i'm not mourning.

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker is tending the shrine of the totem tonight: that great anvil-shaped rock that bears a not-coincidental resemblance to those mighty thunderheads one finds over large continental masses. Embedded in the rock is an axe; wrapped around the haft of the axe, reaching down for sustenance, are the roots of a rapidly-growing oak sapling.

It is this that the Ahroun tends tonight. There are bodies by the shrine, slain enemies laid out, their chest cavities cracked open. Wyrmbreaker is laying the hearts and viscerae of unknown enemies upon the flat top of the rock in sacrifice to the storm-god. Oak spirits are normally peaceful things, but not the oaks of Perun. It's bloody, ritualistic work, which the Ahroun partakes in barechested, lounge pants rolled up to the knee, bare feet squelching amidst earth muddied with blood, bare hands red up to the elbows. It is at once jarring and utterly natural to see Wyrmbreaker, normally so civilized and reserved, like this.

When he sees Asha passing, he calls to her. "What are you up to?" he asks her, cheerfully enough -- blood and butchery all around.

[Asha Singh] Even under a failing moon, in the umbra, near the Caern's heart, amidst the shrines to the totems of Maelstom - pack totems, tribal totems, some fallen into a sort of elegant neglect, the remaining broodlings gathered about them drowsing, others - like that of Perun - covered in blood, grim reminders of the work at hand, the necessity of blood and sacrifice, the gruesome work of war - Asha is a bright thing. Brighter here than in the real world, here - where the breeding of her tribe is all the more evident, as if her black hair and black eyes and deep brown skin were all somehow moonlit from beneath, under, within.

In sharp contrast to Wyrmbreaker, she is not bloodied, not muddied. She is collected, in her dark jeans and crisp white oxford, recently pressed, so recently pressed that the hot scent of the iron on fabric touches the air around her. Her right hand is in the front pocket of her black jeans, the sunglasses (dedicated, those) are pushed back onto the crown of her head, holding back the elegant disorder of her black hair, the huge surfaces of the lenses gleaming with the reflected light of luna. Her feet are bare, though, the undedicated sandals abandoned somewhere admist the ruin that is the Caern in the Tellurian. Her share of last night's trophies are in her left hand. The least part of it, cliath that she is.

Wyrmbreaker calls out to her, and she looks up, sidelong, the lush line of her mouth a narrow sort of twist. Some of her rage has been spent; it leaves her feeling - not calm, not precisely - but emptied, just a touch. With more space inside her for words and other things. "Hey." - she calls back, her mouth pressing together, her nose wrinkling near the tip in thought; the hesitation is clear. Then, " - I was going to the graves."

Maudlin, that. What else do you expect from Silver Fangs, though? Madness and history, the history of madness, written back into the world.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas straightens up, flexing his shoulders back to crack his spine, looking in the direction of the graves.

"Let me finish here," he says, "and I'll join you."

It doesn't take him much longer -- precious viscerae torn out, stripped of gristle and fat, laid glistening onto to the shrine. The carcasses hauled off to the side for later disposal; dumped into the lake, perhaps, or fed to flame-spirits. When he's finished the air is thick with the scent of blood and organ-meats. He cleans his hands by rubbing sandy lakeshore dirt over them, then nods to Asha.

"Okay. Let's go."

[Asha Singh] Asha rocks back on her heels, watching as he finished the brutal work. She is unphased by the filth, by the gleaming fat tossed aside, by the glistening viscera looped and whorled atop the shrine - though she makes no move to interrupt, and does not offer her Alpha a hand.

The creature falls into step beside him when he finishes. Her legs are impossibly long given her slightness - she has the aspect, seen from the right angle, in long shadows - of a spider, some other insect - but the likeness is fleeting, passing. Still, she takes one and a half-steps for every two taken by her Alpha, though by a neat trick she does not seem like she is hurrying so much as stalking, precise and delicate and sure.

The graves are raw; a half-dozen still mounded, the earth not yet settled. "You have packmates buried here." It isn't a question; her voice is oddly subdued. There's an accent beneath it, which does not emerge under most circumstances. The failing moon casts the graveyard in a pale, cool light.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas nods again, quietly. Then he points them out: "Sampson," and then quieter, "and Mrena. Both of the Unbroken Circle, when we ran under the Talons of Horus.

