descent.

[phanerothyme] Up the mountain and into the woods they go, to the tree that was never there before. Through the hollow they go, in the order of Wyrmbreaker's choosing, these Cliaths and their Fostern Beta, shunted aside as Alpha because of his ineptitude -- or else just for the sake of a stranger's challenge. They all know it might be a trap. There is no telling whether or not they suspect it was a trap last time, too. None of them know why these monsters singled out their pack and their Alpha.

The only trail they have now goes from the charred remains of cannibalized humans, spelling out a message dripping with warning. With threat. And it goes into places that should not exist. Places that, as Lukas knows from his temporary pack of younger wolves, have never existed in these hills before.

There is no way to get through the hollow in the roots and trunk of that ancient tree without shifting to lupus, and even then it's a tight fit for wolves like Wyrmbreaker and Threnody. The tunnel they find themselves, descending into cold, hard earth, is claustrophobically tight. Clusters of roots brush through their fur. Slumbering worms slide quickly out of the way of their paws, as though they thought themselves safe and buried until these creatures of Gaia's wrath descended into their realm.


There's a widening up ahead, sends Sunthief back from where he scouts. And... fire light. Shadows.

[Wyrmbreaker] Sunthief is first, of course, a gliding shadow that easily manipulates these twisting, claustrophobic tunnels. Wyrmbreaker lags a good twenty or thirty feet behind, struggling through the earthen pathways with far greater difficulty. Then comes Wane, and Key of Heaven; last, bringing up the rear, Threnody -- bookending the slighter, less physical members of the pack with a pair of larger wolves.

Stay here, he sends to the others as Sunthief reports from up ahead. The black wolf lowers his head; nibbles something from a foreleg, crunches it between his teeth and drinks down the concoction within. Afterward, his tongue licks in and out several times, as though in distaste -- pink on the first three licks, then abruptly jet-black.

Moments later, every highlight fades from his fur. The blue of his eyes go black. The whites. Inky-black now, a solid mass of shadow, he treads forward, lowering himself to his belly after a time.

Sunthief can likely still hear him coming. What stealth Wyrmbreaker has is learned, trained, not innate the way a ragabash's is. When he comes alongside the svelter wolf, he peers ahead to see what might be seen.

[phanerothyme] The spirits of night and darkness are ice cold in Wyrmbreaker's mouth, twining and writhing their way down his throat. They coat him from the inside out, clinging to organ and bone and muscle before they seep through his skin like welling sweat. They hang from the ends of his fur, loathe to drop down, and like this his mate would not recognize those piercing eyes of his. She would never even see him lurking out there in the dark. There is nothing left of Lukas but the dark part. The shadow.

They have to move almost to the mouth of this widening that Sunthief talked about. There's no room in the tunnel to wiggle about, stand beside one another. Sunthief actually gets down on his belly and essentially lets Wyrmbreaker crawl over him, and even them dirt clods fall onto their fur. The going is slow. It has to be, or they'd make too much noise.

There is in fact a cave up ahead, though there's a reason Sunthief didn't choose that word: it's small, as though carved out by hand and just big enough to fit what it has to: perhaps two, maybe three crinos bodies could get in there, no more. Other tunnels lead out from it: three of them, in fact. Two to the left, one to the right. Bones are set into the dirt wall directly across from the tunnel, creating the essentials of a humanoid form -- topped with a crinos skull, vastly outsized to the rest of the 'body'. Six other bones, random ones from arms and legs and ribcages, are placed in a semicircle below the feet of the figure.

Some of the bones are warped, as though made of taffy pulled and twisted too hard. Not a single one of the bones came from a human form, nor that of a wolf.

There is a small fire in the center of the little cave. The ambulatory skeleton of a crinos Garou, hump-backed and dragging one leg and both hands, strides back and forth. Its jaws open and close, teeth sharp as a shark's. It makes no vocalizations, no sound. Both feet and both hands are tipped with 'claws' carved out of stone, sharpened by god knows what, bound and re-bound and tightly tied to its fingerbones. It lumbers back and forth not far from the mouth of the very tunnel they're in, working what was once its mouth as though it would prefer to be growling. The thing's shadow grows and shrinks against the wall where it is thrown, giving movement and life to the embedded bones.

