'Bryne] He takes a breath, and welcome's her to Chicago. She tips her head, rolling her chin along her kneecap to look at him, meeting his gaze only briefly before her own drops to somewhere around his chin. She looks back out over the water.

"Thanks."

Curiosity is almost visibly rushing through her, questions threatening to spill over into the silence. She holds back. It is not her place.