"Walks-the-Tracks, too, though she never had a chance to formally bond with us."

His hand falls back to his side. He considers those graves for a moment: each still neatly tended, the pinwheel before Sampson's still spinning with the lake breeze, though the colors are fading now.

"Who are you here to mourn?"

[Asha Singh] "I'm not - " the girl cuts a look back at Wyrmbreaker's profile. There is a vicious sort of speed subsumed in the single gesture. Her voice is sharp, the natural sullenness undergirds her tone, curls at the edges of it like paper curling in a flame. " - mourning."

Away, then. Her narrow body stiff underneath the rather fine - if utilitarian - clothes, the white shirt stark against her dark skin. She's not mourning. It's something else that lacks a word; it's a half-dozen words shoved together, none of which she knows.

She's stopped, though. In front of sklora-Myrgen's grave, and stands there with her body held stiff, sideways to the foot of the mounded earth, her right shoulder toward the marker, her left toward the expance of the lake. Nearly diffident, she tosses her cleansed trophies onto the spent earth. There's a moment where she almost says something to the grave, but she looks up at her Alpha, abrupt, last minute, almost guiltily, and swallows whatever it might've been, quick-as-you please.

[Wyrmbreaker] She's not mourning, she says, a teenage sullenness underscoring that. It makes Lukas look at her curiously; mildly.

After a moment, "Why not?"

[Asha Singh] "Because mourning is stupid." - the girl replies, wiping her now-empty hand on her thigh. She has not looked back to the grave, not even to see where the trophies landed. She has not looked back at Lukas, either. Breathing deeply, evenly, her heart pounding fast in her chest, her dark eyes fixed on the calm, glittering expanse of the lake, darker than the city will ever be, its black mirror, but still shining with reflected light. "I'm just mad."

She doesn't stound it. Just sullen, that hint of reflexive anger, this sort of expectancy beneath it. "Dying's stupid, too."

[Wyrmbreaker] The truth is, Lukas is sometimes too damn perfect for his own good. Just listen to what the spirits say of him. So fucking glorious. So fucking honorable. So fucking wise. Ready to challenge for Adren already if he'd just step up and take it. So fucking clearsighted, so controlled, so apparently untouched by petty angers and jealousies and emotions.

It makes him seem harsh and uncomprehending of others' failings, sometimes. It makes him berate them for weaknesses and follies he does not seem vulnerable to, and therefore cannot be tempted by. It can make him seem self-righteous; superior; condescending: so quick to point out the flaws of others when he himself seems to not even understand what it is to struggle against failure.

That was a bone that lay between himself and the Silver Fang that now lies in the earth. Wyrmbreaker once berated sklora-Myrgen on the choices he made when Wyrmbreaker himself was not there to make them. Did not have to make those hard, bitter choices even when he relived that night.

That Lukas does not understand temptation, or failure, or emotion is not true in the end. Lukas hews to a clear, hard, straight path not because it's his nature. His nature is wild: is savagery and blood, is the ritual sacrifice of foes on the altar of his god. His nature is the wolf and the storm. Is domination and brutality. Is hotblooded instinct, is bestial. It's sheer control, sheer force of will, that keeps him to his path. And it's fear of bone-deep flaws like wrath, like pride, like avarice, that keeps him to his path.

All of which is to say: it's easy to expect Lukas to berate Asha now, then. To lecture her on mourning or grief or weakness or god knows what else. Or simply, by his goddamn impenetrable even-toned rightness, to make her feel diminished.

But he doesn't. He looks at sklora-Myrgen's grave for a while, letting silence settle between them and soothe the younger Ahroun's nerves.

Then, "I thought he was too proud, and full of the sort of Fang self-entitlement that drives me crazy. But I also thought he was a good warrior, one of our strongest, and willing to help those weaker than himself. Willing, at the end, to protect them." A small shrug. "I think it's stupid and frustrating that he's dead, too.