Rage emanates from the skeleton, filling the air they breathe with something like a scent, acrid and sour.

[Wyrmbreaker] [sniff!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 8 (Failure at target 4)

[Wyrmbreaker] [SHADOW LORDS DON'T FAIL.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[phanerothyme] [Lukas has a sneaking suspicion there is mud down those tunnels.]

[phanerothyme] [The air through the second passage on their left smells a little 'fresher' than the others, though that's being generous with the definition of the word 'fresh'. Also generous with the definition of the word 'air'.]

[Wyrmbreaker] It's awkward at best, two wolves wedged into the tunnel, one clambering over the other to get a look. At one point dirt and pebbles begin to rain from the ceiling -- if such a word can even be used of a thing that presses against Wyrmbreaker's back if he tried to straighten his legs -- and he freezes. He can't say for certain himself if he's more wary of alerting the skeletal Crinos or of a cave-in.

The moment passes. He takes that last, ginger step forward and looks. There's a long pause, then. He scents the air. He watches the creature pace, silent and raging. He studies the embedded skeleton, miniature, perhaps even smaller than a human's.

The other packmates hear the exchange between the ahroun and the ragabash, confirming. Then another brief silence.

We take it down. I'll face it head-on. Try to get behind it and dislocate the neck. If that doesn't work, unhinge the jaw. The rest of you: move only when you hear us moving. Let's make this quick and quiet.

If I call retreat, Threnody and I bring up the rear.

Wyrmbreaker gathers his paws beneath him, waiting for the skeletal Crinos's back to be turned.

[phanerothyme] There's no argument behind him, no dissent. This was one of the things that dragged off their Alpha, the source of all their shame. Sunthief lets go a flicker of surprise that he's being thrust into battle, but it isn't much of one: there's no way any of the others could get in to do as Lukas asks, anyway. It isn't fear. It isn't wariness that he isn't good enough. For all his other flaws, all his smarminess, Sunthief is a skilled Ragabash -- and he knows it.

The wait he lies in for the skeleton to turn its back never quite comes. It paces, turning every so often, but it keeps its chest or side towards their tunnel. If it hears them -- if it has any clue at all that they're there -- it gives no sign.

Wyrmbreaker lunges, and then Sunthief, and it happens as fast as any battle. The last time they faced these things there were seven of them against a pack of five. Even as strong as the skeleton is, this is perhaps one of the weakest. Two against one is far better odds. And Wyrmbreaker is, frankly put, stronger than Stormstrike.

Sunthief leaps on the thing's back and the rest of the pack starts to make its way as quick as they can out of the tunnel, but there isn't enough room in the cave for them to begin with. The Ragabash clings to the monster but can't get purchase on jaw or neck because of the sharp curve of the thing's hump. It opens its mouth in what would be a roar and flings Sunthief against a wall, making the entire cave shudder, dropping dirt and pebbles and all manner of bugs down on them

just before Lukas snaps its spine in half.


It can't feel pain. Not like Sunthief over there, ready to leap back to his feet after crumpling to the ground. He can feel pain. But this skeleton can't. It retains some memory of what it needs to have for life to go on, though, enough to know that if its head or spine is taken it will die, it cannot move. It hits the ground and its dried bones don't break, don't even shudder. Legs and claws twitch. Its jaw opens and closes still, as though gasping. It doesn't pay to stand and wait for it to stop moving. It can't attack them any longer.

The only thing to do is dismantle it, but before they can even think to get started on that, Key of Heaven speaks. Look.

Wane is in the cave now with them, and Key at the mouth of it, Threnody's eyes glowing behind him. The Theurge has a questing stone in his mouth, hanging from his teeth. It's pulling forward, without deviation, towards the second of the left-hand passages.

[Wyrmbreaker] There wasn't a lot of room in this chamber to begin with. Now there's less: a night-black hispo crowds the walls and the ceiling, the skittering bugs, the dirt that snapped and popped as it fell in the fire. Hulking, it turns at the mind-voice: look.

He looks. Where once the stone could do nothing but pull in bewildering directions, could do nothing but spin helplessly in place, it has direction now. It pulls toward the passage with the marginally fresher scent; the only one, perhaps, that leads through to some other locale.