"Did you know him well?"

[Asha Singh]The silence extends, meant to soothe her nerves, to allow her space for her weakness. Except that her nerves are not soothed, not by what passes for silence here in the Caern's heart, surrounded by the constant hum of the spirits, not here, at the edge of the lake, the spirit of the wind singing a low northern song, the waters constant. The darkness does not sooth her either, not the expanse of the lake, nor the darkness of the tree inside her, the roots that draw her down toward the heart of the earth, the branches that extend above her head, all the way to luna, the lucency, the madness, the strength underlying it all.

The girl's arms are crossed low over her stomach, her body language tight, narrow - like a sailboat lashed down for the winter, the sails collapsed and rolled on themselves, tied tight underneath the canvas. When Lukas mentions Fang self-entitlement Asha cuts him a sharp, direct look, right over her shoulder, her black eyes sparking in the pale moonlight, her generous mouth twisted, peeling back from her teeth in the liminal suggestion of a snarl, swallowed in the next moment. The look, though, remains. Her eyes are older, too. The past echoes in her, the tree and the twisted branches, the deep, strong roots.

Once, there was no madness in the line.
Once, they ruled unquestioned, divinely blessed - her Chosen.

Now: a girl half-a-world away from her ancestral lands, from the spiny teeth of the world, the great heights, the impossible valleys, stands at the edge of the poorly tendered grave of a barely remembered cliath. He had no children. The line dies here. Ashes, dust.

"He gave up," she says this clearly, her voice whip-sharp, the anger a bright thing in it. Luminous. " - his klaive for Maelstrom and his ancestors for Athena."

She down at the raw mound of dirt. She hates the earth. Hates the mud. Hates the dead. She's jealous of it all, and kicks the soil in her frustration, her bare brown toes. "I met him before, in that stupid place he came from. With all those stupid servants, all dust and shadows, and all those crazy, stupid people." Her arms tighten around her torso, and she looks back out to the lake. "I'm gonna go back there. See if anyone's left to hear the news."

[Wyrmbreaker] The sharpness of the girl-wolf's tone draws a brief, quirk-browed glance from Wyrmbreaker. His tone is mild:

"I didn't know that. But that doesn't change that he also once presumed to challenge an Adren for his position. And lead a Ragabash mission. And behave, time and again, as though his Tribe alone gave him the right to do what his rank and earned status in this Sept did not.

"And those things, in turn, do not detract from the fact that he died bravely, protecting those weaker than himself. That he did not hoard his own strength but tried to share it and teach those weaker than himself. That he was strong enough an Alpha to lead a Garou who everyone else had all but given up on.

"These were all things sklora-Myrgen did, or were. They're all part of the life he lived, short as it was. Don't canonize or demonize the dead just because they died, Asha, tribesman or not. It's dishonest, and worse, it's disrespectful to those who died. If you raise them up as shining paragons of all that you hope to be, you rob them of who they were. You deny that they were ever real, that they had thoughts and emotions and flaws and triumphs, that they were complex, that they lived and were alive. You strip away their individuality and make them your effigies to crown or burn as you like."

There's a pause, looking at the still-fresh earth of the young Fang's grave. The last of his line. Amongst the last of his dying people, dying faster than even the rest of their entire dying race.

"When I die," Lukas says quietly, "I don't want to be set on a pedestal. I want people to remember who I was, what I did. Not who they wanted me to be, or what they wanted to me have done."

[Wyrmbreaker] [shit. "wanted ME TO have done."]

[Asha Singh] "You sound," her voice is quiet but not soft. Underneath the tone is a low simmer of temper that can turn solid as easily as molten. Now it simply moves underneath the surface of her words. " - you," she turns back to Lukas as he continues, her mouth tight, her nostrils flaring. "you sound like you've got a little checklist inside your head, like - like - I don't know. Like a housekeeper doing her accounts, and a line drawn on the sherry to keep the maids out of it. And - you just want to add things up and then turn them back into words so you can say things and pretend that they're true."

Then she looks away again, out toward the lake, curling her toes in the raw, cool earth, letting the soil sift between them.

"I'm not canonizing him. I'm not demonizing him. I'm not even mourning because mourning is stupid. And I'm not going to measure his life the way you do, because I know more than you. Things - things I'm not even gonna tell you because you'd just turn it back into lines on your checklist, and anyway you don't need to know. It's just a story to you, not a real thing.

"I'm gonna go there, anyway. Where he came from. And see if there's anyone left. Thomas drove us the first time. He knows the way."

[Wyrmbreaker] "Who's measuring, Asha?" Now Wyrmbreaker turns to his packmate, something fierce and hardbitten in the gesture, bitten back. "Are you even listening to what I'm saying?

"I'm remembering all he did, good and bad. All that I saw. I'm not summing it. I don't sum things up. That's the whole point. The good does not negate the bad. There is no final balance at the bottom of the sheet to check against some arbitrary scale of good vs. evil. And there's sure as hell no excuse for ignoring the bad just because there was good as well. Or vice versa.

"He was a man. He was a Garou. He did great things and he did stupid things. He's dead now, and I refuse to force his memory to conform to some one easy label in my mind. If anyone's trying to measure and assign sklora-Myrgen to one category, it's you -- though I don't think that's even what you're doing, is it?

"I think no matter how far from home you've come, there's a seed inside you that still believes all the propaganda your tribe fed you. Or wants to believe, because the alternative is unthinkable. And you've seized onto sklora-Myrgen as some sort of shining fairytale of the Glory of the Fangs, and god forbid anyone tarnish that image with the truth because it'll mean breaking that illusion that you already know is false."

That was perhaps more than he meant to say, and he's angry now, his temper a volatile thing around them, heady as the scent of blood all over him. The Ahroun's nostrils flare on a furious inhale, and he turns back to sklora-Myrgen's grave.

[Asha Singh]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Wyrmbreaker] [percep + emp!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Asha Singh] "You're so - " The slight creature whirls on her Alpha, so balanced, so elegant that she looks like she's dancing, that she looks like she is flying. Her black hair whips around her face and then streams out behind her as she charges two steps, three and four steps closer to him, the beast in her livid in her black eyes, in the whipcord body language of her lean frame, in the ferocity of her hard, direct look - blazing with breeding, all the promised madness of her tribe. Dumb, is the word on her tongue, but she swallows it back, contains it within the confines of her frame, bites back the consonant with a twist of her mouth that verges on a snarl, the same way she bites back the edge of near-frenzy, swallows hard against it, feels the hot promise of it in the back of her throat, behind her eyes, " - you don't know anything."

[Wyrmbreaker] Asha, young as she is, is one of this Sept's more lethal warriors. Wyrmbreaker has seen it for himself time and again; Sinclair, the other vicious beast in the pack, has spoken of it with admiration.

It's some testament to the Shadow Lord's resolve, then, that he doesn't back up an instinctive step when Asha wheels on him. When her rage spikes so hard it curdles the air around them. It's testament to his resolve that he doesn't react with instant violence, himself: bristling against her bristling, instinct to instinct.

He lowers his chin, instead, and he fixes her with an intent stare: quelling, yes, but also searching. He looks for clues in her dusky face, her black eyes, exposed for once now that her (utterly ridiculous: who dedicates these things?) sunglasses, Chanel or Gucci or god knows what else, are perched atop her head.

A beat or two; then.

"If I'm wildly off the mark about your motives, Asha, then I apologize for my assumption. But I can't read your mind, and if I don't know anything, that's because you're not telling me anything."

Another.

"Why are you here? If it's not grief, then why are you standing over your tribesman's grave? If it's not defense of some ... longheld belief or secret hope, then why are you so angry when I speak of sklora-Myrgen's failings as well as his triumphs?"

[Asha Singh] "I came to tell him goodbye." Asha all-but-snarls the last word, as if the answer is obvious, the surface of the dark sea of things inside her, all the possibility of it, the gleaming waters, the naked, unplumbed depths, the history in her head and in her bones and in her skin and in her black eyes, the pupils huge, devouring in the absent like of the failing moon. " - and to say 'I hope you're not crazy anymore.' "

She drops her chin, then, looks back toward the grave. Quieter, then. "And to tell him I was gonna go back to that gross stupid pretend place where he came from and kick down the rest of the stupid sundials and tell all his dry-stick servants they had to leave because no one is ever ever coming back. That's why. Okay? That's all."