Wyrmbreaker turns back to the skeleton. He ends it somehow -- separates skull from spine, or crushes every bone in his teeth, or whatever it will take. It's not vindictiveness. It's a learning process. He remembers what it takes to destroy one of these things, and he passes that knowledge to his temporary pack.

Why would the Stone work now? he questions, then. And while the others come up with answers, or theories, or nothing at all, he goes over to the figure in the wall, sniffing at it before -- ever so carefully -- disturbing the circle of bones at its feet.

[phanerothyme] Feelings and impressions more than thoughts filter through Wyrmbreaker's mind from the minds of the pack. They are all of them in lupine forms of one kind or another -- that's all that will fit in here. If they were to shift to crinos it would be Wyrmbreaker and Sunthief and a dismembered skeleton and Wane wedged somewhere in there, but as it is they can barely do more than turn their heads and shoulders around to look at the questing stone that Key is holding.

Threnody, still in the tunnel, disgusted and frustrated by this, reining in some other emotion. Wane, curious about the bones, the ones that just stopped moving and the ones that seem to paint a picture. Sunthief, disgruntled and frustrated and pained. His rage is higher now, throbbing like a bump on his head, a bruise on his chest. They weren't badly hurt, but already it's clear why no one wanted to leave the Ragabash or the Philodox alone with five of these things.

Key of Heaven is all but silent. Why now, Lukas asks, and nobody even says I don't know.


Across the small cave the effigy stands. They are nothing more than bones, though warped and twisted ones. Hard to imagine what a true crinos would have looked like, flesh and muscle wrapped around bones like these. One eye socket is larger than the other. The jaw is akward, misshapen.

Wane is the first to speak, seeing Lukas sniffing at those bones that carry no scent but that of endless, deathless Rage. They had no leader, when we faced them, she muses serenely in their minds, pawing at the one Sunthief and Wyrmbreaker just killed. None stood above the other six. That skull belonged to one of them. She nudges the newly 'dead' one again with her forepaw. There are only five of them to fight now.

Then what does the figure represent? Threnody asks, immediately, all but biting the words into their thoughts.

[Wyrmbreaker] In this form, Wyrmbreaker is utterly monstrous, a fearsomely huge wolf-thing with just enough intelligence and sharpness in the eyes to look not entirely bestial. He stands with his back to the rest of the pack. Those eyes scan the crude art again and again, examining the effigy of a crinos-humanoid, the six bones laid as though in supplication or subjugation at its feet.

An Alpha, he says suddenly. Maybe your Alpha. Maybe that's why they wanted her.

He swings away from the bone-art, then. Melts down to his smaller form, so very nearly a wolf that the eye distinguish no difference. The instinct can, though. He no more feels like a wolf than he does a man. Not entirely.

Let's go. Sunthief, will you regenerate, or do you need healing?

[phanerothyme] You know, Stormstrike would never ask that, Sunthief snarks, and instantly they all know he's fine. Stormstrike has caved in my head enough times to know better. Really, I can't believe they put you in charge. You're the worst babysitter I've ever had, and that's counting the one who used to sit on me and fart on my head, can you fathom that my parents paid her to make sure I didn't burn down the house? Better a burnt house than a boy with a lifelong obsession with women's flatulence.

He has a pounding headache. They also know that as he rattles on in the backs of their minds, grousing about the time his parents got a male babysitter. Really. At least he keeps it relatively quiet.

An Alpha. Maybe your Alpha. Sunthief is blathering on and on, mostly to himself, but those words are still ringing in all of their thoughts. It's Key, though, who says what none of them want to.

What kind of Alpha would creatures that eat and burn humans want?

It's rhetorical. It sidesteps the real question:

What does that say about Stormstrike?

[Wyrmbreaker] Maybe one to teach them differently. Look at what they drew. The seventh figure has a body. Walks upright. The other six are just bones, twisted and malformed and fragmentary.

He's already heading down the tunnel, nipping Sunthief at the scruff of the neck to encourage the Cliath to scout ahead while his grousing continues unabated in their minds. At least it's quiet.

Or maybe an Alpha that will lead them to more ambitious horrors. Or maybe that doesn't represent an Alpha at all but some puppetmaster they already have. Or their god. We don't know enough yet. Don't let yourselves get locked into one assumption.

Let's keep going, he repeats, and see what we find.