"And I did it, so now I'm gonna go."

[Wyrmbreaker] "Wait," before she can turn and stalk away. Lukas makes a gesture toward the headstone, the marker, whatever might indicate that this is the final resting place of sklora-Myrgen and all his ancestral line.

"Do it right. Without me interrupting your thoughts."

It's not for sklora-Myrgen's sake that Lukas does this. sklora-Myrgen is long, long gone; whatever lies beneath the earth is simply a shell, simply carbon compounds and nitrogen compounds and other, decaying matter. A goodbye to the dead is never for the sake of the dead, though, but for the sake of the living. A final page turned in that book before it's set back on the shelf for good.

"I'll wait for you outside the graves. Okay?"

[Asha Singh] Asha swings a look back at Wyrmbreaker when he says Wait, her eyes dark, her body language narrow, tight. Wait, he says, and she stops, still, her long arms close to her frame, the white oxford gleaming in the darkness, her long hair in elegant disorder around her exotic features, the lush curve of her mouth fuller with that sort of still look that must seem like nothing but teenaged recalcitrance. Still, she waits, mouths okay at him back to his "Okay?" like her okay were an echo dulled by metal. Then, she watches as he turns and leaves, walks through the raw mounds and the sunken graves, the dead and the decaying, the memories of them all pounded into stone until they become points of reference in an narrative, the stories they tell each other about why we die, and how to live in the interim.

When he's gone, the girl turns back to the grave, pads over the mounded dirt and sinks down to her haunches. What she says to the stone is no more ordered than her explanations to Wyrmbreaker. It might include, I hate you. and I'm glad you left. and I'm glad you're never going back. And indeed, I hope you aren't crazy anymore.

Then, finished, she scoops a handful of earth from the grave and pours it into the pocket of her jeans, rising at last and turning to follow Wyrmbreaker's path back through the graves.

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's path out of the graves leads him -- not by accident -- past those of Sampson, of Mrena, of Sheridan. He doesn't linger by any of them, but he does pass them.

Eventually, Asha emerges as well. True to his word, the Shadow Lord is waiting outside, standing knee-deep in the lake now, washing blood off his hands. Seeing her, he wades from the water, leaving a wet trail behind him. In that moment, fording from the lake, Lukas is all brawn and vigor, an apparition of the rugged, hulking mountain lords and Lords that his line descends from.

When Lukas first came to Chicago, there were still obvious echoes of adolescent leanness in his body: juts of bone at hip and elbow and knee, as though his body were a broad scaffold of bones that were yet to be fully hung with the ropes and cords and sheets of muscle his ancestry has marked him for. Already, in the year and a half he's been here on the proverbial front lines of the war, he's changed and grown, as much physically as otherwise. The shoulders and chest are heavy with muscle now, the back a solid wedge of strength. His ribs are solidly sheathed; the crest of the hip more evident in the insertion of the obliques than in the protrusion of bone.

He comes alongside his packmate, palpably warm even across a good foot or so of space, falls in beside her silently. When they're some distance from the territory of the dead, he speaks again, quietly.

"Listen," he says, "we're pack. And that counts for more than just about anything else to me. So talk to me if shit's weighing on your mind. Okay? Even if you don't know how to put it into words yet."

[Asha Singh] Asha circuits the lakeshore, the pebbled little beat where the tarmac folds away into the cold, dark waters. Her bare feet are covered in damp soil from the graves, her hands are tucked into her pockets, her arms held close to her body, distorting the shape of her crisply pressed white oxford. Slight thing that she is, she picks her way over the pebbles with ease, light and surefooted. Their size difference is magnified in humanskin. In her warforms, though, there is no mistaking her moon or her heritage.

Her anger is deflated, now. Somehow, she seems more raw in the moment, casting Lukas a sidelong look as they walk through the spiritual reflection of the Caern, the failing moon sinking toward the horizon somewhere above them. The look extends, her brow drawn together over it, her eyes intent. " - alright," she says at last. Then, "I'll be back in a week or so."

[Theron Locke] Theron had been spent quite a bit of time at the Caern recently , perhaps he was busy working with Caleb on the spiritual defences. Perhaps he was here seeking out someone, eager to gain new knowledges. Or just maybe he was here seeking out quiet contemplation. Escaping from the daily traffic of the Brotherhood, as he found a spot in the Caern and sat in quiet contemplation.

Eyes looking out unfocused on the Graves of the Fallen , his breath slow but steady as he sat cross legged. He doesn't even notice the two forms that are making their way up to him.

[Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [that was percep + emp!]

[Wyrmbreaker] Asha stares at the horizon. Wyrmbreaker studies Asha. Eventually she replies, and he looks ahead to see where they're going, and back to her again.

"All right," he replies, an unconscious echo. "You should see if Kate will accompany you. I know you knew him from before, but Katherine leads your tribe here. She'll probably want to be there."

He raises his voice, then -- "Theron. Hey."

[Theron Locke] The Theurge blinks several times as his attention is brought back to the present "Hey Lukas", that familiar tingle at the edge of his mind paid attention too. Stretching his as he tries to become more alert to his current surroundings. "Evenin Asha" a nod given to the newest member of the pack, one that he was still very much getting to know.

"Sorry for not recognising you early, mind was somewhat all over the place. What brings you two here this evening?" There is a mention of Kathering and her role as Silver Fang Elder, but Theron doesn't comment.

[Theron Locke] (( Hey guys.. if you want to focus on the Fenrir Moot.. I'm cool with this scene fading. As I think the two of you were done. ))
to Asha Singh, Wyrmbreaker

[Wyrmbreaker] [i'm actually not posted into the fenrir moot *dies* i'm just lurking. i am in a scene w/ kai now, though, and probably sleeping soon.]
to Asha Singh, Theron Locke

[Asha Singh] "Kate won't wanna go," Asha replies, confident on this point. "It's filthy there."

Then, Lukas greets Theron, Theron greets them both. Asha gives the theurge a rather abstracted sort of look, as if she hadn't seen him, or expected to find him there, or had taken the subtle tug of totemic connection for granted. There's a faint line bisecting her dark brows, and a twist of a frown written across her mouth. She doesn't say, I came for the graves, he came for the spirits. Instead, she gives him a look, a spark of her old insouciance leavened with gravity. "I was fishing off the docks. I caught three tires and a blender, and now - " she finishes, "I hafta go. I'll let Kate know, Lukas. I don't think she'd want to, though. It's not what you're thinking, that place. So."

An apologetic shrug to Theron, then.

[Theron Locke] (( all good , I'll grab you two another day. Theron just wanted to announce that he was going to challenge for Fostern and wanted some advice on who he should challenge. ))
to Asha Singh, Wyrmbreaker

[Asha Singh] Heh. I am posting there, though! and wrapping here would help me. :)
to Theron Locke, Wyrmbreaker

[Wyrmbreaker] "Congratulations," Lukas says regarding her catch of the day, amused. And, as she's taking off -- "See you, Asha."

Off she goes. Lukas stays, barbaric and barechested, smelling of blood still, drops to a crosslegged sit beside his other packmate. He doesn't say anything. After a while, he lays back in the dirt, stretching his legs out with a satisfied sigh as though pillowing down on the most luxurious bed.

Kate would be appalled.

[Asha Singh] (thank you guys! next time. :) )
to Theron Locke, Wyrmbreaker

[Theron Locke] Theron gives Asha a raised eyebrow at her comment about the fishing and her catch of the day. A bemused smile on his face as he just shakes his head "Hope they make good eating." Watching as she makes her leave.

The Theurge watches as his Alpha sits next to and then lays besides him. His eyes running over his Alpha, far more muscular than he would ever be. But what he lacked in physique the Theurge hoped he made up for it in wit and intellect. Well that alone is what saved him from being tossed into the Silver Lakes of Erebus.

"Is that blood yours or someone elses ? You and Asha do some training ?"

[Wyrmbreaker] "No. Someone else's. I was rendering unto Perun what is Perun's." And then he laughs, "In other words, I was making offerings at the shrine. Hearts and livers of slain foes to feed the oak of Perun."

[Theron Locke] "Hmmm perhaps that is what I should have done with them... Might have gotten some use out of them that way." Theron seemingly talking to himself, it was one of the first signs of madness apparently. He smiles and offers small laugh to join with Lukas' "Ahh I see, I guess these days that would be many?"

"Sorry that we don't seem have run together as of late. But I guess we all have our roles to play in the war and do what we can, I know I've been doing what I can, where I can."

[Wyrmbreaker] "No need to apologize," Lukas replies, easily enough. Then he shifts, his head turning in the cradle of his hands. "I heard about your Erebus trek. Can't imagine why you'd go there willingly, but I'm sure it was a worthwhile cause.

"Something on your mind, Oncoming Storm?"

[Theron Locke] "Heh not so much willingly but it was a tribal matter of some delicacy. It involved a member of our Tribe who had supposedly betrayed us by revealing secrets. Ways~of~Persuasion didn't want to risk encroaching on your territory so she asked me to do her a favour and go and question the Unfortunate located in Erebus. I think it was worthwhile.. mainly because I was able to get out there in one piece " a wry smile curled at the corners of his lips.

"Yes as a matter of fact.. something I was contemplating while sitting here. I feel I am ready to challenge for the rank of Fostern, I have spoken to Warcry about it and she said if I had to ask I wasn't ready. But I think my recent sojourn has cemented that decision for me... I feel ready. I just wanted to inform you and gain your insight on my options of who to challenge."

[Wyrmbreaker] "Hm," is all Lukas has to say about Theron's statement of readiness: a thoughtful sound, neither agreement nor disagreement.

He's silent for a while. Then one of his hands unlaces from the other, shifts from behind his hand to wipe down his face, cover a wide yawn. Butchering the wyrm and offering to Perun: exhausting work. Or something.

"Blood Summons," he says. "If I were you, that's who I'd challenge."

[Theron Locke] "A penny for your thoughts?" the noise Lukas sounded like an acknowledgement of Theron's actions. But he was sure there was some other thought lurking behind the surface. It often was with Lukas, he played everything so close to his chest, that it often seemed hard to get beyond that exterior.

But when Lukas goes silent, Theron does the same and waits for the answer. "hmm Blood Summons.. any particular reason why him over say Mama Ankle Biter ? Just interested in your reasoning is all. I have met and run with Blood Summons a number of times now."

[Wyrmbreaker] Penny for his thoughts: "Nope," Lukas replies. "Your rank challenge is a personal thing, Theron. One of the few things you don't need the approbation of anyone else for. So I'm not going to voice my opinion. If you think you're ready and your renown says you are, that's all the justification you need."

Then, tucking his hand back under his head, "I fought with him a few nights ago. Wise Theurge. Too damn taciturn like all the Get, but he knows his stuff. More importantly, he's of a tribe that respects and understands strength. Mama Anklebiter is not. Since there are no Lord theurges of the Fostern rank in this Sept, I'd choose a Fenrir over a Gnawer."

[Theron Locke] Theron nods "Okay then... well I feel ready and I'm making sure I'm prepared. I just don't want to let Perun down again" It seems the Theurge had learnt some hard lessons.

"Hmm I appreciate your insight Lukas. Your right about the tactiturn comment though and it seems he can make a simple grunt mean a thousand things. While I acknowledge strength , it would seem they dismiss wisdom. Perhaps I just need to get too know this Blood Summons more before I challenge him."

Theron stands from the spot he was sitting "Thanks for your time Alpha, I think I might take this opportunity to seek him out. Farewell brother"

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas stays where he is, back to the earth of the Caern, face to the stars. He looks at Theron as the Theurge rises, nodding.

"Good luck, Oncoming-Storm."

[Theron Locke] "Thankyou Wyrmbreaker-rhya" and with that the Theurge turns and heads deeper into the Caern.